Having finished his meal in a leisurely manner, Bell bade a servant see that his palfrey was saddled while he fetched his cloak and his purse. He had determined to begin his questioning with Jokel de Josne, who had seemed more thoughtful than worried at the funeral and had left the group to speak to others most frequently. Bell had not been able to overhear any of those conversations, but from the expressions on the faces of those Josne approached, they were not best pleased with what he said.
A reason for that occurred to Bell when he had entered Josne’s shop. Although he called himself a mercer, Josne seemed to deal mostly in small foreign luxuries—sandalwood boxes, delicate bamboo fans, brass hinges and latches, and suchlike; however, his shelves were remarkably bare of goods. Items were well spread out but could not completely disguise the dearth of stock. It was possible that Josne had been explaining late deliveries or cancelling promised deliveries.
He still hoped to do business nonetheless, Bell thought, as Josne hurried into his shop in response to the ringing of a bell on the shop counter, but Josne’s expression changed from a broad welcoming smile to a grimace when he recognized who his visitor was.
“What can I do for you, Sir Bellamy?” he asked sharply.
“I am looking into the death of Mistress Bertrild, the saddler’s wife, at the behest of Master Octadenarius, the justiciar.”
The man nodded, lips twisting wryly. “I cannot think why anyone should bother. She was such a woman as the world will rejoice without.”
“You are not the only one to think so, but the law is the law, and a man who kills for a justifiable reason once may do so again for less reason or no reason if he finds killing easy.”
Josne shrugged. “You do not need to look far to find one who had the best reason in the world to be rid of her. She was a shrew and expensive and took joy in hurting and belittling her husband. He is not a man prone to violence, but once he found a woman who professed love for him, likely he decided to be rid of his encumbrance.”
“That is reasonable, only Master Mainard could not have murdered his wife. There are witnesses to say he was elsewhere at the time she was killed.”
“The whore, no doubt.” Josne shrugged again. “She will say anything that will profit her, I don’t doubt.”
“No, not the whore. A dozen or more men who knew him well. Thus, Master Octadenarius and I are constrained to look at any who had reason to wish to be rid of the woman. You had trouble with her, I know.”
Josne snorted. “When the Bridge Guild to which I now belong was first proposed and members solicited, Bertrild’s father, Gervase de Genlis, was proposed as a member—”
“By whom?” Bell asked.
“I do not remember,” Josne said, thrusting forward his lower lip. “He was not accepted, but he did come to a few of the early meetings—one at the Old Priory Guesthouse. Somehow his daughter heard of that and when, not long afterward, Genlis was killed in an alehouse brawl, she blamed the other members of the guild who had attended that meeting.” He laughed suddenly. “Bertrild said we had corrupted her father, who was so corrupt already that the whoremistress of a good house would not let her women serve him.”
“I have heard Bertrild did more than blame you. She came to your shop and made a scene, and when you put her out, she stood in the street and cried aloud her charge of corruption. It might have been worth your while to silence her if you suspected she would create another such disturbance.”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Josne replied, without the smallest look of uneasiness. “If I did not murder her then, why would I do so now, several years later?”
“Because she had learned that your business was…ah…not as prosperous as it once was and she threatened to renew her accusations. What did not matter when all was going well might cause a disaster in less prosperous times.”
“Who said I was less prosperous?” Josne snapped.
“My eyes and the expressions of those you spoke to at Bertrild’s burying.”
“Nonsense!” The man’s eyes shifted. “It is true that a ship with my goods is a little delayed, but an accusation years old will not change that.”
This time Bell shrugged. “Where were you on Saturday between Nones and Vespers?”
“Not killing Mistress Bertrild! I was here, I think, or out walking for a while. Anyway, I did not hold any grudges over her hysterics. I had my revenge for that long ago.” Josne uttered a bark of a laugh. “Did you not know that it was we five, who had formed the Bridge Guild and whom she accused, who bought Master Mainard a night with Sabina? Perekin FitzRevery thought of it, and the five of us each contributed a penny. It seemed just. She had accused us of corrupting her father—who even Satan could not have spoiled, he was so rotten already—so we corrupted her ‘innocent’ husband.”
“Did she know that?” Bell asked blandly.
Josne showed his teeth in what was not a smile. “I am sure she did not. Had she known, she would have told the whole world—and that might have hurt me, since it is often women who buy my wares, and women might not think it so fair and funny that we led Bertrild’s husband to use a whore. But I did not kill her and would not for such a cause.”
“Perhaps not.” Bell half raised a hand in farewell, and added over his shoulder, “But I would try to find someone who can speak to your whereabouts on Saturday—and preferably not one of your men or one easily bribed.”
He stepped out while Josne was still fuming, but once he had mounted and turned his horse’s head west, he permitted himself to smile. That had been interesting. He had known about Bertrild’s attacks on the men leading the Bridge Guild, but he had not known how Mainard came to Sabina’s bed. He had assumed that being dissatisfied with his wife he had gone to Magdalene’s house and chosen Sabina because she was blind, but apparently FitzRevery had chosen Sabina for him. So that was why Mainard had said FitzRevery had done him as great a favor as a man could do.
Could he have done Mainard an even greater favor and removed the cross he was bearing? Bell almost passed Lintun Mercer’s shop to go on to FitzRevery’s, but decided to keep to his original plan of working the men from east to west and dismounted at what had been William Dockett’s mercerie.
This time the journeyman at the counter recognized him and waved him past into the shop. The young man looked almost cheerful, and Bell remembered that he had never mentioned the possibility that the bolts of cloth he had come to inquire about might have been diverted between the shop and their destination. If that half-smile was an acknowledgment perhaps he should…. No. It was none of his business. It was as likely that the journeyman had just had a very good day or hated his new master and hoped a second visit from the bishop’s knight would mean more trouble for Lintun Mercer.
An apprentice scurried up the stairs, and Master Mercer came down without delay. “I saw you at Bertrild’s funeral yesterday,” he said. “I did not know the bishop knew her or Mainard.”
“He does not, as far as I know,” Bell replied. “I attended as the eyes and ears of Master Octadenarius, the justiciar, who is interested in determining who killed her. He has on record a report of several disturbances caused by Mistress Bertrild and has asked me to determine the whereabouts of the men she accused of evildoing.”
“That was years ago,” Lintun Mercer said indifferently. “Master Dockett complained, and she was warned not to break the peace again. She did not.”
“What had Master Dockett to do with Bertrild?”
Lintun Mercer laughed. “Master Dockett was the one who was interested in the Bridge Guild, but he had sent me to the meeting at the Old Priory Guesthouse in his stead. That was how I came to be Bertrild’s target.”
“And you have had nothing to do with Mistress Bertrild since then?”
Mercer shrugged. “She stepped into my shop once or twice on her way home from Mainard’s place. I spoke to her as a courtesy to a fellow merchant’s wife, but I do not believe she ever bought anything.” He cocked his head in thought. “No. No
. She never bought anything.”
“Just to satisfy my curiosity. I am asking everyone she caused trouble. Where were you on Saturday between Nones and Vespers?”
“I was out in the morning for perhaps half a candlemark, but I had dinner here. Then I had to go Greenwich where there was a showing of Flemish cloth, so I rode out. I was still on the road at Vespers, and I was worried about reaching home before dark—and, of course, my beast cast a shoe. It is so whenever one is in a hurry, is it not?”
“You rode your own horse?”
“Yes…well, actually it was William’s horse, but at need anyone in the household can use the beast.”
Hamo had said the horse and saddle looked as if they were from a livery stable. Still, a tale of a cast shoe was easy to tell. “Did you have the shoe replaced?”
“Yes, of course. I did not wish to lame the horse, but it is useless to ask me who did it or where. It was some hole in the wall past Deptford. I did not even ask the smith’s name.”
“Oh well,” Bell said blandly, “if it should become necessary, I am sure you will be able to retrace your steps. Did you perhaps buy any cloth at the showing?”
Mercer cast him an angry glance and said, “No, I did not. It was very fine cloth, but above the price my customers would like to pay.”
“Ah, I am sorry you had a wasted trip. If you saw anyone there you knew—”
“I am sorry to say, I did not. The showing had been mentioned to me in passing as a private hint. Of course, I am sorry now I did not tell my friends, but I did not.”
“Too bad. It is nice to have confirmation. If you remember anyone who might recall that you were there, let me know. You can leave a message for me any time at the bishop’s house opposite the front gate of the priory.”
Mercer nodded. “Perhaps there is a man…. I did not get his name, but he lives there in Greenwich and I spoke to him. He might well remember me.”
As he rode from Mercer’s shop, Bell repeated to himself what the man had told him until he was sure he would have it word perfect for Master Octadenarius. If it seemed worthwhile to the justiciar, he could send men to inquire about whether there had been a showing of Flemish cloth in Greenwich on Saturday and to look along the road for a smith who had replaced a shoe on a horse on Saturday not long after Vespers.
It was very annoying that two out of the five men could not account for themselves on Saturday afternoon. It would be just his fate that no one had witnesses to clear him of suspicion. FitzRevery had said he was in the shop all day, but his journeyman had supported his statement with such an expression of surprise that Bell was almost tempted to arrest FitzRevery and try a little physical “persuasion” to wrest the truth from him. In the end, he left him with no more than a strong warning not to leave the city without first informing him or Master Octadenarius.
His interview with John Herlyoud left him even less satisfied. The man grew pale when he entered the shop and introduced himself, upon which his two journeymen came forward with such aggressive expressions that Bell dropped his hand warningly to his sword hilt. Herlyoud immediately called them sharply to order and sent them away, but Bell wondered if they would have offered him violence had Herlyoud not done so. Nor were they too willing to go, and left with lagging steps, looking over their shoulders as if Bell were going to attack their master.
The behavior woke dark suspicions in Bell and at the same time testified to the total lack of any practice in hiding guilty secrets in Herlyoud’s household. “You have loyal servants,” he said.
Herlyoud looked at him with the sick fascination of a paralyzed bird eying a snake. “I hope I have been a good master to them,” he said, and then as if the words were wrung out of him, added, “But I am sure you did not come here to talk about my household. I saw you at Mistress Bertrild’s funeral, did I not?”
“Yes, and with Master Octadenarius’s concurrence, I am investigating the cause of her death.”
“I know nothing about her death! Nothing!” Herlyoud exclaimed, growing even paler. “I was away all day on Saturday. My sister’s husband died a month since, and I was helping her move from her house in Windsor to a new house I found for her in Lambeth. She will thus be closer to me, and I can be of more help to her.”
“You went to Windsor Saturday morning?”
“No, of course not. I went on Friday after Sext. Windsor is all of thirty miles. We left there at first light on Saturday and came to Lambeth perhaps a candlemark or two before Nones. Then the place had to be swept and some walls painted. I do not know exactly when I left, but it was well before Vespers, after which I came home, and I did not go out again.”
If he had left on Friday afternoon, would he have had time to find Saeger and give him the knife? Perhaps…barely. Also, it seemed he thought Bertrild had been killed near the time she was discovered in Mainard’s yard—or he wanted Bell to believe that was what he thought. So Bell told him that Bertrild had been killed on Saturday, probably soon after Nones and in the common room of her own house in Lime Street. Herlyoud wavered on his feet, clutching at a table edge for support.
“No. No. That is not possible,” he whispered.
Bell’s eyes were like balls of barely tinted ice. “The time is what Brother Samuel of St. Catherine’s Hospital told me, and the place I found for myself, marked by bloodstains on the floor under the rushes. Why do you say it is not possible?”
“I…I do not know,” Herlyoud mumbled, staring at his own hand clutching the edge of the desk. “Somehow such violence is not fit for daylight in a well-furnished room. I thought… I was sure that she had been set upon in the street, in the dark….” He shook his head. “There is nothing more I can tell you. Nothing. I must attend to my business now.”
That was another one who would bear careful sieving out, Bell thought as he left Herlyoud’s shop. His reactions bespoke guilt, but it was also almost certain that Herlyoud did not know where and when Bertrild had been killed. He wondered, as he crossed the street toward Ulfmaer FitzIsabelle’s establishment, whether he should have pressed Herlyoud harder while he was still in shock or whether he was correct in believing he would get more out of the man if he gave him time to recover and make up some lies. Well, if worse came to worst, Octadenarius could wring the truth from him.
FitzIsabelle came out of a chamber behind a small showroom, which held some truly lovely pieces of silver—a set of candlesticks that easily rivaled the work of Master Jacob the Alderman, a set of brooches in gold that could have been made by the ancient Welsh masters.
“You are the bishop’s man and were at Bertrild’s funeral,” he said. “What do you want with me? I owe nothing to the church.”
“The bishop of Winchester is no way concerned with this matter. It is with the concurrence of Master Octadenarius, the justiciar, that I am looking into the death of Mistress Bertrild. I have come to ask where you were on the Saturday she was killed.”
“You are a busybody and likely serving the whore who lives with Mainard rather than Octadenarius. The one who had the best reasons to see Bertrild dead is Mainard. Where was he on Saturday?”
“At a christening party at a Master Newelyne’s house in the West Chepe,” Bell said, smiling. “And I have questioned a dozen men who also attended that christening party. There is no doubt that Mainard arrived just about Sext and did not leave until almost Compline.” Bell felt a little guilty, but what he said was perfectly true, and FitzIsabelle annoyed him.
“I am sure the whore says he was with her at night.”
“It does not matter where Mainard was at night. According to Brother Samuel at St. Catherine’s Hospital, Mistress Bertrild died before Vespers. Mainard did not kill his wife. There are others, however, who had reason to wish her still and silent. You are one of those she caused trouble for.”
“That was years ago, and she was silenced by order of the then sheriff. Why should I suddenly act against her now?”
“Because Mistress Bertrild seems to have found a mo
re effective way to punish those she hated.”
Bell did not smile with satisfaction at FitzIsabelle’s reaction to his statement. He just waited. The man’s face did not pale, but it was as if it had frozen.
“Whatever you think she found, it was nothing to me,” he said, but his voice was strained. “Still, I had nothing to do with her death, and if it was near to Vespers, I can prove it. I was here in my chamber or my shop Saturday afternoon. My journeyman and apprentices will bear witness for me. You can ask them as you leave.”
Chapter Eleven
23 MAY
OLD PRIORY GUESTHOUSE
Magdalene did not get to deliver Mainard’s parcel to Bell until Wednesday morning and had little time to think about it until then. She came home to find four of William’s captains and a clerk she did not know seated around the table and devouring bread, cheese, and cold pasty, washed down with William’s wine. Letice, Ella, and Diot were cheerfully entertaining them. Sabina was nowhere to be seen.
“Just let me take off my cloak and I will welcome you properly, my lord,” Magdalene said, hurrying toward her own room.
“Liar,” Giles de Milland called after her. “You never welcome a man as a proper whore should do.”
Magdalene laughed and flirted a dismissive hand at him as she entered her chamber and closed the door. She pulled off veil and cloak and threw them on the bed over the purse she had dropped there first, then took a heavy key from the pocket tied around her waist under her gown and opened a chest so heavily bound in metal that little wood showed. From that she lifted out her strongbox. She dropped Mainard’s parcel in, put the strongbox atop it, and relocked the chest. Then she rushed out into the common room.
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