The Service of the Dead

3 Caged

Born and raised on the northern border where she need but step out the door to find vast open spaces, Kate Clifford experienced the city of York as an openwork cage in which no matter where she paced she was watched, her movements noted and judged according to the decorum expected of a young widow of considerable means. Or such means as her late husband had led his fellow merchants to believe he had accumulated. It suited her purpose that members of his guild and fellow citizens of York continued to hold Simon Neville in high esteem. Their respect for his memory extended to her, his widow, and bought her time. But Simon’s creditors knew the truth. So far she had managed to keep them quiet, satisfied with small, regular payments, but for how long? One wrong move could undo her. So could Lionel’s tongue, should he see an advantage in ruining her. And now, as King Richard’s troubles muddied the distinction between friend or foe, Kate had moments when she could not breathe. Or sleep.

Which was why she was stealing down the stairs in stockinged feet, trying not to wake her wards. She moved down to the hall where she lit a lantern from the embers in the hearth. Oh yes, a hearth. Simon had insisted. No fire circle in his hall. Such airs! He had laughed at the horror his brother expressed upon seeing the vertical loom Simon had given Kate, how he had placed it beneath the east window so she might work in the morning light. “Fine ladies do not weave,” Lionel had exclaimed. “Katherine would say, ‘What is that to me? I am no lady fair,’” Simon claimed to have replied. It was all very well for him to laugh at his brother’s pretentions, but in truth all the Neville family considered themselves of noble blood, and Simon’s own extravagance was the cause of Kate’s current financial unease. The lantern light was reflected by the polished pewter plates displayed in the wall cupboard. She could make do without them, she thought, though guests might wonder at the empty cupboard. Perhaps she might replace them with plates of lesser quality…

From the cabinet at the cupboard’s base she withdrew a quiver of arrows and a bow, then took a seat on one of a pair of elegantly carved high-backed chairs. As she strung the bow the wolfhounds Lille and Ghent circled her, their noses cold, their fur warm from their bed near the embers. Some time at the butt in her garden before the neighbors woke would steady her. She let the hounds out to gambol in the fresh snow while she secured her squirrel-lined cloak to give her arms the freedom to shoot, then at last stepped into her twin brother’s boots, closing her eyes and imagining his smile. When her parents had purged her room of Geoff’s belongings – the treasures, the memories – they had missed the boots and a few other items that had been out in the stables. She had hidden them in her trunk when she came south to York. They wanted her to let Geoff go. But he was her twin. They shared souls, life force. There could be no letting go. Not even his death could separate them.

Settling the quiver over her cloak, bow in one hand, lantern in the other, Kate stepped out into the eerie whiteness with the sky just beginning to lighten. She paused a moment beneath the eaves, taking a deep breath and remembering snowy mornings up north, doors frozen shut by the drifts. This was nothing. Trudging out to the butt, she placed the lantern on a stone where it would illuminate the target, then backed away, sensing the direction of the wind, sticking out her tongue to catch a flake and feel it melt. She called softly to Lille and Ghent, beckoning them to her side. The wolfhounds knew the mood in which she had come out into the snowy predawn garden. They knew to be still until her arrows were spent or her mood shifted. Ready now, she reached for an arrow.

Eyes on the target, Kate waited for a sudden gust of wind to subside, then let fly the first arrow. This was for her eldest brother, Walter, for rekindling the feud with the Cavertons by falling in love with their daughter Mary. The arrow hit just above center. Bow bent, arrow notched, she blinked the snow off her lashes. This was for her brother Roland for getting himself killed. She aimed, released, hit the center. A deep breath. These are for you, Geoff, for taking on a guilt that was never yours, walking into what you knew was a deadly ambush, and deserting me. Three arrows in succession surrounded Roland’s.

Is that what I did? Then how am I still with you?

Kate shook her head to get Geoff out of it. She could not aim properly when he distracted her.

It won’t work. You’re wearing my boots.

Lille and Ghent whined at her feet. They sensed Geoff, especially Ghent. The wolfhounds had been their birthday presents the year before everything fell apart on the border. Lille for Kate, Ghent for Geoff.

This is for our parents for caging me in this cursed city and marrying me to a Neville. She aimed just to the right of Geoff’s arrows, but hit dead center, knocking out both Roland’s and Geoff’s.

I applaud you, Kate.

Now for her brother-in-law’s news the previous evening. Bow bent, arrow notched. This one was for King Richard for preventing Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, from settling their differences in a trial by combat, and exiling them instead. The arrow struck just off to the right. Another for King Richard, this one for threatening to cheat Henry Bolingbroke of the Lancastrian inheritance on his father’s death. Now the king feared retaliation. If King Richard had honored his cousin Henry, he would not feel so threatened to have ordered merchant ships be searched for Lancastrian stowaways, or have his spies watch those with Lancastrian connections – including the guest Kate expected tomorrow. Dead center, splintering her parents’ arrow.

I could not have done better.

She grinned. No, you couldn’t.

And now the one to cripple the fool whose wagon crippled Matt. Reaching back, her fingers found an empty quiver. Saved by an empty quiver.

She trudged out to collect the arrows, Lille and Ghent racing out with her, their paws and their wagging tails stirring up a blizzard as they batted the arrows out of the butt, then dug for those that had been covered in new snow. She gathered them up before the hounds sank their teeth into the shafts.

The chill wind teased open her cloak, and she shivered as the church bells began ringing prime. Such a din of bells. They had kept her awake for nights on end when her mother first brought her to the city, and they still made her head pound and her temper rise. Giving each dog a good scratch behind a proffered ear, she gestured to where light and warmth spilled out the opened kitchen door. The dogs bounded toward it to break their fasts.

“Dame Katherine?” Berend the cook called to her from the doorway as she picked up the lantern and closed the shutters.

“First I must wake the children.”

He nodded and withdrew with the dogs, closing the door behind him.

Back in the silvery early morning light, Kate stood a moment looking up into the spiraling snowflakes and drew a deep, easy breath. Yes. Better now. She headed to the house. Stomping some of the snow off on the slate doorstep, she slipped her feet out of her twin’s boots and carried them into the hall, setting them near the hearth to dry.

On a table lay the accounts with which she’d thought to catch out her brother-in-law the previous evening. She muttered a curse as she warmed her hands at the fire. It troubled her, the king’s men searching her ship. But no time for worry now. She had much to do. Lighting a lamp, she carried it up the solar stairs to where her wards slept beneath the eaves, one to either side of her bedchamber. At first nine-year-old Marie had shared Kate’s bed, but her complaints murdered sleep. Kate could do nothing right – the covers were too heavy, too light, the room was too warm, too cold, the pillows too hard, too soft, Kate stole the covers, she slept too hot. Enough! Another partition had gone up on the far side of her chamber.

She drew back the curtains on Marie’s small bed. At rest, the child was a beautiful creature, tiny for her age, delicate, as if of fairy folk. Button nose, full lips, cleft chin, and thick dark lashes that rested so sweetly on cheeks rosy with sleep.

Neither Marie nor her brother Phillip favored their father, the man to whom Kate had been wed for three happy years. A time of innocence, before she learned all that Simon had hidden from her. Kate had imagined her husband sleeping alone since the death of his first wife, Muriel. She had ascribed his enthusiasm for bed sport to a decade-long hunger – except perchance an occasional night with a whore when the loneliness threatened to devour his soul. Such loneliness – his wife and son dead. How she had pitied him. And all the while, two bastard children about whom he had never spoken were alive and thriving in Calais, in the home of the French mistress he’d kept long past any need for consolation. He’d continued the relationship while married to Kate.

She imagined her rival, Anne, as a delicate beauty, like her daughter. Marie looked as if a strong wind would shatter her ivory skin. Both she and her brother had rich reds in their dark hair and startling blue eyes. Quite a contrast to Kate, who was sturdy, with bold features, brown eyes, and dark brown, wiry, unruly hair. Kate reminded herself that Simon had called her beautiful, and there was no doubt he’d enjoyed their bed sport and her company, laughing with her, seeking her opinion. She missed him, every day she missed him. His death had robbed her of much joy. Though once his will was read and his account books were opened to her, she had discovered she had been living in a dream.

Marie curled into her pillow with a soft sigh.

What trick of nature erased all trace of Simon from his bastards’ fleshly forms? The Neville family tended to unusual height and barrel shaped trunks. Simon had been tall, fair-haired, with hazel eyes. Was this the cause of his silence regarding them? Did he doubt Marie and Phillip were his? Or had he been waiting until Kate had babies of her own before he told her about the two he had fathered with a beauty in Calais? She would never know. The only child Kate had conceived of him had been stillborn, and two years ago a fever had taken Simon from her. He’d ignored the fever for far too long, believing it would pass on its own. Had his mistress known of his death? According to the children’s account, their mother died almost exactly a year after Simon. Would she have kept the news from her children?

Marie and Phillip had been grieving for both parents when Lionel deposited them on Kate’s doorstep a year ago. “Their mother is dead, two months now. Their French grandam said they are Nevilles and our family’s responsibility.”

Stunned, never having guessed her husband visited a second family on his frequent travel to Calais, Kate had stared at the two small ones. Perhaps not so surprised as she might have been, had she not already learned of Simon’s crippling debts and heard his will. “Two more Nevilles – God save us all. How old?”

“Marie is eight, Phillip eleven.”

They’d reminded her of herself and her twin, Geoff, how they held hands, whispered to each other, examined her and what little of the hall they could see behind her. But she knew nothing of raising children, and she distrusted Lionel’s intentions in bringing them to her.

“Add them to your brood, Lionel. You’ll never notice. Or that of one of your rich cousins.”

He’d clearly prepared a retort. “If you insist on claiming all my dead brother’s property, these are yours.”

There it was. He meant to overwhelm her so she would capitulate to one of the suitors with whom he baited her, and thus forfeit her late husband’s business. In accordance with Simon’s heartless will, the business would go to Lionel upon Kate’s remarriage. “How did their grandam know you were in Calais? Did you call on her? Why?”

The boy responded before his uncle had the time to concoct a lie. “He meant to comfort Maman and fill her with another baby she could not feed.” Phillip’s English was heavily accented, but correct.

God in heaven, the children had understood every word. Kate had assumed they might understand English, but not the way it was spoken in the North. Simon had been so proud of his French, and his London English, they might never have heard a Yorkshire accent. Too late she discovered otherwise. Now the two knew that neither she nor Lionel welcomed them.

Lionel was taking the opportunity to sneak away, but she caught his arm. He was a weak man, easily overpowered. “Simon never acknowledged them, did he?”

“What does it matter? You prayed to have Simon’s children. Here they are.”

She’d slapped him then, hard, and cursed him.

Then she had taken the children’s hands and welcomed them into the hall. But the harm was done, and their hands were limp in hers.

“Time to rise, Marie.” Kate gave the girl’s shoulder a little shake. When the girl did not move, Kate flung back the bedclothes. “Wake up!”

The girl squeaked and flailed for the warm covers. “So cold! Your skirt is wet!”

“It is. It snowed in the night. Now dress and hurry to the kitchen. Berend will feed you before school. Jennet will brush your hair.”

“You brush it.”

“Jennet will brush it.”

“You never have the time for me. Were you out in the garden with your bow?”

Tedious child. Most mornings she sullenly rejected Kate’s offers to comb her hair or help her dress. Of course she was angry, because her grandmother and the Nevilles had rejected her. Kate might have had sympathy, but the girl had no fire. She whined and lay about and gave Kate no clue what might content her. “On your way down, check that your brother is awake and dressing.”

Kate could not rely on them to see to each other’s welfare naturally. Her first impression had been a mistake. They were nothing like she and Geoff, who had been whole only when together, naturally attuned to each other’s every need. Marie and Phillip were bonded only in rejecting her; otherwise they bickered endlessly.

She moved on to wake Phillip, but his bed was made, the space tidied. Calling out to Marie that her brother was already breaking his fast and she must hurry, Kate hastened down the steps, pausing only to slip into pattens before crossing the snowy yard to the kitchen. She sighed with pleasure as the warmth of the large hearth enfolded her. Berend and Jennet glanced up from their tasks to greet her with warm benedicites. On the table were bread, cheese, and winter apples. Lille and Ghent had settled next to the fire beside Phillip, who sat hunched over a steaming bowl.

“Your aim was true this morning, Dame Katherine. Was Master Lionel your target? Father? Marie? Me?”

“Yes to all, Phillip, and more.” Kate gave him a taunting grin, but it troubled her that he had slipped past without her noticing. “Hot ale?” she bent down to sniff. Hot spiced wine. “Well-watered, I hope. It is difficult to attend your grammar master if you are bleary-eyed with drink. And Hugh Grantham expects you after your classes midday to work on his accounts.”

“Well-watered, Dame Katherine.” Phillip ran a long-fingered hand through his curly mane.

Berend handed her a bowl of ale, her preferred morning beverage. Sipping it, she settled next to Phillip. Unlike his sister, Phillip was determined to thrive despite the abrupt, dramatic change in his life. He had offered to keep Kate’s accounts – he had done so for his mother, his grandmother, and several uncles. He showed her how quickly he could add up columns of numbers.

Kate had declined his offer, having no intention of revealing his father’s insolvency. The discovery of the debts had shocked not only Kate, but also his partners Thomas Holme and her cousin William Frost. She had worked hard to secure what was left, primarily property and partial interest in a ship, selling a few tenements and some land, finding lucrative uses for the rest. She tucked away what she could, in her own name, for the future. All the while, Simon’s odious brother Lionel had watched for her to fail. She had disappointed him, and she meant to continue to do so. Besides, she did not as yet know whether she could trust Phillip.

Instead she was helping him develop a gift he preferred to his skill with sums, a gift his uncle had derided, seeing it as menial work, beneath a Neville – no matter that they were a minor branch of the prominent family. Phillip understood stone, and loved to work with it. A city, whether Calais or York, was to him a treasure-house of stonework, from the simple squares and rectangles that composed a wall to the intricate carvings on bosses and capitals in the churches and the minster. One touch informed him of the composition. He said stone spoke to him. She had encouraged him, giving him space for a workshop and purchasing for him some basic tools. Several of his practice pieces adorned the garden. Lionel had scoffed at her “desperate efforts to win the bastard’s love.” Well, she had won Phillip’s gratitude, if not his love. She’d made a deal with Hugh Grantham, a merchant trader and master mason: If Phillip worked on his accounts, he might spend a few hours at the end of each day following one of the journeyman masons in Grantham’s employ in the minster stoneyard. As an added incentive to quicken Phillip’s journey to apprenticeship, she agreed to add Grantham to her select list of esteemed citizens of York who might rent one of the lovely bedchambers in the house on High Petergate.

Phillip was expressing his disappointment in Connor, the journeyman to whom Grantham had assigned him, when Lille began a rumbling growl and Ghent rose and moved toward the door, his ears pricked.

Jennet hastened to open it. “Sam! And Goodwife Griselde?”

Simon’s former manservant assisted the elderly woman across the threshold and supported her as she eased down onto a chair Jennet had moved near the fire. “I was on my way to the house on High Petergate to discuss young Seth’s responsibilities with the goodwife,” Sam explained to Kate in his gravelly voice. He doffed his hat and ran a hand through his white hair, punctuating his speech with a grin, clearly pleased to prove his worth to her. She had kept him on after Simon’s death to run errands, walk the dogs, and assist Jennet and Berend, fearing he was too elderly to be hired by someone new. She knew he often felt useless, so she had been glad to tell him about his new assignment of supervising Seth in helping Griselde and Clement prepare for Lady Kirkby’s visit. She had impressed upon him the size of the task, as the entire guesthouse would be occupied. “I noticed her on Davygate, looking – well, as you see her. She was leaning against the pillar outside Davy Hall pressing her temples and breathing hard. When she said she was on her way here I thought it best to escort her.” He leaned close to whisper, “She seemed frightened.”

“Is it your husband, Griselde?” Kate asked. “Have the preparations for Lady Kirkby’s stay been too much for Clement?”

Griselde shook her head. She looked a sight, her face ruddy with exertion, her hair escaping her hat and clinging damply to her cheeks, her eyes red as if she had been crying. Kate poured an unwatered cup of warm wine and placed it in Griselde’s hands.

“Drink slowly,” Kate said, crouching down beside the afflicted woman, silently praying that she had not been foolish in entrusting the guesthouse to Simon’s former factor and his wife. So far they had done good work, but it took only one indiscretion… “Take all the time you need.”

But Griselde spoke after the smallest of sips. “I have failed you, Mistress Clifford. I shall” – she shook her head vigorously – “never forgive myself.” Still nodding and shaking her head. “Clement – he warned me. In my pride I did not heed him.”

Unease settled on Kate, to witness the stolid Griselde in such distress. “Drink a little more and take a few good, deep breaths. Phillip, go see that your sister is awake and dressing.” With a whine of protest he rose and slouched out the door. When he was gone, Kate told Sam to stay near the door so he might warn her of her wards’ approach. She would rather Marie and Phillip not hear of any trouble at the guesthouse. They knew nothing of the merchants who frequented it when there were no out-of-town guests.

“Now tell me all, Griselde.”

“Your kinsman, William Frost–”

Last night he would have been in the best chamber on High Petergate with his wealthy mistress. “What is amiss with William?” Her mother’s nephew was an ambitious man, a formidable power in the city, and, as such, could be quite the bully. And he knew about Kate’s financial troubles. But Kate played to his weakness, his loveless marriage to Isabella Gisburne, his passion for the widow Drusilla Seaton. She listened now as the elderly woman described a transgression of such proportions that Kate reluctantly had to interrupt her several times asking for clarification. A stranger and Alice Hatten, a common whore? Had she not moved away? A shuttered lantern? A second stranger? Strangled with one of the silk ropes?

“How did she overpower him?” Jennet asked as she refilled the woman’s bowl.

“I do not believe it was Alice who did it,” Griselde said, seeming calmer now, her breath steadier. “I swear I heard another man’s voice in there last night.”

“Where is Alice?” Kate asked. “And the other man? Did you see him?”

“I only heard him, mistress. And this morning there was only Master Frost’s guest, lying there.” She pressed a hand to her lips and shook her head. “I fear I slept through it all. Two cups of Master Frost’s fine wine was far too much for me. There was no sign of Alice Hatten or the second man this morning.”

Kate sat down beside Griselde, stunned. Here was the crisis that would ruin her. The creditors would hear of a murder in her guesthouse and demand that she sell off everything to cover the debts, for who would stay there now? There was the manor – she might live there, leave Marie and Phillip with Lionel – or William, because this was his mess. What could she do? Had her uncle Richard Clifford, dean of York Minster, enough clout to protect her?

“My cousin William is to blame for this, Griselde. He manipulated you.” Kate patted the woman’s hand. “Now. Have you told anyone?”

“Clement. No one else.”

“Good.”

Kate’s heart was pounding. Calm yourself. This is no time to panic. Perhaps they could see this through. If William took responsibility, all might be well, though she would be looking over her shoulder for trouble at every breath. Damn William to hell. He had shattered what little peace she had attained. Damn him. She would take him down with her – all it would take is a word with his wife, Isabella. William was beholden to his wife for his wealth and his stature in the city, and Kate knew that Isabella would not suffer an unfaithful husband. Then why had her mouth gone dry?

What would Kate’s mother have done? Found another husband and let him protect her. That’s what she’d done when Kate’s father died. A few months of mourning and Eleanor was off to Strasbourg with Ulrich Smit, her new love. Her mother’s example was clearly no help.

Kate rose. “Berend, we may be in danger. I depend on you to protect this household. I’ll take the hounds with me. And Sam will stay at the guesthouse until Lady Kirkby’s retainers arrive.”

Berend folded his muscular arms and nodded. “The children?”

“Jennet will escort them to school and go for Marie midday. You keep her here this afternoon. As for Phillip – you’ve seen his knife. He protected himself on the streets of Calais. He will be safe enough on his own if trouble comes.”

All three of the servants she’d hired – Jennet, Berend, Matt – had lived by their wits and skill with weapons at some point in their lives. She had felt it important. Folk wore more polished masks in York than they did up north, but Kate knew that everyone had a darkness. Everyone. She had seen to it that she felt safe in her own home.

Kate told Sam to go to William Frost. William and his ilk were already comfortable with Sam from his days as Simon’s manservant. “Tell him I need him to come at once to the house on High Petergate. I will be waiting for him. And if he thinks to excuse himself, tell him – quietly, for his ears only – what Goodwife Griselde has just told us. Then come to the guesthouse.”

Griselde had drained her cup and was now silently weeping.

“Jennet, see to Goodwife Griselde while I dress. And not a word while the children are in the kitchen.”

Berend placed a large, comfortingly strong and warm hand on Kate’s back as she moved past him toward the door. “I could go to the guesthouse right now, take care of what is there.”

She thanked him, but declined the offer. “I must see it, and then see that my cousin removes it. Quietly. I leave my household in your care.”

As Kate crossed the yard the hall door burst open, Phillip rushing out, calling back over his shoulder to Marie, “You will go to school hungry.” He mimicked Kate’s manner of speech – the pitch was wrong, but the Northern shaping of the words perfect. A talent she had not guessed. And then he tripped and fell.

Kate rushed to help him up, brushing him off.

His face was red and rigid with resentment. “I did not need your help.”

Too late she realized the insult, showing off how much stronger she was than he. Of course she was. He was but twelve years old and had never trained in archery, wielded axe or sword, or even learned to ride a horse. The alleys of Calais had been his domain. But she had injured his pride.

Marie laughed as she ran past. “Stupid boy!”

Kate let them go, hurrying through the hall and up to dress, her stomach in knots once more.