Roberta Gellis

by A Personal Devil

  “Yet FitzRevery fits most closely into the pattern we have for the murderer, and with the threat of an accusation of treason hanging over him, he would be the most desperate to silence his accuser and destroy the evidence.”

  “Why do I not cut the documents apart?” Magdalene asked. “We would then have all the accusations separate, and if we felt exposure would be unjust, we could destroy just those—”

  The gate bell rang.

  “I will go,” Magdalene said. “Diot, watch through the window. If it is anyone except the five men we hope will come, sweep all those documents back into the box and cover it in some way or carry the boxes to your chamber. If it is the five, I do not think they should see you when they first come in, Bell—”

  The bell rang again, somewhat more insistently.

  “You could wait in my room,” Magdalene said to Bell and then turned to Mainard.

  He glanced down the corridor to where Sabina had taken Sir Druerie and shook his head. “There is no sense in hiding me. They must know I am here. I told Henry, and he would tell FitzRevery if he asked. Henry never came upstairs and does not know what was done to Sabina’s chamber.”

  The third time the ringing could be called a peal.

  Diot walked with Magdalene toward the door. “If it is a client other than the five, hold them in talk a few moments so I can get to the table,” she said.

  As Magdalene stepped out, Diot went to the window and loosened the frame holding the sheets of oiled parchment, which let in the light but not the wind. Bell stepped into Magdalene’s room, leaving the door open enough to hear and see out, not that he could see much because the walls of the corridor cut off most of his view. Mainard stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking alternately down the corridor and toward the door.

  In a moment, Diot had pushed the frame back into place and walked to the hearth, where she picked up her embroidery and seated herself on her stool. She dropped the work to her lap and looked up as Magdalene opened the door and stepped to the side so all five men could file in. She shut the door behind them, softly, and equally softly set in place the bar that locked it. Of course, the bar being inside only locked the door against those outside, but it would take a few moments to lift it from its slots and that delay might prevent the flight of a guilty man.

  Ulfmaer FitzIsabelle stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Mainard. He was pushed forward by Lintun Mercer, whose eyes were turned toward the table. John Herlyoud walked around them both, looking from side to side, as if he were more interested in the place than in the documents. Perekin FitzRevery saw Mainard, lifted a hand in appeal, and then dropped it without saying anything. Jokel de Josne came forward only enough to sidle toward where the door would open.

  “You fool!” FitzIsabelle exclaimed, stepping toward Mainard. “What kind of an idiot gives information that might ruin a man to a bunch of whores.”

  “You mean I should have left it at my home or my shop so that it would be easier for you to steal it?” Mainard asked bitterly.

  Lintun Mercer had walked to the table and looked at the bound sheets of parchment. Magdalene came away from the door and stood beside him. Mainard moved closer also, near enough to prevent anyone from grabbing for the documents. Mercer glanced up at Mainard, smiled, and made no attempt to touch anything. When he turned his eyes to Magdalene, however, they were narrowed.

  “Why are these lying exposed for anyone to see?” he asked. “What were you intending to do with them?”

  “Certainly not ask anyone to pay for keeping them secret,” Magdalene said. “Master Mainard had asked, when he was told what was in the packet Johannes Gerlund was holding for his wife, if the evidence could not be destroyed. To speak the truth, I was wondering the same. Old sins, long repented and expiated, likely should be forgotten. Give me a good reason why you employed Gervase de Genlis to swear falsely, and perhaps they will be.”

  “That is easy enough,” Jokel de Josne said immediately. “The merchants from whom I bought were gone from England, the receipts I had were in some heathen script no one could read, and two disappointed buyers were accusing me of stealing the goods. It was cheaper and easier to get Genlis to swear he was witness to the sale than to fight my accusers.”

  “Then why did you pay Bertrild to keep quiet?” Magdalene asked.

  He shrugged. “For the same reason. It was cheaper and easier. She did not ask much the first time.”

  “She did not ask much?” Ulfmaer echoed. “She was bleeding me white!”

  “She knew she could prove nothing against me, no matter what her father wrote,” Josne said. “If you ask me, the only reason she tried to extort money from me was because I was with the rest of you when we brought Genlis here. Remember how she said we had corrupted him and caused his death?”

  “There was more involved than spite,” Magdalene remarked coolly. “Bertrild had collected ten pounds.” She looked back at FitzIsabelle. “Perhaps more of it came from you because you robbed Gunther Granger, whose heirs would be frothing at the mouth and placing complaints with the justiciar if a hint of the loss came to them.”

  “There were no heirs!” Ulfmaer bellowed. “The estate would have gone to the Crown.”

  “Good Lord,” Josne said, laughing, “then you’ve committed treason as well as robbing the dead.”

  “That for sure,” Ulfmaer spat. “To which Crown should I have proffered the inheritance? To Stephen, who usurped his cousin’s right? To the empress Matilda, whom we swore to uphold but who could not bestir herself to come to England? To whichever I made the payment, the other would have called that treason and support of the enemy.”

  He swung his head from side to side like a baited bear. Magdalene did not like Ulfmaer FitzIsabelle, but if it was true that there were no heirs, she found herself in complete sympathy with the man. She thought she would personally rather have her banker steal her money and use it to enjoy himself or support his wife and family than that it should go into the bottomless maw of the king’s purse. Nonetheless, the hint of treason might have added to the impetus to permanently quiet anyone who had proof of the crime.

  “Let us go, Magdalene,” FitzRevery sighed. “We have been punished enough. The farm was not offered to the Church by my father, and the deed was honestly lost. If he had given it to the priest, would the priest not have brought it out and showed it when the case was argued? Because there was no deed, the judges would not give a final decision and that priest tormented me until at last I decided to find a deed. Is that so great a sin?”

  “Perhaps not,” Magdalene said, “but it grew, did it not? You carried letters to the rebels in Normandy.”

  “No!” FitzRevery shouted. “I carried a packet to a wool factor in Brugge. Yes, Genlis asked me to carry the packet, but I had no reason to suspect that there was treasonous matter in it. Genlis just asked. He did not threaten me or give me the smallest reason to suspect him of involvement with Talbot, Lovel, and Fitzjohn. It was only when I came back that he came to my shop and explained what I had done.”

  He came forward toward the table then, but his eyes were on Mainard, not on the documents. “May God forgive me, for I know you never will, Mainard. I have violated your trust—but I was desperate. Do you know how a man convicted of treason dies? Do you know that all his possessions are confiscated? My son would have starved, my daughter been tainted.” He looked down, not at the table; his eyes were empty. “It seemed such a small thing, to open the door. I did not let them damage anything except the one thing you were working on after Bertrild died…. Will you let us all be destroyed because we searched your house and shop?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Lintun Mercer said. “I was not desperate and will not be destroyed. I committed no crime. An old man was afraid to tell his daughter and son the truth about disposing of his business so he lied to them and left me with a nasty problem. Likely he did not expect to die so soon. He thought he would have time to explain to them. Why I paid? As Josne said, it was easi
er than adding a new doubt to the case being considered.”

  “But I know that seals were removed from one document and placed on another for you. You were recognized—”

  “Lies,” Mercer said, glaring at Magdalene. “Tell me who you have to speak against me.”

  “The man you paid to have the work done and the woman who did the work.”

  “A beggarmaster and a mute whore?” Mercer uttered a short bark of laughter without any humor in it. “As I said, I paid not out of fear but because I wanted no complications in the case to be presented to the justiciar. This is not worth discussing. If you want to bring the accusations to the justiciar, do so. I came to keep the others company.”

  Magdalene nodded acknowledgment and looked questioningly at John Herlyoud who said, “Perhaps what I did was a crime, but I did not think so when I did it, nearly twenty years ago, and I do not think so now. I was treated unfairly by a hard, greedy master. I begged for release, but he would not free me, so I left him without permission. Because I did not wish to starve in the road, I needed a letter that would permit me to look for another master.”

  “How did you know that Genlis would write such a letter for you?” Magdalene asked.

  Herlyoud looked down then up again, frowning. “I do not remember,” he said. “Perhaps my master did business with him that I knew was not honest. Perhaps a servant of his heard me complain and hinted he would help me for a price. I had to pay him every farthing I had earned and saved over ten years. I am not sure. What can it matter twenty years later? I satisfied my second master, and I kept in mind the lessons I learned and have been, I believe, a good master to my own journeymen and apprentices.”

  That was certainly true. From what Bell had told her, Herlyoud’s journeymen and apprentices were fanatically devoted. Devoted enough to commit murder for their master? That might have been necessary if Borc was the one who had told him Genlis would write a false letter for release for him.

  However, all Magdalene said was, “Yet you, too, paid Bertrild to be silent.”

  Herlyoud sighed. “It was a mistake to do so. I see that now, but the first demand she made was small, and at the time I was busy with my sister’s troubles. I did not wish to need to explain myself to my guild, and I did not want to be burdened with a fine if the court saw fit to set one. For me, too, this is no longer worth talking about.”

  “Except for one small matter,” Bell said, as he walked into the room from the corridor. He had been quietly standing just inside the doorway of Magdalene’s room while the men explained their compliance with Bertrild’s extortion. His voice was dry, his tone sardonic, and he stopped at the foot of the table. “All of you say the old sins are no longer important, that there are explanations. But there are also two new murders, both connected to these documents—”

  “Murders?” Jokel de Josne interrupted with a laugh. He leaned against the wall near the door, his lips twisted up on one side into a cynical leer. “Say rather an extermination of vermin. Whoever did it should be paid a fee for his trouble.”

  “They were human beings,” Mainard said. “Not good ones, perhaps, but they deserved a chance to see the error of their ways, to confess, to repent, to be forgiven their sins.”

  “Bertrild? Human?” FitzRevery’s voice was high and thin. “You can say that after what she did to you?”

  “Yes, because unwitting and likely unwilling, she and you, not out of good will but because you wished to spite her, may have brought to me the greatest good of my entire life. God and his Merciful Mother work in Their own ways and choose what tools They will for that work.”

  “Pious mouthings,” FitzIsabelle spat. He turned toward the table. “I want those documents destroyed. If the contents were exposed, I would be ruined. How many people will stop to think that I harmed no one, that I only wished to protect myself? They will account me greedy and untrustworthy. I did not kill the woman, I paid her.”

  “You may not have killed her with your own hand,” Bell conceded, “but one of you five either murdered Bertrild himself or hired or forced another man to do it in order to conceal a much more serious crime than those you have explained.”

  “Why? Why we five?” Lintun Mercer asked. “I can see from the number of sheets and the size of the writing that many more men were accused of crimes by Genlis than us. I think what Josne said is true, that Bertrild picked us to squeeze for money not because we were most vulnerable but just out of spite.”

  “Why you? Because Bertrild was stabbed with two knives, and one of those knives was Codi’s. Codi’s knife was stolen from Mainard’s shop on the nineteenth of May. The only ones who could have taken that knife were you five.”

  “I do not think that is true,” FitzRevery said. “I know there were others in Mainard’s shop both before and after we were there.”

  “Some were never in the workroom. Some could not have killed Bertrild for other reasons, such as not being in London at the time of her death. In any case, we know who actually killed Bertrild. It was the man who said he was Sir Druerie’s messenger. The man who came muffled in a cloak. The man who Bertrild called Saeger.”

  “No!” Herlyoud cried. “No! I did not kill her!”

  Every eye in the room turned toward him.

  “You mean you were the man in the cloak?” Bell asked, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.

  “Yes. I was the man in the cloak, but I did not kill Mistress Bertrild, and I am not Saeger. I told you already. I had no reason to kill her.”

  “You hid your face. You claimed to be a messenger from her uncle. With your knife in her back, you bade her dismiss all her servants so they should see and hear nothing. And you expect us to believe that you did not kill her?”

  Herlyoud was breathing hard with nervousness, but he said. “I did not kill her. The rest I can explain. I was coming home from my sister’s new house. There was so much dust from cleaning and scraping and painting walls, that I nearly choked to death. I had intended to stay and help my sister settle into the house, but I was coughing and choking and she bade me go home—that was why I was muffled in the cloak. As I was riding along, I was thinking of Bertrild’s second demand, and it came to me that I had rather spend the pence on my dear sister’s pleasure to lift her spirits after her husband’s death. Also, I thought that it was time to clear my past with my guild. I decided to go and tell Bertrild not to send Borc to my shop again.”

  “You could have told Borc that the next time he came.”

  “I did not want him in my shop again. He upset my journeymen and apprentices.”

  Bell’s brows went up. “Enough for them to feed him lily of the valley steeped in wine?”

  “No!” Herlyoud exclaimed. “They would have cast him out the front door, but they had seen me give him money and were afraid for me. That was why they sent him out the back. And I do not think any of them know how dangerous lily of the valley is. They are all four from the city, and I do not have any of it in the garden. I have young children who come sometimes to the shop and play in the garden.”

  “Let us go back to Bertrild. Why did you say you were a messenger from her uncle?”

  Herlyoud shrugged. “I was exhausted from choking. I wanted a place to sit down and get a drink of water. I knew if Bertrild was there, she would likely refuse to see me, and if she were not, her servants would never let a stranger in the house, so I said I was a messenger from Sir Druerie. I knew he was Gervase de Genlis’s brother. I had seen him with Sir Gervase while I waited in the stables at Moorgreen for Sir Gervase to write and sign my letter.”

  “But Bertrild called you Saeger.”

  “I had not yet put back the hood of my cloak. I suppose she mistook me for this other man. When I did lift the hood, she sort of squeaked with surprise and then said she was expecting someone else and I must leave at once, I told her I had changed my mind about paying for her silence, that I wanted my money back. She paid no attention to what I said. She did not even bother to answer me, but we
nt to the door and shouted for her servant. Then she sent him on an errand, and told him to take someone called Hamo with him, and to send the cook and the maid to her.”

  “Why did she send away the servants?”

  “I have no idea. I thought it was because she did not want them to hear us quarreling about the money I wanted returned.”

  Bell stared hard, then nodded. “But once the house was empty, you found it easy to lose your temper, draw your belt knife, and stab her in the throat.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Herlyoud laughed. “No, you are wrong. Wrong about that. Wrong about who took the knife from Mainard’s shop. It was Bertrild who took Codi’s knife and drew it on me! When I asked again for money, she pulled this knife from under her cloak—she had never taken it off—and said I was a cheat and a liar and what she had taken from me was rightfully hers. She looked like a madwoman and she screamed at me, I swear it was for half a candlemark, about how we had led her father into sin and we must suffer for it, and then she thrust at me with the knife.”

  “So then you drew your belt knife to defend yourself—”

  “No. Before I thought, I thrust back at her with my whip. She was still coming for me, and the whip caught her hard on the shoulder. She fell, and I ran out. I thought she would come after me, still screaming about her father’s corruption, so I pulled up my hood again, mounted, and rode away. I did not kill her! Perhaps this Saeger that she was expecting came afterward and did it.”

  Bell stared at Herlyoud with a mixture of doubt and frustration. Little as he liked seeing his whole elaborate theory of the murder destroyed, Herlyoud’s story was as likely as his reconstruction of the crime, and it explained the bruise on Bertrild’s shoulder, which did not fit with the knife wounds. Magdalene had told him that Stoc reported Bertrild in the shop on Friday afternoon and that both apprentices agreed she would, if she could, pick up a tool, a buckle, a pair of reins—anything that would cause trouble.