King's Bishop (Owen Archer Book 4)

by Candace Robb

  ‘And you sent for Asa?’

  ‘Nay. She came to check on me.’

  ‘And she told Magda?’

  ‘She stayed. Asa has not been back to the village. She would not have told Magda anyway. She has no affection for your Riverwoman.’

  ‘The feeling appears to be mutual. So you just rode off that night and found Nym’s village?’

  ‘Eventually found it.’

  ‘And you just decided to stay here?’

  Ned shrugged. ‘That woman. Asa. She said she could help me forget.’

  ‘Is that what you want to do? Forget what happened to Mary? Forget you loved her? Forget your duties to Lancaster?’

  ‘Lancaster.’ Ned scratched the dog. ‘I’ve thought little of the Duke. But I do not mean to forget Mary.’ His voice broke; he buried his head in the dog’s fur and wept.

  Owen sat down in the damp hay, closed his eye. He would smell of tar and damp sod, and his behind would ache tomorrow from the damp, but he meant to stay here quietly and think until Ned was ready to go. He had to sort out his questions. What he believed and what did not ring true. But one thing was certain. Ned was leaving a great deal out of his story.

  Fourteen

  Bodies in a Beck

  The sod house drew in the damp. Owen woke with an aching shoulder and a taste of wet earth in his mouth. There was little light. He sat up and waited until his eye had adjusted to the darkness before moving about. When he could make out forms, he realised Ned was gone. He must have made a noise at this discovery, because Asa raised her head.

  ‘He is out with the sheep,’ she whispered, ‘and letting the dog have a run. He has not slipped away from thee.’

  ‘I would walk out to him. How do I find him?’

  ‘Walkst thou up into the sun. The ground here is too damp for sheep.’

  Owen heard the dog barking as he climbed out of a morning mist into the sun. Up yet another rocky outcrop and at last he came upon Ned, busy removing the woven mats that enfolded the flock during the night. The bleating sheep were moving about as if blind, bumping into each other and Ned. He patted them affectionately on their shaggy, long-tailed rumps and went on with his work, far more patient than Owen would have guessed. The dog was out beyond the slowly dispersing sheep, barking at something Owen could not see.

  ‘What’s the dog after?’ he asked.

  Ned looked round, seeming unsurprised by Owen’s presence, and shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’s gone silly with age. Or it could be Malcolm on his way. He should have been down here by now, and the dog knows it.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘What do you know of sheep?’

  ‘What did you know till recently?’

  ‘I watched sheep one summer when I was sent to help my cousin.’

  ‘My family had goats.’

  ‘Easier to manage than sheep. Smarter.’

  Owen looked at the shaggy, seemingly confused creatures. ‘Well, no danger of their outsmarting me.’

  The dog’s barking changed. A man approached, hands up in the air, palms out.

  ‘Malcolm,’ Ned said. ‘He can take over now.’

  Ned was silent as they walked back to the house.

  The sun was still low in the sky when the four reached the valley. A stand of birch glowed whitely in the misty dawn. It was a sheltered valley through which the beck rushed, swollen from the spring thaw and the recent storms. As if on command the four paused, no one eager to continue. It was Ned who pushed on.

  His friend’s silence worried Owen. Ned had said he’d meant to find Don Ambrose and learn what the man knew about Mary’s death, but he had not asked Owen whether the man had been found. Did Ned already know Don Ambrose was dead? How? And Gervase and Henry: Ned had not questioned why they might be up on the moors. Or why Owen was here. Was Asa’s remedy still at work? Or was Ned avoiding talk that would reveal too much?

  Lucie, Lucie, I have been such a fool. What had begun as a mundane journey to confer with the Cistercian abbots and report back to the King had become a nightmare. One that might destroy a friend.

  Owen’s fault? How might he have planned for the unexpected? How might he have guessed at Don Ambrose’s strange humour in the brief glimpse he’d had of the man? Owen thought back. He had met the friar only as Ned’s company had gathered to depart York. What had he noted about him? Slender. A long nose. Hunched shoulders which Owen had thought appropriate for a bookish cleric. He’d had the squinting eyes of one who spent his days with manuscripts, not men; and he had kept his gaze humbly averted. Had it not been humility? Had any of this predicted aught? Might a more cautious captain have read danger in the friar’s demeanour?

  The self-examination knotted Owen’s stomach. He shifted his gaze from the familiar back of his friend, focused on the ground, the bracken, and heather. Right now he must steel himself for unpleasantness of a different sort. He noted a stone cross on the far side of the beck. ‘Does that mark a road?’

  ‘Aye,’ Asa said. ‘The monks use it. They thrive all round us – Rievaulx, Rosedale – thou canst not fault their industry.’

  When they reached the beck, Ned pointed towards an uprooted tree caught upstream, where the course slowed and curved round a rock. ‘Up there.’

  From where he stood, Owen would have guessed the water was merely reflecting the brightening sky. But as he drew nearer he saw the bodies. Two, one slightly further downstream than the other, just beneath the water’s surface, the other partly exposed. They must have lain there when the uprooted tree floated down upon them. The current was slowly dragging it across the bodies, the branches pitting and gouging the flesh, tearing away the clothing. What had Ned been thinking to leave them there?

  ‘Could the bodies be seen from the track?’ Owen asked.

  Asa shook her head. ‘But a thirsty traveller might happen upon them.’

  ‘So whoever left them here meant them to be discovered.’

  ‘Aye. Were fools else.’

  The wind whistled past Owen’s ears, an eerie dirge. ‘Ned. Come help me lift the tree from them.’ He handed his cloak to Magda, crouched down on the bank.

  Ned joined Owen. Together they grabbed the tree, yanked, but branches were caught in hair and fabric. Owen sat back, shook his head. ‘We must wade in.’

  They pulled off their boots, then their leggings.

  As Asa stooped to collect their clothing, she said, ‘Thou’lt freeze, Ned. ‘Tis melt water.’ Owen heard tender concern in her voice.

  ‘How else are we to carry them out?’ Ned asked sharply. Apparently Asa’s affection was lost on him. He stepped into the water.

  ‘See thou dost not stay in over long, Captain Archer,’ Asa said.

  ‘Never fear. I do not mean to lose my toes.’

  Asa seemed satisfied, backed away with the clothing.

  Owen waded in. Asa’s warning had been unnecessary. He would not loiter in this icy stream. The current was brisk, too, so there was no warming of the water round them. A mixed blessing, for the stench of the bodies now teased his stomach. It might have been far worse in warmer water.

  The two men worked silently, moving round the bodies, loosening the branches. At last, they nodded to one another, heaved, and tossed the tree far from the rock. Then they bent to the bodies. Carried them from the stream one at a time, stumbling on their numb feet.

  When he was back on land, dried off, clothed, Owen knelt beside the bodies. Gervase had lost an eye, but otherwise his face was intact. The other face was so badly torn Owen could not make out the features. ‘How did you identify Henry?’

  Ned, still fussing with his boots, glanced towards the body, shrugged. ‘He was not so when I first saw him. His face was as clean as Gervase’s.’

  What havoc had been wreaked since! ‘Why did you leave them in the stream?’

  ‘Who was to help me?’ Ned rose, joined Owen, but did not meet his friend’s eye.

  Owen felt a stranger stood beside him. The Ned he had fought beside would have re
moved the bodies himself, taking what time he needed. As Owen would have done. ‘How could you just leave them out there? They might have been carried farther downstream.’

  Ned shrugged. Said nothing.

  Magda crouched down beside Owen, carefully drew the tattered fabric away from the torso of the one Ned had identified as Henry, sat back on her heels. ‘Dost thou see?’

  Owen nodded. ‘Knife wounds.’ Coupled with the bound hands and feet, the mark of the same murderer or murderers as Don Ambrose’s. Owen turned the body over. The back was too torn to discover anything more.

  Ned rose and walked away. Asa followed him.

  Owen looked after them, his anger barely contained.

  Magda moved on to Gervase, proceeded carefully to peel the cloth from the torso.

  Owen eased Henry’s torn body over once more. Dead or no, torn face or no, he could not leave the body lying face down. And then he noticed what he should have see right away: the mutilated right hand, a thumb and two fingers lost long ago, the skin smooth over the scars. It was indeed Henry. Owen glanced up at Magda, who watched him with a sad expression. ‘Why would Ned leave them here?’ he asked.

  Magda shook her head. ‘Dagger-thrower is not himself. It does not take a Magda to see that.’ She inclined her head towards the other body. ‘Stabbed in the chest. But lookst thou.’

  Owen left Henry, knelt down beside Gervase.

  Magda pointed to a wound on the right forearm.

  Owen turned the body. Stabbed twice in the back, too. ‘He fought the attack.’

  Magda sighed, rose and kneaded her lower back with her fists. ‘Magda ages faster with each winter.’ She stomped her feet and rubbed her hands together, then drew the bottle of brandywine from the purse at her waist and drank. ‘So. Where shall the lads lie? Dost thou intend to carry them back to their mates or bury them here?’ She handed Owen the bottle.

  ‘We shall bury them here, then I must escort Ned back to the company and head to York.’ Owen took a mouthful of brandywine, swallowed slowly, letting the heat spiral downwards.

  Magda grinned. ‘Thou art chilled, too, eh?’

  Owen laughed as he handed her the bottle. ‘Of course I’m cold. I was in the beck.’

  ‘Thou wilt go back at once?’

  ‘Aye. Where is Ned’s horse?’

  ‘In the village.’

  ‘And his clothes?’

  Magda nodded, her keen eyes watching his reaction.

  Why? What did it mean? ‘Asa meant to hide him up here?’

  Magda shrugged.

  That must be it. ‘Thus her anger. She meant for us to find his horse and clothes, but no Ned. Would she have shown us a grave, Magda? Told us a tale of death so that we might search no farther for Ned?’

  Magda turned in the direction Asa and Ned had taken, shaded her eyes. ‘Asa’s heart is unknown to Magda.’

  ‘You discovered Ned when you arrived and sent for us. That is the enmity between you and Asa.’

  Still poised as if searching the horizon, Magda said, ‘Find Ned. Bury these men before Nym’s old dog goes mad and chews through his rope.’

  ‘Why does Asa treat you as she does?’

  ‘Why art thou concerned with Magda and Asa?’

  ‘Asa has influenced Ned. If I understood her, I might better understand what has happened to him.’

  ‘Asa has done naught to concern thee. She meant to calm thy friend. It is her way of healing. Magda does not call it such, but that matters not to thee. Thy friend has chosen his own way. He is thy concern.’

  Owen was not surprised that Magda turned the question back on him. But his curiosity was aroused. ‘What are you doing up here on the moors, Magda? You must have travelled up here when it yet snowed.’

  Magda gave him an enigmatic, sideways glance. ‘Thou hast enough to trouble thee without Magda’s comings and goings, Bird-eye.’

  That is all the answer you will give me?’

  ‘Thou hast bodies to bury.’

  Owen grumbled, but went in search of Ned. He would try again anon.

  The late afternoon sun coaxed Lucie from the shop and out into the herb garden. The fresh air felt soothing on her face. She stood on the path and surveyed her domain. The lavender and other woody plants needed trimming before the spring growth began. She smiled to herself. Jasper would call for her when a customer came, and Tildy kept Gwenllian’s cradle close at hand as she worked, so why should Lucie not stay out here a while, trimming the lavender and perhaps the santolina, too, while she formulated her plans for Owen’s and Jasper’s spring chores?

  Owen. Would he be here for the spring chores? He might have been out here today, planting the hardy seedlings that had been started in the garden shed in late winter. He would have been here had he not put Ned into the path of trouble. Perverse man. Why had he not listened to her? Lucie was not pleased to be proved right in this. She was troubled. More than that. Frightened for Ned.

  Owen had sent a letter with Jehannes, delivered two days ago. Lucie knew of Mary’s drowning, Don Ambrose’s apparent fear of Ned, the disappearance of both Ned and the friar, and Abbot Richard’s accusations. She prayed Owen would find Ned before he was found by someone less sympathetic.

  She glanced up at noises coming from the house next door. John Corbett’s house, now hers. The Corbett children had at last come to clear out John’s possessions, much to Lucie’s relief. She was not yet comfortable about her father’s generous gift – Sir Robert had purchased the house for her growing family. But it was in deed her property and now she might find a way to make it her own. She looked up at the first storey of the house, creamy timber and plaster that overhung the street and almost touched her garden wall. A glazed window faced the garden. That would be their bedchamber, Owen and Lucie’s.

  ‘Mistress Lucie,’ Jasper called, standing in the kitchen doorway, ‘Master Fortescue is here for his eye drops. Shall I pour them?’

  Lucie straightened, shaded her eyes. The clerk of the Mercers’ Guild was a regular customer, the formula for his drops unchanging. Jasper had prepared it twice under her watchful eye. ‘I think you are ready, do you?’ Jasper stretched tall with pride and nodded. ‘Good.’ When he was out of sight, Lucie crossed herself and said a little prayer. She suffered the anxiety of a chick’s first flight, not distrust in Jasper’s abilities.

  Owen said little to Ned until they were back at the sod hut, warmed with food and ale. Then he suggested they might let the dog run a while. Ned followed Owen towards the other building.

  As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Owen turned and punched Ned in the jaw, sending him sprawling. ‘What game are you playing, you addle-pate?’

  Ned rubbed his jaw, checked his teeth, picked himself up, brushed himself off, resumed walking towards the barking dog.

  Owen went after him, grabbed him by the elbow. Ned tried to shake him loose, but Owen held on.

  Ned turned, shoulders slumped. ‘What now?’

  ‘How long did you think to leave them in the beck? Until there was nought to bury?’

  Ned rubbed his forehead with the heel of his left hand. ‘I am confused.’

  ‘You’re a poor actor, you are. What are you hiding from, Ned?’

  ‘I need to be alone. Mourn Mary.’

  ‘The dead would not have interfered with your mourning.’

  Ned shrugged.

  Owen pushed Ned’s shoulder. Ned clenched his fists. ‘Leave me!’

  ‘I am your friend. Or I was. And your captain. But you act like a stranger. What has Asa done to you?’

  ‘She is not to blame. She has been kind to me.’

  ‘No doubt, loving you as she does.’

  At last, a flicker of uncertainty in Ned’s eyes. ‘You know nothing of Asa.’ The voice, too, was less assured.

  ‘Lancaster must be a fool to use you as a spy. You walk about with your eyes closed. The woman is holding out her heart to you. Have you tripped over it?’

  ‘She helped me. I had to hide.
’

  At last a crumb of truth. ‘You said you lost your way. You did not expect me to believe that, did you? You killed Don Ambrose and ran, didn’t you?’

  Ned’s eyes blazed. ‘You know I would not commit such a cowardly act!’

  Trapped. ‘You already know he’s dead.’

  ‘I—’

  Owen grabbed Ned’s shoulder. ‘You have played the fool with me long enough, Ned. Now I want the truth …’

  ‘You will not believe me.’

  ‘How can I know until you tell me what happened? Start telling the truth or I’ll beat you till my knuckles are a bloody pulp.’

  Ned closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Sweat glistened on his upper lip. ‘I returned to the grange house the night after I’d fled. Found him shoved under some brush. Tied hand and foot. His chest was wet with blood.’

  ‘Don Ambrose?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘It was yet dark?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Yet you knew it was he?’

  Ned glared up at Owen. ‘For pity’s sake. Put your doubt to work on something of use. You’ve ridden at night. You know how the eye adjusts. And I’d just fought with the man. I knew his form. His scent.’

  ‘And you were certain he was dead?’

  ‘I felt no heartbeat.’

  ‘So you examined him.’

  ‘Aye. Got his blood on me doing it. And then I thought what a fool I’d been. Abbot Richard would accuse me as soon as he saw the blood. So I hid him.’

  ‘You hid him?’

  ‘I thought his attackers would return to do likewise. I would tell the Abbot to put a secret watch on the place. Just Brother Augustine or his servant.’

  ‘You suspected someone in your own company?’

  ‘It was the place to start, eh? But I found the grange house and the barn empty. I’d missed the company. So at dawn I buried him.’

  ‘You buried Don Ambrose? Yet you did not bury Henry and Gervase?’

  ‘I did not bury the friar out of a sense of Christian duty. I thought to leave him as his comrade had left Mary … floating …’ A pause, a deep breath. ‘But I reckoned the Abbot would leave a search party behind. If they did not know of Ambrose’s death, they would be searching for two people. They would not put all their effort into pursuing me. And if they did know of his death …’ He grunted.