The Cross Legged Knight (33 page)

‘Aye, Mistress. But the Riverwoman says it is important that you rest.’

‘Rest I will, when I have seen to my affairs. Will you give Jasper the instructions to make the tonic without the sleeping draught?’

Alisoun, tucking the rag bandages and ointment in a basket, hid her face from Lucie. ‘The Riverwoman is watching me for signs that I am not a healer born, Mistress. If I disobey her …’

‘Then it is best that I go without the tonic until I am ready for rest.’

From the set of the girl’s shoulders Lucie could see that she was annoying her.

‘That is not doing as the Riverwoman wishes, either,’ Alisoun groaned in the pure tones of a child weary of unpleasant responsibilities.

‘But I shall disobey, not you.’

‘What do you mean to do?’

‘When Magda tells you to do something, do you question her intentions?’

‘Aye, Mistress.’

‘And does she allow it?’

‘No, Mistress. I’ll bring the children to you now.’ Alisoun departed.

Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was a bald, well-fleshed man with scars that suggested he had experienced a much more adventurous life before becoming a domestic. He was sitting cross-legged on the rushes beside Poins’s pallet, singing a bawdy ballad when Owen entered the screened-off section of the kitchen. Poins lay with eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

Bolton swallowed the end of a note and scrambled upright. ‘Captain,’ he said, bobbing his head.

‘I’ll relieve you for a little while. But first, have you
ever seen these before?’ Owen drew the gloves out of his scrip.

Bolton bent close, making an odd sound in his throat. ‘I don’t like it when gloves dry like that, like claws ready to grab you.’ He crossed himself. ‘No, I’ve never seen such fancy gloves. Ladies are not commonly dressed so fine when they’re in the kitchen.’ He retreated to the screens.

‘I’ll stay long enough for you to go to the privy and have something to eat.’

‘Bless you, Captain.’

Poins had closed his eyes.

The kitchen had high ceilings, and a small window was open near the bed. Even so, the man’s burns smelled like rotting greens and made Owen’s recently filled stomach queasy. Thoresby had been kinder than Owen realized in sitting with the man last night. Poins’s face was partially visible now, the bandages only covering his right eye and upper cheek, the scalp over his left ear. His lips were still swollen and cracking. Owen found the ointment for them and smoothed some on.

‘Poins, do you remember me?’ he asked as he worked. ‘I’m Captain Archer. My wife and I took you in after the fire.’

Poins’s lips trembled, and a tension in his jaw suggested that he heard and held himself back from responding.

Before a battle the best commanders envisioned the thoughts of the enemy, trying to predict their movements. Owen sat back and thought about how he would feel if he had suffered the wounds and the burns Poins had, the loss of a limb. Magda said that some of his deepest burns were painless. Did that mean he was numb in those places? Owen thought that might be
almost as frightening as pain. And there was the pain in the limb he no longer had, as well as the pain of his burns and the stench of his own decaying flesh. He wondered whether Poins was aware that he had moved from Owen’s house to the palace. And what he thought their purpose was in their attempts to question him about the fire. He must be frightened, confused, despairing, and perhaps angry that Magda had removed his arm without telling him what she was to do. It was no wonder Poins did not choose to talk. But he might be the key to that night. Owen must find a way to reach him.

He wondered whether Magda had told Poins anything about Cisotta’s death. Owen had not. Perhaps it was time to speak of it. Softly, so that his words carried no threat, Owen told Poins how he and Cisotta had been found, and that she had been murdered, but not how, watching all the time for signs that he understood. Again there were subtle changes in Poins’s face, and as Owen described Cisotta’s burns tremors ran down Poins’s ruined side.

‘We know nothing of what happened that night, how you both came to be in the undercroft,’ Owen continued. ‘Did you argue with her?’

No response.

‘Did you catch her stealing your master’s goods?’

One side of Poins’s mouth twitched.

‘Small hides, perhaps? Goatskin? Rabbit?’

Another shudder ran through Poins’s body and his throat began to work.

‘Is that it, Poins, you caught her, and in your surprise you dropped a lamp?’

Poins contorted his mouth and a sound came out, half groan, half sigh. ‘Not … my … lamp!’ he managed, his voice hoarse, his words barely coherent because of his swollen tongue.

‘What happened then?’

Poins moved his head back and forth weakly.

‘Did you kill her?’

Poins turned away, moaning as he tried to roll over on to his right side.

Owen slumped down on to a stool, head in hands. He must be patient though it drove him mad. When his heartbeat returned to normal, he straightened and watched Poins for a short while, but though the injured man breathed more quickly than he had before, he was motionless.

It seemed to have been Owen’s mention of the hide that had roused Poins, and that he had acknowledged that a lamp had set the fire, though someone else’s lamp. It would not be for nothing that Poins had broken his silence in Owen’s presence, not after all this time. He also seemed keen to deny his guilt. Yet his refusal to say more seemed a token of some measure of guilt.

‘I am sorry if I caused you distress, but you must see how important it is that I learn what happened that night. A murderer walks among us. He must be found before he kills again.’

Poins opened his eyes. ‘He struck me down.’

Owen dropped to his knees beside the pallet. ‘Someone was there? A man? Did you see him?’

Poins barely shook his head. The pain in his eyes made Owen want to believe him.

‘Why was Cisotta there?’

Poins shook his head and turned away.

‘I beg you, Poins, tell me.’

Silence.

Hoping for another chance, Owen sat with his attention focused on Poins until Bolton returned, but in all that time Poins did not move. It was even more maddening to Owen than before, knowing the man
could speak, remembered the night and refused to tell him all he knew.

Gwenllian and Hugh had grown bored playing in Lucie’s bedchamber, begging Alisoun to take them out to the garden.

Lucie told herself it meant nothing, she should rejoice in their delight in play, their enjoyment of the garden, but she felt the rejection deep within. They were right to prefer the young, energetic Alisoun to her. Lucie’s hand throbbed, as did her head, and her balance was precarious when she stood. But worse than all that, the darkness was creeping back. She must busy herself.

She slipped out of bed and waited until the room stilled, then, with the mincing steps of the elderly, she made her way across the boards to the chest in which she had locked her scrip and the items Owen had brought from the fire. Unlocking it, she found the scrip, the knife she had wrapped in a rag, the belt used to murder Cisotta and her friend’s ruined girdle, but not the gloves. If Owen had taken them it must mean he thought them of some importance. Perhaps in finding them she had redeemed her mistakes of the previous day. She tucked the belt into her scrip, took her paternoster beads from a shelf and crossed back to the bed, annoyed by how weak her legs felt. Her pulse pounded in her head. The loss of blood could cause some of this weakness, but she suspected that most of it was the effect of the tonic, that Magda had meant it to enforce the rest she had ordained. But it was a half-hearted effort, for Magda would know Lucie might discover the cause of her exhaustion and set the tonic aside.

Sitting propped up against pillows, Lucie examined her scrip. Nothing but a greasy smudge suggested it had
ever been out of her possession. Opening it, she passed her fingers over her initials and the apothecary rose, proud of such a fine piece, then dipped her hand within and retrieved her own ruined girdle. Uncurling it she saw that the fabric had been neatly sliced, the result of a sharp blade. With the items spread out on her lap for inspiration, she took up her beads and prayed for God’s guidance in helping Owen. By the end of the first round of prayers she still lacked inspiration. A second round was equally fruitless, though she felt steadier, more alert than before. She was setting the scrip and belt aside when Emma Ferriby appeared in the doorway.

‘Is that what I hope it is? Have you recovered your scrip and your mother’s gloves?’

Lucie wished she had not lied to Emma about the gloves, for surely she would slip with the truth. She distracted her friend by telling her of the bailiff’s visit and his later apology.

Emma had settled on the edge of the bed while Lucie talked, studying the items strewn on the covers. At the last part she glanced up. ‘George Hempe contrite? I wonder what Owen said or did to him?’ Her gaze wandered back to the items on the coverlet. Picking up the burned belt she studied the buckle, looked closely at the leather. ‘I could swear – but it cannot be.’

Lucie’s pulse quickened. ‘Do you recognize it?’

Emma traced the brass pattern with a stubby finger. ‘It looks very like one of a pair of straps Father used to hold rolled documents together. They were made of a fine cordovan leather that had been salvaged from a belt he had worn as a soldier.’

‘Who has them now?’

‘As Mother has handed over all business to Matthew, he has them. I thought he had used them to strap together the property documents from Wykeham.’

A fragment of memory teased Lucie, a table with a number of items, including a strap such as this might have been when whole. Tally sticks, too.

‘But I cannot recall when I last saw them,’ Emma said. ‘There was something wrapped round the rolls, I’m sure.’ There was an excitement in her voice, but her veil obscured her face as she bent over the belt fragment.

Now Lucie saw it, the table with John, Ivo and Edgar at one end, Matthew at the other.

‘I saw one of the straps the morning I came to your house with the sleep draught.’ Lucie remembered Matthew rising from the table, gathering his work, securing the rolls. ‘He used only one strap that day.’

As Emma lifted her head she was almost smiling. ‘Are you thinking he might have been in the burning house? With documents?’

‘Or he had left documents there and someone else used the strap. We do not know where he was that night.’

Emma lifted the strap higher, tugged it taut. ‘
Used
this? What do you mean?’

Lucie had forgotten that Emma did not know how Cisotta had died. It was difficult to keep track of what people knew, what must be kept secret, who might be after what she knew and to what ends.

Her silence led Emma to demand, ‘What are you hiding from me?’

Lucie needed Emma’s insights, her information. It was too late to back away from her now. Already one lie stood between them. Lucie would not tell another. ‘Owen found it round Cisotta’s neck.’

At first Emma did not seem to understand. Then she dropped the strap on the bed, raised her hands to her neck. ‘She was strangled?’

Lucie nodded.

‘Dear God.’ Emma stared at her upturned palms. ‘I thought him evil, but not so evil as to murder.’

‘I cannot make sense of it,’ Lucie said.

Emma had dropped her hands to her lap and sat contemplating them in a silence that troubled Lucie. It was so quiet she could hear Gwenllian’s laughter in the garden, Kate speaking loudly so that Phillippa could hear her over the splashing water in the laundry tub.

‘How long have you known how Cisotta was murdered?’ Emma asked in a voice that echoed the tension of her former silence. Her eyes accused Lucie.

‘I have known all along. It is a secret, Emma. I pray you, tell no one of this.’

‘Is that why you kept it from me this long?’

‘Of course it is. What need had you to know? I have only this moment learned that the strap might belong to your household.’

‘My mother’s household.’ Emma slipped from the bed, moved to the window, where she looked without, her back to Lucie. ‘Or do you fear that the rumours are true, that my family had a hand in the fire?’ She did not move, did not turn to regard Lucie.

‘I have never thought your family to blame. I told you, no one knows how Cisotta died. Emma, please, you must believe me.’

Emma did not respond.

Lucie slipped the strap and the beads into her scrip, pushed back the covers and rose, using the bedpost to steady herself. Her balance felt better than before, but the floorboards were cold. ‘It is time to hang the bed curtains,’ she murmured to herself, dispelling the uncomfortable silence.

‘You should keep them up throughout the year,’ Emma said, glancing at the plain rails connecting the
posts. ‘Drafts in summer are as dangerous as those in winter.’ She noticed where Lucie was. ‘Standing there in bare feet and just a shift is doubly foolish.’

‘I should be grateful for less criticism and your help in dressing.’ Lucie lifted her bandaged hand. ‘This makes the simplest task difficult.’