Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2)

by Denise Domning

  Leaving his right foot in the print, he shifted into the solid stance required of a killing stroke. That put his left foot at the center of the clean spot. Hence, the single outlined footprint.

  Seeking to follow the same path as the murderer, Faucon reasoned out the line of events that resulted in Bernart’s death. Entering the workshop, the killer had taken the scissors from the peg and disassembled it behind the merchant, doing so without stirring any concern from the man he meant to kill. Once the scissor blades were parted, the murderer had dealt his blow. But rather than jump back to avoid the spewing blood, he’d remained behind the merchant long enough to have his foot outlined on the floor.

  Faucon frowned. When this particular injury was dealt well, as it had been here, there was no recourse for the victim save a swift death and an even swifter departure from consciousness. For blood to spew over the killer’s shoe said that he’d held the merchant to the stool for a moment before releasing Bernart to the floor and his death throes. But why hold him at all?

  Dissatisfied with what he conjured, Faucon stepped back, then looked down to see where his feet rested. He was in an area of the floor clean of blood spatter. Then again, most of what had spurted from Bernart’s severed veins had shot to the sides, not reaching directly behind the man. There were no more outlined prints, and none of the existing bloody footprints matched the size of the killer’s foot. Rather than blood-stained soles, this man would wear proof that he’d taken Bernart’s life only on the top of his right shoe.

  “I am ready, sir,” Edmund said.

  Faucon looked up. His clerk had set Bernart’s stool just inside the workshop doorway. Once again, Edmund had his traveling desk in his lap, their all-important parchment spread across its slanted top. His quill, poised above the skin, glistened with fresh ink. He looked expectantly at his master.

  “Bernart le Linsman has been murdered, his throat slashed,” Faucon told him. “Although I cannot state exactly when he died, I do know that he’s certainly been gone for longer than a half an hour. I say this because the blood that spilled from the linsman’s neck is separating now that it has congealed.”

  Faucon once more tested the heft of the half scissors he held. As well-made as it was, the fact that it needed to be disassembled before it could be used as a weapon made it inconvenient. Why commit this deed with something so awkward when a well-honed knife might serve?

  “Although I remain uncertain if this is an act of passion or one well-planned, the weapon used to kill Bernart was this half of the scissors.” He showed Edmund what he held. “The man who plied it did so with his right hand, for the wound begins high on the left side of Bernart’s throat and ends lower and far deeper on his right side. Whoever handled the blade was skilled in this sort of blow, for the cut is placed exactly where it should be to swiftly end a life.”

  Faucon grimaced as he said that. That information was hardly relevant. Anyone who’d ever slaughtered an animal knew how to use such a killing stroke, and that included just about everyone in this world.

  “Also, the one who dealt the blow was strong enough to almost sever the linsman’s windpipe. But the footprint he leaves behind suggests he was not a big man, I think,” Faucon added, his voice trailing off into quiet. Again, the idea of the smaller man felt wrong.

  “Good enough, sir,” Edmund said and lowered his head as he set quill to parchment. “Bernart was murdered, his death caused by Peter the Webber, who slashed his throat with the scissors that he took from the worktable.”

  Faucon shot him sharp look. “That’s not what I said.”

  “But it is all that the law requires,” Edmund countered without looking up, his quill scratching out the words he, not his employer, wished to place on the parchment.

  This was one battle Faucon would lose because Edmund was right. The law did not require him to describe more than the manner and classification of the death. But what satisfied the law left Faucon wanting much more.

  “Well, do not yet ascribe this act to the webber,” he commanded.

  Edmund paused in his scribbling to look up. His brows lifted. “But this Peter was witnessed right here at the dead man’s side. What of the hue and cry and the webber’s plea for sanctuary? An innocent man doesn’t run.”

  “He does if a mob is chasing him and he fears there will be no justice for him should he be caught,” Faucon retorted, then sighed. “Edmund, remember that the miller was found beneath his wheel, but it was not the wheel that killed him. We wouldn’t have known that had we not followed the trail left by the man who had truly done murder.”

  Edmund studied his master for a moment. “Aye, and the man who committed that crime yet evades the earthly justice that is his due. I hope he doesn’t believe he’ll so easily escape heavenly justice when his time comes.” The clerk’s eyes took light. “Do you think he has done the same here?”

  Faucon smiled. Edmund was far too literal. “Nay, not him. Never again him, and so he well knows.” The time for that one’s accusation and arrest had come and gone, but so had the man’s freedom to do as he pleased in this shire.

  “My point is only to ask you to humor me,” he told his clerk. “Just as it’s not in you to ignore the law, I cannot blindly accept what others tell me is true, or even what appears to be true, without verifying it for myself. Let me hunt for the one who did this in my own way.”

  Edmund watched him for another moment, then offered a single nod. “As you will, sir. I can leave space on the parchment to record the webber’s name later, when you have proved it to yourself.”

  Then, rising from the stool, the clerk set his lap desk on the same chest where he had carefully arranged his stone, his inkpot and his knife. After exactly positioning his quill across the top of the desk, he turned to look at his master.

  “Now that we are satisfied the linsman was indeed murdered, it is time to confirm that he was born an Englishman and not a Norman,” the monk said evenly. “Since neither the wife nor daughter may swear to this, and there appears to be no other man of consequence in the house at the moment, I would like to call his neighbors to testify. Indeed, as they attest to Master Bernart’s ancestry, perhaps they will also agree to stand surety for the wife, guaranteeing that she makes her appearance before the court when called to swear that she was the first finder.”

  Having expected more of an argument from Edmund, Faucon watched his clerk in surprise. “As you should,” he agreed.

  “I’ll come for you when I have returned here with the neighbors, sir,” Edmund said, then crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his sleeves, and sighed. “What a shame that they cannot offer vows in place of the wife, swearing for her that she was the first finder.”

  “Why would they need to?” Faucon countered. “A woman can be named as first finder, and be called to court to testify to the same.”

  “Of course she can. I just don’t wish to deal with her,” Edmund retorted.

  He shuddered. The movement was a mummer’s portrayal of disgust. “All the tears. It’s so unseemly.” Pivoting, he left the workshop.

  Faucon grinned at that. “I’ll take the woman’s vow without you then,” he called after his clerk.

  Indeed he would, and happily so. Not only did it give him the excuse he needed to intrude on the new widow’s grief with his questions, it also gave him the chance to ask what he would without worrying over what Edmund might blurt out.

  “As you should, you being our Coronarius, sir,” the monk called back from outside the house. It was the first time Faucon had heard the clerk admit such a thing.

  Grateful to have this unexpected moment alone with his thoughts, Faucon once more scanned the linsman’s workshop. This time his gaze came to rest on the checkered counting board and its stacks of pennies. There was no interruption in the spattering of Bernart’s blood across the coins. So, what the merchant had laid out on the board before his death remained where he’d placed it after his passing. That said thievery wasn’t the reason for th
e man’s death.

  The coins on the right side of the board were jumbled across its surface, some having even spilled over the back edge. Those on the board’s left side remained neatly stacked, some in piles as high as six pence. Faucon closed his eyes, imagining Bernart in the instant before the blade had been pulled across his throat.

  The man standing behind the merchant would have grabbed his victim’s head with his left hand as he began to ply his weapon. That was why the coins on the left of the board were undisturbed. In Bernart’s surprise at being grabbed by one he trusted, he’d instinctively tried to catch his attacker’s hand with his own. His left arm had come straight up from the table, not touching any of the coins, but his right had briefly swept across the board before he lifted his arm. Thus, the tumbled coins closest to that edge.

  Again, Faucon crouched near Bernart to reexamine the slash across his throat. This time, he looked at its depth at left side of the man’s neck. Even if Bernart had managed to stop the killer’s hand, preventing the stroke from being finished, it had been too late. Aye, this cut had grown bolder as it progressed, but enough damage had been done with the first bite of that strange blade to guarantee the merchant’s life would throb out of him in tune with the beat of his heart.

  Coming to his feet, he once more studied the counting board, again eyeing the coins and their arrangement, unable to shake his sense of dissatisfaction. The varying number in each column had the look of a master calculating the wages he owed his workers, or perhaps the sums he owed his suppliers for what they’d delivered. He caught his breath. Coins weren’t the only item needed when making such payments! Where were the tally sticks on which a man of business noted whom he’d paid and how much? And where had the coins he’d been counting out come from?

  The worktable was too dark and the light in here too dim to show him where blood had landed on the bench. He ran his fingertips from the edge of the counting board to where he was certain the blood spurting from Bernart’s severed veins couldn’t reach. Aye, there were places where he felt dried blood, but there wasn’t enough to leave the sort of tale he’d found on the floor.

  Turning, he eyed the chests lining the walls. None were unlocked, much less open. What sort of man kept his treasure chest locked in the middle of a task that might require him to return to it for yet more coins? Certainly not the sort of man who trusted as completely as Bernart. Nay, such a man as he would have thrown wide that chest, and left it so while he worked.

  Was that why the murderer had lingered after dealing Bernart the killing blow? To return Bernart’s counting tools to an open chest that he then closed and locked? Aye, to safely store the tally sticks but not the coins. That mad thought brought Faucon ‘round full circle to ponder the timing of Peter’s flight to the church and sanctuary.

  No more than half an hour had passed since the webber had made his run. But Bernart had been dead for at least three times as long, if not longer. Putting away the tally sticks couldn’t have taken but a moment or two. If Peter had done this, why had he lingered here any longer after he’d closed that lock? He had to have known that every moment he stayed, his chance of being discovered increased.

  Faucon breathed out in new frustration. Of a sudden, the conversation he craved was with the webber. Aye, and he was just as certain that he wasn’t ready to speak with Mistress Alina. But taking the first finder’s vow might be his only opportunity to have a private conversation with her. As for the Peter the Webber, Faucon suspected heaven would have to move before the elderly priest allowed him inside his realm to speak to the man.

  That left him once more studying that shadowy spoor. The tale it told was clear. Bernart had never imagined that it was Death coming for him, not when the killer entered his workroom nor when the man disassembled the scissors next to him, not even when this one stepped up close behind. Not only had Bernart known the one who’d finished him, the linsman had trusted this man with his very life.

  What was unfortunate for Bernart was a boon for Faucon since tracking such a man should be easy enough. All he need do was discover who the linsman might have loved that much, then look at that man’s shoes. Surely that would be easy enough to accomplish. It was hard to imagine taking forty days to sniggle out who had wielded this strange blade and ended Bernart’s life.

  “My pardon, sir,” said a man from the workshop doorway, “but the mistress has asked us to bring our master into the hall.”

  Faucon turned. Two burly men, both barely more than youths, stood in the opening. They looked to be kin, having the same wide faces, brown eyes and hair. Like the women of the household, they wore pale blue linen tunics, in this case over yellow chausses. Although both men offered him the bows expected of servants as they greeted their betters, one man did so without lifting his attention from his shoes.

  “Aye, you may remove your master,” Faucon told the man who met his gaze, “but I think the hall is not the place to take him. I’ll be calling the inquest jury soon. I cannot imagine your mistress wants all the men of this town tramping through her house.”

  This one offered him a twisted smile. “It was said you are new to our vale, sir. Here in Stanrudde, we pay our king for the right to call inquest juries only from the parish where the act took place. Men of commerce do not much care for the interruption such a jury and its duties makes in their day, especially when the victim comes from an area of town they know little about.

  “As for where we take Master Bernart,” he continued, “what Mistress Gisla commands, we must do. She is her father’s heir and now our employer.”

  “What?!” Faucon blurted out in astonishment. “There are no sons? You are not his journeymen?”

  “Nay, not we,” the speaker said with a shake of his head. “We are but day laborers here. God rest them, the master’s sons never lived long enough to learn any trade. As for journeymen, the master needed no apprentice save for Mistress Gisla. The needlework and trade that is practiced within these walls doesn’t belong to Master Bernart, but to his wife. Thus, just as Mistress Alina taught Mistress Gisla to use her needle, our master schooled his daughter in his only trade, that being selling what the women of this household make.” Here, he shrugged. “That, and managing those of us who work for his house.”

  “This trade belongs to a woman?” Faucon gaped at that.

  The man nodded, the look on his face saying this wasn’t the first time he’d explained the facts of his household to another of his sex. “Aye, so it does and so it shall remain, passing to Mistress Gisla after Mistress Alina’s death, if she so wills. As for my brother and me, as well as most of the other men who labor in this house,” the sweep of the servant’s hand was meant to include those absent men, “we earn our bread by cutting and wrapping fabric.”

  Faucon’s thoughts reeled as everything he held true about the world turned on its head. A woman as master of her own trade while her husband was no more than a costermonger, hawking what she made? Other than alewives, whose trade didn’t befit a man, who had heard of such a thing? Then again, perhaps it could be said that the needlework these women did here also didn’t befit a man. Although judging by this house and its fixtures, perhaps it should.

  As he digested all that the man had said, Faucon caught his breath. Gisla was Bernart’s sole heir. That meant she must also be Peter’s betrothed.

  Why in God’s name would the webber have murdered his future father-by-marriage when all this wealth would be his once he wed Gisla, something that couldn’t be too far in the future, given the girl’s age? Even if what the servant said was true–that the riches here would never actually belong to Peter–it would still be his to enjoy, just as Bernart had enjoyed the fruits of his wife’s work.

  Of a sudden, the quiet man made a strangled noise. He leapt into the chamber and snatched up the half scissors that yet lay on the floor. Holding it up, he showed it to his companion. “My scissors! The bolt is missing and they are undone. Tom, how am I to cut my pieces if I don’t have it to use
?”

  “That can’t be yours, Rob,” Tom told him. “You left your scissors in the storehouse when we went to take our meat.”

  “But of course their mine,” Rob returned. “There is no other tool like them in the house, and so you well know. Brother, help me! I must find the bolt, and where is the other half?” he cried out in rising panic as he once more scanned the floor.

  “I have the other blade,” Faucon replied, moving his hand a little to indicate he held the half but not lifting it far enough to reveal it to the men.

  As he spoke, he eyed their shoes. The brothers wore the usual working man’s soft leather boots, with uppers that rose above their ankles and were tied in place. Their footwear was well-worn and stained, but only with the manure and muck found in a city lane. Moreover, both men’s feet were longer and wider than the mark on the floor.

  “What of the bolt? Have you found the bolt?” Rob was almost sobbing.

  “I have not,” Faucon replied, with a shake of his head.

  “God save me,” this Rob murmured and dropped to his knees and began patting the floor around the spot where the second blade had lain.

  Faucon watched Rob in some surprise. It was the rare workman who didn’t have what he needed to repair what he used on a day-to-day basis. “Surely, you have other bolts for your tool.”

  “We don’t!” Rob cried. “These scissors are beyond expensive. The master said there is no other like them in all of this shire or mayhap all this land. He bought them from some foreign merchant when he was in London last, three months ago. All I know is that the metal is harder than my own knife and they hold an edge like no other shears I’ve used.”

  “As special as that?” Faucon asked.

  “Aye, it is,” Tom said, dropping to his knees to aid his brother in searching for the bolt. “The master bought it because Rob needs scissors that cut cleanly. His job is to shape the finest linen Roger the Webber can produce into the proper forms for making the headdresses and wimples that the well-born ladies love. It’s Rob’s to do because his hand is the steadiest of us all. If his scissors aren’t sharp enough, the fabric puckers and threads pull as he cuts. That mars the finished piece, reducing its value. So aye, Rob sharpens often and straightens even more often than he sharpens. That’s because the master reclaims the cost of Rob’s errors from his wages,” Tom added, a hint of resentment in his voice.