A Murdered Peace

by Candace Robb

  She knew that look, and softened her voice as she would with the children when they needed reassurance. “I do not mean to seduce you, Elric. I merely want time with you without interruption, to enjoy a conversation before your departure, to speak of our friends near and far . . .” She stopped as she sensed her voice about to catch, already missing him, fearing for him, sick with remorse for her part in causing his lord’s anger.

  It worked. He had followed her then, albeit grudgingly, not relaxing until he beheld the elegantly set table. Griselde and Marie had outdone themselves, with help from Henna.

  While they ate they spoke of her cousin William’s courage, Hazel’s funeral, what Elric expected of his meeting with Westmoreland, the small shop about to open in the storefront on her home on Low Petergate, the promising cook Henna had recommended for Sheriff Hutton, anything but the two of them. They avoided the heart of their differences—trust. Until she poured the brandywine and set out the spiced nuts.

  “I am grateful for this chance to explain how I came to shelter Lady Margery. Carl came to me just as the gates—”

  Elric interrupted her. “I know. I understand why you helped your friend, Katherine. I would have done the same.”

  “Then why have you been punishing me ever since I confessed all I knew?”

  “Punishing you? I had been behaving as if—” He seemed to search for words. “My heart had misled me.” He met her eyes, and she caught her breath at the tenderness of his regard. His heart. “You are a remarkable woman, Katherine. Faith, you would make a fine captain of men.” He laughed, but his eyes did not. “I wanted—It does not matter. Forgive me if I have seemed to be punishing you.”

  His awkward speech disarmed her. She, too, was at a loss about what to say. Arguments were easier than declarations of love. Or lust, if she was honest.

  Time for me to leave, Geoff whispered. Speak to him. You both deserve joy.

  “You thought I might love you?” Kate asked.

  “I am not the first man to play the fool in love, and I will not be the last. At least I did not act on it.”

  “A pity,” Kate murmured as she refilled their cups.

  “What?”

  “We might at least toast our success in freeing Berend and Lady Margery.”

  “Indeed.” He tapped her cup and drank his down. “You are a master strategist.”

  “I’d wondered whether you’d noticed.”

  “Have I not celebrated how well it went?”

  “Celebrated? Not with me. I had expected some expression of gratitude.”

  “Is that why you poured such a stingy amount? I am grateful, Katherine. For all you did.”

  “Now who is being stingy?”

  He threw up his hands. “I am at a loss.”

  “Are you? What if your heart did not mislead you?” She rose, stepping behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. When he twisted round to see what she was about, she leaned down and kissed him on the lips. “I have yearned to do that,” she whispered, crouching down beside him, looking up into his widening eyes.

  He touched her cheek. “Katherine?”

  She learned toward him for another kiss, but he drew back, studying her face as if seeking a clue as to her sincerity.

  “I feared I had lost any chance of being with you,” she said. “That night, celebrating Kevin’s recovery—I woke up to what I feel for you.”

  “Yet you continued to lie to me.”

  “I was trapped in Margery’s secret. It was not mine to share. I’ve told you—”

  “Do not toy with me, Katherine.” He rose with an abruptness that almost knocked her over, strode to the door. In a moment, she was alone.

  She sat down on the floor, stunned. How had it gone so wrong? Her face grew hot. Damn him, insufferable man. Unbending. His heart is ice. He—

  Footsteps on the landing. He was still there, pacing back and forth outside the door.

  All might not be lost. Pray God he just needed coaxing. Rising, she fortified herself with brandywine, brushed herself off, and opened the door. “I fear my boldness offended you. But we have so little time.”

  Elric halted before her, shaking his head as if at a loss to understand. “Katherine—”

  “I want to be with you, Elric.”

  “What of Berend?”

  “He is my friend, my brother, not my lover.”

  Crossing his arms, Elric bowed his head, paced away, returned, his expression still cautious, questioning. “I cannot promise—”

  She put a finger to his lips. “I don’t ask for promises. Only a night with you.”

  She’d held her breath, and, as the minutes passed, felt a bitter defeat. But then . . .

  “Are you armed?” A teasing smile.

  She guided his hands to the front of her skirt. “You are free to examine me.”

  He moved his hands out to cup her hips and methodically worked back to center, watching her face, witnessing what that did to her.

  “Hah!” He drew out her dagger and tossed it into the room behind her, then pulled her into his arms, kissing her.

  She was not shy in her response.

  “Do you mean it?” he whispered. “That you want to be with me?”

  “Can you doubt it? Must I take it into my own hands to drag you to the bed?”

  “No need.” He lifted her up and carried her back into the room, kicking the door shut behind him, tossing her onto the bed.

  She pulled him down to her. When they came up for air she rolled away, so that she could unbutton the bodice of her gown.

  Gently brushing her hands aside, Elric took over. When it was her turn, she knelt on the bed, dodging his exploring hands to undress him. He was everything she had imagined he might be when she had watched him demonstrating his martial prowess at Sheriff Hutton on that Christmas Day long ago.

  He moaned as he pulled her to him and rolled so that she was atop him.

  They slept little that night. Just before daybreak, Elric drew her into his arms and asked whether she would consider marriage.

  “To you?” She kissed his belly, his chest, then his mouth. “I might.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “I do not trust myself to make a wise decision after such a night.”

  His laugh was low in his throat.

  She smiled now at the memory of that last lovemaking before parting.

  “Katherine?” William was watching her with a bemused expression. “I believe you have answered my question.”

  Feeling herself blush, she smiled at him. A knight and a woman in trade—with such a guesthouse as hers—she did not think it a likely match. But if it stopped William’s matchmaking . . .

  Her cousin looked well pleased.

  Her presence at Cecily’s hanging had been requested, as an “honor,” but Kate had excused herself. The truth was, Cecily haunted her. You, of all people, you should stand with me. . . . I earned the money . . . I earned it. And just when I was free at last, Merek intended to ruin me. Were they so different? Her anger stemmed from the opposite of Cecily’s, Simon’s extravagance—he had denied her nothing, but had she not plotted and schemed, and found part of the solution in a morally questionable guesthouse?

  You never considered murder, Geoff said.

  No? I’m not sure of that. But he was already dead.

  Her dreams were as wild as Petra’s, though not the Sight, clearly her heart questioning, questioning everything. How childish she had been with Berend, seeing him as her anchor, her support, believing him when he had promised that she could depend on him. And now Elric—was she making the same mistake, seeing in him what she had believed she had with Berend, only more? Was he Simon Neville all over again?

  You are robbing yourself of happiness, Geoff warned.

  Am I? Or am I taking responsibility? The children depend on me. I must be clearheaded for them. They deserve all my love.

  They sat in the hall of the Martha House, the altar cloth on their laps, Eleanor working
a chalice in gold thread, Kate following Sister Dina’s faint sketch of the Virgin’s gown in shades of blue. Wind howled without, the fire crackled within, warming the two embroiderers and the hounds sleeping by the hearth. Such peace.

  A cramp in her fingers forced Kate to pause and relax her hand.

  “You hold the needle too tight, that has ever been your problem,” Eleanor murmured without glancing up. She hummed softly as she stitched.

  “I know,” said Kate, smiling at her mother. “I admire you. You have created a sanctuary here, something precious.”

  Now Eleanor looked up. “Bless you, daughter.” Her eyes glistened. “You are the one being fêted by the city, catching a murderer.”

  “But I have no peace. You lost your sons, your husbands. You suffered such betrayal. Yet you have found peace in this house.”

  “I am healing, yes.”

  “How? How might I do the same? And please do not say I should ask for guidance.”

  Eleanor laughed. “I am the last one to advise you to seek someone else’s advice on how to move forward. No one knowing me in the past would have advised me to found a house of poor sisters. You yourself thought I had gone quite mad.”

  “I confess it seemed an unlikely match.”

  Eleanor reached over to squeeze Kate’s hand. “You must be patient with yourself. You had a happy home, and now there is a yawning emptiness where Berend steadied it, always there, dependable, safe. And the girls lost him as well as their dear friend Hazel. It is a difficult time. You feel helpless, and that makes you angry.”

  Did it? Was it that she felt helpless? “One night I dreamt I was hunting Lady Margery. I meant to kill her.”

  “Perhaps you blame her for Berend’s absence? I do. Though it was not she who summoned him in the beginning, her presence now endangers him.”

  “Her story was so riddled with coincidences,” said Kate, “I cannot trust it. The abbot denies having seen Sir Thomas. I thought, there it is, her lie. But William believes it is the abbot who lied, that he meant to ingratiate himself with King Henry.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Would such a small thing matter enough for him to lie about it? That he had seen Sir Thomas?” Kate did not see it. “Even more, Margery said the abbot tried to stop the violence, and that he prayed for the victims as well as for the souls of the townspeople who had so brutally taken the lives of their countrymen. She painted a man with no thought to pandering to the king.”

  “Do you doubt Sir Thomas’s innocence?” Eleanor asked.

  “I wonder. When Henry turned on him, and on Richard, was he able to remain neutral? Yet if I question that, everything is in question. It’s all ashes. Even Berend. He told me what he wanted me to believe.”

  “And it seems a betrayal to you.”

  “Perhaps I betrayed myself, depending on him. I knew better.”

  Eleanor pressed Kate’s hand. “You are strong, Katherine. It is you who caught Cecily Wheeldon. You who devised the scheme to free Berend and Lady Kirkby. You who earned Sir Elric’s respect, and his love. You have a rich life. You will find your way, and your purpose.”

  Kate threaded a blue the color of sky in early May.

  “Do you love him, your knight?” Eleanor bent back to her embroidery as she asked the question, as if she were merely making conversation.

  But it was no small question to Kate. “He is not my knight.”

  “Do I hear a note of regret in that denial?”

  “I care for him,” said Kate. “But I don’t know whether it is love.”

  “Ah. Time enough for that.”

  “He said I would make a fine captain of men.”

  Eleanor smiled into her embroidery. “And a fine mother of sons.”

  To Kate’s relief, Eleanor left it at that, humming as she completed the chalice. When she straightened to consider her work, she said, again as if simply making conversation, “Richard, he who was king, is dead. Have you heard? On the Feast of St. Valentine. They say he chose to starve rather than to live so confined and solitary. The same day as dear Hazel’s requiem.”

  Her mother’s mind was a complex mosaic.

  “Yes, I had heard,” said Kate.

  But “chose”? That is not how Petra had seen it. Starving to death in the large chamber with its faded tapestries, waking each morning to the scent of bread baking in the ovens that warmed his floor, pounding on that floor, demanding service, until too weak to rise from his bed. But it was a murder Kate had no stomach to solve.

  “May God grant him peace,” Kate said.

  “Amen,” Eleanor murmured. “Shall we see whether the girls have finished their lesson?”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The history of Henry IV’s reign did not captivate me until I read Terry Jones’s Who Murdered Chaucer? His depiction of the deep paranoia of Henry’s court intrigued me. “The opening months of Henry IV’s reign—the last of Chaucer’s life—were not placid times. They were chaotic and dangerous. Those who had been fearful of what the future might hold were right to be fearful.”(140) Shakespeare put the words in Henry’s mouth: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” (Henry IV part 2, III, 1, 31) The line has become a cliché much misquoted, but he was spot on.

  Shortly after Henry ascended the throne a plot was hatched by Richard’s supporters. This plot, known as the Epiphany Rising, provides the background for A Murdered Peace. Jones writes, “A plot to assassinate Henry shortly after Christmas was apparently hatched around the dinner table of the Abbot of Westminster. . . . By a remarkable stroke of good fortune for the usurper, the non-clerical ringleaders were lynched by furious mobs in various cities, leaving Henry able to carry on with the appearance of clemency.

  “Whether the convenient dispatch of his enemies was orchestrated by Henry’s agents, we’ll never know, but certainly Archbishop Arundel seems to have been uncharacteristically supportive of this particular instance of mob rule. In a letter he sent back to the convent in Canterbury he turns lynch mob into ‘the virtuous common people’.”(140)

  Clemency. Yes, well, as for that . . . The uprising, failed or no, sealed the fate of the former king; as long as Richard lived, Henry and all his family were in danger.

  As I have noted in other Author’s Notes, historians are not always agreed on the fine points of history; the Epiphany Rising is no exception. I’ve used Michael Bennett’s brief account as my outline (Richard II and the Revolution of 1399, Sutton 1999). I preferred it to other accounts because of a longstanding conflict between the citizens of Cirencester and the abbey regarding the claim that the citizens were tenants of the abbot.

  In Bennett’s version, when the townsfolk surrounded the rebel nobles and their men at an inn, the Earl of Kent’s chaplain started a fire to distract those standing guard and enable the rebels to escape. But the townsfolk set up a hue and cry that the rebels were endangering the town, dragged the nobles and their men out into the square, and killed them (Bennett 189–91). The alternate story is that the townsfolk entrusted the rebels to the abbot of St. Mary’s Abbey, Cirencester, and only when the captives started a fire in the abbey to make their escape did the townsfolk round them up and execute them. Why would the citizens of Cirencester give up an opportunity to gain favor with the king by disposing of those who had dared to threaten his life and the lives of his sons? And, especially, why would they hand this honor to the abbot?

  “In 1385 some of the townsfolk attacked the abbey. Richard II issued a commission to the keepers of the peace in Gloucestershire upon information that divers of the king’s lieges of Cirencester had assembled and gone to the abbey and done unheard-of things to the abbot and convent and threatened to do all the damage they could. The townsfolk were kept in check for a few years, but in 1400, when they rendered Henry IV a signal service by crushing the rebellion of the earls of Salisbury and Kent, whom they beheaded in the market-place, they seized the opportunity to put forward their complaints against the abbot and his predecessors. At the
king’s command an inquisition was held by the sheriff. Five juries from the town and the neighbourhood testified against the abbot, and it was claimed that the town of Cirencester had not been parcel of the manor until 1208, when the abbot compelled the townsmen to perform villein service. The king’s decision was postponed, and there is no record of it” (A History of the County of Gloucester, fn. 51–54).

  Oh, the ambiguity!

  WORKS CITED

  Who Murdered Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery, Terry Jones, Robert Yeager, Terry Dolan, Alan Fletcher, and Juliette Dor (Thomas Dunne Books, 2003)

  Richard II and the Revolution of 1399, Michael Bennett (Sutton, 1999)

  A History of the County of Gloucester, vol. 2, (originally published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 1907): http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp. 79–84

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It’s difficult to pare down my gratitude list. It has been my good fortune to find the community of scholars studying late medieval history and culture welcoming and generous with information, support, and enthusiasm. Thank you, thank you.

  Regarding A Murdered Peace, special thanks . . .

  To Louise Hampson, my go-to guide for York history. Thank you for reading the manuscript and making suggestions, for answering my emails despite an insane schedule juggling a doctoral thesis and a more-than-full-time career in the Center for Christianity and Culture, and for organizing our event at the York Festival of Ideas in June as well as taking me around the city to show me what’s been learned about medieval York since my last visit. You’re the best!

  To Ian Downes, Senior Heritage Officer, thank you for spending a very soggy Saturday morning taking me around Pontefract Castle and sharing the latest theories about Richard II’s last days in the castle. And for ongoing help at a distance.