Silken Threads

by Patricia Ryan

  “Jesus, Dougal,” Byram murmured, gaping as the big man patted the dirk’s ivory handle curiously. “Give me that.” Byram yanked the sledge out of Dougal’s grip and took aim at Graeham’s skull. Graeham rolled aside as the sledge descended, imbedding harmlessly in the dirt.

  The big knife was once again close at hand, and Graeham grabbed it. Groaning in pain, he bolstered himself on the wall behind him and pulled himself to his feet as Byram yanked the sledge free and wheeled on him.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.” Graeham and his two assailants turned to find a man—flaxen-haired, lean and long-limbed—striding toward them from the direction of Wood Street. From the tooled scabbard on his belt, he withdrew a gleaming steel sword. “Mind if I play?”

  Byram and Dougal looked at each other.

  “Because it strikes me you haven’t really got enough competitors.” He spoke like a nobleman, and there was that handsome sword—although his leather tunic and woollen chausses were worn and dirt-smudged. A wineskin and satchel hung across his chest. “Two against one—that hardly seems sporting, does it? What do you say I even things up?”

  “Bugger yourself,” Dougal growled, even as he stumbled back against the wall, nudged by the stranger’s sword.

  “If I could figure out how, I’d probably give it a go.” With a nod toward the horn handle emerging from Dougal’s stomach, he said, “That smarts, I’ll wager. But I’ve seen men take a knife in the stomach, pull it out, and snap back good as new within days.”

  “Hunh.” Dougal regarded the dagger with an expression of relief.

  “The one in your throat’s a bit trickier, though. If you take that one out, blood will start pumping from you like a fountain, and it won’t stop till you’re dead as a stone. Just thought you should know.”

  Dougal looked at him with slack-jawed dismay.

  “On the positive side, it’s a very quick death. And not too painful, as these things go.”

  “He’s lying,” Byram said.

  Dougal turned and started lumbering back up the alley toward Milk Street, crossing himself and muttering softly under his breath.

  “Come back here!” Byram screamed. “Damn your eyes, Dougal, he’s making it all up! Come back here!” He shook the sledge menacingly. “Get away from here before I smash your brains in.”

  Ignoring the threat, the stranger tilted Byram’s chin up with the tip of his sword and inspected the laceration on his face. “I hope you’re already married, because no wench wants a man with a scar like that.” To Graeham, he said, “Your handiwork?”

  Graeham nodded, shaking all over as he strained to stay on his feet. “I was going for his throat.”

  “Were you? I’ve found the best way to cut a man’s throat is to plant the blade firmly, right about here—” he pressed the edge of his sword against Byram’s throat “—and then just sweep it across, like so.” He made an abrupt slashing movement.

  Byram yelped and dropped the sledge. The stranger kicked it toward Graeham, who made no attempt to lean down and pick it up, suspecting he would pass out if he did so. “Hands in the air, then.”

  Byram spat out a few ripe Anglo-Saxon curses, but complied.

  “I’m going to send for one of the sheriffs and have your miserable arse hauled off to gaol,” the stranger said.

  “Let him go.” Graeham said.

  “What? Why?”

  Because Graeham had sworn to Lord Gui that he would proceed with the utmost discretion, revealing to no one—save le Fever himself—his true reason for being in London, lest it become known that the baron was Ada le Fever’s father. Getting the constabulary involved would open a Pandora’s box of inquiry that could expose the secret his lordship had striven for so many years to protect. Besides, any investigation into the “robbery” was pointless. Graeham had a fairly good notion that Rolf le Fever was behind the attack, the point of which had been to relieve him not just of his silver, but of his life. Le Fever, fearful for his precious reputation, most likely never had any intention of relinquishing his wife to Graeham. But he wanted those fifty marks.

  Graeham still had every intention of bringing her back to Paris, of course. Not only was her delivery from the likes of Rolf le Fever a just cause, but Graeham’s very future rode on it. Somehow, despite his injuries and le Fever’s defiance, he would manage to execute his mission—but without the dubious assistance of the Sheriff of London.

  Thinking as quickly as he could, given his throbbing leg, Graeham said, “This mongrel’s not worth the trouble of bringing him up on charges. We’d have to give statements, testify at the sheriff’s court, all that bloody nonsense—just so they can deal him a few lashes and toss him out onto the street again. ‘Tisn’t worth it.”

  He must have been convincing, because after a moment’s thought, the stranger stepped back from Byron and said, “Why don’t you go find your friend and help him get that knife out of his throat?”

  Byram hesitated, casting an anxious glance in Graeham’s direction—troubled, perhaps, at leaving unfinished business—then turned and sprinted down the alley toward Milk Street.

  Graeham shoved the knife under his belt, then slumped to the ground, gripping his leg and cursing like a sailor. The criss-crossed thong that secured the leather legging was stretched taut over his bulging shin; it thudded with pain.

  The stranger sheathed his sword and squatted next to Graeham, frowning at his leg. His right earlobe, Graeham saw, was pierced by a small gold ring etched with an exotic design. Graeham had once seen an infidel in a turban walking down the Rue de la Lanterne in Paris; he’d had an earring like that.

  “Is it broken?” the stranger asked.

  Graeham nodded. “Rather badly, I suspect. I can’t tell too much with it wrapped up this way.”

  “Don’t unwrap it. ‘Twill act as a splint till you can get a proper one from a surgeon. Is that all they did to you?”

  “They cracked a few of my ribs. But they would have done the same thing to my head if you hadn’t shown up when you did. I’m Graeham Fox, by the way. And I owe you a debt of thanks.”

  “Hugh of Wexford—and I’m the one who should be thankful. ‘Twas the best sport I’ve had all week.”

  “Will that fellow really bleed to death when he takes the dirk out of his neck?”

  Hugh grinned and shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I made that up.”

  “It sounded good.”

  “I thought so. Come.” Hugh stood up and hauled a woozy and pain-racked Graeham to his feet, pressing the four-foot shaft of the sledge-hammer into his trembling hand. “This should serve fairly well as a cane. Let’s get you inside where you can lie down.”

  “Inside?” Graeham rested most of his weight on the sledge, but Hugh aided him with a hand under his arm.

  “This is my sister’s house,” Hugh said, patting the earth-and-straw wall against which Graeham had been leaning. “I was on my way here for a visit when I saw a rather mangy cur leading a handsome sorrel stallion out of this alley.”

  “A handsome sorrel stallion with fifty marks in his saddlebags,” Graeham said as Hugh guided him by torturous little hopping steps into the rear croft and around to the back of the house—one of a long row of attached two-story dwellings facing Wood Street. Outbuildings dotted the croft; a privy shed had been built against the back wall of Hugh’s sister’s house, and in the shadow of a tree behind it stood a stone hut, which probably housed a kitchen. She had a little garden plot, bare of plants this early in the spring, but no livestock.

  “Fifty marks!” Hugh let out a long, low whistle from between his teeth. “Rotten luck, falling prey to robbers when you’ve got a fortune like that on you.”

  Rotten luck had nothing to do with it, Graeham thought, and one of those “robbers” just happens to be manservant to the master of the Mercers’ Guild.

  Hugh pounded his fist on the oaken back door of his sister’s home. “Joanna! Joanna, it’s me, Hugh. Open up.” He tugged on the latch string trailing from a hole
in the door; from inside came the metallic scrape of the bolt being lifted. Pulling the door open, he called down a narrow hallway, “Joanna?” No sound came from within. “She must not be home. Come on in, but step carefully here—it’s a sunken floor.”

  Hugh escorted Graeham down the hallway, which opened into a humbly furnished living chamber with a ladder in the corner leading upstairs. The rushes that blanketed the floor of this modest salle smelled fresh. In the middle of a rough-hewn table flanked by benches sat a sort of poor man’s oil lamp—a lump of fat in a clay dish with a burning rush in it—which cast a wavering corona of light. Two deep little iron-barred windows looked out onto the alley; a white cat observed them dispassionately from the ledge of one.

  “That imperious creature is Petronilla,” Hugh said. “Her brother’s around here somewhere. Manfrid—he’s the timid type. With the exception of Joanna, he’s terrified of people—especially men. There’s usually a dog or two in residence, but not at the moment, apparently. Where’s your mum, Petronilla?”

  Petronilla turned to look out the window.

  “Joanna lit that lamp,” Hugh observed, “so she must not have left that long ago. The sun has just set.”

  Through a wide, arched doorway Graeham could see a small front room—a shop stall, for next to the door that led to the street was an enormous window with horizontal shutters, now bolted shut. Near this window stood a large rectangular embroidery frame laid flat on trestles, on which a length of sky-blue silk, partially stitched in vines and flowers, was stretched taut by means of lacings around the edges.

  Noticing the direction of Graeham’s gaze, Hugh said, “Joanna’s husband is a mercer. He imports silk and they sell it out of the shop—or rather, she does. He enjoys the buying, but he can’t bear the peddling.”

  Graeham nodded politely, straining for composure despite the howling pain in his leg. “You mentioned some place to lie down...?”

  “Right in here.” Hugh pushed a leather curtain aside and helped Graeham to limp into a tiny back room with no rushes to obscure the floor of beaten chalk. By the dusky twilight filtering in through the windows, Graeham made out various chests and sacks and implements, as well as some bolts of jewel-toned silk and a few small baskets on a bench. A narrow cot stood against the back wall.

  “Who sleeps here?” Graeham grunted in pain as he lowered himself onto the linen-covered mattress of crackling straw and stretched out, searching for the position that was least agonizing for his leg.

  “Prewitt.” Hugh punched a limp feather pillow and shoved it under Graeham’s head.

  “Who’s that—the apprentice?”

  “The husband—Prewitt Chapman. They don’t have an apprentice. Here.” Dumping his satchel on the floor, Hugh handed Graeham his wineskin. “Have some of this—’twill ease the pain and warm you up. You’re shivering.”

  Graeham gratefully uncorked the skin and squeezed some wine into his mouth, not bothering to sit up. He was tempted to ask why the master of the house had to make do with a cot in the storeroom when there was apparently a solar upstairs, but it would ill repay his new friend’s hospitality to start prying into private family affairs. “Won’t your brother-in-law be a bit put out to find his bed commandeered by a complete stranger?”

  “Prewitt only sleeps here when he’s in town. He spends most of his time abroad, buying silks.”

  “Is that where he is now?”

  “I couldn’t say. This is my first visit to Joanna in almost a year.” Hugh shook out a woollen blanket that had been folded at the foot of the bed and covered Graeham with it. “You rest here. I’m going to go get you a surgeon.”

  “Is there one in the neighborhood?”

  “I seem to recall seeing a shop with a red and white striped pole out front up toward Cripplegate.”

  After Hugh left, Graeham set himself to the task of draining the wineskin in the hope of inducing a state of numb oblivion before the surgeon arrived. Having held down screaming men more than once while their cracked bones were shoved back into place, he reckoned he’d rather not be in full command of his senses for the procedure.

  Time swam; night fell. Just as Graeham realized the wineskin was empty, he heard a door open and close; the sound came not from the back of the house, where he was, but the front. From his position, he could see through the open storeroom doorway into the lamplit salle and beyond that to the darkened shopfront. A shadowy figure in a hooded mantle moved through the shop. Graeham was about to call Hugh’s name when he realized this person was smaller than Hugh—and wearing a lady’s kirtle.

  The woman—Hugh’s sister, no doubt—entered the salle, hung her mantle on a peg and placed a parchment-wrapped bundle on the central table. Drunk as Graeham was, it was taxing to keep her in focus. She was tall for a woman, though not excessively so. He saw that she wore a plain blue kirtle with no overtunic; her hair was concealed beneath a white scarf twisted and tucked around her head, a few golden brown tendrils having escaped at her nape; keys and various small tools jangled on the chatelaine hanging from her embroidered girdle.

  The cat jumped off the windowsill and joined another—a large black and white tom—in rubbing against its mistress’s skirts. One of them yowled something that sounded like “Now.”

  She chuckled. “It’s eel turnovers you smell, but you must wait till I’ve eaten my fill before you get yours.” Her voice sounded young, and had a scratchy quality to it that was not unpleasant.

  Graeham knew he ought to announce his presence. He raised himself onto an elbow, groaning when things spun sickeningly.

  He heard a sharp gasp. The woman stilled, staring into the darkened storeroom with wide, unblinking eyes. “Who’s there?” she called out in a quavering voice.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Graeham muttered thickly as he collapsed back down, squeezing his eyes shut against another wave of drunken disorientation. He heard the rushes rustling beneath her feet; the footsteps grew closer.

  “Get out.”

  He opened his eyes, squinting at her as she stood over him, holding an enormous axe with both hands, its blade aimed at his head.

  “Did you hear me?” she demanded shakily. “Get out of my house this instant, or I’ll split your skull open where you lie.”

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  “I can explain,” the intruder said, his words slurred, a hand raised as if to ward off the blow of her axe. Another drunken vagrant trying to find refuge in her home; she really must get better about locking up when she left the place unattended.

  “Get out!” Joanna repeated, cursing her wavering voice; she knew better than to let one of these street rats sense her fear. But he was such a big man—his booted feet, emerging from beneath the blanket in which he was wrapped, extended past the foot of Prewitt’s bed—and his face was grimy, and he stank of wine. His drunkenness would only stoke his capacity for violence. If he leapt at her, she must be prepared to strike back, and hard.

  “Mistress...” he began.

  “Get up!” she ordered, brandishing the axe. “Go! I’ll use this, so help me God I will.”

  He took her measure with oddly unruffled calm, his eyes glowing like blue fire in the semidarkness. “No, you won’t,” he said quietly, sounding almost sober. “You couldn’t. Your hands are shaking.” He lifted himself on an elbow.

  Joanna backed up a step, holding the axe before her like a talisman. Was he preparing to leave...or to attack? “My husband’s due home any moment now,” she lied. Thinking that might not be enough to discourage him, given his size, she added, “And my brother is with him. Hugh’s a master swordsman. He’ll run you through if he finds you here.”

  She saw amusement in his eyes, and something else that might, under different circumstances, have almost looked like compassion. “Actually, ‘twas Hugh who brought me here.”

  “What?”

  “Aye, he—”

  “Liar. You just want me to let my guard down. Hugh’s not even in London. He’s off f
ighting in the Rhineland.”

  The bastard’s mouth quirked. “If your brother’s not even in London, how could he possibly be on his way here with your husband?”

  Joanna cursed inwardly; she’d never been adept at lying. “My...my husband is coming.”

  “I don’t think so. If he were, you’d leave right now and let him oust me instead of trying to do it yourself. He’s not in London either, is he? No one’s coming. You’re all alone.”

  “Get out of here!” She advanced on him, the axe at the ready, keeping toward the foot of the cot so he couldn’t make a grab for her.

  “Mistress...”

  “Get up! Go on!” Flipping the axe in her hands, she whacked him on the legs with its handle.

  “Fuck!” He contracted into a ball, clutching his legs. “Oh, shit! Fuck! Shit!”

  Joanna backed up swiftly to the doorway, unnerved by his reaction.

  He growled a torrent of ragged expletives before sinking, ashen-faced and quivering, onto the cot. “By the blood of the saints, mistress,” he rasped. “Did you have to do that?”

  “If you don’t leave right now,” she blustered, “I’ll do it again.”

  “If I could walk, I’d leave,” he said breathlessly. “My leg is broken.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. “You’re lying.”

  He whipped back the blanket. “My left leg. And one or two ribs, I think.”

  Joanna fetched her makeshift oil lamp from the salle, careful not to turn her back on her uninvited guest. Holding her axe in one hand and the lamp in the other, she winced to see that his left leg below the knee was grossly swollen beneath the leathern legging.

  “I really did come here with Hugh,” he said wearily. “He went off to find a surgeon for me. That’s his satchel over there.” He nodded toward a leather kitbag in the corner.

  Holding the lamp over it, Joanna recognized it as her brother’s. He must have returned from the Rhineland. Thank God; every time he went off on another far-flung military campaign, she feared she’d never see him again. She dreaded the day one of his comrades showed up at her door to give her his personal effects—or perhaps there would be no one to attend to such niceties, and she would never find out what became of him.