That had Faucon frowning at her in surprise. "How can you be so precise?"
She narrowed her eyes in scorn, as if she adjudged him as great an idiot as Johnnie. "The fire in the oven, of course. I always keep embers glowing, so the interior stays warm. That way the clay isn't shocked when I bring the heat up to do my baking. Those embers must be fed throughout the day. They're the last thing I check before I leave and the first things I look at when I return. And when I returned home that night, my embers were lifeless which means they hadn't been fed since before twilight, more likely longer as cold as they were."
"Who among your neighbors noticed you as you returned?" he asked.
She stared at him for a moment as if confused by his question. Then understanding flashed through her gaze. Her mouth opened as if to speak. Her gaze shifted toward Johnnie.
"Ah, so the only one about that night as you arrived was a mute dulcop," Faucon commented dryly.
Then he reached out as if to touch the healing wounds on her forearm. "What happened here? They look nasty."
She drew a hasty step back from him. Her arms opened and she pressed them to the sides of her body, hiding them in the folds of her skirt. "The mouser I keep in the kitchen is a vicious creature when she has kits. She set on me with claws bared when I tried to move her and her new litter out of the sack of nuts where she bore them."
"Sir, if I may?" Alf asked.
Startled, Faucon looked at the soldier. Alf's brows were raised, his blue eyes alive with the intelligence Faucon had recognized when first they met at the mill. "As you will," his Crowner replied, curious what his new man intended.
Alf looked at Meg. "My mother has need of a new cat as a fox took hers last month. Is there a tri-colored one among these kits? My dam is especially fond of those."
Again, Meg's mouth opened as if to speak and, again, no word dropped from her tongue. Her gaze shifted between Faucon and Alf. Almost imperceptibly, her head began to shake.
Edmund released an infuriated sound. "Sir Faucon, I insist you put this commoner in his place and do it this instant. You and I serve our king here. He has no right to interfere in matters of the royal court," the monk demanded in French.
"My apologies if I have misstepped or misspoken, Brother, Sir Faucon. I will leave you to your business," Alf replied swiftly, then retreated until he stood a bit farther behind them.
Faucon fought his smile. Oh, there was going to be more value than a sword in having this particular commoner at his back. "What of it, Meg? Is there a tri-colored cat in the litter that my man can have?" he asked.
The old woman blinked. She started to cross her arms only to catch herself, once more lowering them to her sides. "The kits are too young to leave their mother."
"My man has to come back this way to escort a relative home in the near future. Let's have a look at them. If he sees one he likes, he can fetch it then. That will spare at least one of them from drowning," Faucon pressed, taking great pleasure in hammering at her with the weapon Alf had tossed to him.
"I'll want a quarter penny for the cat he chooses," Meg offered in paltry defense.
Faucon turned to look at Alf. "Will you pay for a cat?"
"I will," the soldier called back from where he stood. "The mill does well for my dam and she's generous to me."
"It seems a farthing isn't too much for him to pay," Faucon said to Meg. "Let him have a look at them."
That drove the cook back another step. Her gaze shifted between commoner and knight. "I don't know where they are just now. She didn't like the new spot I gave her, and took her babes elsewhere. I haven't yet discovered where she now hides."
Again, Faucon turned toward Alf, this time to hide his face as he fought a grin. "I fear you'll find no cat here, Alf, at least not this day," he told the tall Englishman.
"A shame that," the commoner replied, "but just as well, I suppose. It's a long ride home, one made easier without a kitten in a sack."
"True enough," his Crowner agreed.
To Meg, he said, "It seems I've no choice but to waste my day looking for your bailiff and Jessimond's body. What say you? May I take Johnnie with me as I make this search? Yesterday, I noticed how fond he is of his half-sister. I'm thinking he might know where Amelyn has gone, and, grieving mother that she is, she may well know the location of her daughter's corpse."
Scorn twisted Meg's face, driving all else from her expression. "You're a greater idiot than that pathetic creature if you think he can lead you anywhere. Please yourself. For all I care, you can keep the dulcop with you for all time to come."
With that, she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen shed. The door slammed after her. Faucon heard the bar drop.
"Where is the priest who tends to this folk? That woman needs to have her tongue torn from her mouth," Edmund said angrily. Then he bent a disbelieving look on his employer. "I don't understand why you let that commoner distract you from hunting the one who murdered a child with questions about cats!"
Faucon only smiled at his clerk. "Tit for tat, Edmund," was all he said, then signaled to Johnnie.
The youth came to him, once again walking on his toes. Although his hands flapped, the motion was calmer now. Amelyn's brother stopped before him, his posture alert and eager. Johnnie's gaze shifted from his Crowner to the edge of the forest behind the kitchen.
"I will follow you into the woods," Faucon told the youth, "but before we can leave Wike, I must see the smith. Can you lead me to the smithy?" This he asked to prove to himself that Johnnie understood him, not because he needed help finding Ivo and his sons. Doing that was as easy as following the din that accompanied metal being formed into tools.
Instantly, Johnnie shifted toward the rhythmic clang of hammers. Rising to his toes, he started away from the kitchen without looking behind him to see if his Crowner followed.
"I hardly think you need the simpleton to lead you to the forge," Edmund said in irritable disbelief from behind him.
"You're correct, I don't need him for that," Faucon agreed, sending a swift smile over his shoulder at his clerk. "But if he can find the smithy, I dare hope that he may also lead us to Amelyn."
"Misplaced faith, I think," Edmund grumbled.
The path Johnnie walked took them past the front of the manor house. The present lady of Wike hadn't been the first to ignore this hamlet. The house looked long ago abandoned and was even more decayed than Faucon had first thought. Birds, mice, and rats had all taken to nesting in its thatch, leaving gaping holes in the rotting reeds. More than moss clung to the walls. Wild vines, naught but browning flesh and twisted bones this late in the season, had taken root along its stone foundation, then made their unfettered way to the roof. Someone had attempted to remove a few and failed spectacularly. As the plants departed, they'd taken chunks of the exterior plaster with them, exposing the withe panels that filled the spaces between the house's ribs. The small porch that stood in front of the door, the one on which Amelyn had taken her punishment more than a decade ago, wore a speckled coat of black rot. The lower step had half-collapsed.
Faucon glanced from the house to the forest's edge beyond the pale. If the family who owned this place had lost the right to hunt in the king's woods, that would explain their lack of interest in the settlement. It also guaranteed that Wike was in its death throes, whether its demise came this year, the next, or twenty years hence. If Odger believed he could forestall that fate by way of an iron hand, he was sorely mistaken. Odger was the wrong man, and the hamlet was too small to rise above being abandoned by its masters.
At the far corner of the house, Johnnie turned again, still moving toward the sound of hammers. The smithy proved a three-sided shed, built all of stone with a wooden roof, although the ceiling stood high above the hard earthen floor, well out of reach of errant sparks. That hadn't prevented it and the walls supporting it from being blackened by soot from the forge fire. On the shed's long wall, metal tools of all sizes—hammers, pincers, chisels, and rasps
—hung from pegs driven into the stones. Beneath the tools stood a narrow wooden workbench. Strewn atop it were gauges for pulling wire and wooden clamps. Two stools, to allow for ease while doing close work, were pushed beneath the bench.
The left wall supported a stone smoke channel, its narrow top guiding smoke out through the roof while its wide base hung a little above a stone fire box. Even without the bellows to feed them, the coals burning in the box were so hot that air in the gap between the box and the channel glowed a sultry red. The heat flowed out of the shed to wrap its chary arms around Faucon, drawing sweat from his brow as he stopped next to Johnnie in the open front.
Inside, Ivo and his sons were arranged in a circle around their anvil, which stood atop an ancient, blackened stump. As they had yesterday, the three wore their leather chausses and scarred sabots, and only bare skin beneath their leather aprons. The mingling of dirt, soot, rivulets of sweat and pink burn scars created a crazy pattern on their exposed flesh.
Focused on their task, they hammered at their newborn tool in a well-timed pattern, each hammer singing out in its own voice. Between that and the precision of their strikes, the clangs sounded like a fuller's chant.
Then, as if sensing them, the elder of Ivo's sons glanced up between his strokes. The dark-haired youth, who already owned the heavy muscles of a full-grown man despite that he wasn't yet a score of years, gave a welcoming lift of his chin. When he missed his next stroke, Ivo and his younger son, a youth of perhaps six-and-ten, paused in their task to follow their kinsman's look.
"Sir," Ivo called out in friendly greeting as he recognized Faucon.
Setting his hammer on the workbench, he came forward to greet his Crowner. His elder lad did the same, while the younger boy returned the length of metal they'd been working to the fire box before joining them. As they came, each man stripped off his heavy leather gloves, tucked them into his apron straps, then used his bare fingers to push back hair and wipe away sweat. The sequence was so similar, the gestures and their timing so alike, that Faucon wanted to grin. Indeed, the sons were like the father here.
"So you've had no word from Gawne?" Faucon asked.
Concern darkened Ivo's eyes as he scrubbed a hand across his brow. What had looked like filth around his right wrist proved instead a circlet of small bruises. "He did not return last night and I can only pray—" the smith began.
"Da, there's no need to pray," his older son interrupted, putting an arm around his father's shoulders. "Our Gawne knows those woods and wastes better than Rauf or I, or even you, and we all know them well indeed, don't we, Da? Rauf and I are both certain that Gawne's hunkered, safe and warm, in some hidden spot. Isn't that right, Rauf?" He looked for support from his younger brother.
Rauf nodded shyly as his elder sibling turned his attention back on his Crowner. "You told Da you didn't believe Gawne had killed Jessimond, didn't you, sir?" the older boy asked.
"I did," Faucon replied, "and so I remain convinced."
"Then, we'll see him again and soon, Da," the son assured the sire.
Ivo shook his head as if reluctant to accept comfort from his child. "Then I'll pray that you're right, Dob," he told his elder boy. To Faucon he said, "I think it's not knowing where he's gone or what's become of him that makes my heart ache most."
"I imagine that's so," his Crowner agreed. "I told you yesterday that I'd have questions for you, and so I have. You all know that Jessimond was bastard born, aye?"
"She was," Ivo replied without hesitation. "All of Wike knows this. Amelyn did not name the one who sired her lass when she was called by Odger to face us after Jessimond's birth."
"Do the two of you also know and accept that the name of Jessimond's sire has always been unknown?" Faucon asked of Ivo's sons.
"We do," Dob replied for both of them, for once again Rauf only nodded.
"By chance, were all three of you there on the day that Amelyn received her punishment for fornication?" Faucon wanted to know.
An unexpected question about Wike's past startled them all. Frowning, Dob spoke first. "I was there that day and I do remember it. But sir, I wasn't yet of age then. I'm not certain I can acknowledge or swear to something I witnessed before my twelfth year."
That brought Edmund forward to stand next to his employer. The monk lowered his basket from his shoulder as he spoke. "The law requires us to take your oaths in regard to the girl's parentage. You're not swearing to what you remember, but to the fact that all of Wike is in agreement that the girl was bastard born. We ask you to swear that you have never heard Amelyn name her child's father, not from that long ago day until this one. Nor, in that same time, has any man or woman stepped forward to accuse a man of being the one who made Jessimond on her mother," the monk said, nodding to the younger men.
"Well, that much is true," Rauf offered, his voice as shy as his nod.
"Aye," Dob agreed. "Not even Jessimond knows who her father is. Gawne once told me that Jes believes even her mother doesn't know the name of her sire, although how that can be I can't imagine," he added.
"Then all three of you will swear that the name of the man who fathered Jessimond, daughter of Amelyn, was unknown at the time of her birth and remains unknown to this day," Edmund restated for them.
"We so swear," both of Ivo's sons replied at once.
Their father only turned his head to the side. "Poor child," he whispered, then said no more.
Faucon watched what he could see of Ivo's face between the man's wild, thick hair and overgrown beard. Something akin to pain filled the smith's expression.
"Ivo the Smith, do you also swear that you know not who fathered Jessimond the Leper's Daughter?" he prodded, crafting his question with care.
That brought the smith's sad gaze back to him. "I swear that I have never heard Amelyn speak the name of the man who fathered Jessimond, not when she was at the manor door all those years ago, nor to this day. Nor have I heard any other man or woman utter that man's name."
Again, the smith sighed. "Speaking of the past leaves me awash in shame over how I did nothing when Odger so cruelly and unfairly punished Amelyn. Where was my courage? Why didn't I raise my voice in defense of my friend on that misbegotten day? Even if she had sinned, and even if she bore fruit because of that sin, Amelyn didn't deserve what Odger laid upon her."
Next to Faucon, Edmund removed the lid from his basket, setting it onto the ground. "If we can find the girl's corpse, all is now within our grasp, sir," he said quietly to his employer in French. "Four men have spoken. Englishry is not proved. I would like a few moments to note the names of the smith and his sons before we move on, if I may."
A few moments? It took longer than that for Edmund to arrange his writing implements, never mind the time it took for his scribbling. But with the murdrum fine even more firmly in hand and nothing but a long tramp in the woods ahead of him, Faucon could afford to be generous.
He smiled. "So you must, and as you do, know that I remain grateful to have you at my side."
The monk blinked rapidly at that. "My thanks, sir," he muttered, then stepped into the smithy, going to the workbench.
Faucon looked back at Ivo. "When did you first learn that Gawne and Jessimond were meeting?"
"Months ago. I shouldn't have given up chasing him when he escaped me that first time, racing into the woods. I should have persisted and brought him home. But I thought if he had some time to himself, he'd find his peace with his mother's death," Gawne's father replied in chagrin. "Instead, he found Jes."
"Your bakestress remains convinced that Jessimond was with child by your son. How is it you're certain that the two remained but innocent friends?" Faucon wanted to know.
Ivo looked startled at the question. "Because I know my son," he replied at last, then looked at his other boys. "What say you, lads? Do you think Gawne made Jessimond into more than a playmate?"
Rauf instantly shook his head as, once again, Dob answered for them both. "Not Gawne, not when he knew—" the
youth started to reply.
But his father spoke over him. "All of this is my fault. After Mille died, I was so aggrieved that I think I lost my mind. I should have brought Gawne into the smithy that very next day, if only to work the bellows," the elder smith said.
"So you should have. We would have happily let him stack coal in the box," Dob offered in friendly jibe from his father's side. Rauf's expression suggested this wasn't a favored job.
"Aye, but you know Gawne. That wouldn't have been enough for him," Ivo protested. "He wants to know everything right away and his questions never cease. Just then, I couldn't bear to listen to him."
"Do any of you know who took Jessimond's corpse last night and where she might now be?" Faucon asked.
All three men looked at him in blank surprise. Dob frowned. "Why would someone take Jes's body?"
Then Ivo drew a swift breath. "Where is Amelyn?"
Faucon shrugged. "Gone as well."
"Ah," the smith replied, almost smiling. "Then it's certain that she took her daughter with her, fleeing Wike before Odger could return from the woods and drive her off as he promised. Amelyn loved that girl with all her heart, and more. From what I saw yesterday, I think no one could have wrested Jes from her arms, no matter what weapon Odger might have plied."
"You are certain of that?" Faucon demanded.
"Absolutely," Ivo assured him. "What Jes was to Gawne, Amelyn is—or was—to me, before she gave up all her childish things, including me, to have her Tom. Our parents were bound to each other in dear and deep friendship, and we two were their only surviving children, born but months apart. We became like brother and sister, and I knew her better than any."
Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) Page 14