Murder at Meaux

by Cassandra Clark

  ‘They’re keeping quiet on that one.’

  ‘And Ulf, where is he now?’

  Roger and Melisen exchanged looks.

  ‘If I knew,’ Roger began, ‘I wouldn’t be standing here wringing my hands with worry.’

  ‘Once he broke out of prison where would he be likely to make for? she insisted.

  ‘He’ll have headed for one of the Humber ports so he can get over to Flanders,’ Melisen suggested. ‘There’s been no word that he’s been arrested.’

  ‘A posse of ruffians has been rounded up with promise of a handsome pay-out when they bring him in,’ added Roger.

  ‘Is this the Sheriff’s doing?’

  ‘He has no choice. Absconding from prison? It leaves him looking like a sot-wit. You should hear the jokes among my own lads! I can understand the fellow’s predicament.’

  ‘Where do you think Ulf has gone, yourselves?’ she insisted with a certain amount of caution as she wondered if they would be breaking faith to tell her.

  Roger looked genuinely worried. ‘I don’t believe he’s such a fool as to head for any of the ports. They’re the first places to be put on alert. Escaped murderer? There’ll be a bounty on his head. Nobody’s going to be slow to seek that out. He must have holed up somewhere until the excitement dies down.’

  Added Melisen, ‘Some safe house, maybe, but not Castle Hutton or his manor at Langbar.’

  ‘They’re the next places they’ll look if they don’t pick him up at one of the ports.’

  ‘Do you think he’s still in York?’

  ‘We’re at a loss,’ Melisen bit her lip. ‘He has friends all over. Everybody loves him,’ she glanced at her husband. ‘Well, it’s true and one of them will be hiding him in a hay loft I shouldn’t wonder. That’s the best we can hope for.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like Ulf to put his friends in danger,’ Hildegard suggested.

  ‘Any better ideas?’ Roger furrowed his brow.

  ‘Might he seek sanctuary somewhere? Beverley, for instance? It’s not far and he’d have forty days to think of a way out.’

  ‘Knowing they’d be waiting for him anyway with every right to decapitate him the minute he steps foot outside?’ Roger shook his head.

  8

  They told her the location of the house Ulf and his wife Eunice had inherited from her father on his death, the place she lived in when in York. Hildegard went along there at once and when she reached the address in Stonegate she found a large, well set-up place, a silver-smith’s, with shop and workshop and a large house attached, set round a wide and pleasant yard, almost a court yard, with stabling for four or five horses at the back.

  She pushed open the door into the shop where a silversmith, presumably a journeyman, was busy at a work-bench. He scarcely looked up at the sound of the door.

  After a greeting that brought his attention she announced, ‘I’m on a secret mission from Lord Roger de Hutton.’ She leaned closer. ‘He told me that he is having a crispinette made up for his wife as a birthday gift and wondered how close to completion it might be?’ She smiled. Friendly. She was still wearing the town clothes lent by Melisen and carried a large straw basket to show she was engaged in harmless and inconsequential domestic matters.

  The journeyman brushed his fair hair off his forehead, gave her a sharp glance then put down his tools and stepped round the end of his bench.

  ‘The crispinette. I suppose you’d like to see how it’s doing, so far?’

  ‘I would indeed. I’ve heard so much about it, from Lord Roger.’

  ‘Friend of the family or servant?’ He looked her up and down, shrewd but uncertain.

  Taken aback by his manner she asked, ‘If you don’t trust me I suggest you send someone to Roger himself to verify my honesty –’

  The journeyman put up both hands as if to ward off an attack. ‘It’s just that you’re calling at a delicate time as I’m sure you know. I’ve had crowds in here whose only interest is to see a young woman with a broken neck.’

  Hildegard drew herself up with more hauteur than she felt. ‘I can assure you, young man, that –’

  ‘My deepest apologies, mistress. I’m sick and tired of it, that’s all.’

  ‘I can well understand that.’ Pleased that they were onto the topic so quickly she went over to a display of his work and casually commented, ‘It must be terrible for you. That poor young woman too.’ She picked up a silver brooch in a design like a rose, each petal perfectly furled. ‘What will happen to all this?’ she held up the brooch and indicated the workshop at large. ‘All these beautiful things –’ Her glance took in the gleaming silver, intricately fashioned objects she would like to have had a closer look at. Carefully replacing the brooch from where she had taken it she asked, ‘I meant what will happen if her husband hangs, will you be able to carry on the business?’

  ‘That’s for the Guild to decide. I only hope one of the brotherhood will offer for the place and not allow it to be handed to the next of kin. What he knows about silver-smithing ain’t worth a straw.’

  Hoping she wasn’t showing too much interest she asked, ‘Is this the friar they’re all talking about?’

  He gave a slight curl of the lip. ‘Not him. No chance with Sir Bernard on the trail.’

  She puzzled her brow. ‘Sir Bernard?’ she repeated with an upward inflection.

  He gave her a dark glance. ‘The City Coroner. Who do you think I mean?’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’ she asked, curiosity the obvious response.

  ‘He’s the brother-in-law, isn’t he?’ He turned away and picked up a hare’s foot to clean the piece of filigree he was working, with a laconic, ‘I thought you were from round here?’

  To recover ground from her mistake she asked, ‘And the little crispinette? May I see it – ?’

  He went over to the work bench and lifted a finely wrought silver filigree head-dress from off a wooden stand. He held it up with some reverence. Although dozens of strands of silver as fine as lace were still to be bound together, the light played over them, revealing an intricate design of fruit and flowers. When it was finished it would fit neatly over Melisen’s head. She would be delighted with it.

  ‘When do you think it might be ready to take away?’ Hildegard asked after admiring it for a while.

  ‘In a few days. If I’m here that long.’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘He might choose to shut me down if he gets his hands on the place. Sell it on. Lease it. Good rents round here, being so central. Now I’ve no master I’m here on sufferance. I’m only allowed to finish present orders. I can’t take on new work.’

  ‘That seems hard.’

  ‘It’s the rule. In an ideal world they’d let me pay my way into the Guild but with master gone there’s nobody to vouch for me.’

  ‘But he died some months past, I’m told, and surely The Guild – ?’

  ‘His daughter took over. She could’ve got me in. Why didn’t she? Too busy with other matters. She got me in her inheritance and she got an apprentice an’ all.’ He gave an odd smile. ‘Had, I should say.’

  He went over to the bench and began to rearrange the pieces on it. The brooch he picked up and placed inside a jewel box with a sideways glance that made Hildegard assume the conversation was over.

  ‘I’ll tell Lord Roger that his purchase is near completion. He’ll be delighted. I pray you’re here long enough to finish it.’ She walked towards the door then turned back well before she reached it as if with a sudden thought.

  His head jerked up.

  ’Poor, dear fellow,’ she murmured. ‘You must have been here in this very workshop when that dreadful thing happened.’

  She noticed him freeze and his face became as rigid as a lump of wood.

  ‘It must be dreadful, with not only your work and your future in jeopardy, but the burden of your terrible closeness to such evil. It is too much for a soul to bear...’

  ‘There’s worse than that.�
�� His fingers seemed to be shaking as he picked up a little silver crucifix. ‘There’s the holy question of guilt,’ he admitted, muttering, ‘May the perpetrators perish in their devilish designs.’

  Hildegard put him at about twenty-three, a bachelor, probably, just beginning to make his way and establish a reputation for fine work which would become much sought after if there was any justice. Despite his apparent indifference to Eunice’s fate he looked bereft of all hope and happiness. She wondered about the cause of such a burden.

  ‘It’s a sad thing when a marriage does not work out,’ she murmured, ‘but it’s more than a sad thing if the wrong man is accused of murder – the perpetrator and his devilish designs, you say?’ She put her hand on the latch. ‘Is the accused innocent, after all do you think?’

  She pressed the latch with a loud click.

  ‘Wait,’ he called in an urgent tone. ‘Stay and have a beaker of wine with me?’

  By the time she reached the stool he pulled forward, he had already poured out some wine from a stone jug on the side.

  In a rush he said, ‘You may already know it but the accused is a vassal of Lord Roger de Hutton. As you appear to know de Hutton yourself – and I trust you, foolish as that may be – I may as well admit I have much time for him after what happened a few years ago during the Great Revolt. I was an apprentice then and have always known which side I’m on.’

  ‘Roger is always on the side of justice.’

  ‘Then somebody needs to tell him what’s going on here so he can save his man.’

  ‘I hear his steward has escaped prison and fled no-one knows where?’

  ‘And will he live like that? As an outlaw? That’s no life. Not when he can clear his name.’

  ‘How can he do that?’

  The journeyman went over to the shutters giving onto the street and closed them, and in the deep gloom he began to tell her what he knew.

  9

  ‘My name is Osmund,’ he began, holding out his hand.

  She took it. ‘And I’m known as Mistress York.’

  He gave a half smile as if fully aware that this was a name of convenience. ‘So, Mistress York, I’ve worked out my years here in harmony under the old master, now sadly departed to heaven, as we hope and pray. He allowed me freedom in the matter of design. See?’ He pointed to the work bench. ‘I had no quarrel with the master and no quarrel with his choice of husband for his daughter. He chose well and she was ill-advised to object.’

  ‘Why did she?’

  ‘Because of someone who held her in thrall. She was besotted and saw life in a dream of romance where she was the great lady in the tower, forever dispensing gifts to her knightly lover – at least, that’s how she must have seen herself, being given to constant singing of the old chansons and such like – and also for other matters which I, at my work, could not help but observe despite myself.’ He glanced through the casement with its view onto the house across the yard.

  ‘So this lover,’ Hildegard said, dispensing with his observations for the moment as she felt she could probably guess what they amounted to. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I will not tell his name. He is a mere tool in what happened that night. I attach no blame to him in the particular matter of murder. The deeper crime lies with the one who benefits from the inheritance once Ulf, as Eunice’s husband, is put out of the way.’

  ‘By “out of the way” I take it you mean hanged?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Heaven forfend that it should come to that!’

  ‘My prayer, likewise. But this is the rumour in some quarters.’

  ‘And this beneficiary?’

  Osmund got up and went to the slatted shutter and opened it a crack then closed it again. He came back. It might have been a trick of the light, the gloom that shrouded the workshop, but his face had turned a colour suggesting fear. He picked up his beaker of wine and downed it. Ran a hand through his hair. Then, pulling a stool under him, leaned forward and mouthed a name.

  ‘Sir Bernard? You accuse him of murder?’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll tell you why.’

  He glanced toward the shutters again as if expecting to see the shadow of an eavesdropper outside and in a lowered voice began to explain.

  ‘That afternoon the dogs made a great racket, growling, bristling, howling, and rattling their chains as they always do when Sir Bernard turns up. This would be after Nones. He went into the house and eventually reappeared before Vespers. He made a great show of telling his man to light the cresset in the yard with evening coming on and then he calls out that he’s going home and that he’ll see her, Eunice, on the morrow.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The dogs continued to growl and bristle. It made me think he was still lurking around. Eventually they settle and a little later all hell breaks loose when Ulf arrives. It’s different this time. They love him and when he takes them off their chains they come tumbling out of the stables to dance around him with their usual signs of pleasure and delight. He strides among them, calling them by name, greeting each one as he always does. They will not leave him alone that evening and he has to tell them in a peremptory fashion to go to their beds. Which, of course, they do. He’s their god and they obey him in everything.’

  ‘How did Ulf sound when he arrived?’

  ‘His usual cheerful self. A little wary, maybe. No doubt wondering what Eunice had in store for him.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘He must have seen her at the window of her solar because he called up to her. I happened to look out at that moment and saw a light on and she was leaning out of the window with her hair unloosed.’

  ‘How did she greet him?’

  ‘By slamming the shutters on him.’

  ‘I see. And how did Ulf take that? Forgive me for my questions,’ she added.

  He brushed her apology aside. ‘I heard him give a huge sigh. And it was then he spoke roughly to the dogs to go to their beds.’

  ‘I’m not sure what Sir Bernard has to do with this, Osmund. Did Ulf then go inside the house?’

  ‘No. He tried the door but it had been locked and nobody came to open it so he sat out in the yard and ate some cheese from his saddle bag. I know for a fact,’ he continued, ‘that their housekeeper was inside because I saw her peering through the window thinking she couldn’t be seen. Well, I turned back to my work. Sometimes he would come over to see how I was getting on, being not unaware of my precarious situation and, in fact, that’s what happened and we shared a stoup of ale –’

  ‘Only one?’

  ‘Certainly only one. And then he went back outside with a sort of hang-dog expression, saying, “it looks as if I’m to sleep in the stables again for my sins.” It had happened before. In fact, mostly, these last few weeks, he’s slept up there in the hay loft either out of choice or because Eunice would not allow him into ‘her’ house as she referred to it.’

  ‘And Sir Bernard?’ Hildegard prompted.

  ‘That’s the thing. When everything was quiet, maybe around midnight, I was woken up by the dogs again. Bristling and growling. Rattling their chains. Ulf must have tied them up for the night and I thought, half-asleep as I was, that’s Sir Bernard, back again. And only later, when I became fully awake did I think, was it him? What was he doing coming back here in the middle of the night? And then I dismissed the idea as nonsense – until next morning when the housekeeper came screaming outside into the yard yelling about murder.’

  ‘When she did that, where was Ulf?’

  ‘Still in the hay loft. He came to the stable door in his tunic and breeches and asked her what the racket was about and she pointed at him and shrieked, ‘You! Ulf of Langbar! Murderer! What have you done?’ And she went to stand out in the street to gather a crowd and start them chuntering and then the bailiffs turned up. They were quick off the mark. They must have been standing round the corner, to my mind, because they showed up straightaway and clapped manacles on Sir Ulf and dragged him o
ff. By then the crowd was jeering and cat-calling and after that the story built and built until now he’s to hang – unless we can prove the truth of what I’m saying.’

  ‘Which is?’

  He gave her derisory glance.

  ‘I need to hear it from your own lips without equivocation, Osmund.’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Sir Bernard crept back secretly and covertly after Ulf arrived and did her in. They never got on so it would be no hardship. Besides, he’s a hard, cold bastard, dealing with dead bodies every day. One more or less means nothing to him. And with her dead and her husband caught with the dagger in his hand, so to speak, your Sir Bernard will inherit everything – not just this workshop and house but all the wealth the master accrued by his skill and hard work.’

  ‘I thought your master had a brother, a friar out near Leeds?’

  ‘He’s not in the picture because he cannot hold personal wealth. Sir Bernard is married to the master’s sister. To be exact, she will inherit but with a husband like him that means nothing.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a sister.’

  ‘Avis.’ He gave a dismissive shrug.

  ‘Was she here that night?’

  ‘She hardly ever leaves her house.’

  10

  Hildegard had plenty to brood on. Osmond was persuasive but it was clear his evidence for Ulf’s innocence depended on nothing more than the barking of dogs. It wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny.

  When she got back to the house on Micklegate she went straight up to the solar to tell Roger and Melisen what she had discovered.

  ‘The upshot,’ Roger growled when she finished, ‘is that even if Sir Bernard did creep back to do her in, as far as we know nobody saw him. Nobody’s come forth to support what the journeyman is saying. He didn’t see him. As far as we know nobody did. Has he made a deposition to the Sheriff?’

  ‘He didn’t say he had but then he seems too frightened to say anything. You should have seen him.’

  ‘We can hardly have dogs up in court as witnesses.’ Roger’s lips twisted.