Wiltshire, England 1592

“Tell me his name.”

The crone had eyes as pale as chips of ice. So pale and clear that the irises nearly faded into the whites. Bess found she could not return the woman’s gaze, but instead searched for aught else to stare at. The rush mats upon the tiles of the hall floor. The orange depths of the hearth fire. The herbs Bess had strung to dry, her mortar and pestle at the ready upon the oak table yet forgotten in her upset. The tapestry of a hunting scene, the fleeing stag that always seemed to move when candlelight flickered across the surface.

However, she looked but briefly at the body stretched upon the settle where he had taken his final repose. A cushion had tumbled to the floor, and his arm dangled as if to reach for it. The cushion embroidered with birds he had so favored. Because you stitched it, Bess, with those fine long fingers of yours. . .

“Martin,” she said, her voice breaking. But the crone would assume the break came of grief, which it did most certain, and not also of fear. “Martin Ellyott. My husband.”

The woman scratched his name—when had someone of her impoverished circumstance learned the art of writing?—upon a scrap of paper. She had no penknife with her, and the nib of her quill was dull, leaving the markings blunt and large. Their surname was misspelled; Bess did not correct her.

With a groan, the old woman rose from the stool Bess’s servant had brought and went to the settle. Bess looked away as she examined him. Heard coals settle on the grate. She wanted to cry, but her eyes had ceased shedding tears and burned from dryness. More tears, she knew, would come later.

“No pustules upon him,” the woman muttered.

“It was not plague,” Bess replied. “He had pains in his stomach and nausea. Troubles of the bowels with great purging. Fever,” she added, a hasty afterthought in her attempt to be convincing. “No pustules.”

The crone nodded, and the edges of the kerchief she’d wrapped around her head slid across her furrowed cheeks. “The bloody flux, then.”

Bess’s pulse skipped. “Yes.”

She returned to her paper. Next to Martin’s name she inscribed “bloody flux.” She blew upon the surface, and, satisfied the ink had dried, rolled the sheet closed. She tucked the chronicle of deaths into a leather pouch suspended from her woven-tape girdle, alongside her quill and inkhorn. “God rest his soul.”

“Indeed. God rest his soul.”

Satisfied Martin’s name would not be added to her count of plague victims and the house and its occupants would not need be boarded up, the old woman departed. It was done. The searcher of the dead had come and declared Martin—witty, sweet Martin—deceased from the bloody flux. Thus it would be recorded on the bill of mortality forever and ever. Leaving Bess alone to suspect the true cause of his death.

She stood in the street doorway and watched as the searcher hobbled across the lane’s uneven stones, the red wand she carried extended to warn all of her passage. Warn all of the dreaded disease that might linger on her person. With a cry, the corner baker’s girl sprang out of the old woman’s path, almost dropping the basket of cheat bread she carried. The old woman paid her no heed. She skirted a fire burning to chase off plague, the sweet smell of pitch spreading with the smoke, as a mongrel ran alongside, snapping at her heels. Bess watched until the old woman was gone from sight and her heart had finally slowed its pounding and returned to normal.

Though normal would not ever be the same.

“Mistress?” Bess’s servant, Joan, had crept up behind her. “What do we now?”

She must bury her dearest Martin alongside their two daughters, sell her goods, and leave London. Escape from the one who’d brought death to her house. Forget her life here. Start anew.

“We must flee.”

God help us.

You can read more about Bess in Searcher of the Dead, the first book in the NEW “Bess Ellyott” mystery series.

Herbalist and widow Bess Ellyott tries to escape the loss of her husband in Elizabethan London only to find that death is following her, and she may very well be next in Searcher of the Dead, the first in a new historical mystery series by Nancy Herriman.

Living amid the cultural flowering, religious strife, and political storms of Tudor England, Bess Ellyott is an herbalist, a widow, and a hunted woman. She fled London after her husband was brutally murdered, but the bucolic town in the countryside where she lands will offer her no solace. She still doesn’t know who killed her husband, but she knows one thing: The murderer is still out there. This becomes all too clear when Bess’s brother-in-law, a prosperous merchant, is himself found dead—dangling from a tree, an apparent suicide.

But Bess doesn’t believe that for a moment, and nor do her neighbors. Competition is cutthroat in the 17th century, and word around the town holds that the dead man is a victim of rival merchants scheming to corner the wool market. Bess, though, is convinced the killer is out to destroy her family.

Town constable Christopher Harwoode will cross members of his own family to help Bess find the killer—whose next target may very well be Queen Elizabeth I—in this unshakably gripping, devilishly unpredictable series debut that will delight fans of Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory.

Purchase Link
# # # # # # # # # # #

About the author
Nancy Herriman retired from an engineering career to take up the pen. Her work has won the Daphne du Maurier award, and Publishers Weekly says her ‘A Mystery of Old San Francisco’ series “. . .brings 1867 San Francisco to vivid life.” The first in her Elizabethan-era mysteries, ‘Searcher of the Dead’, releases March 2018. When not writing, she enjoys singing, gabbing about writing, and eating dark chocolate.

Join her at nancyherriman.com or on Facebook.

All comments are welcomed.