The Cross Legged Knight (3 page)

For days Lucie lay in bed whispering prayers of contrition. Cisotta, the young midwife who had attended Lucie in those first days, had assured Owen that women often behaved so after losing a child, some even after having a healthy baby. But when Magda Digby had returned from a birthing in the country and took over Lucie’s care, Owen could see her concern.

Long after they had closed the account books, Lucie and Owen lingered at the table in the hall in the pool of lamplight. Jasper, Lucie’s apprentice and their adopted son, had gone to see a friend, and Phillippa and the children were in bed. Such a quiet moment seemed rare to Owen these days. Lucie did not seem to welcome idleness, but sought activity until she dropped on to the bed, exhausted. He knew she did not wish to think of the child they had lost. Even now her hands were not idle, she was tying mint sprigs together, her long,
slender fingers moving quickly. The ghost of a smile touched her lips, in fact, her pretty face was alight with a calm contentment. She loved her garden almost as much as her first husband had, found in working with the plants a peace much as Owen’s mother had so long ago in Wales. He wished Lucie might have known his mother – they had much in common, a gift for healing, for knowing the right combination of herbs and roots for a person’s ailments. His mother would have liked the level regard with which Lucie viewed the world – though of late there was a darkness in her gaze.

Tonight Owen noted deep blue shadows beneath her eyes. ‘You should have left the mint harvest to me,’ he said.

‘I took joy in it.’ She lifted one of the sprigs, held it close so he could smell it. ‘A few more days and it would be too late. Perhaps if Wykeham forgets about his mishap the other day you can help me with some of the other autumn chores.’

‘I am afraid he means to keep me occupied.’

‘I am sorry for that.’ As Lucie reached for another clump of mint she winced, withdrew her hand and pressed the other to her shoulder.

‘It is painful?’

‘It aches, yes, but lying abed will not mend it.’ She shook her head at him. ‘And your worry weakens me.’ She had made this argument before. ‘You think – she fell once, she shall fall again. You think the accident has changed me for ever.’

He did not know how to answer this. It was true and not true. He knew now that it could happen. ‘I meant nothing but that I had promised to harvest the mint. Guarding the Bishop of Winchester put it out of my mind. He wishes to ride to his former parish of Laughton. He means to rebuild the church.’

‘Where is that?’

‘At the south end of the shire. Near Sheffield.’ Several days’ ride, he guessed.

‘He wishes to go soon?’

‘Aye. He had thought to leave it until his business with the Pagnells was concluded. But Lady Pagnell refuses to see him yet. The journey would fill the time.’

‘Poor Emma. Her mother’s presence is making everyone in her household ill at ease.’

‘She is a difficult woman?’ He had met Lady Pagnell only at formal events.

‘Yes, both she and her steward are intrusive guests. Emma came today, asking for a sleep potion for herself. I shall make up something to soothe her – Jasper!’

Their fourteen-year-old adopted son had come rushing in, panting and flushed from a good run, skidding to a halt by the table. Lucie steadied the pile of books as he dropped his hands on to the table, leaning, catching his breath. He raked his pale hair back from his face with an impatient gesture. ‘There is a fire in Petergate. The house of the Bishop of Winchester.’

‘God have mercy.’ Owen got to his feet. So did Lucie. He leaned across the table, took her hand. ‘Stay within, eh? One of us heading into danger is enough.’

She shook her head. ‘I can help those who breathe too much smoke. Passing round a soothing drink is not dangerous.’

He did not like it, but he saw she was determined. ‘Aye, you are right.’ He grabbed a cloth from a basket of laundry by the door to the kitchen, thinking he might need something to protect his nose and mouth from smoke, then headed for the door.

Jasper was right behind him with a bucket.

S
moke already masked the October smells when Owen stepped out into St Helen’s Square. Shouts drifted down from the scene. Owen looked up, expecting to see the glow of fire in the sky above Petergate. But the sky was a deep blue, the stars silvery white. Perhaps God was with them and the fire had been caught early. People ran past him. By the time Owen reached the top of Stonegate several chains of folk stretched along Petergate passing buckets of water from the nearest wells. A boy clutching an empty bucket emerged from the smoke near the burning house and headed down one of the lines. Another followed close behind.

Owen stopped him. ‘Where is the fire? I see no flames.’

‘The fire is down below, in the undercroft, Captain. They pulled out a servant – his clothes ablaze. They doused him with water and rolled him in the dirt. The other is dead, they say. A maidservant.’

Owen let him go, hurried on. The street was already slippery with spilled water. As he moved closer, the
vision in his one good eye blurred with the smoke that belched from the undercroft doorway. The walls of the undercroft were stone and the roof tile, but the support posts and the storey above were of timber. Near the door stood Godwin Fitzbaldric, the bishop’s new tenant, here in York only a few months. He was calling out orders, hurrying the bucket wielders along. His face was streaked with soot, his shirt torn. He was a tall man, leaning towards fleshiness, almost bald but for a dusting of dull red hair running from temple to temple across the back of his head.

‘Is everyone out of the house?’ Owen asked him.

Fitzbaldric drew an arm across his broad brow. His wide sleeve was heavy with water and torn, the tight sleeve of the shift beneath soiled. ‘They pulled two of my servants from the undercroft. They were alone in the house.’

‘You were not at home when it began?’

‘No. We dined at a neighbour’s.’

‘Did you ask the injured servant whether any others were in the house?’

‘He is past speaking.’

‘Not dead?’

‘Not yet, but how he can survive with such burns –’

‘Has anyone searched the upper storey?’

Fitzbaldric shook his head. ‘They were …’

Owen did not wait to hear the man’s repeated assurance. Anyone in a crowded city knew to search a house on fire. Servants had friends, neighbours might be visiting. Having moved from a village near Hull a few months ago, perhaps Fitzbaldric did not understand that – fires were a regular occurrence here. Owen pushed past the human chain passing buckets, dipping the cloth he carried into one of the pails of water. Tying the wet cloth over his nose and mouth, he mounted the
stairs, which were shielded so far from the flames by the stone wall of the undercroft, pushed open the door and shouted, ‘Is anyone here?’ Stepping within, he found the crackle of fire and the shouts of the people muted. His voice echoed loud in the hall as he called again. Smoke seeped up through the floorboards, a flame licked over in the front corner. Two lamps were alight on the trestle table, and a lantern on a wall sconce. Already their flames were blurred behind the smoke in the air.

Something clattered up in the solar at the far end of the hall. As he rushed towards the steps his eye watered from the smoke coming up from below. ‘Come down! The undercroft is ablaze!’

A foot appeared on the steps, then a second. So much for Fitzbaldric’s stubborn certainty. It was a woman, her skirts hitched up to descend. She moved slowly, looking about her as if confused. Her cap was askew, her dark hair tumbling down her back.

‘Poins?’ The woman’s voice trembled.

‘Hurry. This is too much smoke for anyone to breathe.’

Seeming only now to focus on him, she crouched down on the steps and reached towards his outstretched arms as if she thought to take his hand, but she was now so unbalanced that she lost her footing and slipped down the last few steps, landing in Owen’s arms. She had fainted.

He pulled her away from the steps, crouched, lifted her up and hoisted her over his shoulder as he rose. His back would wreak vengeance for that on the morrow. Pray God he lived to suffer it. He blinked against the smoke, took a step forward, checked himself. The smoke was obscuring his vision. He cursed the Frenchwoman who had cost him the sight in his left eye.
Trying to establish the angle at which he had approached the steps to the solar, he prayed he was headed in the right direction. The cloth over his mouth and nose had dried in the heat. The smoke burned deep in his chest. He felt from the vibration of the floorboards someone striding towards him.

Alfred, his second in command, materialized. ‘This way, Captain.’

Out on the porch Owen crouched down and slid the woman from his shoulder. He did not trust himself to bear his own weight and hers down the stairs, not with his lungs on fire. He ripped the cloth from his face and gasped the cool air.

Alfred took up the woman. ‘Mistress Wilton awaits you below, Captain. She has been passing round a syrup for our raw throats.’

Fitzbaldric met them halfway up the steps. He lifted the woman’s head. ‘But this is May, my maidservant. I thought … What was she doing up there?’

Owen wiped his face. ‘Sleeping, from the look of her. Turn round, the steps will catch any time.’ Alfred had already continued down, keeping well to the outside edge. Nearer the house, the steps were catching sparks from the upper storey.

Fitzbaldric turned, shouted, ‘Wet the steps!’

One of the human chains shifted direction.

Lucie awaited Owen on the ground, standing still in the roiling sea of people, too close to the fire for his liking. When he reached her, she embraced him, hugging him tightly, then stepped back, plucked off his cap, ran her fingers through his hair, took up his hands and examined them. ‘Thank God you are unharmed.’

‘I did nothing foolhardy.’ He gladly accepted the flask she offered. ‘Did you see where Godwin Fitzbaldric headed?’

‘Across the way. Come.’ Lucie guided him through the crowd passing buckets, shouting, away from the house, the smoke, the sound of cracking timbers.

The Fitzbaldrics stood beneath the overhang across the way, watching Alfred. With the maid in his arms, he was following Robert Dale and his wife Julia to their house at the corner of Stonegate and Petergate.

Lucie had paused in a pool of torchlight set in the wall of one of the houses opposite the bishop’s, far enough from the Fitzbaldrics that they would not be able to hear her. ‘The Dales hosted a banquet to introduce the Fitzbaldrics to some of their acquaintances this evening,’ she said. ‘Now they have offered the couple a bed for as long as they need, as well as the maid and cook.’

‘You have spoken to them?’

‘A little.’

‘What of the injured manservant?’

Lucie did not answer at once. She watched not Owen but the mass of people working on the fire.

Owen touched her arm. ‘Lucie?’ He had come to dread her silences.

She pressed his hand, a gesture she had made seldom of late. ‘They might yet save the upper floors. Listen. It is quieter now.’

It was difficult for him to block out the sound of the people, but gradually he was able to hear what she did – the fire hissed rather than roared. Yet he remembered the burning corner in the hall. ‘I do not think we can hope for that.’

Still facing the burning house, she said, ‘I told them to take the manservant to our home.’

He had forgotten his question and did not at first grasp what she was saying.

Lucie turned to him. ‘Owen?’

Her meaning dawned on him. ‘We cannot care for him. You are yet weak –’

‘It is done. He is on his way and Magda Digby with him.’

In the torchlight Owen could see the set of Lucie’s jaw, the challenge in her eyes, and against all reason he was glad of it, for he had not seen that spirit in her for a month. ‘So be it.’

She pressed his arm. ‘Come home?’

‘Not yet. I want to see the dead woman.’ He shook his head at her. ‘Why would you do this? You do not know these people.’

‘Why did you go in search of the maid?’

The Fitzbaldrics were looking their way. It was not the time for an argument.

‘We have been noted,’ Owen said. ‘I would talk to them. Your flask is empty now.’ He handed it back to her. ‘Go home. I’ll follow when I can.’

‘We are most grateful to you, Captain,’ said Fitzbaldric as they drew near. ‘God help me, but I was certain the house was empty.’ He did not look Owen in the eye.

‘We could not know she was up there,’ said his wife.

Owen was not interested in their excuses. ‘Have you seen the woman found in the undercroft?’

‘I did,’ said Fitzbaldric, ‘when they carried her out.’

‘You had identified her as your maid. Does she look like her?’

‘Have you seen the body, Captain? I could tell little else than that it was a woman. I assumed it was May.’

‘And you?’ Owen asked of Mistress Fitzbaldric.

‘I saw no cause to upset Adeline,’ Fitzbaldric said.