Free The Alchemist's Daughter by Mary Lawrence Page B

honorable citizens of Southwark,” said Patch, playing to the gawping onlookers, “and by the power of His Majesty, King Henry of the Eighth, noble and wise liege of our gentle isle, prolific maker of wives and taker of lives, religious reformer and papal scourge, arrest ye for the murder of the most regrettable death of Jolyn Carmichael.”
    “How does a person dying in the presence of another make one guilty?” argued Bianca. “Poisons can take days, even weeks to kill. Jolyn was with me when the poison finally overcame her, but I did not poison her.”
    If there was a benefit to living in Southwark, it was that its residents knew criminal malfeasance when they saw it and weren’t timid to voice their dissent. Before Patch could even reach for his scraggly beard, an unruly mob was shouting and barking displeasure.
    Mackney, well schooled in the vagaries of enforcement officers, spoke movingly of a brother wrongly accused of purse snatching, for which his hand was lopped off. Unable to work, he took to begging outside of St. Paul’s and was later thrown in the Fleet Prison for not having a license to beg. There he perished from starvation, a slow, painful death, unable to fight for the paltry scraps of food they tossed in his cell.
    This further incensed the crowd, and they grew increasingly contentious, to the point of Patch fearing for his own person. His ill-timed public condemnation was his own undoing. Who would have thought a cemetery would be fertile ground for a riot?
    The indignant constable scrambled up a mound of fresh graves and began to shout over the pack of raucous grievers. He hoped bluster and the power of public office might save him, but eventually he cowed to their jeering, though not without a concession of his own. “I will honor your wishes to conduct an investigation into the murder of Jolyn Carmichael. If I am unable to find the murderer, then I will arrest Bianca Goddard and charge her with the crime . . . since, after all, she is the most likely offender,” he couldn’t help but add. This last aside caused more grumbling, and a clod of dirt was thrown, just missing his head, but at least Bianca was saved from the Clink’s putrid accommodations, if only for one night.
    Bianca had hoped to avoid the squirrely Patch long enough to find Jolyn’s murderer and cause of death, whether it be natural or otherwise. She had precious little time.

C HAPTER 11
    Robert Wynders stared at the sign outside Chudderly Shipping before taking a breath and heaving open the door. The shipping company had been founded by his wife’s grandfather during Henry VII’s reign when the king amassed a fortune in illicitly traded alum. Philip Chudderly had made enough money fattening the king’s coffers that he was afforded some latitude and had continued to profit his company in commodities benefiting the king and other nobility.
    Robert Wynders had not been born of this trade but came to Chudderly Shipping by way of his late father’s employment there. His father had a special acumen for keeping the books. Not only was he expert in reducing the taxes owed the king’s Exchequer of Receipt, but he also smoothed the way for any additional deals that could weight the pockets of both parties.
    Philip Chudderly held the Wynderses in such high regard that when his granddaughter came of age, there proved no more propitious endeavor than to join the two families in wedlock. Twenty years ago, Robert Wynders had the looks and charm for such a position and he held much promise. Now he possessed neither. The same could be said of his wife. The bloom was off the rose, and she’d lost those petals within their first year of marriage.
    Wynders climbed the long flight of stairs to the second level, where the Chudderly offices looked out over the river Thames. Only the most moneyed businesses had such an address on London Bridge. Yet their only advantage, thought Wynders as he labored up the stairs, was their privies emptied