one who will experiment on himself with a stranger’s cures. I tell you what – if you are staying in Canterbury awhile and your problems do not resolve themselves, please do me the honour of coming back and at least giving my cordial a chance. I’ll do you a special price. Meanwhile you may ask around for testimony – I provide for some of the highest men in the city.’ He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, including the physician to the Dean and the Mayor. Ask who you like – there’s not a man of means in these parts who doesn’t swear by Will Fitch’s remedies.’
I was beginning to like this Fitch, despite the fact that I had never met an apothecary who was not also a terrible fraud, and I suspected this one to be no different. If ever their remedies did work, it was entirely by lucky chance or guesswork; more often they knowingly sold wholly useless concoctions to the poor and credulous, who were too easily persuaded that the higher the price of a medicine, the more effective it would be.
‘The Dean’s own physician?’ I affected to look impressed. ‘No doubt aldermen and magistrates of the city too, eh?’
He puffed out his chest and patted it with the flat of his hand.
‘Doctor Sykes, he’s physician to them all – trained in Leipzig, you know – and he won’t buy his supplies anywhere else but my shop. Mind you,’ he added, with another heavy sigh, ‘there’s some things even he can’t cure. Our poor magistrate was horribly murdered not a month past and they have not appointed a new one yet, nor will they in time for the assizes. Mayor Fitzwalter has his hands full trying to do the job of two men preparing for the visit of the Queen’s Justice next week. You’ll have noticed the constables on every corner.’ I had not, but he did not wait for me to respond, shaking his head as if in sorrow at the state of the world. ‘Forgive me – I have a tendency to run on, and we are all much preoccupied with our civic affairs at the moment.’
‘I quite understand – murder is no small matter. Though I suppose that is a hazard of being a magistrate,’ I said, conversationally, as I watched him measure a quantity of dried leaves in his little scales. ‘The family of some felon he had convicted, out for revenge, I guess.’
‘Ah, not in this case,’ Fitch said, leaning closer over the bench, his eyes bright. ‘It was the wife – all of Canterbury knows it. She ran away the very same day and took a good deal of his money too.’
‘Really? What reason would she have to kill him?’
He put his head on one side and looked at me oddly, then gave a bleat of laughter.
‘From that remark, I deduce you have no wife, signor.’ He laughed again at his own joke, then shrugged. ‘They say she had a lover, but then they always like to say that. Pretty thing, she was. But she’s led the law a merry dance, I can tell you – they’ve had the hue and cry out for her since it happened, but they can’t find so much as a hair of her head. No, she’s long gone – over the water, if she’s any sense.’ He grinned, as if delighted by the audacity of the crime. ‘Now – do you want to take the leaves as they are or shall I make you up an infusion while you’re here? If you take it here, I’ll add a few fennel seeds – good against cramps of the gut. I have some spring water heating in the back room, it won’t take a moment.’
‘Thank you, I’d be grateful,’ I said, thinking that the man’s evident love of gossip could prove useful. He emptied the mint leaves into a small dish and disappeared through the door into the back of the shop. I wiped a trickle of sweat from my temples with the sleeve of my shirt and waited. Eventually he emerged carrying an earthenware beaker wrapped in a cloth.
‘Careful, it’s hot. That’s sixpence for the whole – I haven’t charged you for the fennel,’ he added.
I fished in my purse for the appropriate coin, which he examined closely, holding it up to the light.
‘No offence,’ he said, seeing me watching, ‘but we get all sorts of foreign types passing through from the Kentish ports, and I can’t trade with their coins. Not that I have anything against you lot, though many do. I like variety – keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?’ He tucked the coin into a moneybag at his belt. ‘I’d have liked to travel myself, if I’d had the means.’ He reached to a shelf under the bench and produced a large ledger, which he opened and thumbed through to the current page. Dipping the pen in the ink, he recorded the transaction meticulously. ‘May I take your name?’
‘My name?’
I must have reacted more suspiciously than I intended, because he looked taken aback.
‘Just for my shop records, signor. Helps me to remember what was sold and when, in case of any shortfall. I’ve a dreadful memory, you see.’ He tapped the side of his head and offered an encouraging smile.
‘Oh.’ I hesitated. ‘Savolino.’
Beside the amount received he dutifully inscribed ‘Savolino’, then glanced up and smiled again, as if to prove to me that this had had no ill effect.
‘Did they ever find the lover?’ I asked, sipping at the steaming cup. The concoction smelled refreshing and tasted pleasant enough, though the heat made more beads of sweat stand out on my face.
‘Well.’ He folded his arms and leaned against the bench as if settling in for the tale. ‘The son made a great noise, pointing his finger hither and yon, but nothing came of it. If he had a better character himself, his accusations might have stuck, but he’s been in so much trouble, that one, it was only ever his father’s money and position that kept him safe from the law. He’s not respected in the town. You couldn’t keep Master Nicholas Kingsley out of the Three Tuns long enough to notice what was going on under his own roof. Supposed to be studying the law himself, he was, up in London – well, that was a good joke. He was thrown out of his studies for drink and brawling. Ended up back here doing exactly the same at his father’s expense, God rest him.’
I drained the beaker. ‘It must have been a sore disappointment to his father.’
‘Well, they always were an odd family,’ Fitch said, squinting into the middle distance where spirals of dust eddied in the sunlight, as if trying to remember something.
‘How so?’
He shook his head dismissively. ‘Ah, goodwives’ gossip, most of it. His first wife was wealthy – she died of an ague, oh, ten years back. People whispered, as they always will, that he’d done her in, though as far as I know they had no reason to say so. But then maybe a year later he hired a maidservant, Sarah Garth, young girl from the town, and she’d not been there more than a few months when she took sick and died as well.’
‘Sickness is common enough everywhere, is it not?’ I tried to keep my voice casual.
‘Aye, of course, but folk found it strange that neither Sir Edward nor his son took ill with whatever she had. Still – in his defence, he brought in Doctor Sykes to treat the girl at his own expense. But they’ve taken no servants from that day to this, except their old housekeeper, Meg Turner. And there’s another thing.’ He leaned further across the bench and lowered his voice. ‘My late wife’s niece, Rebecca, she helps out Mistress Blunt on her stall at the bread market.’
He paused for effect; I bent towards him and nodded conspiratorially, as if I were quite familiar with the relationships of all these people.
‘Not more than six months past, Rebecca was asked to run an errand, take a package of bread out to Sir Edward Kingsley’s house – you know, the old priory out past the Northgate.’
