The Cunning Woman

Chapter 1.

Command These Elements

“TRUST ME.”

The two most useless words in our language. A person either is trustworthy or they’re not. Commanding someone to trust is like prefacing a statement with “honestly.” Translation: I’m lying.

Yet he seems inclined to believe me. To trust me, the more fool he.

That’s how the magic works.

“I know who stole your bracelet.” Unlike many women, I’ve acquired the art of speaking so the whole tavern hears me, though I’m neither shrill nor shouting.

I swivel to make eye contact with each of the forty or so drinkers in The Three Barks. Most will not meet my stare.

I foretell, loud and low, that the bracelet will soon appear in the collection box of St. Michael’s next door. Two nights later, the priest discovers the bauble and brings it to the tavern.

I buy him an ale out of my fee.

It’s a living.

“It’s a trick.” Seconds after the priest exits, another man slides onto the stool. He carries a tankard in his left hand and sets it on the table. He’s tall, overtopping everyone in the tavern tonight, with deep-set round eyes, a receding hairline accentuated rather than hidden by his shoulder-length graying locks, and a close-trimmed beard and mustache. His clothes suggest a gentleman, as does the silver ring in his left ear. He’s somewhat younger than I am, mid to late forties as told by the folds around his eyes, but time has not yet stooped his frame.

Gentlemen are not uncommon drinkers at The Three Barks. Cripplegate Ward is home to many guildsmen – and, indeed, to multiple guild halls – and the tavern has a reputation for wholesome food and unwatered drinks. Still, in the week since I took the small room across Wood Street, I have seen him only once before, on the night I first heard about the missing bracelet.

I nod – neither pleasantly nor inviting, mostly a mere acknowledgement that a gentleman has spoken – and watch his eyes, his posture, his body to glean some hint of what he seeks.

“A nice trick.” He watches me the way I watch others.

I’m uncomfortable under his gaze. I’m used to being both stared at and avoided, both for similar reasons. Those who have seen me ply my discomfiting trade fear the evil eye. Those who have simply seen me prefer not to peer closely at my pocked features.

Usually this provides freedom to observe without being observed.

Not a lot of freedom for an impoverished woman in London. I cherish whatever small liberty I can wrest from the world.

He opens a palm. “Do you tell fortunes too?”

I inspect his tankard instead. “I predict you’ll find this tavern’s ale most satisfactory.” I am no fortuneteller, and I most certainly will not fall for whatever challenge he is setting forth.

Besides, telling fortunes is punishable by death these days. During Elizabeth’s reign, there was little pursuit of either soothsayers or Catholics or the poor, though statutes frowned on all three. In the eight years James has sat on the throne, however, diviners of all sorts, other than astrologers, have been pursued as fervidly as papists. The poor, of course, are always under threat, doubly so these days given the stories that James outspends even Good Queen Bess.

My visitor lifts his tankard with his left hand, then sets the vessel down in a different spot, all the while gazing directly at me.

Across the tavern, a high, clear tenor voice begins a song, soon joined by others.

The man pays no attention to the music.

I consider whether he plans to accost me when I leave the tavern. I think it unlikely, considering how many have seen us engaged in some minor commerce the past few minutes. But “unlikely” is not “impossible” or even “improbable.” That he is a man and I a woman, that weighs against me. That he is tall and I am… not, that too presses on the scales.

He rubs at his left forearm, not in idleness but – judging by the crinkling of his eyes – to massage away some pains. Not a laborer’s ache, because his smooth palms and fingers suggest that others work on his behalf. Ink on his left forefinger reveals that he has recently used a quill, likely in the keeping of accounts.

His eyes flick downwards, following my own quick glance.

He allows – in what I’m sure is a conscious action – a smile to bend his lips just long enough to suggest he has reached some decision. “I’m Will. And I seek a favor.”

I suspected that’s where he was headed.

“Two favors.” His smile broadens. “First, to know your name.”

“So that you can report me to the constable.”

He snorts. “Constable Rafe?” He points toward the east wall of the tavern. “Now here’s a fortune I can tell. I predict Rafe Shevington is eight ales in at The King’s Arms. Which might lay out an ordinary man.”

He pauses, making clear he expects me to ask why.

At least his smile has now grown genuine.

I supply the obvious answer. “He is no ordinary man?”

“The King’s Arms does not serve ordinary beer, but water with beer flavoring. You do well to drink….” He grimaces, struck by some memory, perhaps. “Drink here.”

“I am Andi.” Others in the tavern know my name, and now Will knows as well.

“Your parents wanted a boy?”

“Like all parents.” Boys have value. Girls require dowries. And protection from those boys, though between the pox and my reputation and my age, I’ve managed, mostly, to avoid predation. “Andi as in Miranda.”

Will nods. “Andi.” He takes a sip of his ale.

He said two favors. I bide my time, recognizing he’s resolute enough to come to the second on his own schedule.

“Miranda is… Spanish? Italian?”

Italian, though I say nothing. My mother thought to honor her grandfather, Mateo Miranda, and would not be impeded by the fact that she’d birthed a girl.

At least she didn’t name me Matea.

Will shifts his tankard again. “I have a friend who… who believes she needs your services.”

Believes she needs. Yet I do not detect the cynic in Will’s voice, just the passing of information. “And will pay for them?”

“Well….” He takes another sip of his ale. “That’s why she needs you.”

Chapter 2.

Command These Elements

ELIZABETH CARY HAS set a meager table for us, for Will and me, in the most meagre house at the north end of Gayspur Lane, near the wall.

Even without Will’s explanation as we walked, her dress would have told me most of the story: Exiled, widowed, or cast off by a wealthy husband who made the most minimal provision for her. Though most houses in Aldermanbury Street and its Gayspur extension are well appointed, a few are near to falling down, including Elizabeth’s.

Wealthy does not begin to describe her husband. Henry Cary, by Will’s telling, is a knight of the realm, has served as a Member of Parliament, and is now co-Master of the Jewels for King James.

Elizabeth’s maid, Besse, a woman of angular bones yet rounded face, serves us rude plates of hard cheese and yesterday’s bread before returning to tend to the two small children across the room, one an infant, the other toddling toward whatever trouble she can reach. The room itself is clean and occupies the entire ground floor, maybe fifteen feet by twenty-five, with a kitchen and fireplace along one wall. A stair in a corner leads, I presume, to the sleeping areas.

Elizabeth sizes me up as I size up the room.

I do hope, for the benefit of my purse, she will prove more credulous than she appears.

Knowing she observes me, I return the favor.

She is short, shy of my own five feet, although she wears high shoes – chopines, I’ve heard them called – that add perhaps eight inches at the heel, six at the toe. They cannot be comfortable for walking, and I do not know why she would don them for me. Her dress is white, with embroidery and lace sleeves, though I suspect it was cleaner and less shabby when she acquired the garment, and also fit her better, because now she distends the fabric around her middle. And so we have that in common as well, our fleshy figures, though her chest is more shapely than mine. My guess is she has not lost the weight gained in bearing her second child. I didn’t either, though her children still live. Her flesh is soft, newly fatted, rather than skin that has enclosed twenty excess pounds for decades, as mine has.

Her features are delicate even though her face is puffy, from her own weight or the burden of circumstances. Her fine red-golden hair has been swept back and tied behind her neck.

“Loquerisne latine?” Her speech is fluid though her voice is thin, as if struggling to escape the bounds of her throat. Or the bounds of the circumstances her husband has forced upon her.

“Quidam.” I do speak some Latin, awkward and ungrammatical as it may be, with declensions tumbling over conjugations. The language is useful in what I do.

Will stares at me, probably in surprise. Few of my class – and fewer women – know more than a word or two of that papist tongue.

“But I prefer English.” I keep my eyes on the woman who, Will claims, believes in my services. “To avoid misunderstanding.” Believe as she may, I have not yet thought of a way she might pay for what she asks of me, as long as her husband lives.

Which, it turns out after fifteen minutes of cautious sparring, is the reason she is in need of them.

The reason she believes she has such a need.

Yet she equivocates even when the topic is laid bare. “My husband has imprisoned me here. I understand you possess such means as may set me free.”

I rise and walk to the door, hold it open to the summer morning’s building heat and stench, and bid her exit.

She tosses her head. “You’re not such a fool as to mistake my meaning.”

Besse rises, clearly on edge with the door open to perils of a precarious world. She grabs the toddler’s soft pink wrist before she can make her own wobbling run for freedom.

“Nor are you such a fool as to not find the words.” I close the door and return to the table.

“Volo te virum occidere.” Getting no reaction, she adds, “Je veux que tu tues mon mari.” And then, “Quiero que mates a mi marido.”

“You ask for the basest act even while you seek to impress me with your erudition. And your learning is indeed impressive. If you speak those languages true.”

“I won’t vouch for my pronunciation of the Spanish.”

So she’d had a tutor for her French.

She studied Spanish on her own.

She wants me to know both those facts, that her family had money for tutors and that she is as intelligent as any man – or woman – I am likely to meet.

I rise again. “I thank you for your hospitality, doubly so now that I have some understanding of your status, and your fall. Perhaps you might consider my services should you lose some precious object.” I stare at Will, hoping he’ll take my hint and then his leave.

He remains seated.

And now I sense that he and Elizabeth are more than acquaintances, or even friends. I don’t think they are either current or former lovers, because she greeted him with courtesy but neither warmth nor coldness. Yet looks have passed between them that I cannot yet interpret.

“Sit.” Her voice is imperious, before she softens her command with an unforced “Please.”

“I do not have the right kind of magic.” Not for murder, though I know of those who claim such powers. I remain standing.

“What kind of magic is that?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug, and offer a smile. “Because I don’t have it.”

“Can’t you call on the saints?” A plea more than a demand.

“I can call on them.”

Will snorts, then tries to cover with a cough. He takes my double meaning: The saints have no obligation to respond.

I relent, and return to my stool. “The church isn’t too fond of saints these days.”

“The church.” The way her voice falls on that word suggests we are moving into a field set with snares. “Do you conjure in Latin?”

I sigh, hoping she’ll take my warning. “At times.” This is, after all, one reason I have learned the rudiments of the language.

“Then… are you a member of—” I hold up my hand, but she plunges on, a rabbit oblivious to the hawk circling overhead. “—Of the True Church?”

“Madam, there is only one church these days. By order of King James, Defender of the Faith.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Does he not defend it well?” I suspect if I asked him, he’d say he does so most excellently. Not that I will ever speak to him. But neither will I speak against him. His defense of the faith includes executing those who gainsay him in public. And executing those who openly promote papism. As well as executing witches, which I am not.

But also executing some who employ cunning magic.

I have survived sixty years, the pox, the loss of two children in their first year, the loss – though I would not call it such – of the man I thought of for a time as my husband. I have survived poverty, and men who took what they wanted would I or no, and the plague.

Whatever little I might look forward to, I should rather seek in this life than the next.

If there is a next life. All the conjuring in the world, by all of Christendom’s berobed enchanters, cannot foretell what that life might be, or even if it might be.

Murder, however, is wrong in this life and the next.

I have sympathy for Elizabeth’s circumstances. Even without hearing her husband’s tale, I doubt she deserves to be so impoverished and immured. “Are you sure murder is the only answer?”

She turns her head away, away from me, away from Will, away from her babes. “I’ve tried everything else.”

She begins to cry, adding through her tears, “Except one thing.”