“What has happened, Sabina, love?” he asked, trying to keep anger out of his voice.
“Mainard’s wife is dead…. Murdered,” she said.
“Oh, good Lord!” Bell exclaimed, dropping down on the bench beside Magdalene. After another moment, he said, “She surely wanted killing, and with the evidence he can bring it maybe that he can escape with ‘justifiable homicide,’ but I am not sure what I can do to help him.”
Magdalene turned her head to stare at him, but he did not notice. She thought bitterly that if a woman nags at and berates a man, and he kills her—that is justifiable homicide. But if a man berates a woman, abuses her, beats her, threatens to mutilate her, and she kills him—that is murder.
Bell might have noticed the fixed, angry eyes had not Sabina cried, “He did not do it!”
His attention fixed on her, and Magdalene, having controlled a feeling she could not explain without breaking open a long-hidden grave, nodded and said calmly, “You had better listen to what she says.”
After the tale was retold and he had made almost the same comments as Magdalene about Pers Newelyne and the Watch, he looked from Sabina to Magdalene and lifted a questioning brow. Magdalene gave a barely perceptible shrug, indicating that she was no surer than he that Sabina was not lying for love about the blood being hard on the knife and that Mainard had never left her bed until dawn.
“I can do no more with hearsay,” he said. “I must go look at the body, if it is not yet washed and shrouded, or speak to the brothers if it is. I must look at the place where the body was found….”
Sabina stood up immediately. “Haesel!” she called.
The child came from the kitchen at once, chewing on a piece of unbaked pastry and giggling, probably at something Ella had said or done. Magdalene smiled at her, recalling the pathetic scrap of skin and bones, shivering with terror, that Sabina had brought to show them only a month ago. Bell had got up when Haesel appeared and Sabina took in hand the staff Letice had fetched for her. Now Magdalene got to her feet also.
“I think I will go along with you,” she said thoughtfully. “If you tell me what questions you want asked, Bell, I will try to get answers from the apprentices and possibly from Codi, too. They will be less frightened of me than of you, and Sunday is quiet here.” She turned toward the hearth. “Diot—
The new woman rose nervously to her feet, clasping her hands before her. Magdalene smiled at her.
“As you know, we have no regular appointments on Sunday, but sometimes a client finds himself with some free hours and wishes to spend them here, or someone passing through might stop. If the man is known to Dulcie, take his money and let him go with Ella or take him yourself, unless he is Letice’s client. If she is still here, and he asks specially for her, ask if she will see him. Usually she goes to where her countryfolk gather on Sunday. If it is someone new, you may use your judgment as to whether it is safe to let him in…and make sure he pays ahead of time.”
Diot flushed a little—her white skin readily showed her emotions. She was aware that she was being given this chance to show whether she could manage, partly because of the other women’s disabilities and partly because she could do little damage on Sunday. Nonetheless, she was delighted and grateful. Sabina was as disabled as the others.
“I will do my best, Magdalene.”
“Thank you,” Magdalene said, and went to get her veil, which she draped over her head to cover her hair and raised one end to hold across her face.
Haesel led Sabina, and Bell fell in behind with Magdalene. “Diot seems to have jumped high in your estimation,” he said.
“So far I am better pleased than I expected to be,” she agreed. “If she continues as she has begun, you will have brought me a treasure.”
“Now that she does not look so gaunt and haunted, she is even more beautiful.”
“Yes, but that is less important than her honesty and her manner. Leaving her in charge was something of another test, to see how she behaves when I am gone. Letice and Dulcie will watch her. Of course, she is still very new and the memory of Stav’s stew is still clear in her mind. I am concerned mostly about the future, about whether she will grow abusive or try to swindle or steal from the clients when that memory dims.”
“The men like her?”
“Yes, they do. She is very clever and seems able to judge just what will please them best, sometimes in despite of what they say they desire. One man, and he is not the most generous of souls, left her a whole shilling! He said she had given him the wildest ride he had ever had, yet he had chosen Sabina, he said for her gentleness.”
Bell shrugged. “Different night. Different desires.” He looked sidelong at her. “If Diot is satisfactory, I hope you will find no other excuses for—”
“I do not need excuses. Whoring is my business.” Her voice was sharp, but she caught his hand as his jaw set. “You must believe me, Bell. I swear it is for your own good. If you think of me as ‘your’ woman, disaster must follow.”
“Why?” he asked stubbornly.
She sighed. “Because I have been a whore for ten years. I cannot wipe that out. You cannot wipe that out. I am an honest woman and a good and loyal friend— William will tell you that.” She laughed. “Many men will tell you that.”
He winced, and she laughed again. She squeezed the hand she held.
“That is why it would be a disaster. Think about it, Bell. Think about accepting me as I am for what I am.”
“Master Mainard seems content with a retired whore,” he snapped back. Then his lips twisted. “Perhaps content enough to want to be rid of his wife.”
Since they had arrived at the bridge, neither said any more until they had passed through the crush generated by the shops, the customers, and the peddlers. When they had turned up Gracechurch Street, Bell, who had not forgotten what he had said, increased his pace until he could walk beside Sabina.
“Have you been happy with Master Mainard?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed softly. “He is so good to me. He is so good a man! You cannot imagine the good he has done.” Her mouth hardened. “That stupid Bertrild! She threatened Codi that she would send him back to his master, but he knew she could not. Because Mainard did not want Codi to feel trapped, he had explained to him that once he lived as a free man for a year and a day, his bonding as a serf was ended. He could live free anywhere and take any employment he wished.”
“Then Codi had no reason to kill her. You know, Sabina, it is Mainard who had the best reasons to wish her dead.”
“And I,” Sabina said stoutly. “I told you I wanted to kill her.”
“Because you expected Master Mainard to marry you?”
“Marry me?” She turned her face toward him, astonishment showing in her voice and every line of her body, even though her eyes could not open in amazement. “Why would Mainard want to marry me? I was a whore.”
Bell winced, but he was not touching Sabina and she remained unaware that she had pricked him in a sore spot.
“I think he loves me and will keep me,” she continued, “but that has nothing to do with marriage. I am sure that if he marries again, it will be to a woman of fine reputation about whose children no jests will be made.”
“You will not mind if he marries again?” Bell asked.
Sabina was silent for a long moment, turning her face forward as if she could see where she was going. Then she sighed. “Yes, I will care,” she said very softly. “I love him, and it will grieve me that he beds another woman, even if it be only to make children.” She sighed again. “And it will not be only that. If she will welcome him, Mainard will love her. He is gentle and needs love and so returns it readily. And it is his right to have children.” She squared her shoulders. “I can always go back to Magdalene.”
“Then perhaps you did not really want Bertrild dead?”
“Oh yes I did!” Bell was surprised at the vicious tone. “She hurt Mainard. I would gladly have killed her. Gladly!�
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“With a knife?”
He was grinning, and she heard it in his voice and turned her head in his direction again, making an impatient gesture. “With anything I had in my hand, and I could have gone down to the privy in the yard.”
Bell laughed aloud. “Yes. Without your staff so that you bumped into all the furniture and tripped over the sleeping apprentices, through a back door, which you could not find, carrying a knife, which you have no idea of how to use, just in case….” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
“Who said I did not have my staff!” she said, trying for indignation.
“Because if you had your staff, love, you would have hit her with that. I remember how neatly you cracked Waleran de Meulan’s man on the head. If Bertrild had been dead of a crushed head or a broken neck….”
“Just a moment,” Magdalene said, coming up on Bell’s other side as the street widened. “In all the excitement about finding Bertrild dead, no one has asked the first question that needed to be asked. What the devil was she doing in Mainard’s yard at God-knows-what time of night?”
“That is a fine point,” Bell said, all laughter gone from his voice and manner. “Sabina, you said you were at Newelyne’s until dusk and that the Watch will confirm you and Mainard were still abroad when it was full dark. You say also that the house was dark and quiet, the journeyman and apprentices asleep when you came home.”
“Yes.”
“If that is true, can either of you believe that Bertrild was dead out in the yard before dark?” Magdalene asked. “Is not a visit to the privy the last thing most people do before going to bed? Could her body have been overlooked?”
“I do not know,” Sabina said. “I was not taken out.” She smiled a little sheepishly. “To speak the truth, I was never in the yard. But I will swear that Codi and the two boys are not the kind to see a dead body and go quietly to bed and to sleep.”
Bell chuckled. “I cannot say I am surprised. That takes more sangfroid than most people have.”
“Yes, yes,” Magdalene said impatiently, “but then what was Bertrild doing prowling about Mainard’s yard when she should have been at home and safely in bed?”
“Spying?” Sabina asked faintly. “There is a window in my bedchamber in the back, and in this weather I open it. There is a hedge and a fence, an alley and another yard between us and the house behind, so I have never worried about anyone looking in. Could she have been watching for Mainard to pass before the window?”
Magdalene made a dissatisfied noise. “Yes,” she said. “Unfortunately, Bertrild was just the kind to spy. I had hoped that there was no reason for her to be there and that she might have been killed elsewhere and dumped in the yard. If that were so, it would be nearly impossible for Mainard to have killed her.”
“Oh, is that possible?” Sabina cried. “I am sure Bertrild did not know the back entrance to the yard. She never lived in the rooms above the shop. She insisted that Mainard buy the Lime Street house before they were married.”
Magdalene and Bell glanced at each other and grinned. “Enough, love,” Magdalene said. “Please do not tell anyone else. It says a little too much of how much you care for Mainard and how little you care for the truth and will only cast a bad light on your saying he was with you until dawn.”
“But he was!” Sabina exclaimed.
The growing noise ahead of them relieved Magdalene and Bell from needing to comment and indicated that they were coming into the market. Sunday might be quiet in the whorehouse, most men being unwilling to so soon soil the cleansing of attending Mass, but it was a favorite day for buying and selling. Bell dropped back, frowning a little as he thought over what Magdalene had said and what Sabina had said also. He thought their warning to Sabina would keep her from suggesting Bertrild had been killed elsewhere, but that was a definite possibility.
Why should Bertrild bother to spy on Mainard? Establishing a whore in the rooms above his shop might be grounds for complaint. But seeing him in the woman’s bedchamber would not make anyone more willing to listen to that complaint. There was no law against a man keeping a mistress; such behavior was between him and God, a sin, not a crime.
That she had been killed elsewhere and put in Mainard’s yard was more likely, actually, than that someone had come out of the house carrying a knife just when she was there and stabbed her—unless she had made a noise and the journeyman had gone out intending to drive off a thief. Or Mainard had heard something through the open bedchamber window and recognized Bertrild? Had his patience broken? Had he rushed out with a knife and killed her? And just left her lying there and gone in again to futter Sabina? Nonsense! Could Mainard have got out of the house without waking his journeyman or apprentices? Probably not. Would they lie for him? Bell sighed. From what everyone said about him, probably yes.
Other questions: Was there anything of enough value in the yard to make worthwhile the danger of needing to drive off a thief? Had Bertrild brought someone with her? Or had she agreed to meet someone? In the middle of the night in the yard of Mainard’s shop rather than in comfort in her own house in Lime Street? Ridiculous. But say there was a reason for a meeting there, why should the person she agreed to meet at such a time and place—which must mean she did not fear that person—suddenly pull a knife and stab her?
Bell could think of any number of people who might have stuck a knife into Bertrild in a rage, but it was impossible for any argument to have taken place in Mainard’s yard without waking someone in the house. That meant that whoever had come with Bertrild or agreed to meet her intended to stab her. Possible, but it was still more likely that she had been killed elsewhere and dumped in Mainard’s yard. After dark it would only take moderate care to avoid the Watch and no one would have seen the body moved.
While Bell’s mind was busy, they had turned right at Gracechurch, passed the cordwainer’s shop on the corner, and come to the front of Mainard’s saddlery. The counter was missing, the door closed. Bell was about to pound on the door, when Haesel came alongside, simply lifted the latch, and led Sabina in. Magdalene followed with Bell on her heels.
“The shop is closed—” Henry began and then sighed. “Oh, Mistress Sabina, we wondered where you had gone.”
There was something in his voice that made Sabina bristle. “You mean you thought I had deserted Master Mainard as soon as he was in trouble. Well, I did not. Since I have more brains than an overcooked pease porridge, even if I cannot see, I went to get help. I have brought Mistress Magdalene, who has powerful friends, and Sir Bellamy of Itchen, who is the bishop of Winchester’s knight and is accustomed to unraveling mysteries.”
“I thought no such thing,” Codi said, getting to his feet.
To right and left a boy rose with him, clinging to him. The younger had a tear-smeared face, and the elder still looked pale and sick. Codi himself was a hulking young man, almost as tall and thick as his master but without Mainard’s grace of movement. He had a shock of brown curls and a thick, neatly trimmed brown beard. His eyes, which were small and deeply set, were also brown and, had his expression been less lugubrious, he would have looked like a friendly bear.
“Well, whatever you thought,” Bell said firmly, “Mistress Magdalene and I are here to discover what we can to help Master Mainard. Now, who found the body?”
The older apprentice grew even paler, but he swallowed hard and said, “I did, sir.”
“And you are?
“Gisel, sir.”
“Now I see that you are still very upset, Gisel, but do you think you can show me the exact place where Mistress Bertrild was lying?”
The boy began to tremble, and Codi put an arm around him. “I saw it, too, sir,” he said. “In fact, it will be easier for me, because when Gisel ran in screaming that Mistress Bertrild was lying in the yard covered with blood, I told him to go wake Master Mainard, and I went myself to see if she had perhaps fallen and hurt herself and I could help.”
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��Then Mistress Bertrild was often in the yard?”
“Oh, no, sir. I never saw her in the yard before. She often came into the workroom. She liked to snoop around and pick out specially fine pieces of leather and insist we give them to her for shoes. But she never went out back. I really thought that Gisel was mistaken, that some other poor woman had been hurt and wandered in from the alley. But Master Mainard would have had to be wakened in any case, so I didn’t ask any questions, only ran out to look myself.”
“Good enough,” Bell said. “Let us go out.”
He cast a glance at Magdalene, and she reached out and took Gisel by the arm. “Sit down, child,” she said, backing him toward the stool from which he had risen with Codi. “You have had a terrible shock.” She looked around at Henry, the other apprentice, Haesel, and Sabina. “Have any of you eaten?”
There was a concerted shaking of heads, except for Henry who said he had broken his fast at home. Gisel swallowed convulsively, and Magdalene smiled at him, realized he could not see that through her veil, and patted his shoulder. “I know that even thinking of food makes you feel sick, but part of that is actually hunger.” She reached into the purse hanging from her belt and took out two pennies. “Haesel, I know you buy Sabina’s meals. It is near dinnertime. Suppose you run across to the cookshop and bring back whatever you think will be best for everyone. Would you like to go with her, Gisel? How about you?” she asked the second child.
“My name is Stoc,” the younger boy said. “I will go. Haesel will only bring back a pot of slops. I want some ham and bacon and some pasty as well as soup or stew, and—”
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