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

by Jason Vail

  “No.” Stephen recovered the vial and replaced the stopper. “That’s best kept a secret.” Already, people visiting the girl’s grave were claiming miraculous cures simply from lying upon the spot where she had been laid to rest. Would their trust in her diminish if this truth got out?

  “It’s not hard to guess who she is, you know,” Julia said slyly.

  “If you do, keep it to yourself. If I hear the slightest rumor, I’ll be back to visit you.”

  Julia opened her mouth to make some smart retort, but she reconsidered. She nodded.

  “Good. Thank you for your help.”

  Chapter 10

  The Trumpet lay at the foot of Dinham Lane where that narrow alley running downhill from the castle struck Mill Lane, which ran along the south wall of the town. The plot it occupied was triangular in shape, and thus so was the building, a small intimate thing of blue-painted timber and white plaster, and the jaunty sign of a jester playing a trumpet that promised more comfort than it actually delivered. Among innkeepers it was known for its sparse food and sparse rooms, but travelers lacking means found it just a left turn from Broad Gate and perhaps a hundred yards farther on their journey, a much easier pull than the climb uphill to the Broken Shield with its greater comforts and greater prices.

  Stephen paused at the prow of the building, where a rain barrel caught runoff from the roof. The mare nuzzled the contents of the barrel as he slid off. There was still a film of ice on the water, which Stephen broke with a fist so she could drink. He tied her to the handle of the barrel, and went into the common room.

  The room was small and as triangular as the building that embraced it, with only half a dozen tables arranged to catch the heat from the fireplace within the far wall. Whoever was in charge of the fire had let it burn to embers that were in danger of expiring, not that it mattered at the moment, since the room was empty. Stephen wondered if it was always so at this time of day, even though the dinner hour was approaching. Perhaps such a modest establishment made its money on supper as people came in for the night.

  He heard voices from the rear, in the rooms behind the fireplace. He pushed open the door by the fireplace. It opened into a kitchen, where a woman with a very broad behind was bent over a skillet of onions and sausage on the fire, and a stout man had thick forearms thrust into a barrel of dirty dishes.

  “Have a seat there,” the stout man said. “I’ll be right with you.”

  “I didn’t come for the custom,” Stephen said. “Sorry.”

  The stout man dried his hands and arms on a towel. “I know you. You’re that coroner fellow.”

  “I have that honor. You’re Jacky Triplett?”

  “You’ve coronered me!” Jacky said, laughing at his pun.

  “Stop that!” the woman said without turning around from her skillet. “Sweet Jesus, and the man’s not even drunk yet. Forgive him, yer honor, he’s got things loose upstairs.”

  “I think we all have things a little loose up there,” Stephen said. “We just try not to show it.”

  “I hope yer speaking for yerself, sir,” the woman said.

  Jacky poured ale into a wooden cup, which he extended to Stephen. “Whatever’s loose upstairs, I know how to treat distinguished visitors. You’ve come on business, I take it?”

  “Unfortunately.” Stephen sipped from the cup, wishing he could have some of the sausages and onions instead, as his stomach had begun to rumble at the aroma. The worst thing about being poor, aside from the lack of steady women, was the bad food, if there was any food at all.

  Jacky settled against a table and crossed his arms. “Nobody’s died hereabouts lately. We’d have heard about that.”

  “This isn’t about a recent death.”

  “Ah,” Jacky said, waiting for Stephen to go on.

  “During the recent troubles, before the big storm, two women came to stay here. Do you remember them?”

  “Two women?” Jacky frowned. “Governor, we were overflowing, like everyone in town. All our rooms were packed wall to wall. I even had people camping in the back garden. You’ll have to give me more.”

  “They would have been alone, without men.”

  “It may be that I recall such. Why?”

  Stephen removed the drawing of the girl in the ice from his belt pouch. Jacky bent over it, with the woman peering over his shoulder. Stephen asked, “Was she one of them?”

  “Good Lord!” the woman burst out. “You think she was here?”

  “You didn’t see her, though,” Stephen said, disappointed.

  Both of them shook there heads.

  Jacky said, “There was a pair, though. You remember, Abby. They kept to themselves. I don’t remember ever seeing the face of one of them. The other did all the talking.”

  “We thought she was sick,” Abby said. “I don’t know. It’s hard to keep them all straight. There were so many.”

  “There was one thing about them that’s hard to forget,” Jacky said. “The night of the storm. As I recall, the two had gone out for the day. In the evening, just as the storm broke upon us, they returned. They met someone at our doorstep, several men it seemed like. There was an argument, quite a lot of shouting. They never came in, and they never came back. Left all their belongings, too.”

  “What became of their things? Do you still have them?” Stephen was eager to see what they had left behind. Perhaps there might be clues about the women’s identity. Most innkeepers would have sold the lot without delay.

  “I held on to them, in case someone should come to reclaim them. A week or so ago, a fellow did come. Described perfectly what was there, paid us for our trouble, quite handsomely too, and carried them off.”

  “You didn’t happen to get a name in any of all this, did you?”

  “Funny,” Jacky frowned, “the girls never did give us their names that I remember. The fellow, though, he called himself Bill Sharp.”

  “That’s not very helpful. England has almost as many Sharps as Smiths.”

  “Well, this one said he was from Shrewsbury, if that’s any help.”

  “It helps if it was the truth.”

  “He seemed an honest, simple fellow. I know how to spot a liar — you’ve got to be good at it in this business, as your friend Wistwode knows. I had no reason to suspect a lie.” Jacky added, “Do you think that the saint really lodged with us?”

  “She could have,” Stephen said guardedly. “But anyway, she wasn’t a saint.”

  “So you say,” Jacky said with a hint of slyness. “You’ll let us know if it was her, won’t you? It will be good for business, people knowing that she stayed here.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Stephen said.

  “It’s a pity she died on the steps of the church,” Jacky said, although to be accurate, she had died on the walkway. “Any idea what happened?”

  “No,” Stephen said shortly. He returned the empty ale cup to Jacky. “Thanks for your help, and good day to you both.”

  As Stephen passed through the common room he heard Jacky remark to Abby, “I smell a lie there. Wonder what’s going on?”

  “Well, thank God you didn’t call him out to his face. He looks like the kind what would cut your throat if you looked at him sideways.”

  Chapter 11

  Stephen climbed Dinham Lane to the broad street that ran along the spine of the ridge from the castle to Saint Laurence’s and was variously known as Castle Street or High Street, depending where you stood upon it. In fact, exactly where Castle Street ended and High Street began was a matter of some confusion as nobody could agree on the exact place where one indistinguishable bit of road deserved a different name than the other bit. Merchants with houses along the way, particularly those located at the middle, sometimes gave their locations as being on Castle Street and at other times on High Street, depending on their mood or fancy. The usual demarcation point was reckoned to be about where the guildhall sat. As much as there was some confusion about it, the matter was not insignificant,
since the difference reflected the fact that the town was held by two different families, both descended from Walter Lacy, who died in 1241, leaving two granddaughters. On one side of the meandering line the Geneviles were entitled to the rents, and on the other the Verduns. Only Edmund Tarbent, the town clerk, knew who was paying whom, as things had not yet settled out between the two branches.

  Today, what there was of a market stood in front of the guildhall. Often boisterous and noisy, this corn market had not altered from the small, somber affair Stephen had seen earlier in the morning.

  Stephen trudged through the mud to Harry’s cart, which occupied a spot at the corner of the market. Harry sat on the bed, wrapped in his blanket, looking appropriately miserable.

  “How’re you doing?” Stephen asked.

  Harry pulled his blanket tighter. “It’s cold. I miss the gate. Oh, the days when gallant old Gip would light up the fire and we’d settle around it, bosom friends.”

  Stephen stirred the contents of the cup. There were a half dozen farthings here. “You’re not doing so badly. Heard anything?”

  “Only the gossip of strangers. Not about anyone you’d know.”

  “No word about any robberies, then,” Stephen said, disappointed. He was sure that Harry would have heard something.

  “Well, there might have been. A whisper or two.”

  When Harry didn’t go on, Stephen picked up his cup and tilted it as if he intended to pour the contents into his palm, giving Harry the eye. Harry opened his mouth to demand the return of his money, when Mistress Wattepas, wife of the town’s leading goldsmith, walked up, trailed by a string of maids as if she were a lady, a stern look on an already stern visage. Stephan hastily returned the cup to the bed of the cart. Mistress Wattepas waved at one of the maids, who dropped a half penny in Harry’s bowl, while he sputtered his thanks and showered Mistress Wattepas with praise that she probably did not care to hear as she drew off toward her family’s house and shop.

  “That’s a good Christian woman, unlike some folk I know,” Harry said.

  “You were saying,” Stephen said.

  “About what?”

  “About whispers.”

  “Oh, that. I doubt you would be interested.”

  “Let me be the judge.”

  Harry sighed. “If you must know, there have been two robberies on the Shrewsbury road in the last month.”

  Stephen looked about at the crowd. “Are your informants still here?’

  “Nah. They’ve gone.”

  “You let them get away?”

  “They weren’t anyone you’d be interested in.”

  “Damn it, Harry! I need to talk to them!”

  “The bad folk used an axe in one case and a bill in the other. Not bows,” Harry sneered. “Can’t be those you’re looking for. Beside, some’s already been caught and hanged. A pair of fellows living in the woods outside Onibury, they were. Hounds tracked ’em to their hiding place.”

  “Oh,” Stephen said.

  “Yeah, oh. Take me for an idiot, do you? Don’t trust me to use my judgment, eh?” Harry fumed. “Hire a man, and then you’ve got to manage his every twitch?”

  “Sorry,” Stephen said.

  “There is one bit you might find interesting,” Harry said offhandedly.

  “What’s that?”

  “It don’t have to do with robberies, strictly speaking.”

  “I’m waiting,” Stephen said.

  “There’ve been some barn burnings. Four altogether. All north of here, east of the Shrewbury road.”

  “That’s unusual. Welsh raiders?”

  “Well, that’s what some say.”

  “What do you say?” Stephen asked, since it was clear that Harry had an opinion about this.

  But Harry was not giving out opinions. Instead, he said, “One belonged to someone you know: the Bromptones of Wickley. Can’t mean anything, though. It’s too far off the road to Shrewsbury.”

  Wickley was a village about fifteen miles northeast of Ludlow, and at least the same distance east of the Ludlow-Shrewsbury road, quite a long way for Welsh raiders to travel in the middle of winter, though it had happened before. What made it a place of interest was the fact that Stephen had visited there last autumn when he had contracted to find Bromptone’s son who had absconded on his apprentice contract with a Ludlow draper. It had not been a friendly visit.

  “There, now,” Harry said. “You satisfied?”

  “I suppose I shall have to be. For now. Keep asking.”

  Chapter 12

  Suppers were generally a light meal of leftovers from dinner, but travelers wanted something more substantial in the evenings after a hard day on the road, so the suppers at inns were more elaborate. However, that was only for the visitors. Edith and the serving girls put down a supper of bread, butter, cheese and leftover pea soup before Stephen.

  Stephen huddled over his soup bowl some distance from the fire owing to the fact that guests had appropriated his usual spot, cloak over his shoulders against the draft that seeped through the cracks around the side door. The arrow he had found in the bushes at the site of the murder on the Shrewsbury road rested on the table, and every now and then, he prodded it with a finger.

  Gilbert’s puttered about making conversation with the guests to ensure they were happy. The only way to make an inn known was by word of mouth, so it paid to have happy customers, who would come back or urge their friends to stop. Good service was only part of it. A convivial host added considerably and Gilbert was more suited to this role than Edith. As the room was only half full, and the inn’s rooms only half let, he finished his first round of talking early and dropped to the bench beside Stephen.

  “More ale there, my good fellow?” Gilbert asked.

  “No,” Stephen said.

  Gilbert cocked an eyebrow at the sharp response. “What’s got into you?”

  “Harry learned nothing useful.”

  “That’s too bad. It seemed like a good idea.”

  “So, I’ve got to go Shrewsbury.”

  “I thought you were fond of travel. You make it sound like a hardship.”

  Stephen shrugged.

  Gilbert sipped ale from his tankard. “I’ve heard that Margaret de Thottenham has a townhouse in Shrewbury.”

  “Really,” Stephen replied with more interest than to the previous question, although he tried to disguise it. During the autumn, he had . . . his mind formed the word “affair,” but it really had been too brief for such a description: more like a night or two together, as they both schemed to acquire a valuable list of supporters of the barons plotting an uprising against King Henry.

  “Yes,” Gilbert said. “Fascinating woman. Quite beautiful.”

  “What of it?”

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “She tried to have us killed, remember?”

  “It was business. I didn’t take it personally. Neither should you.”

  “You think I wish to see her?”

  “Well, it would make the journey more enjoyable, knowing that such a supple reward lay at the end.”

  “You assume too much.”

  “Why do you have to go to Shrewsbury, anyway?” Gilbert asked. “Obviously it isn’t for love.”

  Stephen told him about his conversations with the fletcher, Julia, and Jacky at the Trumpet.

  Gilbert listened with his tankard balanced on his stomach. “An interesting, and perhaps useful coincidence. You might have all your questions answered in one swoop.”

  As Stephen considered a reply, the boy Mark entered through the side door. His appearance brought Harry to mind and, with that, curiosity about whether Harry had learned anything else. “Has Harry had his supper yet?” Stephen asked him.

  “How would I know . . . sir,” the boy scowled and stepped around Gilbert’s outstretched legs.

  Stephen turned and caught the boy’s arm. “You brought him back, didn’t you?”

  Mark pulled his arm away. “I’ll not
be humiliated by that man. He is rude — and he smells!”

  Heads swiveled in their direction at the outburst.

  “Well, he does stink a bit,” Gilbert allowed. “What’s this about bringing him back? Where did he go?”

  “Mark here contracted to take Harry to the market this morning and bring him back in the evening,” Stephen said. “You didn’t bring him back, I take it?”

  “No.”

  “Have you accepted his coin?” Stephen asked quietly.

  “No,” the boy replied, subdued by the menace in that quiet tone. “And I will not.”

  “What happened?” Stephen asked.

  “He insulted me when I went to get him. Called me a stupid prick just because I was a little late. I told him he could freeze his ass off if that was going to be his attitude.”

  “So you left him at the market.”

  “I did. And he can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.”

  Stephen could have ordered the boy to go back for Harry, if he was still at the market, but instead he stood up. “Fine.”

  Stephen went out to the yard and crossed to the stable, where he checked Harry’s stall, the last to the left, to see if he had come back on his own. The stall was empty. He did not often pause to look in the stall, and though he had seen it before he had never actually looked at it. Despite the dimming light, he could make out that it was oddly neat for someone whose person was so disheveled: a nest in a pile of hay lined with two folded blankets that gave signs of having been washed. Spare clothing hung from pegs within reach of a man with no legs. A little shelf above the nest with a candle that had never been lighted, a fragment of mirror, an empty wine bottle shaped like a naked woman, and a series of corks set up in a row like soldiers. There was so little, but Harry seemed to take great pride in it.

  Stephen emerged from the stables and nearly ran into Gilbert. “What’s Harry doing at the market?” Gilbert asked.

  “Checking on robberies on the Shrewsbury road. I got him a license to beg the market in return for his asking a few questions.”