The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘The shit!’ Coroner Roger swore as they left the Secondary slumped near his cold hearth. ‘Miserable, canting shite! I knew Ralph – and to think of that decent man being set up by that pair of turds makes me want to throw up. How dare they!’

‘You can do nothing about the boy,’ Simon reminded him. ‘Benefit of Clergy.’

‘True, but I can speak to his father, and arrest the sod if I can find any evidence – and I bloody will! Are you coming along?’

Baldwin set his head to one side and considered, ‘I should like to join you, but I have another investigation which has been given to me. Before you go, however, we should tell you something we learned this morning.’ Baldwin told the Coroner all that they had heard from Coppe, finishing with the discovery that the basan and cordwain were missing.

‘Thank you for that. Not that I see how it can help us,’ the Coroner grunted.

‘It may be easier than you imagine. Basan and cordwain could be used for glovemaking, bagmaking, or any number of other products – but Vincent trades in such things. He sold them to Ralph in the first place. Ask whether he has heard of any for sale. Ask Karvinel too. Someone would be likely to offer him that sort of stuff. And now I suppose I should seek Adam’s poisoner. I cannot believe his wild allegation, but he gave us a suspect: the Chorister Luke.’

Luke sat numbly in the chamber before his desk and tried to make sense of Adam’s sudden collapse. Gervase had left him in the care of the Clerk of the Lady Chapel while he ran to see how he could help Adam, but now he had returned and was standing behind the Chorister. It was a relief for both to see Baldwin and Simon.

They entered without knocking and Simon nodded his head reassuringly to Gervase, trying to convey a little of his conviction that the child was innocent. Baldwin walked straight to Luke, taking up a stool en route and seating himself before the boy.

Luke found himself gazing into the darkly intense eyes of the knight from Furnshill. It was disconcerting. The man appeared to be looking through Luke’s own eyes and into his soul. ‘Sir?’

‘Luke, Adam has made a dreadful allegation against you,’ Baldwin said slowly and distinctly. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘He said I had poisoned him. Gervase told me.’

‘That is quite right. Now you are too young to be accused in a court, and even if you were, you would be safe because you are within the Cathedral, so you fall under Canon Law. I want you to speak the truth to me. Have you ever tried to poison someone in the precinct?’

‘No, sir,’ Luke responded immediately. ‘I wouldn’t know how to.’

‘Luke, this was on the floor in the room,’ Gervase said and passed Baldwin the little flask of orpiment.

‘Arsenic?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Luke, do you recognise this bottle?’

‘Yes. It’s like the ones we use here,’ he said, looking up at Gervase for confirmation. ‘I had been using some for a picture. Look!’ Luke said and showed Baldwin his work. The golden-yellow tints gleamed even in the meagre light of the hall. ‘But I didn’t have it with me at the meal.’

‘So you didn’t put any of this upon Adam’s food?’

‘No,’ said Luke, adding with simple honesty, ‘although I would have if I had thought of it. He’s always bullying me.’

Behind him, Gervase rolled his eyes heavenwards. The little devils always had to make some sort of lunatic comment. He saw the Bailiff cover his mouth with a hand, trying to smother the chuckle.

‘Anyway, sir,’ Luke said, ‘wouldn’t someone see if their food was covered in yellow stuff?’

Baldwin nodded. ‘I rather think they would, Luke.’

Gervase heard a certain conviction in his voice that made him peer doubtfully, but before he could say anything there was a light knock at the door. He sighed and went to open it.

In the doorway stood young Henry. ‘What is it?’ Gervase demanded. ‘We’re busy.’

‘Sir, it’s about Adam.’

Sir Thomas waited in John Renebaud’s tavern until Hob returned. The place suited Sir Thomas’s mood. Dark, crowded and evil-smelling, it fed his bitter and vengeful spirit.

He knew that Hob and Jen had a touching faith in him. On Hob’s part it was solely due to his simpleness, but Jen was a more complicated soul. She professed her love for him – but then she would. He was her protector. It was little more than the affection due to a lord and master from one of his serfs; it was the duty of a woman to her mate. No more. Probably when he, Sir Thomas, was dead, she would easily slip into another man’s bed.

Early death held no fears for Sir Thomas. He was well into his middle age already at thirty-four; he had lived longer than many of the folks with whom he had grown up. The men had died of disease or fighting; the women from childbirth or starvation since when there were famines the men were favoured with food in order that they might produce more. Women and children must starve.

Sir Thomas had lost everything. The small wars about his manorial demesne had wasted his whole fortune. There was nothing left but a few people, none of whom stayed with him anticipating riches, but from a sense of loyalty and their duty. Hamond, who had been of the same age as Sir Thomas, had been his most devoted friend and servant. Hamond, his longest-serving companion, had grown up with him, and yet he was dead now. Chivalry demanded payment. There was a responsibility lying upon Sir Thomas to honour the debt; Hamond had served him faithfully through his life, and now Sir Thomas must repay that death with blood. The blood of the man who had willed his execution.

He knocked back the last of his mazer of wine and wiped at his lips with the back of his hand. The merchants of any city were a corrupt set of pirates, out to steal whatever they could from anyone with less money and fewer opportunities to protect themselves, but the men here had surprised Sir Thomas with their avarice and brutality. It didn’t matter to him particularly if another man should die in order that he should survive the richer, but he was amazed that merchants should decide whether a man should live or die purely upon the basis of a potential benefit to them. It was unpleasant, an inversion of legitimate behaviour. It was one thing to travel abroad and fight Frenchmen or Moors, taking their wealth, but doing the same with Englishmen seemed wrong.

As he sat mulling over the black thoughts that chased themselves around his head, he noticed a figure standing near the fire. It was him again: Vincent le Berwe. The two men caught each other’s eye and Sir Thomas nodded slightly. His paymaster acknowledged him with a slow smile, nervous that someone else might witness it.

Before Sir Thomas could go over and speak to his client, he saw a cowering shadow slip through the doorway. ‘Hob! Over here, lad!’ he growled.

‘Master, I have seen him,’ Hob said expectantly. His face was like that of a dog, Sir Thomas thought, a dog whipped daily but still eager to be welcomed.

‘Where?’

‘At the Cathedral. He was going there alone, Master.’

‘Good,’ Sir Thomas muttered. He rose. At the door, while Hob waited patiently, a vacuous smile on his face, Sir Thomas considered his options. It was always dangerous to go to the Cathedral, but he must question Karvinel. A bell tolled and Sir Thomas glanced up. It was the signal for Mass – which meant Karvinel’s woman would be alone. Smiling grimly, he set off to Karvinel’s house, Hob scampering at his side like a hound out for a walk.

It was one of the reasons why Sir Thomas had been prepared to allow Hob to remain with him, this happy-go-lucky attitude. He never moaned, never tried to blame others for things, and provided he was occasionally praised he remained content. It took little to please him. If it hadn’t been for Jen, Sir Thomas would not have considered keeping Hob at his side, but Jen made it clear that the price for her body was that her brother should also be looked after. Sir Thomas had thought to point out to her that she was already his, and should he decide to rid himself of her half-witted brother, there was little she could do to stop him, but he knew that the threat was empty. He enjoyed Jen as a willing bed-mate, and if her fee was board and lodging for Hob, Sir Thomas was happy to accept.

It was strange how some lads were born without the brain of a dormouse, he reflected. Perhaps it was the horror of seeing his mother’s body which had addled the boy’s brains. Sir Thomas had heard such things could happen. However, the idle thought drifted from him as he approached the house of Nicholas Karvinel.

‘Wait here, Hob,’ he said, and knocked loudly upon the door.

He had expected a stout doorkeeper, but to his faint surprise there was no answer for a long period and then a young urchin opened it. ‘Yes?’

Sir Thomas blinked. ‘Who are you?’

The boy glared. ‘Servant to Master Karvinel.’

Sir Thomas smiled. ‘In that case, is your lady in the house?’

‘Who is it?’ came Juliana’s voice. She was in the hall and Sir Thomas walked past the boy along the screens passage. Entering the hall itself, he found himself in a smallish, slightly shabby room. A fire smouldered meanly on the hearth, two benches were ranged against the walls, a moth-eaten tapestry hung on one wall and a table was strewn with poor wooden bowls and plates.

On a chair by the table was Juliana Karvinel, drinking from a jug of wine. Seeing him, she stood and gave him a disconcerted smile. ‘Sir?’

‘My Lady,’ he said gruffly, bowing low. ‘I am Sir Thomas of Exmouth, Knight Bachelor. My apologies for following you here, but I saw you at the Christmas Mass and I was ravished. I had to find out where you lived.’

She gaped. It was easy to see that she was at once flattered and worried. ‘You… you saw me?’

‘And you saw me, my Lady.’

‘No, no, I am sure I…’

‘Why don’t you send the boy away and we can talk?’

She met his suggestion with a simper and a half-duck of her head, then bawled for the boy and sent him off to the tavern until he should be called for.

Returning to meet Sir Thomas’s smile she motioned with a hand towards the door at the back of the hall.

‘Why not?’ he said. He allowed her to lead the way. ‘It is very quiet and that boy said he was your servant – are all your servants away?’

‘If you mean “have they been sent away”, I only wish they had been! No,’ she said disdainfully. ‘My husband has failed in business and this necessitates the loss of all our servants. Surely you have heard about his evil luck? He has lost almost everything in failed ventures and thefts, and now we must make ends meet as best we can. Although,’ she added confidentially, ‘I don’t know that I can stand it much more. Not only has he taken away my maid and my small pleasures, now he seems to have gone mad. He tells me that he can renew our fortunes. I tell you, I begin to doubt whether he is sane.’

‘A merchant can hardly succeed without his servants. Where would he be without his staff: his bottler, his gardener, his steward? Without them he would be a poor kind of a host or companion to other merchants. And what would he do without his clerk?’ Sir Thomas paused as if studying the poor tapestry at the wall.

‘It is shoddy, isn’t it?’ she said, standing at his side and sneering up at it. ‘I am afraid it was the best we could afford after the last of the robberies here and the fire.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled. ‘It must have been terrible for you.’

‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled and stood very close at his side.

It took him only a moment to reach an arm out to her, and he felt her shiver deliciously as he pulled her towards him. But she froze when she felt his dagger’s point beneath her chin.

Henry blinked with concern as he stood before the serious-faced knight and his friend, but his fear was not based upon the two men before him; his concern was focused on the figure whom he knew was standing behind him: the Succentor.

‘I know that Adam has accused Luke of trying to poison him and it’s not true,’ he asserted.

Baldwin had an easy manner with children. Simon often found it annoying that while he was careful to behave with suitable, as he saw it, distant authority to children, they often responded far better to his friend Baldwin’s solemnly respectful manner. It appeared to be working yet again right now. While Gervase hovered in the background, scowling viciously at the back of Henry’s head and Simon tried to maintain a diffident aloofness, the child met Baldwin’s gaze with a quiet conviction as he told what had happened the previous night, how Adam had assaulted Luke and left Henry to take the blame.

Luke was near to bursting with fury as he heard what Adam had done ‘You mean he attacked me? I thought it might be him at our meal today but when he was poisoned I forgot it. If only the poison had killed him!’

Baldwin nodded. ‘I can understand your thinking, although at present he may wish the same, after being forced to be sick and then having a bladder squirt something revolting up his arse. I don’t know about you, but having all that happen in front of his Canon can hardly make him feel good.’

Luke and Henry exchanged a quick look. They were by no means allies, but there was a mutual satisfaction in knowing that Adam had suffered. It mitigated the bullying they had endured at the older youth’s hands. Luke frowned briefly, glancing at Gervase, thinking of how Henry had been thrashed the previous evening. Henry saw his look and grinned. Both had been beaten worse by Canons and others.

Baldwin continued, ‘We must still discover where the poison came from.’

Simon looked at Luke. ‘The bread Adam ate was not the loaf which he stole from you?’

‘No. It was a new one. The one I had was older – it had dried with age.’ Luke hesitated, then said, ‘I got that loaf from Peter, sir, the night that he collapsed.’

‘Did you eat any of it?’ Gervase asked.

‘No, sir. I was going to last night, but Adam stole it before I–’

‘So he wasn’t poisoned by eating the same one which Peter ate,’ Gervase said.

‘We don’t know that,’ Simon pointed out. ‘He may have eaten it before going into the meal.’

‘But what then of the bottle?’ Gervase asked.

Another thought had struck Simon. ‘Tell me – when you eat, is the bread brought in later with the meats, or is it served on the table already when you arrive?’

‘Oh, it’s already there.’

‘So anyone could have gone in and poisoned the bread, knowing who would eat it,’ Simon said with a look at Baldwin.

Baldwin stood staring thoughtfully at the ground. ‘And the killer left the pot behind to implicate someone else in the room.’

‘One thing is certain, Adam was not poisoned by that orpiment. It is too bright. No, he was poisoned with something else.’

‘Yes. Gervase, could you tell us when this pot would have gone missing?’

‘I noticed it was missing last night,’ Henry said. ‘I thought Luke had taken it. He often takes different colours for his pictures.’ He hesitated, realised that his words sounded snide, and added, ‘He is the best at drawing and painting among us all.’

Baldwin smiled gently. It was clear to him that there was a considerable amount of rivalry between the two boys, but he was also sure that Henry was offering an olive branch.

‘Who has access to the Choristers’ hall?’ Baldwin asked the Succentor.

‘Everyone. Adam to change the candles, another to sweep and clean, the Choristers, me… If you want the truth, I suppose anyone who came to the Cathedral could drop in here,’ Gervase said.

‘And the Canon’s house – I suppose the same is true there?’

‘Provided the poisoner went there when all was quiet, yes.’