The Cross Legged Knight (25 page)

‘That is it?’ she said. ‘We are to be left mystified about the belt?’

‘For now, yes.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘How annoying.’ She smoothed the skirt of her gown. ‘But perhaps that is your purpose.’

‘I asked if you could …’

‘Yes, you are asking when they knew the house was to be empty for the evening.’

‘Or spoke of it to others,’ Owen said, glancing at May, who was gazing upwards, shading her eyes with one hand, her expression unreadable.

‘My servants are trustworthy, Captain.’

‘A passing comment is all someone seeking the information might need,’ said Owen. ‘May?’

The maidservant straightened and moved her gaze to Owen, with a reluctance, it seemed to him. ‘Sir?’

‘Do you recall mentioning the dinner to anyone? Perhaps proud that your master and mistress were being so honoured?’

She was facing the windows, the sun in her eyes. She lifted a hand to shield them. ‘Oh no, no, I know no one here, nor would I boast among fellow servants.’ She took a breath. ‘I am most grateful for what you did, carrying me from the fire,’ she added softly.

‘Well spoken, May,’ said Adeline. ‘Is there anything more, Captain?’

‘For May, yes. How did you come to be trapped up in the solar?’

‘I was asleep. I knew Poins was in the house, so I thought I might lie down …’ Her voice trailed off as she dabbed her eyes with her apron.

‘You’d cut yourself that evening,’ Owen said. ‘There was blood on your face. Yet I see no evidence of it now.’

May had moved to a better angle but still needed to shield her eyes. ‘I have many scratches on my arms and legs – the blood must have come from them.’

‘I remember the blood, Captain,’ Adeline said, glancing back at her maid. ‘Surely there are stains on your gown, May?’

‘There were many stains, most of water and ash, Mistress. I scrubbed them out as best I could that night with Bolton’s help.’

‘May is a good laundress,’ said Adeline, but her expression was one of puzzlement.

Owen wondered whether it would be useful to speak with Adeline privately about the maid. Something bothered him, but it might merely be the unusual resilience of Adeline that unsettled him. ‘Did Poins have a visitor that evening?’

May shook her head.

‘Had he been working in the undercroft?’

‘No. He was in the hall when I went above.’

‘Is he fond of women?’

The maid blushed. ‘I would not know.’

‘Are you friends with Poins?’

‘I tolerate nothing improper, Captain,’ Adeline said, her voice sharp.

‘How is Poins today, May?’ Owen asked, trying another path.

The maid looked down at her hands. ‘I have not seen him since that night,’ she said in a quiet voice.

‘What is this? When he is here at the palace? Are you not concerned for him?’

Her head came up. ‘I am!’ Her face was flushed.

‘Captain’ – Adeline rose abruptly – ‘that is enough.’

‘Patience, Adeline,’ Fitzbaldric urged, reaching for her elbow.

Adeline bristled. ‘May has been busy helping me settle here. I thought it best that she not upset herself with Poins’s condition.’

‘And you, have you sat with him, Mistress Fitzbaldric?’ Owen asked. She was already angry, so he saw no benefit in mincing.

Gracefully resuming her seat beside her husband, Adeline shook her head, dropped her eyes to her folded hands. ‘God help me, but I cannot bear to see his suffering.’

‘Nor should you need to,’ Fitzbaldric said, putting a protective hand over hers.

Adeline smiled up at her husband, tears shimmering in her eyes.

Owen doubted that the woman required the protection Fitzbaldric seemed so anxious to give her.

Despite Eudo’s frequent rebellion against his guild’s rules, his fellow tawyers had arranged for the mourners to dine in the hall of an alewife, with guild dues paying for the small feast. Cisotta’s sister, Eudo’s cousin, and their spouses, the master of the tawyers’ guild and
several members, as well as some of Eudo’s neighbours accompanied the family to the house on Girdlergate. Lucie offered to take the children home, but at their looks of disappointment their aunt insisted they partake in the feast. ‘They deserve a reward for tolerating Father John’s unpleasant voice,’ she said, ‘and what they have been eating for the past few days I do not care to think about.’

‘A neighbour has been seeing to such things,’ Lucie said.

‘It is not for neighbours but for family to see to such things,’ the cousin said.

Lucie had hoped to resume her conversation with Anna about the gloves Cisotta had hidden in the dresser. The information might be of use to Owen. She considered departing and returning later, but in the end she remained, honouring Cisotta’s memory. Anna stayed close to her, but it was not the place in which to talk of such matters, with too many curious ears.

At first the girl seemed reluctant to partake in the feast, but her brothers’ cries of delight soon stimulated her appetite. Lucie imagined the children had never had eel, pigeon, and venison in a single week much less a single sitting. By the end of the meal Henry and Ned had fallen asleep with their heads on their aunt’s lap and Anna with her head on Lucie’s.

It was not until the family returned home that Lucie was able to talk to Anna. Eudo settled into a chair near the fire circle, with little Will on his lap, and picked up a tankard of ale to resume the drinking he’d begun at the meal.

Lucie and Anna sat well away from him, talking about the relatives and their promises of help. Anna expressed concern that help would translate to interfering, but Lucie reminded the already exhausted
child that it was difficult even for an adult to run a household. Gradually Lucie led the conversation back to the gloves and the hides.

‘I told you all I knew of it, Mistress Wilton. Ma didn’t say any more.’

‘After your mother spoke with the stranger in the kitchen yard, how did she behave?’

Anna shrugged. ‘She was glad I had put away the things we’d brought from the market.’

‘Did she seem excited? Upset?’

‘She just went on with chores.’

‘When she went out the evening of the fire, what did she take with her?’

‘Her basket.’

‘Did you see what she put into it?’

Anna shook her head. ‘Little Will was crying and Pa was shouting from the shop to keep him quiet because he had a customer.’ She took a deep breath, blotted her eyes with her apron. ‘It would help if I could remember what she put in the basket, wouldn’t it?’

She was a remarkable child, both clever and courageous.

‘It might.’

Anna faced the dresser, ran her hands slowly along the row of jars and bottles. ‘I remember her picking up some cloths, then putting them back.’ She lingered over a jar, moved on, backtracked, then at last dropped her hand to her side. ‘I was too busy with little Will.’ Her voice broke.

Lucie crouched down and gathered Anna in her arms. ‘Forgive me for making you try to remember.’

The girl clung to Lucie, her reserve gone.

Eudo put down his tankard and carried Will, now sleeping, to the corner bed, then came over to them. ‘What is this? Why did you make her cry?’

‘It is good for her, Eudo. She has had to be strong for the boys. Just for now, she can be a child, weep for her mother.’

He held Lucie’s eyes for a moment, then turned away as his face began to dissolve in his own grief. ‘Aye, well, don’t you leave her like that. See that she’s calmed before you go.’

‘I shall.’

Eudo crossed the room, reaching up to punch one of the ceiling beams as he passed beneath it, then the lintel before stepping out into the kitchen yard.

Anna had quieted. Lucie lifted her chin. ‘Would you mind if I took the gloves away for a few days? I should like Captain Archer to see them.’

The girl wiped her eyes with her sleeves. ‘Was Ma doing wrong? Is that why she died?’

‘We have no cause to think she did wrong.’

Anna glanced over at her father. ‘Should we tell Pa about the gloves?’ He had returned to the doorway, leaning against it as he talked to the guard.

‘Not yet, Anna. He has enough sorrow to bear. Let him rest this evening.’ There was no predicting the man’s temper.

Getting up on to a stool, Lucie took one of the jars from the bottom shelf and drew out the gloves, tucking them inside her girdle, beneath her surcoat. When she stepped down, she crouched and gave Anna a hug. ‘Little Will is cooler tonight. But if he worsens again, send for Goodwife Claire.’ The woman had gone home to see to her own family.

‘He will get better?’

‘I believe it is a catarrh, nothing more.’

Lucie felt Eudo’s eyes on her as she made her way past Henry and Ned, and the overturned toy wagon they were repairing. The tawyer stood in the doorway,
hands on his hips, legs spread, effectively blocking her way. His face was ruddy with drink, his eyes flinty.

‘I thank you for including me at the table today,’ she said. ‘It was good to hear how beloved Cisotta was by her friends and your fellows in the guild.’ Her breathless speech did not move him.

‘What did you tuck into your girdle?’ He moved his head, trying to see anything showing beneath the surcoat, which was cut low at the sides, allowing a glimpse of the girdle at her hips. ‘Something of my wife’s, was it? What are you and my Anna conspiring?’ Eudo brought his face uncomfortably close to Lucie’s, his jowls thrust forward, the pain of his loss visible in every line, every patch of swollen, reddened skin.

Lucie hesitated. Anna had joined her and watched her with a frightened expression. She must think of the child in dealing with Eudo, not herself. If he did not believe his daughter, he might beat the truth out of her. ‘I did not wish to give you any more to worry over today, Eudo. It is Cisotta’s day, when we remember her and pray for her soul.’ Though he was not doing much of that while tippling. But as he had asked, Lucie showed him the gloves and told him what she knew.

He stepped back and fell to studying the gloves. He held them close to his face, sniffing the leather, squinting at the decorative beads and stitching; then, with a gentleness she had not guessed possible with his large hands, he turned one of the gloves inside out, patiently working several of the fingers inside out as well. ‘Deerskin, tawyed by someone with skill. I thought at first it might be from a hide I had worked, but the oils are not mine. The stitching is fine.’

How he changed when talking of his work, what he knew well. How at ease he seemed, confident. ‘See how smooth the tips of the fingers are. These have been
worn a long while.’ He held the glove up to Lucie.

Indeed, the nap had been worn smooth and darkened.

‘Though there is wear within, the stitching has held – the glover fitted these well,’ said Eudo. He turned the glove right side out again.

‘Can you identify the glover?’ Lucie asked.

Eudo shook his head. ‘Jet and silver thread – these were made to order, I’d wager, not the glover’s common work.’

‘If you wished to make gloves like these, to whom would you go for the hides?’

Eudo handed her the gloves. ‘I can tell you two merchants who trade in such hides – Peter Ferriby and of late Godwin Fitzbaldric.’

O
ut in Patrick Pool, Lucie found herself uncertain whether to return home or continue on to Emma’s house. She was anxious to see how her friend was taking the news of her boys’ transgression. But she was worried she would be tempted to show Emma the gloves and she was not yet convinced it was the time to do so. It was best that Owen saw them before she showed them to anyone else. She dreaded telling him that Eudo had seen them.

Yet she had learned much from Eudo’s comments, and Emma and Lady Pagnell knew far more about fine clothes such as the gloves than Lucie did. It would be helpful to Owen if they identified the glover or the former owner.

And if the gloves had belonged to Emma or her mother? There was the rub.

She turned down the street, heading for the Staithe. Watching the river might quiet her mind enough to think more clearly.

*

The rear door of the palace kitchen was wide open to the sunshine and what had calmed to a pleasant breeze. Inside, Owen found Maeve bent over a small brazier as she stirred a sauce and spoke in quiet tones to a maidservant who was cracking nuts and digging out the meats. They seemed absorbed in their work and Owen thought he might reach the screened corner unnoticed.

But he had not taken two steps when Maeve cried out, ‘Captain! Did you mean to pass through without so much as a greeting?’ Instructing the maidservant to take over the stirring, the cook hastened towards Owen while wiping her hands on her apron.

‘I did not mean to take you from your work,’ he said. ‘You have a large household to feed.’

‘That is the least of my worries, Captain.’ Her rosy face was pulled together in a troubled frown. She leaned close and whispered, ‘I do not like what is ado in my kitchen. The devil is in that poor man who lies beyond that screen, mark me, I am right about that, and the Riverwoman sees naught amiss in it – indeed, she encourages him in his evil confusion.’