Hildegard was called into the archbishop’s audience chamber after the messenger was sent down to the kitchens for a reward of cheese and ale. She was joined by Edwin and Thomas.
Neville began without preamble. ‘It seems that my unfortunate kitchener did not drown as we believed, or, at least, not before receiving a blow to the back of the head.’ He glowered at the three of them. ‘What d’you make of that?’
Edwin bit his lip.
‘An accident?’ offered Thomas tentatively. ‘He hit his head on the side of the vat, maybe?’
Neville raised his eyebrows.
Hildegard spoke up. ‘It sounds to me like foul play.’
Neville was grim-faced. ‘And so it sounds to me as well. My bailiff has questioned the few servants who remain behind. He has decided not to mention that he found a stout stick lying in the herb beds not far from the door of the brewhouse until he has learnt more. So you’re right, Domina. Indubitably foul play.’
Edwin spoke up. He sounded shocked. ‘Somebody hit the fellow on the head with the stick, then tried to dispose of his body in the vat?’
They glanced at each other. But Neville continued. ‘What you’re going to do, Edwin, is look at this list here and tell me what you think.’
He handed the clerk a piece of vellum with the seal of the Bishopthorpe bailiff dangling from it. Edwin scanned it and looked up. ‘These are the old servants who stayed behind at the palace, Your Grace.’
‘They are indeed. And when you call them old you’re right again. Can you imagine any of them picking up a club and bludgeoning a man to death with it?’
Edwin threw his head back and gave a musical laugh. It relieved the tension. ‘Only with the greatest difficulty, Your Grace.’
‘You think it a ridiculous idea?’
‘I do.’
‘So do I. And it suggests one thing: the man’s assailant must be one of these blackguards here and now in Lincoln skulking in my retinue. Now …’ He took the piece of vellum, screwed it up into the shape of a dagger and stabbed it angrily at the air to emphasise his words. ‘ … the second thing you’re going to do,’ his voice rose, ‘is question every man we have with us!’
‘Every single man?’ gasped Edwin.
‘Yes,’ he snarled. ‘I want to know who was where and when and why. You’ll be helped by the domina and her priest.’ He glared at Hildegard and Brother Thomas, who flinched. ‘The three of you can comb through their lies and find the fellow without a plausible story. We do not leave Lincoln until the matter is resolved!’
He turned with a furious rustle of embroidered brocade. ‘He’s here. He’s got to be. It’s one of these lying devils. I want him nailed forthwith. And, I do not need to remind any of you’ – he paused ominously – ‘the words “blow to the head” or “murder” will not pass your lips. Let them put two and two together. The one who makes four is our man.’
Shrugging his cope into place he raged out.
‘Well, well,’ said Edwin glancing at the two monastics. ‘This is a turn-up. I can still hardly believe it. In the palace of all places!’
‘We’d better start now if we want to get to Westminster,’ Hildegard suggested.
‘Who are we going to call first?’
‘We could start with your head cook, Master Fulford. He should know exactly where everybody was.’
‘After him I suggest the cook’s clerk, to check that their versions tally, then the brewmaster and the baker.’ He added, ‘We’ll give them all a good going-over. The bailiff must have done the same at Bishopthorpe with what’s left of the staff up there.’
‘They’re going to guess something’s up,’ muttered Thomas as they took their places.
Rain was blowing in through the eye slits. It was a miserable day and not a good one for travel. The bishop’s yeoman of the chamber ordered his underlings to light a fire for them. ‘Useful things these fireplaces,’ he murmured as he went about his task. ‘I don’t know what we did without them.’ Thomas went over to warm his hands when he left.
Word had been put out that Master Fulford was required to attend His Grace’s clerk in the privy chamber next to the guest hall. They took their places on a bench close to the hearth with another bench placed opposite to give them a good view of those they called. They were just waiting for Fulford to show up when Edwin eyed Hildegard and Thomas in a somewhat cynical manner. ‘I hope you two are ready for a pack of lies?’
‘It’s everyday life for us,’ replied Thomas, unperturbed. ‘You’ve no idea the lies they tell us in the hope of gaining pardon by the back door. As if their sins are not already known!’ He sighed and looked as if he was about to enlarge on the subject.
Hildegard was used to this. She turned quickly to Edwin. ‘While we wait for the archbishop’s cook, why don’t you tell us something about him?’ She recalled the red-faced, angry-looking fellow who had almost swamped his fellow travellers in the wagon reserved for himself and other members of his kitchens.
Edwin looked pleased to tell what he knew. ‘Of the lot of them I’d take his word first. He’s been with His Grace for about twenty years. Stuck with him through thick and thin. I expect they get on because they both have vile tempers. It allows them to understand each other. I’m surprised neither of you two have been bawled out by His Grace yet.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe it’s the power of your Order that makes him rein in the worst of it.’
‘I’d like to see him shouting at Hildegard,’ said Thomas.
Edwin gave her a sidelong glance. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Fulford, despite his rages, has acquired a measure of respect. Maybe it’s the nature of his calling. There’s no quicker way to men’s hearts than through their bellies, as they say, and he knows what he’s doing in that department. He’s a real craftsman. A taskmaster, true, but fair-minded after he’s let fly.’
‘“Let fly”?’ asked Thomas with interest.
Edwin nodded. ‘Anything that comes to hand.’
‘We had a cook at Meaux like that but he seems to have calmed down since the abbot took him aside.’
Hildegard looked impatiently towards the door.
Edwin continued. ‘Fulford prides himself on it – “I tell them what for” and “I speak as I find”. They call it talking plain. He’s just an old Saxon, of course.’ He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. ‘Be that as it may, he runs a tight ship. No complaints from His Grace. And when people come to work for him they tend to stay. Nothing much else to say about him. Unmarried, of course. His work is his life. His kitcheners are his family.’
‘Can you see him hitting anybody over the back of the head?’
‘Never. No matter how riled he was.’
‘Where’s he from originally?’
‘Some village near York. He worked for the Bishop of Durham as an apprentice after a stint as a scullion with a York merchant when he was a lad back in the Dark Ages. He boasts he’s never been further south than Doncaster.’
‘Not even when His Grace was called to attend previous Parliaments?’ Hildegard asked.
Edwin shook his head. ‘Left to hold the reins at Bishopthorpe. This time His Grace insisted. Something to do with putting up a good table for guests in Westminster.’
‘With his commitment to His Grace, then, his testimony should be reliable.’
‘I’m prepared to trust it.’
A page boy poked his head round the door. ‘The master of the kitchens approaches.’ He bobbed back out of sight.
A few moments later Fulford hove into view. He addressed the two men as if Hildegard were invisible.
She didn’t mind, of course. It was a lesson in humility and gave her chance to observe the cook more closely than she would otherwise have been able.
She noticed how he groped around behind him to find the bench before settling his vast bottom on it, and once firmly seated, began folding and unfolding his hands until eventually they found a resting place on his paunch. He was breathing hard as if having run up a f
light of stairs. She couldn’t imagine him being able to hit a man. No wonder he threw things instead.
Edwin opened the questions with an invitation to tell them when he had last seen Martin. ‘We’re just trying to establish how he came to fall into the vat,’ he explained.
‘I can’t rightly remember when I saw him,’ Fulford admitted. ‘We were run off our feet that morning. I know I saw him near the wagons at one point. Mebbe putting his stuff on board.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘There was more on my mind than the whereabouts of one servant.’
‘Don’t know, then,’ Edwin made a note. When he stopped scratching his quill over the vellum, he asked Fulford to explain where everyone was meant to be from matins to prime on the day they left the purlieus of Bishopthorpe. The dead man had been found just after prime when they all came out of the service and assembled in the main courtyard ready to leave.
‘And so they were,’ replied Fulford. ‘Remember, we had all that tomfoolery with the Pope’s man and his vultures, counting heads?’
‘Run us through everybody’s movements, then.’
‘At matins they’d still be in their beds. No necessity to go and pray at that time of night. We’re not monks.’ He bowed his head courteously towards Brother Thomas.
‘I can verify that none of the kitchen staff was in church at matins,’ agreed Thomas. ‘In fact there was just myself, His Grace and his acolyte, the sacristan, a priest from—’
‘We’ll get your testimony later, Brother, if you don’t mind,’ Edwin cut in. He turned back to the cook. ‘The period of time we’re more interested in is after that, closer to prime itself. Your staff must have been up and about by then. What time do they rise?’
‘The bakers are on with their bread before first light. My clerk personally assigns the tasks as I’ve instructed the day before. On a normal day he makes sure all the produce is checked in and everybody’s allotted their duties—’
‘That’s on a normal day. Was this day what you’d call normal?’
‘No, it wasn’t. Anything but normal. There was no call for our usual fare that day. It was all vittles to be carried and eaten on the road, most of it prepared and packed previous, like. Cheese, dried fish. All except for the bread, of course.’
‘Tell us more.’
‘The only place functioning was the bakehouse. It was going full blast. You can’t have any idea how much bread folk eat, and it takes a lot of organisation to get enough for forty on a journey of near on three hundred miles not knowing when we’ll be able to get fresh bread again. We buy it in when we can, of course, but it all takes planning.’
He sat back with his hands clasped over his stomach and a look of challenge on his face.
Edwin nodded. ‘I’m sure your skills are up to it, master. So,’ he continued, ‘the bakehouse going full blast. Everybody else still in their beds. What I’d like to know is who was in the bakehouse at this point? Who was first in?’
Fulford ticked them off. ‘Kitchen lad to stoke the fire, couple of spit boys, under-baker and his two assistants, pot boy.’
‘The bakehouse adjoins the brewhouse where the body was found,’ Edwin explained in an aside to Hildegard and Thomas.
‘So who was in the brewhouse?’ she asked.
‘Nobody had any need to be in the brewhouse.’ The master cook was emphatic but he addressed Edwin. ‘We’d already loaded the casks of ale the night before. There was nothing in there for anybody. The mash could be left to do its job by itself.’
‘I do apologise for asking this but I’m a stranger to Bishopthorpe. Can you tell me where exactly the brewhouse is in relation to the bakehouse?’ Hildegard asked.
Fulford addressed his answer to Brother Thomas. ‘The bakehouse and the brewhouse are one linked building. There’s a wall inside to separate one from the other. You go in over the small footbridge across the stream. It takes you in through the main door into the bakehouse. From there you go under an arch on your left and on into where they do the brewing.’
‘And how do you approach the bridge over the stream?’
Again the same avoidance of her glance, his eyes fixed on the monk. ‘You come at it down a path behind the infirmary. It takes you past the herb gardens across the side of the bakehouse and round the front. As I say, there’s a little wooden bridge over the stream – it’s no more than a sluice. The bridge leads you right in through the main door and you turn left if you want the clerk’s office, otherwise you’re right there.’
‘Is that the only way in?’
He fixed Thomas with a firm glance. ‘There are another couple of doors,’ he admitted with a sidelong glance at Hildegard as if afraid she had almost caught him out. ‘One is the brewmaster’s chamber and the other leads into the brewhouse from the herb enclosure. But it’s private. It’s for the use of the brewmaster and nobody else.’
‘But anybody could enter through the enclosure, into the brewhouse itself, without coming in by the main door over the sluice?’
‘No, definitely not. It’s forbidden. Unless you want the brewmaster to say something to you.’
‘Was he there that morning?’ asked Edwin.
‘As I said. He was overseeing the casks, marking them up and making sure his ale was fit for travel. He was with me in the yard from getting up until His Grace said Mass, and he was standing right next to me when the lad came shrieking out with the news.’
‘To go back to the garden you mention,’ said Hildegard. ‘Is it overlooked?’
‘Only from the infirmary windows – oh, and by anybody walking along the path.’ Glance still averted.
Brother Thomas had a question. ‘Where does the path go?’
‘It continues towards the watermill – although there is a branch before that that’ll take you up to the main gate.’
‘And from there it joins the road the convoy took when we set out,’ concluded Edwin. He glanced at the other two. ‘Do you have any more questions for the moment, Domina?’
She shook her head.
‘And you, Brother?’
Thomas frowned. ‘Surely it would have been easy for somebody to go from the bakehouse through into the brewhouse at any time, wouldn’t it?’
The master cook was emphatic. ‘Not with my kitchen clerk overseeing matters. They’d have had to leave their stations, for one thing, and he wouldn’t stand for that in working hours. Not without leave and with so much to be done before we set out. Definitely out of the question.’
‘We need to talk to your kitchen clerk,’ remarked Edwin.
‘He’ll say the same as me.’
‘Are you suggesting, master, that we can discount your bakers altogether?’ Thomas leant forward.
Fulford frowned. ‘What exactly is this?’ He looked from one to the other. When nobody answered his colour rose. ‘Are we talking foul play here?’
He began to struggle to his feet. ‘Now look here, if you think any of my lads are capable of …’ He sat down again. After a moment he asked, ‘What really happened to the poor devil? Are you going to tell me? Because if there’s—’
‘He drowned, as you know,’ Edwin cut in. ‘We simply want to find out how it happened. It strikes us as odd,’ he continued, ‘that nobody knows what he was doing in the brewhouse nor how he made his way there, whether alone or with someone. And of course,’ he added, ‘I have to prepare a report for the coroner.’
Looking doubtful, Fulford sat down heavily on his bench. ‘So you’re trying to work out how Martin got into the brewhouse without being seen? And why he bothered to go there in the first place?’
‘That’s about it,’ agreed Edwin.
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘I wonder,’ Hildegard interjected, ‘just for clarity, will you confirm that someone could have got into the brewhouse from the herb garden, whether forbidden to go in that way or not?’
‘I’m confirming nothing.’
‘Very well. But, from what you’ve just told us, the only conclusion to
be drawn is this: in order to get inside the brewhouse through the master’s private door, you’d have to approach by the path under the infirmary windows?’
Reluctantly he went on to agree that it would be easy to slip out through the back door of the main kitchens and take the path through the enclosure wall.
‘And then, if you didn’t want to be seen, all you’d have to worry about is a short walk under the windows?’
‘Even then it’s not likely you’d be noticed,’ he reluctantly pointed out. ‘Them windows is high up. You’d have to stand on tiptoe to see out, or be some kind of giant,’ he added.
‘Putting aside the question of giants, it must be possible for somebody to slip into the brewhouse unnoticed through the brewmaster’s door, even when the bakehouse is going full swing?’
‘Possible.’
Edwin looked pleased.
‘Possible,’ Fulford repeated. ‘But forbidden.’
‘You can leave us now, Master Fulford. Many thanks for your help.’
After the cook had heaved himself off his bench and before leaving the chamber he stood by the door with a fierce look. ‘You think Martin was done in. It’s not one of my lads. I’ll lay my life on it. And if it is, I’ll want to be the first to see him hang.’
After he’d gone Edwin said, ‘Hell, it’s like getting blood out of a stone. Now all we need to know is whether anybody saw Martin going off in that direction and whether he’d had words with anybody that morning. It’s my bet he had a falling-out with someone and they followed him down to the brewhouse to show him what for.’
‘That may be so, but why would he go sneaking in there by the back entrance anyway?’ Hildegard still puzzled.
‘His job could entail a visit to the herb gardens, I suppose,’ Thomas contributed, ‘but, you’re right, why enter the brewhouse?’
‘Unless to meet somebody in secret,’ Hildegard suggested.
‘It was all confusion that morning, with everybody preparing to leave for London,’ Edwin pointed out. ‘But they were all busy in the yard. It might have been the only empty place they could find if they wanted to settle something in private. He’d have had to carry his personal stuff from the lay brothers’ dormitory to the wagons like the rest of us, so somebody will have noticed him.’
A Parliament of Spies Page 4