The last few entries focused on Stephen’s unsuccessful efforts to convince others within the city to rise up against the King’s men. If Yeoman or Bacca returned to renew their threats, Stephen made no mention of it.
I returned the book to the desk and found Martha waiting in the front parlor. “How did your meeting go?” she asked with a slight smile. Apparently my voice had carried into the parlor.
“I have the letter that will open the Castle’s gates to us,” I said. “But that was not all.” Martha looked at me quizzically. “Edward had Stephen Cooper’s diary. He took it from his office the day after he was killed.”
“And he let you see it?” Martha asked, her face radiating excitement. “What did it say?”
“It appears that Charles Yeoman’s lies go beyond exaggerating Stephen’s impending victory over the Hookes.” I told Martha about the fight between Yeoman and Stephen.
“Mr. Cooper had more enemies than the King himself.”
“He did at that. We’ll talk to Esther now. Perhaps she can help us unravel all this.”
“Perhaps,” Martha said skeptically. I knew that despite my discoveries, she still believed Esther had killed Stephen. I said a prayer that she was wrong.
* * *
When we reached the Castle gate, we found a different sergeant on duty, so we went through the same inspection as at our last visit. Samuel, the dwarf-jailor, was more welcoming, chatting gregariously about the news of the city. He took us down the stairs to Esther’s cell and opened the door. In the days since we’d last visited, he had treated Esther well indeed. The wood bed was still present, but she now had a second mattress along with a linen sheet and thick wool blanket. There also was now a chair next to the bed—roughly made, of course, but a chair all the same. Surprised by these improvements, I looked at Samuel.
“Her servant sent the bedding,” he said. “The chair belonged to another prisoner, but he doesn’t need it anymore, if you catch my meaning.” He expertly mimed the snap of a hanged man’s neck.
“And I assume she paid handsomely for all of this?”
“Of course she did! You said to make sure she is treated well, and I have. If I’d thought a woman such as yourself was asking me for charity, I’d have told you to piss off.”
I conceded his point, and he locked us in the cell with Esther. Given her circumstances, she looked well. I can’t say pregnancy became her—she did not yet show any signs of her condition—but her confinement had not yet begun to take its toll. That would change come winter, if she lived that long.
Without preamble Esther crossed the room and grasped my arms. “Did you find the letters and diary, my lady?”
“We did,” I said. “But all was not as you said.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The key you gave to us did not fit the lock on the chest.”
This seemed to deepen her confusion. “Perhaps it was stuck,” she suggested.
“What did the lock look like?” I asked.
She closed her eyes to picture it. “It was iron, of course, and square … I don’t know, it looked like a padlock,” she said with obvious frustration.
“Did it have any engravings on it?”
“No, none. Stephen was always one for simplicity.”
I looked over at Martha—she had recognized the significance of this. The lock that she had picked had an ornate cross engraved on its face. Someone had indeed changed the lock. The question then became what this meant.
“Esther, someone took the lock off of Stephen’s chest and replaced it with another. Can you think why someone would try to keep us from reading his letters or diary?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know how they could have done so. There was only one key, and he always kept it on his body.”
“Most padlocks can be picked without much trouble,” Martha volunteered.
“Also,” I continued, “there was no money in the chest, only the letters.” I decided not to tell her that Edward had pilfered the diary even as her husband’s body lay downstairs.
“I saw the money a few weeks ago—perhaps he spent it, or loaned it out.”
“You said it was a lot of money,” I said patiently, “more than you’d ever seen.” She nodded. “And you said that he had gathered it because of the siege.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Then he wouldn’t have spent it or loaned it, would he?”
This gave her pause. “Whoever changed the lock must have taken the money,” she said, mostly to herself, I think. “But only Stephen had the key. Where could the money have gone?”