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

by Jason Vail

  “Ah. Well, that was clever of you. Sir Geoff will never connect Harry’s inquiry with either of us, should Harry’s interest reach his ears.”

  “That was my thought. You think otherwise?”

  “Oh, no,” Gilbert said at Stephen’s back as he hurried to catch up. “Far be it for me to question your judgment.”

  “You do it all the time. Why stop now?”

  “I take it from your haste that Harry has not returned,” Gilbert gasped, jogging at Stephen’s side as his longer legs propelled him up Bell Lane toward Broad Street.

  “My, you are quick this evening. Don’t you have guests to take care of?”

  “They can manage for a few moments. After all, this is duty —”

  “— of a sort,” Stephen finished for him, with a smile concealed by the twilight.

  “Of a sort,” Gilbert echoed.

  They turned onto Broad Street and climbed toward the church spire at the top of the ridge. Stephen slowed his pace so that Gilbert did not have to jog to keep up, although the older man still puffed from his exertions.

  At High Street, they saw in the gloam the dim outlines of a cart with a man’s figure upon it in the empty street. They hurried up to the cart. Harry turned his head at the sound of their approach.

  “How good of you to come,” Harry said. “And I thought I had been forgotten.”

  “What are you still doing here?” Gilbert asked, still gasping from the rush.

  “Guarding the cart, of course,” Harry said. “It would have been stolen if I’d left it here.”

  “Quite right,” Gilbert said.

  “I know Edith thinks the cart is worth more than me,” Harry said.

  “Well,” Gilbert said in defense of his wife, “carts do cost money.”

  “So,” Stephen said, “the question is who will take the cart back. After all, it is your cart.”

  “You’re not suggesting that I pull it,” Gilbert said.

  “It’s more than a suggestion,” Stephen said. “I am a crown officer. Crown officers cannot be seen to pull carts.”

  “You did once.”

  “That was Boxing Day. Almost, anyway.”

  Gilbert glanced about the deserted street. All the shop windows were closed, only candlelight visible behind a few of them as the residents finished their supper and prepared for an early bed. “No one will see.”

  “Get going before the cart falls apart from old age.”

  “And old Harry here doesn’t freeze to death,” Harry said. “It’s getting cold. Don’t forget about old Harry.”

  “I should make you walk, for that tongue of yours,” Gilbert said. “It’s what got you in this trouble in the first place.”

  “The boy was rude to me,” Harry said archly. “I cannot suffer people’s rudeness, especially from serving boys.”

  “When they’re not your serving boy, it pays dividends to be polite,” Gilbert said. “A lesson you should take to heart. It will improve all your commerce with others.”

  “Tell you what,” Stephen said, “owing to the dark and your old age, I’ll take one trace and you take the other. That way we share the humiliation.”

  “Done,” Gilbert said.

  “What humiliation?” Harry asked, as they picked up the traces of the cart and began pulling toward distant Broad Street.

  “An acquaintanceship with you is more than enough humiliation for anyone,” Stephen said.

  “I shall remember that, next time you need a favor.”

  “Meanwhile,” Stephen said, “you are in my employ. While we are on our way, you can tell us what you learned today. That way, you don’t have to strain your tongue by repeating yourself for Gilbert’s benefit.”

  Stephen was morose when they arrived at the Broken Shield. “I was certain he would hear something,” he said.

  “It was too much to expect for one day’s work,” Gilbert said. “But look — you haven’t done so badly yourself. You’ve learned something useful.”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure I can do anything about it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t afford to go.”

  “What? Why, you were rolling in money only a day ago. That advance!”

  “It’s gone, or nearly so.”

  “What?” Harry called from the back of the cart as they reached the doors of the stable. “How can that be? Probably hiding out in the Wobbly Kettle while the rest of us toil in the wet and cold!” The Wobbly Kettle was a bathhouse that offered other pleasures than warm water down by the bridge over the Teme.

  “Hardly,” Stephen said as he set Harry’s board on the ground. “Your license took up a good part of it. And then there were the fees for my horses.”

  Harry swung down to the board. “Don’t go blaming me, you spendthrift. I’ve been telling you for months you ought to sell those miserable beasts. You’ve a fortune walking on horseshoes, and you know it.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” Stephen said.

  “Quit clinging to your illusions and face reality,” Harry snapped. “Poor men can’t afford illusions. You’re not rich enough for them.” Harry swung into the stable. He stopped and looked over his shoulder, then turned part way around. “If you go there, Shrewsbury, you might learn something about the saint?”

  “She’s not a saint.”

  “That’s your opinion. You’re entitled to be wrong.”

  “The inquiry could be no more productive than yours today.”

  “Still, there’s a chance you’ll find out her name and how she died.”

  “There is that,” Stephen said. “Possibly.”

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Harry swung off into the dark. While Stephen waited, he and Gilbert rolled the cart back to its place by the side of the stables, and returned to the doorway. Presently, Harry reappeared. He had a sack on his lap. He held out the sack to Stephen, and said, “This ought to cover your expenses.”

  Stephen took the sack, amazed at the weight of it. It was too dark now to see what it contained, but when he put his hand inside, he found it had coins at the bottom. “Harry, where did you get this?”

  “I saved it,” Harry said. “It’s not like I have the opportunity to drink or whore it away.”

  “You’re giving this to me — or is this a loan?”

  Harry rubbed his thighs. “I’ll have it back, if you please, and something in return.”

  “What?”

  “That picture you have of her — I want it. When you’re done with it, that is.”

  Chapter 13

  Shrewsbury lay within a great loop of the River Severn, surrounded by brownstone walls that glowed a brilliant orange in the afternoon sun.

  The road from Ludlow crossed a wooden bridge to Coleham Island, a narrow strip of land just below the bridge leading eastward across a boggy pond from the town to the Benedictine abbey. Houses lined the road there, potters mostly, the air foul with the smoke from their furnaces, and at the bridge connecting to the causeway, Stephen and Gilbert found an inexpensive inn. They created an alarm when they entered, Stephen wearing helmet, mail, shield, and sword, as it was unusual for anyone to go about in that fashion. The inn’s proprietor took one look and fled out the back door as if he had a guilty conscience about something. A splash was heard from the rear garden as the proprietor threw himself into the pond behind the house.

  “What got into him?” Stephen asked mildly.

  “You’re not from the sheriff?” the proprietor’s wife asked, taking command in this moment of crisis.

  “No, I’m from Ludlow.”

  “You’ll be wanting a room then, I suppose?”

  “That was our intent.”

  “You’re willing to share? Or do you want your squire there to have his own place?” she asked, nodding at Gilbert, who had collapsed onto a bench and was looking with great desire at a servant girl with a large pitcher of what had to be ale. Despite the civility of the question, she managed to communicate both r
eproof and amusement at the aging and somewhat disheveled state of the alleged squire.

  Stephen caught both the reproof and the amusement, but did not disown Gilbert. “The same room will be acceptable.”

  “We can manage that. You can see it now, if you please.”

  She turned toward the stairs. Stephen gestured to Gilbert to accompany them, but Gilbert, exhausted by a thirty mile ride which they had accomplished in a single day, shook his head as he held out a cup to the serving girl, who passed him by without charging the cup. Gilbert said, “You go. I am sure you can be trusted in the matter of beds.”

  “Then I don’t want to hear you complain if I choose unwisely, or not to your satisfaction.”

  “I’d be happy with a pile of hay at the moment,” Gilbert said, snagging the serving girl’s skirt at last so that she could not get away.

  Stephen followed the innkeeper’s wife upstairs to a room at the rear of the house. “I’ll let you have it all to yourself,” she said as she pushed open the shutters to admit light so that he could inspect the premises. “You’ll note that it has a lock and everything, so your valuables will be safe. And that’s a real feather bed as well.”

  The proprietor was halfway across the pond, his head and shoulders just above the surface.

  “I hope he’ll be all right,” Stephen said, as he prodded the bed to test the mattress and scout for bedbugs.

  “Don’t mind him. This is the third time this month that he’s swum the pond.” She shouted through the window, “Get back here, you dumbass! He ain’t from the sheriff!”

  She closed the shutters, returning the room to semi-darkness.

  “He could catch his death in this cold,” Stephen said sympathetically. Although the thaw had melted most of the ice and snow, it was still chilly enough that a swim was something to be avoided.

  “He’s got more blubber than a whale,” the woman said. “He’ll be all right. Supper’s half an hour before sundown, if you’ve a mind to eat with us. It’s good honest fare, not the best in town, but it will fill the belly, and it don’t taste bad, either.”

  “There is something you could help me with,” Stephen said. “I’m looking for a couple of fellows.”

  “This isn’t legal business, is it?”

  “Not really.”

  “All right, then.” She stood in the doorway, arms crossed, waiting for the question.

  “I’m trying to find a certain Edmund Tomkys. I’m told he’s a fletcher in town.”

  “He owe you money?”

  “He owes me an explanation.”

  The woman smiled crookedly. “Arrows won’t fly straight, eh? You’re not the first to register a complaint about that. You’ll find him in the Castle Foregate. On the right, down from the Peacock Tavern. And the other?”

  “A fellow named Bill Sharp.”

  The woman laughed. “There’s dozens of Sharps around here, and that’s only counting the grown ups, and half of ’em ’re named Bill! You’ll have to do better than that.”

  The prospect of rest and a full belly tempted Stephen to fall upon the bed and wait until tomorrow to make further inquiries. It had been a long ride from Ludlow, which he and Gilbert had made alone rather than with a traveling party because he did not want to be confined to the leisurely pace preferred by most people. There was nothing like a thumping trot that went on for hours to put a cramp into the small of your back and an ache in your head. They had done so well on the road that there was still time left in the day. He could not see wasting it over a tankard of ale in the inn, so he went down to the hall.

  Gilbert was still at his place on the bench, not having moved any more than to turn around so that he was now facing the table bent over a quarter round of white cheese. He paused in carving a slice from the quarter round and said with a mouth full of cheese, “Want some?”

  Stephen sat down beside him and accepted the sliver. It was quite good cheese, to his surprise, with a sharp and salty flavor. “This is good.”

  “Best cheese I ever had in my life,” Gilbert said, forcing another sliver into an already full mouth.

  “Careful there,” Stephen said. “You’ll choke.”

  “Then I will die of pleasure.”

  “I’m going into town,” Stephen said. “Want to come?”

  “I am not moving from this place.”

  “You could bring your cheese.”

  “No. I’ve had enough traveling. I want only supper and bed. You are an evil man to drive me so hard.”

  “You didn’t want to sleep by the road, did you?”

  There was nothing between Ludlow and Shrewsbury but little villages, which meant that if they could not find a place in the corner of someone’s house or in their barn, they would have had to settle for a bed of leaves. And there was the prospect of robbers to contend with, not to mention the vile things that country legends said slipped through the forests at night. “There is that. What are you going to do? See the sights?”

  “I want to find this Tomkys fellow.”

  “What about Sharp?”

  “Apparently the town is full to the brim with Sharps, almost all of them named Bill.”

  Gilbert sighed. “That will make things difficult on that front, then.”

  “Yes, that’s why I thought I’d leave that part of the work to you.”

  “You wouldn’t! This is your inquiry! I’m only here to record the results.”

  Stephen patted him on the shoulder, then cut the remainder of the cheese round in half.

  “Hey!” Gilbert protested as Stephen bit into a half.

  “I’m paying for it, after all.”

  “Yes, well, then don’t forget to pay the woman before you go out. I’m not sure she’ll let me run a tab. Innkeepers are always so damned untrusting.”

  Stephen set out over the northern bridge off the island, which crossed above marshy ground rather than a proper stream that bled into a pond rimmed with ice on the right. The path of the innkeeper, who had fled across the pond, could be made out where the ice rim had been crushed.

  He paused to admire the new stone tower on this side of the river guarding the bridge to town. To the east, the abbey church’s blunt tower, just visible among the abbey outbuildings, glowed almost orange. He thought about going in. Gilbert would want to hear about it when he got back, as he walked across the stone span over the Severn leading to the town. He paid the toll to enter — no dispensations for a crown officer so far outside his jurisdiction — delayed only a short time by a shouting match between the two gate wardens and a prisoner in the little gaol within the tower. He walked up Sub Wyle, a muddy street on flat ground with the low wooden houses of the poor on either side. At the first right, he turned onto a street called Wyle and began a climb up a steep hill past the houses and shops of a tailor, a dyer, a glover, and two furriers. Before the top of the hill, another, more narrow street came in from the right, Doggepol, the innkeeper’s wife had called it. He turned here and continued to the top of the hill, where Saint Mary’s Church occupied the summit in a square surrounded by houses of the deacons and a few of the more well-off inhabitants of the town.

  Stephen entered the street on the south side of the church and paused three houses from the corner. A woman servant was airing a mattress over the sill of a window above him. She stopped to give him the eye and said something to someone behind her. Stephen could not see who it was, only a vague shape. He almost asked if the mistress was home, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. The thought that Margaret de Thottenham might actually be here, within those walls, smarted through the longing and desire that had driven him here against his better judgment. It was foolish to come. Although they had lain together, it had turned out to be strictly business on her part. She hadn’t really cared for him, after all, and probably would not appreciate it if he called. Besides, it was unlikely that she was here anyway. The manor-born moved about from one property to another, so she was as likely to be in the country as here. He turned away
before he embarrassed himself any further.

  As he reached the castle, the street bent left and descended. Just beyond the north gate, the road forked, the left heading off toward the river and the right, the broader of the two, heading downhill toward the gray country beyond.

  No signs gave away the location of Tomkys’ shop and Stephen had to ask directions at the Peacock Tavern whose main customers appeared to be off-duty soldiers from the castle, and only got them after he bought a pint of ale he didn’t want and tipped the serving girl.

  It was strong ale, and, not one to waste a drop even if he hadn’t desired it in the first place, Stephen was lightheaded as he emerged into the street, hugging the edge to avoid a collision with a fast-moving post rider, and then a cart pulled by a pair of oxen loaded with so much hay that a person in one of the windows above could have stepped into the summit of the mound.

  “Careful there, sir!” the wagon driver called out to him, laughing at Stephen’s narrow escape, unmindful of his own danger since the huge stack swayed ominously and could collapse upon him at any time.

  Now that he could direct his attention down the street without the threat of being trampled, Stephen had no trouble identifying Tomkys’ shop: while he had been in the tavern, a wagon had stopped in front of it and a half dozen men were clustered on or about the wagon. Someone was passing bundles of finished arrows through the shop window to two of the men who handed them up to another who stood in the bed. Most of the arrows were unpainted, but at least two of the bundles held yellow-painted arrows with red stripes, just like the arrow that Stephen had recovered from the murder site on the Shrewsbury road — well, not quite an exact match. Instead of three red stripes near the notch, these arrows had two. Nonetheless, Stephen’s heart thumped against his ribs, not exactly with excitement, but something close to it: the same exhilaration he experienced on the hunt at the sight of the quarry, or at beginning of a fight.

  Trying to appear casual and unconcerned, Stephen strolled down to the wagon. He paused to stroke the head of one of the horses, while at the same time examining the men as surreptitiously as possible for some hint of whence they had come. Nothing in particular marked them out as belonging to any lord, although they had to have had such an affiliation. These men were well-enough, but plainly dressed, with simple long tunics that hung almost to their knees: yellows and blues and reds; and good quality stockings also of varying colors that often clashed with the color of the tunic, and sound, well-made shoes. Yet no one but a lord bought a full wagon-load of arrows at once. They had the lean, wolfish look of soldiers, and all of them carried long daggers just like the one at the small of Stephen’s back rather than the simple knives many peasants bore.