by Candace Robb
Alisoun closed her eyes, then opened them just enough to catch any movement through her lashes.
While she waited she prayed.
At last the watcher moved. Alisoun opened her eyes. He had his back to her. She slipped on to the floor and began to crawl after him. It was difficult watching him and picking her way carefully among the pallets. She lost sight of him. He must have made it to the doorway to the chapel stairs. She rose to a crouch and hurried towards the doorway, heard footsteps above her, started up the uneven stone steps, tripped on her hem.
Owen was still lingering over his early morning bread and cheese when Kate opened the door to a messenger from St Leonard’s. Owen heard the lad asking for him. Fearing it was bad news, he hurried over.
‘God go with you, Captain. Dame Beatrice prays you to come to her as soon as you are able. Alisoun Ffulford has been injured.’
‘What has that to do with me?’
‘Dame Beatrice begs you to hurry.’
Owen arrived to chaos. A child had fainted in the midst of play and though they had hurried him off to the infirmary it had frightened the rest of the children who cried and clung to the skirts of the sisters. Dame Beatrice had a cluster of children about her.
‘Benedicte, Captain,’ she gasped. ‘I pray you, go to the room by the chapel. The child awaits you there.’ She bent down to the children clutching at her skirts.
Don Cuthbert hurried from the room to greet Owen.
‘What are you doing here?’ Owen asked.
‘The sisters are busy with the children and the sick. But after what happened last night Dame Beatrice rightly thought the child should be guarded.’
Alisoun sat in the middle of the room, head down, hugging herself. She showed no sign of injury.
‘What happened? What did Alisoun do?’
Cuthbert glanced back at the child. ‘That is for her to tell you, Captain. I know only that she was found at the bottom of the chapel steps just before dawn with a swelling behind her ear that was first feared to be a boil.’ He crossed himself. ‘But it is merely a bruise, thanks be to God. The child says she tried to follow someone who had awakened her and she tripped in her haste on the stairs.’
‘Someone awakened her?’
‘She says they stood over her as she slept, and when she woke they ran – a fantastic story.’
‘A child telling tales. Why was I sent for?’
‘The child asked for you.’
Owen wondered for what sin he was being punished. ‘I suppose you must leave us alone.’
Cuthbert began to leave the room.
‘Stay just without, if you will,’ Owen requested. ‘I want no one to overhear.’
‘Gladly.’
Owen walked over to the child, who had not looked up from her examination of the floor since he’d arrived. ‘Alisoun?’
Still looking down at the floor, the child said sullenly, ‘Dame Beatrice says I should trust you.’
‘I see.’ Pulling a bench over so that he might sit opposite her, Owen sank down, crossed his arms. Still she stared at the floor. ‘Are you likely to listen to her?’
A deep breath. ‘I wounded the man who stole my horse.’
‘Ah. What else might you tell me?’
As if a dam had been opened, the child told Owen of the night she had run from her uncle’s house and found the man in the barn. ‘I shot him in the arm and the leg, I think.’
‘With your bow?’
Alisoun nodded. ‘Then I ran.’
Owen did not speak at once, thinking what might have happened to the child had she been a poor aim. But what had this to do with her accident?
His silence drew her eyes up to his. ‘Yesterday you were full of questions.’
It was his first view of a bruised eye. ‘What happened last night?’
‘I tripped on the steps.’
‘But your eye.’
‘I fell forward, didn’t I?’
‘Someone watched you?’
‘He wants revenge.’
‘Are you saying the man you injured was here last night?’
‘And the night before. I hate him.’
Hatred took time to develop. ‘You have seen him before.’
‘Did the Riverwoman tell him I was here?’
‘I am certain that she did not.’
The child sighed, looked down at her hands which were twisting a handful of the fabric of her skirt. ‘He took my bag.’
The one Dame Beatrice said she would not let out of her sight? ‘When?’
‘The night before last. I had it under my feet. He got it while I was sleeping. Then he stood there watching me. He came back last night.’
‘Did you wake the others?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘The treasure was my secret.’
He would come back to that. ‘You did not cry out?’
‘I thought it was my mother at first. And last night I tried to follow him.’
‘Tried to?’
She bent her head, lifted her hair to show him a knob behind her ear, on the same side as her bruised eye. ‘I told you I fell.’
‘Are you certain it was him?’ Where was he hiding? Owen would have liked to have begun a search, but he deemed it wise to try first to ascertain whether the child was telling the truth. She might have walked in a dream. One of her comments had given him an idea … ‘Your treasure. What was it?’
‘A silver missal cover.’
‘How did you come to possess such a thing?’
The sullen child dropped her head. ‘It was one of the treasures my mother hid in a chest in the barn.’
Owen remembered their first meeting – she had been guarding the barn, not hiding from them. ‘Hid? From whom did your mother hide these treasures?’
‘From folk who would steal them.’
‘Were they gifts from your father?’
Alisoun shook her head.
‘Tell me about these treasures. What were they?’
Alisoun described many of the items missing from the hospital: silver candlesticks, tapestries, the golden chalice, the pearl and silver cross, the missal cover, the saddle.
‘Sweet Jesu!’
‘I buried everything but the tapestries and the saddle before I went to my uncle.’
‘And the embroidered altar cloth?’
‘That was in the pack. I used it for a pillow.’
‘The pack also contained the tapestries and saddle?’
Alisoun shook her head. ‘Just the missal cover.’
‘Where are the tapestries, the saddle?’
‘The man who stole my pack stole them, too.’
‘You had them with you at St Leonard’s? Dame Beatrice mentioned nothing but the pack.’
‘He stole them at the farm.’
‘When you injured him?’
The child squirmed. ‘Yes.’
‘Who is he?’
Alisoun dug at the floor with the toe of her soft shoe. ‘I do not know his name.’
‘Whence came these treasures?’
‘I do not know.’
‘How did your mother come to have them?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Then how do you know they were not from your father?’
‘I think she hid them from him.’
‘But she let you see them?’
Alisoun shook her head.
‘I see.’ Owen wondered whether she knew all the treasures had been stolen from the hospital. He decided not to mention it. ‘Why would she hide things from your father?’
‘He called mother a liar when she spoke of her father.’
‘No doubt because she had been abandoned at the hospital.’
‘It was her mother abandoned her.’
It was an odd logic that only the mother abandoned her. ‘How did she know of her father?’
‘She never said.’
‘And you never asked?’ Owen found that unlikely. ‘What did she say of him?�
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‘He was a rich man. She had been born to a better life than the farm.’
‘Did your mother ever mention her father’s name? His family name?’
Alisoun shook her head.
Perhaps the tale had been meant to enchant the child. But if so, whence came the items? ‘Why did you have the missal cover in the pack?’
‘I thought they might want something for my keep at St Leonard’s.’
‘Has anyone spoken to you of items missing from the hospital?’
‘You mean he stole other things? Not just my pack?’
‘How much of what you have told me is true?’
‘All of it.’
Owen shook his head. ‘What am I to think of a farmer’s wife possessing such a hoard, child?’
‘They are my grandsire’s treasures and that man wants them.’
‘How did he know of them?’
Alisoun wiped her nose, lifted one shoulder, let it drop.
‘You tell an odd tale, child.’
‘You will believe it when he’s killed me.’ She glowered at him.
‘No doubt. You say you buried the treasures. Will you tell me where?’
‘You would dig them up.’
‘Does that not seem a wise thing to do?’
‘They are mine.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘My mother was not a thief.’
‘Doubtless she was a good woman, Alisoun.’
‘I hate all of you.’
Owen rose. The child would tell him no more today. Best to let her think about it. ‘We shall search the hospital for the man. Meanwhile, a sister must be near you at all times.’
‘Let Anneys stay with me. She is nice to me.’
Ravenser’s clerk had taken Cuthbert’s place outside the room.
‘The cellarer was too busy to wait?’
‘I offered to relieve him, Captain. I have learned something that might help you.’ Douglas looked pleased with himself as he handed Owen a parchment.
It was a deed of gifts to St Leonard’s. Owen glanced at the bottom. Signed by Laurence de Warrene and Julian Taverner.
‘Read the list, Captain.’
Amongst other items were the majority of the goods lately missing from the hospital. ‘This must be significant. How did you discover this?’
‘A speck of memory. Something Sir Richard once said in jest when Master Warrene won a game. “And why would you not play chess well on your own board, with your own pieces?” They played, you see, on Master Warrene’s board, which he had given to the hospital.’ Douglas looked smug. ‘It seemed of little import, but I thought it worth searching to see if other gifts had also been bequeathed by Master Warrene. And I came across this list.’
But what did it mean? ‘Why did Sir Richard not tell me of these gifts?’
‘I doubt he knew.’
‘He knew of the chess board.’
‘He played chess with Master Warrene is why. But this deed was written before Sir Richard was master.’
Twenty-one
More Than Friendship
Up on a ladder, nailing a loose shutter in place, Tom Merchet paused to watch a hunched, obviously weary man pushing an overloaded cart through St Helen’s Square. He wore a light tunic over his leggings, but even from Tom’s perch, circles of sweat were visible around the man’s neck and under his arms. Piled haphazardly in the cart were bedding, several chairs, pots – one of which was jarred loose as a wheel rode up on to a grave at the edge of St Helen’s cemetery. Someone fleeing a plague house? As the man lowered the cart handle to go after the rolling pot, a chair began to slip. Tom hurried down the ladder to assist. He caught the pot with his foot before it gained speed on Coney Street. As he handed it to the panting man, Tom recognised him. Julian Taverner’s former servant. ‘Nate! You would leave York without a farewell?’
With a half-hearted curse, Nate yanked the toppling chair from the cart, set it down on the square, sat down on it, took out a dirty cloth and wiped his sweaty, dusty brow. His hands were knobbly with swollen joints. ‘I am too old for this, Tom Merchet. I thought to die in my master’s service. Happy to do so. And now he is gone. What am I to do?’
A good question. ‘Did Julian leave you any money?’
Old Nate blew his nose, sat a moment catching his breath. ‘Oh, aye, the master gave me a fair sum. ’Course he did. He was a fair man, Master Taverner was. And he left me all his furnishings. But where am I to put them? I have nowhere to go. What am I to do now? Who would hire a man as bent as old Nate?’
Tom considered. They had no need for an extra pair of hands, nor had they accepted lodgers since the pestilence began. The tavern was open only to those the Merchets knew, and only those with no pestilence in their households. Which meant they had precious little business, certainly not enough to warrant hiring Nate.
And what of his having lived at St Leonard’s? Might he carry pestilence? No more likely than Bess herself, Tom thought. She had been with her uncle at the last and was still standing and able. It might even be true he had not died of pestilence.
‘You might rest a while with us, Nate. Long enough to think what you will do.’
The man’s large nose grew red and his sad eyes glistened. ‘You are sent by the merciful Lord, Tom Merchet. I’ll not forget this kindness.’
As Tom helped Nate pull the cart into the tavern yard he wondered what Bess would say about his kindness.
Hands on hips and foot tapping, Bess was not pleased. ‘’Tis not the pestilence worries me, Tom Merchet. Nate is old, that is what worries me. Not a man to find work easily. What then? Do we give him a room for life? Have him underfoot until he wastes away?’
‘Sweet Heaven, wife, I want but a few years to match his age. Am I wasting away?’
Bess peered out of the window of her parlour to where Simon was helping Nate unload the cart. ‘Look at his joints. See how he hobbles. You are healthy. Nate is not. ’Tis all the difference.’
‘You owe it to your uncle.’
‘I owe my uncle nothing. A soft heart is what you have, Tom Merchet.’ Bess sat back down at the table where she had been working on her books, picked up her quill.
Tom leaned on the table. ‘Which of us is to tell him then, wife?’
Bess snapped her head up, her eyes round as if he had just said a most ridiculous thing. ‘Tell him what? He is here now. Naught to do but make the best of it. You always make such a muddle of things.’
Leaning down, Tom gently kissed his wife’s hot forehead. ‘Rest easy. Nate seems a man wants something to do. He’ll not burden us.’
Bess patted her husband’s hand. ‘He reminds me of Uncle Julian is all. I’ve neglected him. He will not rest in his grave until his murderer has been brought to justice. I must get to work.’
‘I thought you had journeyed to Easingwold. That was not work?’
‘Precious little good it did.’
‘Have you told Owen about your journey?’
‘Aye. A chiding I received for it, and not a word of thanks.’
‘Owen’s not one to behave so. What did he say?’
‘That he could not undo the harm I did.’
Tom’s eyes grew round. ‘He said that?’
Bess sniffed and waited for sympathy.
‘Well, that should teach you to stay out of his business.’
The cur. ‘I came to that decision on my own, husband.’
Bess rose from her work as Owen entered the tavern in the late afternoon. ‘What brings you here so early?’
Owen glanced round the room. ‘I never thought to see it empty at this time of day.’
‘You have not come to see how we fare, friend,’ Tom said. ‘You have some news?’
‘I have come with more questions about Julian Taverner and Laurence de Warrene.’
‘Oh?’ Bess did not like Owen’s tone.
‘None of the servants can hear us?’
Bess shook her head. ‘They are all about their business.’
She leaned closer. ‘Tell me, for pity’s sake. What have you learned?’
‘You know of the thefts at the hospital?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Did you know that many of the missing items were originally given to the hospital by Julian and Laurence? A gold chalice inlaid with precious stones, a silver filigree missal cover with gems, a saddle inlaid with gold leaf …’
‘Uncle Julian?’ Bess sat down. ‘He had such things to give away?’ He had never given her any evidence of such wealth. ‘Was it these things bought his corrody?’
‘No. The gifts were an additional payment. “For our sins”, the deed read.’
Bess pressed her eyelids, forced down her disappointment. He might have left her such treasures and instead he had given them to St Leonard’s. Had he ever thought what Bess and Tom might have done with such wealth? ‘Ungrateful old man.’ A deep breath. ‘Tom, pour four ales. Owen might profit from a word with Nate.’
Owen glanced from one to the other. ‘Your uncle’s servant?’
‘He is lodging here until he finds work.’ Bess found Owen’s obvious pleasure a nice reward for her trouble with old Nate. ‘Tom will fetch him for you.’
‘I feel a servant myself,’ Tom muttered as he put the four tankards on the table. ‘Shall I assist Simon with Nate’s things, wife?’
Bess shook her head at him. ‘And who else will do it?’
It was a sweaty, breathless Nate who sank down at the bench and greedily gulped at his ale.
‘You will have a head feels it has been pressed for wine if you drink so,’ Bess warned.
Nate set his tankard down, eyed the pitcher with interest. ‘I’m that thirsty, Mistress Merchet. I loaded the cart myself. Pulled it all the way from St Leonard’s. You cannot imagine how hot that sun is.’
‘Precious little sun reaches Blake Street,’ Bess muttered. Pray God he did not drink them into debt while he was here. ‘This is Captain Owen Archer. He is helping the Master of St Leonard’s with a problem.’
The old man turned his attention to Owen. ‘Thieving and such, eh?’ A knowing wink. ‘My master and his friend dying so suddenly. And poor Walter de Hotter.’ Nate nodded. ‘Things are not as they should be at spital, ’tis plain. I know about you, Captain. There are many at spital glad to hear you will put an end to the troubles.’
