by Jason Vail
Parfet frowned at Stephen. He appeared peeved at the interruption. “Ah,” he said. “I know you. You’re Attebrook, from Ludlow, am I right? What are you doing here?”
Stephen advanced to Parfet, removing the letter from the waxed leather case that had protected it. “I was asked by Prince Edward to deliver this to you.”
“So,” Parfet said, “you are busy. A royal messenger, are you now?”
“I do what I am asked to do.”
“Don’t we all. Why on earth is the Prince writing to me?”
Stephen did not reply, other than to cross his arms and glance at the letter, which was now in Parfet’s hands.
“What does he want?” the blond man asked as Parfet broke the seal and unfurled the letter.
“He wants me to return to Ludlow,” Parfet said. “I’m to leave my men here and return straightaway.”
“Just you?
“Yes, it seems he wants to question me about some stupid bones.”
“I don’t follow.”
“A sack of some saint’s bones went missing while we were there. It caused something of a stir.”
The blond man waved a hand as if saint’s bones were of no importance.
“What could the Prince possibly think I have to do with it?” Parfet asked Stephen.
Stephen shrugged.
Parfet tossed the letter back at Stephen. “Well, the Prince will just have to wait. I’ve more important things to do tomorrow than rush off about some silly old bones.”
“What could be more important than a command from Prince Edward?”
“We’re taking a ride in the country. You’ll have to come along and find out, if you’ve the stomach for real soldiering.”
Parfet’s statement hung in the air. Real soldiering , he had said.
The prudent thing, given Stephen’s suspicions, would be to insist that Parfet comply with the letter’s command. “Come on,” Parfet said.
“What did you have in mind?” Stephen asked.
“The Welsh’ve burned several villages hereabout,” Parfet said. “No doubt you’ve seen what they did to the few hovels remaining outside. I’ve a mind to pay them back and recover what they’ve taken. It’s also a chance to make a little for ourselves.”
“Besides,” the blond man grinned, tweaking the whore’s nipples, “it will be more fun than sitting on our asses around here. Not to mention profitable.”
“You haven’t spent much time sitting on your ass,” the whore said.
“You hush,” the blond man said. He pinched the girl again, and she squealed.
“It looks like you could use a bit of pillaging,” Parfet said. “What do you say? One or two days, the Prince won’t mind that.”
“You mean a raid.”
“He is a swift one,” the blond man said.
“Let’s be courteous, David,” Parfet said. “Yes, a raid. You know, I was disappointed to be sent here, away from the army, but once I got here, David convinced me of the opportunities available at this post. We’re both rather hard up for cash. Keeping up appearances is so difficult what with the prices of things the way they are today. But I don’t need to tell you that.”
“I am a bit hard up myself,” Stephen murmured, as he digested the implications of this. Those emeralds were worth a castle or the rents from a town. If Parfet was so desperate for cash that he thought his best solution was to steal from the Welsh, then it was unlikely he had a hand in the theft of the relic. And if Parfet wasn’t the quarry, who was? No one Stephen was likely to discover. If Stephen was unlikely to discover the thief, there was now only one course left to him if he wanted to avoid imprisonment, ruin, and possibly death at Percival FitzAllen’s hands. Getting safely away required money he did not have. “They won’t care if you do that? I thought you were supposed to watch the ford.”
“We can watch the ford from the other side of the river just as well as we can from here.”
“I suppose a couple of days won’t matter.”
“Excellent,” Parfet said. “Say, how are you at bowls?”
Stephen was not any good at bowls, and by dinner time he was in debt not only to Parfet and the blond man, whose name was David Mably, but also to Melmerby, who was better at the game than any of them. Mably accepted his losses with reasonably good grace, even though Melmerby was Parfet’s servant, a valet or chamberlain or something, as dinner was called and they abandoned the pitch.
For his part, however, Stephen was worried about his debt. “I haven’t any money to speak of,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Parfet said, clapping him on the back. “We’ll settle up after our adventure. Won’t we, Melmerby?”
“Of course, sir,” Melmerby said.
Chapter 12
Gilbert spent the better part of the day Stephen left trying not to think about what he had to do about Ormyn. It was not that he didn’t want to solve the riddle of the castle ward’s death. It was mainly that he had no more idea how to go about it than Stephen. He expected that inspiration would come in time, but by midmorning, when it became clear that inspiration was avoiding him, Gilbert forced himself to have thoughts about the problem. This did not help much. The only thing that came to mind was the canteen found at the foot of the wall. Stephen had done nothing about it. Perhaps, Gilbert decided, he should follow where it might lead. He was sure there was a connection. All this seemed like work. But there would be questions if Stephen got back, and Gilbert better have some answers, even if they were unsatisfactory.
So, he climbed the stairs to Stephen’s room. It was four flights up, a garret at the rear of the house, and by the time he reached the top, he was gasping for breath. He had not made this climb for a long time. It was dark here, for no light penetrated the stairwell. He groped his way to the garret’s door and pushed it open. With the shutters closed, it was hardly much lighter, until he crossed the room, stumbling on something on the floor, and threw them open.
It was normally used by the lowliest servants of the house. Narrow and small, with room for only a bed and a table beneath the window for a wash basin, the room overhead slanted so that a man Stephen’s height had to stoop to avoid striking his head against the rafters except near one wall. Gilbert and Edith had given it to Stephen when he first arrived in the expectation that he would find it an insult and then go somewhere else; every room in the inn was precious and it was a waste to give it to Stephen even in payment of a debt to his brother. Yet Stephen had stayed without complaint. “I’ve slept in worse,” was the only remark Stephen made about it. “At least it’s got a roof. You could do something about that mattress, though.” Gilbert was glad that Stephen had not left. He had got used to Stephen and Harry shouting to each other in the mornings before Harry left.
The object that had tripped Gilbert turned out to be the canteen. Why it should be lying in the middle of the floor was a mystery by itself, but he did not waste much energy seeking an answer to it. He retrieved the canteen and examined it more closely than he had before. He reflected again how expensive and rare an object it was: tin made and new, with hardly a scratch on it and no dents at all. Most canteens were leather. Gilbert turned it around in his hands. There was a maker’s mark stamped on the bottom, the letters S and W intertwined, as there should be, for the thing was a work of art and the maker would have been proud of it and wanted people to know where it had come from. He had no idea who SW was. Nobody in Ludlow made such things.
Gilbert tucked the canteen under an arm. He was about to go when he noticed a folded piece of Italian paper on the bed. What need Stephen would have for paper, which was rare and expensive, was an even greater mystery than the canteen’s position on the floor. Gilbert’s hand hesitated over the paper. Could it be a letter to that beautiful but dangerous woman Margaret de Thottenham with whom Stephen was foolishly infatuated? If it was, Gilbert should leave it lie, but his curiosity triumphed, and he unfolded the paper. There was a crude drawing upon it that was unmistakably a sword hilt. The cross
was curved toward the blade rather than straight, as in most swords of his acquaintance, and the pommel was tear-shaped rather than a round disk, the more common design, with grooves of some sort etched in it.
He put a finger to his lips as the significance of this drawing suggested itself. Stephen had said Ormyn’s sword was distinctive. Here Stephen had tried to capture what it had looked like, undoubtedly to show to people. He had done the same with the likeness of Rosamond, the girl in the ice, so the same idea must have occurred to him now.
“Why did he not tell me about this?” Gilbert wondered, as he closed the door and went downstairs. The answer to that question was not pleasing: “Because he did not really intend me to make a serious inquiry after all. Well, I’ll show him.”
When Gilbert reached the meadow north of the castle where the bulk of the army had camped, his inquiry was frustrated by the fact men and women were rushing around packing things and loading carts. Nobody wanted to be bothered with him and it took several inquiries before anyone paid the slightest attention. Persistence at last forced a sergeant to turn from the urgent business of cart loading as Gilbert asked what was going on, and got the reply, “We’re marching tomorrow. I’ll bet you townies are glad of that.”
“It will be more peaceful, that is certain,” Gilbert replied. “I say, have you ever seen this before?”
The sergeant gazed at the canteen which Gilbert held out for his inspection. “No. You want to sell it?”
“Not at all. Someone lost it. I’m trying to find its owner.”
“You are a Samaritan,” the sergeant said, turning away to shout at a pair of soldiers manhandling a cask of arrows into a wagon which they had stacked in a way that did not satisfy the sergeant, although it was hard to tell what was the matter.
“Well, it is rather important that I find him,” Gilbert said to the sergeant’s back. “A matter of a man’s unfortunate death, you know.”
But the sergeant did not turn around, caring more for the loading of his wagons than someone’s death. The reason for that became apparent when a knight strode up, glanced at the job the sergeant and his men were doing, and stopped. The knight’s face got as red as his floppy hat. He threw the hat on the ground, and began shouting about the arrangement of the barrels, the gist of which was: “You’ve buried the wine casks, man! We’ll not be able to get to them on the march!” This provoked the sergeant to sputter orders so fast that the words ran together so he could hardly be understood, as he spoke with a Devon accent, apart from the fact that most that came out were curses. The soldiers scrambled to comply with speed they had not exhibited until the appearance of the officer.
“I shall leave you to it, then,” Gilbert murmured, turning away, but not without some admiration for the sergeant’s performance.
He met no greater success elsewhere on the field. Many marveled at the canteen’s workmanship and immediately recognized its value, but no one had seen its like before, or that of the sword on those times that Gilbert remembered to pull the picture from his pouch. By this time, people were settling down for dinner, the air choking with the smoke of cooking fires that accented the aroma of fresh bread and boiled beef, and he was reminded that he was far from his own dinner and unlikely to get back before the best stuff had been eaten. He had discovered this was a constant problem about investigations: they were tedious and dull, and he often missed his dinner. He might not enjoy the tedious and dull, but he was accustomed to them. However, missing dinner was not something he reconciled to easily.
Gilbert felt that he had exhausted the possibilities of the field and was heading back toward Linney Gate, imagining the delights of mutton stew, when he crossed paths with an ale-seller named Batson carrying a cask on his back as if it was a pack.
Batson had a collection of leather cups dangling from straps attached to the bottom of the cask, swinging about as he walked. The two of them halted as they came together amid the hubbub of the camp. For Gilbert, this hubbub had proven to be a source of dismay, but for an enterprising man like Batson, it was an opportunity. “Morning there, Gil,” Batson said. “What brings you out here? Somebody die?” He cackled at his little joke.
Gilbert ignored the joke. He got the same from everyone. It was old and stale, and had not been funny the first time he’d heard it. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Anybody I know?”
“That fellow at the castle — Ormyn.”
“Oh, yes. The ward fellow, the one who jumped off the wall.”
“Or was pushed. You knew him?”
“I knew who he was. Not that we were friends, or anything. Used to see him quite a bit down at the Pigeon, especially on Sundays when we made deliveries there. Care for a drink?”
Gilbert had not realized until this moment how much investigating made one thirsty. “Don’t mind if I do.” He eyed the dangling cups with some suspicion, however. No telling who had drunk out of them or when they had last been washed. He brought up the canteen, pulled out the stopper, and sniffed the contents. As he had suspected, the ale within the canteen had gone sour; ale never kept more than a few days. He poured it out, and handed the canteen to Batson. “Use this, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not filling it up, mind you, unless you want to pay extra.”
“A cup-worth’s fine. Say, have you ever seen this canteen before?” Asking Batson was a long shot, but as Gilbert had decided to give up on the canteen, he might as well make it.
He was thus surprised when Batson answered, “Sure. I’ve seen it before.”
“Where?”
Batson waved toward the east as he handed the now partly filled canteen back. “There, at the Pigeon.”
“The Pigeon?” Gilbert had not expected this. “Not here, or the castle?”
“A fellow just leaving stopped me at the gate as I was making a delivery.”
“What sort of fellow?”
“One of the soldiers. They’d just come in the day before. Not local folk.”
Gilbert sipped from the canteen as he gathered his thoughts around this new and unexpected information. The ale was fresh and sweet. “This is good, Batson. Your wife is an artist. You don’t happen to remember the fellow’s name?”
“What fellow?”
“The owner of the canteen.”
Batson snorted. “’Course not. I don’t bother with people’s names.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
Batson’s brow furrowed. “Can’t say that I do. It’s been a while.”
“How much of a while?”
“Sunday before last, it had to be. I can hardly remember what my children look like. You can’t expect me to remember some fellow I sold ale to out of this flock.”
“I suppose not.” Gilbert capped the canteen. “But you remember this.”
“It’s hard to forget a piece of work like that. How many people have a tin canteen?”
“Hardly anyone.”
“And I remember that he had me fill it up. It holds a lot of ale. Hard to forget that, or the workmanship that went into that thing. T’is a thing of beauty.”
“Thank you, Batson. You’ve been most helpful.” Gilbert tried to sound grateful, but this news meant that he had lost any chance of fresh mutton stew.
“My pleasure,” Batson said. “Oh, I remember something now about that fellow. I can’t see his face but he had a great big moustache. Quite an impressive thing. You could hang laundry from it.”
“You don’t happen to remember the color?”
“Oh, sure. Black.”
“Thank you, Batson. You’ve been a great help.” Though at what was not clear, exactly.
They parted company then, Batson to continue business, and Gilbert to trudge toward Linney Lane, the prospect of more tedious inquiries stretching before him.
One would not expect the bowling field at the Pigeon Inn to be active in the middle of a weekday, but these were not ordinary times. There were half a dozen games going on when Gilbert pushed
through the gate. While the Pigeon sought a higher class of customer than most bowling alleys, its owner was not the sort to turn anyone away with sufficient coin to pay the fee, but today the players all were gentry folk — officers of the army by the look of them, who had taken quarters at the inn in preference to sleeping in a tent, which they would have enough of soon now that Prince Edward had determined to march into Wales. Gilbert supposed the men were enjoying their last opportunity for leisure before the hardships of campaigning set in.
He went round to two of the groups, but despite the fact he asked in his most obsequious way, he was so sharply rebuffed each time that he hesitated to approach the third game. He was nerving himself up for another sharp rejection when one of the serving girls arrived at his elbow. “Drink for you, Master Gil?” the girl asked.
“No, Sally,” Gilbert replied, swirling the canteen, which still held ale.
“Bring your own?” Sally asked, glancing at the canteen. “Better not let Herb see that. He’ll have it out of your hands in a blink.” She looked toward the house in case the owner, Herbert Jameson, was watching. “He don’t like folk bringing their own.”
“I can imagine why. Cuts into his profit.”
“What are you here for? You didn’t come for the drink or the bowls, that’s clear.”
“I’m looking into the matter of Ormyn’s death.”
“That ward at the castle? What a shame. He was a nice fellow.”
“You knew him?”
“A bit. He used to come down, Sundays, and play. When he wasn’t playing he’d cry on my shoulder.”
