by Jason Vail
“No,” Gilbert said. “I can tell a woman from a man, even one that’s been dead several days and once buried.”
“How were they killed?”
“Stabbed in the back and their throats cut for good measure.”
“They were surprised by whoever killed them, then.”
“It would seem so. Why are you so concerned about a woman?”
“Because there had to be a woman involved.” Stephen told those at the table about what he had learned at the Peacock.
“She couldn’t have killed two men,” Sarah said.
“One, maybe, but not two,” Gilbert agreed. “She had to have had help. I wonder why they were murdered in the first place — ah! A falling out over the stolen money.”
“That seems the best idea,” Stephen said. “Or to silence them for their part in the murders of Martin and Sir Rogier.”
“But why not kill the girl as well?”
“Perhaps she got away.”
“Or she was in league with the killers,” Gilbert said.
Stephen sighed. “There are too many possibilities to count. But if we can find her, perhaps we can shed light on the truth.”
“How are we going to do that?” Gilbert asked.
“The troupe took lodgings at the Green Turtle,” Stephen said. “It’s an inn on Hungreye Street up from Saint Owen’s Gate.”
At Gilbert’s puzzled expression, Theo said, “Everyone in Hereford knows where it is.”
“Someone needs to go there first thing tomorrow morning,” Stephen said, “and see if they left any clue where they were going next.”
“I suppose you expect me to do it,” Gilbert said.
“I can’t very well do it. I’ll be recognized.”
“And what about you?”
“I need to think of a way to get out of the city.”
Chapter 11
The simplest way to get out of a city at night undetected was to go over the wall. But the wall was twenty feet high. Stephen risked turning an ankle if not breaking a leg from that sort of drop. He might use a rope, but that would leave evidence that someone had taken the route, and suspicion would immediately fall upon him.
He thought about using the bishop’s ford, which crossed the Wye near the Wye Bridge. He could pass through the bishop’s pasture and get over the palisade enclosing the lower town.
But then he thought of a way out that did not involve getting wet. The problem here was the same as using the wall, a ten-foot drop — not that far a fall, but again not something Stephen wanted to attempt in the dark.
“Theo,” Stephen asked, “do you have a rope?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to borrow it.”
“I suppose, if it will help get rid of you.”
Theo produced a coil of rope from a chest in the corner.
Stephen looped the rope around a stair and secured it with a horse knot, which involved tying a knot in which one end could bear any amount of force, but a tug on the other end released the knot. He tried the knot to see if it would hold his weight. It did. He tugged the free end and the knot unraveled.
“I’ll leave it behind the Trumpet, where Gilbert boarded the horses,” Stephen said.
“Thanks. Ropes cost a lot of money,” Theo said.
Gilbert contemplated the rope as Stephen coiled it. “It occurs to me that our killer could have escaped FitzHerbert’s house that way.”
“It occurred to me, too,” Stephen said. “Remember how the bed had been moved slightly? The rope was tied to the bed and the weight of the killer pulled it off. Everyone knows how to make this knot, well almost everyone apart from you. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
Jews Street was silent when Stephen stepped into the night. No lights twinkled through cracks in the shutters, and no muffled voices could be heard. There was no moon yet, and when it rose in the wee hours it would be nothing but a waning sliver even if the gathering clouds did not obscure it. It was, Stephen realized, the first day of September, and there was already a nip in the air.
He slipped along Jews Street keeping close to the houses, alert for the slightest sound or glimmer of light, especially any glimmer. The night watch patrolled the city in pairs and carried a lantern suspended from a pole to light the way.
He paused at Wydemarsh Street, looking one way and then the other. Seeing and hearing nothing, he crept out into Wydemarsh and went south until he reached the first right. He turned there into Frenschemanne Street and crept as far as All Saints Church, where he went left across High Street to the little alley of Norgate.
Stephen had barely entered the alley when something struck his good foot, tripping him. He fell on his face. Someone leaped upon his back, and snaked a forearm around his neck, cutting off his wind. The head of his assailant was close to Stephen’s left ear, hot breath upon it. He reached up, grasped the man’s hair, turned to free his right arm, and drove his fingers into the man’s eyes. The attacker shrieked and let go.
It felt as though Stephen merely pushed off the ground and bounded to his feet, and he was surrounded by others barely discernable in the dark.
They had not been ready for his escape from the hold on the ground and for an instant did not respond. Then one of them raised a scarcely visible hand wielding a scarcely visible club. Stephen kicked the club man in the groin with his bad foot, pivoted and parried a punch and responded with one of his own, pivoted the other way while drawing his dagger, and stabbed the last man with a low thrust to the stomach and finished him a high thrust to the neck. Meanwhile, the man he’d kicked in the groin was struggling to his feet. Stephen drove the dagger under the man’s chin into his brain. The clubman collapsed without a sound. Stephen would have killed the man he had punched as well, but that fellow had run off down the alley. That left the man Stephen had poked in the eyes, who had not stopped screaming all this short time. Stephen stabbed him too to shut him up, collected the rope from the ground, and ran as well as he could with his bad foot, a sort of limping trot, toward Brode Street which opened up at the south end of the alley.
At the mouth of the alley, Stephen slowed to a walk. The screaming will have got the attention of the watch, not to mention all the householders hereabout and it would only be moments before someone came out to investigate the disturbance. Anyone seen running would immediately be thought to be complicit, and detained, especially if the hue and cry was raised.
Stephen turned right onto Behynderthewall Street. The original plan had been to take the first left, Wrotehale Street, to Bridge Street, but he passed it and instead turned left down an alley called Plow Lane. He heard voices calling “Out! Out!” in the direction of Norgate and a bell began clanging — the watch sounding the alarm — but he thought he might be far enough away by now that if anyone looked out they would not connect him with the fresh killings. It had been bad luck to run into a bunch of robbers when he had hoped to reach the Wye Bridge undetected.
Plow Lane emptied into Westgate Street, with the gate not far away to the right and Saint Nicholas’ Church an island in the street to the left.
Stephen was tempted to take the direct route, for the mouth of Bridge Street opened beyond the church. But he hesitated.
A good thing, too, because five gate wardens, alerted by the alarm bell, trotted by him and went around the church.
It occurred to Stephen that this left only one man at the gate, since the royal decree of 1252 required a complement of six be maintained at a city’s gates. It was the normal duty of the wardens to keep watch outward rather than inward, so Stephen might not be seen.
On this uncertain premise, Stephen tip-toed down West Gate Street and turned into the gap between the first and second houses up from the gate. He crossed a back garden and vaulted the wicker fence to the path along the base of the wall. He knelt, listening for anyone to shout at his trespass, but no one did.
Confident that he had not been seen after all, Stephen padded along the path to the point where the wall turned
sharply east, and in a few moments he was kneeling in the dark where the city wall ended at Bridge Street by the foot of the bridge, surprised that he was so out of breath.
Stephen gulped air and stepped onto the bridge.
The drop from the bridge to the lower bank of the river was about fifteen feet or so, give or take. Stephen draped the rope around a support beam and made his horse knot. He dropped both ends. Then he slipped over the railing and lowered himself to the sand. A tug on one end, the knot unraveled, and he coiled the rope.
“What you up to?” a man’s gravel voice inquired from the darkness beneath the bridge.
“Trying to make a quiet getaway, what does it look like? But that seems to be impossible,” Stephen said, startled. Vagrants sometimes slept beneath the bridges at Ludlow, but he had not expected to find anyone beneath Wye Bridge because it was hard to reach from outside the city. “If you don’t say you saw me, I’ll not mention this conversation.”
“Fair enough. Just don’t like my sleep disturbed, is all.”
“My apologies.”
“Accepted.”
Stephen climbed the steep bank to the base of the city wall and followed it to the town ditch, which ran northward with the wall itself. The ditch was a deep V-shape with water at the bottom; not good walking. He crossed the ditch and struck out into the fields of the Grey Friars’ Priory.
Presently, he stumbled onto a road whose name he could not remember. The West Gate loomed to the right, visible against the sky. Stephen waved at the invisible warden in the towers, and continued walking up a cart track to the north.
The track ended at Above Eigne Road, where a stream coursed beside the street, emptying into the castle ditch eventually to meet the Wye on the other side of the city.
Beyond were fields, a mist beginning to collect upon them.
Stephen trudged around to the north side of Hereford to a great field that stretched off into the night without any visible boundaries, and found a hayrick near the road to Leominster that had not yet been taken in. It was made of new-mowed grass and smelled fresh and good. He burrowed into the rick, feeling safe like a fox in his hole even if that was an illusion, and settled down for the remainder of the night.
He was so tired that he was asleep in moments.
Chapter 12
The clank of a bell woke Stephen. He stuck his head out of his burrow to establish that the carrier of the bell was a sheep, and saw that sunrise was near. It was a good thing that sheep had come along, otherwise he might have slept for several hours more, and then he might have been seen crossing the field in daylight.
The place appointed for the meeting with Gilbert was a stand of trees just up the road from Hospital Lane, where FitzHerbert’s house was visible in the distance.
Stephen settled to the ground to wait, his back to a tree.
A foot prodded him awake.
“Time to get up,” Gilbert said. “We need to be away. The entire city is aflame with news of you. Dozens of people must have passed you just this morning. It’s a miracle no one’s noticed you here, just waiting to be snapped up without the slightest struggle.”
Stephen climbed to his feet. “Did you learn anything?”
“I did, in fact. Our players are talkative people.”
“Well?”
“Patience, my good friend. I know it’s hard for you, but try it for once. First you must tell me if you had anything to do with that disturbance in Norgate Lane last night. The whole city is in an uproar over it, and you are the chief suspect. I must say, it’s done wonders for your reputation as a ruffian and man to be reckoned with.”
“At this point, I’m not confessing to anything. FitzAllan is sure to add that to my list of crimes anyway. The truth doesn’t seem to count for much anymore.”
“Have it your way. I thought you’d enjoy the boost in reputation. I heard some harpist at the Trumpet making a song about your escape and the slaughter, and it isn’t even the third hour yet.” Gilbert wrinkled his nose. “Now that I think about it, the song was more an excuse to make fun of FitzAllan than laud you. Well, then, our players are headed to our old stomping grounds.”
“Ludlow?”
“I know of no other old stomping grounds.”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what the stable boy overheard them to say.”
“What, exactly, did he hear?”
“One of the players asked a merchant as they left which road to take to Ludlow and how far was it.”
“And you believe it to be true?”
“Why not?”
“Perhaps they meant to be overheard to throw any pursuit off the scent.”
“And you accuse me of overthinking things!”
“Still, I suppose it’s all we have.”
Stephen mounted his horse while Gilbert struggled to climb onto his mule, which shied away so that he stumbled and only a desperate grasp of the saddle pommel prevented a fall.
“You’re not getting any better at that,” Stephen said.
“It’s not for lack of practice these days with all the scurrying about I’m forced to do at some unkind person’s behest — to London and back, trips down the great river! —”
“And into the great river,” Stephen muttered.
“— but she sees me coming and wants to torment me. Why does everyone use me so roughly?”
“Because it’s so easy?”
“Oh, do be quiet. You are interfering with my concentration.”
But at last, Gilbert was aboard.
“Hold on tight,” Stephen said. “It’s time to go home.”
It was twenty miles to Ludlow, a journey that normally took a day, but Stephen and Gilbert covered the distance in four hours of hard riding without Gilbert falling, although he came close twice.
Stephen’s horse could have kept up the pace for another ten miles or more, but the mule had had enough and stopped dead on the slope above the River Temes bridge.
Gilbert stepped down and tried to lead the mule on foot, but she dug in and would not budge until Stephen tapped her on the flank with his whip. Instead of walking forward, as Gilbert intended, the mule bolted away, knocking Gilbert on his arse, raced across the bridge, and dashed on up Lower Broad Street, stirrups flapping, only stopping at the gate, where Gip, the toothless warden, caught her.
Gilbert observed the flight with eyes narrowed in uncharacteristic fury. “I wonder if mules make good eating.”
“Nah, too tough.”
“Not if you boil it long enough, I’ll wager.”
Stephen crossed the bridge with Gilbert limping a bit behind.
“Good Lord!” cried Gip, when Stephen bent to retrieve the mule’s reins. “Look who it is! We heard you was in prison! Murder, they say!”
“Good day to you, too,” Stephen said, depositing a farthing on Gip’s outstretched palm. “I am such an amiable fellow. Why do people seem to think me capable of murder? Anyway, thanks for catching Nellie. I was in prison, but I have been released.”
“You don’t say.” Gip did not sound convinced.
“The Sheriff has a high sense of justice and a respect for the law.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“You won’t tell anyone that you’ve seen me, will you, Gip?”
Gip’s face screwed up. “I’d like to, sir. But I have my duty. I’ll have to.”
“Give me an hour or so before you send word to Henle at the castle. Can you do that?”
“An hour, sir. I’ll give you that.”
“Ah, and here’s a penny for your trouble.”
“Thank you, sir!”
Stephen stood in front of his house in Bell Lane, which was only a door down the slope toward Broad Street and across from the Broken Shield Inn. He had not been in the house long, but it had begun to feel like home. It was good to be back.
He gave the mare’s reins to Gilbert, who led the horse and his trusty mule into the inn’s yard.
He smelled fire com
ing from the front of the house, which was Harry’s shop. This was alarming, since there should be no fires in the front. The shutters were down even though it was a Sunday, so Stephen looked in. Harry and Joan, the pretty young housekeeper, were crouched over a board resting on the dirt floor on which an ember was burning at the end. Her hand rested on Harry’s shoulder in a familiar way that Stephen had not noticed between them before. It took a moment to register that Harry was burning in the bowl of what would become a wooden spoon.
“You’re going to get in trouble working on Sunday,” Stephen said.
Both Harry and Joan jumped at the sound of his voice. “Good Lord! You’re back!” Harry exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be in gaol!”
“I decided that I didn’t like it, so I broke out.”
“Just another thing to add to your growing list of crimes.” Harry looked bitter. “It looks like we’re going to have to go back to the stable, if Edith Wistwode will even allow such a thing.” When Harry was a beggar, he had lived on the Wistwodes’ sufferance in their stable behind the inn. “You won’t be here longer than necessary to pack your things. The new tenant won’t be as malleable as you, or as lenient on the rent.”
“You’re saying I’m soft?”
“No, just easy to manipulate for someone as cunning as me.”
“Well, I’m not running. Where’s Ida? Is she home?” What affection there had been between Ida and her mother, Elysande, had evaporated at William’s death and Stephen’s succession to Hafton Manor, and she had been living with him in the Ludlow townhouse since then.
Joan and Harry looked troubled.
“She’s not here,” Joan said.
“Lady Elysande and some of FitzAllan’s men came the day you left,” Harry said. He pulled himself up to the bench at the window. “She said she just wanted to visit. So Mistress Bartelot let them in. But they seized Lady Ida straightway and rode off with her and Mistress Bartelot.”
“She didn’t want to go,” Joan said. “But they forced her.”
“Where did they go?” Stephen asked.