The Case of the Spotted Tailor (A Cunning Woman Mystery Book 1) by Anna Castle

Author:Anna Castle [Castle, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elizabethan, witches, fairies, faeries, the king of the cats, apothecary, amateur sleuth, female protagonist, set in England
Publisher: Anna Castle
Published: 2020-09-21T22:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Jane slept a dreamless sleep and woke refreshed early in the morning. She dressed in sober gray, thinking about the stony-faced townspeople. She called Hester in to help with the laces and tie up her hair. She tied a prim white coif over her head and almost laughed at her image in the mirror. She looked the veriest Puritan in this garb. Good.

She went downstairs to have her cup of warm spiced ale at the counter in the shop. She missed her father sitting on the other side, reading a book while giving half an ear to her plans for the day. Not even the ginger cat showed up to keep her company.

Should she open the shop or not? People needed things like tansy and calendula. Where else could they go for them? But some folk would come in just to scold and wag their fingers at her. She didn’t want that. Some people doubtless had always believed Amias was a wizard, which wasn’t a necessarily a bad thing. It might accord him some respect.

But how could he be anything more than a small-town apothecary? She’d never seen any sign of wizardry in all her years playing and working in this shop. More, she’d cleaned the house from top to bottom less than a week ago and not seen anything stranger than that box of silver hair. Well, and the serpent’s hearts. And the jar full of bat wings. And the ones labeled ‘Eye of newt’ and ‘Toe of frog,” alongside several boxes of what looked like different shades of snakeskins.

But those bizarre ingredients had been high up on the top shelves, covered in thick layers of dust. Jane cast her eyes toward them now and gasped to see those upper shelves shrouded once again in filthy cobwebs. Impossible! Nothing could get that dusty in a mere matter of days.

She took a draught of her lukewarm ale. It didn’t help. Something kept those shelves in that obscuring condition. It wasn’t Hester, brushing dust over them as she cleaned the house. She didn’t enter the shop. Could it truly be some sort of spell, cast by a mighty wizard to hide his most potent wares?

Two days ago, Jane would never have countenanced the idea. But after an evening spent conversing with a fairy, things looked rather different.

Then another thought struck her, so abruptly she cried out loud. “Aha!” The obscuring shrouds of dust explained why her father had stopped putting out milk for the pixies. Pixies would clean away the dust every night in thanks for the milk, forcing the spell to work harder.

Jane shook her head as if to clear an echo from her ears. Everything she thought she knew was being turned upside down.

She finished her ale and set her cup in the kitchen on her way out to the privy. When she emerged, she stood for a moment contemplating the garden wall. It was eight feet high, made of aged red bricks, and topped with a fringe of spongy moss.

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