A Twisted Vengeance

by Candace Robb

  “She is too late to shock Phillip and Marie. They already know the nature of your guests.”

  “But Petra.”

  “Your niece is more worldly-wise than her grandmother. She would not flinch.”

  Berend was right; her mother’s words held no danger unless she took them to heart. “I should go in. See how Petra is feeling.”

  “I’ve not noticed her hurrying past to the privy this evening as she did last night.”

  “So her stomach is on the mend. That is a blessing. Sleep well.”

  Kate called to the hounds to follow her into the hall for the night.

  She woke to the deep-throated barks of her wolfhounds. Kate sat up, listening for running footsteps, her father or one of her brothers calling the warning—Attack! The Scots!

  But it was her manservant Matt she heard addressing the hounds down below in the hall, his voice rising in questions. She was in York. She was not on the borders, she was in the city of York, her cage, her home. Her brothers and her father, all dead. Her mother—this was not the time to think of her.

  The hounds continued barking. They would not be silenced. Did Matt recognize the tone, that these were not about a passing dog or a demand to be let out, but warnings? Danger.

  That was real. The danger. It might be York, not the borders, but it was still a place of danger. Especially now.

  Kate threw off the light covers, grateful it was summer and her feet would not meet an icy floor.

  “Dame Katherine?” her niece, Petra, called from outside Kate’s door. She and Marie slept in opposite ends of the solar to keep the peace, with Kate’s chamber in between. The girls were as different as night and day, but Kate hoped that, in time, they might grow close.

  “Come in, come in. I’ve heard them. I’m dressing.” Kate was fumbling with the bone buttons on her gown.

  The girl, a seven-year-old version of her aunt, all wiry dark hair and tall for her age, began to enter but paused, tilting her head to listen as the door opened down below and the hounds’ warning barks subtly changed. “Jennet,” Petra whispered. Kate’s maidservant and, like Berend, fiercely loyal and ever ready to defend the household. “They think she’s come to let them out to search.”

  “Stay up here, in the solar, you and Marie, until I return.” Kate finished her preparations by concealing her knife beneath her belt, then she kissed Petra’s forehead and hurried down to the hall.

  Her mother was not the only threat to the peace of York. Henry of Lancaster’s return from exile was why Matt slept down below now, not out in the smaller house across the yard, on the street—to assist Kate in protecting her niece and ward. Duke Henry was believed to have landed just northeast of them, on the coast of the North Sea. A royal messenger had arrived in the city several days ago with orders from Edmund, Duke of York, to hold the city against Duke Henry. The sixty knights and esquires and hundred archers who had been readying for a march to Ware were now to defend the city. The city sheriffs were paying out money for carpenters, plasterers, and masons to repair the defenses. That Henry had chosen to return almost as soon as King Richard himself landed in Ireland in the company of most of the military might of the realm meant to Kate that Duke Henry was here to wrest the crown from his cousin, the anointed but not-so-beloved king of England. Blood would be shed before their feud was resolved, and she doubted that both would survive.

  No one in York slept easy at present. In times of war, civic law and order suffered. She had learned that all too well in her childhood on the border with Scotland. And York, the great city of the north, a wealthy city of merchants, seat of the second most powerful archbishop in the land, one who might be persuaded to support the Lancastrian army—Duke Henry might find it an irresistible first stage in his coup.

  Armed men had been passing through the four gates of the city for a week or more. Strangers. Each of them lusting for a fight. Had one of them found a combatant in the night? Is that what had set Lille and Ghent to this insistent barking? Or did the hounds sense an intruder on the property? Had a siege begun? Or was it merely her mother, marching through the hedgerow to resume her tirade? For once, that was Kate’s hope. But the hounds knew Dame Eleanor; they would not be so alarmed were it her.

  As Kate reached the hall Lille and Ghent rushed up to her, leads in mouths. She smiled at Matt’s whimsical training. While she bent to attach the leads, the dogs nuzzled her, their rough gray fur warm with their agitation, Ghent gazing up with his soulful eyes, seeking reassurance. Lille danced sideways, her eyes a little wild.

  Jennet and Matt began talking at once.

  Kate straightened up and raised a hand, silencing them. “Jennet first.”

  “I noticed nothing out of place in the yard or the garden.” Jennet wore a man’s linen shirt over leggings, easily donned. “But Lille and Ghent will be far better judges of that.”

  “Matt?”

  “They rose up as one. I first noticed their heads up, on the alert even before they stood and began to bark. Ghent sidled over to see that I was awake, but he kept his watch on the garden door. I’ve never seen one of them behave so.” Kate had taught Matt since spring to work with Lille and Ghent. Young, eager to prove himself of use, Matt had learned quickly.

  “Arm yourself and stay in here,” said Kate. “Petra is awake and knows to keep Marie up above. Come, then.” She gave a gentle tug on the hounds’ leads and led them out into the night garden. Softly, “Lille, Ghent!” She signaled them to track—silently.

  Her eyes were still adjusting to the dark as the hounds led her straight toward the hedgerow separating her garden from that behind the house on Hertergate that her mother had leased. Dear Lord, no, not Mother, she prayed.

  A futile prayer, Kate’s twin said in her mind, his presence a sure sign of danger.

  I know, Geoff, I know. Trouble shimmered in the air about their mother. But of our family, I have only Mother and Petra. I mean to keep them safe.

  Petra I understand, but you know better with Mother. And after yesterday’s attack? No thanks for a peace offering?

  Kate shrugged him off.

  As the dogs continued on to the shut hedge gate, Kate signaled a halt so she might listen. Lille and Ghent sat, heads high, scenting forward to sense what might be across the way.

  There was no light in her mother’s house, or the kitchen nearer the hedgerow. With seven women in residence, if anything were wrong, surely one would light a lamp. They would be moving about, calling out to each other. But all was still. Whatever had disturbed Lille and Ghent, Kate saw no sign of anything amiss.

  Bending to the hounds, Kate whispered that she understood, the scent was still there, but all was now quiet. She led them away from the hedge and around her own property—the house, the smaller building out on the road, back to her kitchen, the small lodging and the garden shed behind it. When she was satisfied that no one lurked in the shadows, she joined Berend, who stood in the kitchen doorway, barefoot.

  “Lille and Ghent are keen to cross through to your mother’s house.” He spoke quietly, as if they might be overheard.

  It was true. They sat at her feet on alert, ears pricked, eyes trained on the gate. “I see no disturbance over there,” she whispered. “If someone came to harm in the night, one of them would hear and wake the others. We would see lamps lit, movement. But there is nothing.” She looked back toward the latched gate. “I pray my irritation with Mother does not cloud my judgment.”

  “With the influx of armed men to defend the city, we can expect strangers wandering about, folk following the army, hoping for work,” said Berend. “They must find their own lodgings, food. Some help themselves.” He spoke from experience, years in the field, some as a soldier, the latter years as an assassin for hire.

  Kate knew he was right about the situation in the city. She watched him now as he walked over to the gate in the hedgerow. Jennet joined him there, peering into the dark, her long braid swinging as she moved her head back and forth, apparently listeni
ng. Taking a deep breath, Kate followed, Lille and Ghent moving to surround and protect her.

  The hounds were formidable in size—though Kate was a tall woman, the tops of their heads reached her shoulders, and the three moved as one, alert to one another’s slightest shift in direction of speed, divining each other’s intentions. Berend once told Kate, “Often I cannot detect how the hounds see your hand signals—they suddenly change direction, or halt, and I’ve seen nothing, nor have I noticed them watching you.” Kate took pride in that. And comfort. Her father’s master of hounds had praised the twins for their connection with the hounds. He had teased her father, asking how far back in family history a Clifford had wed a shape-shifter.

  A few feet from the closed gate, Lille and Ghent halted and pricked their ears. Kate rested her hands on their backs, signaling them to hold still. Light footsteps. Stealthy, pausing, hurrying on, pausing, coming from Hertergate down the alley beside the Martha House. Kate considered moving back out of sight, the brightening predawn light both a gift and a threat. No, best to hold steady. The footsteps continued toward them. She felt the hounds’ muscles tense, noticed Jennet slightly shifting, reaching for the latch, poised to move quickly through the gate. Berend touched Kate’s arm, as if to steady her.

  From round the corner of the Martha House a woman appeared. By her slight limp Kate recognized Agnes’s maidservant, Nan, a young woman whose colorful clothing was a topic of dissent in Eleanor’s household. Her mistress had chosen to take vows of humility and chastity, but not Nan. Kate wondered what she had been doing moving about the sleeping city. The young woman paused, glanced down, lifted her skirts, and shook one foot, as if she had stepped in a puddle. But it had not rained for days.

  Lille growled.

  More slowly now, her steps more furtive, Nan moved through the garden to the kitchen. She paused at the door of the small detached structure, looking back toward the alley, as if checking whether someone followed, then stepped inside. Without opening the door. Why had the door been open? A moment of silence, then Nan pushed open a shutter, moved away. Kate heard the soft sound of a poker stirring the embers. Now a lamp glowed. So a servant’s day began.

  Kate eased a little, but the hounds did not.

  “Shall I just go peek?” Jennet whispered.

  Kate nodded. “The hounds are still on alert.”

  Jennet was halfway to the kitchen door when Nan appeared in the garden, holding a lantern. “Sister Dina? God be thanked, I was so worried when I saw—Oh, Jennet. I hoped you were—” Her voice quavered with emotion. “Something has happened. Sister Dina is not in her room and there is blood!”

  Jennet placed a hand on Nan’s shoulder as if to steady her. “Start from the beginning. What did you see in the alley?”

  Back at the gate, Berend leaned close to Kate to whisper, “Do you see Nan’s shoes in the lantern light?”

  She glanced down. “They are wet,” she said.

  “Though it has not rained in days.”

  “No, it has not.” Kate moved through the gate with Lille and Ghent. “Shine the lantern down on your shoes, Nan.” She offered her arm for support.

  Someone called down from a solar window. “Is there trouble?”

  “Is Sister Dina up there?” Jennet called back.

  Murmurings, the sound of movement.

  “God help me, I thought it was water,” Nan whispered, covering her mouth as she lifted a foot, saw the blood.

  “You did not smell it?”

  Nan shook her head. “I do now.”

  Kate nodded, then left her, letting Lille and Ghent lead her out to the alleyway, where they stopped by a pool of blood that was beginning to soak into the earth. Ears back, the hounds growled at the strong scent, then wanted to track on, but Kate led them back to the kitchen, where Jennet now held the lantern aloft. Bloodstains pocked the rush-strewn floor, especially vivid where the rushes had been scuffed away. Jennet shone the lantern round—a bloody handprint on a small door to the side. Lille and Ghent strained at their leashes.

  “Sister Dina’s bedchamber,” Nan whimpered.

  There were several more bloody prints on the inside of the outer door.

  “What is it, Katherine? Why are you here with the hounds?” Dame Eleanor demanded as she approached across the small garden.

  Seeing to your latest disaster, Kate thought. But this was not the time for grudges. “Lille and Ghent sensed trouble. Then Nan cried out. There is blood in the kitchen—on the floor, the walls, the doors, and pooled in the alleyway.” Kate stepped back to let her mother see, Jennet holding the light down toward the floor.

  “God help us.” Dame Eleanor turned to Nan. “Where is Sister Dina?”

  Nan ducked her head. “I know not, mistress.”

  “Come with me,” said Kate, taking the lantern from Jennet, nodding to Nan to follow her into Dina’s bedchamber. She shone the light on the small space. No blood on the floor. But smears on the bed. “Look round. Is anything missing?”

  “Gown, hose, shoes,” said Eleanor, who had come in behind them. “How is it that you did not raise the alarm at once, Nan? Where were you when all this was happening?” She stood with hands on hips, chin forward, eyes steely. Despite her new, modest garb—white wimple and veil, soft gray gown: she had several, well cut of the finest wool and silk, her household keys hanging from a simple leather girdle—Eleanor still impressed one as the lady of the manor ready to call down her armed servants to fend off an attack. Always quick to blame.

  Nan shook her head with a small cry and scuttled from the room to the garden. Kate nudged her mother aside and followed.

  The widow, Agnes, had her arms round Nan and was rubbing her back as one might do to calm a sobbing child. Agnes was a short but substantial woman, half as wide as she was tall, with upper arms as big as hams. She stuck out her heavy chin as if defying Eleanor to say her nay.

  “She has just returned from her nightly vigil at her mother’s bed, is that not so, Nan?”

  A sniffle, a nod.

  “Nightly vigil?” Eleanor looked to Sisters Clara and Brigida, who stood in the garden halfway between the house and the kitchen, holding hands, looking unsure where they should be. “Did you know of this, either of you?”

  Sister Clara, plain, competent, the guiding spirit of the house, said, “No. I should have been informed.” Sister Brigida, bold-featured, tall, a brilliant scholar, seemed diminished by the early waking, the confusion of the scene. She simply shook her head.

  “And have you left the kitchen door unlocked when you depart each night?” Kate asked the maidservant.

  “Well of course she does,” Agnes snapped. “She does not hold the keys, Dame Eleanor does.”

  Kate looked to her mother, who visibly trembled with righteous indignation.

  “I don’t understand,” said Eleanor. “I lock the house and the kitchen every night. It is the rule in a Martha House. Have you found a way to unlock it, Nan?” By now Agnes and Nan stood apart. When Agnes began to answer, Eleanor snapped, “Be quiet. Let the truant answer.”

  “I know how to prop the door open so that it is not noticeable but the lock is useless,” said Nan.

  Eleanor took a deep breath. “Sister Agnes, I—”

  “You might deal with that later,” Kate said quietly to her mother as she turned to address Dina’s two companions. “Brigida, Clara, have you seen Dina this night? Did you hear anything?”

  “I heard nothing, nor have I seen her since we parted at the end of evening prayers,” said Sister Clara in her Bavarian accent.

  Sister Brigida shook her head. “Nor I. May God be watching over her.” Her accent was softer than Clara’s, more French, like that of Kate’s wards, Marie and Phillip.

  Both women crossed themselves. Dame Eleanor did as well.

  “Agnes? Did you hear or see anything?” Kate asked.

  “Nothing.” She was a bit breathless, but then so were they all.

  Kate took her at her word. For now. “What was
Dina’s room used for in the past?” she asked.

  “Boarders, I screened it off for boarders,” said Agnes. “But I’ve had none since autumn. Or course there will be no more, as it is now a Martha House.” So very breathless, and her eyes scanning the garden as if looking for something.

  “Come into the kitchen,” said Kate. The woman bowed her head and followed. “Do you notice anything missing?”

  “No, but perhaps in daylight . . .”

  Sweat shone on the woman’s face. It could be many things—concern for Sister Dina, remorse for keeping Nan’s nighttime absences a secret, fear for her own safety. Agnes might even regret offering the house to Eleanor. She would not be the first to realize too late the risk involved in participating in Eleanor’s schemes.

  Kate stepped into the bedchamber, pulled off the bloody sheet, and wadded it up in her hand. Back in the kitchen she nodded to Jennet. “Stay with them. Berend and I will take Lille and Ghent, see whether they are able to track Sister Dina.” She led the hounds out into the garden.

  Matt, pacing by the hedgerow gate, called out, “What is it? What has happened?”

  Kate shook her head. “No time now. Protect the children.”

  He nodded and turned back to the house.

  Berend joined her as she let Lille and Ghent smell the sheet. “Track.”

  She had little need to command them. They were already following a scent, noses down. They returned to the pool of blood in the alley, a dark stain in the pale, predawn light. A pause as they reached Hertergate—glancing to the right, toward the King’s Staithe, then to the left, toward Castlegate. The scent moved in both directions? The hounds chose the staithe, snuffling their way down the street, onto the dock area, lost the scent at the water. No, no, now they picked it up a bit upriver, along the staithe, then lost it again in the incoming tide. On a gamble, she led them up to Ousegate. They snuffled around, lifting their heads, lowering them, then sat. Nothing strong enough to warrant tracking.

  Berend was still standing at the edge of the water. He pointed to a small boat on the opposite bank. Shrugged. They returned to Hertergate, silent, thoughtful. She knew that he knew the memories called up by the blood, and a young woman she cared for gone missing. Her friend Maud, long ago . . .