A Vigil of Spies (Owen Archer Book 10)

by Candace Robb

  Jehannes smiled. ‘I would welcome a ride.’

  Owen ordered Gilbert to have a horse saddled for Jehannes. He thought the villager might feel more comfortable with the gentle, sweet-faced archdeacon. From years of experience, Owen knew that some people never relaxed in the presence of his scarred, soldierly appearance – neither were all comfortable with his height or his Welsh accent.

  As Jehannes stood with Owen outside the stables, waiting for the grooms to bring out their horses, he expressed his relief to be escaping the tensions of the crowded palace for a little while.

  Owen laughed. ‘I expect quite some tension at the villager’s house.’

  ‘But of a different kind. I am curious – why are we riding? We might walk and be there and back again before vespers.’

  ‘To impress the family,’ said Owen, ‘and to allow us to hurry back if we’ve learned anything. Nor do I wish to be long away.’

  Jehannes said nothing for a little while. ‘Forgive me if you do not wish to speak of it, but I sense great anger in you – you looked as though you could make thunder when you strode from the stables, and you were so curt with Gilbert.’

  Owen could hardly have expected that his fury would not be noticed, yet he was sorry Jehannes had seen him so. ‘I’ll not attack you.’

  Jehannes laughed. ‘I did not think you would. But perhaps you’ll confide in me as we ride?’

  ‘Gladly. I could use a good dose of your calm wisdom.’

  Indeed, as Owen slowly rode from the palace, he was already calming. The feel of warm sun on his back eased his spirits, and the pleasant, almost crisp breeze was a subtle sign that autumn was adding its breath to the summer breezes and starting to cool them. He could imagine Gwenllian and Hugh introducing the baby Emma to her first snowball. It was good to think of how happy his household was, with the new baby and Lucie so strong and back to her clear-witted self again.

  ‘It is good to see you smile,’ said Jehannes, tearing Owen from his reverie. ‘I find it a pity that the household is so glum, for His Grace is quite happy. He’s made his peace with God and he is ready to be relieved of his fleshly body.’

  ‘I’m paid to be suspicious, not happy,’ Owen reminded him.

  He wondered whether Thoresby would be aware of autumn this year, or if he would be trapped now in his great bed until God called him. He remembered the times he’d come upon the archbishop in one of his gardens, sitting on sun-baked stones enjoying the quiet hum of insects. He wondered whether, when struggling for his next breath, Thoresby ever wished that it might be redolent with the perfume of flowers.

  ‘There is a woman in the princess’s party who keenly watches you, have you noticed? The Lady Eleanor?’

  ‘She watches me?’

  Jehannes read something more than indifference in Owen’s voice or on his face, for he said, ‘You are not strangers?’

  ‘I’d not seen her since I left the old duke’s service. I trust she’s praying that I say nothing of having bedded her many years ago.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Once. I think only once.’

  Jehannes sighed. ‘I would remember every breath in the embrace of such a lady.’

  ‘I am not proud of my former ways. Her presence has not been easy on my conscience.’

  ‘I’ll say no more about this.’

  Owen nodded. But he was glad Jehannes had spoken. He’d not noticed that Eleanor watched him. He changed the subject.

  ‘The nun Clarice may have stolen a letter from His Grace, one from Marguerite,’ said Owen. ‘I wish I knew why.’

  ‘Why, in heaven’s name, did he keep such a thing?’ Jehannes asked the sky. ‘Why did Michaelo befriend the handsome Dom Lambert? Their weaknesses are their undoing. Perhaps this is the meaning of original sin. We each have a flaw that will destroy us if we relax our vigilance.’

  ‘I do not like to think God was so cynical in our creation,’ said Owen.

  ‘Is the nun’s theft the cause of your anger?’ Jehannes asked.

  ‘No.’ Owen moved his horse a little closer to Jehannes. ‘I think that some of the guards may have betrayed His Grace’s trust. And mine.’ He confessed his fears.

  ‘May God lead them to confess,’ said Jehannes, when Owen grew quiet.

  ‘Aye.’ Owen spent the rest of the ride telling Jehannes of his purpose in visiting Sam.

  At Sam’s house, they learned from his wife that he was out in the fields. While one of the girls was sent out to fetch him, the goodwife invited them to sit on a bench in the kitchen garden and she would bring them some ale. The house was simple wattle and daub, a longhouse shared with the livestock, with one small, shuttered window opened to the lovely day. No doubt the goodwife thought it too crude and dark for the likes of them. And yet, Owen had been in her shoes in his youth and knew that keeping the lord’s men outside was also a safeguard against their noticing poached meat hanging from the rafters or other items out of place. If Sam had been paid for his part in the concealment of Lambert’s murder, Owen might find some evidence of new wealth in the house. He listened closely, and soon heard a clatter that allowed him to rush in, asking whether there was anything he could do to help.

  The poor woman was on a stool trying to tuck a hefty sack of grain into the corner above a beam and a small tear was leaking corn as she pushed. A girl a little older than his own Gwenllian, perhaps nine years old, held a very full pitcher of ale and watched her mother with uncertainty – should she serve the guests or help her mother?

  Owen was beneath the goodwife in one stride, tall enough to finish the task for her, tucking the hole upright.

  The light in the house was too dim and smoky to allow him to see subtlety in her expression, but, by her quavering ‘God bless’, it seemed clear to him that she knew that he knew what he’d seen.

  ‘Mary, take the ale out to Dom Jehannes,’ said the woman, wiping her hands on her apron and then reaching for two bowls.

  A baby slept in a cradle by the fire. And over the fire hung a fine new pot – no charring or dents. A fine piece of ironwork.

  ‘Forgive me, I do not know your name,’ said Owen.

  ‘Janet,’ said the woman, tugging on her wimple to straighten it.

  ‘Dame Janet, I am here because of the death of the man whose horse your husband returned to Bishopthorpe yesterday.’

  ‘Death?’ Janet breathed, lifting a calloused hand to her throat.

  ‘Hanged in the archbishop’s woods,’ he added.

  She quickly lowered her hand. ‘So that is why his horse was wandering. Poor man.’

  ‘He was a man of the Church.’

  ‘A priest? Like the one without?’

  ‘Not so high in the Church as my companion, the Archdeacon of York, but a cleric,’ said Owen. ‘The dead man had been entrusted by the Bishop of Winchester to carry important documents to the archbishop. I very much fear that he was murdered, Dame Janet. That is why we wish to speak with your husband.’

  ‘God have mercy on his soul,’ she whispered. ‘You think my Sam killed him?’

  ‘I did not say that. He may have seen or heard something that will help us catch the murderer.’ She’d be of no help if she felt she needed to protect her husband. Owen made a show of looking around the longhouse with a half smile. ‘I grew up in a house much like this.’

  ‘You?’ Though she looked him up and down and shook her head, she seemed more at ease.

  He nodded and smiled down at her. ‘In Wales. I am a long way from home. Now I live in the city – in York, with my wife, the apothecary. Our home is much different from this.’

  ‘Dame Lucie mixed a salve that saved my Sam’s arm when he was badly scalded,’ Janet said.

  Mary stuck her head in the door. ‘Ma, are you bringing the bowls?’

  With a nervous laugh, Janet hurried past him, then paused in the doorway to urge him to join Jehannes in the garden for some ale.

  Owen joined her, but stayed in the doorway. ‘You’ve come into some wealth of l
ate, Goodwife. I pray it had nothing to do with the dead man’s horse.’ Though, how they might have spent it so soon … ‘I hope that someone did not come to your Sam a while back, promising more if he would assist in whatever way was necessary?’

  The woman reddened, but said nothing.

  ‘I am racing against time. I promise you that if you help me I will punish neither your husband nor your family. You have my word.’

  She bowed her head and crossed herself. ‘He did it for our souls, Captain Archer. They told him that the new Archbishop of York would grant us indulgences for his help, that it was God’s work. But, if they killed the bishop’s man—How could we hope for God to honour such ill-begotten indulgences?’ Her eyes welled with tears. Indeed, she looked quite frightened. ‘We’ll be cursed instead!’

  ‘Did your husband mention any names?’

  As Janet shook her head, the infant in the house began to cry.

  ‘Mary, see to little John. Go along.’

  As Owen stepped aside to let the girl pass, he noticed a lad of about seven eyeing the horses from a careful distance. That was four children and two adults to feed so far, and he decided that he would not tell anyone about the grain he’d seen, or the pot. The indulgences were enough to report, and they would deprive no one of nourishment.

  Beyond the horses, he now saw a man he presumed was Sam loping across the road. Owen said a silent prayer of thanks for the opportunity to coax the information out of Janet, for he could see, by the changing drama of anger, fear and calculation on his face as he approached, that Sam was cut from a very different cloth than his wife. He looked an opportunist. The Nevilles must have been delighted to find him.

  ‘Captain Archer, I did not think to see you here.’ He wiped grimy sweat from his brow with a sleeve and muttered to the girl who had fetched him to bring him a bowl of ale. He glanced at his wife’s face and his jaw tensed as she bowed her head and shrugged.

  Now he returned his gaze to Owen, who took the opportunity to introduce Jehannes.

  ‘Archdeacon of York?’ Sam said.

  ‘I have come on a difficult mission,’ said Jehannes. ‘I fear that you may have mistakenly helped a murderer to escape punishment.’

  ‘What?’

  Jehannes told Sam almost precisely what Owen had told Janet. The woman stood with tears of gratitude in her eyes as Jehannes added, ‘I fear that he or his helpers might have told you that they represented the future Archbishop of York, and that you might be rewarded with indulgences. It is their custom to make such false claims. Am I right?’

  ‘I—’ Sam turned to his wife in a fury. ‘What did you tell them?’

  Janet backed from him and, hugging her arms to herself, began to weep.

  ‘Cursed woman,’ Sam spat.

  Owen grabbed him by the shoulder and unceremoniously led him a little away from his family. ‘Don’t make me change my mind about revealing the source of your extra grain and new pot, you thankless cur. I thought to ease your family, seeing no harm in that. But, if you persist …’

  ‘A murderer, you said?’

  ‘And the victim an envoy of the Bishop of Winchester. Your greed has led you into a cursed trap and now you’ve sold your soul. There will be no indulgences won by you for this foul deed.’

  ‘But he said—’

  ‘He said what he knew would win you over. Who was he?’

  Sam shrugged and spat to the side. ‘Curse you, all of you high-blooded bastards.’

  Six

  MISSION TO NUN APPLETON

  Wednesday Evening

  UNFORTUNATELY, SAM KNEW little of the man who had offered money and indulgences, except that it was a different man who’d come with the horse in the early hours past midnight, banging on the door and simply instructing Sam to deliver the horse at midday to Bishopthorpe with the tale of finding it in the fields. The one who had paid him several days earlier had spoken like a noble, using some foreign words; the man who came in the night spoke like a man of the shire.

  Owen and Jehannes had returned to the palace knowing little more. On the ride back, Owen fell to brooding about Sybilla and Eleanor, two enigmatic women who seemed to invite mystery.

  God was looking after him, for as he entered the palace yard, he spied Sybilla, her blue silk gown and gold surcoat bright against the dark wood of the stables. She appeared to be talking to one of the grooms about two young dogs rolling about in play nearby. Lifting laughing eyes to Owen, she momentarily rendered him reluctant to broach a serious subject and dim that smile. There were all too few smiles in the palace at present.

  ‘Captain Archer. I’ve been admiring the puppies. They’ve captured my heart.’ Sybilla’s round face and short stature, animated by her excitement, made her seem childlike.

  ‘I trust His Grace would be willing to part with one – if you would like to carry one back with you,’ Owen said.

  She beamed with joy, clapping her hands as she exclaimed, ‘I shall ask him!’ She pointed to the larger and rowdier of the pair and playfully commanded the groom to guard him with his life.

  ‘I will, my lady,’ said the young man, with a wink at Owen.

  ‘My lady, might we walk away from here and talk a moment?’ Owen took a few steps towards the gardens.

  With a quizzical look, Sybilla bowed her head and followed. Overhead, clouds were gathering, and the late summer garden was dreary with dry, rotting leaves, flowerless stalks, and drooping blossoms gone to seed. Sybilla’s bright clothing only emphasised the faded mood of the garden.

  When they were well away from anyone who might overhear, she said, ‘You want to know about the brooch.’ She glanced up at him with a tiny, apologetic smile. ‘I have teased you with it.’

  ‘Why, my lady? It seemed a very odd time to speak of it in the wood this morning, unless the brooch is connected to Dom Lambert’s hanging.’

  She crossed herself. ‘I did not mean disrespect. I pray they are not connected.’

  ‘The corpse made you think of it?’

  ‘I do not know what to think. My intent was that if you were to encounter it, you would know that it meant something. Do you see?’

  ‘Not at all. Why would I come upon it?’

  She wrapped an arm round his and led him to a far bench beneath a linden.

  ‘I fear a friend is in danger, and I am – prying.’ She shrugged. ‘Hoping to find out how I might help without breaking a promise to say nothing. I’m not very good at it.’

  ‘The friend for whom you fear is the owner of the brooch?’

  She nodded. ‘It will probably turn up among a servant’s belongings, but I cannot help but worry, with all that has come to pass on this journey, whether the loss of the brooch is more significant. I thought that, if you came across the piece, then I would know where her danger lies – or whether I am worried over nothing more than a greedy servant.’

  ‘Who is this friend?’

  ‘I cannot say.’

  Owen was losing patience. ‘Two men have died, my lady. If you believe her to be involved in their deaths, you must tell me.’

  ‘No. I pray you, forgive me for mentioning the brooch.’ She fussed with her surcoat, kicked a leaf out of the way with her pretty shoes, then looked him in the eye, all hint of teasing gone. ‘My concern might be much ado about nothing. And then I could not forgive myself for breaking my promise and perhaps compromising her reputation.’

  ‘I’m assuming you speak of your companion, of Lady Eleanor.’ He watched Sybilla fight to conceal her reaction, but it was clear to him that he’d guessed right. ‘What sort of danger do you think she’s in?’

  She was quite visibly upset, teary-eyed and flushing crimson. ‘Why did I mention it?’ she cried.

  ‘What danger, my lady?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Betrayals of the heart, Captain.’ She rose. ‘Forgive me for distracting you with my petty concerns. God go with you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you think them petty, my lady. There is a sadness in Lady
Eleanor. Is she content in her marriage?’ Owen asked, hoping to learn more of Sybilla’s thoughts, seeking the key to the change in Eleanor.

  Sybilla brightened a little, apparently amused by the question. ‘Is anyone content in their marriage, Captain? Are you?’

  ‘I am most content in mine, my lady. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Would that I were, Captain. You are a most fortunate man, and your wife a most blessed woman.’ She nodded to him and turned to leave.

  He frantically searched for a way to ask more without revealing his past acquaintance with Eleanor. ‘So she is not content?’

  ‘In her position here, yes. But her home is a cold place.’

  ‘The brooch is from a lover?’

  ‘No! But—’ Sybilla hesitated, then said quietly, ‘It might have been given to one.’

  ‘And therein lies the danger?’

  Sybilla looked mortified. ‘I pray you, ask no more.’

  ‘Do you know where I might find Lady Eleanor?’

  Frightened eyes searched his face. ‘God in Heaven! You would tell her of this conversation?’

  ‘Do you take me for a cur, my lady? Of course I would not so betray you. I would enquire as to her recovery from this morning’s fright. She was most affected by Dom Lambert’s death.’

  ‘I believe she is in the great hall, talking to Sir Lewis,’ said Sybilla, and, with another nod, hurried down the path.

  The sun was beginning to set, and a fine mist fell from the sky, seeming to tease tendrils of fog from the river. The brightly dressed Sybilla seemed an exotic bird in the dying light, flying down the path towards the stables and the puppies she coveted. Owen guessed that the woman was not the silly pet she pretended to be, but was rather a shrewd woman who knew how to use her effect on men. He wondered why she’d sought to distract him with this matter of the brooch.

  He sank back down on the bench to consider how to approach Eleanor, and was deep in an argument with himself when he noticed an oddly flickering form approaching. He crossed himself and whispered a prayer. Blinking to clear his vision in the dying light, Owen realised it was Magda Digby, her multicoloured gown catching the occasional glimmer of twilight in the swirling mist. He felt his mood lift as she stepped lightly along the stone pathway, seemingly waking nature up as she came, the water pooled in the lady’s mantle leaves shimmering as her skirts brushed them, the rosemary releasing its heady scent into the air as her hands swept past. Her presence healed even before what she would consider her work began.