If I were at home, in the fine large house my husband, Kit Wainfleet, purchased in Holborn after we were wed, I would be breaking my fast with good ale made from clean water. I’d be served the finest manchet bread money can buy and there would be cheese and fruit and a bit of beef or ham.
Instead, confined in Colchester gaol in this winter of 1590-91, I must subsist on stale bread, sour ale, and cold, lumpy porridge and be grateful for it. The women imprisoned with me tell me that for the second meal of the day we will be given one good herring on a fish day. On flesh days, we will each receive four ounces of meat, although it will be impossible to say what manner of creature it comes from.
Once the food is eaten, we will have none of the usual female occupations with which to pass the time. I will not regret for one moment the lack of needlework. I have always questioned the common belief that a woman’s hands must be kept busy. I decided years ago that this idea was devised by fathers and husbands to keep their female relations from meddling in matters they feel are the exclusive province of men.
And yet I cannot help but think with great longing of my normal routine. At Wainfleet House I’d be speaking with the cook about the day’s meals. After that, I’d work on the accounts, both household and business, as I am responsible for Kit’s enterprises while he is out of the country. That duty done, I often walk in the garden for exercise, even on cold January days like this one. Then, when there is time, I curl up on one of the gallery’s deep window seats and read. At home I have a small collection of favorite books, not one of them religious in nature.
And here in Colchester gaol? The recusant women who are my fellow prisoners—Catholics who recused themselves from attending Anglican church services in Queen Elizabeth’s England—spend many hours on their knees in prayer. We will circle our subterranean prison in a slow procession to break up the monotony and maintain our health. If I am fortunate, as they talk of their faith, which they believe I wish to share, they will tell me what I really want to know.
I cannot reveal the real reason I am here, or admit that I am only pretending to have been imprisoned for the crime of reading a forbidden Catholic book. To do so could well lead to another murder . . . and this time it might be mine.
The Finder of Lost Things is a standalone historical mystery set in Elizabethan England, released October 6, 2020.
“The Finder of Lost Things” is the name Blanche Wainfleet’s three sisters bestowed on her when they were young, not only for her ability to locate missing handkerchiefs and runaway pets, but also because she was so good at finding solutions to all manner of puzzles. Now, in the winter of 1590-1, twenty-eight-year-old Blanche, a London merchant’s wife whose husband is traveling abroad, is faced with a much more serious mystery, one she is desperate to solve.
Late Elizabethan England is an era rife with treason and conflicting political and religious loyalties. Priest-catchers target Catholic households in the hope of being able to arrest and execute priests. The householders themselves have to pay ruinous fines if they do not attend Anglican services. And yet leaders of both faiths agree that a bewitched person can be cured by exorcism.
When Blanche’s youngest sister, Alison, fell in love with a Catholic gentleman, she converted to Catholicism and went to live at Otley Manor as Lady Otley’s companion. Arrested for illegally hearing mass, she died under mysterious circumstances while imprisoned in Colchester Castle. Some say she was bewitched to death.
To discover the truth about how Alison died, Blanche contrives to have herself confined with Lady Otley and other members of the Otley household in Colchester’s dungeon. She tells no one of her connection to Alison, but does pretend that she, like her sister, wishes to convert. Still without answers when a royal pardon sets all women prisoners free, Blanche accepts Lady Otley’s invitation to join her household and take instruction in the Catholic faith. She’s just begun to make progress when a second murder puts her in mortal danger from powerful figures on both sides of the religious divide.
About the author
Although Kathy Lynn Emerson has had sixty-two books traditionally published prior to The Finder of Lost Things, this is her first standalone historical mystery. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her historical mystery series include the Face Down Mysteries, the Diana Spaulding 1888 Quartet, and the Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries. She writes the contemporary “Deadly Edits” series as Kaitlyn Dunnett.
Her websites are KathyLynnEmerson.com, TudorWomen.com, and KaitlynDunnett.com.
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