The Guilt of Innocents (Owen Archer Book 9)

by Candace Robb

  Jasper was glad to be back at the minster school among his friends – he enjoyed being caught up in the energy that bubbled up to the surface now and then, as it had today when the more senior boys heard that Drogo had been seen at the staithe. Timing was critical because Drogo frequently travelled up and down the Ouse piloting ships between York and the sea, so he might not stay long in the city. The older boys had quickly devised a plan to confront the man about Hubert’s scrip: the main body of scholars were to rush the bargemen and distract them while the older scholars dealt with Drogo.

  Jasper wasn’t convinced that Hubert’s absence from school the past week had to do with the loss of his scrip. That had happened more than a fortnight earlier, and Hubert had attended class for a week afterwards. He knew that the lad had more on his mind than his lost scrip. In the autumn Jasper had come upon him behind the school, all curled into himself and weeping. Jasper had heard that the lad’s father was feared dead. Having lost his own father when younger than Hubert, Jasper understood the fear in the boy’s eyes when he loosened up and began to talk of his mother’s troubles with the farm, how suddenly they were poor. In Jasper’s opinion such a loss and the subsequent fear about the future were more likely to keep Hubert away from the classroom than would the loss of a scrip. Although if it had held money its recovery might comfort the lad a little.

  Perhaps that was sufficient reason to help recover it, even though Jasper had promised the captain that he would not get involved in the skirmishes between the scholars and the bargemen. He was still debating whether to follow his fellows or to head straight home to the apothecary. He doubted he would contribute much as he was unfamiliar with the barges, but he knew he’d feel left out when the others talked about it afterwards. He was sympathetic to Hubert’s situation as well.

  It was plain that he must quickly choose, for those leading the band of scholars were already out of sight. In fact, the light had faded enough that Jasper could see only the last few stragglers.

  Surely he might be late to the apothecary this one afternoon. He’d been a diligent apprentice the past year, having withdrawn from school the previous autumn when Dame Lucie was injured in a fall and could not spare him from the apothecary – she was his master as well as his adoptive mother. Dame Lucie had regretted cutting short his education, so she’d worked to convince the guild to provide her a second apprentice in order that Jasper might complete his studies. A few months ago Edric had joined the household, an experienced apprentice a few years Jasper’s senior whose master had recently died. Edric could mind the shop.

  By now his fellows were out of sight and it was a long way to the staithe – through the minster grounds to Petergate, out Bootham Bar and into the grounds of St Mary’s Abbey by the postern gate, and then out into Marygate and down to the landing. He shut the door behind him and took off into the fading light. Slipping occasionally on frozen mud, Jasper was breathing hard by the time he caught up with the last of the group at Bootham Bar, and his hands and ears were numb. He ignored his physical discomfort as he hurried with them across the abbey grounds, but that was just part of his discomfort now, as he noticed they were being joined by curious onlookers, adults, strangers, not their fellows. He was growing increasingly uneasy about what else might be happening, about what he might be heading into.

  As shouts echoed from the staithe, he and the stragglers ran the last few yards, then slowed upon reaching the barrels and covered flats that had been offloaded from the barges. The long, flat-bottomed vessels were bobbing on the water with the movements of several dozen people darting about, shouting, waving arms. The fading light made it difficult to tell bargemen from the older boys at first, and Jasper thought he’d made a mistake in coming. Glancing around at the gathering crowd he saw fists clenched and heard tension in the voices muttering about privileged scholars and hard-working bargemen, poor lads defending their own and bullying staithe workers. This was growing into something much larger than merely recovering a friend’s purse.

  ‘How will we know if we come upon the bargeman who took Hubert’s scrip?’ asked one of Jasper’s companions.

  He hesitated to respond, considering whether it would not be wise to make a run for home, but he resolved to stay – he was already here, and his reasons for wanting to help Hubert had not changed. ‘Ned said Drogo wears a green cap, has a much broken nose, and a tooth missing up front,’ Jasper said. Ned was one of the raid leaders.

  ‘Come on, then,’ cried one of the others, grabbing Jasper’s frozen hand.

  They’d just stepped onto the nearest barge when someone crashed into Jasper, and the two went sprawling on the slippery wooden deck.

  The human missile groaned as he sat up, rubbing his head. ‘I almost had him!’ It was Ned.

  Jasper stood and brushed himself off. ‘Now what?’

  Ned had pulled himself up and leaned out over the water to peer at the neighbouring barge. ‘I can’t see him now. I hope one of the others grabbed him. But I tell you, one look in that man’s face and I knew there’d be nothing left of value in that scrip. He has the eyes of a thief, mark me.’

  ‘The eyes of a sick man – that’s what I saw,’ said another lad. ‘He was pale as wax and stumbling like he was unwell or drunk.’

  Jasper moved away from the argument that commenced, and in towards the action, remaining wary of sudden movements. He found several lads looking towards the next barge, which was wildly rocking.

  ‘I have it!’ someone cried from there. Voices rose in a victory shout. A splash inspired more shouting that gradually softened to anxious queries and responses.

  ‘Can you see him?’ a man shouted.

  ‘He’s gone under,’ cried another.

  ‘There he is, towards the stern,’ one of the boys called out.

  ‘I’ve lost him.’ The speaker’s voice cracked with defeat.

  * * *

  An icy blanket enveloped him, slaking the fire in his cheek, his neck, his arm. God be praised, Drogo thought, almost whimpering but knowing somehow even as confused as he was that he must not inhale. It did not matter that the current tumbled him for the water eased him, it smoothed away the pain, the guilt, the anger. Forgive me, O Lord, he prayed, and let me return to my Cissy and my daughters, more precious to me than gold or silver.

  Jasper grabbed the elbow of his nearest fellow. ‘Who’s in the water?’

  ‘Drogo, the one who took Hubert’s scrip.’

  ‘Was he pushed?’ Jasper whispered. He could not imagine any of the older scholars taking such a risk.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  God help him, Jasper prayed. Drogo had stolen a scrip, which to the thinking of his foster father, Captain Archer, was hardly a crime deserving death. The captain said a thief should be executed only if he’d also taken a life. Jasper didn’t understand how this evening’s worthy goal could have led to this horror.

  After another splash, there was a hush, except for a whispered, ‘A swimmer’s gone in to help him.’

  ‘Someone fetch Brother Henry from the abbey,’ a man cried. Henry was the abbey infirmarian.

  Before Jasper could think to go, he saw that two other students were already running from the staithe down Marygate. Jasper prayed for both the good Samaritan and Drogo as he followed the bargemen and scholars returning to the riverbank, all pushing, shoving, cursing as if frightened – as if as frightened as Jasper now was. The wind had picked up, adding the danger of fire to his worries. He watched a man cup his hand dangerously close to a burning taper as he lit a lantern held by his mate, cursing as the flame licked his hand. Several lanterns already illuminated the worried faces of the townsfolk, boys and bargemen who now gathered about the two men holding a rope attached to the rescuer, ready to assist him in fighting the current to the shore. Another stood close with a long pole.

  ‘Why don’t all bargemen learn to swim?’ one of Jasper’s companions asked.

  ‘Do you know how to swim?’ asked Jasper.

  ‘No,
but the ferrywoman near our farm does. She says only a fool works on the Ouse without the knowledge.’ The boy was quiet a moment. ‘Can the Riverwoman swim?’

  Jasper had never wondered that, but he could not imagine the midwife and healer Magda Digby giving in to the rushing water. The elderly woman was too wise to live on the river as she did if she feared it. ‘I’ve no doubt she can do anything she decides to do. Hush now. They’re bringing him out.’

  As the swimmer climbed up the bank, the two on the rope dropped it to relieve him of his human burden.

  ‘Is he dead?’ folk asked as Drogo’s limbs gently swayed with the men’s gait.

  They laid him face down, and the one who’d held the pole knelt beside him and went to work pressing the Ouse from Drogo’s lungs. When he coughed weakly the growing crowd cheered, but grew quiet as Brother Henry, the abbey infirmarian, pushed through to the prostrate form. After listening with bent head to the comments of the man working on Drogo, the monk turned to the crowd and asked them to pray for the man’s soul. Jasper knew Brother Henry, and he read resignation in his expression.

  ‘He is very weak,’ said Brother Henry.

  ‘We’ll carry him to the statue of the Virgin,’ said one of the abbey bargemen.

  ‘The Virgin! Yes, she saved my Tom,’ a woman cried.

  It was custom to bring the victims of river accidents to the life-sized statue of the Blessed Mother that graced the main gate of St Mary’s, for she had worked many miracles. Jasper was glad someone had thought of that.

  With Brother Henry solemnly leading the way, Jasper and his fellows, the bargemen, and the townsfolk all walked the short distance to the abbey gate. Drogo was laid before the Virgin on a pallet that had been brought out by abbey servants. Jasper found himself standing beside Master Nicholas Ferriby, the Vicar of Weston and Master of a small grammar school in the minster liberty. He’d offended the dean and chancellor of York Minster by locating it so close to their grammar school, the one Jasper attended. It did not seem to help that Master Nicholas was brother to one of their fellows, the keeper of the minster fabric. Jasper knew the Ferriby family because another brother, a merchant, was married to one of Dame Lucie’s closest friends.

  Shaking his head, Master Nicholas said, ‘It is a sad afternoon’s business, young Jasper. I understand the pilot is dying.’

  Jasper crossed himself. ‘He was not long in the water, but it’s so cold.’ He shivered at the thought of it.

  A well-dressed young man joined them, though in truth he joined Master Nicholas for he did not seem to notice Jasper at all.

  ‘This will go ill with the dean and chancellor, Father Nicholas,’ said the newcomer in what seemed to Jasper a goading tone. ‘I pray none of your scholars were involved.’

  ‘They were not,’ Nicholas said with undisguised irritation. ‘What brings you to York, Master Osmund? I should think you’d be in Weston celebrating your father’s safe return.’

  ‘I’ve already toasted Sir Baldwin,’ said Osmund. ‘Why aren’t you tending your flock in Weston?’

  Jasper recalled that Hubert’s father was fighting for a Sir Baldwin of Weston. ‘Did Hubert de Weston’s father return as well?’ he asked Nicholas.

  The priest nodded and said quietly, ‘I pray that’s where the lad’s gone, to see his father.’

  ‘We should dine together while I’m in the city,’ said Osmund, ignoring Jasper.

  Noticing that Brother Henry was alone despite the crowd of people clogging Marygate, Jasper pushed his way towards him in the hope of finding out more about Drogo’s condition. Brother Henry’s predecessor as infirmarian of St Mary’s, Brother Wulfstan, had been Jasper’s good friend, and through him he’d known Brother Henry since the monk’s novice days. It took him a little while to work through the gossiping, excited people.

  Henry met Jasper’s greeting with a distracted, worried expression.

  ‘This is a terrible evening, terrible,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking of Captain Archer when you hailed me.’

  Jasper glanced round. ‘The captain? I didn’t see him.’ What he did see was a man lying on the pallet, blankets and hides now wrapped about him like heavy winding sheets, his face the only part of him visible.

  ‘The captain’s not here,’ said Brother Henry. ‘I was considering whether to ask my lord abbot’s permission to seek the captain’s advice. I fear that what happened to this man was no accident.’

  Owen Archer was captain of the archbishop’s guard and noted in the city for solving crimes for the archbishop.

  ‘Is Drogo still alive?’ Jasper asked, still staring at the body placed before the Blessed Mother as if an offering.

  ‘He is, God be praised, but I doubt he will be for long unless we move him in to the infirmary so that I might care for him.’ The servants who had brought out the pallet for Drogo waited nearby with poles ready to turn the pallet into a litter.

  ‘Benedicite, Jasper, Brother Henry.’

  Abbot Campian’s arrival stirred them both to straighten up as if they’d been discovered at some mischief.

  ‘If the poor man dies I shall insist that the scholars of St Peter’s pay for his funeral mass and burial,’ said the abbot. ‘Perhaps that will put an end to their warfare.’ Campian believed order to be man’s greatest virtue, and so deplored the feud between the students and the bargemen.

  Jasper felt his face grow hot under the abbot’s stern gaze. ‘We meant only to help one of our fellows.’ He felt unjustly accused.

  ‘I have heard the story,’ said the abbot. ‘Had you informed your schoolmaster of the boy’s loss he would have seen to it.’

  Of course he would have. Jasper bowed his head, feeling more than a little foolish despite not having been involved in the planning. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Master John might intercede for them, and obviously it had not occurred to the older boys.

  ‘My Lord Abbot, if I might call your attention to the dying man.’ Henry drew the abbot towards Drogo. ‘Certain marks on his left cheek, near the ear, and his neck and hands suggest that he’d been engaged in a struggle before he fell into the water.’

  ‘I’d not heard of this,’ said Campian.

  ‘The wounds had been cleansed by the cold waters,’ said Henry.

  ‘Then this earlier struggle might be why he fell in?’ The abbot nodded to himself.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Henry.

  Jasper stepped closer to Drogo in the abbot’s shadow. Slashes, they looked like, made by a very sharp blade. ‘Perhaps this did not happen on the barge, my Lord Abbot,’ Jasper said, keeping his voice low. ‘One of my fellows said he’d looked ill when he arrived at the barges.’

  ‘Did you see him arrive?’ asked Campian.

  Jasper shook his head.

  Abbot Campian thanked Jasper, then took Brother Henry aside.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ the abbot asked the infirmarian.

  ‘Perhaps this man had a falling out with someone else besides Hubert de Weston’s friends,’ said Henry loud enough that Jasper could hear him, ‘someone armed and far more aggressive than the boys.’

  Campian frowned down at the ground. ‘Why then did he go to the barges, I wonder?’

  ‘He felt safe amongst his friends?’ Henry shrugged. ‘He might not have realised how badly injured he was, how weak.’

  ‘I’d thought it an unfortunate accident, but it certainly looks otherwise,’ said Campian. ‘Still, the lads should be taught a lesson.’

  Sensing a disturbance behind him, Jasper glanced back. Master Nicholas Ferriby was making his way through the crowd towards Drogo. He bent close to the drowned man, whispering a prayer.

  It was not Master Nicholas but a man close behind him and a little to one side who gasped and then cried out, ‘He bleeds!’

  To Jasper’s astonishment he saw blood oozing from the wounds on the man’s face and neck. He glanced back up to see the schoolmaster’s reaction.

  Master Nicholas looked towards the crowd with a puzzled
frown and then down at Drogo. He staggered backwards with a cry. ‘Sweet Mary and all the saints!’ He crossed himself.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ a boy cried. ‘Master Nicholas drew blood from the corpse.’

  His exclamation was repeated throughout the crowd accompanied by gasps and cries of dismay.

  Nicholas turned to the young speaker, his eyes flashing in the lantern light. ‘I did nothing but pray for his soul.’

  ‘Drogo is not dead,’ Brother Henry loudly reminded them.

  Abbot Campian stepped forward, and taking Nicholas by the elbow he guided him aside. ‘The crowd’s mood grows dangerous. I advise you to withdraw into the abbey close as soon as you can do so without notice,’ he said softly, though Jasper heard it, and apparently so did some of the monks who had drawn near, for they silently shifted just enough to give Master Nicholas cover in which to withdraw.

  ‘Am I to be a scapegoat for Master John’s scholars?’ Nicholas protested.

  ‘Accept my offer or be damned,’ hissed the abbot.

  ‘Forgive me, my Lord Abbot,’ Nicholas murmured, and with head lowered slipped away.

  Abbot Campian turned to address the crowd. ‘This is no corpse,’ he said in an arrestingly authoritative voice. ‘This man yet lives.’

  ‘But he was not bleeding before Master Nicholas approached him,’ cried a woman.