by Bell, Hilari
Kathy dropped the Liege a hasty curtsey and went after Rupert, and Fisk and I bowed and followed. The Heir was walking swiftly toward his lover’s cottage, likely by instinct, because he clearly wasn’t thinking.
“He took her,” Rupert told Kathy when we caught up to him. “But I’ll find her. I’ll find her if it’s the last thing I do. And marry her, Gifted or not!”
“For the most part, that sounds fine,” said Kathy soothingly. “Except I’m not so sure your father was lying.”
Neither Kathy nor I have our father’s Gift for reading people — and even Father can be fooled, for aside from magic sensing, Gifts are often erratic. But the Liege’s exasperation, anger and pity had rung true to me.
“Fisk, don’t you think he was telling the truth?” my sister asked.
Fisk shrugged. “It sounded like it. But a man in his position has to be a very good liar.”
And watching the court, I’d started to wonder...
“Rupert, could someone want to drive a wedge between you and your father? And know that Mistress Margaret’s disappearance might do just that?”
’Twas evidently not impossible, for Rupert’s steps slowed as his mind engaged.
“I can’t think why anyone would. I’m the declared Heir, and my little brother’s only two. After Liam there’s a number of cousins Father could choose from, most of whom don’t even want the job. And Caro’s young enough that she and my father could have more children. So even if he disowned me — and if he was going to do that, he’d probably have done it by now — it’s not like there aren’t other heirs. But if Father didn’t take her, and I still think you’re wrong about that, then who did?”
He clung to this theory, because if his father held her then Mistress Merkle and the child would be safe. Even the most obdurate father — like mine — would baulk at committing murder to keep his son from a bad marriage. If someone else had taken her, for some unknown reason, his lover and his child might already be dead. My heart went out to him ... but my heart would do him no good, and Fisk’s wits might.
“You’re the expert on crime,” I said to Fisk. “What now?”
There were benefits to exchanging a squire for a partner — I just hoped he had an answer.
“I’ve never kidnapped anyone,” Fisk told Kathy hastily. “But if you want to pursue this, now comes the tedious part.”
“Of course we’re going to pursue it.” Rupert shot Kathy a grateful look as she spoke. “What do we do?”
“We know when Mistress Meg left the palace,” said Fisk. “And we know where she was going. We follow the route she probably took, asking every street vendor, shopkeeper and beggar we can find if they saw her. When we locate a street where people saw her at one end and didn’t see her at the other ... well, that’s where whatever happened took place. Then we go on asking people till we find someone who noticed something suspicious, and proceed from there. Because Rupert was right when he said that she can’t have vanished off a busy street in mid-morning without someone seeing something. We just have to find them.”
“That could take months!” Rupert protested.
“Not really,” said Fisk. “We only have to cover a few miles. If we leave at the same time of day she did, between us we can talk to the people most likely to have seen her in ... oh, two or three days at most.”
“That does us no good,” Kathy said. “’Tis past ten, and she left at nine in the morning.”
“Which means we should get some sleep,” said Fisk. “This isn’t going to be fast, unless we’re incredibly lucky.”
“You can stay in the cottage,” Rupert said. “I think Meg stocked the cupboards, and Kathy can send for anything you might need. But I ... ah... If you’ll excuse me?”
He hurried off toward the gate, and Fisk sighed. “It really would be smarter to wait till morning.”
“He can’t,” Kathy said. “I couldn’t, if you were missing.”
Fisk put his arm around her. “I would wait,” he said soberly. “Even if it was you. There’s no point being stupid about this, and the people who were out in the morning won’t be there at night. He won’t find anything.”
“’Tis no use trying to stop him,” I said. “He does what he must. We’ll do what’s wise.”
So we went to Mistress Margaret’s cottage, and Kathy insisted that Fisk and I take the big bed while she slept on Griswold’s cot in the dressing room.
She ordered breakfast from the palace kitchen early next morning, and when the servants brought it we learned that for once Fisk was wrong. Several hours after midnight, the Heir had rushed into the stables. He didn’t wake the grooms, but he made so much noise saddling his own horse that they roused and went to help him anyway.
He’d then gone galloping out the palace gate, and he hadn’t been seen since.
“So, Rupert found a clue.” I hadn’t said it was impossible. Just unlikely.
“But now the people he talked to will be gone. Should we be asking about Meg, now that it’s morning? Or Rupert?”
Kathy was only picking at the delectable fruit salad. There was also a basket of muffins, and a platter of two kinds of sausage, sliced ham, and several cheeses. Kathy had lived here for almost a year. I couldn’t imagine how she’d kept that willowy slenderness, because I’d seen her eat and she never picked at her food.
Which meant that now she was really worried.
“We’ll ask about both of them,” I said. “Which will double our chance of finding someone. But after we’ve finished breakfast. Rupert may have succeeded on his first try, but we might not be that lucky.”
Kathy’s fork dropped to her plate with a musical chime — the china was very fine too. Clearly, my husbandly advice didn’t carry much weight.
“We know how Rupert was dressed. Shouldn’t we ask Griswold what Meg was wearing?”
She’d clearly been giving the matter some thought.
“We should,” I said. “But Rupert will have been a lot more visible. All we need to do is find out where he stopped asking, and that should narrow the search considerably.”
It wasn’t that easy, of course, but we tackled it sensibly. Mistress Margaret had been wearing a pale green walking skirt with a dark brown bodice on the morning she vanished, and she’d taken a dark green cloak — I wished she’d been more inclined to finery, but Rupert’s court coat would more than make up for that.
And it seemed we were going to have some competition in our search — inquiring after Rupert, near the palace gate, we learned that one Captain Varner, and a half a troop of palace guardsmen, had been asking those same questions, not an hour ago. Finding no one who’d seen where Rupert went once he left the palace, the Captain had sent his men into the city to track down Rupert’s friends, but we knew where he’d gone last night.
Too bad the captain hadn’t thought to ask us.
At my suggestion, we walked down the quickest route to the Pig in a Basket. About six blocks from the palace we started flashing coin and asking questions, till we found someone who’d seen Rupert.
“I was fastening up the shutters,” a tapster told us. “He was done up all fancy in that coat, like he’d just come from the palace. Well, likely he had. He asked if I’d seen that wench of his, morning before last. This is an early morning for me — usually I’m just getting out of bed, the time she went by. But he went right on down the street, asking everyone who was out. Wasn’t many, at that hour,” he added. “So he was moving quicker than you’d think.”
Instead of following Rupert’s example, talking to everyone as he moved on down the street, we then skipped several blocks and started our inquiries with an apothecary, whose sign told customers to go round to the back and knock if there was an emergency after hours. They hadn’t had any late customers last night, but the baker next door said that the man who brought wood for his ovens told him that the Heir himself was out in the street, asking everyone he saw about his girl, who’d gone missing. Fallen in love with a city merchant’s
daughter, the Heir had, which was maybe good for the city but hard on the girl. Giftless, poor lass...
No one had seen Mistress Margaret, but I made a mental note about how much the common folk knew about Rupert’s love life.
We skipped several more blocks and pestered strangers till we found an elderly woman who’d woken up remembering she hadn’t watered her window boxes. She hadn’t been able to go back to sleep so she got up to do it ... and had spoken to the Heir himself!
We went on to the next location, now about two-thirds of the way to the Pig, and found no one who’d seen Rupert.
“It means little,” Michael pointed out. It wasn’t yet noon but the day was already getting hot, and we stood in the shadow of a cutler’s shop. A grinding wheel whined faintly in the work yard behind the store. “There might have been no one about when he passed by here. Or those he spoke to are now elsewhere.”
“And no one saw Meg either,” Kathy fretted. “Suppose she took a different route. This is the shortest way to the Pig, but she might not have gone the shortest way. If Rupert found a place she turned aside, he might have been asking for her just a block away, and we’d never know.”
“I told you this would be tedious,” I reminded them.
We went back two blocks, and after only ten minutes found someone Rupert had talked to. We came forward a block, and after almost half an hour were about to conclude that we needed to go back when a fishmonger’s wife told us she’d heard a noise in the street last night, and looked out to see a man in a fancy court coat talking to the rat catcher.
Rat catchers are nocturnal creatures, like their prey. We left a message that we’d pay, if he could tell us where the man in the fancy coat had gone, went to the end of the next block ... and found no one who’d seen either Margaret or Rupert, even though we asked everyone we could find.
“Mayhap ’tis somewhere in this block that Rupert found his clue.” Kathy was grubby and tired — and you have to be in love when strands of hair stuck to a sweaty brow makes you want to kiss a girl.
“Not for certain,” I warned her. “But it’s possible. We can check out this street, and if we don’t find out what happened to Rupert, we’ll go back to the cottage, get some luncheon, and come back late tonight, when the people he saw are more likely to be around.”
I was tired enough to half hope this would be the case ... so of course, that was when we finally got lucky.
It was Kathy who found the old beggar woman, sitting on the steps of a ramshackle house. I was talking to a saddler’s apprentice, and paid little attention when Kathy approached the woman and dropped a few fracts into the bowl that touched the tattered skirt. But while my conversation with the boy ended quickly — he’d been sleeping the sleep of a teenager when Rupert came by — Kathy’s conversation grew more intense. I’d already dismissed the apprentice and started toward her when she looked around and gestured urgently for Michael and me to join her.
Unlike Michael, I didn’t start to run when the old woman pulled a knife from her skirt and brandished it, for I’d already seen the stumps peeping under that ragged hem.
Many beggars fake an injury to bring in a bit more, but there’s no faking the absence of your feet.
Kathy didn’t even step back. “They’re my friends, Mistress. You don’t need that.”
“Being your friends won’t stop ’em from stealing my coin.”
She reached out with her truncated calves to pull the bowl toward her and her free hand twitched fabric over it. Michael’s headlong pace slowed.
“We’ve no need of your coin, good woman.” He stopped several yards short of her to prove it, dropping to his haunches so she didn’t have to look up at him. “Indeed, if you possess the information we seek, I’ll add to your take.”
At least he hadn’t promised some extravagant amount. For once my purse wasn’t lean — unlike Michael, I’d kept my half of the reward we got for bringing down Atherton Roseman. But I was saving that money, and I wasn’t about to pay more than we had to. Just these few hours of paying for people’s time had put a dent in it.
“She saw it.” Kathy’s eyes were brilliant with excitement, and I strolled up and put an arm around her. “She’s the one Rupert found. Tell them what you told him, Mistress. What you told the fancy-dressed man you met last night.”
The old woman eyed us appraisingly. I didn’t drop down to the dirty pavement, as Michael had, but I smiled encouragingly.
She looked at the three of us, and either decided that we were friendly or that if we wanted to rob her she couldn’t stop us, because the knife went back to its hiding place.
“So, he’s worth money, that fancy man. Maybe more’n you’d pay, if I find the right buyer.”
Old and crippled, but not a fool. A whole copper roundel was probably a small fortune to her ... so it didn’t surprise me to see Michael scramble forward, pulling out a silver ha’. He started to drop it into the half concealed bowl, and I said quickly, “You get this only when you’ve told us everything. Do you really think someone else would pay more? Assuming you could find them, that is.”
Michael gave me an irritated look, but the hand that had started toward her bowl pulled back.
“Seems to me they’ll come looking,” the beggar said. “Just like you did, asking everyone on the street. So I won’t have to go finding ’em, will I? There wasn’t no one but me around when that young man came up, all worried like. None but old Sal, who can tell you about him.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll bet there were plenty of people in the street to see what happened to the young woman he was asking about. And once we know that, we don’t need you.”
It had been a fairly obvious guess, but Kathy cast me an admiring glance that pleased me almost as much as Mistress Sal’s defeated sigh.
“There were some around then. I’m not sure any of the others saw, but they might have. They might have.”
“Tell us everything,” said Michael. “Answer all our questions fair and true, and I’ll make it a silver roundel.”
“Oh for...” I rolled my eyes in exasperation, and Kathy gave a lovely little laugh.
“All right,” Sal said. “I was out that morning, as well as last night, and I noticed your young miss right off, for she often gives me a fract. I knew she was pregnant, too. She wasn’t showing, not yet, but there’s a look... And I’m always here on my doorstep.”
She patted the step she sat on, and for the first time I looked at the house behind it. It had once been a small, but tidy house, tucked between two taller buildings. Now only a memory of paint clung to it, and the stoop sagged away from the front wall. I’d have bet another silver roundel that the roof leaked. Still...
“You own this place? That’s why the beggars’ guild hasn’t run you off.”
All guilds enforce standards on their own trade, but the beggars’ guild does it more firmly than most. Towns have been known to evict all beggars, if a few become aggressive or obnoxious. They’d never tolerate the way Sal had drawn that knife.
“That’s right. This is my own front step, on my own property. So I can do as I like, and they can’t say me nay. I’m out here a lot, though most ignore me. Just like those men ignored me. I saw the coach coming down the street. Started moving real slow, when it came up on her, but I didn’t pay it much heed. I was watching her, hoping she’d have some fracts to spare like she usually does.”
She was drawing out the tale, not because she wanted more money, but because the attention pleased her. She clearly had no family — and if her friends had any money, she’d not be in this state. Assuming she had friends.
“Then the coach pulled up beside her,” Sal went on. “The door opened and a man jumped out and threw his arm around her. I didn’t see it, but he might have had a knife to her ribs, ‘cause she didn’t move or do anything. He picked her up and handed her to another man, inside the carriage, and they shut the door and drove off, quick like.”
“And you didn’t report that
?” Kathy asked indignantly. “You saw Meg kidnapped, right in front of you, and you didn’t scream, or send for the guard, or call out to passersby—”
“I didn’t see a knife.” Sal sounded a bit defensive. “She didn’t scream nor struggle. How’s I to know it’s not some friend, lifting her up to the coach ‘cause she was carrying?” She’d lowered her gaze to the pavement, and her face held the bitter brooding of remorse. “To tell the truth, I didn’t think she had been snatched till I saw that man.”
“What man?” Michael asked.
“Slight fellow,” Sal said promptly. “Wearing clothes supposed to look like a groom or a journeyman, but they was too clean, too... Like a nobleman, trying to dress like he thinks someone on this street should look. I might not have noticed him, either, except that he was holding a kerchief up to his nose, like the gentry do when they smell something bad. Had pulled his hat down, and he was looking around all sharp, to see if anyone had noticed. Scared me some,” Sal admitted. “When he looked my way, I stared at the middle of the street and shook my bowl like I was blind. And I kept doing it till after he’d gone, too. Was that made me wonder if ... if maybe she hadn’t wanted to go off in that coach. But if I’d told the guard that, they’d have laughed in my face. A woman got lifted into a coach — no sign of a weapon, no struggle, no screaming. And then a man looked at the street and walked off. That was all.”
But it had frightened her, and I didn’t think Sal was easily frightened.
“What did the coach look like?” Michael demanded. “And where did it go?”
“That’s just what he asked,” Sal told us. “Your fancy gent. Coach was fine, not with gold paint and whatnot, but good wood, real shiny under the mud. I wondered about that too, cause it was pretty dirty and we haven’t had rain for a while. Used to be a crest on its door,” she continued. “But someone had scratched it off. They varnished over the scratches, but you could tell. You might keep a coach muddy to hide a crest ... but the crest was gone, so why bother?”
“Where did it go?” Michael was keeping to the point.
