The Heretic’s Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease Read Free Book Online Page B

to tell him ’t were a waste.”
    The black-haired thief? Kate wondered. He hardly seemed the kind to give charity . . . more the kind to steal it. Still, he was in the next cell. “What happened to him? Is he still here? May I see him? I think he knew . . .”
    “Nay, mistress. He beint here. Some fancy-dressed lord bailed him out, like always.”
    “Bailed him out?” she asked. “But . . . how . . . ?”
    “Paid surety for him.”
    “Do you know the man’s name who bailed him out?”
    “I can’t remember his name. Big hulk of a man in satin knee breeches and furred doublet.”
    That was it then, she thought, feeling suddenly very tired. The late March wind whipped at her skirt, tightening it against her body and blowing back the hood of her mantle. The sentry leered. Kate pulled her mantle in and her hood back up on her head. She stepped back, widening the space between them. Why hadn’t the scoundrel Tom whatever his name was told her John would have to pay to get to the window? She would have given him the money. It was probably all a lie anyway. He probably didn’t even know her brother. She turned to leave, but a voice in her head held her back.
    Raves in his sleep about a woman named Mary.
And there was more. Something behind these forbidding walls pulled at her. She fancied she could feel John’s despair weighing on her own heart. Or perhaps it was just the weight of so much communal misery seeping through the walls. Whichever, she turned back for one last try.
    “I have reason to believe that my brother is here. If you would just let me in to take a look.”
    He coughed and loosed a string of spittle over his shoulder. “This stinking place is a hotbed of disease. No fit place for the likes of ye.” His brow furrowed and his eyes bulged with this pronouncement. “Like I done told ye afore. There beint nobody here by the name of John Goll.”
    “Gough. John Gough,” Kate said quietly. “It would be spelled
gh
on alist, but it is pronounced like an
f,
” doubting that he could read, but hoping her own measured tone would settle his temper. “I know he’s here. The man in the cell next to the woman described him to me. You said his name was Tom something. This same Tom said my brother is here. He is a tall, blond man. His features are somewhat like mine. Except he has blond hair where mine is dark. Same high forehead.” She threw back the hood and swept back her hair with her hands so the watchman could see her features clearly.
    He peered at her intently for what seemed like an eternity. “May be.” He nodded. “Just may be. I do recollect—a quiet sort. His back all bruised and bleeding when they brought him in. Spent a week in the infirmary. Didn’t have much to say for hisself. Not even after he healed up. Tom told me to put him on the list—’course he didn’t pay enough to get him on the list, so I didn’t.”
    Kate dug in the little leather purse tied at her waist just inside her cloak. She handed him a shilling with a question in her eyes. He looked at it and raised an eyebrow. She dug out two more.
    The watchman slid the coins into his pocket so swiftly she hardly saw his hand move. “Come back tomorrow,” he said. “Be here early. I can’t vouch for the whole day.”

    At first Kate wasn’t sure.
    She’d gotten up before dawn, restless, pacing as she waited for day to break. Finally, she’d put on her cloak and gone out into the darkness of the silent street, carrying a tallow-dip lantern. A light dawn mist settled rather than fell, fogging the streets so that her smoky lantern looked like a ghost-light bobbing along—had any soul been abroad at that hour to notice.
    The prison was eerily quiet as she approached at first light, no street traffic except a lone ragpicker with his cart creaking down the lane on his way to a more lucrative street. Even the pigeons roosting on the rooftop still had their heads tucked beneath their wings. All the cells looked empty.