‘No, no, I will be quite all right if only I could sit.’
Fludd ushered her to a window seat and plumped a cushion for her. The men sat on hard chairs, ranged in front of her, as if in homage. Sitting with the dusty sunlight behind her the years dropped away as she began her story. The Constable had ink and parchment beside him and dipped occasionally as he made quick strokes with the quill.
‘I feel, Master Fludd, that I must begin by telling you that I don’t know whether my sister has any marks, distinguishing or otherwise. Until I saw her a week ago yesterday, that would be Sunday sennight, I had not seen her since she left our parents’ house thirty years ago, when I was just seven years old.’
The Constable gave himself an invisible pat on the back – his guess at her age had been remarkably accurate.
‘She had married young,’ Jane Butler went on, ‘and I remember the fuss for the wedding; she was our parents’ eldest daughter and the sewing and the cooking and everyone rushing to and fro – it was great fun for a little girl.’
‘Who did she marry?’ the Constable asked. ‘Just for the notes.’ And he waved his hand to the fluttering wall.
The woman looked at her husband, who waved his hand at her to carry on. ‘I don’t know.’ She caught the expression on the Constable’s face and grimaced back at him, ruefully. ‘I know that that may sound strange, but I only remember the wedding preparations. The wedding day was confusing for a little girl, so many new people, so much music, dancing.’ She smiled at Fludd and an excited seven year old looked out of her eyes. ‘I know I made myself sick eating all the marchpane animals the cooks had decorated the table with. I have never been able to eat it since. But as to who she married, I can’t remember him at all.’
‘But surely,’ the Constable asked, ‘other people in the family must have known who he was. Must have spoken of him since. Did something happen? Did he die young?’
‘I don’t know what happened to him,’ she said, simply. ‘I remember . . .’ she furrowed her brow, trying to work out how to tell this stranger about an event thirty years ago which had rocked her family to its foundations. ‘I remember her coming home, late one night. My mother was crying. I was excited, because I had missed my sister, and I thought she was home for a visit. But in the morning, she wasn’t there. People told me I had imagined it.’
‘And had you?’
‘No. Later, when I was older, my mother told me that my sister – her name is Eleanor, Eleanor Peacock – had married a man who had turned out to be a bad lot. He had abandoned her and she had come home with only the clothes on her back. To avoid a scandal, my parents sent her to our aunt in France. She had joined a convent there when King Henry . . .’ her voice tailed away. Especially in this day and age, it paid to be circumspect with strangers. There were plots everywhere, Jesuits roaming the roads and planning God knew what.
The Constable understood. Every family had a Catholic somewhere in its closet. ‘Your aunt is a nun?’
‘Was a nun, yes. Of the poor Clares, I believe. She went to France when her convent was dissolved.’ Jane Butler drew a deep sigh. ‘She did well there, and when Eleanor’s shame came on the family, mother said, it seemed the right thing to do to send her to live with her sister, who was known as Sister Bernard. After the Saint, you know.’
Fludd was a man who found he had enough to do with the constabulary job and the carpentry that he didn’t need to spend hours poring over the calendar of Saints’ days. However, he was as kind as he was busy and so nodded understandingly.
‘So Eleanor went to France. She never took her vows, she remained a Lay Sister, but she became very devout. She wore a wedding ring as a bride of Christ, adopted the habit and was, to all intents and purposes, I suppose, a nun.’
‘Why did she come home?’ Fludd asked.
Jeremiah Butler spoke up now. ‘My wife’s mother died,’ he said. ‘Her father couldn’t manage his home. The servants were running wild, the farm was in rack and ruin. We brought him to live with us, but’ – he stole a covert look at his wife – ‘it was not successful. Then we had word that Jane and Eleanor’s aunt had died in France. It seemed the perfect solution. Eleanor could come home to nurse her father. I have taken on the farmlands to run with my own.’
Fludd almost added aloud ‘And my mad old father-in-law will not be in my house morning, noon and night.’ But in fact he said, simply, ‘That seems an ideal solution.’ He turned to Jane Butler. ‘So, she got back on the Sunday. When did you see her last?’
‘A week ago today.’
The Constable was amazed and showed it. ‘So she was in your house for just one day?’
‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘Just one day.’ She foraged in her sleeve for a cloth and blew her nose noisily. ‘Not even that, really. She got home at about nine at night, it was quite dark, so that must have been around the time. Then, on the Monday morning, Jeremiah -’ she flicked a hand at him and blew her nose again – ‘Jeremiah gave her some money to go and get some new clothes. She looked very . . .’
Jeremiah Butler took over. ‘She looked like a French nun’s idea of how a fashionable lady dresses, Fludd. Perhaps I should say a French nun’s idea of how a not very fashionable lady dressed thirty years ago. She had on a drab coloured dress, and a head . . . thing . . .’ he waved a hand distractedly in the air, sketching a scarf wrapped round the head and neck. ‘She had a cross, on a rosary, which she wore outside her clothes. She was very . . . noticeable.’ He sat back and gestured to his wife to carry on her story.
But she had little more to add. ‘That is the story, Master Fludd. She went out to go marketing, and I have not seen her since.’
‘And you’re sure she came to Cambridge?’ the Constable checked.
The Butlers stared at him. ‘Have you been to Royston lately?’ the yeoman asked. The point was made.
Fludd scratched his head and looked out of the window over Jane Butler’s shoulder. He was trying to frame a way of asking his next question without upsetting the woman. ‘And yet you only come to me today?’ he said.
She immediately burst into tears. He gave himself a mental kick – he hadn’t managed to avoid upsetting her after all.
Her husband answered for her. ‘We thought she had . . . well, she’d been in a convent for thirty years, man. We thought she might have . . .’
Incredulous, Fludd suddenly understood his meaning. Tentatively, he checked that his facts were straight. ‘You -’ and here he pointed at each of the Butlers in turn – ‘assumed that because she had been celibate for thirty years she had . . . gone . . . off . . . in order to . . .’
Butler blustered. ‘Yes. Well, that’s what I would do!’ This was pronounced with an air that suggested that that was what any sane person would do.
Jane Butler shook her head and whispered, ‘No. I knew she hadn’t done that, but Jeremiah . . .’ again, she could only flap her hand at her husband and then blow her nose.
Fludd put down the quill, got up and paced across the room, thinking. Then, he spoke to Jane Butler. ‘Madame, is your sister of about your build, perhaps a little slighter, with auburn hair? She has the mark of a wedding ring, perhaps?’
Jane Butler leapt to her feet and grabbed his hands. ‘Yes! That is Eleanor. She took off her ring as Christ’s bride when she left the convent, but there was still a mark.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Jeremiah! Do you hear? Master Fludd has found Eleanor!’
Joseph Fludd held both her hands firmly in his. ‘Mistress Butler,’ he said, in a calm, low voice. ‘I fear that the news may not be good. No, do not get distressed, but I fear we must pay a visit to the Dead House.’
Jane Butler turned white and fainted dead away, crashing to the sawdust-coated floor in a less-than-ceremonious heap. Her husband looked on as Joseph Fludd laid her more comfortably, instinctively loosening her lace collar and hoping the yeoman would understand. ‘So, my wife’s sister is dead, then?’ he said.