The Cross Legged Knight (28 page)

She must find Owen. Abandoning the support of the wall, she straightened her veil and brushed off her surcoat with her good hand. She waited a little while, until she felt steadier, then moved along into the shadows of Little Shambles. When she emerged in Silver Street the late-afternoon sun blinded her and she stumbled to one side as she heard a cart rumbling towards her. Shielding her eyes with her bandaged hand, she saw a man leading a donkey and cart. It was the friar who had been so kind. He stopped beside her and held up his hands in peace. ‘I am come to take you home, Mistress Wilton.’

She thanked him as he helped her into the cart. She did feel light-headed and would be glad to get home.

Owen and Margaret Dubber had fallen into conversation, talking of the city dwellers’ fear of fire, the ease with which rumours spread, the worth of a skilled tailor, gardens. Eventually Owen reintroduced Cisotta.

‘Women there are who did not look on her with charity,’ Margaret said. She lifted a piece of yellow cloth, and a red one. ‘She drew all eyes to her with her
gay attire. And her bonny smile made men foolish.’

‘And her ambition?’

Margaret dropped the cloths. ‘The young midwives must learn while the old yet live. It is better to work with an elder, but except for Adam the Cooper none found fault with Cisotta. Some might have felt slighted, but to murder? Nay, I never heard that anyone hated her so much as that.’

‘What of Adam?’

‘He blamed her for his first wife’s death, said the charm for an easy delivery was a curse killing both mother and babe. Folk gossiped, Eudo took a fist to Adam, their parish priests and guilds put an end to the quarrel, and Adam remarried and fathered two healthy children.’ She groaned as she lifted one of the baskets of cloth. ‘The shadows are settling. I must stoke the fire, cook my dinner.’

Owen helped her with the baskets, stooping to pass through the low doorway of her house. As he stepped out for the last of the three, he saw the groom from the York Tavern standing in Goodramgate counting the doorways of Lady Row. Owen hailed him, dreading his errand.

‘Captain!’ The groom hastened to him. ‘Mistress Merchet says you are to go home at once, you are needed.’ He bobbed his head and began to leave.

‘Stay a moment. What has happened?’

The young man shook his head. ‘A friar brought Mistress Wilton home in a cart and helped her to the house. That is all I know, Captain.’

Margaret, standing in her doorway, crossed herself and said, ‘You’re both in my prayers, Captain.’

Owen caught up with the groom. ‘Is my wife injured?’

‘I’ve told you what I know, Captain.’

Kate met Owen at the door with a confusing account of the friar, who nodded to Owen as he passed him sitting in the hall.

‘And Magda Digby had come to see Alisoun, thank the Lord –’

‘Where is your mistress?’ Owen demanded.

‘In the kitchen.’

Owen was there in half a dozen strides and almost choked with relief to see Lucie’s eyes opened. She lay on the pallet, close to the fire, Magda bending over her.

‘Now that thou art here, thou canst hold this tight.’

Magda had a stick twisted in cloth to cut off the blood flow to Lucie’s hand.

Owen saw the gash as he sat down beside Lucie and took the stick. ‘Who did this?’

‘I was trying to catch a thief.’ Lucie tried to smile. ‘I caught his knife with the wrong side of my hand.’

‘Where did this happen?’

‘In the Shambles.’ She closed her eyes, licked her lips.

Magda lifted her head and helped her drink something that smelled of honey.

Owen noticed Lucie’s gown lying on the rushes next to the pallet, rumpled and torn. A sleeve was stiff with dried blood. ‘I thought you were with Eudo and his children.’

Haltingly, she told him what had happened, while Magda cleaned the wound and then stood by, casting impatient looks at Owen. When he had heard all that Lucie had the breath to tell him, he asked Magda how bad the wound was.

‘The bleeding is the worst of it,’ said Magda. ‘She has lost too much blood of late. It will be a long time before she has need of leeches again.’ She drew closer. ‘Begin
to ease the pressure now, let Magda see whether the bleeding has stopped.’

Owen eased the tourniquet and watched, hardly daring to breathe. Droplets appeared, welled and grew no more. ‘God be thanked.’

‘Good. Magda will continue.’

Owen rose to give her his place. One twist at a time she loosened the bandage, pausing after each turn to see whether the bleeding would resume. At last she drew out the stick and began to clean the wound once more. ‘It is seeping a little, but not enough to worry Magda.’

Owen paced the kitchen while Magda finished cleaning and dressing Lucie’s hand. He kept his silence, for Lucie’s breathing was shallow and he did not want to make her strain to talk to him. He did not know what to think of the incident. Lucie seemed so certain that the gloves were important. Yet nothing in her tale made him so sure. He wondered why she had pushed her way into a rowdy crowd. As with her fall from the stool, she had been injured because of her own carelessness. It was not like Lucie.

‘Thou art to stay in bed a week, drinking as much of Magda’s blood tonic and Phillippa’s concoctions as thou canst bear, and thou must have meat once a day.’

Seeing Magda gathering the bowls and rags, Owen resumed his seat near Lucie, took her uninjured hand and kissed it.

‘I must redeem myself,’ Lucie whispered.

Owen smoothed back the hair from her forehead. ‘You are my redemption.’

‘I lost the gloves. I should have brought them home at once. I cannot be trusted.’

‘If thou canst not speak without making thy heart race, Magda must forbid talk.’

Lucie closed her eyes. ‘I
am
tired.’

Magda muttered something unintelligible as she took away the tray she had filled, then retreated to the hall.

The firelight warmed Lucie’s face. ‘Can you forgive me?’ she whispered.

Owen kissed her hand again. ‘There is nothing to forgive.’

‘I lost the gloves.’

‘Why are they so important to you?’

‘They were important to
you
. Eudo knows. He must have sent the boy after me. Only he and Emma know of the gloves.’

Owen smoothed her brow. ‘Eudo cannot leave his house. There is a guard at either door.’

‘There is no one else.’

‘What makes you so certain the gloves will help me find Cisotta’s murderer?’ Owen asked.

‘It is the way she hid them, and swore Anna to secrecy.’

‘But that is all in keeping with a surprise for Eudo.’

‘Anna thought Cisotta was to get the hides the night of the fire.’ Lucie did not open her eyes. Her voice was faint, her speech slurred.

‘It may prove to be nothing but a child’s imagination that connects the gloves with that night,’ he said.

Lucie fought to open her eyes. ‘I am not a child.’

‘I did not mean
you
.’

‘You think I am mad. I see it in the way you look at me.’

The door opened and Magda came in, followed by Alisoun. ‘Enough talk,’ Magda declared. ‘I must show Alisoun what she must do.’

Owen pressed Lucie’s hand. ‘Send them away.’

‘You’ll see,’ she whispered.

He kissed her on the forehead and withdrew, feeling
useless and filled with an anger that had no target. He did question her judgement these days. She seemed to move about in a dream, motivated by her feelings, not her head. Her insistence on the importance of the gloves was a good example – Eudo could not slip past his men. Or could he? Perhaps Owen should not be so certain of that. But even if the tawyer could find a way past the guards, he would be a fool to attack Lucie. It was too obvious. She had shown him the gloves.

The friar had risen from his seat in the hall. ‘Mistress Merchet’s groom has this moment kindly taken the cart from me to return to its owner. I must leave.’

‘God bless you for what you did.’

The friar bowed his head. ‘The owner of the cart is equally to thank.’

‘Would you be willing to show me where the theft occurred?’ Owen asked.

‘It is on my way.’ The friar preceded Owen out on to Davygate. ‘It was the Lord who put me in Mistress Wilton’s path when it seemed she could walk no further. There she was, lit up by the sun when I reached the crossing of Little Shambles and Silver Street. God watches over her.’

Not enough
, Owen thought. ‘Did you see what happened?’

The friar shook his head. ‘I caught sight of Mistress Wilton pushing through the crowd, trying to give chase to the thief. By the whiteness of her face I knew she was in pain. I followed, calling out to her time and again, but she did not hear me.’

Owen was only half listening, worrying that perhaps Eudo had found a way out. He turned north from Thursday Market so they might pass Eudo’s in Patrick Pool. He was relieved to see the tawyer working beside his apprentice in the shop, a guard sitting nearby.

As they entered the Shambles, the friar pointed to Harry Flesher’s shopfront at the far side. ‘That is where the argument took place.’ Moving further up the street, the friar finally paused. ‘I believe this is where Mistress Wilton was standing, perhaps a little closer to the shop’s side of the street.’

Owen noted that it was in fact quite close to the butcher’s shop itself.

‘I must leave you now, Captain. May God be with you. Mistress Wilton will be in my prayers and those of all my brethren.’

Owen thanked him, though Lucie seemed to be in all of York’s prayers by now and it had done little good.

The shopfront in the Shambles was still open, though all the others were shut. A young man whom Owen recognized as one of Jasper’s friends was raking up blood-spattered rushes. ‘We are closed for business, sir,’ he said without pausing.

‘I have not seen you for a long while, Timothy. How do you find your apprenticeship?’

Now the boy raised his head. ‘Captain!’ He leaned his rake against the door jamb. Glancing back at the shop and seeing they were alone, he said, ‘I think I would rather do anything else. I smell of the slaughterhouse. Dogs follow me in the streets. But my master is kind, and fair.’

‘I understand there was much shouting in front of the shop this afternoon.’ The boy was already nodding and, by the light in his eyes, eager to tell the tale. ‘What was it about?’

‘My master caught a boy thieving and lifted him up by the neck of his tunic, and a customer took offence, preaching at my master that he should be lenient with the poor. “Poor!” my master shouted. “Half the wealth of the city passes through his hands. Poor indeed.” And
they fell to arguing with such intent that the thief got away and the customer dropped a good piece of beef on the ground. Worse, a dog made off with it.’ Timothy laughed, then looked round to make sure he had not been heard and continued more softly, ‘When my master said the customer must pay, that is when the fighting truly began. Such names they called one another!’ Timothy stopped to catch his breath.

‘The thief. Could you describe him to me?’

‘Weedy, like my little brother, sprung up too fast for his clothes, all wrists and ankles. Long, dark hair tied back in a piece of string, and he’s lacking a bit of one ear.’

Lucie’s thief had been blond, or so she thought. So there were two at work in the street.

‘How did you hear about it?’ Timothy asked.

Owen told him of Lucie’s loss.

‘Faith, you will wish to talk to my master, then, since he knows the cur.’

‘Aye, if you could find Master Flesher.’

Timothy tossed aside his rake and disappeared into the shop. He returned a moment later accompanied by Harry Flesher, a short, muscular man with a bush of white hair. He had his sleeves caught up above his elbows, exhibiting strong forearms. ‘I fear Timothy has given you false hopes, Captain. I’ve seen the thief before, aye, we all know him by sight on the Shambles, filching coin from our customers. But to tell you his name or his abode …’ Harry shook his head.

‘Do you know if he works with another lad, short, fair hair?’

‘Well, they oft work in pairs, eh? I would have wondered about the customer who caused all the trouble, whether he was working with the lad and the dog, curse him, but the man was well dressed, with
clean hands and hair. A thief could not scrub all the filth from his hands for one jest.’

‘He was a stranger to you?’

Harry nodded. ‘It is not so rare as you might be thinking. York is a big city.’

Owen thanked him. As Harry withdrew, he remarked that Timothy was slow in cleaning up the rushes. The lad took up his rake again.

‘Is Jasper much in the shop these days?’ he asked when his master had shut the door behind him.

‘Aye, he has been busy of late.’

‘He is lucky, working with sweet-smelling potions.’

‘He measures out pig’s bladders, blood and dung as well as lavender and mint.’

‘At least he never stinks of it.’