Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) by Anna Castle Read Free Book Online

pushed Tom out the door. He had to finish lacing his doublet as he hurried through the gallery. He didn’t mind. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep in her bedchamber, and now he was in sore need of a nap.
    He ought to go to the astronomy lecture in the Common Schools, but he didn’t have the strength to go out. He had lost his tutor today to violent death; surely he could take one afternoon off. He decided to grab a copy of Aristotle’s De Caelo on his way up to the cockloft and read it lying on his bed. Entering his chambers, he crossed the room to the bookshelf leaning between the front windows. While scanning the neat stacks of leather-bound volumes, he heard a scrape and a thump behind him in the vicinity of Diligence Wingfield’s desk.
    “Dilly?” Tom had thought he was alone. Usually, his chambermates would speak up whenever someone came in. Any distraction from study was welcome.
    A wet snore arose from the corner. Dilly’s desk was tucked under the stairs to the cockloft in the rear corner of the room.
    “Diligence?” Tom took a few steps and spotted the boy lying sprawled on the floor behind his overturned stool. He seemed dead to the world but for the noise issuing from his open mouth.
    Tom bent to shake the boy’s shoulder. “Wake up!” No joy. He shook harder and shouted louder. “Wake up, Dilly!” Diligence slept on, like the princess in the story, only vastly less attractive.
    Tom stared down at him, scratching his beard. What the devil was this about? Why wouldn’t he wake? He looked at the desk for some explanation and saw a green jug and Mr. Leeds’s pewter cup. Diligence must have taken them while cleaning up his puke. Finding wine left in the jug, he’d hidden them behind his books for an after-dinner treat. He’d drunk it too fast and knocked himself out.
    Tom picked up the jug and jiggled it. Empty. But it only held about four cups when full. If Leeds drank one and Marlowe another, that left two at most for Diligence. Was that enough to lay a boy his size out cold? Tom’s small friend Trumpet could drink three times that amount and still walk and talk. Not well and not clearly, but still. He sniffed the top of the jug gingerly, trying for a whiff of spirituous liquor. He smelled cheap sack with plenty of honey and ginger, and something bitter underneath.
    The snoring shifted into a strangling sort of gargle, raising the small hairs on the back of Tom’s neck. The thought of poison leapt into his mind. Not another death. Not today, may it please you, God.
    He needed to rouse this boy at once. He slid his left arm under his torso and hauled him to his feet. He started walking him around Leeds’s table, around and around in a circle. “Come on Dilly, you silly old billy. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” He accompanied each command with a little shake.
    The chamber door squealed. Steadfast Wingfield walked in with a bag over one shoulder. His other arm was laden with linens and blankets. He gaped at Tom and dropped his burdens to the floor. “What are you doing to my brother?” His hands clenched into fists as he strode across the room.
    “Help me get —” Tom started, but Steadfast drove an iron fist into his jaw, sending him sprawling across Leeds’s table. Then he caught his brother around the chest and scowled at Tom with the exact expression of a ram guarding his cote.
    “What have you done to him?”
    “Nothing!” Tom righted himself and held both hands palms out. “I found him like that, you crack-brained nidget! I was trying to wake him.”
    “What?” Steadfast looked from Tom to Diligence and back again. His temper slowly cooled. “What’s wrong with him?”
    “I think he’s been drugged. I found him on the floor beside his desk. I think he drank some wine from Mr. Leeds’s jug. What was in it, I couldn’t say.”
    Steadfast chewed on that for a while. He and Diligence looked much alike. They both had clear blue eyes and white-blond hair, thick and straight, cut