A Twisted Vengeance

2 A Bloodied Angel

Kate had sent a servant from the maison dieu to let her mother and the others at the Martha House know where Sister Dina was, and that she was safe. Dame Eleanor and Sister Brigida had just arrived when Magistra Matilda beckoned for Kate to come see for herself that Dina had suffered bruises and a small scrape, but nothing to account for all the blood on her gown.

“Dina, did you injure someone in defending yourself?” Kate asked softly.

Though awake, Sister Dina stared off at the ceiling, mute and unmoving.

Perhaps Sister Brigida might have more success – she had been Dina’s good friend in Strasbourg. Kate asked her to try. She did, but to no avail. Dina would speak when she was ready. Kate was content that she bide there for now, until she was herself once more and could tell them whether she could bear to return to the Martha House.

“What of her shift?” Kate asked Matilda. “Was there blood on the shift she wore beneath her gown?” She would have worn only that if awakened by an intruder.

The sister gestured to the pile of clothes. Beneath the gown Kate found the shift, encrusted with blood. So it had been quite soaked. Kate ached with grief for the woman’s ordeal.

“Yes, it is a horror to consider what gentle Dina suffered in the night,” Matilda whispered. “A child already so haunted, so frightened. May God watch over her.” The sister crossed herself.

“God expects us to watch over her, Magistra Matilda. Her life is in our hands.”

“I understand, Dame Katherine. You may rest easy.”

No one might rest easy. Especially now, as the city prepared for war. But Kate simply thanked the sister, letting Brigida be the one to stress to Matilda that either she or Sister Clara, or Dame Eleanor, should be summoned the moment Dina seemed ready and able to speak. “Send for one of us at once.”

Magistra Matilda bristled. “Do you not trust us to care for Sister Dina?”

Brigida asked her forgiveness; she was merely worried for her dear friend. “You know how timid she is, how she jumps at loud noises or sudden movements. I did not mean to imply a lack of confidence or trust, just that she may need to see a more familiar face. We are most grateful for your kindness.”

On that warmer note, the four of them withdrew. As they stepped out of the maison dieu, Kate was glad to see how peacefully Lille and Ghent sat with the sister who had watched them. She handed over the hounds’ leads, and all six crossed Castlegate together, separating at the hedgerow gate. Dame Eleanor, who had been quiet all the while, even now deferred to Brigida, who thanked Kate and Berend for taking Dina to safety. Eleanor merely nodded to them, then continued on through the gate.

“I do not understand your mother,” Berend said as they watched them depart.

“You are not the first to say that, nor will you be the last. Perhaps she is irked that we found Dina.” They turned toward the kitchen. “Before we are set upon with questions, I would have your thoughts, Berend. What do you think happened?”

“Are you asking whether this might be the work of soldiers?” He shook his head at her nod. “Knowing so little, I cannot say.”

No longer able to hold back the emotion she had choked down, Kate sank onto the bench beneath the kitchen eaves, letting the tears come. Lille and Ghent settled at her feet.

Berend crouched between them. “You think of Maud?” Kate’s dearest childhood friend, who had been raped and brutally murdered.

“And the shattering of the sisters’ beautiful, trusting calm. I took comfort in the peace of their presence. I saw another way to live.” Without fear, without constant vigilance. “But it was an illusion.” She blotted her eyes with her sleeve as Marie’s voice rose inside. “The girls must not see me this way. Go in. And take Lille and Ghent. I will compose myself and join you in a moment.”

“Of course.” Berend straightened with a grunt. “God help me, I grow too old for such a posture, eh?”

She leaned her head back against the wall and mirrored his gentle smile, watching him as he rubbed his own eyes with his three-fingered hand, then motioned to the hounds to follow him. Strong, steadfast Berend. He never failed her. He opened the door now, laughing at something Marie said in her most imperious tone, throwing it back with a silly comment rewarded by both girls dissolving in laughter.

Bless him, with a simple gesture he eased her back into her own household. All were well, happy, and mostly at peace. Mostly. Marie, a delicately beautiful child, had arrived in York grieving her parents and feeling betrayed by all her kin. In the course of a year and a half she had begun to thaw, but her temper still flared at perceived slights or disappointments. At times she reminded Kate of her own mother.

Hunger and thirst roused Kate. She ordered her thoughts, then rose and followed Berend inside.

All the household was gathered in the kitchen – Jennet, Matt, Marie, Petra, Berend, Lille and Ghent. Though it was just past dawn, the tension of the past hours had brought them all fully awake. The bread Berend had left to rise during the night had been baked. Marie’s work. Kate thanked her, ruffling her curly hair. The child pretended irritation.

“Matt helped. He feared I would burn myself.” Marie sighed and rolled her eyes. Forced to grow up too quickly in her mother’s house in Calais, cooking for the household, Marie took pride in helping Berend.

“Have you saved me some bread?” Kate asked, sliding onto the bench beside Berend.

Marie handed her a warm loaf. Berend poured her a bowl of ale, then returned to his own pieces of bread, slathering them with butter and cheese and eating them quickly, washing them down with good ale. Pulling her small loaf apart, Kate asked him to tell the others what they had discovered. Matt and Jennet both sat up, eager to hear it.

When Berend had told all he knew, Jennet added what she had learned about the lock on the kitchen. “And then Sister Clara shepherded them all to the hall to pray.” Jennet shook her head. “There is a time for prayer and a time for action.”

“I could not agree more,” said Kate. “Anything else?”

“I went to Griffin’s lodgings, told him he was needed. His landlady was not cordial about the early hour.” Jennet helped herself to more ale.

“So there it is.” Kate nodded to Berend, Matt, and Jennet. “I want to hear your thoughts.”

“Sister Dina rarely leaves the house,” said Matt. “I cannot think she has drawn attention to herself. So this was not an attack aimed at her.”

“But people are doubtless gossiping about Dame Eleanor’s beguines,” said Jennet. “They will be known to be young women, and with all the soldiers crowding the city …”

“Sister Dina has difficulty understanding us. Or being understood. Though I am beginning to catch much of what she says, it is a struggle,” said Matt. “Might she have misunderstood someone looking for help?”

“In her bedchamber in a private garden before dawn?” Jennet snorted.

Matt blushed. Marie giggled.

“Berend says many of the men are left to find their own beds. He’s warned us not to go out after dark unattended,” said Petra. “Maybe Matt is right.”

“My niece the peace weaver,” Kate whispered.

But she did wonder. It was true that Dina’s speech sounded to all of them like a mixture of languages, but Brigida, Clara, and Eleanor were able to converse with her. Her efforts to learn to speak to the people of York were improving, and now it seemed more a matter of being so timid that Dina chose to go nowhere, see no one, without having one of the others with her. Fortunately she was a skilled sempster, so as her reputation spread, the work came to her.

“Why did Dina not cry out?” Kate wondered aloud. “How is it that she fled rather than calling out for help? Why did Nan not tell the others about her mother? Is caring for the ill not within their calling? Why did my mother assign that room to Dina? I have so many questions.”

She sighed as everyone turned toward her. “I know that I swore before all of you that I would not be swept up in my mother’s Martha House scheme. But I have come to have great affection for all three sisters, and none of them, especially Sister Dina, should suffer for my mother’s poor judgment.”

“I will see what I might learn about Agnes and her maidservant, and whether Nan is caring for an ailing mother. If not, what she’s doing,” said Jennet.

Kate nodded. “I need to see Griselde and Clement at the guesthouse today. I will ask what they know of Agnes and her boarders, and what her late husband did on his long journeys. They keep their ears open about such things.”

“Will Sister Brigida take us to Master Frost’s house for our lesson today?” Marie asked. Brigida, who had been schooled for a time in a convent in Paris, was tutoring Hazel Frost, the daughter of Kate’s cousin William, as well as Petra and Marie. They assembled at the Frost house because Hazel was often too unwell to move about in the city. Marie, born in Calais, spoke French, but not the elegant Parisian French that Brigida was teaching the others, so she had insisted on being included.

“Until we know what happened, and whether our households are safe, you will stay close to home,” said Kate. “If Sister Brigida is willing to tutor you and Petra this morning, she may do so in the hall. But you will respect her decision about whether or not she wishes to do so.” She looked pointedly at Marie. “Is that clear?”

Marie nodded and pushed aside her bread to lay her head down on her folded arms. Petra whispered, “Clear,” and went to sit by Ghent, resting her hand on his back. He sighed and sank lower into rest.

Kate smiled at Petra and smoothed Marie’s hair. “Bless you,” she whispered, before turning back to Berend and the others. “I want to know who frightened Dina last night,” she said, as if the interruption had not happened. “It might have been quite innocent. Soldiers spilling out of the taverns drunk, brawling … One might have lost his way.”

“Except that he was so quiet,” said Jennet.

Kate agreed.

“You mentioned a boat,” said Matt. “Someone bleeding so badly, would they be able to row?”

“So he had an accomplice.” Berend nodded.

It seemed likely to Kate as well. “Whoever it was,” she said, “they might pose a further danger to the sisters, or to some other household in the city. We need to know.”

“We might talk to the knights who are now your tenants on High Petergate,” said Berend.

Kate owned a pair of properties on High Petergate, near the minster, two houses side by side. One she operated as a guesthouse, managed by her late husband’s former factor, Clement, and his wife, Griselde. The other house had been empty for a while and was now leased to a knight, Sir Alan Bennet, who was sharing it with some of the other well-to-do knights arriving in the city.

“They will be watching for any trouble that might suggest Duke Henry has spies in the city,” Berend continued. “They will have men watching the rivers and the gates. They might have seen or heard something last night.”

Kate disliked the current use of the house, but the enterprising knight who had leased it to accommodate his fellows, at a fee, of course, had laid down a handsome deposit against damage and assured her that he would say nothing to anyone of the comings and goings next door at her guesthouse. The truth was, with Edmund of York’s call to arms, the house would have been requisitioned had she not made her own, undoubtedly more lucrative, arrangement, and perhaps the guesthouse as well, robbing her of income and the worthies of York of a venue for distraction from their mounting anxiety. “You’re quite right, Berend. I will pay them a call.”

“Or if Brigida comes for the little ones, I might do it myself,” he said. “The men might be more likely to talk to me.”

“Or they will be too busy recruiting you,” said Jennet.

Berend was laughingly assuring them that was not his purpose when out the window Kate saw Thomas Holme, her neighbor and business partner, come out of his house, glance toward hers, then hasten down the adjoining alley toward Castlegate. He had dressed with care, in the sort of attire he wore as alderman, or for guild events.

Guild events. “I almost forgot the guild meeting called for this morning.” Collecting Jennet, Kate hastened across the garden to the hall and up to her bedchamber to dress for the occasion.

It bothered her that Thomas had glanced this way but hurried on. It was their custom to walk to the guildhall on Fossgate together. More cause for unease on a morning when Kate’s world was tumbling down around her.

“I shall go directly from the meeting to High Petergate.” Kate cursed as they discovered a tear in the hem of the dress she wished to wear.

“Quickly mended.” Jennet helped her step out of the gown so she might work on it.

“We know so little about any of this. My mother and her cursed secretiveness.”

“She is skilled in dancing far from the point,” Jennet muttered as she worked.

“They say that mothers and daughters are always in conflict. Did you and your mother agree?”

“I never knew her.”

Kate felt herself blush. Jennet had been abandoned as an infant. “Forgive me.”

“It was an honest mistake, on a morning when you have much on your mind, Dame Katherine. Ready.” She held the gown up for inspection.

“You are a wonder.”

A pleased shrug as Jennet helped her with the small silver buttons. “Your mother would approve of this one.”

“She would find some fault with it, you can be sure.”

Jennet stepped back with a satisfied nod. “It should not take long to discover whether or not Nan has been sitting with an ailing mother. What else might I do while you are at the meeting?”

Kate thought while Jennet brushed out the tangles in her hair. “It would be good to know with whom Dina has had contact. Who has brought sewing to her. Women sometimes forget that a sempster has ears, or, in Dina’s case, knowing her troubles with our speech, they might have spoken freely in her presence thinking she would not understand. Too freely. About something that must not be repeated.”

“Do you think it likely a customer sent a man to silence a sempster?”

“Now that I hear it in your words, no. But we cannot dismiss any ideas, however unlikely. I want to know the names of her clients.”

“I will snoop,” Jennet agreed. “Though we might already know the answers to many of our questions if only you and Dame Eleanor were able to talk.”

“We would, I know. But life is never so simple.”

“No.” Jennet finished tucking Kate’s hair into a silver crispinette and gave her an encouraging hug. “We will find out what happened in that room last night. And Dame Eleanor need never know it was us. Her man Griffin can take all the credit.”

“That would require our working together – Griffin and our household.”

“It would make sense, would it not?”

“Of what use is he? He knows York little more than do the sisters.”

“Not entirely true,” said Jennet. “It is said he has family both in the city and a day’s ride from here. He was away visiting them in the countryside for almost a week. Just returned. And he has explored the city.”

“You have been following him?”

Jennet grinned. “Asking about him, that is all.”

Kate was very curious about the man. As Ulrich Smit’s retainer, he must know something of her mother’s experiences in Strasbourg. And he might know, or at least guess, why she left in such haste upon Ulrich’s death. “You have a point. Family in York, you say? But he sounds Welsh.”

“I know nothing more.”

“I will talk to him at the first opportunity. How will you approach Nan’s mother?”

“I shall take her a gift of Berend’s bread.”

“You are inspired! Who would not be grateful for that?”

Jennet stepped back. “Dressed!”

Kate spun round. “Am I all that a merchant of York must be?”

“That and more.” Jennet smiled.

Rushing down the steps and out into the garden, Kate almost collided with Sister Brigida. The beguine gave a startled cry, then apologized for lurking so close to the door. Kate had glimpsed a frown on Brigida’s expressive face before she had cried out and stepped aside.

“Has something happened?” she asked.

Brigida’s pale eyes lit up with a warm smile. “No, Dame Katherine. Sister Clara has set Sister Agnes and Nan to work on cleaning the blood from Sister Dina’s room and the kitchen, and Dame Eleanor is resting. I thought the best use of my time would be to distract Marie and Petra.”

Kate thanked her. “I told them they will take their lessons here in my house until we feel certain the danger is over. Will that suit you?”

“Of course.”

The relief on the faces of Jennet and Berend said it all. They wished to head out into the city and learn what they might about the intruder. Now they were free to do so. Matt would stay to watch the property.

“I think it best you know that Sister Dina sleeps with a dagger under her pillow,” said Brigida. “But I did not see it in the room as Sister Agnes and Nan began to clean it.”

“A dagger?” Berend looked surprised.

“An elegant one. We have never talked about it. She did not offer a story or a reason, and I did not feel it my place to ask. But I fear–”

Kate kissed Brigida’s cheek. “Bless you for telling us this. It is a help.”