A Choir of Crows

by Candace Robb

  As they climbed to the solar Owen asked whether it was wise to leave them unchaperoned.

  ‘I choose to trust them.’

  On the landing Lucie turned to watch Alisoun and Jasper slip into the hall, hand in hand.

  Owen woke in the night to a soft knock on the door. Expecting Gwen, who often came to them with bad dreams, he groped on the floor for his shirt before sticking his head out the door. But it was Kate, who apologized for waking him before dawn but a man had brought Ambrose, who was injured.

  ‘I will dress and come down,’ he whispered, hoping not to wake Lucie. ‘Bring out the pallet we used for Gabriel.’

  Owen was fumbling with the rest of his clothes in the dark when Lucie startled him by opening the shutter on the lantern they kept by the door, for the children. ‘I did not hear you rise,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘How could you with all the noise you’re making stumbling about? What has happened?’

  ‘Ambrose is here. Injured.’

  ‘I will come.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No arguments.’

  As he stepped out onto the landing Owen saw Alisoun peering round the nursery door. ‘Is there trouble?’ she whispered.

  ‘Ambrose is here.’

  Lucie joined Owen, motioning to Alisoun to go back to sleep, and the two crept down the steps.

  In the kitchen, Kate was stoking the fire. Owen did not know the gray-haired man who bent over Ambrose, who lay on the pallet near the fire, but he guessed by the French endearments that this was the one who had followed him from France, protecting him. He looked the part of a soldier, puckered scar on his neck, weathered face, now drawn down in concern for his friend. Owen greeted him, identified himself. The man offered his name, Denis, pronounced as the French would.

  Joining him to kneel beside Ambrose, Owen opened the cloak. A cloth wrapped round Ambrose’s chest was so blood-soaked he could not tell the precise location of the wound. Denis indicated a space just below the heart. As Ambrose’s breathing was shallow, but quiet, and he was not gasping, it seemed the lung was spared. God be thanked.

  ‘What happened, Denis?’ Owen asked. ‘Would you prefer we speak French?’

  ‘Merci, but no, I had much practice speaking your tongue when Ambrose was first at court. I was walking down the alley to the home of the vicar where I have sheltered – Franz – when I heard Ambrose cry out behind me. I was not aware that he had followed me, but I knew his voice and rushed back to help. The musician Carl had fallen on him, wounding him as you see, but Ambrose fought back before falling to the ground, slicing open the man’s knife arm. When I turned round Carl was running away. Ambrose told me to follow him. He ran to Stonegate, disappearing down an alleyway. I did not care. My concern was Ambrose. I carried him to Franz’s house. We bandaged him, but we could not stop the bleeding. Is Dame Lucie—?’

  ‘I am here,’ said Lucie, kneeling to Ambrose, taking his hand, whispering his name. When Owen showed her where the knife had entered, she agreed he was most fortunate.

  ‘But he lost so much blood,’ said Denis.

  ‘He will be weak,’ she said, ‘but I feel no fever. That is good.’ Kate handed her the basket in which she kept her medicines and bandages, offered all four ale.

  The day had begun.

  Shortly before dawn, Stephen and Alfred called to report quiet nights on the watches set around Hempe’s and the chancellor’s houses. Both men were relieved to see Ambrose. One search to call off. They offered to help search for Carl.

  Denis said he had disappeared on the opposite side of Stonegate from Robert Dale’s shop, past Swinegate. The description fit the home and shop of the silversmith Will Farfield.

  First Owen wanted to move Ambrose to the safety of St Mary’s infirmary. Lucie agreed to the idea, though of course he could not walk there. Not bothering to don a cloak, Owen crossed to the York Tavern, already well lit, the staff bustling about the morning chores.

  His eyes still puffy with sleep, Tom Merchet listened to Owen’s proposal, scratching his chin, yawning. ‘You are in luck, my friend. I’ve a few barrels I might spare. The lay brother at the postern gate has the abbot’s blessing to give me access in the early hours.’

  ‘What about Bootham Bar? Will they let you through?’

  ‘For free tankards for an evening they will.’ Tom tapped the side of his nose and winked. ‘Carry him over and we will tuck him in with your message.’

  ‘Bless you.’

  ‘Now hurry before my Bess wastes your time with more questions.’

  Once Ambrose was safely delivered to Tom, the four set out, watching the street and the alleys as they approached Will Farfield’s. Most of the shops showed signs of life, lamps flickering, smoke rising from chimneys and snaking down the alleys, a few apprentices sweeping the doorsteps. But Will Farfield’s shop was dark. An apprentice at the entrance next door leaned on his broom and watched Owen and the others circling the building.

  ‘Sent his apprentices off a few days ago. One of them staying with us,’ he said when Owen greeted him.

  ‘Do you think the apprentice would talk to me?’

  ‘Still sleeping. I have the early shift. If you want to talk to him later …’

  ‘I will come by if I still need information. He’s a fortunate lad.’

  ‘The master will work him hard, but he’s kind and we eat well.’ A grin. ‘Will you be dragging Master Will away for his debts?’

  ‘I am not a debt collector, lad. Keeping the peace, that is what we’re about.’

  The lad glanced at the hulking shape of Stephen, the wiry edginess of Denis, but he was most interested in Alfred, who was working the lock on Will’s shop door. Grinning, the apprentice bid Owen good luck and hurried into his shop, no doubt to share what he had learned.

  ‘Best take Carl now, before we collect an audience,’ said Owen. He directed Denis and Alfred to slip inside the shop and hold there, ready to catch anyone trying to escape. He and Stephen would go in through the rear door.

  At the back Stephen chose to kick in the door rather than fiddle with a lock and risk being heard, stepping aside to allow Owen to enter first. In the dim light a man cowered in a corner moaning, ‘I am ruined, ruined. God help me, I am ruined.’ Stephen lit a lamp from the embers of the kitchen fire, revealing the speaker to be Will Farfield.

  ‘You are injured?’ Owen asked the silversmith, touching his blood-stained shirt.

  ‘Not mine. His.’ Will started shivering.

  ‘We’ll stoke the fire when we have him,’ said Owen. ‘Is he here?’

  A nod. ‘He heard you and ran toward the shop.’

  Gesturing to Stephen to stay with Will, Owen picked up the lamp and stepped into the next room. Quiet, dark, but gradually he detected rough breathing, soft, muffled. Setting down the lamp, Owen crept toward the sound. It paused. He paused.

  ‘We know you are here, Carl. We surround you. You have nowhere to run.’

  With a hiss the man reared up and lunged at Owen with a knife in his fist ready to stab. But Owen had halted where he had space to step aside and let the man crash to the floor. By the time Stephen rushed in Owen knelt on Carl’s back, holding down the man’s bandaged arm.

  ‘I cannot breathe,’ Carl cried, proving the lie.

  ‘If I let you up and you charge me, you’re a dead man. Understand?’ A feeble attempt to nod. Owen plucked Carl up by the shoulders and dragged him out to the kitchen before he could regain his footing.

  ‘I have them!’ he shouted. He heard Denis and Alfred fumbling their way toward them through the shop.

  Stephen moved Will Farfield to a bench and turned to help Owen with Carl, who had begun to struggle.

  ‘I will see to him,’ Denis called and lunged toward the man in Owen’s grasp.

  Jerking Carl to the side Owen kicked over a stool to trip Denis. He fell and rolled away.

  Denis picked himself up, muttering French curses.

  ‘I want the story while he has his
teeth and can still be understood,’ said Owen.

  Owen pushed Carl down onto the bench. ‘I will tie you down if you try to move.’

  ‘The folk talk of you as the guardian angel of the city. What will they think when they learn you’re protecting a pair of spies for King Charles?’

  ‘By the time you are able to speak in any public space they will know the truth about Ambrose, you fool.’

  Carl cradled his bandaged arm. ‘I’m bleeding again,’ he whimpered.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Stephen growled.

  Owen dragged chairs and stools into a circle.

  Alfred stoked the fire, adding bricks of peat. ‘No wood or coal?’ he asked Will.

  The silversmith sank onto a stool and leaned his head back against the wall. ‘No.’

  Once seated, Owen leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked long at Carl, then Will, curious about their partnership. Time to question them, while they were humbled, cold, no doubt hungry. He saw no evidence of a recent meal.

  ‘I want to know what led up to Ronan’s murder,’ he said.

  Will sat up, glaring at Carl. ‘You’ve told him?’

  ‘I’ve said nothing, you dalcop.’

  ‘I want to hear all of it,’ said Owen. ‘Who would like to begin? Will? I took you for the honest sort.’

  ‘I am! But that monster—’

  ‘Honest, are you?’ Carl spit on the floor. ‘I came upon you trying to rob the vicar of his scrip.’ He looked to Owen and the others. ‘Found him wrestling the man to the ground and kicking him as he lay in the snow.’

  ‘Then you fell upon him and stabbed him,’ Will cried. ‘You’re the murderer. Only you murdered the wrong man. I heard you curse when Ronan’s hat rolled away. You cursed at him and came at me.’ Will looked at Owen. ‘Mistook the vicar for the musician in that costly cloak and velvet hat. The man he murdered last night.’

  ‘So Will knocked Ronan to the ground, and Carl made certain he was dead.’ Alfred looked from Will to Carl. ‘Both guilty.’

  ‘I murdered no one,’ Will whined. ‘I just wanted his scrip. I’ve been mad with grief, out of my senses, but I never meant to kill him. I wanted the account book. Thought it was in his scrip. Always was when he came here. It would have been my salvation. I meant to prove he tried to ruin us all to fill his purse, and the archbishop’s.’

  Carl laughed. ‘But that isn’t what the vicar had in his scrip that morning, was it? Had the whore’s beloved prayer book is what he had.’

  ‘And now this monster has murdered two men,’ said Will. ‘Last night. That’s how he was wounded.’

  Denis shook his head. ‘Ambrose Coates lives.’

  ‘The cur lives?’ Carl let out a string of curses as he held up his hands, the bandages on his fingers as bloody and soiled as the one on his arm. ‘His work, the traitor. He lied to us, used us to spy on the Nevilles. How does he thank us? Takes off with the Percy girl. And there we are, looking like we helped the traitor spy on the Nevilles and run off with the prize.’

  ‘I heard it was Sir John Neville who broke your fingers, not Ambrose Coates,’ said Owen.

  ‘Because of him! Sir John’s men dragged me to their lord. Who was the white-haired musician? For whom was he spying? Where has he taken the lass? His men held down my hands, splayed my fingers. Neville had a wooden mallet. Every I don’t know rewarded with a thwack.’ He stomped his foot. ‘Thwack. Thwack.’ Tears of anger turned to despair and pain at the memory. ‘Took the lass I protected with my life for months. My treasure. I knew who she was. The missing Percy, the nun who abandoned her lover, let the villagers burn him. I meant to turn south after Cawood, deliver her up to Sir Thomas Percy. But he stole her. And ruined me. I will never play again. Never. A musician with crushed fingers?’ He stabbed a hand at Denis. ‘Your comrade destroyed me.’

  ‘You did it to yourself, you greedy cur,’ Stephen growled.

  ‘You failed her that night at Cawood,’ said Denis. ‘Took off to the fields with the cook while one of your men crawled onto her pallet. How could Ambrose leave her?’

  ‘Time enough for that after you finish the tale,’ said Owen. ‘Tell me all that happened the night of Ronan’s death.’

  As they bickered through the telling, Carl cursing, Will moaning, Owen pieced together a picture of the moments leading up to and past Ronan’s murder. Will’s excuse – cajoled into investing in a shipment of goods, promised riches, celebrating with his partner’s maidservant, and then the terrible news, pirates, complete loss, a loss of his daughters’ dowries, the business partner threatening to expose him for getting his maidservant with child, the cost of caring for her. An endless trap. His wife’s disbelief when he obeyed his confessor and told her everything. Her flight south to her parents with the children, where the pestilence of summer took one of his daughters.

  ‘I wanted the account book. God forgive me, that is all I wanted. I meant to take it to Dom Jehannes. He’s a kind man. He would listen. He would convince my Mary that I had been one of many Ronan ruined. That I meant to restore the dowries.’ Will groaned. ‘But that wasn’t what Ronan carried. I am cursed. It was not the book.’

  ‘How could you tell in the dark?’ Owen asked.

  ‘What he carried was too big. The account book is smaller. Thinner.’

  ‘What did you do with the book he carried?’

  ‘Tossed it away. No use to me.’

  ‘And you took it up.’ Owen nodded to Carl. ‘How did you come to this house?’

  ‘I followed him home that morning. I wanted a place I could slip in and out while watching for Ambrose Coates.’

  Will groaned again. ‘I ran from the minster yard. Never looked back.’

  ‘Course not,’ said Carl. ‘A whipped pup running to hide in his den, lick his wounds. I followed him. Watched. Saw he had troubles, no sign of a wife, family, his apprentices cursing him for cold food and little of it.’

  ‘Who was the partner who ruined you, Will?’ Owen asked. It might be useful to have that name.

  ‘No!’ Will shook his head with a vehemence. ‘I could never again show my face in the city. And with Neville now the archbishop. No.’

  It stank of Gisburne. Was that why Owen found himself devising a way to keep Will’s name out of this, to spare him? An ally when needed against the man he intended to ruin someday, somehow? Needle pricks across his ruined eye. He had pushed that resolve far back in his mind, only to have it surface now. A curse.

  He needed to inform Sir John Neville of his findings. But the precentor and dean deserved to be the first to receive word.

  ‘Denis, Stephen, watch them.’ Motioning to Alfred to follow him, Owen went out to the shop.

  ‘Can I trust Denis to guard Will here for the day, to spare him public humiliation?’ Owen asked.

  ‘As long as he’s not responsible for Carl as well, I would trust him,’ said Alfred. ‘But why ask me?’

  ‘I’ve no time to think it through. I need to move quickly, before Sir John hears that Ambrose is recovering in my home.’

  ‘But he’s at the abbey.’

  ‘I pray his spies followed them to our door and then went back to make their report. No eyes left watching to see Tom Merchet take delivery.’ When he saw that Alfred understood, Owen set out his plan. Alfred and Stephen were to deliver Carl to the castle. Denis would guard Will at the house. By nightfall Owen would know whether or not Will Farfield was to be freed to follow his despair, or whether he, too, was for the castle.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Alfred.

  ‘To Jehannes. I’ll collect Beck and Ronan’s hoard, and take them to the dean and precentor.’ Beck would do his best to be seen assisting the investigation if he hoped to remain a clerk in the service of the minster chapter. ‘From there to Neville.’

  ‘A day’s work before you reach the palace? Tell the others and be on your way, Captain.’

  For the moment the apothecary was quiet, the sole customer a young servant wide-eyed with the importance o
f the mission entrusted to him, fetching a headache powder for his master. As Jasper finished wrapping the physick he heard the squeak of the gate from the tavern yard. He had left the rear door ajar so he might listen for that very sound, or for Alisoun calling for him. Neither doubted someone would try to retrieve Ambrose. Handing the lad the small package, Jasper saw him out, and was about to shut the street door when George Hempe rushed through, finger to mouth, gesturing toward the back.

  Jasper closed the street door, locked it.

  ‘Two men in the garden,’ said Hempe. ‘Seen dumping Pit’s body in the Ouse this morning. One of my men is waiting in the tavern yard. We’ll take them.’

  ‘They will be here for Ambrose,’ said Jasper, picking up a dagger and cudgel as he followed Hempe’s silent passage through the workroom. A few steps out the door, Hempe stopped. Was he grinning? Jasper peered round him to see.

  Alisoun stood in front of the long window next door, an arrow aimed at a pair on the garden path halfway between the shop and the house, their backs to Jasper and Hempe. One of the men was injured, an arm in a sling. The other leaned heavily on one leg. Porter and Diggs, Jasper guessed, wanting vengeance and the reward of delivering Ambrose.

  ‘Put that away, girl,’ Diggs drawled. ‘Luck served you last night. It won’t today. We want the minstrel. Hand him over and there will be no trouble.’

  Alisoun aimed at Diggs’s uninjured arm. ‘Are you certain you want to test me?’

  Diggs wobbled as if finding it difficult to stay upright, but Porter lunged. Jasper was there before Hempe could reach him, delivering a blow to the head sufficient to fell him. Hempe called to the men waiting at either gate.

  ‘They’ll be coming with me to the castle,’ said Hempe. He nodded to one of the men to pick up Porter, who lay limp on the ground. The other had already secured Diggs, with Alisoun’s help.

  ‘Get your hands off me, you filthy cow,’ Diggs growled, and caught Jasper’s cudgel in his gut.

  ‘Send for a healer for this one,’ Alisoun told Hempe. ‘His sleeve reeks of low-tide mud and muck and he grows weak.’