A Twisted Vengeance

by Candace Robb

  Marie and Petra rushed to claim their share, inviting Eleanor to join them on the grass. To Kate’s surprise, her mother accepted, settling beside them.

  “Are you comfortable there?” Kate asked.

  “I am quite content,” said Eleanor, patting the girls’ hands.

  But Kate was not. Her calm was already fraying at the edges with her mother’s presence. Eleanor had been furious when Kate’s father gave her a bow, a quiver of arrows, and lessons at the butt for her tenth birthday, and she had never changed her attitude. Kate felt her mother’s eyes on her now, but there was no courteous way to coax her away, and it was possible that her mother meant this as a gesture of peace. So she proceeded to notch the arrow, draw back the string, aim.

  This one is for all the pain between us. She let fly the arrow. Centered. Perfect.

  She reached for another, notched it, drew back the string, aimed. For Hans’s murderer. It landed just to the left of the first.

  Your best form despite Mother’s presence, Geoff whispered in her head.

  Kate ignored him, always worried her mother would sense him. She notched another arrow, aimed. For whoever put Robin and his fellows up to the theft. She let fly the arrow, knocking the other two out as it hit the center.

  Another arrow notched. Her mother’s arrival in York had unsettled Kate’s life and that of those she most loved, even her uncle. But Kate loved her. She was her mother, all she had left of her family. Perhaps it was her own reaction to Eleanor that had kept her in the dark about what drove her here. Whom could her mother trust? Had she been betrayed like Kate, who had believed all Simon’s words of love, only to hear his cruel will and discover that he had a family in Calais? Had Eleanor discovered that Ulrich was not the man she had thought? Had his death dealt a blow to her love?

  She drew the string, aimed. The arrow hit wide of center.

  Dame Eleanor rose, brushing off her skirts. “A sugared almond?” She held the bowl out to Kate.

  Setting the bow atop the butt, Kate accepted one of the treats as she searched for something to say, something that might bridge the divide, begin to build trust. Eleanor, too, seemed to be searching for words.

  Petra and Marie chose that moment to hop up and retrieve the arrows for Kate.

  “Tell us more stories about your brothers,” said Marie.

  “Would you teach me to shoot?” asked Petra.

  “Us, teach us,” said Marie.

  “You are so young and slight,” Eleanor said to her.

  “My da taught Aunt Katherine when she was just a mite,” said Petra. “Tell me more stories about my da. I want to know him.”

  “Walter,” Eleanor whispered, her expression pained. “I—I have work to do,” she said, shoving the bowl into Kate’s hands and retreating to the gate.

  It clattered loudly as it shut behind her.

  Kate closed her eyes, taking some deep breaths. The girls were not at fault, and she did not want to snap at them.

  “Should I not have mentioned my da to her?” asked Petra. “Is she angry with him?”

  “No, not at all. She is grieving her son. Her eldest. You must never doubt our love for him. And you.”

  “How did he teach you?” Petra asked.

  “Please, Dame Katherine?” said Marie, taking her hand. “Show us!”

  Such a gesture from Marie was a rare event, not to be wasted. “It takes strength,” Kate said, forcing a smile. “You must practice every day to build your strength. Are you ready for that?”

  Marie nodded. “I want to be strong like you. Then nothing will frighten me.”

  “Old Mapes said only a fool fears nothing,” said Petra.

  Marie rolled her eyes and danced away toward where Lille and Ghent lounged beneath the kitchen eaves. The hounds glanced up at her approach. “With a bow and a quiver of arrows and two war dogs I will fear nothing!”

  “You never want to excite them, Marie.” Kate grasped the opportunity to give both girls a lesson in the sort of discipline required to train as an archer. Working with the girls usually lifted her spirits, but not at the moment. Her mother’s pain and her own part in it weighed heavily.

  The houses along Micklegate cast long shadows as Berend and Matt approached Toft Green, the elder instructing the younger in demeanor—walk with purpose, not too curious, skirt the clusters of tents, avoid any visible reaction to things overheard.

  “Well, what have we here?” Berend said as they passed the first cluster of tents. He nudged Matt, nodding toward the priory wall, the camp circle that was their destination. “Sir Alan Bennet—the knight leasing Dame Katherine’s tenement beside the guesthouse.”

  The knight was kicking a pile of blankets with his foot, then toeing the cold coals of an extinguished fire.

  “At the camp where Thatcher was cooking? The men who came for Robin?” Matt gave a low whistle.

  “Aye. The soldiers appear to have broken camp. Now what did Sir Alan want with them?”

  “Wondering where they’ve gone? Shall we rush him?”

  “And reveal our interest?” Berend shook his head.

  He asked a few men about the one-legged cook as they picked their way through what was left of the campsites. Only four clusters of tents left. No one had seen the cook for at least a day, maybe longer. The stragglers were friendly enough until he pointed to Sir Alan.

  “The king’s man? Who’s asking, eh?”

  “Who’re you spying for?”

  Berend asked no more.

  “Sir Alan’s gone,” Matt muttered as they moved away from the last campsite.

  “We know where to find him. Nothing to see here.” Though Berend did search the abandoned campsite, dreading to find Thatcher’s peg leg, evidence that the petty thief had been used by them and then cast aside. Or worse. But there was no sign of any of the men, nary a sharpening stone, a pot, or a jar of spices. As if they had never been there.

  They caught sight of Sir Alan on Micklegate and followed him as he walked with seeming purpose, pausing only once, to talk to Severen.

  “Now that’s an interesting acquaintance,” Berend said. “Nan’s night-watch friend, the one injured by Hans’s assailants.” He motioned to Matt to slip closer, see whether he might overhear. He was smaller than Berend, less noticeable. He’d almost reached the two, standing just beyond the fishmongers, when Severen bobbed his head and continued on in Berend’s direction. He had just enough time to slip into a crowd clustered round a street musician playing a hurdy-gurdy while his monkey hopped from shoulder to shoulder. As soon as Severen passed, Berend whispered to the woman beside him that the monkey had stolen her earring, then strode on to join Matt, grinning as the hurdy-gurdy stopped amid angry shouts. Bloody fool of a thief to weigh himself down with a costly instrument. Made him hesitate just long enough upon discovery to get jumped on by his victims.

  “Could you hear anything?” he asked Matt.

  “Too little. Something about all being quiet and departing soon. Nothing telling.”

  “But that they know each other.”

  They hurried after Sir Alan as he headed over Ouse Bridge. He turned into the alleyway on Petergate that led to the door to his lodgings. Berend heard him greet Griselde, who was sweeping the entrance to the guesthouse. When the knight had firmly shut the door behind him, Berend and Matt strolled up to the housekeeper.

  “Bonny afternoon after all that rain,” she said, setting aside her broom. “And far fewer armed strangers on the streets. Once that lot goes,” she nodded toward the door through which Sir Alan had gone, “I’ll breathe easy. Some are already doing so. Master Frost and the widow Seaton will be our guests tonight. Dame Katherine will be pleased.”

  Berend agreed.

  “You two look thirsty. Come to the kitchen and tell me all the news.”

  Clement nodded to them as they stepped into the kitchen. “Matt, my lad, it is good to see you.”

  Berend left them to talk while he asked Griselde about Sir Alan’s visitors. S
he had set Seth Fletcher to watching for visitors in the evening, which was when they tended to arrive. But they all wore dark clothing, hats covering their hair and sometimes parts of their faces. Berend told Griselde about the meeting on the bridge between Sir Alan and Severen.

  Her round, placid face registered no surprise. “The night watch, yes. They all seem to stop by sometime during their rounds. Seth thinks they are treated to food and brandywine. As they are elsewhere. How they all stay awake till dawn I will never understand.”

  Laughing as they were caught in a downpour, Kate, Jennet, and Berend hurried into the kitchen, watched with interest by Lille and Ghent, who’d had the good sense to seek shelter with the first drop. The three had lingered out on the bench beneath the eaves, talking quietly while listening for signs of trouble. That was Kate’s doing. Or Geoff’s. He was strangely present in Kate’s mind this evening, worrying, wondering about Eleanor’s behavior, itchy with foreboding.

  Earlier, Kate had found her mother in the Martha House garden and tried to make peace. “I have invited Dean Richard and Helen to dinner tomorrow. Will you join us?”

  Instead of a surprised smile, Eleanor shook her head, a tight shake, more a shiver. “How well do you know your uncle?”

  Kate thought about his surprising gift. “Not as well as I might like. He has been helpful.” Until Eleanor arrived, she thought. “But we have argued of late.”

  “You are strong, Katherine. I am proud of you, of the life you have made here despite Simon’s regrettable behavior.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, surprised and moved by her mother’s praise, though uncertain what that had to do with her invitation.

  “But the girls, the weaponry,” Eleanor added. “They are not being brought up on the border as you were, they are city girls. Such knowledge—it will only hurt them when it comes to marriage. Or the religious life.”

  “They have both suffered much loss,” said Kate, “and the indifference of their parents. They both know how unreliable others can be. How important it is to know how to care for oneself.”

  Eleanor covered Kate’s hand with hers. “They have you, my dear. Your task is to prove that to them. That you are always there.”

  As Mother was not? She was so busy blaming Father for our troubles when we were small she could not be bothered protecting us. How would she? She disdained anything resembling a weapon. Geoff’s words were so loud in her head that she braced herself for her mother’s reaction.

  But Eleanor was patting Kate’s hand and talking about Marie’s delicate frame, how Petra might benefit from more time with the sisters, learning to be quiet and still.

  “Petra is skilled in the art of stillness,” said Kate. Be quiet, Geoff. I do not want her to know you are here. “Will you come to dinner with the dean tomorrow?”

  That tight shake of the head again, the unease in her mother’s eyes. “No. No, I think not.” Eleanor rose, shaking out her skirts. “It is time for prayer.”

  She trembles, Kate. What frightens her?

  “Did the dean offend you, refusing to be the sisters’ confessor?” Kate asked.

  Eleanor touched Kate’s cheek. “He is your family, not mine. I feel about the Cliffords”—she seemed to search for words—“much as you feel about the Nevilles. It is said we marry the families, not the individuals, but that is not true. We are tolerated by the families while there is the possibility of an heir, a son who will bring renown to the name. I lost my sons, you were denied them.” A shrug. “I have no quarrel with your uncle.” She emphasized the last word. “He is nothing to me.”

  Not true. He is something, and it terrifies her, Geoff noted.

  Kate saw it as well. He is a Clifford. This is about the Cliffords. Before she could ask her mother if that was so—she might not respond, but her reaction to the question might be telling—Eleanor had changed the subject.

  “You should know, Thomas Holme says the sheriffs are making no effort to find Hans’s murderer. They presume it was one of many brawls among the soldiers and the men of York that begins in taverns and alehouses and spills out onto the streets, that he might have been as much to blame as the man who unwittingly killed him. I have never heard such nonsense. Thomas says they care naught because Hans was but a servant, not even a man of the realm, and therefore not worth the bother. He thought, hearing that, I would tell him where Werner is. He said Werner was his servant, his responsibility. But I cannot help Thomas. I’ve no idea where Werner might be.”

  “Is that true? You do not know where he and Griffin are?”

  “That part is true, Daughter. I deemed it best I knew nothing of their plan, how they intended to find out who murdered Hans, and why.”

  “You said that part. What knowledge did you keep from Thomas?”

  Eleanor waved away the question. “I misspoke. A storm is coming—can you smell it? My head is pounding. Of course I misspoke. You must have patience with me, Daughter. I am not so young as I was.”

  “Werner is with Griffin, and they have a plan?”

  A hesitation. “Of course they have a plan. They walked off together, did they not? They must have some plan. We would be lost without a path, an intention, a guide—that is what the beguines have given me, a guide for living.” She waved a hand and began to walk away.

  There was cunning in her mother’s feigned confusion. “Werner has not been seen with Griffin.”

  A shrug. “They are being cautious. That is all to the good.”

  Frosts and Cliffords. Her uncle, her mother, both pointed to a rift in the bond of Kate’s two families.

  Three. The Nevilles.

  For once, that lot are not troubling me, Geoff.

  Another feud. Will it prove as deadly as ours with the Cavertons? Or the king’s with his cousin?

  Ever since Kate’s conversation with their mother, Geoff had whispered of feuds and imminent danger.

  I will wish you gone if you persist, Geoff, she’d threatened at last.

  He had been silent since that thought, his absence simply adding to Kate’s unease. Lille and Ghent had caught her mood, eyeing anything that moved, peering into the shadows.

  Now, Kate tried to shrug off her concerns about that conversation as she rushed into the kitchen, forcing herself to laugh with Jennet and Berend. Laughter cleared the mind. She blinked in the light. The kitchen was bright with lamps and the fire that would keep the bread dough rising through the night. The three moved close to the fire, drying their clothes, grinning at themselves for biding there as the fat drops began. They’d all known that was prelude to a downpour.

  “Aimed at us where we sat!” Jennet said with a laugh.

  Berend nodded, but he eyed Kate with concern. “All the while we sat out there, you were listening for something. For what?”

  How well he knew her. She told them about her conversation with Eleanor, all her pauses, the care with which she chose her words, words that denied the fear so evident in her cold hands, her shakiness. All so tangible that Kate could not even now, in the warmth and comfort of the kitchen, escape the sense that danger was near. She held up her cup for more ale. “And she will not dine with us tomorrow. My uncle distrusts the Frosts, Mother distrusts the Cliffords.” She paused there, glancing at her companions, waiting for them to say it.

  Berend tilted his head, considering. “A feud between your families?” A slow nod as he left the fire and checked the large bowl in which dough was rising. Standing there examining it, he seemed at peace, as ever he did when going about his tasks. He once called his work in her household his redemption. “But you know nothing of a feud.” As he glanced up at her, she saw the lines of care return. Would there ever come a time when there were no cares?

  She shook her head. “My uncle never approved of his brother’s marriage, and Mother’s hasty remarriage further soured his feelings for her. But it is a passing discomfort, surely. I believe this has more to do with the beguines. Heretics, in his mind. Their house founded by a woman who carries th
e Clifford name.”

  “And why the theft?” asked Jennet. “What might the Christ child and religious texts mean to the Clifford family? They belong to the beguines, not Dame Eleanor.”

  “By association?” Kate rubbed her eyes. “I do not see the whys or the wherefores yet, but one thing has occurred to me. My uncle was cordial to Mother at first, almost welcoming, remember? Yet recently, I think quite recently, he must have learned something, received a warning—whatever it was, he resolved to keep his distance from her. And to warn me away.”

  “He warns you but will not tell you the cause,” said Jennet. “He cannot think to win you over with no explanation. Surely if it were merely the beguines, he would say.”

  “Nor does it explain his gift.” Kate told them about the house in Petergate.

  “A generous gift,” said Berend, giving a little whistle. “It’s a fine house.”

  Jennet softly cursed. “It smells of blood money. What has Dean Richard done?”

  “Families do this all the time,” said Kate. “It keeps the property in the family.”

  “Will you sign the deed?” Berend asked.

  “It is a clear deed, no conditions. I think I would be a fool to let it slip through my hands. What do you say?”

  Jennet shrugged.

  “It would be a fine addition to your holdings,” said Berend.

  “But as for living there . . .” Kate shrugged.

  “If you live there, so shall we, eh, Berend?” said Jennet with a conciliatory grin. “But it is not empty.”

  “Who lives there now?” asked Berend.

  “Knights,” said Jennet. “Only not so well behaved as Sir Alan’s lot. They have spent a great deal at the bawd houses at the edge of the Bedern, paying more than the vicars choral can afford. Poor laddies, they have felt the pinch. They will be glad to see the back of the knights.” She rose, stretched her arms, rotated her freckled wrists. “With Matt in the kitchen next door I should be in the house with the girls and allow Brigida to go to her evening prayers. Should I be wary of Griffin? Or Werner?”

  “For the nonce, I am wary of everyone but my own household,” said Kate.