The Cross Legged Knight (Owen Archer Book 8)

by Candace Robb

  Phillippa was given little reward for her unwavering faith in God. Magda was not so afflicted, despite her refusal to step foot in a church. But at least Phillippa had been blessed with a longer life than Cisotta.

  Dear Cisotta, God grant you peace.

  Lucie had tried all day to push away the image of the cold, hard buckle pressing into Cisotta’s throat. But such horrors gained strength in the middle of the night. She imagined the man seizing Cisotta – had he come from behind? He dropped the belt over Cisotta’s fair head. She reached up, opening her mouth to scream, but he pulled the belt tight. She clutched at the air, at her throat, slipping down all the while. Now the man’s face was exposed – it was Poins.

  If he is guilty may his pain torment him this night.

  But if it was not him – no, Lucie was certain. That was why God had so punished him.

  Lucie’s hands were shaking, her heart racing. Her stomach ached and where the discovery of her flux had given her joy only a while ago, now she feared it for the disappointment it would bring. For surely, surely she grew too old to conceive and bear a child through all the long months. It would have been better had her flux not returned, better not to hope again. She set the cup aside, still half full, and dropped to her knees. Heavenly Mother, Holy Mother of God, show me what to do, help me banish this despair, quiet my devil. She buried her head in her arms and wept.

  Something brushed past her elbow, and again. A cold nose nuzzled her hand, a rough tongue licked it. Lucie sat back on her heels and Melisende climbed on to her lap, butted her head against Lucie’s chin. Gathering the skinny elderly cat in one arm, Lucie eased up and settled back in to the chair by the fire, Melisende on her lap. At first the cat stiffened, but as Lucie petted her she relaxed, finally settling down, her chin resting lightly on one of Lucie’s forearms, a warm, purring comfort. She was just a wisp of a cat now. Lucie had not been aware of how Melisende was fading.

  In the morning, Lucie was puzzled to awaken to Kate’s gentle prodding. ‘The captain is out in the hall, Mistress, breaking his fast with Gwenllian and Hugh.’

  Lucie lay alone on the pallet before the fire. Some time in the night she had slipped beneath the blanket next to her aunt. ‘Where is Dame Phillippa?’

  ‘She is in the hall, too, but she will not eat. She is confused today and does not know me.’

  More was coming back to Lucie now – she feared she had added too much valerian to her tisane last night, so slowly was she waking. ‘Cisotta’s funeral. Am I too late?’

  ‘No, Mistress. I woke you in time to help ready Mistress Cisotta’s children, as you wished.’

  ‘How will you manage with my aunt unable to help you? Perhaps I should not go. Someone must see to the chores while you watch the children. Jasper will be busy in the shop.’

  ‘You have nothing to worry about, Mistress. Alisoun Ffulford is here. The Riverwoman sent her, just as she promised, though I had not expected her so soon. She says she has much experience minding children.’

  ‘Alisoun – I had not thought of her.’ The girl had taken care of several sets of young cousins since she lost her family in the last visitation of the plague, even though she was young – a year younger than Jasper. ‘I do not recall Magda offering to send for Alisoun.’

  ‘She told me as she departed yesterday. She said Dame Phillippa was due for a troublous time, and you and the captain would be too busy to help with her. I forgot to tell you last night, but I thought it would be days before she came. I can comb your hair when you are dressed, Mistress.’

  ‘So you can.’

  Magda had said nothing of being able to predict Phillippa’s spells.

  Kate gave Lucie a hand up from the low bed. ‘Already Alisoun has Gwenllian and Hugh in hand.’

  ‘From what I remember she was as wilful as my Gwen – perhaps my daughter has met her match.’

  Kate handed Lucie her shift. ‘I put your clothes by the fire so they would be warm.’

  Seeing the dark-blue gown, Lucie remembered the missing buttons, how calm and content Phillippa had looked as she sewed by the window last night.

  ‘Dame Phillippa sews buttons so neatly,’ Kate said, kneeling to help Lucie with all the fastening. ‘I did not think old folk could see well enough to do such work.’ She laced one of Lucie’s sleeves to the shoulder of her gown.

  When Lucie was dressed, she slipped out to the privy. The dew was heavy on the grass, the sky striped by fast-moving clouds. A penetrating breeze set her shivering. By the time she returned to the hall the chill had cleared her head.

  At the table set near the garden windows Owen sat beside Phillippa, one hand cupped beneath and one over her folded hands, talking to her in a comforting tone. The elderly woman, with her better ear cocked towards him, wore the ghost of a smile. Bless him for his kind patience. As if he had heard her prayer, Owen glanced up and wished her a good morning.

  ‘Who is she?’ Phillippa demanded. ‘Was she invited?’

  In the far corner beneath the windows Alisoun held Hugh on her lap and Gwenllian sat beside her. Alisoun was singing in a high, clear voice while nodding to the children to clap as she did to the rhythm. Gwenllian held her hands stiffly up towards her face as she focused on Alisoun’s hands, struggling to catch the beat while stumbling over the words as she tried to sing along. Hugh seemed more interested in Alisoun’s hands than his own, giggling and squirming.

  How the girl had grown since Lucie last saw her. She had been a sullen, skinny child with wild hair and ill-fitting clothes. But there she sat with her hair tamed by a crisp white cap, the bodice of her gown fitted to her slender frame, the skirt draping well and the hem tidy.

  ‘Good-day to you, Alisoun,’ Lucie said.

  Gwenllian jumped from her bench and ran to Lucie, hugging her legs. ‘I was singing.’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘God be with you, Mistress Wilton.’

  Alisoun’s eyes were as Lucie remembered, dark and wary, and the chin defiant. But she moved with Hugh’s squirms, gently containing him.

  ‘You can stay today? You are not expected back at your aunt’s house?’

  ‘No, truly, I intended to begin at once. The Riverwoman said you needed me.’

  ‘We do. God knows that we do.’

  Gwenllian ran back to Alisoun to ask for another song. The girl looked to Lucie for leave to resume.

  ‘Your voice is cheering – we have need of that today,’ Lucie said, withdrawing.

  ‘I did not guess what new troubles the day would breed,’ Owen said as Lucie sat down beside him at the table. ‘I thought I had done with Alisoun Ffulford.’

  ‘We need someone to watch the children.’

  ‘What are you doing in my dress?’ Phillippa demanded.

  ‘You mended this gown for me yesterday, Aunt.’

  Phillippa frowned at Owen. ‘Who is she to call me “aunt?”’

  ‘This is Lucie, Sir Robert’s daughter, your niece,’ said Owen.

  ‘No no no.’

  Kate served Lucie bread and cheese, then asked Dame Phillippa to help her in the kitchen.

  ‘Is cook unwell again?’ Phillippa asked in a shrill voice as she placed her walking stick firmly on the floor and leaned on it to rise, Owen helping with a hand to her elbow. ‘I told you it was a mistake to permit her to marry.’ Phillippa shook her head at the past as she followed Kate to the kitchen.

  ‘Poor Phillippa,’ Lucie said, ‘she was looking forward to going out today.’

  ‘Was it truly because of her that you slept in the kitchen?’ Owen asked.

  ‘What other reason could I have?’ Lucie put her hand over Owen’s, stared at him until he met her gaze. ‘She is entirely to blame.’

  ‘I did not know what to think when I woke before dawn and found your side of the bed cold.’

  ‘You could have come to fetch me.’

  He watched her as she ate, and only when she began to slow did he speak. ‘I must tell Wykeham about the Ferriby boys before he h
ears it elsewhere. More time wasted.’

  Lucie touched his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘It cannot be worse than telling Peter and Emma.’

  ‘No. But that is small comfort this morning.’

  She worried to see him exhausted at the beginning of his day.

  Twelve

  TROUBLING

  DISCOVERIES

  As Owen approached the Dale residence he slowed, thinking it a good time to talk to Robert and Julia. He would not keep them long and he might feel better having accomplished something before facing Wykeham, who was sure to be difficult. He should have time for both before the requiem mass.

  The goldsmith shop occupied the ground floor of the Dale dwelling. A young man, an apprentice by the look of his clothes, opened the door and invited Owen to sit while he found his master and mistress. Already at this early hour the apprentices and journeymen sat at their work at two tables, one near a great hearth, chiselling, hammering, polishing. Along the walls were racks with various types of hammers, chisels and tongs, shelves holding earthenware pots, trays, sticks of wax. The side of the room with the hearth was warm, the air acrid with the scent of hot metal. But the breezes from the open windows, front and back, freshened the air on the opposite side.

  The apprentice reappeared, his face flushed with the activity. ‘My mistress requests that you attend her in the hall above, Captain Archer. My master will join her in a moment. The stairs are just outside the door, on your left.’

  Up in the hall, which stretched the length of the shop below, Julia Dale rose from a cushioned bench, framed in the light of several oil lamps. She was a vision in a blue silk gown that matched her eyes, her dark hair caught up in delicate filigree netting beneath a gossamer veil, a gold circlet crowning all. She had bold features and a powerful voice, tempered by her beauty and warmth. Had she married a man who could afford to provide her only the simplest of ornaments, she would have shone no less. Her daughters passed through the far end of the hall, pushing one another and giggling. They had her colouring, but not yet the presence that drew one’s eyes and held them. Owen cleared his throat.

  ‘I trust this will be a more comfortable place in which to talk than the shop,’ Julia said. ‘Certainly my husband will be less distracted up here.’ She lifted her chin at the sound of her daughters greeting their father. ‘There he is now.’ She awaited him, quietly composed.

  So Lucie once was, full of smiles for Owen, welcoming, soothing, loving. Was it the children who had changed her? This last child, so eagerly awaited, so violently lost? Was the shop too much? Perhaps the strain of motherhood and work were too much. And yet he could not imagine Lucie without her work. He rose abruptly when he noticed Robert Dale extending his hand.

  Julia’s husband was a pleasant-looking man except for the poor vision that drew his face into a perpetual squint. Owen often wondered why Robert did not use some of his wealth for a pair of spectacles such as Thoresby’s.

  Robert greeted Owen amiably and sat down beside Julia. ‘You are here about the evening of the fire,’ he said. ‘It is good you have come so soon, while it is fresh in my head.’ He nodded to his wife. ‘You might name the guests.’

  She ticked them off on her fingers.

  ‘How long had the evening been planned?’

  Julia glanced over at her husband, who shrugged and shook his head. ‘I had spoken with Edwina Hovingham,’ she said, ‘and she agreed that we must introduce Adeline and Godwin to our acquaintances. Being connected in Beverley and Hull as well as York, they are good people to know.’

  ‘Julia, the captain asked when, not why,’ Robert said in a fond tone.

  ‘Forgive me. It was that Monday. The laundress arrived just as I was leaving.’

  ‘Tell me about the evening,’ Owen said.

  Robert nodded. ‘All the invited guests had arrived, save William Hovingham, who is ailing. We were a dozen for dinner, as Julia said, which is why Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was assisting ours. We had completed the fish course when Hovingham’s servant came to fetch Edwina home. William was asking for Master Saurian.’ Robert pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, sighed. ‘May God watch over his family.’ He fell silent, staring at nothing.

  ‘We were about to have the cakes when Godwin excused himself,’ Julia said. ‘I should think that is the most important detail. He was so long about it – I had finished a piece of cake and saw that the sauce on his was separating. I sent a servant to check the yard, fearing he had taken a fall, or was ill, and he returned with news of the fire.’

  Robert had shaken himself from his fears for William Hovingham and sat forward now. ‘Adeline Fitzbaldric was first to the door, crying out for her husband.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘I thought it strange at the time. She cried out, “Dear Lord, not Godwin! Have I not given enough?” But afterwards I remembered she had lost both children to the pestilence.’

  Robert caught her hand and they looked at one another for a few moments.

  A happy marriage. Three healthy children, the boy at the minster school, the girls showing promise of their mother’s beauty.

  ‘And that night, where did the Fitzbaldrics sleep? How was your household arranged?’

  ‘We put Godwin and Adeline in the solar, near us,’ said Robert. He rose, took a few steps to the hearth. ‘The children slept here – it is chilly in the evenings now, though the hearth in the workshop below warms the floor through the night. The servants were sleeping behind a screen just over here.’ Robert strode a few paces. ‘Except for the cooks and the scullery maid – they were out in the kitchen. And my apprentices down below in the shop. That is what troubled me so, we were all spread out. If the intruder had come through this door …’

  ‘The servants would have caught him, husband,’ Julia said, rising to coax him back to his seat.

  ‘But he came only to the kitchen and fled at once?’ Owen asked.

  Robert nodded. ‘I shall walk down with you and show you where he climbed the wall.’

  ‘It needs repair,’ said Julia. ‘One can scramble up with little trouble. The children have done so many a time.’

  ‘It shall be mended,’ Robert said, nodding energetically.

  ‘What of May, your guests’ maidservant? What did you notice about her injuries that night?’ Owen spoke directly to Julia.

  ‘She had a few scratches on her legs, a good bruise forming on one knee, a grazed wrist and she said her hip was tender. Her eyes were smeared with blood. Dried, caked. She kept blinking and I washed them out. I urged Adeline to send for a physician, someone, thinking she must have injured her eye and we could not tell. But she assured us that her eyes were fine, she saw well enough. And Adeline was content with that. Fretting over her loss, I am sure, and her manservant’s terrible injuries.’

  ‘How did the Fitzbaldrics behave after the intruder?’

  ‘Crossing themselves and praying,’ Robert said. ‘It was too much for them in one evening. And then that poor man in the morning. Though I can tell you I cursed him from here to the devil when he woke me. I had just managed to fall asleep after spending the night checking the doors and windows over and over again.’

  ‘Robert could not rest, that is true,’ said Julia, touching his arm lightly.

  Perhaps it was Owen who had changed, not Lucie.

  ‘Is that all, Captain?’ Robert asked.

  Owen straightened. ‘I’ve no doubt you found it difficult to rest after the fire, the intruder. Have you any idea whether the Fitzbaldrics slept?’

  ‘I do not believe Adeline did,’ said Julia. ‘But Godwin had the red, creased face of someone who had slept deeply.’

  ‘You are most helpfully observant,’ said Owen. ‘How did they respond to Eudo the tawyer?’

  Julia looked to her husband.

  ‘Godwin thought it best simply to take him to the shed, let him see for himself whether it was his wife,’ said Robert.

  ‘We held Adeline back. She feared the tawyer wo
uld attack Godwin. He was coarse with drink, but I assured her that he had too many witnesses to be such a fool, and that Godwin was no weakling, he could protect himself.’ Julia had grown uncomfortable, toying with a ring on one finger, avoiding eye contact. ‘It was kind of him to take the tawyer. Godwin Fitzbaldric is a good man.’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Julia is full of remorse for how the two households parted.’

  ‘I was thinking of the children.’ Her eyes pleaded for understanding.

  ‘So, too, was I when I told Master Fitzbaldric that we could not keep Poins in our home.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Owen had nothing else to ask at the moment. Robert escorted him to the yard, showed him the tumbled wall, which would have been an easy climb, probably the way the intruder had arrived as well.

  Owen was glad to be away from the Dales. Their ease with one another had brought home to him how he and Lucie had drifted apart.

  The counter at the front of Eudo’s shop was closed, the door shut. Overhead, the tawyer’s sign creaked in the breeze. Somewhere further down the street a door or shutter banged in an uneven rhythm. Lucie turned down the alley towards the kitchen entrance, giving a cry when she stumbled over a man in the archbishop’s livery sitting with his back against the wall, dozing.

  ‘Who goes there?’ he called out as he scrambled to his feet.