by Candace Robb
‘You do not look well this morning, Archer,’ Thoresby said when they stepped into the daylight from the high windows in the hall.
‘Awaking to the bailiff’s accusations was unpleasant, Your Grace. I am worried about Lucie, and I have not yet broken my fast. I’ve no doubt I am not at my best.’
Thoresby clapped for a servant, who came in his own good time, damn him. He ordered food and ale brought to his parlour for Archer. ‘It appears I feed my servants too well,’ he said so that the servant might hear, ‘and they grow lazy.’
Owen said nothing.
In one corner of the hall the sun shone on Wykeham’s colourful chess pieces. ‘I see the Fitzbaldrics have abandoned their game,’ Thoresby noted as they passed it.
‘They have access to the bishop’s house.’
‘Ah. Yes.’
Owen resumed his silent walk through the great hall.
Thoresby followed. ‘I sat with the Fitzbaldric manservant for a while last night.’
That sparked an interest. Owen paused on the first step, his hawk eye on Thoresby. ‘You sat with Poins and the Riverwoman?’
‘Mistress Digby had been called away late in the afternoon. I took the opportunity. I have never seen such injuries outside of battle. The man is in great agony.’
‘Aye. What made you …’ Owen began, but cut himself off. ‘Did he speak to you?’
‘He asked for my blessing.’ Thoresby could see that Owen was surprised. ‘Guy and the Fitzbaldrics’ cook were also puzzled that he spoke to me. But when I asked him what he remembered of the fire he turned away from me.’
‘So he is concerned for his soul.’
‘Does that give you pause?’
‘No. With his injuries, it is fitting.’
There was an autumn chill in the air, a dampness that did not suit Thoresby’s joints. ‘Your food has doubtless preceded you to my parlour.’ He led the way across the porch. He hoped a meal would revive Owen.
A small table had been set beside one of the comfortable chairs, spread with cold meats, cheese, bread and fruit. A jug of ale and a cup sat to one side.
‘Maeve is in a generous mood,’ Owen said. ‘But I should not eat in front of you.’
‘I sent for it and you will eat it. While you do, we shall talk.’
Thoresby was glad when Owen took a seat, slipped his knife from its sheath and stabbed a piece of meat. Settling nearby, he poured himself a cup of equal parts hot water and wine.
‘You spoke of Guy,’ Owen said. ‘He was present at Poins’s bedside?’
Thoresby could see by Owen’s frown that this disturbed him.
‘He has offered to sit with Poins when neither the Riverwoman nor Bolton the cook is able to do so. I thought it strange, such a sullen man, to be so charitable. But Wykeham says he has a kind heart.’
‘I’ve seen no sign of it till now.’
That did not require a response. ‘The bailiff overstepped his duties. But I am concerned whether there is any connection between the thief’s murder and the midwife’s.’
‘Would that I knew, Your Grace.’
Thoresby wondered at the weariness in his captain’s voice but forgot that as Owen drew a pair of women’s gloves from his scrip. They were pretty things, or had been before being stained and stiffened.
‘Lucie was carrying these. She had found them hidden behind Cisotta’s potions. She believes it was no accident that the thief chose her.’
‘But the recovery of the gloves is surely a sign that neither the thief nor his murderer was after them.’
‘Lucie would argue with that.’
‘Why?’
Owen paused, elbow on the table, a piece of bread in his hand. ‘Much of what she says is against reason of late.’
Thoresby knew that Owen depended on his wife’s good sense. To have her lacking it must seem a great void. ‘Mistress Wilton has suffered much. Perhaps when she regains her health she will regain her wit also. Tell me what you know of the incident.’
Owen pushed away the food and leaned his elbows on the table as he related the events.
Thoresby listened with growing concern. ‘What is this city coming to, a man attacking a woman for a pair of gloves?’
‘The gloves were not visible.’ Owen raked a hand through his unruly hair. ‘I can make no sense of it.’
‘Are you certain that her only injury is the hand? Did she fall?’
‘And addle her pate?’
Owen’s eye grew so dark that Thoresby rose and went to his writing table. Atop other documents for his consideration was a note in Brother Michaelo’s hand saying that Wykeham wished to discuss arrangements for a meeting with Lady Pagnell to take place the next day.
‘So Lady Pagnell has relented,’ Thoresby murmured. Life might soon return to a calm rhythm, God willing.
‘Aye,’ said Owen. ‘The bishop wants a full guard on the palace tomorrow, in case Lady Pagnell alerts the Lancastrians of it.’
‘This feud he began in self-righteous anger will be his undoing.’
‘So fall great men,’ Owen agreed. Setting aside his cup, he prepared to rise.
But Thoresby was still disturbed by Owen’s mood. ‘I am fond of Mistress Wilton, as you know, and I ask this in that light. What is her condition, Archer? Is she pressing herself to work when she needs rest? Has she seen the best physicians?’
Owen studied him but said nothing for a while. Thoresby kept still, allowing the man to decide whether or not to confide in him.
It was Owen who shifted his gaze at last, casting his eye at some point just beyond Thoresby. Despite the food he looked more haggard than before. ‘If anyone can return my wife to her true self it will be Magda Digby, I think. I trust the Riverwoman with my life. But Lucie claims that work is her solace, that lying abed as Magda has ordered is agony for her. God knows what she is thinking, what she is suffering.’
‘Does she suffer in both flesh and spirit?’
‘Aye, Your Grace. But the spirit is the worst.’
‘Might it be good for Jehannes to see her?’ The Archdeacon of York was a close friend of the family.
‘She has sought him out as confessor and guide, Your Grace. He has comforted her, but nothing eases her for long.’
‘I am sorry Wykeham’s problems have drawn in your family, Archer. Let us pray that tomorrow’s meeting is satisfactory, and then we’ll be free of him.’
‘Amen.’
Lucie woke to a knock on her chamber door. Her mouth was woolly, her eyes swollen. She had cried herself to sleep, God’s curse on her at last crumbling all her reserves. Self-pity was ignoble, sinful, yet she preferred it to the self-hatred that had poisoned her days and nights of late. Now she woke with a new emotion – anger.
‘Come in,’ she called out, coughing at the effort.
Alisoun entered with a cup of Magda’s tonic. ‘You had a visitor, Mistress Wilton. The bailiff George Hempe.’ Lucie looked up sharply, saw the distaste in Alisoun’s expression. ‘He stayed only a moment, saying he did not wish to wake you. He begs your pardon for his unpleasant behaviour this morning.’
‘George Hempe said that?’
‘He did, Mistress.’
Lucie stared out of the window. The day had grown wanly fair but the breeze still held dampness. ‘How long have I slept?’
‘It is midday, Mistress.’
‘Are Gwenllian and Hugh behaving themselves?’
Alisoun’s colourless face lit up. ‘They are the best children I have ever minded, clever and cheerful. They are no trouble at all.’
Lucie smiled. They were good children. Heaven knew what they must think of their mother, always abed, always in bandages. She drank some of the tonic, then pushed back the covers.
Alisoun brought a bedpan from beneath the bed. ‘Do you need help with this?’
‘I do not need it. I am going out to the privy.’
Instead of backing away, as Lucie had expected, Alisoun shook her head. ‘Mistress Digby said you wer
e to stay abed, that you are weak, and only rest and a good appetite will strengthen you.’
‘I shall have little appetite if I do not move about.’
‘May I look at your hand?’
As Lucie lifted it, a pain shot up her arm. She clenched her teeth. ‘Dear God.’
‘I’ll pack the wound with the Riverwoman’s paste that will cool it and draw out the bad humours.’
‘First help me with the chamber pot,’ Lucie said. ‘An injured hand does not make me a cripple. And when we are finished, bring the children up to play for a while.’
Alisoun’s hands were strong and her presence comforting.
‘Do you know the ingredients of the tonic Magda made for me?’ Lucie asked.
‘I do, Mistress.’
‘I would have you and Jasper remix it without the sleeping potion, which is valerian and something else – sleepwort? It is difficult to taste.’ The girl had paused in her ministration. ‘Did I guess correctly?’
‘Aye, Mistress. But the Riverwoman says it is important that you rest.’
‘Rest I will, when I have seen to my affairs. Will you give Jasper the instructions to make the tonic without the sleeping draught?’
Alisoun, tucking the rag bandages and ointment in a basket, hid her face from Lucie. ‘The Riverwoman is watching me for signs that I am not a healer born, Mistress. If I disobey her …’
‘Then it is best that I go without the tonic until I am ready for rest.’
From the set of the girl’s shoulders Lucie could see that she was annoying her.
‘That is not doing as the Riverwoman wishes, either,’ Alisoun groaned in the pure tones of a child weary of unpleasant responsibilities.
‘But I shall disobey, not you.’
‘What do you mean to do?’
‘When Magda tells you to do something, do you question her intentions?’
‘Aye, Mistress.’
‘And does she allow it?’
‘No, Mistress. I’ll bring the children to you now.’ Alisoun departed.
Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was a bald, well-fleshed man with scars that suggested he had experienced a much more adventurous life before becoming a domestic. He was sitting cross-legged on the rushes beside Poins’s pallet, singing a bawdy ballad when Owen entered the screened-off section of the kitchen. Poins lay with eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
Bolton swallowed the end of a note and scrambled upright. ‘Captain,’ he said, bobbing his head.
‘I’ll relieve you for a little while. But first, have you ever seen these before?’ Owen drew the gloves out of his scrip.
Bolton bent close, making an odd sound in his throat. ‘I don’t like it when gloves dry like that, like claws ready to grab you.’ He crossed himself. ‘No, I’ve never seen such fancy gloves. Ladies are not commonly dressed so fine when they’re in the kitchen.’ He retreated to the screens.
‘I’ll stay long enough for you to go to the privy and have something to eat.’
‘Bless you, Captain.’
Poins had closed his eyes.
The kitchen had high ceilings, and a small window was open near the bed. Even so, the man’s burns smelled like rotting greens and made Owen’s recently filled stomach queasy. Thoresby had been kinder than Owen realized in sitting with the man last night. Poins’s face was partially visible now, the bandages only covering his right eye and upper cheek, the scalp over his left ear. His lips were still swollen and cracking. Owen found the ointment for them and smoothed some on.
‘Poins, do you remember me?’ he asked as he worked. ‘I’m Captain Archer. My wife and I took you in after the fire.’
Poins’s lips trembled, and a tension in his jaw suggested that he heard and held himself back from responding.
Before a battle the best commanders envisioned the thoughts of the enemy, trying to predict their movements. Owen sat back and thought about how he would feel if he had suffered the wounds and the burns Poins had, the loss of a limb. Magda said that some of his deepest burns were painless. Did that mean he was numb in those places? Owen thought that might be almost as frightening as pain. And there was the pain in the limb he no longer had, as well as the pain of his burns and the stench of his own decaying flesh. He wondered whether Poins was aware that he had moved from Owen’s house to the palace. And what he thought their purpose was in their attempts to question him about the fire. He must be frightened, confused, despairing, and perhaps angry that Magda had removed his arm without telling him what she was to do. It was no wonder Poins did not choose to talk. But he might be the key to that night. Owen must find a way to reach him.
He wondered whether Magda had told Poins anything about Cisotta’s death. Owen had not. Perhaps it was time to speak of it. Softly, so that his words carried no threat, Owen told Poins how he and Cisotta had been found, and that she had been murdered, but not how, watching all the time for signs that he understood. Again there were subtle changes in Poins’s face, and as Owen described Cisotta’s burns tremors ran down Poins’s ruined side.
‘We know nothing of what happened that night, how you both came to be in the undercroft,’ Owen continued. ‘Did you argue with her?’
No response.
‘Did you catch her stealing your master’s goods?’
One side of Poins’s mouth twitched.
‘Small hides, perhaps? Goatskin? Rabbit?’
Another shudder ran through Poins’s body and his throat began to work.
‘Is that it, Poins, you caught her, and in your surprise you dropped a lamp?’
Poins contorted his mouth and a sound came out, half groan, half sigh. ‘Not … my … lamp!’ he managed, his voice hoarse, his words barely coherent because of his swollen tongue.
‘What happened then?’
Poins moved his head back and forth weakly.
‘Did you kill her?’
Poins turned away, moaning as he tried to roll over on to his right side.
Owen slumped down on to a stool, head in hands. He must be patient though it drove him mad. When his heartbeat returned to normal, he straightened and watched Poins for a short while, but though the injured man breathed more quickly than he had before, he was motionless.
It seemed to have been Owen’s mention of the hide that had roused Poins, and that he had acknowledged that a lamp had set the fire, though someone else’s lamp. It would not be for nothing that Poins had broken his silence in Owen’s presence, not after all this time. He also seemed keen to deny his guilt. Yet his refusal to say more seemed a token of some measure of guilt.
‘I am sorry if I caused you distress, but you must see how important it is that I learn what happened that night. A murderer walks among us. He must be found before he kills again.’
Poins opened his eyes. ‘He struck me down.’
Owen dropped to his knees beside the pallet. ‘Someone was there? A man? Did you see him?’
Poins barely shook his head. The pain in his eyes made Owen want to believe him.
‘Why was Cisotta there?’
Poins shook his head and turned away.
‘I beg you, Poins, tell me.’
Silence.
Hoping for another chance, Owen sat with his attention focused on Poins until Bolton returned, but in all that time Poins did not move. It was even more maddening to Owen than before, knowing the man could speak, remembered the night and refused to tell him all he knew.
Gwenllian and Hugh had grown bored playing in Lucie’s bedchamber, begging Alisoun to take them out to the garden.
Lucie told herself it meant nothing, she should rejoice in their delight in play, their enjoyment of the garden, but she felt the rejection deep within. They were right to prefer the young, energetic Alisoun to her. Lucie’s hand throbbed, as did her head, and her balance was precarious when she stood. But worse than all that, the darkness was creeping back. She must busy herself.
She slipped out of bed and waited until the room stilled, then, with the mincing s
teps of the elderly, she made her way across the boards to the chest in which she had locked her scrip and the items Owen had brought from the fire. Unlocking it, she found the scrip, the knife she had wrapped in a rag, the belt used to murder Cisotta and her friend’s ruined girdle, but not the gloves. If Owen had taken them it must mean he thought them of some importance. Perhaps in finding them she had redeemed her mistakes of the previous day. She tucked the belt into her scrip, took her paternoster beads from a shelf and crossed back to the bed, annoyed by how weak her legs felt. Her pulse pounded in her head. The loss of blood could cause some of this weakness, but she suspected that most of it was the effect of the tonic, that Magda had meant it to enforce the rest she had ordained. But it was a half-hearted effort, for Magda would know Lucie might discover the cause of her exhaustion and set the tonic aside.
Sitting propped up against pillows, Lucie examined her scrip. Nothing but a greasy smudge suggested it had ever been out of her possession. Opening it, she passed her fingers over her initials and the apothecary rose, proud of such a fine piece, then dipped her hand within and retrieved her own ruined girdle. Uncurling it she saw that the fabric had been neatly sliced, the result of a sharp blade. With the items spread out on her lap for inspiration, she took up her beads and prayed for God’s guidance in helping Owen. By the end of the first round of prayers she still lacked inspiration. A second round was equally fruitless, though she felt steadier, more alert than before. She was setting the scrip and belt aside when Emma Ferriby appeared in the doorway.
‘Is that what I hope it is? Have you recovered your scrip and your mother’s gloves?’
Lucie wished she had not lied to Emma about the gloves, for surely she would slip with the truth. She distracted her friend by telling her of the bailiff’s visit and his later apology.
Emma had settled on the edge of the bed while Lucie talked, studying the items strewn on the covers. At the last part she glanced up. ‘George Hempe contrite? I wonder what Owen said or did to him?’ Her gaze wandered back to the items on the coverlet. Picking up the burned belt she studied the buckle, looked closely at the leather. ‘I could swear – but it cannot be.’
