by Jason Vail
“You never wondered why she came back?”
Sharp’s lips pressed together. “Of course I wondered.”
“But you made no inquiry.”
“The countryside is troubled. Commerce is at a standstill. It is not safe to venture far from town, and Bucknell is far away.”
“Not that far. And FitzAllan’s agents frequent the town. I saw some myself only a few weeks ago. You didn’t think to ask them? I am sure that you do quite a bit of business with the earl.”
“I saw no reason to ask them.”
“It is a well-known fact that Lady Rosamond is dead. Pentre openly mourns her. They would know of this. I find it curious that, knowing your daughter was in service to the Pentres, none of them would mention her death to you.”
“My employees conduct my day-to-day business. I have little need nor reason to speak with such people as come to the shop.”
“Well, then,” Stephen sighed, having hit a wall. “There is nothing for it but to see your daughter.”
“I cannot allow that.”
“No?”
“Her condition is delicate. Your questions would only upset her.”
“I have no intention of upsetting her. I wish to see for myself that she cannot speak or give testimony.”
“The indignity! Have you no respect!” Sharp burst out angrily. “She is ailing! Why can’t you leave her alone? You say you are from Herefordshire? You have no jurisdiction here.” He called for one of his servants, “Egbert! Please escort the lady and these men out. We have done our business for the day.”
Back on the street, Stephen gazed up the lane opposite Sharp’s shop at a tableau that often occurred on the public streets in certain quarters of towns. About fifty yards away a cow had been led out and a man stood at its head with a mallet in his hand. Stephen turned away before he could see the mallet used.
Gilbert, who had also turned away, murmured, “Quite protective, wasn’t he? As any man would be with a daughter.”
“He was,” Stephen said. “No more than I suppose you would be, had it been you.”
“I suppose not,” Gilbert said. “Insanity in a family is an embarrassment.”
Stephen noticed Margaret looked troubled. “Something bothering you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “He seemed a bit too indignant. What harm could have come had we just been allowed to peek through the door? But then, you wouldn’t have been satisfied with that, would you?”
“No,” Stephen said. “I wouldn’t.”
“I wonder if he sensed that,” she said. “You are not good at dissembling.”
“I am so.”
“Pentre would not have caught on to if you’d been better.”
“How would you know? You weren’t there.” Stephen gazed into the shop at the arms and armor. As much as he wanted to go in and inspect them, he pulled his mind away. “Where does that physician live who attended me?”
“Not far from here. Down the hill on Hundeswete Street.”
“Show me the way.”
“Are you feeling ill?”
“No, I’m fine, physically anyway. It’s my disposition that needs attention. Gilbert, you stay here and keep watch on the house.”
“Whatever for?” Gilbert asked.
“People coming and going. That’s why people watch houses.”
“You suspect something?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve a feeling.” It was really more of a memory, something he had heard once and had forgotten, and could not yet recall it.
“Ah, yes, well, we’ve come to put so much trust in those, haven’t we?”
“Gilbert!”
“I’m a clerk, a man of letters. I’m not the sort who’s good at skulking in streets spying on people.”
“You’re all we have at the moment. So you’ll have to rise to the occasion. Oh, and one more thing — the picture.”
“Ah.” Gibert produced it.
Stephen stuffed the paper in his belt pouch.
“Well, just don’t be long,” Gilbert said, moving off toward the lane where the men ahead had killed the cow and strung it up on a scaffold for butchering. Fortunately there was a tavern and bun shop not far away where Gilbert could shelter and keep watch.
“That physician, madam,” Stephen said to Margaret.
“This way.”
The physician’s house was only thirty yards from the intersection with Mardefole Street, which led steeply down hill to Saint George’s Bridge whose red towers they briefly glimpsed when crossing the street. It was a four-story timber building painted a dignified black and white; none of the yellows and blues and greens fancied by many shop keepers in an effort to make their establishments stand out. People did not trust flamboyant physicians, so black and white it was.
A servant admitted Stephen and Margaret to the hall, and hurried upstairs to fetch the physician, while they stood by the fire to wait. Presently, the physician bustled in, a tall slender man wearing a fox-trimmed, embroidered robe.
“Lady Margaret!” Helmo Pride exclaimed. “It is there some emergency?”
“No, Master Pride,” Margaret said, “not one requiring application of your professional talents.” She eyed Stephen. “At least as far as I’ve been led to believe.”
“What can it be, then, that brings you here in person?”
“Sir Stephen has business with you. He has trouble finding his way around and needed a guide. I’ll let him explain it, for he has not shared his mind with me.”
“Your back is troubling you?” Pride asked Stephen.”
“My back is fine. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“What sort of questions?”
“Have you been summoned at any time recently to the home of Buckwell Sharp?”
“The cutler? Why, no.”
“The physicians in Shrewsbury, do they have a guild?”
“Well, there are only four of us, but yes, we do.”
“How often do you meet?”
“Once a month.”
“When was your last meeting?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Humor me.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“When you meet, do you speak about your patients?”
“Occasionally.”
“I imagine that you would discuss difficult cases. Seek each other’s opinions, that sort of thing.”
“We do, yes, now and then.”
“Had any of your fellow physicians been summoned to Sharp’s house? To attend his daughter?”
“Why no, not that anyone has said.”
“It’s said that the girl has gone mad, that she’s unable to speak. If any of your fellows had been called to the Sharp house for a case like that, do you think they would have mentioned it?”
Pride nodded. “Yes, I think they would have. The daughter of such a prominent man, yes.” He added, “I have heard that she is addled.”
“But not from one of your colleagues.”
“No. Just a rumor, that’s all.”
“Thank you, Master Pride. You’ve been very helpful. Oh, there is one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“I presume that you are familiar with Marjory Sharp.”
“I have seen her many times.”
Stephen fumbled in his pouch and produced the paper. He handed it to Pride. “Is this Marjory Sharp?”
Pride’s eyes lingered on the drawing. “No. I have never seen her before. Such a beautiful girl. Enough to take your breath away. Who is she?”
“Rosamond Pentre?” Margaret asked.
“It would seem so, after all,” Stephen said.
Chapter 28
“Did you learn what you needed?” Margaret asked as they climbed up the hill toward the spot where they had left Gilbert.
“I did,” Stephen replied grimly.
“But what did he say that was significant?” Margaret walked on a few more steps, swerving to avoid a pile of tras
h thrown out a window. “Ah! I see. Sharp said physicians treated his daughter. Yet none had. He’s lying!”
“It would seem so. About that, certainly.”
“Marjory’s not mad then?”
“I suspect not.” Then the memory that he had been struggling to recover came to him as if out of the dark. “If she couldn’t speak, how did this other Sharp person know where she stayed in Ludlow so as to recover her possessions?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Neither had I, until now.”
“He’s hiding her, then — protecting her!”
They reached the corner across from Sharp’s shop and turned into the lane. Margaret’s nose wrinkled at the stench of blood, mud, and shit that seemed a choking cloud. “I hate Butcher’s Lane. Must we come here?”
“Only to fetch Gilbert.”
Fortunately the tavern where Gilbert had found refuge was not far from the corner.
“You’re not thinking of asking me to remain?” Gilbert asked when they entered.
“No,” Stephen said. “I’ll stay.”
“Ah, thank God. Here.” Gilbert thrust a leather tankard of ale into Stephen’s hand. “This will complete your disguise. It’s quite good, by the way. A pleasant surprise.”
After Gilbert hurried out, Margaret asked, “Should I send to the sheriff?”
“You’ve already threatened that. He’ll remember it.”
“So there’s no need?” she asked puzzled.
“Not yet.”
“You are not a law unto yourself.”
“That’s a thing I should say to you, given your customary business.”
Margaret smiled slightly at that, and went out.
Several hours passed before any activity outside the Sharp residence was of the sort that piqued Stephen’s curiosity. An enclosed wagon pulled by four horses halted before the passageway to the courtyard. Men loaded two large trunks into the wagon. There was a long pause before two passengers, cloaked and hooded, boarded the wagon and drew the canopy all the way down on all sides so that they could not be seen. The driver, astride the lead left-hand horse, snapped his whip and the wagon struggled way up the hill, followed by two armed men on horses who gave every appearance of an escort meant for a journey through dangerous country.
Stephen left his tankard and a farthing coin on the window sill, and hurried after the wagon.
Four-horse wagons can outpace a man on foot when the road is good, but uphill in the mud the wagon’s passage was slow and Stephen had nearly caught up by the time it reached Saint Mary’s Street. He hung back, however, even though traffic increased as they neared the castle and the north gates, which slowed the wagon’s progress to a crawl, and then to a halt within sight of the first gate. This sort of traffic jam was not unusual. The city gates were only wide enough to allow the passage of one wagon at a time, and as there were wagons coming in, the gate wards made them halt and pay the toll. This compelled those going out to wait until the wards had admitted several wagons and then allowed four or five to leave.
The wait was so long that Stephen began to feel exposed standing there in the street. Loiterers were suspected of having crime on their minds, and the escorts had already spotted him when one of them looked back for some reason. If he stayed put, he’d attract attention and not necessarily theirs. So he passed down the line of carts and wagons. As he drew abreast of the enclosed wagon, a woman pulled up the curtain to see how much delay she might expect. She had to be more than forty, a jutting chin with lines around her mouth and eyes as if she scowled a lot. Judgmental blue eyes examined him as he trudged past pretending not to notice. At the sight of her, Stephen worried that he had made a mistake. Could this be some other business and the chase for nothing? He resisted the impulse to leap inside. If he tried this, the escorts would be on him in an instant. He had to find a way to distract them, but he could not think of a single thing to do. He considered following them to their destination. It was late in the day, with little more than an hour of daylight left, so they couldn’t be going far, five or six miles at most, but the prospect of such a long walk and spending the night by the road did not appeal. And he preferred a public place for the inquiry, not someone’s country house where he might not be able to get away if things went sour.
As he entered the gate arch, he spotted a small troop of urchins lingering about the Peacock Tavern on the other side of the street. They were throwing a leather ball about, but Stephen suspected that they had other motives. He’d seen gangs of cut-purses before, and this had all the signs of one. Late in the day was the best time for their activities, for this was when most marks were distracted with the satisfaction drink and a good meal afforded and the failing light offered the chance of an easy escape. Yet herein lay an opportunity.
He passed through the gate and approached the gang. They paused in their game and regarded him with suspicious eyes. Such a bold approach usually meant someone in authority and that meant trouble, and Stephen could see the urge to bolt taking hold in their minds.
He held up a hand and said, “Boys, I have a business proposition for you.”
As the wagon with its escorts finally emerged from the gate, Stephen nodded to the leader of the boys, a child of no more than twelve or thirteen, but tall, strapping, and on the verge of manhood.
“Right, then,” the boy said to his fellows. “That’s the one.”
The gang had already prepared a pile of mud clods, for there were no stones about, spheres of filth that they had molded with surprising care and enthusiasm.
They took up these disgusting missiles, formed not merely of mud but of the shit that people often dumped into the streets when they were too lazy to put it aside for the nightsoil workers, and gauged the distance and the aim. There was joy on their faces, since the chance to strike back at the upper classes and get paid for it was an opportunity that came only once in life.
When the wagon came abreast of the Peacock where Stephen waited and the escorts’ backs were to them, the boys let fly.
The shower of mud clods struck the escorts in the back, and like anyone attacked suddenly from behind, they wheeled to get a look at their assailants, before charging to get their revenge, as the boys scattered in all directions.
That was Stephen’s moment. He dashed forward, and leapt over the tailgate.
A sudden intrusion almost always meant robbers, and Stephen said to the two passengers seated in each other’s arms on the forward bench, “Easy! I mean no harm!”
The older woman did not take him at his word, for Stephen had not even settled on the opposite bench when she whipped out a dagger and struck at him with devilish speed. The attack was so sudden, violent, and unexpected that Stephen barely had time to parry and swivel his body just enough to get out of the way. The woman dove at him with such force that the dagger stuck in the board behind him. Stephen pushed her back into her seat as he worked the dagger free.
“You can have this back after we’ve had a talk,” he said.
“We’ve nothing to say to you,” the older woman said.
Stephen turned his attention to her companion, who had watched these proceedings not with alarm, but with indifference. She was young and almost as pretty as the girl in the ice. Stephen had expected her to be collected and neat, but she was disheveled, her hair down and hanging about her face. The slump of her shoulders, the way she hung her head, her hands clasping together in her lap, and the cast of her eye — all spoke of a deep melancholy. Was she really mad?
“You’re Marjory,” he said to her.
“She is not!” the older woman said hotly.
The girl nodded.
“Do you know who I am?” Stephen asked.
“Don’t say anything!” the older woman said.
Marjory shook her head.
“You have no idea why I’ve come to speak with you?” Stephen fumbled into his pouch for the dandelion ring. Marjory’s eyes went wide at the sight of it.
“You�
��ve seen this before. You know what it means,” Stephen said.
“Marjory, dear!” the older woman implored. “Please, girl, if you love me, say no more!”
“Nana, I’m so tired. I just want it over.” Marjory’s fingers twined and untwined in her lap. She asked, “What do you want to know?”
“I need to know how Rosamond Pentre died.”
Chapter 29
Warin Pentre came to her during the night. He and Rosamond had quarreled again. It had been so loud that everyone in the hall could not help hearing. It had been about the same thing that had sparked many of their other quarrels. He wanted his rights as a husband, and she refused him. He tried to take her again by force, but she had acquired a dagger — which Marjory had got for her — and she cut Pentre on the hands, only minor wounds, but he withdrew, cursing loudly, to have them tended. When he had been bandaged, he came to her.
“She tried to kill me!” he said to Marjory as he stood over her bed.
“Serves you right,” Marjory said.
“She’s my wife! She has no right!”
“You may have bought her body, like you do a swine or a horse, but you cannot buy her heart, nor beat your way into it.”
Pentre sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do. She hates me, all because I do the bidding of my lord. You’re supposed to obey those above you. Why doesn’t she understand that?”
“Perhaps because you do so with too much enthusiasm.”
“You think I enjoy it, the killing?”
“You do. Admit it. You and that little snake, Edmund. He’s more your son that Walcot’s.”
“Edmund has his uses.”
“But the child? Did you have to let him kill the child?”
“It was being noisy and bothersome.”
“You had just killed his mother. What did you expect?”
Pentre put a hand on Marjory’s throat. His grip was the same as if he intended to strangle her, though his touch was gentle. “And you, what do you think?”
“I think a man must obey his lord. Although, I think you have wide discretion in how you do so.”