Beyond the church, which Magdalene had never entered—what need when St. Mary Overy, larger and more beautiful, was right beyond her back gate—the lane narrowed even further. Magdalene’s glimpses of the filth-encrusted inhabitants who occasionally peered out the open doors made her grip the knife hidden in the folds of her gown, but Letice walked without either hurry or nervous glances. Indeed, she waved a hand occasionally to this or that seamed face and matted head. Most acknowledged the greeting; some even smiled.
They did not go much beyond St. Thomas’. Within little more than a hundred yards, they turned left again into what began as an equally narrow and dirty lane. This, however, soon widened, then widened again into a little square. It was no cozy village green—there was no sign of grass—but the stalls around it and the goods laid out on mats were recognizable. Fruits, vegetables, and to Magdalene’s surprise rice and spices. Those were expensive items and did not seem to fit with the squalor they had passed. All of those vendors greeted Letice, only they called her Leilia, and she waved and made some signs with her hands at them.
On the northwest corner was the ale house called The Saracen’s Head. It had, as well as the bundle of brush that marked a drinking place, a roughly painted head wearing a turban. Magdalene recognized their goal at once from the times Letice had drawn the sign on her slate.
The exterior of the building was, if not decrepit, old and worn. The interior was a surprise. It was well-lit from some windows, unshuttered in the summer heat, and brass lamps hanging from the ceiling. Even more surprising, the heavy wooden tables were clean and the rushes on the floor fresh. There was a decided smell of wine and almost none of ale.
Several voices called “Leilia, what are you doing here today?” And at the very back of the room a man stood up and came forward toward them. Letice put a hand on Magdalene’s arm and gave it a hard squeeze. Then the man was before them and Magdalene understood the warning.
Bell had said that Letice’s uncle had the most villainous face he had ever seen. It was no exaggeration. The skin was ravaged by pock marks until it looked leprous. On the right side, a terrible scar from forehead to lip drew both eye and mouth upward into an ugly leer; on the left, the lid of the eye was scarred by the pox so it could not open fully and a large black wart twisted the lips. Magdalene was grateful for her veil, which hid her no doubt blanched complexion.
“Leilia,” the man said, giving Letice a quick hug. “Is something wrong? What are you doing here today?”
Magdalene did not expect Letice to shrink away; her face had always expressed real affection when she acted out visiting the man. But Magdalene did not expect her to kiss his horribly scarred cheek, then step back and begin waving her hands about and making quick gestures with the fingers.
“Ah,” the man said when Letice’s hands had come to rest. He smiled at Magdalene, which made her swallow hard. “So you are Mistress Magdalene, Leilia’s employer. I am very glad to meet you. Leilia is very happy at your house.”
“Thank you,” Magdalene replied, “but how did you know I was not just a friend?”
“Because Leilia just told me. She speaks with her hands in signs that permit the deaf and mute to be understood.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Magdalene exclaimed, almost forgetting the man’s face in her interest in what he had said. “Why in the world didn’t she teach me? I would have gladly learned. I have been teaching her to read and write, but writing is so slow.”
The man laughed, which, although it did nothing good for his appearance, made Magdalene even better able to forget it. The laughter was warm and merry.
“She did not try to teach you because she can only sign in our own tongue, not in French. She would have had to teach you Persian first, and that would have been no easy task when she cannot speak and at that time could not write either.” He bowed. “My name is Abd al Zahir. I am the brother of Leilia’s father.”
Magdalene looked away for a moment but then could not help saying, “Could you not have given her a home? I do what I can to make my women happy, but it is not a good life.”
Zahir raised his eyebrows, which made Magdalene look away again for a moment. His cratered and furrowed skin seemed to crawl around the fixed lines of the scar and the black mole.
“You say it is not a good life,” Zahir sounded rather condescending, “but that is because your faith considers the joys of the flesh evil. That makes you ashamed to use your body for pleasure. Our faith recognizes the joys of the flesh.”
Now it was Magdalene who raised her brows with a touch of contempt. “Yet I understand that you keep your women locked up.”
Zahir shrugged, smiling again. “Ah yes, because we do recognize the joys of the flesh and wish to know that our sons are our get. So we do prefer that our women lead safe and secluded lives.” He sighed. “But for those women who cannot tolerate the confining conditions or who for some other reason cannot find a husband, there is this other life.” He shook his head. “In any case I was too late to offer Leilia a home. Her father had already sold her into the house she left to come to you.”
“Sold her?” Magdalene’s voice was flat.
Abd al Zahir shrugged again. “Perhaps I would not have done the same, but she was his daughter and mute, which made it hard to find a husband or another way to live…and he was very sick. I do not think it was against her will—she says not, but that might be out of loyalty. The house was not a common stew. He did not know the keeper was cruel and dishonest. And he did not know that I was on my way here.”
Letice touched his arm and signed briefly. He nodded, smiled, and gestured for them to follow him. In the corner of the room from which he had come he set two stools for Letice and Magdalene and sat down himself across a small table.
“Leilia tells me that you have come for information about a woman who was killed?”
“Yes,” Magdalene said, very glad that Letice had kept her mind on business, for she had once more forgotten all about Nelda. “Letice recognized the woman, who was called Nelda Roundheels, and remembered she had seen her here.”
He frowned and said defensively, with an angry glance at Letice, “I do not even know when and how this woman died. We had nothing to do with her death.”
Letice shook her head violently and Magdalene made a dismissive gesture. She had forgotten that foreign and non-Christian as Zahir was, he would fear being blamed for any crime—a convenient scapegoat, as were whores.
“No,” Magdalene said emphatically. “I’m sure you did not because you would have had no reason to place her body in the bedchamber of the bishop of Winchester.”
Zahir’s mismatched eyes widened. “No, certainly not. The bishop has been tolerant of our residence here. As long as we pay our tithes, like any Christian, we are free to do business and even, privately, worship in our own way. I assure you we were very disappointed when His Grace of Winchester was not elected as archbishop. God alone knows what this new man will order.”
“I am in much the same position as you are. Master al Zahir,” Magdalene sighed. “If he can, I am sure Winchester will continue to protect us, but it would be easier for him if we could clear up this woman’s death so no scandal would attach to his name.”
“I see that,” al Zahir said, then turned to Letice. “When did you see her here, Leilia?”
Again Letice’s hands flew.
“Hmmm,” al Zahir said. “Leilia tells me that she saw this Nelda with two dealers in drugs. Was she an apothecary?”
“No, she was a whore.”
Zahir cocked his head. “I wonder if she bought to sell or to use?”
But he did not wait for an answer. He got up and walked around the room, stopping at several tables. First a man and then a woman rose and followed him back to where Magdalene and Letice sat.
“This is Umar,” al Zahir said, gesturing to the man. “He deals in drugs of various kinds and has sold to the woman Leilia has described. But he says she bought only cakes of dried poppy jui
ce.”
“She did not take it,” Umar said. “Did not eat the drug herself. I know the look. She did not have it. Those who do eat it can become very desperate. Perhaps that was why she came with a guard.”
“Or because she did not trust us,” Zahir said, his lips twisting.
“A guard?” Magdalene repeated thoughtfully. “Then she was afraid of something. That is interesting. What was the guard like?”
“Big,” Umar replied, and the woman with him nodded.
“Ugly too,” the woman said. “Not so much in the face, in the look. Mean. Cruel.”
Magdalene immediately thought of the man who had accosted Bell, asked if Nelda was dead, and said she deserved killing.
“Can you say more closely what he looked like?” al Zahir asked.
Umar shook his head but the woman said, “Brown hair, brown eyes, and his nose was broken maybe more than once.”
“All I saw, Fatima,” Umar said, “was the way he looked at the cakes of poppy seed juice. Not bound to it hard yet, but he knew the delight it can bring.”
The woman shrugged. “A foolish delight. False. With much sorrow to follow. I sold only peace—sleeping draughts. But you said she was a whore, not an apothecary. Well, perhaps she feared sinning and slept ill.”
“You said she was killed?” Umar asked. “It would have been an accident. A poppy-eater would not wish to kill the supplier.”
“We do think her death was an accident,” Magdalene agreed, “but what was done with her body afterward was not, which is why we wish to find the person who killed her.”
Both Umar and Fatima nodded and murmured that the reason they had been willing to speak to her was that they did not desire trouble to fall upon the bishop of Winchester.
“Likely no one will ever need to know what you have told me,” Magdalene said slowly, “but I fear Nelda might have put the sleeping draughts to less innocent use than her own need to sleep. We found evidence in her rooms that she was a thief. It is possible that she drugged her clients so she could steal from them when they were sleeping deeply.”
“That does not seem very reasonable,” Fatima said. “It could happen once, possibly with a very stupid man even twice but then the client would not return. Or are your men more stupid than ours?”
“No, but I think what she stole was more often something secret rather than valuable. Something that could mark the man in some way. I think she did not care that the client did not return because she then threatened to expose his secret and extorted money from him.”
“A good reason for her to be dead,” Umar said. “Cannot you find who killed her from the secrets she had uncovered?”
“If there were only one item,” Magdalene said wryly, “we might, but there are several and we are not yet able to identify to whom each belongs.” She sighed. “Well, I thank you all.” She reached through the slit in her skirt to her pocket and took out two silver pennies, which she laid on the table. “For your time,” she said.
Umar and Fatima each took a coin and nodded acknowledgment. To Abd al Zahir, Magdalene said, “Letice will tell me if there is some favor I can do for you in return.”
“Teach Leilia to read and write well, and when she tires of work in your house, I will take her into business with me. That will repay any favor I do you many times, for once she knows the skill, I can find someone to teach her to write in Persian also.”
Chapter 9
When Magdalene and Letice left The Saracen’s Head, Magdalene’s glance at the position of the sun showed that it was after Tierce but not yet close to Sext. There would be time, she said to Letice, to stop by the house in which Nelda had lived and see if she could manage to speak to the woman who lived next door—Tayte, Tom Watchman had called her. Letice nodded, but pointed onward, which Magdalene took to mean that Letice would go on to the Old Priory Guesthouse.
When they came to the turn onto Dead Pond Road, Letice nodded and continued along the main street while Magdalene turned first right into Dead Pond and then left onto Rag Street. The woman in the rag shop barely flicked her eyes at Magdalene when she opened the door and walked into the house.
It did not seem very safe to Magdalene, to leave the outer door open that way when the rag woman was known to be “blind and deaf.” But then, as she looked around the bare space into which the stairs descended and the rickety stairs themselves, she acknowledged that there was nothing to steal. She remembered that Linley had told them that Nelda always kept her door locked. Tayte did too, no doubt.
Magdalene knocked, waited, knocked again. Even if Tayte had had a client the night before, she should be awake by now. Magdalene knocked a third time, somewhat longer and a bit louder.
“Tayte,” she called, “it is Magdalene la Bâtarde. I wish to speak to you.”
Still no answer. It was, of course, possible that the woman had gone out to shop or to visit a friend. Magdalene knocked once more and sighed. She was about to turn away when she heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn. She pulled her veil aside so that Tayte, even if she did not know her face, would see that it was, indeed, another woman.
A little mouse opened the door and peered out. She was diminutive in size though well rounded, with soft, fuzzy brown hair, small bright black eyes, a little pursed mouth, and a nose, just a little pink, that seemed to twitch a bit.
“What do you want?” The voice was mouselike too, high and squeaky.
Magdalene bit her lip to keep from giggling and spoke softly and slowly so as not to alarm the little creature. “You know, I assume, that your neighbor, Nelda, was killed—we think on Thursday night.” The door started to close. Magdalene put out a hand to hold it open. “Believe me, we do not think you had anything to do with Nelda’s death. We think it was an accident. We are fairly certain that she was quarreling with a man and that she fell or he pushed her down the stairs.”
“Don’t know. Had company Thursday. Busy, and then sleeping. Neither of us heard anything. And my man didn’t leave till morning, so it wasn’t him!”
The pressure on the door eased and Magdalene quickly pushed it more widely open and stepped inside before the little woman could prevent her. The room was small, holding no more than a wide bed, a chest under the one window, a stool, a chair, and a very small table. But it was not a typical whore’s cocking place. There were a few touches of luxury: the chest was padded with a woven rug and the chair had a cushion on it. Moreover the room was clean and tidy.
“I mean you no harm, Tayte,” Magdalene said hastily, “and I do not think—no one thinks—that you or the man who was with you had any part in Nelda’s death. But Nelda’s body was carried from here, where Sir Bellamy, the bishop of Winchester’s knight, is sure she died, to the bishop’s house and was set up in the bishop’s very own bedchamber. Sir Bellamy is most eager to discover who moved Nelda’s body. And, if we can, discover how the accident that killed her occurred. That, we hope, would remove any trace of blame from the bishop.”
The little mouse’s eyes flicked from side to side, seeming to look frantically around for a place to hide but saw that escape was impossible. She then gestured Magdalene toward the chair. Magdalene took the few steps necessary but before she sat reached through the slit in her skirt, took out her purse, and laid it on the table.
“Did you see anything at all that Thursday?” Magdalene asked when she had seated herself and Tayte had taken the stool.
Tayte eyed the purse with an expression of anxiety on her face that was puzzling to Magdalene. “It was hot,” Tayte whispered. “I had opened my door so the breeze could blow through the room. I heard a knock on Nelda’s door late in the afternoon and I…I did glance out. I saw a man standing there. It was not her man.”
There was definite disapproval and contempt in Tayte’s manner and expression. Magdalene first felt surprised that one whore should be contemptuous of another and then realized that Tayte must not be a whore in the common sense. Most likely she had only one lover, a man who, for some reason,
would not or could not marry her—perhaps because she had no dowry or perhaps because he was married already—but who supported her. Well, Magdalene could not blame him. She was an adorable little thing.
Suddenly Magdalene also understood the expression of anxiety on Tayte’s face when the appearance of Magdalene’s purse provided a strong hint that she would be paid for her information. Likely, Magdalene thought, Tayte was from a decent family and maintained their standards; she would be troubled by the idea of being paid for information it was right to give. On the other hand, from the size of the room, Magdalene suspected that, though Tayte did not go hungry or without shelter, there was little extra money.
“I am taking up your time,” Magdalene said. “It is only fair that you be paid for that.” And when Tayte finally nodded, after thinking over what had been said, continued, “Can you tell me anything about the man? Could it have been he who caused Nelda to fall down the stairs?”
Tayte bit her lip. “Well, I have seen him before, but not often, and once he came with her man.” She shrugged. “He dressed like her man so I suppose they were in the same business, but he was very ordinary to look at. And I don’t think that he did Nelda any harm. She was glad to see him. Oh!” She looked surprised and then said, “His name. He called out his name before she let him in! He said, ‘It’s Sir John.’ Yes. I remember.”
Sir John was too common a name to be much help in identifying the visitor, but that Tayte remembered might mean she would remember—and relate—other details.
“And then what happened?” Magdalene asked.
“She must have opened the door, because I heard him say, ‘My God, Nelda, what happened to you?’ If she answered, I didn’t hear her, and then the door closed.”
“What did this Sir John mean when he asked what happened to Nelda?”
“Oh!” Tayte’s eyes got very round. “She was beaten. Monday, it was that it happened. It was awful! Awful! I heard her screaming, but I was so afraid. And whom could I call to help? It was that great big man.”
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