He doubted that the church would think any perils were sufficient excuse for what Ned saw before him. He pulled the covers back over the pair of bodies then stepped across to Meg Black. He took her unresisting hands and carefully pulled her over to the cabin window. He would have preferred the deck or somewhere less steeped in death but he had a strong feeling that this required privacy and he needed information now. “What can you tell me?”
Slowly her attention dropped from the river traffic and came back to him. Her eyes were red and strained. “I’ve known Joachim for several years now. He used to deal with my parents. He is…” Meg Black paused and gave a quick glance towards the shrouded bunk. “…he was a good man, a godly man, believed in the same ideals as my family. This cannot be. He…he loved Pieter as a son. It…it isn’t possible!”
Ned initially made no comment. In the last year he’d had a chance to review some of the more sordid cases that had passed through the Courts, and from a few, he well understood what some of the godly inhabitants of monasteries were capable of. If they could succumb so frequently to vile lusts, what chance an ordinary man? “Are you so sure?”
It was a quietly asked question but it received a savage response. She swung around and snarled back at him. “Joachim’s family had died of the Sweats. Pieter was his only living relative!”
That did put a slightly different complexion on the matter. If the uncle had died then the lad stood to inherit and inheritance was a common reason for sudden death. But with both deceased that ruled out the obvious solution.
Ned had a flash of inspiration. “Who owns the ship?”
This simple question gained him a most interesting response from his summoner. She now acquired an air of sudden hesitant evasiveness, then snapped out an instant denial “That has nothing to do this!”
Ned’s daemon quivered with suspicion at the change from her previous sorrow. “Why not Meg? I was always taught that in any death somebody gains.” Ned didn’t want to add the rider that at the Inns of Court it was part of a longstanding joke-the greater the estate, the longer the case, the bigger the fee ergo, the happier the lawyer.
Her answer was short and sharp and still evasive. “In this situation, that won’t help.”
Ned was tired of the dodging and ducking. His leg still hurt and he had lost the best part of a pint of good ale, all to be next to a pair of corpses that were getting, in the warm summer weather, to be more ‘corpsey’ with every passing minute. To top this off, the tide was now actively pulling at the boat lending it a distinctly swaying-tilting motion, that was doing something very similar to his not so happy stomach. At this queasy feeling Ned’s tolerance snapped. “I need to know what’s going on. Or cozen someone else to solve your problems!”
Meg gave him one of those speculative looks of hers, as if at a tumbler’s dog that had learned to speak. “All right… you do! You own the ship.”
At her preposterous answer Ned’s mouth automatically started a reply, then frozen in mid syllable. “Wha…”
What he was going to say went like this. ‘How in the name of all the blessed saints can I own a boat? Why would I own a boat? I get the pukes crossing the river!’ Then a simple fact from the past strangled his words in mid spate. He looked at his companion with more than a twinge of suspicion. “It the Cardinal’s Angels, isn’t it?”
Meg Black pulled herself haughtily up to her full height of five foot odd and bestowed on him the kind of glare reserved for peddlers of mouldy linen. “Well, what if it is! Lady Anne’s terms for keeping it from the King was that I was the executor, and you agreed, Ned Bedwell! Anyway did you think that twenty pounds a year would last forever? It isn’t going to sit there on its own and breed you know!”
Ned just shook his head. Wonderful news-he was the owner or more likely part-owner of vessel with two dead men aboard, and so far he could guarantee that every official in London would be bound to be interested. His daemon made an unwelcome comparison to the grain shipments syndicate. Reluctantly he put that aside once more. The sudden thrill of ownership seemed awfully brief. However it did explain his peremptory summons. Now resigned to a reluctant defence, Ned slowly shook his head. As his daemon reminded him, affairs concerning apprentice apothecary Margaret Black, were never simple. Switching into a more lawyer-ish manner of thinking, Ned rubbed his head. He’d better start somewhere before several burley and insistent men, hauled him up before the dour judges of the Inquest.
“So Meg before the City Coroner, Justices and everyone else tramps up the plank, what happened up to now?”
Mistress Black cross her arms and frowned, chasing down the memory, before she replied. “Roger and I saw Joachim just before the Vespers bells, say nine of the clock, about…about a matter of cargo.”
Ned didn’t need to press. He’d a very good idea what sort of illicit shipments she’d have been arranging; heretical books. Damn, why had he been thrown into the situation where to gain Thomas Cromwell’s dubious patronage, they had to rely on the restriction bound privilege of Lady Anne Boleyn’s support? By the saints he knew then it would come back and bite them! As one of his fellows at Grays Inn said about doubtful decisions, ‘the dagger of today trumps the noose of the tomorrow’.
“The… matter would have taken about an hour then we left. One of the sailors escorted us past the wharf and Joachim and Pieter were very much alive.”
Once more Ned sensed that Meg Black had answered with a hefty dose of evasion. He hoped that it only concerned forbidden books. “Did anyone else come onto the ship or pass you on the wharf.”
That received a brief shake of denial. Ned, still undaunted, pushed on. “Was Joachim expecting anybody else?”
“He didn’t say.”
So Meg and Roger may still be regarded as suspects. Just what he needed. His daemon hopefully wondered if Hawk’s could be made to take the blame, but his angel banished the suggestion. No, Meg wouldn’t countenance it, and nor should he! Driven back onto the stony path of righteousness, Ned continued his questioning. “When was the boat to leave?”
“It’s a ship Ned, not a boat, a Hanse carrack, the Ruyter of Bremen.” This reply was in better spirit. Hopefully Meg Black was beginning to recover from the shock, though why they should purchase a foreign vessel he had no idea, but he’d get a full explanation before the end of this, or else.
“It was to sail on the morning tide, bound for Bristol, Dublin and Glasgow with a mixed load and a shipment for the Earl of Ormond. When the ship master didn’t appear, the crew searched all over for him for an hour. The activity drew those two customs officers and eventually, after all the local taverns had been searched, they tried the shipmaster’s quarters. I had already been summoned and gave authority to break open the door.” Mistress Black waved over towards the occupied bunk. “You can see what we found.”
That sounded a great deal better, lots of witnesses at the discovery. Any inquest would be hard put to find any real connection between Meg and the murder. It may have been a low thought, but in his proposed profession, it paid to check. “From what you said, the inquest should clear you of any suspicion. It is unfortunate your friends were murdered and possibly they will find the killers, but on the whole you and Roger are in the clear.”
Ned doubted anyone would find the slayers. Death happened every day in the city. He didn’t think that the under-sheriff or the watch would make much effort to figure out who had killed a pair of foreigners. There may be a brief flurry of correspondence between England and the Hanse League but unless the men had powerful patrons that would be it. The fatalities would be put down to the usual risks of trade.