Bell nodded and sat down on the stool near Phillipe’s table. “Tell him. He was so overset by finding that woman in his bedchamber that he did not tell me what more he wanted me to do today.”
The young clerk shuddered and turned pale as he rose. “Terrible. That was so terrible. Why? Who would do such a thing?”
“I need to discover who she was before I can hope to discover who placed her in my lord’s chamber. I have set that first matter in hand, I hope, but—” he was about to say that the women who might give him information would be occupied until the following morning, but he decided to spare young Phillipe’s blushes and went on “—my informants cannot tell me more until tomorrow morning.”
Poor Phillipe blushed violently anyway as he hurried to enter the bishop’s chamber. Bell chuckled softly. Apparently the young man already knew to whom Bell had gone for information. But he liked Phillipe, who had his opinions but never allowed them to interfere with his duty.
To Bell’s surprise Phillipe was back in a moment, holding the door open and gesturing for Bell to enter. He did so at once, and saw Father Holdyn gathering up and putting in order the documents that were strewn over Winchester’s table.
Bell swallowed a grin. It always seemed so inappropriate to see documents in Father Holdyn’s huge hands. He towered over the bishop, topping Bell’s own considerable height, and he was as hard and fit as Bell too. There wasn’t a church in London that needed repairs that did not find Father Holdyn carrying stones and mortar for the walls or raising heavy beams. His lank black hair and deep-set dark eyes only added to the impression of strength and determination.
As he straightened the documents into order, the episcopal vicar said, “What is this terrible thing I hear about your servants finding a woman in your bedchamber?”
Winchester’s brows rose and Bell bit his lips to hold back laughter. Father Holdyn was a true ornament of the Church. He was very nearly as clever and as efficient as Winchester himself and he was much more truly pious.
“She was in no condition to be a temptation to me, I assure you,” the bishop said dryly, and then, his eyes being drawn to Bell by the knight’s approach added, “And when I think of the appearance of some of my tenants, not much of a temptation even had she been alive. Very ordinary. Brown hair, brown eyes, a mole near the end of her right eyebrow, and a full bosom… Oh, sorry, Holdyn, did I offend you by noticing that?”
“No, no, of course not,” Father Holdyn said stiffly, but he scrambled the remainder of the documents together and pushed them hurriedly into a large leather satchel. “I will attend to the matter of St. Columba’s church as you decided, and I will speak to the dean of St. Paul’s about better controlling the churchyard vendors.”
“Good,” Winchester said. “Thank you.” And as soon as the door closed behind Father Holdyn, sighed to Bell, “He is such a good man. Not only is he a wonderful administrator but he is a good priest, truly compassionate to the worst sinners. But why does he believe that taking holy orders caused me to go blind? I vowed to be chaste, not an idiot.”
Bell chuckled. “No, my lord, and even if you took a vow to be an idiot, I doubt you could keep that one. Besides, I suspect it was not the temptation of the woman’s bosom that made you think of it but what I found beneath it.”
The bishop sighed. “You may be right, Bell.” He stiffened for a moment—Bell guessed he was repressing a shiver—and added, “Thank God you decided to examine her to see if she had any other wounds. If we had just sent her over to St. Mary Overy… That accursed letter would have been common knowledge.”
“Well, the infirmarian would have had to tell the prior, of course, but Prior Benin is no fool. He might well have sent the letter directly to you or asked you to come for it. Still, I agree that it is much better that only you and I know of it. It leaves you free to do as you like.”
“Unfortunately it does not. What I would like to do would be to put that parchment in a fire, but I dare not.”
Bell looked offended. “My lord, if you think that I—”
“Do not be ridiculous. If betrayal was ever your intention, you could have put that letter in your pouch and I would never have known about it. You called me and showed me that she had something wrapped in her breastband. It is nothing to do with you, Bell. It has to do with how many others know of the letter. Gloucester knows, of course. How many in his court know he wrote it? If it were destroyed, what might be said of its contents—that we were in agreement that I would support him?”
“I see.” Bell gnawed gently on his lower lip. “At least if you have the letter, you can prove that it was in fact, harmless. Only sympathy over the way the king cheated you by not naming you archbishop and a wish, if it is possible, to be your friend.”
Winchester’s lips twisted. “Not so harmless with those two thoughts together.” Then he shook his head. “I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that a common whore would be carrying a letter from Robert of Gloucester wound up in her breastband. And dead. Seated at my table in my bedchamber. Is it possible, Bell, that the woman was killed here just to make sure that there would be a scandal?”
“She was not killed here, my lord. I showed you the marks of the rope on your windowsill. The body was drawn up by a rope and whoever put her in the chair then went out the same window to escape. They came over the outside wall, too. This morning before I went to Magdalene’s I examined the wall around this house. Two horses were tied down at the far corner in the alley; they were grazing and there were hoof prints where the earth was soft. I also found signs on the wall where the men climbed over.”
“But why would a whore have a letter from Gloucester? And why should Robert write me such a letter?”
“Because you are the pope’s legate and Gloucester hopes you will hold neutral if he should invade? Because he knows of your influence with your fellow bishops? My lord, surely you know the possible answers to that question better than I. And there is another possibility. Someone could have gone to Gloucester and urged him to write the letter.”
“To take advantage of my anger over Stephen’s latest outrage. Yes. I thought of that. But to give the letter to a whore? A dead whore?”
“For that I cannot suggest a reason, my lord. Frankly, I think it ridiculous. If the intention was to smirch you with friendship to Gloucester, who is a traitor to the king, surely the enemy who obtained the letter could have pretended to have discovered it by accident and carried it to the king or bawled aloud of what he had found.”
The bishop’s lips folded into a thin line. “So I thought myself.”
“There is one other possibility, my lord. The woman was not a common whore in the sense that she lay in ditches or worked in the stews. She was likely a woman who had a keeper or several clients and she entertained those clients in some chamber of her own. It is possible that she stole the letter from one of those clients.”
“Stole a letter? How would a whore know anything about the importance of a letter?”
Bell shrugged. “Magdalene says that men tell whores the strangest things. Could he have been attempting to make himself important in her eyes? Could he have boasted that he had come from the great Robert of Gloucester’s court?”
“Boasted to a whore?”
Bell shrugged again, a tinge of color in his face. “Men do. Especially to the better kind of whore. And this one—she did not look very attractive dead, but her face was pleasant and if it were full of expression, lit with laughter and playfulness, she might have been quite enchanting. At least attractive enough to make a man wish to please her.”
Winchester sighed. “Perhaps I have been a priest too long. I cannot see it.” Then a brief smile touched his lips. “No. No. I cannot say that. The delicious Magdalene is still far too tempting and requires stern discipline and a prayer or two to dismiss from my mind. Well, what did she say?”
“That she would do whatever she could to discover who the woman was and to whom she was connected. And when I described the wo
man, Diot and Letice both said they might know who it was. I will take them to the mortuary chapel tomorrow morning.”
“Why did you not take them then?”
“It was too late. Clients were on their way. Magdalene will serve you to the best of her ability, but—” Bell smiled bitterly “—she will not allow anything to disrupt the smooth functioning of her business.”
“And what is the point of taking the mute with you? She cannot tell you anything.”
Bell laughed. “Do not you believe it, my lord. Oh, Letice cannot make a sound. She cannot scream if she is hurt nor laugh aloud when she is happy, but look…” Bell’s fingers played out the pattern that Letice’s had shown him.
The bishop frowned. “She implied that the woman we found had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. How did she know that?”
“I don’t think she did know anything, my lord. That was just the easiest way to point out that a woman with a broken neck does not get up, walk up a flight of stairs, and sit down in a chair.”
With a discontented moue, Winchester said, “All those women are far too clever for anyone’s good but their own.”
Bell swallowed, a cold finger running down his back. He felt like the worst kind of traitor. If what he had told the bishop caused Winchester to turn against Magdalene, Bell would never forgive himself, but he did not dare say anything in defense of the women of the Old Priory Guesthouse. The best he could do for them was to look patient and indifferent. And to his relief, the bishop turned to a low pile of parchments at his elbow.
He picked them up and handed them to Bell. “Here are complaints, some from Father Holdyn, a few from local people about churches ill maintained in one way or another. I want you to visit them and see with your own eyes whether the complaints are justified. If the complainant was not Father Holdyn, speak to the person, and try to speak to others in the parish. If the complaint is justified, then speak to the priest and…ah…see that the problem is amended. With this other trouble we have, I do not want to use Church discipline if I can avoid it.”
“Yes, my lord.” Bell glanced out the window, saw that the sun was still well up. “If you have nothing else for me to do, I will start on this at once.”
* * * *
Magdalene watched Bell go out the door and then returned her attention to the smoked salmon on her trencher. There was a warmth in her, a sense of familiar comfort that slowly cooled into misery. He had been much as always, but she knew the breach between them was not mended.
More the fool he. He was happy here. His patience with Ella was remarkable. He was as quick to understand Letice’s signing as any of them, and he knew Diot for what she was. Why, why could he not just accept the Old Priory Guesthouse as his home, the women as his family, take his joy with her when he desired, sleep in her bed like a long time husband when he was weary? He did not despise the other women for being whores. He understood their necessity and, despite Church training, did not judge. Why did the fact that she loved William too drive him mad?
What a fool she had been to tell him that! It was one of those things he had no need to know. She should have found another excuse for staying in Oxford…that she dared not refuse any request William made. Bell would have believed that. He had learned to accept the fact that she lay with William when he asked…her lips curved wryly. Well, if no one mentioned it. Bell would not think about it, but acceptance was too positive a word for his reaction.
Suddenly Magdalene stopped chewing and swallowed the mouthful of fish. She took another with more appetite. It had occurred to her that just thinking about Bell made her feel better. Why should she be miserable? It was ridiculous. Because she feared to be hurt again, she would suffer for who knew how long now?
Utter foolishness, specially when Bell missed being with her—with them all—as much as she missed having him. She had seen tears in his eyes twice. She had seen how he looked at her women, as if they were dear ones he had believed dead and had found restored to him.
Moreover, Ella was not all wrong about Bell and his long sword making the house safer. Magdalene pursed her lips. Now there was a ploy she had never thought of using. What if she paid him for his protection of their premises with her body, as most whores paid for services provided for them? If she suggested it. Bell would have a fit! But really, it was not such a bad idea to remind him that she was a whore, not a wife who happened to be running a peculiar business. A stifled giggle escaped her.
Diot’s head lifted. “Has that dark cloud begun to lift?”
“Perhaps,” Magdalene said. “Perhaps it has. It is something I need to think about. We will see.”
“He is a very peculiar man—half very fine, half a natural killer. Do you know how he got that way?”
Magdalene smiled. “Yes, I do. Pillow talk, but not secret. He would tell you if you asked. He came from a large and happy family. His father was a knight of very comfortable circumstances but little ambition and he had two older brothers and three older sisters.”
“Ah. And he was the pet of the sisters, no?” Diot asked with a smile.
“He did not put it that way, but yes, I think so. He is very comfortable with women and does not immediately see them as bedmates.”
Diot nodded. “But how did he come by reading and writing and not only French but Latin?”
“What was his father to do with a third son? The estate would bear a small living for a second, but to divide it farther would make all three too poor, so Bell was educated for the Church.”
Letice laughed soundlessly and shook her head.
Magdalene laughed too. “You are right. Bell was not cut out for the Church. He told me that at first he was quite content. He has a keen mind and he enjoyed what he was taught at the abbey and readily learned to read and write and cipher. But unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on the way you look at it—included with the saints’ lives were tales of the Knights Templar and the Hospitaliers. And there was a knight who held abbey lands and came with his troop.”
Diot shook her head. “Once. I would wager he would not need to see armed men more than once. I said he was half killer.”
“He is very good. I have seen him fight.” Magdalene nodded. “And he enjoys it. He craves excitement the way a drunkard craves drink. Apparently when he first said he wished to be a knight, he was lessoned in how hard a path it was by—” Magdalene’s voice faltered as she remembered Sir Ferrau, who had murdered three people and had nearly killed her before Bell came to her rescue “—a man now dead.”
“I warrant Bell did not need a second lesson.”
“No, he bribed the men-at-arms who stayed at the abbey to teach him, and at fifteen he ran away. He took service as a mercenary aboard a trader.”
“Ah, clever. That way his father could not reach him and drag him back.”
Magdalene chuckled. “He told me his father was furious and it was years before his mother could soften him. But she, poor woman, all that time had been having nightmares of her baby dead and drowned and she wept and pleaded until Bell’s father relented and appealed to Winchester for a place for his son. That Bell could read and write Latin as well as French was enough of an advantage to win him a trial. That he was Bell made him a favorite.”
Diot nodded again. “From what you have told us, Winchester is the kind to appreciate Bell’s cleverness.”
“Oh, yes, and the fact that he is not coarse and crude but can be vicious when necessary. But did I not see you frown when Bell described the dead woman? Do you think you know her?”
“I hope not,” Diot replied. “When I first came to London, before I found a place for myself, I stayed with a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman who had a mole just where Bell pointed. Her charge was reasonable and she was pleasant enough, but she would not let me bring men to her place and when she heard her patron was about to return, she told me to go. She did not want me to meet her patron, I suppose.”
“And you, Letice?”
The mute nodded, then m
ade a sign for her compatriots and then, looking frustrated, signed that it was too complex to explain, even to write. Nonetheless she went and fetched her slate.
“Se,” she wrote and then, “Cum wit to…” and she drew a head wearing a turban.
Magdalene nodded and pushed away the remains of her meal. “If it is the woman you think it might be, I will have to come to the Saracen’s Head for an explanation.”
Letice smiled and nodded also. Then she stepped back over the bench and began to gather up bowls and spoons. Diot collected what remained of the fish stew and the vegetables and carried them into the kitchen. Dulcie also went to the kitchen to return with a damp cloth and vigorously clean the table. In just a few moments more, all the women were seated around the hearth with their work in their hands.
None too soon. They had hardly set five stitches, when the bell at the gate pealed. Magdalene smiled and went to answer. She tempered her smile as she opened the gate. Master Gerome was terminally shy. If she smiled too broadly, he might flee.
Master Gerome, a cordwainer, had been brought by Mainard who had explained Gerome’s needs to Magdalene. She had first thought of Letice, who could not speak and thus might seem not to require him to do so; however, perhaps her knowing black eyes frightened him. He shrank back toward Mainard when Letice approached him, but when Ella bounced into the room and held out her hand with a giggle, he followed her.
He had been a very good client ever since, coming three, sometimes four times a week. There was something in Ella’s childishness that made him comfortable, and he very nearly matched her sexual insatiability. Many men tired of her near mindless babble and some were embarrassed by her urging them to couple repeatedly because they could not perform. Not Gerome. Ella said he seemed too shy to initiate sex, but was more than willing each time she did.
“Ella has been looking forward to seeing you,” Magdalene said softly.
Master Gerome twitched and Magdalene was sorry she had spoken, but after a moment he whispered, “Is that true?”
Chains of Folly Page 3