“Be careful,” I added, but he was already out the door and down the stairs. I heard the main door slam shut as he left the house.
Anthony looked a little worried. “Will he be all right?”
“I think so. There are many folk about.” I fancied Anthony still looked anxious and I felt guilty over sending Crispin out. “Here, now, I will just go outside and watch for him to come back up the street. It should not take too long for him to fetch the sheets.”
Anthony looked relieved and lay back against the bolster on the bed. I returned to my own chamber and told Donald what I was about as I grabbed my brat and wrapped it around me. I passed Avice at the bottom of the stairs. She had a bowl of fragrant broth on a tray, beef I thought, and so it seemed that Anthony would be nourished in my absence.
Outside the afternoon sun was sinking in the sky. Canditch was crowded with folk about their errands, students and masters heading for their lodgings or to a last lecture. I saw some of the Austin Friars making their way back to their house around the corner as the shadows grew longer. A pie man had a stall across from the boys’ tenement and I bought a beef pastry for a farthing, munching on it while I waited. Eusebius waved vaguely as he headed down the street, taking his usual evening walk. The minutes dragged by and I was heartened to see Crispin finally emerge from his lodging and head back toward the Widow Tanner’s.
He scowled when he saw me. “What are you about, Muirteach? I’ve no need for a nursemaid.”
I had heard similar phrases from young lads before and tried not to show my own annoyance. “Your friend was anxious for your sake. Don’t act the churl over it. Did you find the satchel?”
Crispin nodded sullenly and I found myself wishing for an instant that he had been the lad knocked on the head, instead of Anthony. “Well, let us go, then,” I said, glad Crispin was no mind-reader. “Here, I’ll buy you a pie for your trouble.”
Crispin brightened up a bit at this and devoured his treat while we walked back to the widow’s. I saw Crispin safely to the door and then walked out on the road leading north, past the Benedictines’ College and Vintner Gibbes’s large house to the abandoned homes Phillip and I had searched the day before. I had intended to search this area, and although the day had come close to escaping me I could not abandon my quest.
I passed the houses by and entered into the woods we had searched with the lymers. I don’t know what I hoped to find, some trace of my wife that we had overlooked before. But I found nothing, just hazel twigs and the first fallen oak leaves lying on the ground among the grasses and the bracken. The sun disappeared behind the trees and it got too dark to see anything. Disconsolate, I found my way back to the road and started the walk back to our lodgings.
The fading twilight gave a faint light to the road. It had grown chill; I wrapped my mantle more closely about me and shivered. A movement caught my eye, and I hung back in the shadows to watch. Most likely it was the vintner’s pig, I thought, gotten loose again. I could barely make out the shape, blacker against the growing darkness. As I strained my eyes it seemed that the shape was too tall to be a pig or other animal. A human, then, but doing what in the darkness?
The figure reached the road. I saw it turn and survey the road behind, as if it did not want to be observed. I sank back into the shadow of a beech tree and watched as the person, apparently satisfied, turned again and started down the way toward the town. I considered whether to approach or not, and decided instead to follow and see where he led. It might, after all, be something entirely without consequence: the vintner looking for his pig, a lover parting from a sweetheart, or some such thing. But I would follow, in any case.
I stayed well back in the shadows but the figure, which I could now make out, wore a hood and cloak. He seemed satisfied he was alone and strode rapidly down the street, turning right when he reached Canditch. Here there were more folk about, and light spilled out from open doorways and unshuttered windows. The figure continued down the street and I strove to keep up while he passed the boys’ lodgings and the other tenements. As we reached the corner of St. Giles’s Street, the yowl of a cat broke the silence of the night. I turned to look, despite myself, and when I looked ahead again the mysterious figure had vanished.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
I combed the street, walking up and down Canditch to North-gate and then back to the widow’s several times. Thinking the mysterious figure must have ducked into a tavern, I also poked my nose into the few taverns in this neighborhood, but none of the patrons looked remotely like the mysterious figure I had followed. Then I walked up St. Giles’s Street until I reached the open fields but saw no one. Finally, I abandoned the search, disgusted with my moment’s inattention and myself.
The person I’d seen could have been totally innocent, I told myself. A lover returning from a tryst. Or, I added, more cynically, a housebreaker. The figure probably had no import to my search for Mariota. Still, I wondered, and resolved to search that area again on the morrow as I made my discouraged way home through the darkness of a deserted street to the widow’s.
I could see a candle burning through the upper window of the chamber I had shared with Mariota and I judged that perhaps the lads were still working on the parchments. At least, thankfully, I heard no sounds of the lute. I opened the door onto the welcome light and warmth of the widow’s hall and shut the door on the blackness outside.
“Oh, there you be,” said Widow Tanner, looking up from some sewing she worked on by the firelight. “We’ve saved some pottage for you in the kitchens, thinking you’d be hungry once you returned. You must eat, sir, you are wasting away.”
“Aye,” I replied, “thank you for that.”
The widow sent Avice to the kitchen for the food and then put her sewing aside and busied herself pulling up a stool to the table. “You’re wearing yourself down as thin as an over-scraped parchment,” she observed.
“And what would you have me do?” I asked, sounding as churlish as Crispin. “I’m going upstairs to check on the lads. I shall be back in a moment.”
The widow’s comment was meant kindly, I told myself as I wearily climbed the stairs. But that did nothing to help my mood. I entered my chamber and saw Donald and Crispin bent over at the desk Mariota had used. Anthony had joined them and lay on my bed with the tabby kitten pouncing on his toes under the blanket. Several wet parchments also lay on the bed, drying out.
“And so are you having success?” I asked.
Donald and Crispin looked up. “Aye,” Donald replied, reverting to Gaelic in his eagerness to tell me. “All the parchments will be having some of that strange writing on them. And some are having the drawings on them as well.”
He showed me the faint image of a strange circular object with crenellations somewhat resembling battlements around the edge of it.
“There are no naked women,” Crispin interjected. “I’ve searched and searched and have not found a one.”
“Aye, I’m sure you have,” I said, wishing I could give the lad a clout. Instead, I turned to Anthony. “And you, sir, are you feeling better?”
“Yes, thank you, sir. Much better. I slept quite a time, and then was hungry. Avice brought pottage.”
“And the other two of you, did you eat as well?”
The boys nodded.
“And you thanked your hostess? Widow Tanner is going to some extra trouble to have you all here.”
“We are not knaves, Muirteach,” Donald retorted. “We thanked her properly.”
I nodded. “Good.”
“Muirteach,” asked Donald, “did you find anything?”
“Nothing,” I replied, and leaving the lads to their labors I made my way downstairs.
The table was set with a wooden bowl of hot soup and some fresh bread. Widow Tanner was nowhere in sight. Although I had thought I had no hunger in me, the soup smelled tasty and I ate all of it, and some of the loaf. Avice came in to take away the dishes. I noticed she looked plumper in the belly; the babe was begin
ning to show.
“Anthony does much better,” I observed. “You must be a fine nurse.”
The lass flushed as she picked up the empty soup bowl. “I am glad of that, sir.” She stood there awkwardly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Sir,” she finally asked, “how does my father? Have you seen him? I heard in the market today that the assizes have been called.”
“I have heard that as well,” I answered. “I have not seen your father in a few days but he is safe enough for now.”
“But what if he is hanged after the assizes?”
“He swears he is innocent and I think he is. Let us hope the jurors find him so.” I sounded stuffy even to myself, and I knew little of English practices of justice. In my homeland, even if he was guilty, the man could have paid an honor price and that would have been the end of it.
“Then who murdered Master Clarkson?”
I could not answer the lass’s question and so said nothing. Avice finally left, leaving her question hanging in the air behind her, and I sat for a time, watching the flames in the fireplace flicker lower until I nodded off. I came awake with a jerk and nearly fell off my stool when Widow Tanner came in to bank the fire. I thanked her for dinner and for feeding the boys, and dragged myself upstairs.
Donald and Crispin were still working on the parchments while Anthony snored on my bed. I left them to it and went into Donald’s room, collapsed on top of the bed without even removing my outer clothes and again fell into slumber.
I woke in the morning with a start. Again I had dreamed of Mariota, adrift in some strange vessel. I struggled to remember, but it was all confused. Mariota in some large glass vessel, or mayhap it was one of Vintner Gibbes’s abandoned casks, adrift in the sea. I gave up and rubbed at my eyes, trying to push fragments of my unpleasant dreams from my mind.
The sun was full up and beside me on the bed Donald lay, snoring with his mouth open. I stood up, rearranged my disordered attire and peered into the other chamber. Both Anthony and Crispin still slept, looking like little angels in a stained-glass window, although I very well knew them to be no such thing. The kitten lay wedged between them, also asleep, stretched out on its back with its four paws in the air. None of them looked as though they would wake anytime soon.
I glanced at the metal candlestick on the table and saw that the candle had entirely burned away. On the desk next to the candlestick lay a pile of the cleaned parchments. I bent to look at them and picked up the top sheet, the drawing of the strange crenellated orb. The next page had a similar drawing. The third sheet was full of the same writing I recognized from the previous parchments, that strange script in an unrecognizable language.
Since the attack on Anthony I felt increasingly certain that these parchments had something to do with the murders. Clarkson had sold them to Bookman, I recalled. Perhaps they had some value, and Berwyk had seen them and recognized that as well, and for that reason Bookman had stabbed Master Berwyk. I gathered a few of the cleaned parchments together, bundled them up in my scrip and scribbled a note to the lads, then left the house.
As I walked down Canditch I saw the undersheriff near the pie-man’s stall. “Muirteach,” he hailed me as he paid the vendor, “I’ve news.”
“Yes?”
“We’ve finally found that Walter of York. The chapman?”
“Was Jonetta with him?” I prayed that the lass had been found safe, but the man’s next words dashed my hopes.
Grymbaud shook his grizzled head. “No. The man denies she was ever with him.” He bit into his pie.
“Where was he found?”
Grymbaud chewed awhile, then answered. “Well out of Oxfordshire, on his way home, in the village of Heptonstall. Close to home, he was. We’ve checked out his story and folk in the villages he visited remember him passing through, alone. No one remembers seeing the girl with him.”
“So either he is telling the truth—” I said.
“Or he’s slain the poor girl and secreted her body away close to town here.”
I shuddered.
“Did you find anything from Mistress Bookman yesterday?” asked Grymbaud, changing the subject before he took another bite.
“Nothing of import. I think the attack on the lad had to do with these.” I pulled one of the parchments out of my bag and showed it to the undersheriff, who took it with his free hand. “If they have value it might have been a reason for Bookman to slay Berwyk.”
The undersheriff squinted at the parchment, holding it upside down. “Gibberish, it looks like.”
“We’ve made no sense of them. But Bookman had them secreted away, so it’s possible they’re of some value. His wife found them and thought to sell them.”
“And do you know where Bookman got them?”
“He got them from Clarkson.”
The undersheriff grunted and wiped at his mouth with the parchment. “So perhaps Berwyk killed Clarkson over the parchments, and then Bookman slew Berwyk in turn. But I don’t see much use of this parchment except for an arse-wipe.”
“What of Delacey?”
Grymbaud made a face. “I questioned him but the braggart swore he had benefit of clergy and that he was innocent besides that. And it’s true, the little turd. That’s the worst of it. We’ve no evidence or witnesses to say he did the murder, and he does have benefit of clergy. A great mess of stinking perverts, all these damned scholars. And their parchments.”
“Here,” I interjected before Grymbaud could throw the parchment away on the muddy street, “let me keep this for a time.”
“Well enough, Muirteach. Well enough.”
“And what of Walter of York?”
“We’ve got him here in the castle gaol. Until we can find what happened to that girl or find her body. What might be left of it, if the crows and wolves have left any trace. We’ve the evidence of that master that the chapman was seen leaving town with Jonetta.”
“Mistress Jakeson will take this hard,” I observed.
“Indeed,” the undersheriff answered. “It’s no easy thing to lose a child. I lost three in the pestilence. My eldest would have been well grown by now.”
“I am sorry,” I said awkwardly.
Grymbaud shrugged. “Most all of us lost someone. The saints turned a blind eye to our prayers. They did us no good.”
I knew, for I had lost my mother as a lad to the plague as well.
The undersheriff continued. “But this lass was not killed by the pestilence. If she’s dead, it’s by man’s work. And a man will hang for it.”
I could not even argue with him that Jonetta might still live. It did not seem likely.
I bade Grymbaud farewell and left him, still scratching at his beard. I continued on my way down the street. It was in my mind to visit Balliol and seek out Delacey. Mistress Bookman had told me she had sold parchments to a couple that resembled Delacey and DeVyse.
When I reached Balliol, the new gatekeeper glowered at me but let me in when I gave him half a farthing. I surmised he was doing well enough at his new post, and thought Ivo had not taken such advantage of his position in the past. The assizes were to be held the next day and as of yet I had done nothing to help the old man. I pushed the thought out of my mind guiltily as I opened the wooden door to the old hall.
At table in the central room I spied Delacey finishing up his breakfast, some bread and white cheese along with a mug of ale. His face flushed unpleasantly as he saw me enter the room.
“What is it you are wanting, Muirteach? Are you not satisfied at having set Grymbaud on me?”
“You yourself told him there’s no evidence against you. And you’ve benefit of clergy, as you also pointed out. You’re safe enough, no doubt. I came to ask you something.” I sat down, uninvited, at an empty bench opposite the table from Delacey. He said nothing but waited, his mug set down on the table and his arms crossed over his chest.
“Where is Brother Eusebius?”
“At his early lecture, I presume. What’s that t
o do with me?”
“Nothing. I want to know what you had to do with some parchments you bought, the day before yesterday it was, at Adam Bookman’s stall.”
“Parchments . . . oh, those. Dickon bought them, not I.”
“Perhaps. Mistress Bookman remembers seeing the both of you there.”
“What of that?”
“Why did you purchase them?”
“Dickon needed some parchments. It’s easy enough to soak and clean these.”
“Is that all?”
“What else should it be?”
I noticed there was an empty mug on the table and poured myself some ale from the pitcher, ignoring Delacey’s irritated expression.
“Do you remember that parchment that the lads gave to Berwyk?”
“Aye. The one in code, that Ralph showed us?”
“When your Dickon cleans the ones he bought I’m thinking he’ll find these are the same.”
“What of it?”
I grew disgusted with Delacey’s bravado and stood up to leave. “I’m thinking that these palimpsests are tied somehow to the murders. Ours were stolen. If your Dickon values his parchments then I’d advise him to hide them well. And to watch his back. The lad Anthony was attacked over the sheets he owned.” With that I left the room and the hall.
I walked rapidly up Canditch and passed the widow’s, wondering briefly if the lads were awake yet. The little dog Rufous came bounding toward me in the street, barking, but he quieted when he smelled my hand. I decided I’d not mind the company, missing Somerled, and let the dog tag along beside me. I turned up the street that led north and passed the walls of the Austin Friars’ on the right, walking rapidly with Rufous up the street. I passed the Benedictines’ college on the left, then Vintner Gibbes’s house, until I reached the area where Phillip had found Mariota’s ring in the mud. With the dog by my side I turned off the road and into the yard of the abandoned house. It looked as I had left it, the loose shutter still flapping in the breeze. I looked about for the barrel but did not see it. Perhaps Vintner Gibbes had come and fetched it back.
Study of Murder, The (Five Star Mystery Series) Page 21