The Red Velvet Turnshoe

by Cassandra Clark

  His eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘We have something in common, then, Sister, for I believe my men’s loyalty is nothing if bullied into being. I’d rather have the support of men who are fighting by my side from their own choice.’

  ‘And do you believe their choice is free and not bought?’

  His eyes narrowed again and the corners of his mouth turned down. Two deep furrows appeared between his brows. Hildegard could have bitten off her tongue. She watched him, alert for what would happen next. But he was beginning to laugh. The furrows became more marked.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They’re dogs, each with his own price. As are we all. I wonder what yours is, Sister?’ He was chuckling. ‘I admire your audacity in coming here! Daring to plead with me to defend English peasants! Who sent you?’

  ‘No one. I came of my own accord.’

  ‘Vitelli is not involved then?’ His glance sharpened.

  ‘Only in so far as it can affect trade.’

  His lips puckered. ‘How much are you offering for this adventure?’

  Carefully, Hildegard replied, ‘I hope you might consider volunteering your services out of regard for your countrymen. They are daily giving their lives in the fight against the injustices of Gaunt and his allies.’

  ‘You mean you’re offering nothing?’ He roared with laughter. ‘I admire your courage even more! Let me put forward an opinion about my so-called countrymen. I believe they’re giving their lives because they’re a weak force pitted against a stronger. But the aim of both, Gaunt and the people, is the same – to take power and hold it by any means. At the moment Gaunt is the stronger. Sometime, maybe in the distant future, the weaker side will become strong. Their tyranny will match that of their oppressor. This is the law of life. The lust for power is the same in all men. Some hide it. Some do not. The king is a mere boy and is therefore weak, and the weak, recognising someone they think is like themselves, flock to his cause and call themselves the Company of the White Hart. But Richard will become a man and then the balance of power will shift. He will become strong and will disappoint them. The people will desert him to seek another lost cause. Now tell me why I should feel anything for either winners or losers. What is it to do with me?’

  ‘Because there are women and children involved who have no choice in what their men fight over,’ she said levelly. ‘They are always the losers. They are worthy of protection but no one protects them.’

  He looked astonished. ‘And you think I might?’

  ‘I pray you might.’

  With an oath he swung away from her and strode back towards the window where he jerked to a halt to gaze out for some moments into the garden. Hildegard held her breath. The guards had moved closer and she sensed one of them standing behind her. Duchess bristled and Bermonda made a small growl in the back of her throat.

  Hawkwood half turned. He did not look round. ‘Tell her to leave this document. Let’s see what it says. Then tell her to get out.’ He again gazed out of the window and did not turn back.

  Hildegard fumbled with the shoe, took Reynard’s copy from inside the lining and handed it to one of the guards. With only the sound of her hounds’ claws clicking over the tiles to break the silence, she left.

  The bill of exchange would not have been enough, she thought later as she prepared to leave Florence. Nothing would have been enough to negate the dishonour of running from England’s shores and living a life based on wanton destruction. Every glittering jewel he possessed represented the death of a fellow being.

  She wrote a final letter to Ulf and sent it by means of the Vitelli company courier. It would take about twenty-five days to reach Bruges and from there it would be taken on to Castle Hutton. Given the usual speed of the scarselle it would reach him before its subject did, for it concerned Pierrekyn. What he had confessed burned in her mind. She wrote:

  The boy is innocent but for fear of this letter falling into the wrong hands I cannot say more. Protect him, I beg of you. I leave Florence within the day.

  She was handing over the letter at the couriers’ office in the main court when Matteo approached, walking at his usual brisk clip. He was fanning himself with a scented cloth, the smell of smoke still hanging in the air.

  ‘Sister,’ he called, ‘you have a visitor. I’ve shown him into the small chamber under the portico where you may talk in privacy.’

  ‘A visitor? But I know no one here. Did he give a name?’

  ‘It’s difficult for me to pronounce,’ he looked apologetic, ‘but he had black hair, smart, with an elaborate capuchon.’

  Black hair suggested Jack Black but smart did not. ‘And did he have a scar?’ she asked, holding her breath.

  Matteo blinked. ‘Not that I noticed.’

  ‘Or an emblem of some kind?’

  Matteo shook his head. ‘He’s not a Florentine either. He tried to explain himself with touching difficulty!’

  Matteo was clearly in a hurry so she thanked him and made her way to the chamber. Her visitor would no doubt solve the mystery.

  When she pushed open the door, however, she was puzzled to find the room empty. Before she could go back outside someone stepped from behind the door and slammed it shut.

  ‘As neat as netting a lamprey.’ It was Escrick Fitzjohn.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘HOW DARE YOU come here!’ she ground out. ‘How did you talk your way in? What lies did you tell? Get out, before I call the guards and have you thrown into prison!’

  He ignored her words. ‘No hounds again, Sister. When will you ever learn?’

  He strode confidently towards her until they were almost touching. She was forced to take a step back. He stank of sweat and staleness and smoke despite the outward finery he wore. Matteo was right about the capuchon. Escrick had wound it in a Turkish knot so that it concealed his scar.

  He withdrew his right hand from his sleeve and held it up to show a filthy bandage wrapped round the wound from his severed finger. ‘You did this to me.’ He seemed to expect her to say something but for once she decided to hold her tongue.

  Outside she could hear the busy sounds in the courtyard, the click of bone counters, the occasional burst of laughter where the fattori and the accountants were at work under the portico. It was close, yet as far from help as a mountain top. The moment she cried out he would use his knife.

  Escrick must have seen this realisation in her face because he gave a sneering laugh and drew a broadsword with taunting slowness from its scabbard.

  ‘I am unarmed,’ she pointed out. ‘If you strike me down your soul will go straight to hell.’

  ‘It might, if I believed in all that, but I don’t.’

  He came closer, circling her like a wolf, forcing her into a corner. The chamber was empty except for a chest, a dark wood table with ornate legs, and a couple of heavy wooden chairs. They looked too weighty to be moved, let alone lifted and thrown. For once her knife was in her chamber where she had been using it to sharpen a quill.

  In addition to the capuchon Escrick was wearing a short cloak. It had been cut from a larger piece of cloth. It was blue.

  She said, ‘You shot Sir Talbot.’

  ‘Did I?’ He laughed.

  ‘Then you stole anything of value, including my cloak, and, presumably having mistaken him for me, you set off down the mountainside in pursuit of your real victim.’

  ‘Pity about the knight. He shouldn’t have put your cloak on in that dazzle of snow. The sun was shining straight into my eyes. You cut the rope bridge later, you bitch. Caused me a heap of trouble getting down to St Rhémy. By the time I arrived you’d already left. Where did you pick up that minstrel again? He wasn’t with you when you left the hospice.’

  ‘You were watching?’

  He laughed again. ‘Of course I was watching. I’ve been watching you for some time. All the way, in fact. I slept out. It was no hardship.’ He began to walk to and fro in front of her, backing her further into the corner.

 
‘Why do you hate me so much?’ she asked, curious, despite her danger. ‘Anybody could have revealed you as the murderer of that poor maid at Castle Hutton last autumn. Would you have hunted them down the way you’re hunting me?’

  He considered her words and then he said, ‘I have instructions. That’s why I’m here. You’re not the only one after that cross. I want to know where you’ve hidden it.’

  ‘What makes you think I’ve got it?’

  ‘If you haven’t, who has? The old monk was told to go and fetch it back from Rome. The contessa’s spies found out that much. You must have bought it from him. God knows how much you paid but the contessa would have paid double. So where is it? You must have it or you wouldn’t be leaving tomorrow.’

  He even knew that. Perhaps the contessa had spies in every household. She lifted a hand. The gesture made her sleeve touch his wrist and he jerked away as if stung, bringing up his sword.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he snarled.

  Fighting the desire to scream, she said quickly, ‘If you kill me you’ll never find the cross and your lady will have your fingers, one by one, and your toes, and much else you value before you can even exit the gates of Florence.’

  ‘And for that reason, Sister, you still live. But your hours are numbered. Now where is it?’

  ‘You’ll never know whether I’ve got it or not—’

  ‘Then you may as well die,’ he growled. ‘But I think you will tell me – when you know what lies in store for you. We know the sacristan hid it in his church. He must have told you where it was and you went back last night before the fire. Yet it’s not in your sleeping chamber. I’ve already looked.’

  ‘How did you know where I was sleeping?’

  He pulled his right ear. ‘Same way as I know a lot of things.’ His eyes narrowed and he added, ‘Things you might not wish your abbot to know.’

  She remembered the only time she had spoken her most secret thoughts out loud. Escrick must have been listening in some dark corner near the confessional. Deciding to bluff it out, she said, ‘I can’t tell you what you want to know. You seem to have silenced the only person who could help.’

  ‘The old monk, you mean? He was just a dithering old fool.’

  He regarded her with cold calculation while she thought how badly he had misjudged the sacristan. He had been fully aware of the importance of the cross and had kept silent to the end. He had even swallowed the key to the aumbry to put Escrick off the scent.

  ‘The contessa was upset when you left without permission. She thought you must have been burned in the fire and it was only when I heard you’d been to see Hawkwood that I could tell her the glad tidings.’

  ‘She won’t be glad when she knows you’ve run your sword through me without getting what you want.’

  ‘She’s not the only one who wants something. I want something myself—’

  He moved closer.

  ‘Hildegard,’ he said. His tone thickened. ‘I think you know what I want – and I think you want it just as much as me. A woman like you, in her prime, wearing that—’ He reached out and touched her head-covering and then, holding one end, he started to pull her towards him.

  For a moment she was reminded of the time in the undercroft at Hutton when he had mistaken her for a serving woman and had torn off her cloak to find she was a nun. A sickening memory of the chase that followed came back to her with terrifying clarity.

  With her eyes fixed on his, she waited until he had pulled her against him and his surcoat of chain mail was pressing into her bosom, and his mouth, his bad breath making her want to vomit, was approaching her own mouth and then, at the last moment, she butted her forehead hard into his face. As he jerked back with blood pouring from his nose, she ripped off her kerchief, leaving it dangling between his fingers and fled towards the door.

  With a roar he was after her but she managed to get her fingers through the door-pull and hold on. His wounded hand was no use to him and she was able to jerk the door ajar. It was no more than a few inches but she wedged her foot in it, then elbowed him in the face and, in the brief pause that followed, dragged the door wider, screaming with all her might, before he managed to clamp one hand over her mouth and drag her back inside the room.

  Duchess and Bermonda had been exercising out in the yard with a kennel lad. As Escrick was grappling with her, blood pouring from his nose, the two hounds must have heard her voice because now they came bounding down the corridor.

  Duchess hurled herself against the door, forcing it open, and then leaped straight at Escrick’s throat. His sword slashed down, missing her by inches. He staggered back with the full force of the deerhound on top of him. As he fell Bermonda snapped her two rows of deadly teeth round his wrist and shook his arm from side to side like a piece of straw until the sword dropped from his grasp. Between them they could bring down a stag at full speed. Escrick was nothing to them.

  The commotion brought servants running from all parts of the building. Ser Vitelli himself emerged from the reception chamber at the far end of the corridor. Hearing Escrick raging at Hildegard to call off her hounds, everyone swarmed into the chamber and quickly surrounded him.

  Ser Vitelli entered the chamber last and the servants parted to let him through. His glance alighted on Hildegard, her garments in disarray, her hair, grown long in the previous weeks, fully revealed and falling in disorder round her shoulders. Then he noticed Escrick, pinned to the floor by the hounds, his sword unsheathed beside him.

  His yellow eyes flashed with rage. Stepping forward, he asked, ‘Who is this villain?’

  Briefly, Hildegard explained but, remembering the prioress’s warning to reveal nothing about the cross, mentioned only that Escrick had been outlawed in England last autumn and blamed her for it.

  ‘He followed you here seeking revenge?’ Vitelli asked in astonishment.

  Escrick groaned as Bermonda sank her teeth more firmly into his wrist. Duchess had planted herself four-square across his chest with her great front paws on both sides of his head, her jaw only an inch away from his face, awaiting orders. The capuchon lay on the tiles beside him.

  ‘I believe he serves La Gran Contessa and was coerced into coming here,’ she said.

  Vitelli threw her a searching glance.

  ‘She thinks I have something she wants,’ she added.

  Ser Vitelli gave Escrick a cold glance. ‘Search him, disarm him, then throw him back on the contessa’s doorstep. She’ll devise a worse punishment than anything the law can allow.’

  An attendant whispered something and Ser Vitelli gave a thin smile. ‘All right then, throw him in the river. See if he floats. Just get him out of here and fumigate the place afterwards.’

  He turned and without a sound padded back to his interrupted meeting.

  When Hildegard returned to her sleeping chamber she felt a shiver of revulsion. Even if Escrick had not told her he had searched it she would have guessed someone had been inside. It smelled unpleasant, with a lingering odour, sickly sweet. It made her wonder at the roughness of Escrick’s life, the hardships, living from hand to mouth, his choice to be a professional killer and what had brought him to this pitch of degradation.

  She opened the window to let in the fresh air from outside. Ser Vitelli had invited her to dine with him on this, her last night in his beautiful and terrible city. Carefully she changed her habit and her hosen, both torn in the scuffle with Escrick.

  When she went down later to join Ser Vitelli in the main chamber there were candles everywhere. They gave off a honeyed scent, arousing feelings of luxury and ease. Their light danced over the gilt mouldings on the walls and were reflected many times over in the Venetian mirrors and in the silver and gold of the elaborate tableware. They even stood in clusters on an enormous bracket suspended from the ceiling among a serpentine wealth of blown glass and they were fixed in holders down the length of the black marble table.

  There were gold urns fashioned in Milan and filled with flowers, dishes o
f Bohemian crystal containing strange fruits from the kingdom of Naples, platters of viands from the forests of the Apennines. Maybe Ser Vitelli dined in such private splendour every day, she thought. Or maybe he had commanded his servants to make a special effort for some purpose of his own.

  She remembered her first impression of him.

  Tonight the burnished snake looked no less splendid than his surroundings. He was wearing a long purple lucco of some lustrous fabric and a single ruby on his finger that flashed like fire every time he lifted his gold goblet.

  For once his head was bare and his hair, she saw for the first time, was silver, clipped short like that of a Roman emperor. When he leaned towards her she discovered it was perfumed with some exotic oil suggesting great expense in its procurement. The style emphasised the harsh lines of his features.

  Once they were seated and the servants had brought in a supply of delicacies, the subject of his nephew’s betrothal came up after the familiar graceful foreplay.

  ‘I wish to send further suggestions to Lord Roger de Hutton,’ he told her. ‘My scarselle are totally trustworthy, of course, but I wonder if I may presume on your friendship with Lord Roger to—?’ He let the question trail away.

  ‘I will take a letter to him in confidence if you wish. I would deem it an honour.’

  He offered a glimpse of a smile and bowed his head.

  That negotiations were to continue seemed to be a good sign.

  Next he mentioned the shipment of staple from Hutton that was still on its way to Florence to supply the cloth manufacturers and how the price had already risen while in transit. He referred to trade from the East too and how lucrative it was and how anyone wishing to make a good profit could rest in the conviction that it would remain so.

  Hildegard took this as a hint that Roger’s share in the trading ship had been approved and arrangements for the voyage were under way.

  He did not question her about Escrick’s reason for entering the palazzo uninvited. She felt he suspected there was more than personal revenge at stake. He said only how detrimental to trade between the two countries was the continual warfare of the Tuscan city states, and how it would be worse if England, too, recommenced her wars with France or, worse still, fell into civil disarray.