The Cross Legged Knight

Twelve

As Owen approached the Dale residence he slowed, thinking it a good time to talk to Robert and Julia. He would not keep them long and he might feel better having accomplished something before facing Wykeham, who was sure to be difficult. He should have time for both before the requiem mass.

The goldsmith shop occupied the ground floor of the Dale dwelling. A young man, an apprentice by the look of his clothes, opened the door and invited Owen to sit while he found his master and mistress. Already at this early hour the apprentices and journeymen sat at their work at two tables, one near a great hearth, chiselling, hammering, polishing. Along the walls were racks with various types of hammers, chisels and tongs, shelves holding earthenware pots, trays, sticks of wax. The side of the room with the hearth was warm, the air acrid with the scent of hot metal. But the breezes from the open windows, front and back, freshened the air on the opposite side.

The apprentice reappeared, his face flushed with the activity. ‘My mistress requests that you attend her in the hall above, Captain Archer. My master will join her in a moment. The stairs are just outside the door, on your left.’

Up in the hall, which stretched the length of the shop below, Julia Dale rose from a cushioned bench, framed in the light of several oil lamps. She was a vision in a blue silk gown that matched her eyes, her dark hair caught up in delicate filigree netting beneath a gossamer veil, a gold circlet crowning all. She had bold features and a powerful voice, tempered by her beauty and warmth. Had she married a man who could afford to provide her only the simplest of ornaments, she would have shone no less. Her daughters passed through the far end of the hall, pushing one another and giggling. They had her colouring, but not yet the presence that drew one’s eyes and held them. Owen cleared his throat.

‘I trust this will be a more comfortable place in which to talk than the shop,’ Julia said. ‘Certainly my husband will be less distracted up here.’ She lifted her chin at the sound of her daughters greeting their father. ‘There he is now.’ She awaited him, quietly composed.

So Lucie once was, full of smiles for Owen, welcoming, soothing, loving. Was it the children who had changed her? This last child, so eagerly awaited, so violently lost? Was the shop too much? Perhaps the strain of motherhood and work were too much. And yet he could not imagine Lucie without her work. He rose abruptly when he noticed Robert Dale extending his hand.

Julia’s husband was a pleasant-looking man except for the poor vision that drew his face into a perpetual squint. Owen often wondered why Robert did not use some of his wealth for a pair of spectacles such as Thoresby’s.

Robert greeted Owen amiably and sat down beside Julia. ‘You are here about the evening of the fire,’ he said. ‘It is good you have come so soon, while it is fresh in my head.’ He nodded to his wife. ‘You might name the guests.’

She ticked them off on her fingers.

‘How long had the evening been planned?’

Julia glanced over at her husband, who shrugged and shook his head. ‘I had spoken with Edwina Hovingham,’ she said, ‘and she agreed that we must introduce Adeline and Godwin to our acquaintances. Being connected in Beverley and Hull as well as York, they are good people to know.’

‘Julia, the captain asked when, not why,’ Robert said in a fond tone.

‘Forgive me. It was that Monday. The laundress arrived just as I was leaving.’

‘Tell me about the evening,’ Owen said.

Robert nodded. ‘All the invited guests had arrived, save William Hovingham, who is ailing. We were a dozen for dinner, as Julia said, which is why Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was assisting ours. We had completed the fish course when Hovingham’s servant came to fetch Edwina home. William was asking for Master Saurian.’ Robert pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, sighed. ‘May God watch over his family.’ He fell silent, staring at nothing.

‘We were about to have the cakes when Godwin excused himself,’ Julia said. ‘I should think that is the most important detail. He was so long about it — I had finished a piece of cake and saw that the sauce on his was separating. I sent a servant to check the yard, fearing he had taken a fall, or was ill, and he returned with news of the fire.’

Robert had shaken himself from his fears for William Hovingham and sat forward now. ‘Adeline Fitzbaldric was first to the door, crying out for her husband.’

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘I thought it strange at the time. She cried out, “Dear Lord, not Godwin! Have I not given enough?” But afterwards I remembered she had lost both children to the pestilence.’

Robert caught her hand and they looked at one another for a few moments.

A happy marriage. Three healthy children, the boy at the minster school, the girls showing promise of their mother’s beauty.

‘And that night, where did the Fitzbaldrics sleep? How was your household arranged?’

‘We put Godwin and Adeline in the solar, near us,’ said Robert. He rose, took a few steps to the hearth. ‘The children slept here — it is chilly in the evenings now, though the hearth in the workshop below warms the floor through the night. The servants were sleeping behind a screen just over here.’ Robert strode a few paces. ‘Except for the cooks and the scullery maid — they were out in the kitchen. And my apprentices down below in the shop. That is what troubled me so, we were all spread out. If the intruder had come through this door …’

‘The servants would have caught him, husband,’ Julia said, rising to coax him back to his seat.

‘But he came only to the kitchen and fled at once?’ Owen asked.

Robert nodded. ‘I shall walk down with you and show you where he climbed the wall.’

‘It needs repair,’ said Julia. ‘One can scramble up with little trouble. The children have done so many a time.’

‘It shall be mended,’ Robert said, nodding energetically.

‘What of May, your guests’ maidservant? What did you notice about her injuries that night?’ Owen spoke directly to Julia.

‘She had a few scratches on her legs, a good bruise forming on one knee, a grazed wrist and she said her hip was tender. Her eyes were smeared with blood. Dried, caked. She kept blinking and I washed them out. I urged Adeline to send for a physician, someone, thinking she must have injured her eye and we could not tell. But she assured us that her eyes were fine, she saw well enough. And Adeline was content with that. Fretting over her loss, I am sure, and her manservant’s terrible injuries.’

‘How did the Fitzbaldrics behave after the intruder?’

‘Crossing themselves and praying,’ Robert said. ‘It was too much for them in one evening. And then that poor man in the morning. Though I can tell you I cursed him from here to the devil when he woke me. I had just managed to fall asleep after spending the night checking the doors and windows over and over again.’

‘Robert could not rest, that is true,’ said Julia, touching his arm lightly.

Perhaps it was Owen who had changed, not Lucie.

‘Is that all, Captain?’ Robert asked.

Owen straightened. ‘I’ve no doubt you found it difficult to rest after the fire, the intruder. Have you any idea whether the Fitzbaldrics slept?’

‘I do not believe Adeline did,’ said Julia. ‘But Godwin had the red, creased face of someone who had slept deeply.’

‘You are most helpfully observant,’ said Owen. ‘How did they respond to Eudo the tawyer?’

Julia looked to her husband.

‘Godwin thought it best simply to take him to the shed, let him see for himself whether it was his wife,’ said Robert.

‘We held Adeline back. She feared the tawyer would attack Godwin. He was coarse with drink, but I assured her that he had too many witnesses to be such a fool, and that Godwin was no weakling, he could protect himself.’ Julia had grown uncomfortable, toying with a ring on one finger, avoiding eye contact. ‘It was kind of him to take the tawyer. Godwin Fitzbaldric is a good man.’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Julia is full of remorse for how the two households parted.’

‘I was thinking of the children.’ Her eyes pleaded for understanding.

‘So, too, was I when I told Master Fitzbaldric that we could not keep Poins in our home.’

‘Oh yes.’

Owen had nothing else to ask at the moment. Robert escorted him to the yard, showed him the tumbled wall, which would have been an easy climb, probably the way the intruder had arrived as well.

Owen was glad to be away from the Dales. Their ease with one another had brought home to him how he and Lucie had drifted apart.

The counter at the front of Eudo’s shop was closed, the door shut. Overhead, the tawyer’s sign creaked in the breeze. Somewhere further down the street a door or shutter banged in an uneven rhythm. Lucie turned down the alley towards the kitchen entrance, giving a cry when she stumbled over a man in the archbishop’s livery sitting with his back against the wall, dozing.

‘Who goes there?’ he called out as he scrambled to his feet.

‘Mistress Wilton. I have come to help Eudo ready the children for the funeral.’

‘The captain will have my hide for sleeping,’ the young man said.

Lucie did not know him. ‘I, too, should find it difficult to stay awake in a dark alley. Perhaps you would fare better standing where you were posted, out in Patrick Pool.’

‘Aye, mistress,’ he mumbled, lowering his gaze to the ground.

It was not her habit to reprimand Owen’s men, but her abandonment yesterday still rankled. Ignoring the young man’s exclamation as he stepped out into the windy street, Lucie hurried on down the alleyway, the sound of her footsteps echoing between the two buildings. The quiet unnerved her. She was glad to hear a child’s petulant wail as she stepped into the kitchen yard, a sound of normality.

Eudo and a guard had their eyes trained on the alley as Lucie appeared.

The guard sheathed his knife. ‘Mistress Wilton,’ he said, bobbing his head.

‘Good-day to you, Mistress Wilton,’ said Eudo. He had shaved and combed his thinning hair, and wore his best tunic and leggings. A pair of boots with no creases or scuffs in the polished leather were either new or had been oiled for the occasion.

The guard nodded to her.

‘I have come to help with the children,’ Lucie explained.

‘Goodwife Claire is helping Anna,’ Eudo growled. ‘Not a moment to ourselves, folk inside, outside.’

It was no mystery why the tawyer had trouble finding support in the guild with such outbursts when offered help.

But it was the guard who said so. ‘You should be grateful that neighbours are coming to your aid, Master Tawyer. They might have shunned you after your folly yesterday.’

‘Are you my protector or my warden?’ Eudo demanded.

The guard shrugged and turned away.

‘Come within, Mistress Wilton, I meant nothing by my complaint,’ said Eudo. ‘I can hear Anna and the goodwife struggling with the lads.’

What Lucie heard most keenly was Anna’s cough. She stepped inside, pausing to adjust to the dimness, then crouched to catch the youngest who was careening towards her, one leg kneeling in a low, wobbly wheeled cart, the other pushing alongside. He saw her at the last moment and tried to brake, but the rushes slipped beneath his bare foot. The impact almost knocked Lucie backwards. She lifted him by his skinny shoulders and set him on his feet. He felt feverish and his breath indicated a sick stomach.

‘Will!’ The shout came from a woman who held tight to a naked boy squirming to escape. Lucie thought it was Henry, though he and Ned looked much alike. ‘Oh, Mistress Wilton, I am sorry.’

Anna had run to grab little Will. ‘Bad boy, you almost knocked Mistress Wilton over.’

The boy screwed up his face and stuck a fist in his mouth.

‘He did not hurt me,’ Lucie assured Anna and the goodwife. She bent to hug the girl. ‘I am sorry about your mother.’ It was not the thing one might say to most children, but Anna was a grave girl, old before her time. Still, Lucie was glad the din of the other boys hid the tremor in her voice.

‘I keep hoping it was a mistake, it wasn’t Ma in the fire, she’s just away at a birthing, maybe outside the city.’ Anna smoothed her brother’s hair. ‘He’s in a temper,’ she said. ‘Because of his fever he is going to Goodwife Claire’s for the day.’

‘But the rest of you are going to St Sampson’s?’

Anna nodded. ‘Pa is not pleased. He says we’ll embarrass him.’

No more than he does himself. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘Would you fuss over Will while Mistress Claire and I dress Henry and Ned? Pa just shouts at Will and makes him worse.’

Lucie tested the boy’s weight, judged him light enough for her to carry — he was much smaller than Hugh, who was about his age. ‘Go on, see to the others.’

Will held himself stiff in her arms, watching her with an uneasiness that could quickly turn to tears. She walked over to the dresser with him, where a lamp glowed warmly, and searched for something to entertain him. The shelves were full of Cisotta’s jars and bottles, but it was a thin string that she chose. Setting him down while she drew a stool over, she then lifted him up to sit astride it and sat facing him, knotting the string and stretching it between her hands. ‘Do you know any string games, Will?’

Still with one fist in his mouth, he shook his head.

Though he mastered none of the games it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Soon Mistress Claire came to scoop him up. ‘Anna is dressing. I shall take little Will next door. Come, Will,’ she cooed.

The boy shoved his fist into his mouth once more.

Lucie tidied the dresser while she waited for Anna. The jars and bottles lined up on the main shelf had no markings on them; though she had known Cisotta could not read, she had expected some symbols or marks. Opening them at random, she found rosemary, a powder mixture with valerian root as the strongest scent, rue, a jar of feathers, a bottle of lavender oil, a jar with a small amount of blood at the bottom, a tray of stones. She moved on to the other items on the dresser. A scale was tucked on a higher shelf, along with small rolls of cloth tied with laces and strings. Lucie did not fuss with them. A dozen or more small boards tied together caught her eye. Untying them, she found pressed flowers, hairs, what looked like fingernails. She pressed them back together and tied them, wanting no part of Cisotta’s charms. The boards would not slide back where she had found them. Pulling the bench over, she climbed up to inspect the obstruction. Tucked at the back of the shelf was a delicate pair of gloves, made of butter-soft leather. Stepping down from the stool, Lucie held the gloves towards the lamplight. Tooled leather, with jet beads on the outer wrist of each and, tracing some of the tooling, they seemed too fine for Cisotta.

‘I should give them to Papa, I guess.’

Lucie started. ‘These are your father’s work?’

Anna shook her head. ‘Ma said they were a surprise for Papa, a pattern he could copy.’ Her eyes were on the gloves.

‘Was she saving them to give him for a special day?’

‘Nay. Just until she had the hides to give him, so he could make a few pairs using these for a pattern. I thought that was where she was going that night, for the hides.’

Lucie turned the gloves over and back. ‘They are very fine, Anna. Where did your mother get them?’

‘As payment, I suppose.’

‘From whom?’

Anna did not know. ‘She showed them to me a few days ago.’

‘When, Anna?’

‘I think it was the afternoon we found the stranger waiting out in the kitchen yard.’

‘Was he a stranger to your mother?’

‘Anna!’ Eudo shouted from the doorway. ‘If you must come, come now.’

‘Henry! Ned!’ Anna called.

The boys hurried up to take her hands, squirming in their good tunics, their hair slick from an unaccustomed combing. They would be handsome lads, when the terror in their eyes faded.

A sharp wind whipped down the narrow, shaded streets, irritating Anna’s cough. Through the maze of signposts and overhanging storeys Lucie glimpsed high, thin clouds scudding across a blue sky. The city streets were not so crowded today, it not being a market day, and most of those passing along were too busy holding on to their hats and manoeuvring with billowing clothing to gossip, though they did notice Cisotta’s family, especially when the boys grew bold and veered away, returning only after much shouting by their father. But all the party hushed as they approached the door of St Sampson’s. Anna used both hands to muffle her relentless cough. Bowing their heads, they entered the candlelit nave, standing still for a few moments to become accustomed to the gloom.

There were a dozen lay people standing about, a few others kneeling in chantry chapels in the north aisle. Two couples approached Eudo, both women with arms outstretched, weeping. He moved away from their embraces while introducing them to Lucie as Cisotta’s sister and her husband from Easingwold and his own cousin with her husband who lived in York. Once Cisotta’s sister began to speak, Lucie saw the resemblance. Though stouter and a good five years older than her sister, the woman had her liveliness, her musical voice.

Eudo’s cousin looked nothing like him, sweet-faced and petite. She knelt to the children and hugged them one at a time, then scolded her cousin for bringing them. ‘It is too much for them, can you not see?’

‘It is all too much for all of us,’ Eudo mumbled. ‘They begged to come.’ He nodded to his sister-in-law. ‘Where is Mistress Agnes?’

‘Our poor mother cannot eat or sleep for grief. I did not think it wise for her to risk the journey.’

‘If she had wished to come she would have found a way.’

‘You would not have wished her here,’ she said, stepping closer so as not to be overheard by the folk milling past them.

Eudo’s response was lost in the noise of others who wished to express their condolences.

Lucie gathered the children and took them up close to the front of the worshippers. As the mass began, Eudo joined them.

Anna handed Lucie the embroidered cushion she had brought with her. Lucie shook her head, thinking Anna’s knees were far bonier than her own. But the girl insisted. ‘I always carried it for Ma,’ she whispered.

Lucie accepted, but in return she gathered the boys, one on either side of her, to give Anna and her father some peace during the mass. As it proceeded, Eudo fought a fierce battle with his emotions. Anna slipped her hand in his but he shook it off and lifted it to shade his eyes, even though the interior of the church was but dimly lit. What had Lucie been thinking, to fear Eudo so when he came to the house? He would not have harmed her or the children.

By the time Owen arrived at the church the Eucharist was past, the mass nearing an end. There was not such a crowd as to hide the mourners at the front. Eudo’s hunched shoulders reminded Owen of how lost he had felt when he feared Lucie was dying. The pain had been physical, a tearing through the centre of his being, as if his heart were being ripped from him. It frightened him to think of it, more than the memory of any battle, for he had glimpsed the void that would open up and swallow him if Lucie died before him. His children had been a comfort, but they could not replace their mother.

Realizing he was staring at Eudo, Owen turned his head. Near the centre of the small crowd of mourners stood Alain, Wykeham’s clerk. Approaching him, Owen caught sight of Lucie kneeling with Cisotta’s boys on either side. Anna’s slight figure stood woodenly between the trio and her father, her head lifted towards the ceiling of the church, tears glistening on her cheeks. Owen wondered at Lucie’s involvement with Cisotta’s family.

‘You are here representing the bishop?’ he asked Alain.

‘Bishop William wishes to know the temper of the people.’

‘He expects something other than sorrow at a funeral?’

‘He is concerned that the people might blame him for the tragedy.’

‘Why should he worry? He is surrounded by guards.’

‘He is afraid of much these days, Captain Archer.’

As the priest intoned the final blessing, the wind moaned without and from the open church doors a draft sent the candles around the nave flickering, the guild banners snapping. As the worshippers crossed themselves and bowed their heads, the stained glass rattled and the sacristy door slammed shut. Heads turned and a murmur passed among the people. Perhaps it was because the coffin bearers had lifted their burden and begun the procession to the churchyard, but Owen sensed a shift in the mood of the mourners, as if the wind had brought to mind the gossip about the woman whose body was being borne past them.

At the edge of the churchyard a group of women held their skirts and veils, watching the procession. They had not been in the church, and one of them Owen recognized as a midwife. Suspecting trouble brewing, he approached them, but at the same moment George Hempe entered the yard and nodded to the women, who bobbed their heads briskly and dispersed.

Lucie had noticed Owen at the edge of the mourners as she had turned to follow the coffin from the church. Now she started as he reached for her hand. When the priest had withdrawn and Eudo knelt with his children beside the grave, Lucie and Owen moved away from the mourners. Owen had just begun to tell her something about midwives watching from the market place when Henry and Ned ran past, with Anna in pursuit. Lucie abandoned Owen for the chase, cursing the need, for she had seen such concern in her husband’s eyes that it had frightened her.

‘Here, lads. What will your mother think if she is gazing down upon you from heaven?’ Hempe crouched by the boys, each hand firmly gripping the shoulder of a tunic.

Henry tilted his head back and searched the clouds with frightened eyes. Ned held his hands out to Anna, who backed away, then ran to Lucie.

Perhaps it was the bailiff’s presence that worried Owen, as Hempe clearly frightened the children. ‘You have nothing to fear from the bailiff,’ Lucie assured them.

‘Here now,’ Eudo called out, brushing off the knees of his leggings. ‘They are good lads, there is no need to frighten them.’

Hempe let go of the boys, looking bemused as Eudo’s extended family joined them, his cousin and Cisotta’s sister scooping up the boys, who looked cowed and on the verge of tears. ‘I merely thought it would be best that they quieted down and did not run from the churchyard.’

‘It was kind of you to help,’ said Lucie.

‘Aye, I did not understand,’ said Eudo, his face averted. ‘I am grateful you kept them from the street or the market.’ He bobbed his head towards Hempe.

Lucie looked round for Owen and saw him striding away. Could his job never rest, even at the burial of a woman they had known so well? She returned to the mourning family, knelt to Anna and warmed the girl’s hands in her own.