Masques of Gold (6 page)

“And you think what was spoken in wine was the truth?”

“Oh yes.” Goscelin nodded emphasis to his words. “Flael had no part in the plot, but I cannot help but wonder what he meant. And before anyone could ask, his journeyman—I cannot recall his name, but I remember he was killed in a stupid accident…a shame. It was he who made the cup and plate for the king. Ah, such beauty! Anyway, the journeyman had a much harder head for wine than Flael did, and he made a jest and soon carried his master home.”

“Flael could have meant he had been approached by someone for support and refused.”

“He could have meant anything,” the alderman said. “But if his words were carried to the king, implying that he had known of the plot, been at court, and
not
given warning—”

“This is idle speculation.” Justin shook his head, then smiled suddenly. “And if you do not open the door and tell your wife we are ready to dine, I will have an enemy I fear worse than the king.”

“I too,” Goscelin admitted, his shrewd eyes twinkling now. “After all, the king can only kill me. I must live with Adela.”

William Bowles heard his daughter cry, “Wait,” but could not be bothered with her. Let the little bitch solve her own problems. His were worse. If Flael had been tortured to death and not confessed, suspicion might fall on him, William thought. FitzWalter had not blamed him originally because Hubert de Bosco had taken the box Flael had given him out of his hand immediately. He had never had any chance to open it. Thank God for that. Still, if Flael had sworn under torture that he had delivered the seal to William when William's daughter became his wife and his hostage—

William's eyes stared blindly with terror as he wove in and out of the crowd in the Chepe. At first he was so frightened he could not think at all. He could hardly keep from running, running he knew not where. Finally the desire to run formed into coherent thought. He knew his only hope was to flee before FitzWalter thought of him, and then despair made him whimper aloud. He could not flee because he had no money. He was a rich man, a very rich man, yet he could not lay his hands on more than ten shillings in silver. Much of his wealth was in the charge of three goldsmiths to be lent out at interest. All the rest was tied up in the rare and costly herbs and spices that stocked his shop and in the cargo in the ships of his brothers-by-marriage. In two days he could have money enough to live in comfort anywhere in the world, but in two days he, like Flael, might be dead by torture.

His thoughts ran round and round, panic insisting that he must escape but that, without money, escape was impossible. He was at the corner of his own street when he stopped dead in his tracks so abruptly that a man behind him ran into him and cursed him soundly.

What a fool he was! Heloise would have money. There must be gold in plenty in Flael's coffers. Flael's sons were gone and could not interfere. And if she tried to deny him…Despite his terror, William almost smiled. If she tried to prevent him from taking anything he wanted, he would beat her senseless. He would break her nose and her jaw, knock out her teeth, make sure no man would ever look at her again. If he fled and hid, he would have no need to fear Gamel and Gerbod, his thrice-accursed brothers-by-marriage.

William turned to walk back in the direction he had come from, so taken up with his pleasant vision that he did not notice a big man rise from a bench in front of the alehouse on the corner. He started violently when the man seized his arm and spoke his name, and he almost sank to the ground as he whispered, “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Hubert de Bosco growled. “He died before I laid a hand on him.”

“Died?” William breathed, unable to believe his ears. “Of what?”

“Fear.” Hubert's lips twisted in a sneer meant as much for his companion as for the dead man, but William did not notice the expression.

“By God,” he snapped, his quick mind seeing the fact that he was in no danger, “why did you not leave well enough alone and drop him near the house of that woman he used to visit? Either his death would have been taken as natural or she would have been blamed. Heloise said he had been tortured. Why—”

“
He
ordered it,” Hubert said. “He thought it might scare anyone who knew into bringing you news.”

“He was right about making those who knew fearful,” William remarked dryly. “But unfortunately it did not work the way he hoped. It frightened the sons so much that they ran away. Let us hope it also frightened them enough to make them leave behind what we seek. You had better go and tell him. I will go back to Flael's house—”

“No,” Hubert said. “You come with me and tell him yourself.”

William had noticed that one side of Hubert's face was bruised and swollen, but until then he had not associated the injury with Flael's death. Hubert was forever getting into brawls, but his refusal to bring his master more bad news put a new light on the bruises. Internally, William shuddered. He had no desire to bring bad news to Robert FitzWalter either, but he dared not refuse Hubert directly.

“Very well,” he said, “but let us first go back to Flael's house. My daughter is alone there, and we can look for the seal without interference. Flael must have hidden it outside the house before the wedding, but he might have brought it back after he let us search for it.” He saw the incipient refusal in Hubert's face and added, “We could look into Flael's strongboxes too. I suppose the sons took something, but…”

The suggestive drift in William's voice changed Hubert's mind. The thought of a chance to dip freely into a master goldsmith's strongbox overwhelmed even his fear of his master. His disappointment was correspondingly strong when William's blows on the door for admittance brought Halsig, still chewing but with one hand on his sword hilt. Hubert uttered a growl of frustration, but over William's shoulder he saw two more men behind Halsig and gave up hope, at least temporarily, of making free with Flael's gold. Nor did he utter any further protest when William turned to him and said, “Thank you for accompanying me. I am much recovered from my shock now and do not need to impose on your good nature any longer. There is no need for you to stay here. When I have done what I can for my daughter, we can finish our business.”

Hubert had not the faintest idea what this meant, beyond the fact that William clearly wanted him to go away. Since he was accustomed to following William's suggestions without understanding them, he mumbled some meaningless response, watched the door close, and walked back toward the Chepe. On the outskirts of the market, he saw a cookshop, which reminded him that he had not eaten, and he walked across to it, ordered a meal, and sat down to eat on a stool at the end of the plank that served as a table for the shop. He had chosen the stool because it was near the brazier that kept the food hot and warmed the air around it, but the position also gave him a view of Flael's house.

Puzzlement, not suspicion, drew Hubert's eyes to Flael's door. He was far too contemptuous of William's cowardice to suspect him of any attempt to cheat. He had first been hired by Bowles to protect him after William's father-by-marriage and brothers-by-marriage had beaten him nearly to death in revenge for beating his wife. After their ship had sailed, William had paid him now and then to do to others what his wife's kin had done to him. In exchange, aside from money, William would tell him what to do when FitzWalter's orders puzzled him or when he could not understand the dangers or advantages of offers others made to him. Several times he had not followed William's advice, and he had suffered for it. That had been some years ago. Now he always did what William said—unless FitzWalter gave him orders.

Everything had worked just as William said it would this time too. When that journeyman had come to him and said he could lay his hands on a copy of the king's privy seal, William had explained just what to do, and FitzWalter had been very pleased with Hubert,
very
pleased, even though the journeyman had been killed before Hubert had a chance to tell his master about the seal. FitzWalter had been perfectly content with the way Hubert managed the business—by William's advice—until Flael died. But that wasn't William's fault. And it wasn't Hubert's either. Even his master had not guessed that Flael would drop dead.

That train of thought was unpleasant, and Hubert left it to wonder again why he had been sent away from Flael's shop. It could not be because William wanted to be alone with the strongboxes, he thought slowly; even William couldn't get anything out of those while the guards were there. And he couldn't get anything from the daughter either, the thought continued. Cold bitch. She'd see her father starve before she'd give him a farthing of what was hers—and report him to the guard for stealing too.

The food was good. Hubert cracked a bone, sucked on the marrow, and threw the pieces out into the road where two dogs, darting from a side alley, promptly fell on them, snarling and snapping, until a passerby kicked them and they fled in different directions. Slowly Hubert's mind, which had been distracted by amusement as he watched the dogs fight, returned to the question of why William had been in such a hurry to be rid of him. Why could he not have joined the guards in their meal, for example, if William did not want the daughter to see him?

Hubert still had made no sense of the problem when William came out of the house some time later, but considering it had sparked enough caution in him to prevent him from calling out to his friend. He rose from the stool and followed, his longer, faster stride slowly narrowing the distance between them. They were again near William's house when he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. This time, although William turned swiftly, he did not start or grow pale.

“The news is good and bad,” he said. “Let me get a bite to eat and we will go. I had no chance to search the workshop, of course, and any hope of profit is gone. The sons loaded Flael's strongboxes in the cart and made off with them—and my idiot daughter did nothing to stop them. However, some good has come of that. The sons are being sought by Justin FitzAilwin.”

Hubert grunted, being familiar with Justin, who occasionally did business with his master. But since he did not understand how he could profit in any way from the sons being found by Sir Justin, who would take good care that the strongboxes were not available to any unauthorized person, what he said was, “Why did you send me away?”

William no longer ground his teeth when Hubert asked him a question. The years had taught him patience—and that he must limit his contempt to remarks Hubert could not understand. He had once gone too far and been knocked down and kicked, like a misbehaving dog. Besides, in this case where money was involved, he had to be sure that Hubert did not, by accident, transmit any ideas to FitzWalter that could inspire even a flicker of doubt.

“Because,” he murmured, stretching upward to speak directly into Hubert's ear, “if you stayed, we would have had to give your name, and once your name was known, someone would remember that you are sworn to FitzWalter. Do you think your master wishes to be connected in any way to Peter de Flael, who is suddenly and most strangely dead?”

Hubert shook his head, but he still did not understand how anyone could connect Flael's death to him or through him to FitzWalter, and he said so. William's explanations continued right through dinner, once he had made sure no one in his house could overhear Hubert's unguarded voice. Toward the middle of the meal, if he had had the courage, he would have stuck his eating knife in Hubert's eye in frustration. However, by the time he had finished eating and they were on their way to FitzWalter's house, which was perched somewhat forlornly on the mound where Baynard's Castle had once stood, he had got across the point that Hubert must not tell his master he had been near Flael's house since he dropped the corpse there, and he must not go there again, unless specifically bidden to do so by FitzWalter.

***

Lissa had been wakened suddenly by a voice, the most familiar and least loved in the world, making a demand she did not at once understand. For a moment the whole of the past six weeks were wiped from her mind and she was once again in her own home, fallen asleep before the fire as she sometimes did after a particularly busy day. She sat up, rubbed her aching neck, frowned crossly and said, “Whatever do you want, father? Can it not wait—”

Her voice checked abruptly as her eyes took in a room lit by daylight and different from her own chamber in her father's house. She remembered where she was and what had happened. The frown, however, only grew more pronounced. “So you came back,” she said. “Why?”

“Why? Naturally, to assist my poor bereaved daughter in any way I can.”

The mockery in William's voice did not hurt her, but Lissa stared at her father. She was still somewhat bemused by sleep, and she was sickened and disappointed by the idea that Justin was below, listening slyly to their conversation. Nor could she guess from what her father said whether he was aware that Justin was in the house. Then she saw that the door was closed, and she was so filled with joy at the idea that Justin had not insisted the door be left open, that he trusted her enough not to spy on her, that she barely prevented herself from smiling.

“I am very sorry that Peter should have died in such a horrible way,” she said, “but you must know better than any other that I could not be bereaved. You forced me to marry him, and though he was kind to me, we had not been man and wife long enough for me to become fond of him. What do you want here?”

“Perhaps you should not spread the notion that I forced you to marry and that you had no affection for Flael. It is not unknown for a young wife to rid herself of an old, rich husband.”

“Do not trouble your head about it, father.” Lissa's soft chuckle mocked her father's sneer. “I am in no danger of being suspected on those grounds, since
you
arranged that not a penny of Peter's money nor any share in his business be added to my dower.”

William licked his lips. “But his sons are fled, and if they are suspected of his murder—for why else should they run away?—you are Flael's only remaining heir. Certainly until they return and can prove themselves innocent, you must be in charge of your husband's estate.”

“That may be so,” Lissa agreed, considerably amused at the thought of how her father's expression of gloating greed would change when he heard the end of her sentence. “But that will profit neither you nor me, since young Peter and Edmond took both strongboxes and most of the tools with them. They have left me nothing of Peter's estate but his debts.”

There was a moment's silence and then William burst out, “You fool! Idiot! You let them go with the money and the gold and jewels?”

A string of obscenities followed, but Lissa interrupted calmly, “Why should I care? It was
their
money and gold and jewels. Why should they not take them? I am sure young Peter and Edmond had nothing to do with their father's death.” Her eyes, full of challenge and accusation, met his. “They ran away because they were frightened by the manner of Peter's murder—and you know it.”