The Leper's Return (34 page)

“Thinking it all through again?” Baldwin asked.

“Was it that obvious?”

“Only when you sighed so loud! Godfrey’s passing would not seem to have caused anyone a great deal of pain, would it?”

“That’s just what I was thinking. The only real affection for him came from Coffyn’s wife, and that’s hardly a suitable love. I suppose it’s hard to say it, but would anyone be happy to know that the only mourner at his funeral would be a slut?”

Baldwin threw him a curious look. “Probably not, but I suppose I’d be more glad to have even one whore regret my passing than no one at all.”

“I expect you’re right,” Simon agreed. “All I can say is, I thank God that I have a wife and daughter to mourn me when I pass.”

“Yes, you are lucky.”

“Baldwin, I’m sorry. I know you crave the company of a wife.”

The knight gave a dry grin. “There is no harm in being proud of your wife, Simon. Any man could be proud of a woman like Margaret. And the same is true for Edith. She is a daughter any man would be pleased to call his own.”

“Yes. I am fortunate,” said Simon complacently. Then he pursed his lips and whistled, low and mournfully.

“All right, Simon. What is it?”

“What do you mean?” the bailiff asked.

“Why have you adopted that innocent demeanor? Why are you whistling like a slow wind soughing through the trees? In short, spit it out, whatever it is!”

“Baldwin, I really don’t know what you’re on about. All I was thinking was, what a pleasant woman Jeanne de Liddinstone is.”

“Oh, good God!”

“She’s good at sewing, too,” Simon mused, casting an approving eye over the knight’s new tunic.

“Hmm. Yes, she was most kind to make it for me,” said Baldwin, unconsciously fingering the embroidery at his neck.

“In fact, I should think you are a very lucky man,” Simon said judiciously.

“Simon…” Baldwin paused. It was hard to broach such a topic even with his closest friend, especially when he knew his servant was listening to every word. But Edgar had been his servant for so many years, it would have been unthinkable to send him away, and he knew in his heart of hearts he could trust Simon completely. “Simon, what would you do in my position?”

“Me? I’d marry her tomorrow. If you really love her, I mean, and certainly your expression when she appears seems to bear out that construction. Anyway, her lands are good, she’s beautiful, and her needlework is excellent.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Oh well, if you’re asking the best way to propose…”

“Simon, do you intend to be the most exasperating man alive, or is it just a skill you were born with? I mean, how in God’s name can I get rid of that damned gorgon who masquerades as a maid? What can I do about Emma?”

“Ah, now there you have me. I’ve never had that specific problem before myself. I’ll tell you who you should ask about her, though, and that is Meg.”

“Your wife?”

“She has thrown out more useless staff than anyone else I know of. If she can’t help you, no one can.”

“I shall speak to her.” With this determination, Baldwin settled to staring at the road ahead. They had hardly come halfway yet, and he shook his shoulders to settle his cloak more evenly, pulling at the trailing end until it came over his chest and kept the wind out.

“Baldwin, who do you think might have done this murder?”

The knight sat silently for some while, and Simon almost thought he hadn’t heard. He was about to ask the question again when the knight began speaking quietly and ruminatively.

“I know who I don’t think it is: Cecily. To me it seems highly improbable that she committed the crime, even though I am quite convinced she lied to us about the events of the evening. That makes me wonder why she should want to lie. The only logical assumption has to be that she is trying to protect someone—but we don’t know whom.

“Then again there is that dreadful little tranter. John could have tried to rob the place—in fact, that was my first thought, that he might be a drawlatch, and the robbery went sadly wrong when he was found—but that is not the case. The goods are back, so there was no theft.”

“Isn’t it possible that someone broke in to steal the plate and was found out? Maybe that’s why. It’s all back, because someone went to fetch it back?”

“If that was the case, why keep it secret? They’d call the constable to fetch it for them, and to see that the drawlatch was arrested.”

“Unless they wanted to take their own revenge. They might have thought it more suitable.”

Baldwin considered this. “You mean that John was the thief, and was beaten for his felony, rather than for his assumed adultery? If Coffyn hadn’t admitted his attack, I’d be tempted by that as a theory. But the fact is, Coffyn confessed to having him beaten. Thus we are left with why someone should steal the plate only to return it. In which case, why was it removed at all? Why do people move their plate?”

“They’ll take it out if there’s a fire,” Simon mused.

“There was no fire,” pointed out the knight.

“Well, people pack it up when they are going to travel.”

“There was no sign that Godfrey was about to leave, was there?” Baldwin frowned suddenly. “Unless…”

Simon waited, but the knight sat silently, and at last the bailiff burst out, “You had the nerve to accuse me of being frustrating! ”Unless’ what?“

“I was thinking—people take their most valuable things with them when they travel, and leave anything that they can’t take with them in safekeeping.”

“So?”

“So—perhaps someone took Godfrey’s silver and looked after it. There was no theft because it is all back there now. Godfrey wasn’t going away, there was no fire, but perhaps someone felt the plate could be at risk if it was allowed to stay where it was, so it was put in a safe place.”

“Why should it be safe now, when it wasn’t before?” Simon demanded, mystified.

“Clearly it was unsafe when the whole household was unconscious. Now members of the house are fine once more, it is safe to return it.”

Simon shook his head, “What of the other suspects, then? You’ve only considered Cecily and John.”

“Who else? Putthe I cannot understand. I would be more suspicious of him if he had not been struck down himself. Since he was, I can’t see how he could have been involved.”

“There’s his friend, Jack the smith.”

“Except even the stablelad said Putthe couldn’t stand the smith. I would need to see some kind of proof that they regularly met before I could see them as conspirators. No, I find it hard to accept that Putthe could have killed his master and then Jack knocked him out. What would be the point? Jack can’t even have robbed the place—the stuffs all back on the sideboard now.”

“Coffyn said he came in from the front, too, so he should have seen Jack running away if he’d been there.”

“Whoever was there obviously made off through the garden at the back. That in itself tells us nothing. Jack could have come back, committed his acts, and then run off through the back.”

“True enough. And we still have the question of this mysterious stranger at the window. Someone with whom Cecily spoke, and presumably a man since Jack heard a man and a woman.”

“Yes, and since his identity is being kept from us, he is naturally very suspicious.” Baldwin nodded. “I should like to question Cecily more about him—or them, if we believe John. Surely the two he saw must be the same. That is something we shall have to do tomorrow.”

“Fine. In the meantime, let’s hurry back to your house. This wind is cutting through to my bones!”

Baldwin laughed, and glanced about him. “Another mile or so, not more. Come on!”

Moving at a fast trot, they soon warmed themselves. The land was peaceful as they passed. Smoke rose from cottage fires, only to be dissipated by the gentle breeze. As night fell, Simon found himself looking up at the stars more—his horse would follow Baldwin’s without needing guidance. Already the sky was blue-black, with a sprinkling of white stars standing out distinctly, like flour shaken finely over a dark cloth. A solitary cloud floated above him, as fine as a feather of silver. Would a feather float on the air if it was made of silver? he wondered. Could any other metals float if they were carefully constructed to the same dimensions as a feather?

The thought made him give a wry grin at his own foolishness. Metal was metal! Metal was heavy, and couldn’t float, neither on air nor water. The idea was ridiculous. Just because you made something look like something else, just because you changed its outward appearance, didn’t mean you changed its essence…

He jolted along for some moments lost in thought. Appearances, he thought, could be deceptive.

Inevitably his thoughts turned to Coffyn. The man had thought his wife was enjoying an affair with the Irishman, and all because the evidence appeared to support that view. Yet in reality the culprit was his neighbor, an unscrupulous character who was prepared not only to cuckold him, but was also quite possibly willing to spread the rumor that it was John who was guilty, which had at last led to John’s brutal beating at the hands of the jealous husband.

And suddenly Simon had a strange idea.

In the leper camp, Ralph saw to the wounded Quivil. The man was shaken, but his injuries from the stoning were mending nicely, and Ralph was confident that he would be up and about, perfectly well, within a few days. Getting up from the leper’s bedside, he forced his fists into the small of his back and stretched. He was finding that seeing to the needs of his inmates was becoming painful. It was easy to see why those of his colleagues who spent their days tending to the sick were prone to aches and pains in their backs, he felt. It came from constantly bending over their charges.

Edmund Quivil was snoring peacefully enough, and Ralph could hear the church bells tolling from the other side of the town. He moved to the door and wrapped his robe about him more tightly as he saw how cold it was. Shivering, he threw more logs on the fire before pulling the thick curtain over the doorway and walking quickly to the chapel.

Inside he found a couple of the more devout lepers waiting, and with them he went through the mass. There was always so much to be done, but this was the office he most enjoyed. The candles flickered as they cast their soft light, glinting on metal and paintwork, reminding him of his duties: to tend to those souls whom most had already assumed to be consigned to damnation.

It was with a light heart that he left the little chapel. He was always more contented leaving than going in; the small chamber was filled with the love of God. Its pictures of Christ and His mother seemed almost to glow with adoration. The very walls were constructed of kindness and generosity. Its atmosphere of incense and dirty clothing was to Ralph the very essence of worship, for the two smells demonstrated the love of man for God, and Christ’s love of the sick and the dying. There couldn’t be a better place to worship God, he felt, than from inside the chapel of a lazar house.

The ground crunched underfoot. Since he had walked inside the chapel, the frost had dusted the grass, and he inhaled the crisp air with satisfaction. It tasted clean in his mouth, like a fresh mountain spring. Outside his own door, he snuffed the air happily and sighed with pleasure.

He knew many of his friends and fellow-brothers thought he was insane to want to look after the lepers; that was partly why he was here, because at the election for the post there was no one else who wanted the job. But Ralph was convinced it was the best way for him to serve God. This was surely the best way too to save souls, and that was the sacred duty of all who wore the tonsure. They were God’s own army, whose only task was to save mankind in the eternal battle.

Something caught his attention, but he was only aware of it as a niggling irritation at first, something which interrupted the flow of his thoughts. It was like a piece of carpentry where the workman has been forced to leave off his task when he has all but finished. The last little unfinished part is an annoyance. This was similar; it was a tiny part of his normal scenery that was wrong. He looked over the whole encampment, but nothing appeared out of place. Toward the town he could see nothing wrong—until he realized that there was a glow, just over the brow of the hill, where he had never seen one before. It appeared to waver in the night air, and the sight made him frown.

He walked toward the gate. From here he had a good view of the road, and he stared eastward, trying to pierce the gloom, but it wasn’t possible. In the end he was about to return to his room and seek a good night’s sleep, when he saw them.

From the town came what looked like a solid mass of men. They approached inexorably, some carrying burning torches, clad in a malevolent silence that was more intimidating than if they had been chanting slogans or shouting.

He fell back from the gate, his guts churning. The signs were all too easy to recognize; this was an attack. He had heard of the murders in France from a traveller when he lived in Houndeslow. There, he had heard, a whole number of lepers had been captured and burned alive, on the pretext that they had been involved in poisoning wells. It was nonsensical, of course. The lepers depended on the alms of the healthy—if they killed their neighbors, they would be killing themselves—but that hadn’t persuaded the peasants who wanted to extirpate the “sinners.”

His glance roved up and down the camp. He had no choice but to defend the place, but how?

25

S
imon was a little in front of the other two when they arrived at the stableyard. It was already dark, and there were no torches lighted. Baldwin bellowed for his grooms as he passed through the gates.

The bailiff was impatient to get to the fire. His horse pranced, hooves pounding at the packed earth, and Simon hunched his shoulders to keep his neck warm. Baldwin kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and leaped down, stumbling and almost falling. Seeing this, Simon gave a short laugh.

“Very funny!” Baldwin growled.

“This is how you do it,” said Simon, and swung his leg over his horse’s neck. As he did so, his mount lifted his head, catching the bailiff’s foot. Simon found his leg rising higher and higher. He had no reins to hold, his feet were free of the stirrups, and suddenly he found himself falling, eyes wide in surprise. He hit the ground with an unpleasant squelch, his ears filled with the delighted, mocking laughter of his friend.