Silken Threads

by Patricia Ryan

  Graeham looked up and met le Fever’s frigid gaze. “How often are you tempted to discard her, Master le Fever?”

  The mercer smirked. “Is that it? The old man thinks I’m going to bring some sort of harm down on his precious daughter?”

  Graeham refolded the letter and put it with the others. “Are you?”

  “That, serjant, is none of your affair.”

  “Baron Gui de Beauvais has made it my affair. At best, your wife is miserable in this marriage. At worst, you do, indeed, intend some harm toward her.”

  Le Fever leapt to his feet, his teeth showing. “You’ve got some stones, coming into my home and accusing me of—”

  “I’m accusing you of nothing. I’m merely conveying a father’s concern for his daughter’s welfare.”

  Le Fever’s gaze sharpened on Graeham. “You’re not here to escort her home for a visit,” he said softly. “You came to take her away for good.”

  Graeham didn’t bother to deny it. “I should think you’d be pleased to be rid of her, considering your feelings about the marriage.”

  Le Fever’s eyes lit with a white-hot fury. “You propose to steal my wife out from under my roof, and I’m supposed to be pleased about it? How in bloody hell do you think that’s going to look, for my wife to leave and never come back?”

  “Ah, yes, appearances.” Graeham sighed. “His lordship has authorized me to offer you fifty marks if you let her leave with me.”

  “He could offer me a thousand marks. Ten thousand. I’m not letting the bitch go. She knew what she was doing when she married me. Let her reap what she’s sown.”

  “Master Rolf?” came a tenuous voice from the service stairwell.

  Le Fever wheeled around to face the girl who stood there, a milky-skinned redhead of about sixteen or so, dressed in a dark green, hooded mantle and homely gray tunic, her brow furrowed. She might have been pretty had she not looked so cowed.

  “Olive!” le Fever exclaimed. “What do you mean, sneaking in here this way?”

  “I—I knocked at the back door,” Olive said, looking back and forth between Graeham and the mercer, “but no one heard me. Your man is out back, currying the horses, and he said I could go on in.” She shrugged helplessly and held up a phial of thick blue glass that contained a dark liquid. “I’ve brought today’s tonic for Mistress Ada.”

  “Very well.” Le Fever waved her upstairs. “Bring it up to her.” He turned back to Graeham, still seated, as the young woman darted up the stairs. “Go back to that conniving whoreson who sent you here and tell him he’s not getting his daughter back. He’ll never see her again. She’s mine now. He gave her to me. Now, get the hell out of here.”

  With lazy movements, as if he had all the time in the world, Graeham slid the fourth letter from the pile and unfolded it.

  “Did you hear me?” le Fever sputtered, his beringed hands fisting at his sides. “Get out—or I’ll have my manservant throw you out. Byram’s quite the strapping beast, and good with his fists—I guarantee you’ll come away from the experience bloodied.”“‘My husband makes no attempt to hide his numerous assigna¬tions with other women,’” Graeham said, reading from the letter. “‘Indeed, he boasts of his conquests to his man, Byram, within my hearing.’”

  Le Fever crossed to a large window overlooking the stable yard. “Byram!”

  “Yes, sire,” came a man’s deep-pitched voice from outside.

  “Put Ebony back in his stall and come up here, will you? I need your help with something.”

  “Right away, sire.”

  Graeham resumed his reading of the letter. “‘Rolf seems proudest of his liaisons with the wives of the high-ranking men whose influence he so avidly courts. Perhaps seducing their wives makes him feel more like one of them. Recently I overheard him bragging to Byram that he had slept with the wives of four of London’s aldermen, including that of our own ward, Fori.’” Graeham looked up from the letter. “That would be Alderman John Huxley, would it not? Lord Gui met Master John when he was studying in Paris—did you know that?”

  Two spots of pink bloomed on Rolf le Fever’s cheeks.

  Returning his attention to the letter, Graeham read, “‘From what I can gather, Rolf has grown so bold as to set his sights on the wife of the king’s justiciar. Cool though my feelings toward my husband have grown, I dread to think what will come of him should it become known that he has made cuckolds of so many important men.’” Graeham refolded the letter and replaced it on the stack. “I’d say she makes an excellent point, wouldn’t you? ‘Twould go badly for you should your wife’s correspondence happen to fall into the wrong hands.”

  Le Fever leaned out the window. “Byram, I...I don’t need you after all.”

  There came a pause. “Are you sure, Master—”

  “Yes, damn it, I’m sure. Go back to your work.” Le Fever’s expression when he turned back to Graeham was murderous. “You blackmailing bastard. Let me see those letters.”

  “You’ve got the ‘bastard’ part right,” Graeham replied as he handed le Fever the bundle of letters. “As for blackmail, it needn’t come to that.”

  “I daresay it needn’t.” With an expression of triumph, the mercer flung the sheets of parchment into the fire. “It seems they really do call you ‘Fox’ for your hair and not your cleverness. So glad to find I misjudged you.”

  “Ah, but you didn’t,” Graeham admitted with a mild smile. “Those were copies. I penned them myself before leaving Beauvais. The originals are locked up safely in his lordship’s private chamber.”

  Le Fever sank into his chair, his face as white as bleached bone. “The fox has set quite a cunning little trap of his own, it seems. That’s it, then. If I don’t let Ada go, you ruin me.”

  “Will it ease the sting any,” Graeham said, “to know that Lord Gui instructed me to give you the fifty marks regardless of your cooperation? I told him he was too generous by far.”

  “I’ve been in trade long enough to know that such generosity doesn’t come without conditions.”

  “You’re to refrain from discussing Mistress Ada with anyone, ever, especially in ways that may reflect badly on her. In particular, you are to keep your counsel as regards the circumstances of her birth.”

  “I’m hardly eager to advertise those circumstances, I assure you. But fifty marks isn’t enough. I want more.”

  “It’s all I brought with me, and it’s fifty marks more than you deserve. Take it or leave it.”

  A muscle spasmed in le Fever’s jaw. “Give it to me, then.”

  “The prior of St. Bartholemew’s is safeguarding it for me. You’ll get it when I come back to collect Mistress Ada.” Graeham stood. “I’ll return this evening at compline.”

  “She’ll be packed and ready.” As le Fever rose, he squinted at something in the corner. Graeham turned to find the young woman who’d brought the tonic, Olive, lurking in the service stairwell. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “I just...I’m sorry, sire. But Mum, she’ll light into me something awful if I come back to the shop again without the tuppence for the tonic.”

  Glowering, le Fever dug two silver pennies out of the purse on his belt and hurled them at the girl. She squealed and covered her face; the coins bounced on the clay floor and rolled away.

  “Jesu!” le Fever bit out.

  “I’m sorry,” Olive muttered, dropping to her hands and knees to scramble after the money. “I’m sorry, Master Rolf. I’m so clumsy.”

  She found one of the pennies under a chair. Graeham picked up the other, which had come to rest near his feet, and handed it to her. She accepted it with murmured thanks, blushing when he took her hand and helped her to her feet.

  “Do you work for the apothecary?” Graeham asked her.

  The girl nodded. “I’m her apprentice. She’s me mum.”

  “If she was to make up a week’s worth of tonic for Mistress Ada, would it keep that long?”

  “Aye. We brew it up in
four-pinte batches that last longer than that. Just mind you don’t let it get too warm, and it’ll keep just fine.”

  “Good.” Graeham untied his purse and counted fourteen pennies into her hand, then added another four for good measure. He could well afford to be generous—or rather, Lord Gui could, for this was the baron’s money, provided to cover Graeham’s expenses in returning his daughter to him. “There’s a shilling and a half. That should more than cover it. See that you have the medicine here by compline.”

  “Yes, sir. It’ll be here, sir. Good day, sir.”

  “Good day.”

  After she left, a disconcerting thought occurred to Graeham. “Your wife,” he said to le Fever, “how ill is she? She is well enough to travel, isn’t she?”

  The guildmaster gave him a look of smug contempt. “The way I see it, that’s entirely your problem now. As of compline, I wash my hands of her.”

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  The sun hung low in the sky, gilding the thatched roofs of London, when Graeham returned to West Cheap on the sorrel stallion he’d purchased in Dover, his saddlebags heavy with silver for Rolf le Fever. Having given it some thought, he’d decided not to bring along the chestnut palfrey he’d acquired for Mistress Ada. If she was seriously ill, it would be safer for her to ride pillion behind him. It was either that or a litter, and he didn’t know where he’d find a proper one on such short notice.

  Graeham couldn’t help wondering what Ada le Fever would look like. The baron hadn’t described his twin daughters except as “angelic beauties with exceedingly temperate dispositions.” Of course, Ada’s long illness might have taken a toll on her appear¬ance. Graeham cautioned himself not to be dismayed if she struck him as less than comely. After all, it wasn’t Ada he was betrothed to, but Phillipa.

  Almost betrothed to. It wouldn’t be official until he returned Ada safely to Paris. Then would come the reward Lord Gui had promised him—Lady Phillipa’s hand in marriage and a generous holding. Best of all, an English holding, and one of the baron’s finest estates—fifteen hides of fertile farmland and rolling pastures just outside of Oxford.

  Graeham had been stunned when Lord Gui had offered such a princely reward—especially as regarded the betrothal to his daughter—but he’d known better than to question it lest his lordship start entertaining second thoughts. For a man of Graeham’s modest background, it was the opportunity of a lifetime—land of his own and marriage to a beautiful woman of temperate disposition. Phillipa’s illegitimacy troubled him not at all, for it was a curse he lived with himself. Perhaps their shared baseborn status would even enhance their compatibility.

  What would it be like, he wondered, after a lifetime of never really belonging anywhere, of always being alone, to have a home and family of his own? How would it feel, after years of forgettable couplings with serving wenches and laundresses, to take his ease night after night in the arms of the same woman, to see her grow great with his child, to watch her hair gradually turn to silver as the years passed?

  Soon would come his opportunity to find out. All he had to do was return Ada le Fever to her father. The Devil himself couldn’t stop him; Rolf le Fever hadn’t stood a chance.

  Graeham turned onto Milk Street, guiding his mount around gaps in the crumbling Roman paving stones. From his boyhood in London, he recalled perhaps a dozen such old paved lanes among the complex network of dirt roads that filled the square mile within the city walls. He walked his horse gingerly across a section that was mostly rubble, the stones having been torn up to build the house next to le Fever’s.

  Except for the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and that house, all the dwellings and shops on Milk Street were of thatch-roofed timber, although Rolf le Fever’s was, by far, the most conspicuous. Of course, this part of West Cheap was the hub of London’s silk trade, a trade overseen by le Fever as guildmaster. He was the most important man for blocks around; why shouldn’t he have the biggest, most ostentatious house? Still...painted in garish red and blue, its portico supported by intricately carved posts, the rest ornamented with fancy moldings and beams, it struck Graeham as the home of a man who’d gotten too rich too fast.

  Eyeing the window of the third-floor solar as he rode toward the house, Graeham fancied he saw someone sitting there, silhouetted against yellowish lamplight; Ada le Fever? He hoped she was packed and ready, as promised, for he didn’t have that long to get her to St. Bartholemew’s, where he’d secured a place for her in the women’s guest quarters. Once night had fully fallen, the churches would ring curfew and the city gates would be locked until dawn. It was well that Lord Gui had steered Graeham to St. Bartholemew’s. Not only did the hostelry accommodate women as well as men, but the priory maintained a splendid hospital—although he hoped Ada wouldn’t need it. The sooner they could manage the journey to Paris, the better.

  As he approached the house, Graeham noticed a burly, bald-headed man in a russet tunic leaning against the tall stone wall that enclosed the front part of Rolf le Fever’s property, absently whittling a chunk of wood with a large knife. When he looked up and saw Graeham, he tossed the wood aside. “Graeham Fox?”

  “Aye.” Graeham reined in his mount.

  “I been waitin’ for ye. Master le Fever, he said as how you were to come round back for his wife. Says he don’t want the whole neighborhood to see her leavin’ with the likes of you.” He shrugged apologetically.

  “Are you Byram?”

  The fellow shoved his knife back in its sheath. “That’s right. This way, then.” Pushing off the wall, Byram motioned for Graeham to follow him into an alley adjacent to le Fever’s house. “You might want to dismount. It gets a might tight in there before you get to the back of the house.”

  Graeham got down off his horse, his soldierly suspicion of anything irregular raising his hackles. Alert and wary, he led his mount into the alley, a dirt path about a yard and a half wide that connected Milk Street to the street just west of it—Wood Street, as Graeham recalled. Cast into shadow by the buildings to either side, the passage¬way was dim and littered with debris. The sorrel stallion snorted anxiously.

  About halfway down, the right-hand side of the alley opened up into what looked to be a common rear croft of packed earth shared by the houses on Wood Street, and from which access could be gained to Rolf le Fever’s stable yard via a gate in the low stone wall surrounding it. The croft was deserted for the supper hour, save for a few chickens and pigs in scattered pens. The alley, shaded by dwellings whose upper levels were built out awkwardly over the lower, grew even darker and narrower as it ap-proached Wood Street.

  “Where are you going?” Graeham asked as Byram walked past the gate to le Fever’s stable yard.

  Byram turned around, his gaze shifting from Graeham to something out of sight behind le Fever’s stable.

  Graeham spun around, unsheathing his dagger as two men—one of them gigantic—emerged from behind the stable. The smaller one seized the horse’s reins, while the giant swung a long-handled sledge-hammer at Graeham’s head. Graeham ducked beneath the sledge, rolled, leapt up. He grabbed his attacker’s tangled black beard to hold him still and drove the dagger deep into his belly. The bastard grunted. Without so much as a pause to catch his breath, he jerked away and whipped the sledge around, smacking Graeham in the ribs and sending him sprawling onto the hard-packed dirt.

  “Shit, Dougal,” Byram gasped at his companion. “Are ye all right?”

  Dougal looked down at the horn handle of Graeham’s dagger protruding from his belly, and shrugged.

  As Graeham struggled to sit up, his teeth clenched against the dull pain in his side, he saw his horse being led swiftly down the alley toward Wood Street. “No!” He reached into his boot for his spare weapon, a little razor-sharp dirk—for all the good it would do. He was outnumbered, and by brutes who could clearly take a bit of punishment.

  As Graeham braced himself to rise, Byram knelt over him, knife in hand. Grabbing a fistful of Graeham�
�s hair, Byram yanked his head back and pressed the giant blade to his neck. “Say hello to the Devil for me, Fox.”

  “Say it yourself.” Graeham aimed his dirk at Byram’s throat, but the bastard saw it coming and recoiled; the blade opened a bloody gash across his cheek and chin instead. Byram dropped the knife, swearing rawly.

  Keeping a firm grip on the dirk, Graeham reached for the knife, but Dougal stepped on his hand, immobilizing him and all but crushing his fingers. Graeham drew back his foot, encased in a wooden-soled riding boot, and kicked the giant in the groin.

  Bellowing like a bear, Dougal slammed the sledge with a jolting crunch on Graeham’s left shin. Pain ignited in a searing explosion, racing like Greek fire along his nerves. A roar that must have come from his own throat reverberated in the alley.

  From a window somewhere, a man yelled, “Pipe down out there! I’m tryin’ to eat me supper!”

  Graeham uncurled himself, sucking air, and tried once again to get up, but his lower leg had been smashed; it wouldn’t support him.

  Byram, using his tunic sleeve to blot his bleeding face, kicked Graeham in his broken ribs. To Dougal he said, “Finish him off and let’s get out of here.”

  Dougal, the dagger still sticking out of his belly, stood over Graeham. His gaze narrowed on Graeham’s head as he took aim. He raised the sledge-hammer high.

  Gripping his little dirk by its ivory handle, Graeham flicked it toward Dougal’s massive neck. It stuck there, quivering. Dougal blinked and slowly lowered the sledge.