A Mortal Bane (16 page)

Magdalene shook her head nervously. “I do not know,” she said. “When the messenger came here he was carrying a pouch, but he took it with him when he left. I doubt whether it has been destroyed, however. Sir Bellamy of Itchen, the Bishop of Winchester’s knight, thought Messer Baldassare was not wearing the pouch when he was killed. Baldassare could have hidden it.” Then, as Somer’s mouth hardened, she added, “You had better hear the whole tale from the beginning—as much as I know myself—and let William decide for himself what he wants to do.”

21 April 1139

The Bishop’s House

When Bell left the Old Priory Guesthouse, he was so sick and angry that he was sure he had been trapped, tricked, lied to, and led around by the nose like a newly ringed bull. All that sweetness and light. All that eager cooperation. Now everything the women had said seemed false, and Magdalene’s winning smiles and dulcet tones were the falsest of all.

“Whore,” he muttered to himself, striding along the street, so blind with rage that he did not realize he had passed the priory gate until he walked into the bishop’s house. Then he stood in the midst of the hall, shaking with shame and self-disgust. He was so taken up with jealousy over a common whore that he had forgotten he wanted to speak to the sacristan’s assistant and the infirmarian. About to turn on his heel, he heard Guiscard call his name. He took a deep breath and walked to the end of the room.

“So how did you make out with your whore?” Guiscard asked, smiling knowingly. “You do not have to tell me. You are now sure she is innocent.” He chuckled. “Do not let it trouble you. She can even convince the bishop that the sun is shining when it rains.”

Bell struggled to keep his lips from thinning with fury; he would not give Guiscard the satisfaction of knowing his shaft had struck home. He raised his brows. “You are wrong about the bishop,” he remarked, pleased by the indifference in his voice. “He warned me against Magdalene’s charms.”

Guiscard frowned, his hand stroking the rich, shining velvet of his gown. “But he himself is not invulnerable to them. She diddled him out of nearly half the rent I could have got for the house. And cheated me out of my fee as agent, too.”

“Oh-ho.” Bell grinned, feeling better. What Magdalene told him about renting the house was true. “She told me she rented direct from the bishop, but she did not admit that any agent’s fee was involved. She said you did not offer her a leasehold.”

“Who offers a whore a leasehold—except a man befuddled by her beauty? You let a whore rent from week to week, if she does well, you raise the rent.” Guiscard sniffed. “The bishop is too indulgent toward sin.”

Bell watched the clerk’s hand stroke his velvet gown. There were sins and sins, he thought. “I worry more about guilt than sin,” he said. “And despite her trade, I cannot find any reason to think Magdalene guilty of murder.”

Guiscard sniffed again. “Well, I do not like her, but I agree she would not be likely to murder unless Baldassare was carrying so rich a purse that she could not resist killing him for it, or” —his lips turned down with distaste— “her great patron paid her well to kill.”

“Baldassare—” Bell began, and then the last thing Guiscard said struck him. “You mean William of Ypres? But why under heaven should William of Ypres want the papal messenger killed? And how could he know Baldassare would go to Magdalene’s house?”

“Because he had arranged to meet him there? It is a common place of resort to those who wish to talk to William of Ypres. And murder is the first thing Ypres would think of to make trouble, coarse and brutal as he is.”

“Coarse and brutal I will allow, but not stupid,” Bell said. “William of Ypres does not need more trouble.”

The bishop had commented, however, that Ypres used the Old Priory Guesthouse for purposes other than lechery. Could one of Ypres’s men have met Baldassare there and killed him? For what? The pouch? But if the pouch held a decision in favor of the king and a bull granting legatine power to Winchester, William of Ypres should want it delivered.

Guiscard shrugged. “You were the one who needed reasons. If you were not bedazzled by her, you would know the whore was guilty and not look further.”

It was too common a sentiment for Bell to allow his anger to show. “Unfortunately, until I know who is truly guilty,” he said, “I will not know what happened to Baldassare’s pouch, and the bishop wants that pouch.”

“Pouch!” Guiscard exclaimed, paling. “What pouch?”

“A papal messenger carries a pouch—and it was not with the body.”

“My God,” Guiscard breathed, eyes wide. “Could he have been carrying the bull making our bishop legate?”

“It could be,” Bell said. “I think Winchester has that suspicion also and is greatly concerned that one of his enemies might have attacked Baldassare.”

Guiscard nodded. “The bishop is much overset by Baldassare’s death, and in such a way. I hope the pouch was not stolen and the bull destroyed.” He sighed. “He asked to see you as soon as you came in, but he is eating now.”

The word “eating” made Bell’s mouth water. He suddenly remembered that he had had no dinner and that the bishop was not above inviting him to join him in a meal if he had no other guests.

“Good,” he said. “I am starving. I will go in right now.” He suited the action to the words before Guiscard could rise or protest.

“My lord?”

Henry of Winchester lifted his head. “Bell. Do you have news for me?”

“Nothing definite about the pouch, my lord, except I can assure you that it is not in the Old Priory Guesthouse or the stable, and I have some hope that Baldassare was not wearing it when he was killed.”

“Then where is it?”

“That is what I do not know…yet.”

He should have said that he had a strong suspicion that Magdalene had found it and hidden it again elsewhere, perhaps in the church, but he could not get the words out. Because he dared not meet his master’s eyes, he looked fixedly at the tureen of stew standing before the bishop. Then the smell hit him, and he swallowed.

“Are you hungry? Would Magdalene not even feed you?” Winchester asked, laughing. “I thought she would do that.”

“She did offer me dinner, but I wished to search the house and stable while she and her women were fixed in one place.”

“Then sit down and eat, man. You must be starved.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Bell fetched a stool from against the wall and set it near the bishop’s chair. Henry pushed a loaf of bread and several dishes toward him. Bell pulled his knife from his belt and carved some slices off a roast haunch, which he laid on one piece of bread, then tore off another piece to scoop chunks of fish and vegetables from the bowl of stew.

The bishop frowned. “But if Baldassare died Wednesday night, Magdalene and her women had all day Thursday and all Friday morning to be rid of the pouch. Why did you search?”

Bell swallowed hastily but did not speak at once, trying to separate his angry jealousy from the information he had gained from questioning Magdalene’s women. “I think they are hiding something,” he said slowly, “but I do not believe it is knowledge of Baldassare’s death. For the other question…I searched because they kept telling me over and over that they would not be such fools as to leave anything of Baldassare’s in the house—”

“Ah, I see.” The bishop laughed again. “A wise move.”

“But I found nothing. And that brought to mind another important question. Why did Magdalene have nearly two days to search her own house and grounds before the news of Baldassare’s death came to you? The fault was not Magdalene’s. She did not find the body. Why is it that the monks did not send you word of a dead man on the porch of their church?”

Winchester watched Bell bend a slice of meat in half with his knife, push the point through it, and raise it to his mouth. “That is strange,” he said slowly. “I think you will have to ask Prior Benin—no, he is away at the mother house of his order and will not be back until tomorrow, so he cannot be faulted for this. It is Brother Paulinus, the sacristan, who is in charge.” Winchester smiled thinly. “Yes. Ask Brother Paulinus why I needed to hear this news a day late from a whore. And what else?”

Bell smiled also. Then, between chewing and swallowing, he told Winchester everything he had seen and learned, including the position and shape of the wound, which implied Baldassare had known and trusted his killer, and the fact that with the guesthouse gate locked at dark and the porter on duty at the priory gate, it must be one of those within the walls who was guilty.

“Or someone who came in before the gates were locked,” Winchester said. “But let us deal first with those known to us. You have questioned the women and do not believe them guilty?”

Bell shrugged. “No, not of murder.” Except Magdalene, he thought. She knows too much of murder. But he went on smoothly. “The mute is too small. Baldassare slept with the blind woman, Sabina, but I cannot see how she could have placed the knife so cleanly. And the idiot…no. One must experience Ella to believe her, but murder with a knife is not possible.”

“Mute? Blind? Idiot?” Winchester said, shaking his head doubtfully.

Bell laughed. “I had forgotten you have never been there and know none except Magdalene. She says she chose her women on the ‘hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil’ principle and that her wealthy and powerful clients are more comfortable with women they believe cannot identify them.”

“Very well. I never thought Magdalene or anyone she controlled guilty. She is too clever to get caught with a dead body so near her as the church porch or to permit so bloody a death. If she were guilty, her victim would be clean and neat and no one would ever know how, when, or where he had died. So, the monks and their guests?”

“I will have no trouble questioning the monks. I have already told Brother Godwine, the porter, that the way to escape the pope’s blame for allowing his messenger to be slaughtered on their doorstep is to find the killer and see that Baldassare is avenged.”

“Very good. Very good indeed.” Winchester hesitated, surprised by Bell’s expression, and then asked, “Why do you look so black?”

“Guests,” Bell snarled through set teeth. “Those women so befuddled me that I forgot to ask the names of the men who were with them the night Baldassare died.”

“Ah, well,” Winchester said indulgently, “that is not something that a few hours will change. Nor will the men disappear. Mostly the same men come there, and all her clients are recommended by others.”

“But she took Baldassare—”

“No, he had a recommendation of sorts,” Winchester said, his voice cold and his lips stiff. “Richard de Beaumeis told Baldassare to go to the Old Priory Guesthouse—only, he called it the Bishop of Winchester’s inn.”

Bell was surprised by the bishop’s controlled rage when he mentioned Beaumeis, for the name meant nothing to him, but the last phrase explained it. “I think that pup needs a lessoning,” he remarked, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.

“Not from you,” Winchester said quickly. “He knows you as my man. It will only give him another cause to complain of my persecution to his new master ” —the bishop’s mouth pursed and twisted as if he had swallowed a bitter draught— “the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Chapter Eight

21 April 1139

St. Mary Overy Priory

Meal finished, Bell set off for the priory again. He had wanted to go directly to the Old Priory Guesthouse, but had curbed that impulse because he knew it was bred more of his desire to see Magdalene once more than of any immediate need to learn the names of her clients. Having suppressed personal desire, he considered those he needed to speak to in the priory. Of the two who had dealt with the body—the sacristan’s assistant, Knud, and the infirmarian—he decided to deal with Knud first so he could confirm the lay brother’s observations of the body with those made by the infirmarian.

That intention, he thought as he rang the bell at the priory gate, might be more readily sought than accomplished. He had had some experience with Brother Paulinus and suspected he would not be allowed to question any of the monks without the sacristan’s interference. Bell grimaced, then hurriedly straightened his face as he heard the bar of the gate lifted. Anyone questioned in Paulinus’s presence was unlikely to say more than “yes” or “no.” But how to rid himself…of course! So beatific a smile bloomed on Bell’s face that Brother Godwine, who had opened the gate, was startled.

“Yes?” he asked, stepping back.

Bell promptly walked in. Still smiling, he said, “I must speak to Brother Paulinus.”

The porter blinked; few smiled so happily at the prospect of speaking to Brother Paulinus. That tempted Bell to grin more broadly, but he controlled himself. He was not, after all, certain of the outcome, but the questions he had to ask Paulinus could be highly embarrassing, and he hoped that the sacristan would not be inclined for more of his company after answering them. Thus Bell might be able to speak to Knud and the infirmarian alone.

After a longer wait than he thought necessary, he was ushered into a small visitor’s cell adjoining the lay brothers’ building. He had thought those cells had fallen out of use when the nuns gave up St. Mary Overy, but then he realized that a cell would be kept in case one of the novices or postulants had a female visitor. Shaking his head, he sat down on the stone ledge provided, undecided as to whether to laugh or be annoyed. He was amusing himself by wondering what sort of contamination Brother Paulinus thought he carried, when the monk entered through the opposite door and sat down behind the grille that separated the cell into two parts.

Bell immediately lost all sense of amusement; he would be able to hear well enough through the stone fretwork, but not be able to make out the sacristan’s expressions. To save an aspiring brother from the unhealthy excitement that might be engendered by seeing a woman’s face, the pierced stone was perfect. For examining the expression of someone answering questions about a murder, it was highly inappropriate. Bell stood up.