The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker (28 page)

She had got to know him so long ago, soon after her mother had died so horribly, fainting over her fire and burning to death. Father was wasting away to nothing, as were all the other people in the vill. Afterwards Jen promised herself she would never again suffer from a lack of food. To be without money was one thing, but to die the lingering death of starvation was hideous. Jen could feel herself fading away, sinking into a lassitude like her mother, with bleeding gums and loose teeth as scurvy attacked her undernourished body.

It was Sir Thomas who had fed her. He had come across her one day before her father died, when she was desperately looking for bird’s eggs in the soggy hedge just as another downpour drenched her. Past caring, she scarcely noticed that a rider was approaching, but when she heard the hooves, she glanced over her shoulder at him.

It was enough. Within a day she was sleeping in his bed, a fifteen-year-old girl with a knight who had been entranced by her. When her father died, she had begged room for herself and her brother, and Sir Thomas had agreed. He didn’t need to. She owed him a large debt for that reason. When he lost his manor he offered her freedom, but she refused it. Where else could she go? She had remained his lover and he had repaid her by feeding and protecting her and Hob.

She had to protect him now, in her turn.

It would not be easy. He had a great sense of debt to the men who had remained with him after he lost his manor, and Hamond was one of his longest-serving men. The dead clerk and Karvinel had confirmed that Hamond had been in the gang that attacked them south of Exeter on their way back from Topsham. The knowledge that Hamond had been killed on the man’s word had sent Sir Thomas into a cold rage at first, swearing that he would avenge his man, but then, later, he had taken Jen to his bed filled with a languishing sadness.

‘He’s gone; my lad is dead, hanging from a gibbet, for all the citizens of Exeter to point and laugh while he swings. It’s terrible. And he was nowhere near the robbery.’

She had soothed him, rocking him as he lay upon her breast, gentling him as she might their child one day if she ever conceived, and at last he succumbed to sleep, but he wouldn’t be able to forget that his man had died in that demeaning manner. He could never forgive the city, and especially not the merchant who had condemned Hamond. He wanted his vengeance, and he would have it.

That was Jen’s greatest fear as she hurried along the streets. She was convinced that she would hear that the merchant had been struck down in the streets, stabbed and left dying, but fully able to point his finger at his assassin, the leader of the gang he said had attacked him and robbed him.

But her anxiety was misplaced. In the fifth tavern she entered, the Cock, she found Sir Thomas sitting at the back of a gloomy hall filled with smoke from the damp logs that the host had optimistically set in the central hearth.

He sat on a stool, a slumped, rather sad figure huddled in his cloak and gulping wine from a pint pot. Seeing her shadow, he started, then gave her a lopsided grin. ‘So, little lark. You’ve come to fetch me home, have you?’

‘I thought you had been killed. I thought you had stuck your dagger in him and been caught. Why didn’t you come straight back with Hob? You could have sent a message with him to stop me worrying.’

He took her hand and gently tugged her towards him, then pulled her onto his lap and rested his head upon her breast. ‘Because I saw this Karvinel in the crowd. Your brother pointed him out to me and I followed him home. I know where he lives. Then he went to an alehouse and I followed him again. I could have killed him there, Jen, if I’d wanted to. I could have slipped my blade between his shoulders and left him dead in the gutter. Easy. But before I kill him, I want to know
why
he did it.’

‘You left him and came here?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘No. After the tavern, he returned to his house where he collected his wife, and they went off to another house where there was a Christmas feast; I ate from the alms dish at the door to find out whose house it was. It is owned by Vincent le Berwe, the steward told me. He’s the City’s Receiver.’

‘Does that tell you something about Karvinel?’

‘No, nothing. I still don’t know why he had Hamond killed,’ Sir Thomas said. ‘But I will!’

Why
had
the bastard sent his fellow to the gallows? All that day, Sir Thomas had been with Hamond in the city. Hamond had walked with Sir Thomas to the city gate and waved him off only a half hour or so before Karvinel ran up to the city’s gate and pointed out Hamond as being a felon.

Not knowing was dreadful, but Sir Thomas
would
find out. A firm resolution filled him with the warm satisfaction of revenge to come. Yes. Sir Thomas would not let Karvinel get away with his crime. Sir Thomas was a knight and he demanded satisfaction from the mere merchant who had murdered his servant. That was what it was: murder by proxy. Karvinel was too cowardly to kill Hamond in a fair fight, so he sought Hamond’s death by deceit, telling people Hamond had robbed him. And then had Hamond executed by the city.

‘You could have been seen – been captured,’ Jen said fearfully.

‘Not today,’ he said. ‘No one is looking today.’ But his attention had already returned to Karvinel. As soon as he could, he would catch the
shit
and beat the truth out of him. Before killing him.

Adam saw Luke at the corner of the chorister’s block as he left the Cathedral, his box of candles in his hand.

It was chilly out in the open air again, and now, with the dusk giving way to full night, Adam was tired and cold. He gripped his box of candles to his chest as he hurried over the grass towards his chamber.

But the boy walking ahead of him was too tempting.

Adam had never liked Luke. Truth to tell, he hated the cocky little shite. He hated the way Luke always contrived to be smart and clean, the way he was always being commended for his efforts, the way the little brat accepted the compliments of Canons and clerks for the purity of his singing, like a little male whore with that smug, smarmy smile on his fat face.

It wasn’t so easy for the men about the place, Adam knew. He’d done everything in his power to learn the lessons he’d been given from the first day he entered the Choristers, but he’d failed. The letters moved on the page before his eyes, he couldn’t make head nor tail of them, and the pictures were as bad. What was a man supposed to do when the reed in his hand just didn’t work? He couldn’t help the fact that his sketches and drawings were smudged and out of proportion. And try as he might, he couldn’t make the scenes he drew look neat. Where others formed pretty little pictures with balance and elegance, his ended up as the worst of cartoons, with men and women looking sharp-faced, bestial.

His time here must be drawing to an end soon. He couldn’t remain with any likelihood of preferment. The Canons would grumble, asking that someone else be brought in to take the spare place, someone who would be of more direct and immediate use to the Cathedral. Perhaps he’d be lucky, get offered a post as an acolyte. He could stay in the Cathedral provided he agreed to continue looking after the candles, delivering loaves to the older members of the choir, and a few other duties.

It almost made him throw down his candles in rage and disgust. Why should he be cast off, when these little bastards were allowed to stay? They had other places they could go to, they had homes; in Luke’s case, a wealthy home. Everyone knew how well off his people were. He came from the Soth family. It was
unfair
!

Luke was still walking slowly ahead of him. As Adam watched, Luke pulled out a lump of bread. He broke off a piece just as Adam saw an object that would allow him to take out his revenge in a mean and cruel manner on one of his most hated rivals.

The first Luke knew was when he heard the slap of sandalled feet behind him.

After seeing Henry in the hall, Luke had been musing over the celebrations for Holy Innocents’ Day and wondering whether he could somehow escape the humiliation of waiting upon the new boy-Bishop. Sadly he came to the conclusion that there was no escape: any attempt would show Henry that he had won, that he had succeeded in destroying Luke’s equilibrium.

Luke’s appetite had wakened. It felt like days since the feast in Stephen’s house; Luke sometimes thought that the whole of his life was spent in hunger. The amounts of food given to him and the other choirboys were never enough.

He was about to slip the first piece of bread into his mouth when he heard the feet. There was a hollow, empty-sounding rattle as Adam dropped his candle-box, and Luke was suddenly convinced that a ghost was coming to grab him, maybe to pull him down under the ground with him. Squeaking in terror, he felt strong arms grip him, felt himself swung up and over, upside-down, and his face was heading towards the ground.

Henry frowned at all the other desks, but before he could make a search, he heard the muffled cry from outside. Forgetting his pot of orpiment, he rose and went to the door. There, in the dim light that streamed from behind him in the doorway, he saw a figure lying on the ground. He felt the flesh of his scalp creep as he wondered whether it was a dead man, but then he realised that the body was lifting itself up.

He heard the sobs and frowned. It was weak to cry; but he would help if he could. Only when he arrived at Luke’s side did he recognise who it was, and the hand he had put out in sympathy stayed in mid-air as he realised that his sympathy might not be agreeable to this victim.

‘What in God’s name is going on?’ roared Gervase. He had been in his hall when he heard the first hiccupping cry, and now he peered from the door to see, as he thought, Henry leaning over Luke, having pushed him or thumped him.

Henry’s face turned to him, almost white in the cold moonlight, and Gervase instantly marked him down as guilty. He stormed out and went to Luke’s side, picking him up and then wincing. ‘Are you all right?’

The boy had been pushed headfirst into a gutter, which was filled with horse manure and dung from the animals which had passed through there today. Luke’s face was a grimace of revulsion and hatred as he tried to keep the tears at bay. ‘Someone picked me up and threw me into that,’ he declared with a sob.

‘Was it Henry?’

‘I haven’t done anything, I was in the hall!’ Henry stated emphatically.

Gervase’s anger burst. ‘You and Luke have always had this silly dispute, haven’t you? And now you’ve made him suffer like this, you little heathen. Your behaviour is a disgrace to the Cathedral and to the robes you wear, you devil. My God, I am tempted to rip the robe from you and throw you from the precinct at once!’

‘I didn’t do anything! I came out to help him when I heard him cry out!’

‘I saw you there, pushing at him, you devil! Get back inside and go to your room. I’ll not have you trying any more tricks on this poor child. Go on! Go!’

Henry turned and shuffled away, snivelling. Luke was still weeping as he was wiped and cleaned as best he could be by the Succentor before being led away to have his face washed.

When they had all gone, Adam slipped out from his hiding-place, collected his empty candle box, and then, after a moment’s thought, picked up the loaf, which had fallen on the grass and had missed following Luke into the sewer. With a skip to his steps, Adam made his way back to his own little chamber in the Close, chortling as he remembered Luke’s panicked squeak. He wouldn’t forget that for many a long month.

On the day after Christmas, Simon woke in the early hours to find Baldwin in the hall with him. The knight was squatting by the side of the fire, ruminatively prodding at the coals with a stick, sipping every now and again from a pot of ale at his side.

‘Baldwin! Are you all right?’

‘Oh, Simon, I am sorry to have woken you. I thought I was being quiet. Ah well, I shall leave you. My apologies.’ He stood and collected up his pot.

‘No, sit down again. What’s the matter?’

Nothing loath, the knight dropped onto a stool beside the fire again. ‘I cannot help but feel that something bad is going on here, Simon, and the feeling is growing stronger. Someone is going to suffer unnecessarily and unfairly, I think, unless we do something to help him.’

‘Obviously you mean the poor devil in gaol.’

‘Yes,’ Baldwin sighed. ‘That poor apprentice. I can see no reason why he should be confined, and if we do nothing he may well be executed for something he didn’t do. The only motive we have been given is that the lad might have robbed his master – and yet there is no money or jewels to prove that he did. They say he could have run away and hidden them – but no one can show where he might have put them. No, it is more likely that he had nothing to do with the murder or the theft. They came as a complete surprise to him.’

‘Then who did have a reason to kill the glover?’

‘That is the all-important question,’ Baldwin said heavily. ‘Jolinde had bought the arsenic, but what would be
his
motive? Although I am intrigued by Jolinde and Peter delivering the money and gemstones to Ralph. It is significant, too, that Peter also contributed to the death of the felon.’

‘You think one of the outlaws might have decided to kill him?’

‘It is possible. Unlikely but possible.’

‘And the Dean asked us to look into the Secondary’s death as well,’ Simon pointed out, yawning.

‘Yes. That in itself is odd. Why should he ask us to enquire into that when he had the Coroner there to investigate?’ He scowled at the fire, trying to make sense of it all.

Simon leaned across to take Baldwin’s pot from him. Sipping from it he said, ‘There is one obvious conclusion: the Dean and Chapter don’t trust the Coroner.’

‘Possibly – and yet I find it hard to believe. Coroner Roger is transparently innocent, especially now he has suggested other courses for us to look into. He didn’t need to introduce us to the City Bailiff.’

‘Fine, so if we assume he is straight, perhaps there was another motive behind the Dean’s suggestion that we should help. Maybe he feared that the Coroner himself could get into deep water.’