Free Kingmaker: Broken Faith by Toby Clements Page B

towards the men. She can feel that roaring in her ears. She wishes she had a knife now, for someone needs to shut this man up.
    ‘That’s enough,’ the coroner shouts at last. He turns to Katherine.
    ‘Tell us what happened,’ he instructs.
    She tries to calm herself. She can feel her face flushed and her heartbeat in her teeth. She takes a deep breath. She can smell her sweat rising from the stained wool of her dress.
    ‘Come on!’ one of the jurors calls. ‘Get on with it.’
    ‘Swarm of lies it’ll be anyway!’
    ‘Let her speak,’ the coroner demands and Katherine begins.
    ‘The baby was stuck in Eelby’s wife,’ she says. ‘He would not come out in the normal fashion. He was turned, or the womb had moved. Or something. So we cut— No. I cut, with Widow Beaufoy’s instruction, I cut Eelby’s wife to save the baby.’
    ‘And this is the knife used?’ the coroner asks. He is on safer ground here, and he holds up Widow Beaufoy’s beautiful knife, and there is a murmur of appreciation. Eelby confirms that it is the knife and the coroner places it next to his clerk’s inkstand. It is deodand now, forfeit to the Crown, unless Katherine is willing to pay for it a second time. She glances at Widow Beaufoy, who is turned from her.
    ‘Go on,’ the coroner instructs. ‘What happened after you cut her?’
    ‘She bled. A lot. We could not staunch the flow of blood. And then she died.’
    ‘There, you see!’ one of the hecklers shouts. ‘Told you she killed her!’
    ‘I admit she died because of what I did,’ Katherine replies. ‘But by then she was already dead in all but name. I shortened her life by as long as it might take to say the prayers of the rosary.’
    There is silence for a moment, as if this is reasonable, then one of the men shouts: ‘That is time she will never have back.’
    There is a grumble of assent.
    ‘No one regrets that as much as me,’ Katherine says. ‘But you did not see her. She was dying anyway, and the baby was too. We wanted to baptise him.’
    ‘You wanted her dead so you could have the baby for yourself!’ comes the first heckler.
    ‘That is not true!’ Katherine hears herself shrieking. ‘That is not true.’
    ‘Then why’d you kill her?’ demands the second.
    ‘I didn’t!’
    ‘Yes, you did!’ the other one shouts. ‘Said it yourself!’
    The coroner has lost control of the inquest. Katherine looks to him and, for a moment, he seems to be considering trying to recover it, but then he decides against it. After all, it is not his task to get to the truth of the matter. His task is to fine the Hundred for the breach of as many rules as possible, and to establish if it is worth the King’s Justices pursuing the case to trial, given that should the perpetrator of the crime be found guilty at that trial, then all their property will come to the King. In this case they all know that Margaret, Lady Cornford’s property is extensive, even if it is run-down, and even if it is in the name of her blind husband, so it is certainly worth the Justices’ while to hear the trial when they are next in Boston. More than that, though, the presence of the hecklers means that someone, somewhere, is taking an interest in the case, and someone, somewhere, wants it to go to trial, and so it is useless the coroner trying to stop it.
    The coroner turns to them and Katherine can see him looking at her with that mixture of pity and scorn, and she can guess what he is thinking: that her husband is blind, and that she is a woman, and so it is not only natural that she is separated from her property, it is inevitable. He is probably wondering, indeed, why it has taken someone so long to take it from her.
    So, finally, the coroner gathers himself and holds up a hand.
    ‘Fellows!’ he calls. ‘I believe there is doubt enough in the circumstances of Agnes Eelby’s death to admit the possibility of a felony. So I order the binding over of Margaret, Lady Cornford, to await the