The Cross Legged Knight (35 page)

He had expected Lucie to be abed. ‘Why are you watching the children? Where is Alisoun?’

Lucie smiled to see him. ‘How pleasant to see you here in mid-afternoon.’ The children hurried to him, demanding hugs. Lucie rose, her movements stiff. ‘Alisoun is helping Jasper modify Magda’s tonic to allow me more waking hours. I am merely sitting here playing with Gwenllian and Hugh until she returns. It is not tiring.’

‘Magda ordered bed rest. You will undo yourself.’

‘Put that aside. I have news. The fragment of belt that you found – it was not a belt but a strap, one that keeps rolled parchments together. Matthew had been using a pair of them to hold the documents Wykeham’s clerks brought to Lady Pagnell, but now has only one. Bess …’

They both turned as someone knocked on the door.

When Owen opened it, Adeline Fitzbaldric swept past him and into the hall clutching May by the arm.

Adeline’s face was brittle with tension, her posture that of one holding much back. May appeared to move solely by her mistress’s will. ‘Forgive me for intruding, Mistress Wilton, but I must speak to your husband.’

‘What has happened?’ Owen asked.

Adeline glanced at Lucie and the children who had paused in their play to study the newcomers.

‘Might I see you alone, Captain?’ Adeline asked.

‘My wife is privy to all my business,’ Owen said.

Lucie bent down to the children. ‘Gwenllian, take Hugh to the shop and stay there with Alisoun until
Kate or I fetch you. Make certain he touches nothing in the workshop. I am entrusting him to you.’

Gwenllian rose and bowed to all of them, then took her little brother’s hand and moved away slowly.

With an uncertain glance at Lucie, Adeline hesitated, then laid a small bundle on the bench beside her. ‘Servants were able to enter the bishop’s house today and bring out much of our clothing and some of the furnishings. Among May’s things I found this.’ She unwound the wrapping, revealing a bloodstained cloth, two jars and a small cup.

Owen wondered how he had missed the rag. ‘What are they?’ he asked.

Adeline turned to May. ‘Tell him.’

The maid ducked her head and came forward, blinking and giving her head little shakes. She pointed to one jar. ‘There was blood in that – it’s caked now.’ She pointed to the other. ‘Cisotta called it a colliry.’ She touched the cup. ‘This was the little cup she used to hold the blood to my eyes.’

So it was a physick for the eyes. Lucie opened the jar of blood and sniffed. ‘Could this be bat’s blood?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Do you have difficulty seeing in the dark, May?’

May pressed her eyes. ‘I did not know it was the blood of such a creature,’ she cried.

Owen understood now. ‘Your clumsiness – your eyes are failing, aren’t they?’

May was on the verge of tears. ‘Aye,’ she whispered.

‘Not just at night?’ Lucie asked.

May shook her head. ‘Would that it were.’

‘That is not all she has concealed behind that timid countenance,’ Adeline said, taking a seat with a little huff. ‘May, tell them the rest.’

Lucie motioned for May to sit. She seemed in need of
support. The maid sank down and for a moment buried her face in her hands.

‘She has been like this ever since I confronted her,’ Adeline said.

‘You did not know of her condition?’ Lucie asked in a tone of concern, not accusation.

Owen took note of it, for Adeline did not bristle, but only sighed.

‘I did not know the cause of her recent accidents. There has been so much to do with the move, and since May had never been so far from home, I thought it a passing problem. May, speak up, woman.’

Owen held his breath as Lucie moved the jars and cup closer to May and sat beside her. He feared May would be silenced by Lucie’s nearness.

‘May, have you told the Riverwoman about your eyes?’ Lucie asked.

May shook her head.

‘Do you fear her?’

Another shake of the head.

‘Do you visit Poins?’

Owen was about to tell Lucie that he had already asked May about that, but the maid raised her eyes to meet Lucie’s.

‘I don’t know what happened, what caused the fire.’

It was an interesting answer to the question.

‘I pray you tell us whatever you do know,’ Lucie said. ‘I was Cisotta’s friend. I would know what happened that night.’

Tears streamed down May’s cheeks. Lucie pulled a cloth from her sleeve and handed it to the maid.

‘My mistress’s visitors spoke of how Cisotta had sat by you day and night after you lost your child.’ May spoke in such a choked voice that Owen crouched down to hear. She started at his nearness.

‘He is my husband, May, and no one to fear,’ Lucie said softly. ‘So what you heard led you to seek Cisotta’s care?’

May pressed the cloth to her eyes, then wiped her nose. ‘I had given her my mistress’s old gloves in payment. I was so afraid when I saw them today.’ She sniffed. ‘That night she brought me the remedies and showed me how to soak my eyes in the blood, then rinse them once a day with the wash. Then I was to lie still with my eyes closed until I heard my master and mistress return.’

Owen asked, ‘Did you escort Cisotta out of the house?’

May shook her head. ‘She said she knew the way.’

‘Where was Poins?’ Lucie asked.

‘I don’t know.’ May shivered and hugged herself. The room was almost too warm for Owen, the brazier burning because of Lucie’s weakness.

‘Was anyone down in the undercroft that evening?’ Lucie asked.

May shrugged. ‘I was frightened about having Cisotta there. About what my mistress would say if –’ She cut herself off.

‘But if you were so concerned, did you not check to make sure no one saw her arrive or leave?’ Lucie asked.

May looked down at her hands. ‘I did not think of that. I have never before lied to my mistress. I do not have the knack for it.’

Lucie looked up at Owen, her eyes questioning whether she should continue.

Adeline understood the expression. ‘She claims to have no idea where Poins was or whether anyone was in the undercroft at that time,’ she said. ‘So I thought to question Poins. But the Riverwoman would not let me see him.’

‘I was just there with him,’ Owen said.

‘Yes, I know. I watched you leave. I had hoped to keep this private.’

Lucie lifted the other jar and sat for a time sniffing and thinking. Adeline rose and began to pace. May kept her head down, sniffling now and then.

‘Fennel and ground ivy,’ Lucie said. ‘And a little nettle seed. You were to dampen the mixture and apply it to your eyes?’

May nodded. ‘She was to make more. She said it would take a while because she must soak it in wine and then let the sun dry it. I was to go to her in a few days. She said in a week I would see better. But the fire kept me from the medicines. And she –’ The maid held her stomach and gulped air, as one about to vomit.

‘I shall fetch you something for your stomach,’ Lucie said. ‘I’ll send it with the captain when next he goes to the palace.’

‘That would be kind of you,’ Adeline said. ‘But how can I take her back there? What am I to do with a servant who is going blind?’

May stared at her mistress, her eyes glassy with tears and horror.

‘Comfort her,’ Lucie said. ‘Have Magda Digby examine her.’

Adeline Fitzbaldric was not one to comfort a servant and her expression said as much.

Owen thought it time to be blunt with her. ‘If May leaves your household before this matter is resolved, the gossips will declare one of you guilty of Cisotta’s death and the destruction of the bishop’s house.’

Adeline drew herself up straight as a board. ‘We shall leave the jars with you,’ she said. ‘Come, May, we have said all we came to say.’

‘Is that truly all of it, May?’ Lucie asked softly.

The maid was fiddling with the jars and the cup on the blood-stained cloth. ‘Yes, Mistress Wilton,’ she whispered.

After Adeline and May departed, Lucie and Owen stood by the window staring out at the garden for a long while without speaking.

Owen tried to piece together all he had learned just now of that fateful evening. ‘Despite her timidity, May is a determined woman to have found her way to Patrick Pool to bargain with Cisotta,’ he said.

‘It is the sort of mistake Cisotta might make, thinking bat’s blood good for any problem of the eye.’ Lucie’s voice shook with emotion.

Owen gathered her in his arms, listening to her ragged breathing, trying to imagine what Cisotta’s death meant to her. In his mind Cisotta had been a poor substitute for Magda, and he had thought her efforts to cheer Lucie and encourage her to resume her life inadequate. He was certain Lucie would have recovered much sooner had Magda cared for her from the time of the fall – a part of him even thought the baby might have lived. He wanted to find Cisotta’s murderer more out of a sense of justice than as a personal vengeance. But he understood that for Lucie it was the latter.

‘What were you telling me about the belt? Have you been about with it asking questions of folk?’

‘Emma recognized it.’ Lucie stepped away from him, told him what had transpired and what Bess had remembered. While she talked, she wandered over to the things May had left. ‘I’ll take these to the shop and see whether I can pick out any other ingredients.’

Her strength was returning and Owen was glad of it. But he worried that she was doing too much. ‘You must rest now. From what you’ve told me you’ve been out of
bed for a long while. Let’s go up and you can lie down while we talk.’

‘I should prefer to do this.’ Her voice was uncertain.

‘Come. Up the stairs. I must confess to you how close I came to knowing Poins’s heart before I failed in my talk with him.’

As often of late, Thoresby grew drowsy as the sun set, in the hour or so before the evening meal. He fought to concentrate on the letter Brother Michaelo was reading to him, but it became impossible and he allowed a velvet stillness to envelop him. He found himself in a moonlit room scented with roses. His dear leman Marguerite slept with her head on his shoulder, radiating such warmth that his arm was soaked in sweat. As he slipped it out from beneath her, she woke and turned to him. Suddenly the bed pitched and yawed. He woke at sea, bereft of his dream of his love. The pile of rope on which he reclined cut into his back, but how beautiful were the stars overhead, how peaceful the sigh of the ocean and the gentle rocking of the ship.

‘Your Grace!’

The voice pulled Thoresby from the dream. Someone leaned close.

‘Your Grace, the Riverwoman begs an audience.’

For a moment Thoresby was not certain where he was, in what time. The scent of lavender reminded him of Brother Michaelo. But he had not been Thoresby’s secretary during his years with Marguerite. He reached round and plucked the crumpled pillow from behind him, held it in his lap and studied it, then looked about the room, slowly remembering. He was in his parlour in his York palace, listening to letters from supplicants, avoiding the strangers to whom
Wykeham had so presumptuously extended his hospitality.

‘Who?’

‘Mistress Digby, the Riverwoman.’

‘She would not beg.’

Michaelo sighed with impatience. ‘Will you see her?’

‘She will have my head on a platter if I do not.’

Michaelo leaned close again and, reaching out his long, slender hands, paused. ‘Might I adjust your cap and surcoat, Your Grace?’

‘Do you think she will be offended by my appearance?’

‘You are the Archbishop of York. It is not fitting that you be seen in disarray.’

‘It is you who are offended. You do not like that I am old.’

Michaelo looked pained. ‘Your Grace, I am devoted to you.’

‘The crone has been here for days. Why must she see me now?’

Michaelo drew a comb through Thoresby’s thinning hair.

Thoresby rose and crossed to his high-backed chair, noticed they were alone. ‘Where is my page?’

‘I thought perhaps you would prefer to speak with the Riverwoman alone.’

There was something in his secretary’s tone. ‘You know what she wants, don’t you?’ By Michaelo’s blush he saw he was right. ‘Is that why you have kept everyone out of the room above the kitchen? You’ve been spying on the sickroom?’

Michaelo cleared his throat. ‘Your Grace, she waits without.’

His secretary was a sly creature.

‘Very well. I shall see her.’

He felt himself tense as Michaelo opened the door and bowed to the wizened woman. Magda rose from the guard’s chair with a limber grace unexpected in such an ancient of the labouring class, a commanding figure despite being a good four hands shorter than the monk. As she stepped across the threshold she did not gaze round the room as one would expect but sought Thoresby at once and bowed to him. ‘Thy Grace.’ Her voice seemed to echo in the room.

‘Mistress Digby, we are all grateful to you for the life of the servant Poins.’ Thoresby began to raise his hand in blessing, but thought better of it. She nodded to him, for all the world as if thanking him for not embarrassing both of them. He wished her gone as quickly as possible. ‘What is your request?’