B00B9BL6TI EBOK

by C. B. Hanley

  She screamed.

  Chapter Six

  Alys felt a hand over her mouth, suffocating her. In a panic, she struggled.

  A voice spoke urgently. ‘Miss Alys, Miss Alys, stop. Stop, I beg you, or you’ll get us both killed!’

  She recognised that voice. Feeling the hands slackening, she released herself and turned to face Aldred. He watched her warily, but somehow she got the feeling that he was pleased he’d frightened her. He stood between her and the way out to the street, and she doubted she could get past him without a struggle.

  She was angry, but some sense of caution remained and she spoke in a furious whisper rather than a shout.

  ‘What in the Lord’s name are you doing here? You frightened me half to death!’ A suspicion arose. ‘Have you been following me?’

  He stepped nearer and she could smell the rank odour of sweat. ‘I saw you at the market, Miss Alys, and wondered what might bring you this way. It’s dangerous out here, you know, for a woman on her own. I thought you might need some … protection.’ He leered.

  ‘Protection! The only protection I need is from you, skulking around in ruined buildings.’

  ‘Ruined buildings, miss? Seems that’s what you were doing as well. A strange thing to do on your own – or were you perhaps waiting to meet someone? I’m shocked – taking a lover with your father barely in his grave …’

  He was cut off as she slapped him hard about his leering face. She couldn’t help herself, but immediately realised that this had been a mistake. His eyes narrowed and he hissed at her.

  ‘Be aware, miss, that only my respect for your father stops me from striking you back. Otherwise I would punish you for that.’ He looked at her. ‘But know that I shall not forget it.’

  She could say nothing. They stood in a furious silence for a moment. Alys couldn’t work out how she might extricate herself from the situation, for he still stood between her and the street.

  The problem was taken out of her hands as he stood aside. ‘Might I suggest that you go back home where you belong. I will escort you to make sure you don’t fall into any trouble.’

  There was nothing to be done. Casting one last glance at the castle, she moved out on to the street and started to walk back towards the cathedral, unwillingly bearing his presence at her side.

  It was evening; perhaps an hour before the curfew, and Edwin was taking a last walk around the town with William. He was so tired he could barely put one foot in front of the other, but he needed to keep going. As they passed through the last remains of the day’s market, traders packing up around them, he saw a face he recognised from earlier. It was the small man who had been speaking with Master Michael, and who had disappeared. He was walking with a woman, although Edwin could only see her back as she looked at something on one of the stalls. Then she turned, and Edwin jerked out of his stupor, feeling as though someone had thumped him in the stomach, hard. She was very young, certainly several years younger than he, and she was – well, perhaps she wasn’t actually the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, but it was definitely close. There was something about her which held his attention, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He realised he was holding his breath and slowly let it out. The mason, or whoever he was, had certainly made a catch there. He was hovering very close around her, so presumably she was his betrothed or his wife, although she seemed less keen to be close to him – as he watched she shied away and put an arm’s length between them. She looked melancholy. Perhaps they weren’t betrothed. He should stop staring. He must.

  William saw him looking and expelled a long breath of his own. ‘She is a brave girl, to be out so soon after her father’s death, but I suppose she has a family to feed.’

  Edwin didn’t quite make the connection, but he couldn’t speak anyway. He hoped his look would ask the question for him.

  William nodded. ‘It is Alys, the daughter of Nicholas. We buried her father this afternoon.’

  The words bit so deeply, so personally, that Edwin felt tears coming unbidden to his eyes. He looked at the girl and felt the first crack appearing in his heart. He stood unmoving as it widened, rending itself in two, and his life’s blood poured out. It would never be entirely his again, a piece of it lost forever. As he watched, she lifted her head to speak with the stallholder, and Edwin observed her pale, fragile cheeks. How he wanted to care for her. How he wanted to protect her. For the second time that day, he made a vow, more solemn than the last. He would find who had killed her father, and he would keep her safe.

  William was looking at him quizzically. He should say something. What should he say? ‘Who’s the man?’

  ‘One of Nicholas’s weavers. Aldred, I think his name is. Not nearly as good as Ralf the son of Lefwine, whom you met this afternoon – he does the fine patterns while Aldred turns out the cheaper stuff. I suppose he is accompanying her as she has no man to look after her now – the older brothers are still missing and the younger ones are children.’

  Oh, you’re wrong, thought Edwin, for she does have someone to look after her, someone who would do anything for her. But his attention was dragged away from her face by something else. ‘A weaver?’

  ‘Yes. Why, should he not be?’

  ‘No, no, it’s just – oh, never mind.’ He gripped William’s arm. ‘They’re coming over.’ He could feel himself becoming hot and red. What would he say to her?

  William greeted her, speaking kindly. ‘Alys. Should you be out this evening, so soon after your father’s funeral? Could you not stay in and rest?’

  Now that she was closer, Edwin could see that she was not perhaps as fragile as she might have appeared at first. There was something in her eyes. This only made him admire her more.

  She spoke with composure. ‘Thank you for your concern, Master Mayor, but I have the children to feed. I thought it better to try and find something this evening to bring home for them to eat tomorrow, in case there was nothing in the morning.’

  The man with her interrupted. ‘And of course she has me to protect her.’ He laid one hand on her arm. William was smiling at him paternally, so Edwin thought that he alone could have seen the look which Alys gave her companion; not quite hatred, but something akin to it. If her eyes could have burned a hole in that hand which had dared to touch her, they would. There was something wrong here, and Edwin wanted to find out what it was, longed to strike away that touch which was so obnoxious to her. He looked directly at her, and found her staring back.

  William spoke again. ‘Forgive me. Alys, this is my nephew Edwin, who is visiting from the north.’

  The ghost of a smile played across her face as she curtseyed. ‘I am pleased to meet you, sir, but I must say that your timing is very bad.’

  He nodded, not willing to risk saying anything in case he fell over his words.

  William spoke again. ‘And still no word of your brothers, I fear?’

  Edwin could almost feel the waves of pain emanating from her, but her voice remained level. ‘No, Master William. But we must live in hope. Now, if you will forgive me, I must get home to my little ones.’

  ‘Of course, of course. And would you like us to accompany you? We could just about make it there and back before the curfew, even with my aged gait.’

  Good Lord, thought Edwin, even the ancient William is stirred to gallantry. But yes, he wanted to go with her, to keep her safe on her way back home.

  As she opened her mouth to reply, he saw the man increase the pressure on her arm, and she declined. Damn fellow! Who did he think he was? She was obviously not welcoming his attentions, so what was he doing? Edwin felt indignant. But there was nothing he could do as the two of them marched off, and William turned in the opposite direction to head back to his house. ‘Come, you must tell me what else you have learned this day.’ Edwin cast one final glance over his shoulder and then followed him, past the towering cathedral, seeming even taller in the dusk, and into the maze of streets.

  He was hungry. His insides gro
aned and cried out for food so that he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. He hadn’t dared to go home for three days, since the night he’d been followed. He and his father had parted ways, and he didn’t know what had happened after that, only that he had to run and hide. During the long dark night he’d doubled back and forth through the streets of the town, using every alley and yard he knew, and finally he thought he’d shaken off the shadowy figure who was following him. There were traitors in Lincoln, this he knew, fellow citizens who had sold themselves to the French invaders rather than trying to defend their city. He despised them. All true men should be helping those who resisted the enemy; but someone, somewhere, was trying to find out what they had been doing, and they wouldn’t stop until they knew. He would have to move again, even though the light hadn’t yet gone completely; he’d been in this hiding place for nearly a day and he couldn’t risk being found. Besides, if he didn’t get something to eat soon he felt he might die anyway.

  As he slipped out of the ruins of the house, something was thrown over his head, blinding him. A cloth, a sack, something. He struggled hard and tried to cry out, but a hard punch to the stomach sucked the breath out of him and left him gasping, winded, unable to speak. The sacking was tied around his neck and he could see nothing as arms encircled him like a band and forced him to walk. Then he was thrown on to something hard, which started to move. Blinded, breathless and in pain, he couldn’t keep track of where they were going, and he simply lay, trying to collect his wits for the questioning which he knew would follow.

  Eventually the movement stopped, and he was being grabbed, pulled out of the cart. He felt that he was inside a building, and was shoved forward into a space. He stood, and then the sack was taken off his face. He blinked and looked around him. He could tell nothing of his location save that he was in a bare room, which he took to be an undercroft. The only door was shut, presumably locked. He could see one other person in the room in front of him, and he looked full into the face. He gasped.

  And then he knew fear, and pain.

  It was dark. Edwin lay wrapped in a blanket on the floor of William’s shop, staring upwards and breathing in the aroma of spices. As his chest rose and fell, he tried to order the thoughts in his mind, but they wouldn’t stay still – they skittered and scattered, refusing to do as he wished. Someone, somewhere, had been organising resistance against the French invaders, and someone, somewhere, must know something about it that he could tell those inside the castle and the regent’s host. Had he only been here a day? The people of the city were much clearer in his mind than those outside. Those in the castle were hazy, the regent’s host further away still, and any thoughts of a life before that were just a fading memory. One face kept appearing before the others in his mind, but he tried to push it firmly away to concentrate on the huge task which threatened to overwhelm him, to send him mad. Think again. Think straight. The man Alan had been in communication with someone in the city. Initially William had been involved, but then he’d been shut out – no wonder, if he’d been behaving like he had today – and Alan had been talking to someone else. It could be anyone. No. It would be someone with at least some influence on others or on events. Who had he met today? Peter of the Bail and Peter of the Bridge, the merchants, although he still didn’t know which was which. Master Michael of the cathedral works, who William thought was a spy, though with little justification from what he could see. Aldred, the man he had taken for a mason but who was a weaver. Pinel, who was Alys’s neighbour. Gervase, the younger man; there was also a priest called Father Eustace and a dead man by the name of Nicholas Holland, whose two sons were missing. Any of them were likely candidates. And how did Nicholas’s death fit into this? A murder. Had he been the organiser of the resistance, struck down by a traitor? Or had he himself been a spy for the French who had been stopped by the loyal men? Or had he simply been killed for the purse at his belt? That was something he could find out tomorrow. Now he had to keep thinking, despite the sleep which was trying to overwhelm him. He had been awake all last night and the exhaustion was creeping into his bones, but he had to fight it off.

  With a start he heard the cathedral bell sounding for Matins in the distance. Had he fallen asleep? Or had he simply been staring into the darkness that long? The men inside the castle would be letting a rope down for him, unaware of how little progress he had made in his quest. The threads were as tangled as ever and he didn’t know if he had the wits to make sense of them. The perfume of spices was very relaxing, and brought to mind the face of a girl, a girl who wouldn’t leave his thoughts …

  By the time the bell sounded for Lauds, he was fast asleep.

  As Alys walked through the market alone the following morning and spoke to some of the stallholders, she heard that the price of food had gone up even since yesterday. She hadn’t had a pleasant journey home that afternoon, in the company of the odious Aldred, but she had at least persuaded him to walk home via the market so that she could buy something to eat. She hated to admit it, but his presence had probably been the main reason why she’d managed to reach her home without being molested: carrying a basket of food through the beleaguered city was becoming a more and more dangerous exercise, as starving people watched with hollow faces and empty eyes. She’d paid for it, though: he’d made her give some of the provisions to him, still claiming that he was starving, although he looked strong enough. She contented herself with despising the sort of man who would steal bread from the mouths of children. And so here she was again. The business of being solely responsible for the little ones was exhausting, but it had to be done, and if not by her, then by whom?

  She saw Peter of the Bridge and Peter of the Bail looking at some of the stalls, their heads close together, probably discussing some spiteful gossip, as usual. She would try to get past them without being noticed. As she drew near and passed them with her head turned aside, she overheard a part of their conversation.

  ‘Well, it’s no secret that she entertains men there, you know.’

  ‘I know, I know, for how else is a widow to make a living? She’s very young and attractive, probably makes quite a tidy sum out of it.’

  ‘It’s not decent, I tell you. She should marry again.’

  ‘Yes, but that would deprive many of our good merchants of agreeable company. Haven’t you ever…?’

  ‘How dare … Oh Miss Alys, how nice to see you!’

  They had seen her. Quickly, she tried to look unconcerned and hoped they hadn’t realised they’d been overheard. She wanted to walk on, but now they’d greeted her she would have to stop or it would be taken as a gross incivility.

  As she turned, they both hurried over. She tried to look pleasant as they oozed compassion, but it was hard going. Irritated, she decided to strike back, and asked them innocently what they had been speaking of. She was rewarded by a look of some guilt from Peter of the Bridge, but Peter of the Bail merely smiled and said they had been discussing the sudden appearance from nowhere of William’s nephew.

  Peter of the Bridge took the opportunity of the change of subject and waded straight in. ‘And do you not fancy, Miss Alys, that there is something strange about that?’

  She ventured no opinion, feeling sorry for the young man who had made her heart beat a little faster the previous day. But it didn’t stop the diatribe. They seemed really riled – perhaps she shouldn’t have goaded them in such a way, for the poor stranger was sure to suffer if they took against him.

  ‘Can he really be William’s nephew? He doesn’t look like a wool merchant’s son to me – did you see the state of that tunic?’

  Peter of the Bail threw up his hands in horror. ‘The fabric! I can scarcely credit that anyone would sell that. It almost looks homespun.’

  Peter of the Bridge sniggered. ‘But perhaps they make their own clothes out of what nobody will buy?’

  Alys pitied the young man even more. ‘Is it not possible that he simply put on such a tunic for travelling, so that he should not
be too conspicuous on the road?’

  They were silent for a moment. Then Peter of the Bridge continued. ‘Well, in any case, I intend to test him. If he is a merchant’s son then he will have knowledge of different fabrics and their names, qualities and costs. If that young man has ever worked in a shop I shall – I shall eat my hood!’

  They giggled, and then Peter of the Bail nudged his companion. ‘But look – here they come. Let us go over to the stall there and intercept them.’

  Both men started scurrying, and Alys trailed along behind them, hoping to be able to limit the damage, and drawn to the man who was about to be tested.

  As they reached the stall she examined the contents of it. Poor stuff, certainly – nothing like what her father traded in. Or what she traded in, she supposed she should say now, at least until either Thomas or Nick came back, or until such time as she married. Married? Why had that thought leaped into her head all of a sudden? It wasn’t surprising that it should be at the back of her mind, of course, as with anyone her age, but it certainly hadn’t been to the fore for a good number of weeks. She felt herself blushing and examined the fabrics more closely as William and his nephew approached.

  The stallholder, facing hardship but now presumably thinking that his luck was in, expounded on the number and quality of wares he had available even in these difficult times.

  As the two newcomers were greeted, Peter of the Bridge began to speak in an unnecessarily loud voice. ‘So, fellow, how much is that sarsenet there?’

  ‘Sevenpence the yard, sir, and a finer you will not find …’

  Peter of the Bail cut him off with a wave. ‘Yes, yes, but look, Peter, at the cambric. Would that not do for some new hangings in your chamber?’