Death by Disputation
Anna Castle
Author Bio
Anna Castle has been a waitress, software engineer, documentary linguist, college professor, and digital archivist. Historical fiction combines her lifelong love of stories and learning. She physically resides in Austin, Texas, and mentally counts herself a queen of infinite space.
Description
Thomas Clarady, son of a wealthy privateer, is determined to climb the Elizabethan social ladder by any means necessary. The surest route is through the Inns of Court, England’s prestigious legal societies. The trick is being admitted; once in, Tom can rely on his wits, looks, and charm to help him rise. When Lord Burghley, the Queen’s chief advisor, offers him a deal — one small job in exchange for guaranteed membership in Gray’s Inn — Tom jumps at the chance. His task is to return to Cambridge University and enroll in Corpus Christi College, a hotbed of religious nonconformity. He must worm his way into the confidence of the Puritan community and identify the hothead who is pushing them towards sedition. In other words, he’s to go back to college and spy on the godly. How hard can that be?
His spymaster is Francis Bacon, Lord Burghley’s nephew. Francis is also struggling to climb the ladder, although he starts at a higher rung. He longs for a position of real power, with scope enough to exercise his abundant talents. But he has an unfortunate habit of putting his foot wrong before the Queen. The Cambridge enterprise is an opportunity for him to redeem past mistakes. His qualifications for the job are impeccable: his own mother is a fervent nonconformist.
Tom settles in as a student of Burghley’s snitch, Bartholomew Leeds, who is having second thoughts. Tom is prepared to be patient, but someone else isn’t. Tom finds Leeds hanging from the roofbeam in a scene neatly staged to look like suicide. But the illusion quickly falls apart, leaving Tom with a murder to investigate. His first suspect is the brilliant Christopher Marlowe, who was on the scene and acting strangely. Marlowe plainly suspects Tom, which confuses the issue. Leeds had more than one secret to keep; he was also the college bursar, who kept the accounts in a locked desk.
Guided by letters from Francis Bacon, Tom pursues both the seditioner and the murderer, who might or might not be the same person. Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and nagged daily by his exacting spymaster, Tom risks his very soul to expose the crimes and win his reward.
Book excerpt
Bartholomew Leeds hung from the roof beam that ran the length of the cockloft. He seemed asleep with his head bowed, his eyes closed, and his hands dangling limply at his sides.
Thomas Clarady blinked, twice, then squeezed his eyes tight shut and popped them open, hoping to clear the trick of the light creating this illusion. There must be a stool beneath Leeds’s feet, supporting him.
But who could sleep standing on a stool?
Tom took a few reluctant steps forward from where he had abruptly stopped. He’d been in a hurry and made it halfway across the long room before spotting the man hanging between the curtained bedsteads. Three beds stood crosswise in a row down the center of the loft where the roof was highest: one near the stairwell for the younger boys, Leeds’s grander one in the middle, and the one Tom shared by the far wall. Leeds was hanging between the last two.
Tom had just dashed up to get some money from the box under his bed to pay the carrier to deliver his letter. That’s why he’d skipped out of the sermon early — he’d forgotten to fill his purse. The carrier left promptly at nine and Tom’s report was overdue as it was. He was supposed to write daily, detailing his observations of the events in the college.
Well, now his report would be even later. He wondered how his spymaster, Francis Bacon, would receive the news that yet another of Tom’s tutors had died unexpectedly.
Cold air struck his cheeks. The small windows set into the eaves on each long side of the loft were wide open, letting in a breeze fresh with the earthy smells of the greening fields east of the college. Spring was awakening in Cambridge, and for a mercy, it wasn’t raining. The sky beyond Leeds’s slender figure was a perfect blue. A blackbird on a nearby ledge vigorously declared his melodious philosophy to the breeze.
How could anyone destroy himself on such a beautiful March morning?
Leeds hung perfectly still, his slipper-clad toes pointed downward, two feet above the floor. The hem of his black gown fluttered about his bare ankles. Now Tom spotted the stool, lying on its side against the bed, where it must have rolled when Leeds kicked it over.
This was not a good development. Tom’s masters would not be pleased. How could such a thing have happened with no warning whatsoever? He’d seen the man only that morning when Leeds roused them for five o’clock chapel. Sleepy-eyed, by candlelight, he had seemed his usual self. Leeds was always dapper and correct, even before sunrise. He’d been dark of complexion and had cultivated a vaguely Italianate air, but more in the way of a scholarly curate than a melancholy man.
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