The Cross Legged Knight

Eight

The crowds had thinned by the time Owen made his way up Petergate again, but several people stopped him to ask after Poins, or about Cisotta. Speculation was rife about why she had been unable to escape the fire, whether she had been trapped, and one passer-by asked Owen whether she had injuries besides her burns. He said little, fearful that he might reveal more than he intended. One thing was certain — Wykeham would not be pleased by how much the city guessed.

Owen was saddened by the morning’s task, questioning Eudo about his wife’s death while not telling the truth. And yet he was uneasy about Eudo’s temper. Without evidence to the contrary he could not rule out the possibility that the tawyer had killed his wife. He would not be the first spouse to lose control in an argument. They might have fought about the man who had frightened Anna. Owen resolved to post a guard at the tawyer’s shop and in the yard behind his house both to watch Eudo and to protect him. It was always possible that the mysterious intruder in the Dales’ kitchen the previous night might seek him out.

Close to the scene of last night’s fire, Petergate was much quieter than it had been earlier, although a few clusters of people lingered near the bishop’s gutted house. The right corner of the roof had caved in — that was where Owen had seen the flames climbing when he had been inside. That entire corner was blackened, the boards burned through in places. It reminded Owen of a black lacquer cabinet with elaborate carving that he had once seen, he could not remember where. The steps to the living quarters had survived almost intact, up to the last few and the landing, where the boards were blackened and several hung down and swung gently, caught in a draft in the alleyway.

The undercroft door was gone — two wickets shoved into the opening were all that secured the remains from animals, theft, or the curious. Owen was considering where he might find a lantern so that he could ascertain whether a better closure was needed when someone joined him on his blind side. Remembering his earlier encounter with the bailiff, Owen turned slowly.

A short man with a shock of greasy hair stood beside him, hands clasped behind him, rocking slightly back and forth on his feet. ‘Good-day to you, Captain Archer.’

‘Good-day to you,’ Owen said, searching his memory for the man’s name.

‘Such a fine house. It would be a pity if Bishop William abandoned it.’

‘It would indeed.’

The man turned to Owen. ‘Corm’s the name. I live at the back of Edward Taylor’s messuage.’

Now Owen remembered him, once a regular at the York Tavern, now married to a woman who embarrassed him by fetching him home when he strayed, thus training him to stay put.

‘You must have said a prayer of thanks when the fire was contained,’ Owen said.

‘Aye. It was a night I’ll not soon forget. Nor will any of the women of this parish. Are they safe, Captain?’

Here again was the assumption that Cisotta’s death had not been accidental. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because of the man I saw hurry away from the undercroft.’

Owen tried to hide his excitement. ‘Tell me about him.’

Corm stepped closer to Owen. ‘He rushed out from the undercroft door.’

‘Rushing from the fire?’

Corm shook his head. ‘Nay. I cannot be certain, of course, but I do not believe the fire had yet begun. I heard voices before he appeared, angry voices they sounded to me.’

‘You saw no fire behind him in the undercroft?’

‘There was light, but I did not think of fire then. Later, after I carted my sacks of grain back to the house, unloaded them and returned the cart to Taylor’s shed, that is when I raised the alarm about the fire.’

‘What did you see then?’

‘The door was ajar and smoke poured out, flames flickering behind.’

Owen backed up to the alleyway between the bishop’s house and Edward Taylor’s. ‘You went down this way?’

‘Nay, on the far side of Taylor’s house, by the shed.’

‘The shed to which Mistress Cisotta was taken?’

‘Aye, the very one.’

‘You heard voices raised in anger?’ Owen wondered about that, with all the noise of the city of an evening.

‘Aye. It was a quiet evening, until the fire. It was no accident, was it?’ Corm rocked back and forth.

‘Your tale makes me wonder. Have you told anyone else?’

‘My wife, that is all.’

‘I would ask you to keep it a secret for now, Corm.’

The man nodded solemnly.

‘Would you walk me through your movements that night?’

Four heavy sacks of grain the man had carried down the alley from the street and set them down at his door, one at a time, which was all he could manage. Long enough for a blaze to begin behind the departing man, but surely Corm would have noticed something amiss before all four bags had been stowed inside.

‘Were they men’s voices?’

‘I couldn’t say for sure, Captain, nor what they said.’

Upon turning on to Stonegate, Owen found the Fitzbaldric and Dale families gathered by the front gate of the goldsmith’s house, with two of Wykeham’s men standing off to one side. Except for the Dales’ two daughters, who were clipping late roses, arranging them in a nosegay, it was a grim gathering. The lovely Julia Dale, looking tired and dressed in more sombre garb than Owen ever recalled her wearing, was urging Adeline Fitzbaldric to accept an armload of wool cloth — fine wool, by the look of it. Adeline wore the same gown she had worn the previous evening, damp spots revealing attempts to clean it. Her eyes were narrowed in temper, though her tone in addressing Julia Dale was cordial. The servant May stood back a little, leaning against the garden wall. Her face was sallow, slack-skinned. Owen wondered why she did not wait on the garden bench nearby. But perhaps that was not considered appropriate behaviour for a Fitzbaldric maidservant.

‘Good-day to you,’ Owen said. ‘I hope you have had no further trouble that has driven you from the house.’

Fitzbaldric, still suffering his ill-fitting clothes, would not meet Owen’s eye, so it was up to Adeline to explain. ‘His Grace has offered us shelter and we have accepted. We cannot continue to impose on the Dales. They have their family to think of.’

As I do. Owen must speak with Thoresby about moving Poins. ‘His Grace is most generous,’ Owen said. He wondered whose idea it had been to take in the Fitzbaldrics. Thoresby seldom mixed with the citizens of the city.

‘It is better this way,’ said Adeline, tight-lipped.

Julia Dale had shifted her gaze to her daughters. Tension was thick in the air. The girls had completed their nosegay and now watched Owen, bobbing their heads and blushing when they found him looking at them. Whatever had transpired among the adults, the daughters thought all this exciting. They would regret the abrupt departure of their guests.

Owen would like to talk to Robert and Julia about the Fitzbaldrics, but it must wait. Perhaps he might find them alone and expansive on the morrow. For now, as the Fitzbaldrics and their maid had salvaged nothing from the bishop’s ruined house and had two of Wykeham’s men to carry what little they had, Owen did not consider it his duty to escort them to the palace.

He made his farewells and departed, feeling all eyes on his back as he headed for the minster gate. Once in the close, he slowed his steps and considered whether he had the time to say a few prayers in the minster. He did not want to become so caught up in the investigation that he forgot the tragedy of last night — that a woman had perished and a man had been horribly injured. More than Owen’s efforts to learn what had happened to them, they needed his prayers. Inside, in the chill dimness that echoed with the whispered prayers of his fellow supplicants, Owen knelt and prayed for Cisotta and her family, and for Poins. Before continuing to the palace he added a prayer for Lucie.

When Lady Pagnell and Emma fell to arguing once more about Matthew’s behaviour, Lucie judged that it was time she took her leave. Emma escorted her out to the street, promising to pay her for the sleep powder when next she escaped from the house. She did not wish to draw her mother’s attention to it by fetching her purse.

‘Is Matthew not an unpleasant man, just as I said?’

‘It is difficult to judge on so little evidence,’ Lucie said, her mind elsewhere. ‘Do you and your mother ever agree?’

Emma drew her hem away from a dog that had wandered into the courtyard, shooed it out to the street. ‘Did our arguments disturb you?’

‘No, it is not that. Only — you are so fortunate to have her here.’

‘You mean I should honour my mother while she walks among us. I know. Father hated our bickering.’ Blinking, Emma dropped her head, crossed herself.

‘I did not mean to chide you.’ Lucie understood how close to the surface her friend’s emotions were in this time of mourning, how fragile her composure. She had noticed the solemnity of all the household. ‘The boys were so quiet today,’ she said.

‘Do you think so?’ Emma glanced back at the house with a sympathetic expression. ‘They miss Father, too. He doted on them.’ She embraced Lucie, stepped back to study her. ‘You must have a care. Let Magda and Phillippa fuss over the servant while he is in your house. I shall pray that Owen finds another good Samaritan. You do not need the extra burden so soon after the loss of your baby.’

Emma was one of the few people who openly spoke of Lucie’s miscarriage, and did not dismiss it as God’s will as the older women tended to do.

Lucie pressed her friend’s hand in thanks. ‘Once Owen sets his mind to something, it is soon accomplished,’ she said. ‘I must hurry now — I promised Jasper sweet vinegar and barley sugar from the market.’

Only after she was out of sight of the Ferriby house did Lucie slow, worried about a deep, dull pain in her belly. She tried to distract herself from it by going over the conversations at Emma’s house, searching for what she had gleaned. In doing so she walked past Thursday Market and down Coney Street, remembering the vinegar and barley sugar only when she crossed into St Helen’s Square and passed a customer carrying a jar of physick. She was about to turn back, but thought better of it. She would send Jasper. He could do with an outing.

As Owen entered the palace garden, Brother Michaelo rose from a bench and joined him, his neat habit somehow shedding the leaves and dried blossoms that tried to cling to it. ‘I thought perhaps you would escort the Fitzbaldrics,’ said the monk.

‘With two of Wykeham’s men at hand they did not need me.’

‘Ah yes. The bishop has spread his men all about the city today. Four were dispatched to bring the Riverwoman and her patient here. The crone came — can you believe it?’

That Magda and Poins were already at the palace was an unwelcome piece of news. The suffering man should have been left in peace for a day or two. And Lucie would take it ill, Owen was sure of it, thinking he had urged such speed. ‘I did not expect them to be moved so soon. Who was in such haste?’

‘Our masters. They thought it best to have them here. May God watch over us.’ Michaelo crossed himself as he spoke the last words.

So be it. Owen had wanted Poins gone and so he was. Now he must make the best of it.

Michaelo flicked the hem of his robe away from a cat lying near the path. ‘That wanton prevented me from hearing what Guy and someone in the Pagnell livery were arguing about the other day.’

‘The cat did?’

‘I’d caught her moving her kittens to the porch behind His Grace’s quarters. They made such a fuss as I was carrying them back to the stables that they broke up the argument. Pity. It seemed quite heated.’

Owen smiled at the image of the fastidious monk carrying a litter of squealing kittens.

‘Ah. Here come the rest of His Grace’s guests,’ said Michaelo.

Following the monk’s gaze, Owen sighted the Fitzbaldrics and their maid approaching from the minster, flanked by Wykeham’s guards. Adeline carried the nosegay from the Dales’ garden, holding it at an awkward distance from her body, as if uncertain of its safety. Fitzbaldric still looked pathetic in his borrowed clothes. One of the guards carried a sack over his shoulder. The maid, pale and coughing, dragged behind all of them, carrying the cloth Julia Dale had urged on the Fitzbaldrics.

‘Before I meet with them,’ Owen said, ‘I want to see Magda and Poins.’

‘They are in the kitchen,’ Michaelo said. ‘A corner has been enclosed with screens. It should be warm, and the sound of the cook and her servants might cheer the invalid.’ He pressed his fingers to his temples. ‘How he must suffer. I do not know how he lies so quietly. Do you think he will survive?’

‘I pray that he does, at least long enough to tell us what happened last night.’

Michaelo studied Owen. ‘Do you think he murdered the charm weaver?’

‘I have no way of knowing that yet. I wish I did.’ Owen bowed to him. ‘I shall leave you to your guests.’

The morning’s clouds had burned away. The midday sun felt warm on Owen’s head and shoulders. Once he rounded the corner of the palace and slipped from observation, he paused, lifting his face to the radiance. If only it could burn away the scent of death on him. For several moments he stood there. When at last he opened his eyes the garden seemed bathed in a white light and as he moved into the shade of a linden he felt the sweat on his face cooling. There would not be many more days like this until spring, months away.

By the time Lucie returned to the shop there was a lull in customers, and a good thing it was, for only a few spoonfuls of the cough syrup remained. While Jasper was out at the market, Lucie assembled the other ingredients. The hocks seeds and flowers, the gum Arabic and dragagantum were all within easy reach on the bottom shelves in the shop and the storeroom, but the quince seeds, seldom used in physicks made while a customer waited, or asked for specifically, were stored on a high shelf.

Lucie hesitated — she had been fetching quince seeds when she fell. As if the memory were not enough, the cramp in her belly worsened. She rested on a stool, passed a few moments talking to a customer who bustled in — needing a toothache remedy, thank goodness. When the customer was gone, Lucie resolved that she would not spend the rest of her life fearing to climb to a high shelf. She was doing to herself what she had accused Owen of doing — assuming that once she’d had a fall, it would happen again and again.

Positioning the small ladder, she gathered her skirts and climbed, with more caution than usual and with her breath held all the way. The jar was large and smooth, and she would need both hands to lift it from the shelf. She must let go her skirts and her grasp on the shelves in order to pull out the jar. Taking a deep breath, she reached for it. Her hands were clammy, slippery on the glazed pottery, but she clutched it tightly to her side, freeing the hand that must keep her skirts from underfoot, and backed down the ladder.

Weak with relief and bent over with the cramp, she almost wept. But Jasper appeared just outside the shop door, greeting a neighbour. Catching her breath, Lucie set the jar on the counter and calmed herself by measuring out the seeds.

The kitchen sat between the two palace halls, Thoresby’s and the more public great hall. Behind it, screened from the archbishop’s chapel and the minster by a juniper hedge, a large oven rose out of a patch of packed earth, squat and blackened from years of baking for archbishops of York. That is where Owen found Maeve, the archbishop’s cook, bent over a tray of fresh bread.

She greeted Owen with a broad grin. ‘More mouths to feed.’ She straightened with a sigh of contentment, wiping her large hands on her apron. ‘I have made pandemain for the injured one. Easy to chew.’

‘I hope he wakes to relish it. He will not have such a treat again, I warrant. No one makes bread so light as yours.’

‘The Riverwoman tells me the poor man has said nothing, though he looked about him when they carried him in.’

Owen was glad to hear that Poins had at least awakened.

‘How fares Mistress Wilton?’ Maeve asked.

‘No better nor worse than you might expect.’

Maeve clucked in sympathy. ‘Tell me, what is Mistress Fitzbaldric like?’

‘No more demanding than Brother Michaelo, I promise you.’

Maeve laughed. ‘Go on, then, Captain. I must not keep you. Bishop William is within.’ She gestured towards the kitchen.

‘The Bishop of Winchester is here? In the kitchen?’

She nodded, then leaned towards him with a conspiratorial expression. ‘Discussing the treatment of burns and the severing of limbs. I preferred the autumn afternoon.’ She fanned her ruddy face. ‘Maggots and butchering knives — such talk does not belong in a kitchen. But I shall enjoy the Riverwoman’s company.’ She eyed him up and down. ‘You look hungry.’

‘I am. And thirsty. But I have no time — ’

‘You have time for a cup of ale and a meat pasty, you will not gainsay me.’ She nodded to a bench where a tray covered with a cloth had the inviting shape of the items she had mentioned. ‘I brought it out for myself, but now I’ve no appetite. Talk to me for a moment while you eat. You will not digest a thing if you eat it in there.’ She rolled her eyes towards the kitchen.

Owen had already settled on the bench and had drawn the cloth from the tray. The aroma of spiced meat tempted him to try that first, but with his mouth as dry as it was the food would choke him. He took a good long drink of ale. ‘Tom Merchet’s ale?’ he asked, picking up the pasty.

‘Aye. His Grace trades brandywine for ale from the York Tavern. Mistress Merchet is a stubborn bargainer.’ She watched him take a bite, chew. ‘How is that, then? Will that hold you until you can sit down to a decent meal?’

‘It will indeed.’

‘Good.’ Maeve bent once more to the oven, wielding a paddle with long-accustomed skill.

Owen felt the food improving his mood. He washed the pasty down with the rest of the ale. ‘How long has the bishop been in the kitchen?’ he asked as he rose and brushed off the crumbs.

Maeve stood with hands on her hips, considering. ‘Long enough for the bread to rise a goodly amount.’

Owen felt a lethargy in his limbs as he walked across the yard to the kitchen door. The afternoon was so warm that sweat trickled down through his hair and his clothes stuck to him. He guessed by the damp heat and the utter stillness of the air that a storm was coming. He was grateful to enter the coolness of the kitchen. Across the room, plain wattle screens enclosed a corner just beyond the one window. He crossed over the rush-strewn floor and peered round the screens. Dressed in his clerical gown, his bejewelled hands pressed to his knees, Wykeham perched at the edge of a stool, straining to watch Magda, who knelt on a stool beside Poins, applying the tanning unguent to a raw area on the man’s right thigh. Poins flinched, then struggled to lift his head to see what Magda was doing. The bandage wrapped round his head and the swelling of his face made it impossible for Owen to interpret the man’s expression.

‘I understand that silver filings in an unguent speed the healing,’ said Wykeham.

‘Many claim that is so, but Magda uses no filings in wounds. They are too harsh.’

‘They scour the flesh, perhaps? It would seem preferable to maggots.’

‘Maggots attack only the dead flesh.’

Their tones were calm, conversational.

‘If the maggots have consumed the dead flesh,’ Wykeham said, ‘what need have you of the unguent?’

‘The salve cleans the wound and protects it while new skin is growing.’ Magda glanced round at Owen. ‘Hast thou come to enquire after thy houseguest?’

Wykeham swivelled, noted Owen and nodded.

Owen stepped past the screens and bowed to Wykeham. ‘My Lord.’

‘Captain Archer.’

Owen joined Magda. ‘I did wonder at the haste with which you removed Poins. I see he wakes.’

Poins lowered his head to the pillow and turned away from them.

‘Has he spoken?’ Owen asked.

‘He tried when he first woke. The pain stopped him.’ Magda finished smoothing the salve, stepped back to consider her work. ‘This is Owen Archer, the good man who gave thee shelter last night, Poins,’ she said.

The patient twisted his head back to face them and grunted. His eyelids were heavy with salve, as were his lips.

‘You are fortunate to have the Riverwoman watching over you,’ Owen said.

Poins glanced at Magda, then over in the vicinity of the bishop.

Of Magda, Owen asked, ‘Do you have all you need?’

‘Aye. Go now, he must rest and thou hast much to do.’

Wykeham rose. ‘I shall walk with you, Captain.’

The crinkles round Magda’s eyes suggested laughter as she watched them depart.

‘She is a singular woman,’ Wykeham said as they entered the screens passage to Thoresby’s hall. ‘Confident of her skill, and rightly so, I am told, yet lacking all understanding of whence comes her gift. That troubles me.’ He said nothing more for a few paces, then, ‘Yet, having met her and observed her at work, I would not cast her out.’

‘I am glad you recognize her worth.’

Wykeham made a sound in his throat. ‘Her worth is yet to be proved.’

They paused by a door open to the garden. Wykeham stepped out and glanced around. ‘Such an October day is rare this far north, is it not?’

Owen thought it an odd question. The bishop had possessed prebends in both Beverley and York, and not so long ago — he should know the weather in the shire. It revealed how seldom Wykeham had resided in either minster close.

‘We treasure these last days, My Lord, but they are not so rare. Sometimes we are blessed with a mild, dry autumn through Martinmas.’

Wykeham tucked in his chin, studied the gravel path. ‘Who is to be first in your questioning, Captain?’

‘I think it best to allow the Fitzbaldrics time to settle themselves, so I would begin with your clerks.’ Owen had only just decided that as they departed the kitchen.

Wykeham nodded. ‘I shall come with you.’

When a page opened wide the bishop’s chamber door, the clerk Alain hastened to greet his master and bowed Owen in. Though Alain wore merely the bishop’s livery, he still managed an air of elegance.

Guy rose from a table, setting his pen aside. He was not so elegant as his fellow, his gown bunching about his round middle, his hands stained with ink. He had lank, colourless hair, tiny, widely spaced eyes, a flat, broad nose.

After making his obeisance to Wykeham he bowed to Owen. ‘Captain. We have awaited your visit.’

The bishop turned to Owen. ‘My men will be more forthcoming in my absence. I leave you to them.’ As the page opened the door, Wykeham took a few steps and then paused, regarding Guy, then Alain. ‘Tell him all you know,’ he commanded. ‘Captain Archer has a reputation for bringing the truth to light. You have nothing to gain by dissembling with him.’

‘Yes, My Lord,’ Guy said.

Alain bowed.

‘If you would not mind, Captain,’ Guy said as the page closed the door, ‘it will take but a moment for me to complete this letter.’

Owen nodded to him.

The guest chamber given over to Wykeham was a large room partitioned with carved wooden screens. The carving echoed the patterns in the window tracery above. The bishop’s bedchamber with a small altar for prayer was furthest from the door. The section in which Owen stood was furnished with several tables, benches, a comfortable chair for the bishop and several chests. A tapestry depicting the boy Jesus with the elders in the temple hung on the wall facing the table at which Guy worked.

Owen settled in the comfortable chair.

Alain arranged himself on a bench near the table. He was a handsome man, sharp blue eyes, fair hair cut neatly about his ears and fringing his arched brows. Of moderate height, he was slender and straight-backed. He had long-fingered, delicate hands, with which he now smoothed the folds of his gown. According to Thoresby, the bishop had engaged Alain as a favour to his family, to rescue him from the clutches of a scheming woman who would have ruined his name.

After a final scratch of his pen, Guy put it aside, sprinkled sand on the parchment, shook it, then leaned away from the table to blow. ‘I have just finished.’ He shifted his stool to face away from the table, inclined his head towards Owen. ‘Captain.’

‘You have both heard of this morning’s discovery, that the woman who died in the undercroft was not of the Fitzbaldric household?’

Guy nodded.

‘We have,’ Alain said, with a touch of irritation in his tone. ‘A woman of questionable character, I understand.’

‘Cisotta attended my wife during a recent illness. She will be missed.’

Alain dipped his head.

‘My comrade’s ill humor is his weakness,’ Guy said. ‘He means nothing by it.’

‘Are you here to play cat and mouse with us, Captain?’ Alain had reached back to the table for Guy’s penknife and now began to clean his nails with it.

Owen ignored the question. ‘I understand that both of you have been much at the house on Petergate, working in the records room in the undercroft.’

‘Such a dungeon,’ said Alain. ‘His Grace wished us to record what was there, but everything was in disarray. We spent our time trying to create order so we might work.’

‘Oh?’ This was news to Owen. ‘What records were kept there?’

‘God have mercy,’ said Guy, ‘has the fire destroyed all trace?’

‘I have not had the opportunity to make a search,’ said Owen. ‘But I suspect all is ruined.’

‘I had not realized the extent of the fire.’ Guy shook his head.

‘They were records for the bishop’s Yorkshire properties,’ Alain said.

Guy nodded. ‘Forgive me, yes, property records. We have been most concerned about them, particularly the deeds, which of course should not have been kept in such a place. When will we be permitted to survey the damage?’

‘After such a fire, the undercroft must be shored up before any search begins. What other records were there besides the deeds?’

‘Some accounts, letters.’ Alain waved the penknife. ‘Including accounts from properties no longer in my lord’s possession, which explains our assignment.’

To Owen it explained nothing. ‘Had you planned to come north for this purpose before Bishop William decided to escort Sir Ranulf’s remains?’

‘That you must ask my lord,’ said Guy.

‘By your questions are we to understand we are suspect?’ Alain asked.

‘Did either of you know Cisotta?’

Alain shook his head. ‘Thank heaven, no. It is enough to deal with the fire.’

‘What business would I have with a midwife?’ Guy looked puzzled.

‘Tell me what you saw in Petergate last night,’ Owen said to Alain.

‘In faith, I can tell you little that you did not see. I arrived to find a street full of people running this way and that with buckets and pots, shouting directions to the nearest wells, forming lines to pass the water along. I know few people in the city, so I cannot provide you with names.’

‘And you were all the time in the minster in prayer?’ Owen asked Guy.

The clerk bowed his head. ‘I was, Captain.’

‘Neither of you had been working in the undercroft yesterday evening?’

‘We did not work there at night,’ said Alain. ‘Rats — I am brave about most things, but not those hideous creatures.’

He must have been brought up in a wealthy household in which he was protected from such creatures. It brought the Pagnells to mind.

‘I understand you have been involved in the negotiations with the Pagnells. In fact, you delivered property deeds to them.’

Alain rolled his eyes. ‘They mean to squeeze everything they can from Bishop William.’

‘Were the deeds among those in the bishop’s undercroft?’

‘They were,’ said Alain.

Owen wondered at Guy’s silence in this. ‘Have you also an unfavourable impression of the Pagnells?’

Guy blinked nervously. ‘They have suffered a great loss in Sir Ranulf. I do not think it fair to judge them at such a time.’

‘Well said.’ Alain clapped his hands and laughed. ‘Only the other day you were about to explode with indignation after an encounter with Stephen Pagnell.’

Guy winced. ‘He is a most discourteous man. Even so, he has some cause for his anger.’

Feeling his lack of sleep clouding his thoughts, Owen hastened to conclude. He stood, leaned against the table and glanced at the parchment on which Guy had been writing. Wykeham’s signature already graced it, although the bishop had not touched it. Guy must have the bishop’s complete trust. Thoresby had mentioned that Wykeham had had charge of the clerk’s education from the beginning and that they were as father and son.

‘I cannot think how the son and heir tolerates the steward Matthew,’ Alain was saying. ‘I envision them spitting venom at one another over the accounts.’

‘Enough, Alain,’ Guy muttered, his balding pate pink with his discomfort. ‘Might we have a look at the records room, Captain? See whether we might salvage some of the more important documents?’

‘Resolve that there is nothing worth a cress,’ said Owen.

Alain breathed a curse. ‘Leather-wrapped boards and thick parchment, they do not burn so quickly. I cannot believe nothing is left.’

‘You witnessed the fire,’ Owen said. ‘What is not ashes is sodden and unreadable, I warrant.’

‘We might save something if — ’

‘I’ve told you it is not safe,’ said Owen, interrupting Guy. ‘But in time you will have access to what is there.’ He straightened. ‘If either of you remembers anything you have not told me, be so good as to send me word.’

As soon as Jasper returned with the vinegar and sugar, Lucie withdrew to the workroom behind the shop and began to make the syrup that formed the base of the electuary, standing the bowl in which she had mixed the ingredients over a pot of water so that the syrup warmed, but did not burn. As she worked she became aware of a feeling of light-headedness. Perhaps she had stopped taking Magda’s tonic too soon. She should have considered how much blood she had lost. She found the jar on a shelf and mixed some in a cup of water, then pulled over a stool and relaxed with the drink, leaning over occasionally to stir the syrup. The warmth and the pleasant scent of warming sugar began to make her drowsy. She woke to find Jasper reaching past her to stir the syrup.

‘It is good you were heating it in a pan of water,’ he said, smiling to let her know there was no harm done. ‘Would you rather stay out in the shop?’

Lucie’s thoughts were muddled as she focused on Jasper.

His expression changed in an instant from teasing to worried. ‘Are you unwell?’

‘I am exhausted, that is all,’ Lucie said, as her head cleared. Being caught nodding over her work made her feel like an old woman. Like Phillippa. She rose to stir the syrup, thanking God it had not burned. ‘It is warm enough to add the rest. I shall bring it out to you in a little while.’

Jasper stood watching her for a moment, as if uncertain whether to believe her reassurances, but a hail from the shop decided him and he withdrew to see to the customer.

Lucie fell into a stew thinking about Cisotta. She must have been horribly disfigured by the fire for Owen not to have recognized her. Merciful Mother, do not let Anna and the boys see their mother’s ruined beauty.

‘Master Eudo!’

Lucie’s head jerked up, hearing the tension in Jasper’s changeable voice.

‘Where is he? Where is the man who killed my Cisotta?’ Eudo’s voice was shrill, his words slurred.

‘I do not know whom you mean, Master Eudo.’

‘Tell me!’

Peering through the beaded curtain, Lucie saw the tawyer, wild-eyed and flushed with rage, bear down on Jasper, who stood behind the counter. Eudo slammed his hands down on the wood. Lucie crossed herself, her heart pounding. Jasper backed away just enough to push shut the bolt that locked down the opening part of the counter. Then with one foot, his eyes still on Eudo, Jasper slid a wooden chest into the opening.

The man had no weapon that Lucie could see and Jasper was holding his own, but still she choked back a sob of fear. She must calm herself and think what to do. Eudo might come next to the house. Kate must be warned to keep the children away from the kitchen. She did not want them frightened. And Phillippa, dear God, Lucie had no idea what her aunt would do if Eudo stormed into the house.

Backing up, Lucie turned and slipped to the back door, opened it with quiet care, pulled it shut and hurried out through the garden, seeking the guard posted there. The stitch in her side slowed her for a moment, but she pushed past the pain, searching the garden for the guard who should be by the kitchen door. Finding no one, she ran round the house to the front gate, biting back pain and growing fear. She found no guard there, either.