The Girl in the Ice (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 4)

by Jason Vail

“During the troubles.” When the town had filled to overflowing with refugees from the countryside fleeing the Welsh. All the inns had been so full that people had opened their houses and those not fortunate to find a bed with a roof had been forced to sleep in the streets.

  “Yes.”

  “What was she doing there?” Stephen asked.

  “Trying to get a bed,” Clemmie said. “Well, the girl who was with her was, anyway.”

  “The girl who was with her?” Stephen asked, startled.

  “Yeah, she was trying to sweet talk Jacky.” Jacky was the owner of the Trumpet.

  “The other girl was trying to sweet talk Jacky,” Stephen said, still struggling to digest that the girl in the ice had not been alone. That meant that someone, this other girl, had abandoned her, could even have played a role in her death. If he could find that girl, he would know the dead girl’s name.

  “That’s what I said. You deaf?”

  “And you saw the girl in the ice?” Stephen asked.

  “Just a glimpse, mind you.”

  “How did you get this glimpse?”

  Clemmie hesitated, glancing at Tim and the other warden, who were following this exchange closely, for it would make excellent gossip that they could parlay into free drinks. Clemmie rose, “Can we talk privately, governor? In confidence?”

  “All right.”

  The two of them withdrew to the middle of the street. Clemmie said, “I approached her.”

  This explained her need for secrecy. She had begged outside the Trumpet, where she had no license to do so. If the wardens found out about it, they were bound to report the transgression, which could mean a fine.

  “You won’t tell on me, will you, governor? On account of the help I’ve given you?”

  “No,” Stephen said. “So you asked for a contribution and at that point you saw her face?”

  “As close as I am to you. But she turned away and drew her hood about her. Never said a word. Then Jacky chased me off.”

  “So you left them at the Trumpet.”

  “Aye.”

  “You’re sure it was her?”

  “Well, it all happened real quick like. And it was evening, so the light was bad, you know.”

  Evening: so Clemmie was begging within the town after dark, when the gates were shut and curfew had fallen. The town beggars were supposed to stop work at sundown and be off the streets like everyone else. But early December had been a time of tumult, when the usual rules had been set aside, for the streets had been filled with people even after curfew.

  Clemmie continued, “But it’s always stuck in my mind why such a highborn girl would be trying to find room at the Trumpet. You know, rather than at a better place. Like the Broken Shield.”

  “Highborn?” Stephen asked, startled again, although he had already had suspicions about this.

  “Yeah, it was pretty clear she weren’t no peasant or serving girl. She smelled too good for that. All perfumy.”

  Stephen nodded, ruminating on this information, hoping it was true. “Was this before the big storm, or after?”

  “Before.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “As sure as I’m missing a finger.”

  “Thank you, Clemmie.”

  “Yer servant, governor,” she said, beaming at the courtesy. It probably wasn’t often that anyone thanked her for anything.

  She strode back to her stone.

  Tim asked, “What’d you tell him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’d she tell you?” Tim called to Stephen, who was still standing in the middle of the road, staring into space, mind churning.

  “Nothing that would interest you,” Stephen said finally.

  “Shit it don’t!” Tim called to his back, as Stephen passed through the gate and left the town proper. He said to Clemmie, “Come on, what’d you tell him?”

  “Crown business,” Clemmie said. “I ain’t allowed to say.”

  The argument continued as Stephen passed out of earshot.

  Chapter 8

  Ludlow was so small a town that it could support only two fletchers. Both had shops on Corve Street down the hill from Corve Gate which lay within shouting distance of each other. Since the two men were brothers, this was probably not a coincidence. Since they did not get along, there were frequent complaints from their neighbors about their arguments in the street.

  The shops were small, as in ordinary times there was not a great need for arrows. But with the recent troubles and the expectation of more fighting in the spring, demand for replacements had overwhelmed the proprietors, and at the first shop Stephen came to, the apprentices said the owner was off buying wood for arrow shafts and would not be back until the end of the week.

  At the second shop, the owner and one apprentice were hard at it trimming goose feathers while the second was heating glue in a pot over a small fire at the rear. Only a single bundle of sticks that would be shaped into shafts stood against a rear door. Normally, bundles hung from the ceiling to cure, but now there were none, although there were as many as twenty bundles of finished arrows waiting only to have heads applied to them stacked by a rear door.

  “Could I speak to you for a moment?” Stephen called to the proprietor.

  “Go see what he wants,” the shop owner ordered the apprentice hovering over the fire without looking up. “And be quick. Don’t let the pot get too hot.”

  The apprentice removed the pot from the direct flame and came to the window. He looked apologetic. “Is there something I can help you with, sir?”

  Stephen laid the arrow on the counter. It was yellow along the shaft except for red and yellow alternating stripes from the level of the fletching to the nock. Stephen asked, “Have you ever seen this sort of work before?”

  The boy regarded it politely. He shook his head.

  Stephen didn’t expect that the boy would be able to answer the question. “Will you ask Master Farwell?”

  “Pa! He wants to talk to you.”

  “Is he ordering?” Master Farwell asked. “Or is he selling?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s that coroner fellow. The one who solved the draper’s murder, and the one up the road at Webbere’s.”

  “Tell him to go away. We’re busy.”

  “He’s busy,” the boy said to Stephen.

  “I gathered that.”

  “I have to get back,” the boy said. “The glue will overheat. Then it goes bad.” He hurried back to the fire. But he hesitated, as he prepared to move the pot back over the flames. “This isn’t about a murder or anything, is it, sir?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “It is.”

  Master Farwell glanced at Stephen. “I don’t know nothing about no murder, and I’ve got a thousand shafts to make by the end of the month, or I lose the contract to that pissant of a brother of mine. Can’t get enough good birch wood, the smith is behind on the heads, and there’s a shortage of good feathers. So go away.”

  “I will not,” Stephen said. “This is crown business.” Although it most definitely was not. There was always the chance that Farwell would gossip about the visit, but he thought it unlikely that it would get back to Sir Geoffrey.

  Farwell put down the feather and knife in his hand and came to the window. He glanced at the red and yellow arrow on the counter. “What’s this?”

  “The killers left it behind.”

  “What killers?”

  “There’ve been robberies and murders on the Shrewsbury road.” Stephen hoped that the fletcher would not apprehend that fell outside his jurisdiction.

  Apparently, the fletcher did not think of this, for he said, “These are bad times. There are murders all over the place. I cannot keep up with all of them.”

  “Well, I am interested in a particular murder.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your business. I want to know about this arrow. Can you tell who made it?”

  “That depends,” Farwell said, bending over the arrow.
He took it up and flexed it, sighted along the shaft, fingered the fletches, ran his fingertips along the wood and laid the point of the slightly barbed head to the pad of his index finger. “Made of alder,” he said dismissively. “Whippy, too, even for that miserable wood. I don’t use alder. Too light and weak even for hunting arrows, in my opinion.” He returned the arrow to the counter. “Utterly unremarkable. You say this was used in a murder?”

  “You heard me right”

  Farwell sniffed. “Well, it’s a hunting arrow, of course.”

  “I thought it might be. From the markings and the head.” War arrows were sometimes painted, but since they were often produced en masse, decoration frequently was neglected. Hunting arrows, however, usually were painted so that they could more easily be found in the brush if the arrow happened to miss its target.

  “Ha! It’s the wood gives it away. No one uses alder for anything but hunting arrows.” Farwell sniffed at the arrow. “It’s decently fletched, I’ll give him that. But its cheap: cheap wood, cheap hunting head. It’s too whippy for a longbow, as well. Why, it hasn’t even got horn on the nock. It would tend to shoot wide.” He reached for a length of string on the table behind him. There were black marks along the string at one-inch intervals. Farwell laid the string beside the arrow and counted out the inches. “Thirty and a quarter,” he said when he finished. “Made for a big man with a long draw. Still, I doubt it was meant for a longbow. Flatbow more likely.”

  “But can you tell who made it?” Stephen was counting on the fact that craftsmen in a region knew each other, even if they lived in separate towns, and could spot each other’s work.

  “Wasn’t me, I’ll tell you that. Or my brother.”

  “I did not think so.”

  “So, it killed somebody, this arrow?”

  “It shot wide.”

  “You don’t say.” Farwell smiled at his prediction being proved right.

  “You have no idea then? This work is foreign to you?”

  “I didn’t say that. I may have seen its like before.”

  “Yet you seem reluctant to share your opinion. It makes me wonder if you have one. Perhaps I should consult your brother.”

  “My brother is an idiot.”

  “Not everyone thinks so.”

  Farwell drummed his fingers on the counter. “There are fellows who make arrows of this like.”

  “You are no closer to satisfying me than before.”

  “Fellows in Shrewsbury.”

  “That is helpful. A name. Give me a name.”

  “I would ask Edmund Tomkys. I have seen him peddling such inferior work at the Hereford fair.”

  “Hereford. That’s far afield for a fellow from Shrewsbury.”

  “People there don’t know him, or the poverty of his skill. He profits from the unsuspecting.”

  Stephen took up the arrow. “Still, shot from the right bow it should serve.”

  Farwell shrugged. “I suppose so. I know that I would not make its companion. I am an honest man, unlike some.”

  “Edmund Tomkys,” Stephen repeated.

  “A tall fellow. Brown beard mixed with gray. Very morose.”

  “You know him better than you let on.”

  “We’ve met. That’s all I care to say about it.”

  “Thank you, Master Farwell. Good day to you.”

  Chapter 9

  Stephen mounted the mare and turned back toward town. At the bridge to Corve Gate, he directed the mare into the ditch surrounding the town. Since the houses in the suburbs did not overflow into the ditch, it was one of the more popular short cuts around the town.

  The ditch was so deep that even on the back of a horse Stephen’s head did not reach above ground level, and his only views were of the tops of houses and the town wall, where one of the watch looked down with bored eyes as he passed by. “Watch yer step there, governor!” the watchman called, as the mare swerved around a pile of trash that someone had thrown into the ditch in defiance of the law, and then a woman squatting on the slope by a folded patch of canvas that had been a tent. It had been pitched at the bottom of the ditch, but with the melt it was too soggy for good camping. The woman watched him suspiciously as if she feared that he had come to run her off, since strictly speaking, squatters were not allowed to populate the ditch any more than people were supposed to use it as a repository for their trash. But Stephen merely nodded as he passed, and then turned the corner as the walls led southward.

  At Galdeford Gate, he dismounted and walked up the slope to the road, as the incline was so steep that he feared the mare could not make the climb with him on her back.

  He passed another bun shop on the road, which made his mouth water, but he had spent his quota on buns for the day, and though the proprietor called to him, he could only wave at her.

  He went left at the fork onto the Upper Galdeford Road, keeping to the edges of the street as much as possible, for the mud was less pernicious there.

  Shortly, he passed a little stone chapel on the left and the houses began to peter out, with the yards becoming larger and the houses more separated from each other, until he finally reached the house which sat under a large spreading oak.

  Beth Makepeese was in the yard with her oldest daughter Sally raking up acorns. The poor often ate boiled acorns and acorn bread when food got scarce. Beth leaned on her rake, and said, “Well, governor, come to visit, have you? It’s been a while. I thought you might have forgotten about us.”

  “Do you know if Julia is home?” he asked nodding toward the stand of wood beyond the field at the back of the house.

  “She might be,” Beth said. “There’s a fire going there. She usually banks it when she’s out. Don’t want to leave it going, you know, and burn down the house.”

  Calling Julia’s hut a house was overly generous, but Beth was right about the fire, because now that Stephen looked more closely, he could see smoke rising from among the trees. “Mind if I cut through?”

  “Suit yourself. Say, you wouldn’t mind delivering a satchel for me, would you, if you’re going that way? It’ll save us a trip.”

  “All right.”

  Beth waved at Sally, who ran into the house and emerged with a wool satchel. She handed the satchel up to Stephen, who saw it contained a loaf of bread — real bread, too, not the acorn variety. Beth had been badly beaten in the autumn by a fellow who turned out to be twice a murderer, and Julia, who had a way with herbs and healing, had tended to her injuries. This must be part of the payment. It moved Stephen to realize that Beth and her children were eating acorn bread so they could pay the debt.

  “Good day to you, mistress,” Stephen said as he rounded the corner of the house.

  “Good day to you, governor,” Beth said, resuming her search for acorns.

  Stephen crossed the field to the stand of trees. About forty yards inside the wood stood Julia’s hut, a thing so small that five or six people could not sleep comfortably within it, as Stephen himself had learned last autumn, when he had spent a night here.

  Julia stepped out of the hut as he dismounted and tied the mare to a sapling. “Well, look who’s here.” She was old and bent, with a face as wrinkled as a well-traveled roadbed.

  Stephen handed her the satchel. “From Beth Makepeese.”

  Julia accepted the satchel. “What trouble is brewing now?”

  “Enough to keep me busy.” Stephen drew a clay vial from his belt pouch and held it out to Julia.

  “What’s this?” Julia fingered the vial.

  “I was hoping you could tell me. You’re the herb expert.”

  Julia pulled the leather stopper from the vial and sniffed the contents. She looked sharply at Stephen, then upended the vial over an index finger. Some of the contents, a greenish sludge, oozed onto the finger. Julia tasted it gingerly. She spat into the snow and flicked the sludge off her finger.

  “What are you doing with this?”

  “What is it?”

  “A potion.”
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br />   “I know it’s a potion. What’s it a potion of?”

  “An herb, a simple vine. You’d just think it was a nuisance if you didn’t know any better, though it’s a pretty thing when it flowers in summer.” She gestured to her garden by the hut which was barely visible in the snow. “I had some growing there. It’s useful to treat many illnesses: rheumatism, gout —”

  “Gout!”

  “Yes,” Julia laughed, “if taken carefully. Sir Geoff sends a man around every few months for the syrup I make.”

  Julia walked to a stub nearby that was used for splitting firewood and sat down, favoring her back. “It has other uses. It can intoxicate, give people trances, still the shakes in old people, relieve pains in the chest. Take enough and it will make you mad.”

  Stephen shook his head, bewildered why they had found such a potion in the girl’s mouth.

  “Why are you interested?” Julia peered upward at him.

  “We found it in a dead girl’s mouth. Someone clamped her lips shut as if trying to force her to take it.”

  “Ah,” Julia nodded. “What girl would this be?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  She chuckled. “As well you might, if you don’t want to tarnish her reputation, whoever she is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Julia stirred the slush with a foot. “It has other uses, more sinister uses.”

  “It kills?”

  “In large amounts, yes. But in smaller ones, it will cause a woman to lose a child. There are those who come here, secretly, asking after the syrup of the nightshade, because they have got with a child they do not want.”

  “And you let people have it for that purpose?”

  “I do not ask. I am not responsible for what they do. They pay. That is all that counts.” She fixed him with a sharp eye. “Forced to drink, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps by someone who did not want her to have the child.”

  “Could be,” Stephen said, trying to digest this possibility. He remembered vividly how shapely the girl had been. She had shown no sign that she might have been pregnant.

  “You sure you don’t want to tell me who she is? Was?”