‘It is time I went,’ I said. ‘I will be missed if I am not back at my place soon and I have created enough suspicion for one day.’
‘And I must go out and find milk,’ said Raoul.
‘No,’ I cautioned. ‘It’s too dangerous.’ Then I resigned myself to the inevitable. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, brother, you’ve done enough. I can’t ask you to involve yourself anymore.’
‘I’m touched by your concern, my son, but is there any other choice? However difficult it will be for me to find food it will be easier than for you.’ I looked about the darkened room. ‘You are fortunate the abbot’s quarters are empty and that you have been absent these last few hours. If I thought to look here others will have done too. I am sure the prior’s men have been here while you were gone and checked which probably means they won’t be back and you are safe to remain. I will go now and return in a little while with some milk for the baby and anything else I can think of. But I fear it won’t be enough. She needs proper sustenance - for that matter you all do. In the meantime, show no lights and keep the shutters closed. And don’t for goodness sake light that brazier again. Better you shiver in the dark than hang in the light. I will bring blankets when I come.’
I took one last look round and started for the door. But before I could get there Raoul caught hold of my sleeve.
‘Why are you doing this? Why not hand me over to the prior? It would exonerate you.’
I looked at his hand on my arm. ‘Who’s to say I won’t?’
Until that moment I still was not certain about him. Had he truly been the murderer this would be his opportunity to silence me before I could betray him. But he released me and I was able to take my hand from the knife I had at the ready beneath my robe in case he should not.
I opened the door and checking that the coast was clear, stepped outside. ‘Do not despair,’ I smiled encouragingly. ‘I will be back before you know it. God be with you all.’
‘Can we trust you brother?’ asked Raoul as one last shot.
‘You have no choice,’ I replied and quietly closed the door.
Chapter 15
ROSABEL
Plans were rapidly forming in my head as I hurried out once again through Anselm’s gate. The old gatekeeper had been replaced and this new one was unknown to me. I had to assume he was one of de Saye’s men and so took a circuitous route through the town to reach my destination. Once I was certain I had not been followed, I came back down through the town to the marshlands - a remote area to the south of the town, lowlying and damp. Here Onethumb and Rosabel had a room in her parents’ house in a street that ran down to the Linnet River. It had to be remote because of the type of industry that was carried on here. Rosabel’s father worked in the tanning trade curing leather hides which is a notoriously noisome and evil-smelling activity. Neighbours tended to shun them as a result which suited my purpose. The process also required a constant supply of urine, the more acrid the better, which Rosabel’s father stored in earthenware jars in the back yard and could get very ripe indeed, especially in summer. Crucially, they also had a cow.
It was Onethumb who answered the door to my knock. They were in the middle of eating their evening meal and he invited me to join them. But I was too agitated to eat. We went instead out into the back yard where we could talk in private.
Before I revealed the de Gray family’s whereabouts I needed to be sure Onethumb was as convinced as I was of Raoul’s innocence for only then would he be likely to help me with the rest of my plan. I asked him first if he remembered the curfew bell the night I met him on the street. He answered that the bell was still sounding when we met - in fact it had been the signal for him to stop work and start for home. So far so good. Next I asked him about the blacksmiths in the market. He signed that he knew the blacksmiths from his days as a street urchin when he would hang around their fires for warmth and companionship. He corroborated what the beadle had told me that the smithies were nearly always the last to pack up usually well after the curfew bell sounded.
‘So do you see the point I’m getting to?’ I urged him. ‘Effie’s body couldn’t have been dumped in the market before the curfew bell or the blacksmiths would have seen it. And since Raoul was in the tavern at the time and with us thereafter, he had no time to deposit the body. Ipso facto he couldn’t have been the murderer.’
Onethumb screwed up his face.
‘What?’ I asked him impatiently. ‘Tell me, what have I missed?’
Onethumb signed that Raoul could have killed the girl before we saw him, hidden the body somewhere and put it in the market square some time later.
I shook my head. ‘He was never out of sight again until the next morning.’
Onethumb still looked unconvinced. Are you sure he was never left alone even for a short while?
‘Positive,’ I affirmed. ‘Dominic was with him all night – well, except for a few minutes around midnight when he answered a call of nature. But he would have seen if Raoul had left the laboratorium.’
And Dominic didn’t fall asleep? Or leave the room even for another few minutes?
‘He assures me not. Oh God, now you’re putting doubts into my head again.’ I scratched my naked pate in thought. ‘No,’ I said resolutely. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have had the time. He’d have had to kill Effie then gone off to the tavern to see Netta and someone else would have had to dump the body. It’s all too elaborate. And another thing, he was drugged – I found enough henbane in his vomit to kill a horse. He wouldn’t have done that to himself,’ I grimaced. ‘Would he? To throw us off the scent?’
Onethumb walked away thinking while I nervously bit my nails waiting for his decision. Eventually he came back nodding. To my enormous relief he seemed as convinced as I was of Raoul’s innocence. I was about to tell him the rest of my news when he started signing again. Watching him, I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Nothing gets past you does it, my friend? Yes, you are right, I do know where they are.’
I took a deep breath and told him. He listened with a serious face. When I’d finished he signed that they would need milk for the baby. Being a father himself of a young child, he’d know all about that.
But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?
‘Naturally I’ll pay you,’ I said. ‘But first there’s something else I have to ask. Something of a delicate nature…’
‘No, absolutely not. Don’t bother asking again because the answer will still be no! No, no and again I say no. No!’
Ah, sweet Rosabel. If I were twenty years younger and not already betrothed to Christ and His church, I could easily lose my heart to this beauty. Full and rounded and voluptuously feminine, she was my ideal of a true woman - none of these skinny, boyish girls with flat chests that seem to be the fashion these days. She combined the face of Helen, the form of Aphrodite, the complexion of a rosebud - and the temper of Tisiphone, the fiercest of the Furies. Her parents must have had a premonition of how their daughter would turn out for no-one could have been more aptly named: Rosabel, Bella Rosa - a beautiful rose indeed, but every rose has its thorns and none sharper than Rosabel’s. Many’s the time Onethumb has threatened her with the cucking-stool for a scold, and many’s the time he has come home to a burnt supper as a result - or no supper at all. How he managed to win her in the first place has long been a source of wonderment to me. Not uncomely of face himself nor unmanly of form, Onethumb nevertheless did not strut with his fellows or excel with the longbow as they did. And try as we might, we cannot ignore his natural handicaps which surely must put off many a would-be suitor. I once asked her what she saw in him, and Rosabel simply smiled secretively and winked. He clearly has attributes that appeal to woman but evade the eye of the casual male observer. I put it down to the same spirit that won him the pennies I’d thrown in the air when we first met on the street fifteen years ago. Competing with other fully-limbed lads, Onethumb had managed to collect more of the trophies than they did desp
ite having no tongue and only half their complement of fingers. But that was typical of Onethumb. Once he had determined upon a quest, little could deter him. And he had been determined upon his Rosabel.
They made a fine couple and all the finer when their son, Hal, arrived to bless their relationship six months ago. For all their apparent discord in public, clearly in private they harmonised well – Hal was the living proof of that. Five years younger than Onethumb, Rosabel was quite a buxom wench made all the more so by her recent pregnancy - which was the reason I risked venturing into the tigress’s den tonight. But it was clear from her initial response to my suggestion that we were going to have difficulties persuading her. Arms akimbo and brow exquisitely furrowed, she tapped her toe impatiently upon the garden path.
‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she sneered, ‘I have a child of my own. I don’t need another.’
Onethumb smiled at me and shrugged as if to say “I told you so”.
But I wasn’t about to give up just yet. ‘Madam,’ I said to her in my sternest patrician’s voice. ‘Your husband commands you. It is your duty to obey him.’
That was the cause of the first pot of urine to be tipped over. Onethumb angrily rebuked her for her wastefulness and threatened to beat her for her obstinacy - and that was the cause of the second pot going over and for good measure this time she picked up the ladle brandishing it threateningly at her husband. Like cowards before this great Bathsheba we both cringed in a corner. She was magnificent! Onethumb winced at the mess in the yard and glanced anxiously back at the house where his father-in-law must have heard the crash and known what it was. Since he did not come out he evidently guessed who had caused the damage and thought better of challenging his daughter.
Threats having got us nowhere, Onethumb tried a different tack. He explained in some of the most exquisite choreography I have ever seen him execute the plight of the lady Adelle and poor little starving Alix. The hunger pangs, the mother’s tears, the despair. His performance certainly convinced me. I thought I saw Rosabel mellowing after his efforts and sought to press home the advantage:
‘Madam, there is no disgrace in being a wet-nurse,’ I ventured. ‘King Richard had one and she greatly prospered from the association achieving wealth and status after the king’s death.’
‘And will I prosper too from your proposal?’ she asked haughtily.
I squirmed. ‘God will reward you in heaven I am sure.’
‘Ha!’ Rosabel nodded knowingly. ‘I thought not.’
I looked imploringly at Onethumb who insisted that it was because Rosabel was such a wonderful mother - a caring, loving mother - that we ask her. He also pointed out, delicately, that although Hal was weaned she still retained plenty of milk on the tit and so could easily cope with the needs of a young baby girl.
She frowned suspiciously. ‘Why do you need me? Why not a proper wet-nurse? A proper paid one.’
‘It is a delicate matter,’ I said. ‘We have to keep this arrangement private.’
‘Why? What have they done?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied rather too quickly. ‘At least, nothing proved.’
Then light dawned in her eyes. ‘It’s that dead girl, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘The maid. The child’s father’s the one accused of murdering her. And this is the household you want your wife to enter?’ She turned angrily on her husband and smacked the ladle hard against Onethumb’s thigh. It is the only time I have ever heard Onethumb utter any kind of a sound – a sort of strangled animal whimper.
‘He didn’t do it,’ I insisted.
‘Well, that’s easy to say,’ she said whacking my thigh now and making me yelp in surprise. ‘You’re not the one he’ll murder next.’
Onethumb guffawed as it to say “He wouldn’t dare!”
That got him the second slap making him hop about in pain.
‘I suppose when I’m butchered and lying on a dunghill somewhere, you’ll be able to look after your son, will you?’ she snarled at him.
Right on cue, Rosabel’s mother appeared at the back door with little Hal in her arms. From his grizzling he’d evidently been woken up from his sleep by the noise in the yard and looked about him wide-eyed and fearful. When he saw Rosabel he started to bawl and put out his arms.
She nodded with satisfaction. ‘There’s your answer. Your son needs his mother. Here, chick, mummy’s not leaving you. She’s going nowhere, don’t worry.’
She went to take the child from her own mother’s arms, but as she approached, Hal’s bawling grew worse and as Rosabel went to take him he screamed pushing out past her towards his father. Onethumb took his son from his mother-in-law’s arms and Hal’s bawling instantly stopped as he grizzled contentedly in his father’s arms. Mouth open in astonishment, Rosabel threw her ladle down in the dirt in disgust.
‘Men!’
It has always intrigued me that in a world rightly dominated by men it is often the female that turns out to be the most useful - and not just among humankind but right across the animal kingdom. It was a cow, after all, that provided the milk that will give life-giving sustenance to little Alix. The herdsmen on my mother’s estate will very often kill off or sell any young male-cattle for meat while heifers are nurtured to full maturity with many productive years ahead of them. Likewise chickens provide eggs while the cock merely crows and struts. How odd that God should arrange things so.
Men, of course, are the more capable of the two sexes – that is self-evident and the reasons why are simple to explain. Men’s brains are bigger than women’s which is a scientific fact established long ago by Aristotle. And we mustn’t forget that it was a female, Eve, who brought sin into the world without which Adam would still be enjoying the innocent delights of the Garden of Eden, as God originally intended. I suppose the real answer is that men are stronger in body and spirit and are thus better equipped to order society. I shudder to think what a mess the world would be in if ever a woman was put in charge. So I suppose the correct balance between the sexes has been struck - at least in terms of human society if not that of animals.
But I digress. With a bundle of food and some warm clothing together with a pannikin of warm cow’s milk, I hastened back to the abbey where I stayed just long enough to deposit my cargo and then rushed back to take my place in the abbey church in time for vespers praying that no-one watching had guessed what I was up to. The cow’s milk, I knew, was only a temporary solution to the problem. What the baby needed was not my ministrations but Rosabel’s unique feminine attributes – and soon. And with this in mind I arranged to meet up with Rosabel later that evening by the south gate of the abbey, the least guarded of the abbey’s five gates, and smuggle her into the abbey grounds.
She came wearing a disguise of a pair of her husband’s breeches and hood to cover her long red hair. Heaven knows what sport Prior Herbert would have made of this had he ever found out. Bringing a woman inside the abbey walls after sunset violated a whole array of his precious rules. One dressed as a man would have condemned us all for sure. But it was far too late to worry about such trifling matters. And I think we managed to get away with it smuggling Rosabel over to the abbot’s lodgings without drawing curious attention. I barely had time to deposit her with the family before having to rush back again to sing compline.
With all this rushing from here to there, when at last it was time to retire I collapsed, exhausted, onto my cot. Subterfuge is a young man’s sport not for someone of my mature years. But at least I could rest easy in the knowledge that the de Grays were no longer in danger of discovery. The abbot’s palace had been virtually abandoned since Abbot Samson’s death with only the rats and mice and bats now in residence, and until the new abbot was appointed it would remain so. I felt I was able to relax at last. It was Friday 31st October – All Saints Eve. In pagan times this was the night when the souls of the dead return to earth to inhabit the bodies of the living. Heathen nonsense, of course, for what could possibly happen to disturb the peace a
nd tranquillity of the abbey on this of all blessed nights?
Chapter 16
THE FAMILY VANISHES
I awoke next morning with a start. The bell for prime was sounding but that’s not what stirred me. Muffled voices were coming in through my cell window that I couldn’t quite hear properly but something about them worried me even in my half-wakefulness. I opened the shutter and peered bleary-eyed across the Great Court towards the abbot’s palace where in horror I could just make out three men with axes and hammers standing outside the entrance exactly where the de Grays and Rosabel were holed up.
Barely stopping to heave on my boots, I rushed over just as one of the men was raising his axe to the barricading. ‘Stop! Stop!’ I cried. ‘What are you doing? The palace is sealed, no-one may enter except the new abbot!’
‘Aye,’ the man agreed, lowering his tool. ‘The new abbot – or the king.’
‘The king? He’s not coming. He’s in France!’
‘Well I don’t know about that, brother,’ said the man. ‘I just been told to get on and free these doors because the king commands it. Whether it’s France or Indi-land that’s what he wants and that’s what I do. Now, stand aside brother if you please lest you get hit by flying splinters.’ He nodded to his companions and again raised his axe above his head.
‘No! Wait! ’ I said putting my hand on his arm. ‘You can’t – you mustn’t!’
The man faltered nearly dropping his axe. He looked at me sternly. ‘Brother please, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. If you have a complaint, see Brother Peter. I have my instructions. Now I’m asking you politely - step away.’
There was nothing more I could do. I stood back as the three man spat in the palms of their hands, raised their axes above their heads and brought them crashing down into the boarding. I flinched. The sound of splitting wood and tearing nails sounded to me like an animal’s death throes. I looked up at the building. Heaven alone knew what the family inside was going through. They must be terrified. What worried me most was that Raoul must be thinking I had somehow betrayed him. In that frame of mind there’s no saying what he might do.
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