The Witch Hunter's Tale(35)

I later learned that the boy who had told me to lie on my belly was a Hollander who’d come to York with his father and been trapped in the city when the river froze. I thanked the Lord for the boy and the good he’d done us. After a time, Elizabeth climbed under the covers with Tree and the two of them drifted off to sleep.

With that fright behind us, I sought Will and Martha so that we could begin our search for George Breary’s mistress and, through her, his murderer.

* * *

Helen Wright was often described as a bawd, a pimp, or a putour, but such terms hardly did her justice. While she did secure whores for any man who would pay her price, this was only the start of her work. If there was an illicit need in York, she would find a way to meet it. She owned alehouses that specialized more in doxies than drink, and if a whore needed a tenement for her work, Helen would rent her a room. She provided “wives” for merchants who came to York for a trading season, and if anyone in the city required a secret room for an adulterous tryst, Helen could provide it. It was the last service that gave us hope she might help us find George’s mistress, for he did not bring her to his home, and he was too well known to rent a room at one of York’s inns.

In order to avoid the unwelcome attention of city officials, Helen lived just outside the city walls, so Will, Martha, and I began the long walk to York’s southern gate. As we crossed the Ouse Bridge I looked down at the hole in the ice that Tree had made, and I said a prayer of thanks that God had not seen fit to take another of my little ones.

We crossed the bridge into Micklegate, the southernmost of the city’s wards. South of the river, the streets were wider and the houses far larger. And while I had to make do with a small courtyard behind my house, Micklegate’s more substantial residents enjoyed large and carefully tended gardens. Will had grown up here, and when I looked down St. Martin’s Lane, I could just make out the house where he had lived, the house that he had thought might someday be his. I glanced at his face and found him staring resolutely ahead, unwilling to look upon on his former home. My heart ached for him, and I took his arm. Martha must have seen the same thing, for she reached over and squeezed his hand. He ignored both of us.

Within a few minutes, the massive stone gate called Micklegate Bar appeared before us, and the street became more crowded as travellers and merchants made their way in and out of the city. During Parliament’s siege, the King’s men had patrolled the city walls, but now they served more as a road for people making their way around the city than as a defense. We slipped in behind a southbound carriage and followed it through the gate. Though it had been nearly eighteen months since the King’s men had burned the suburbs, few of the houses had been rebuilt. Who would spend so much money while the war still raged? We all knew that if the war returned to York, so too would the burning.

Helen Wright, of course, was an exception to this rule. She had enough money to buy nearly any house inside the city, but every reason to live beyond the walls. Her house stood three stories tall, and it was every bit as grand as I remembered. I could not help feeling apprehensive as we approached, not because of her wealth and the way she’d earned it (or at least not only because of those things), but because during my last visit, in the midst of that terrible and bloody summer, I had accused her of murder. I did not know what kind of reception we would receive.

Martha had been thinking the same thing. “She’ll be happy to see you,” she murmured as we approached the door.

“Perhaps you should speak for us,” I replied, only half in jest. While Helen and I often fought, she had developed a certain fondness for Martha. This was born, I think, out of a sense that they had much in common. And perhaps they did, for Martha had narrowly escaped a life not unlike Helen’s, and there could be no doubting that they were both whip smart and had learned how to survive on their own. The only difference was that while Martha had escaped from criminality to midwifery, Helen had risen from whore to bawd.

Will knocked on the door, and within a few moments Helen’s man, Stephen Daniels, appeared. He smiled when he saw us, and a chill ran through me. While he’d never threatened me or mine, violence hung about him as surely as it did about Joseph’s man Mark Preston. Daniels stood nearly half a foot taller than Will, and there was no mistaking his strength.

“Lady Bridget,” Daniels said with a bow. “I am quite sure that Mrs. Wright will be pleased to see you. Can I tell her what this concerns?”

“We are here about a murder.” Only then did I realize I’d said almost exactly the same words the first time I’d visited.