by Jason Vail
“I thought you might want to do that yourself. I’m sure she wants to thank you.”
“I have other business, urgent business. It just came up. Tell her I am sorry about the silver, but I’m glad to have done this much.”
Stephen spun about and almost ran back to the inn.
A woman’s voice called “Come!” at Stephen’s knock on the door. He pushed the door open and entered. The Lady Margaret de Thottenham was seated on the cushioned chair by the window, working on some embroidery. The embroidery fell to her lap at the sight of him. She looked better than he remembered: a small woman who barely came up to his shoulder, slender hands and arms, a long graceful neck, a heart-shaped face with a bud of a mouth that lighted rooms and hearts when it smiled, her wheat-colored hair bundled under her wimple with only an errant strand over an ear to betray its brilliance, blue eyes capable of dancing with amusement or flashing with steely determination watching now. She looked as delicate as any flower such that a breeze could blow her over, but he had learned in his brief and dangerous acquaintance with her that her spine held more iron than those of most men.
“I’m surprised you didn’t see me from the street,” Margaret said. “What were you doing with that old woman?”
“Returning something she had lost.”
“And no reward for you, either, I don’t doubt. Sometimes I think you are a fool.”
Stephen shrugged. He didn’t like that she might think him a fool. “I’m sure many think so.”
“To their misfortune. Christina,” Margaret said to the maid seated on a stool by the bed, “please leave us for a while. I have something I wish to discuss with Sir Stephen that is for his ears alone.”
“Yes, my lady,” Christiana said. She glided to the door and eased it shut behind her.
Margaret put aside her embroidery and crossed the room. She rested her hands on either side of Stephen’s face. “You look tired and careworn. What have you been up to?”
“Nothing of consequence.”
“I doubt that. Shall we pick up where we left off?” she asked as she drew his lips to hers.
When they were done, they lay together in the bed, her back to him, he curled around her slight body, hand cupping one of her breasts. Her breathing was music. He tweaked a nipple. She swatted the offending hand.
“Stop that,” she said. “I shall have to put you to work again if you keep up, and I am spent too much for the exertion.”
Stephen’s hand resumed its cupping. “What are you doing here?”
“Passing through.”
“And you just thought to pay me a visit?”
“Well, I don’t know anyone else in Ludlow whom I’d like to visit, so why not?”
“You always do as you please.”
“Mostly. As a widow I have greater freedom than many women.” She turned her head to see him out of the corner of her eye. “Mistress Wistwode says our friend Gilbert is in trouble.”
“You consider him a friend?”
“Your friends are my friends.”
“Now I know you aren’t being truthful.”
“Well, I’d like to consider Gilbert a friend after what we went through over the Pentre affair.” She sat up. “Edith said he had been kidnapped and that you were to ransom him. What could he possibly be worth in money? And where will you get it?”
“They don’t want money.”
“What do they want? Maybe I can help get it, whatever it is.”
“It’s already taken care of.”
“That’s a relief. It must be a very precious thing. Some jewel or other, like those emeralds of the saint you tracked down last month?”
“You heard about that?”
“I like to know what you’re up to. You should write more often. Or I should say, you might write.”
“I’m not much at letters. Anyway, the thing isn’t a jewel but it’s precious enough to kill a man for.”
“You can’t tell me what it is?”
“I’d rather not.”
Margaret pouted but did not pursue the point. “What now?”
“I wait for the kidnappers to contact me to arrange the exchange.”
She drew a deep breath and sank down on the pillow. Her fingers made little circles on his chest. “Be careful, Stephen. Whatever you do, please be careful.”
“I will,” he murmured, sleep, which he wished to push away, drawing his eyes closed as it stole upon him, almost unaware of her lips brushing his forehead as she brought his head to her shoulder.
“Poor Stephen,” she said. “Poor, poor Stephen.”
Chapter 19
Margaret de Thottenham left before breakfast the following morning. Stephen, who had groped his way to his garret room sometime before dawn so as not to be seen leaving the front chamber, almost missed her departure, for she had not informed him of her plans. He knew something was afoot when he pushed open the shutters and saw James, her other body guard, lead out a string of horses and tack them up just as the sun was rising. He threw on his clothes and hurried down to the yard in time to be there as Walter gave Margaret a leg up to the saddle.
“You were going to leave without saying good-bye?” Stephen asked.
“It’s not good-bye, Stephen,” she said. “We’ll meet again, I’m sure.” She reined her horse toward the gate. “Take care. Perilous times are coming, I’m afraid.”
The times were always perilous; people constantly lived on a knife edge with death looming about in many forms: disease, crop failures and starvation, random acts of criminal violence. One particular peril loomed larger than these others. Stephen wondered if she had some special knowledge about it. “What are you talking about?”
“Just be careful.” She pressed her heels to the horse and rode out of the gate, followed by Walter, James, and her maid.
Toward evening, as the inn began to fill up and Edith and Jennie prepared the tables for supper, the inn’s front door opened and admitted two fellows that Stephen had seen before. They spotted him in his corner by the fireplace and wound through the tables until they reached him.
“Well, Harelip,” Stephen said, giving his nearly empty tankard a swirl, “I was wondering if you’d show up after all.”
Harelip settled on the bench across from Stephen. He scowled at being called Harelip. “You can call me Otto.”
“That’s not an English name.”
“Runs in the family.”
Otto stroked the tabletop with the fingers of one hand. Stephen noticed that the other was out of sight. He almost wished Otto would pull his dagger; he felt like killing someone. But Otto said, “You have them?”
Stephen extracted one of the dies from his belt pouch. He rolled it across the table to Otto. Otto examined the engraved end. He rolled the die back to Stephen and stood up. “On the Shrewsbury road, two miles or so north of Onibury. There’s a crossroads that leads to Stokesay. Tomorrow, at the third hour. Come alone. If you’re not alone, I’ll cut his throat.”
“If you hurt him, I will find you and hunt you down. I’m good at finding things and people. Ask anyone in Ludlow. It may take some time, but I’ll get you in the end.”
“Haven’t found Wattepas yet, have you?” Otto grinned and strode toward the door.
Jennie was bringing out a platter laden with bowls of soup and bread when Stephen finished off the last of his ale. He stared out a window at a party of men and horses entering the yard. One of the horses paused in the middle of the yard, drew up its tail and defecated. Edith noticed this event as she filled a guest’s tankard in the hall. She went to the window and called for Mark to clean up the pile and returned to serving ale.
Normally, of course, a pile of horseshit was something that was not to be noticed other than to step around it, but this horseshit tickled at Stephen’s mind. There was something important about horseshit that he was missing and the thought of what he had missed was a burr that would not go away.
Jennie passed by his table and was about to put a bow
l of soup down when it came to him and he stood up. He drained the bowl as if it were a cup as Jennie’s eyes grew round at the impropriety of it; while it was not unknown for ordinary folk to drink their soup like ale, people of Stephen’s class were not often caught doing so, and certainly not in public where others could observe and remark about their bad manners.
“Sorry,” Stephen said, “I’ve just thought of something.”
“My word, sir!”
“It’s good.”
“Your thought?”
“No, the soup.”
“Cook will be glad to hear you thought so,” Jennie said to Stephen’s back as he hurried toward the door. “Would you care for some bread as well to go with it?”
Stephen stopped and turned. “Certainly.”
Jennie threw him a round of bread as if it was a stone without spilling a drop from the soup bowls remaining on her tray — it was known throughout Ludlow that Jennie could throw a rock as well as any boy. Stephen bit into it: day old but not yet stale. “Thanks!”
The brisk walk to Galdeford Gate and the bread cleared Stephen’s head and sobered him up, although he was still a bit sleepy from all the ale.
It was still not quite sundown and the gate was open as Stephen passed through, waving to One-eye Dick and the gate ward, who were throwing dice upon a blanket.
He turned left at the stone cross and the village well, which threw long shadows across the ground, and turned onto Upper Galdeford Lane.
Presently, the large oak outside the Makepeese house came into view and shortly after the Makepeese house itself. The oldest of the Makepeese children, Sally, was chasing a goat about the yard in an attempt to shoo it into the house. They exchanged waves and Stephen crossed the ditch on the opposite side of the street to the house of Mistress Gwenllian.
She was visible through an open window leaning over a pot suspended above the hearth in the center of the floor. She spotted Stephen as he crossed the yard. But he did not head for the door, but swerved around the corner to the back garden. He stopped at the corner and gazed about, searching in the tall grass.
Gwenllian emerged from the back door, wiping her hands on an apron. “What is it, sir?”
Stephen came forward a few steps and knelt by the fenced vegetable garden. He unsheathed his dagger and prodded the thing that had tickled his memory: a pile of horseshit, brown now with age. There was a faint curve in the dirt that had to come from a horse’s hoof beside the pile. He looked up at Gwenllian. “Horseshit in your garden,” he said. “What’s it doing here? It didn’t come out of Wattepas’ ass, did it?”
Gwenllian fell back a step. A hand flew to her throat and fear glittered in her eyes, but she said, in an effort to brazen over this incongruity, “I suppose it came out of a horse, like it usually does.”
“Fertilizing the grass, are you?” Stephen stood up and crossed to Gwenllian, whose eyes fell to the dagger that remained in his hand.
“Must have fallen out of the trolley,” she said. “It’s good for the cabbage, you know.”
“I doubt it.” He was before her now, staring down into her eyes. They were light brown eyes, and quite pretty. He put a hand on her throat and pushed her up against the house. It was against the law to lay hands on a woman who was not your wife, but Stephen’s temper had begun to fray as he thought about how he had been lied to; but the truth was, he was angry more with himself for having been stupid.
“It came from a horse, all right,” Stephen said, “a horse that was in your yard. A horse that took Wattepas away.”
“You are imagining things,” Gwenllian said. “And if you don’t let me go, I shall call out. I shall say you tried to rape me.”
“And the neighbors can come and hear my accusation against you. Go ahead.”
Gwenllian’s lips worked but she did not cry out after all. “You have no accusation to make.”
“He came here to meet those fellows and rode away with them of his own accord, didn’t he.”
Stephen could feel Gwenllian trembling. At last she nodded.
“Where did they go?” Stephen asked.
“Don’t make me tell! Please! That man with the harelip, he’ll kill me! He swore he would if I talked!”
“Something is going on. Something to do with counterfeiting. And you know what.”
“I don’t know!” she cried. “Really I don’t! Why would I? I’m just a woman!”
“But you are caught up in it nonetheless and will be punished like they will be when the truth comes out — unless you confess to me now.”
Gwenllian’s chin trembled and her body shook beneath Stephen’s restraining hand. Finally she said, “All I know is that they went to Bishop’s Castle! I don’t know why! Leofwine never told me anything about his business! You must believe me!”
Stephen’s hand fell away from Gwenllian’s throat. He took a deep breath, glad that he had not had to go any further. He had done some terrible things in his life and they weighed heavily on the scale of his conscience. He did not wish to add one more crime to the balance.
“I believe you now,” he said.
He sheathed the dagger and left her.
Chapter 20
The meeting place lay nine miles north of Ludlow on the Shrewsbury road. The crossroad was surrounded by open farmland running up to low wooded hills on either side, which made it a good place for the exchange because any body of men intent on a surprise could be seen from far away.
Stephen, who had arrived early, paced from one side of the road to the other. He was in mail and carried his longbow on his shoulder. He had not liked that helpless feeling staring down Otto’s crossbow, and he wanted something to equal the odds.
The fields about the crossroads had been planted in beans and wheat. Sprouts had already begun to poke upward and the field seemed covered with green fuzz. A few men and women were visible pulling weeds, and a dog and a boy chased birds, which flew up in a cloud, swirled in the air, settling some distance away, where the process was repeated. Some of the people stopped their work to look at Stephen. It was an odd thing to see a man pacing at the crossroads where there normally was no one, especially an armored man with a longbow.
Although it was now almost midmorning, Stephen had not seen a soul on the road. It was quiet.
At last, he saw horses approaching on the road from the north. Stephen slung his shield on his back, strung his bow and nocked an arrow.
As the horsemen drew closer, Stephen was relieved to see Gilbert’s stout form sitting awkwardly upon a horse, clutching the high pommel of the saddle, a sack over his head. They halted about fifty yards away.
Otto dismounted and pulled Gilbert from the saddle. This caught Gilbert by surprise and he fell down. Otto kicked Gilbert and said, “Get up, you idiot.”
Gilbert, whose hands were bound, struggled to his feet with protests that were muffled by the hood over his head. Otto must not have liked what he said, for he clouted Gilbert on the side of the head, sending him staggering so that he almost lost his footing again.
Otto grasped Gilbert by the shoulder, and marched him toward Stephen. “You’re a suspicious fellow.”
“I’m dealing with you. I’ve good reason,” Stephen replied.
“You can put that thing down.”
“I fancy that I’ll kill you first if anything goes wrong,” Stephen said.
“What could go wrong? We’re just a pair of mates doing a little business. You first.”
Stephen pulled the dies from his pouch, and tossed them to the ground about half way between him and Otto.
Otto shoved Gilbert toward Stephen. If he expected Stephen to catch Gilbert’s dangerous lurch, he was mistaken, for Stephen stepped out of the way. Gilbert blundered by, tripped on his own feet and fell again with a cry of “Oh, my heaven!”
Otto stooped and collected the dies. “Nice doing business with you.” He backed away, turned about and jogged back to the other men waiting on their horses.
“Until we meet agai
n,” Stephen said, not relaxing until they had all gone back north and ridden out of sight.
Gilbert had not attempted to rise again. He sat in the road, legs splayed.
Stephen cut the bounds securing his wrists and pulled the sack from Gilbert’s head.
Gilbert rubbed his face. He looked haggard. What hair he had left stood out every which way as if flung about by the wind and then frozen in place. “Dear Lord, I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Nor did I, frankly.”
“You have no idea how close it was,” Gilbert said as Stephen helped him to his feet. “There was quite a debate over whether they should just kill me out right to save them the trouble of feeding me. And they were afraid that perhaps I had seen too much, although what that too much was, I have no idea. They never really thought you’d get the dies back. The whole thing was almost a joke to them, a cruel joke, and at my expense. However did you manage it by the way — getting them back?”
“I’d rather not say,” Stephen said. “It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that, or legal either.” He set down the bow and arrow and pulled the mail shirt over his head. “Where did they take you?”
“It was a town of some sort. They kept me locked in a cellar of some house with the bacon and ham, that’s all I know. It was more torture to be tied to a post with bacon and ham over my head and me not being allowed any, than being confined to the cellar. I’m afraid that isn’t much help.”
“How many were there?”
“I can’t be sure.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“About what was going on.”
“I have no idea what was going on, though I heard talk through the door. They were planning something big. I have no idea what, but it had them all very excited.”
“How big?”
“I only heard bits and snatches, and not all of that clearly. I got the impression, though, that they were not all there was to the scheme.”
