A Mortal Bane

by Roberta Gellis

  This time she believed what she wanted fit so well with what Guiscard thought was his own advantage that she was sure her message would be transmitted—and as soon as possible. Of course it might be garbled into something she had never said, but since Bell would surely come to find out what she had learned from Beaumeis, she could untangle any knots Guiscard had tied in the truth.

  She took the long way home, knowing it would be impossible for a woman to enter the priory without identifying herself. She would not be welcome, and even if the porter admitted her, she could not get home through the back gate, which was supposed to be locked. Not that she minded the walk; she needed the exercise. She had hardly been out of the house except for her visit to the bishop since Baldassare’s death. Well, she had all but finished her embroidery commission. Perhaps tomorrow she would take it to the mercer in the East Chepe.

  Having arrived at the Old Guesthouse and closed the gate behind her, Magdalene looked at the bell cord, thought of the purse William had left, and smiled. She was just about to turn her back and leave the cord inside when she remembered the message she had left for Bell. She glanced at the sun and decided she could not leave the cord inside. There was time enough for Bell to come.

  He did not come, however, neither that afternoon nor even after the evening meal, by which time Magdalene was sure he would have returned to the bishop’s house. She was furious, one moment calling herself a fool for having trusted Guiscard to do anything right, and the next, calling herself a worse fool for believing Bell would respond when she—a known whore—asked him to come. She was even more ashamed and enraged because she had waited long after dark, after Ella and Letice had gone to bed…and he had not come.

  Chapter Fourteen

  25 April 1139

  East Chepe, London;

  Later, Old Priory Guesthouse

  One good thing came of Magdalene’s fruitless waiting for Bell—she finished her embroidery. The next morning when Bell still had not appeared after they had had breakfast, she wrapped her work in a clean cloth, swathed her head and face in her veil, and set out for the East Chepe. It was a long walk, across the bridge and up Fish Street to the Chepe, but since both sides of the bridge were lined with stalls selling all kinds of baubles, trinkets, and household wares, Magdalene did not mind a bit.

  The cries of the vendors calling people to their stalls mingled with those of the sellers of sugared fruits and flowers, of hot breads, rolled savories, and yes, less fortunate women of her own profession. Not that one could concentrate solely on the proffered wares. Traffic moved along the center of the bridge, and a failure to dodge brought shrieks and curses and could result in bruises or real injury if one were too absentminded.

  Magdalene bought a cup of violets in crystallized honey. Dulcie’s were probably better, but there was a kind of joy in having a half farthing to spend and knowing she would not need to sacrifice some other desire.

  That made the fruit all the sweeter. She stopped to look at embroidered bands ready to be sewn onto the collars and facings of gowns and shook her head firmly at the mercer’s apprentice. They were poor things compared with her own work. Even Ella could do better.

  A bolt of linen so soft and fine one could see through it on the next counter held her attention. She fingered the cloth, held it up to the light, pressed a fold of it against the inside of her wrist. A lovely, soft green that would have flattered her skin and hair, but when the journeyman murmured a price, and not unreasonable, she still sighed and turned away. She had no occasion for any garment made of such revealing cloth and never would have. The last thing in the world she wanted was to tempt a man.

  That thought woke a small echo of her hurt over Bell’s neglect, but she told herself she should be grateful for it. The light prick would save her deeper pain later—and one could not be sad in the midst of so much color and noise. In fact, before Magdalene was a third of the way across the bridge, she had forgotten her hurt and pique and was studying a pair of brass torchette holders that she thought would look very well at either side of the door of the Old Guesthouse. That time she stopped and bargained and came away with what she felt was a prize.

  Fish Street distracted her in another way. Here, too, were stalls, but these were less attractive, with heaps of herring and mackerel, great mounds of cod, baskets of eels, piles of flounder. Magdalene’s nose, inured to the smell of hard-worked, hard-riding, unwashed men, wrinkled against the overwhelming odor of fish. Far worse than the stalls was the gutter down the center of the street, where pigs and feral cats and dogs snatched at and fought over wares too ripe for even the poorest to buy, leftovers cast away amidst the dung and urine of horse and man.

  Magdalene clutched her torchette holders under her arm and tucked her veil firmly into her collar to free her hands so she could lift her skirt well off the ground. It took careful attention and quick footwork to get around the people haggling at the stalls, avoid stepping into the muck in the gutter, dodge the animals, and escape being splashed when others were not as adroit and landed in the sluggish puddles cursing and shouting. Next time, she promised herself, she would walk the extra street west to Gracechurch, where the shops were mostly those of pepperers and mercers.

  She was cheered, however, by escaping with no more than a few small spots on her garments, and her interview with the mercer who sold her embroidery was also soothing. From her speech and manner, he had deduced that she was a lady of good birth who had fallen on hard times, or had a niggardly male guardian and was forced to sell her handiwork. That did not make him any more generous in payment for it, but he treated her with great courtesy, and it was a pleasure not to need to study a man to say just the right thing. He also had several more orders for her, one for an altar cloth.

  To that offer, many months’ worth of work, Magdalene shook her head. “I cannot do it for that price,” she said.

  “But the buyer will provide the cloth itself and all the embroidery thread, even the needles, if you desire.”

  Magdalene laughed. “Come now. Master Mercer, you know that half the beauty of my pieces is in the quality of the cloth, the thinness and rich dyes of the thread. I cannot trust another to purchase those for me. If the buyer wants the quality I produce, he or she must pay at least forty shillings. For that, I will provide cloth and thread and the very finest work, and either do the buyer’s design or present a design of my own.”

  “That is too much,” he said, looking disappointed.

  “For my own work, I cannot take less, but I have a compromise to offer.” From her purse, Magdalene withdrew samplers of Letice’s and Ella’s work. “These are the work of two of my women. It is not so fine as mine, but it is good. For the price you offered—the buyer to provide cloth and thread, too—your purchaser may have the work done by those women. If you like, I will leave the samplers with you to show. The other two pieces, the headband and collar band, I will do. Would you desire a matching design, or are these for different customers?”

  “Matching.” He fingered the samples she had given him and sighed. “If I raised the price to thirty shillings?”

  Behind her veil, Magdalene smiled. “Keep the piece I gave you and show it with the other two. Then ask for fifty or sixty shillings and let the buyer wear you down.”

  He sighed again. “You are too aware of your own worth or not hungry enough,” he said. “All right. Forty shillings, and let me have the design for it before next Monday. And let me keep these samplers. There are customers who cannot afford your work and might be content with these.”

  The smile he could not see broadened. If she got many more orders for embroidery—the mercer across the street had asked if she had any more he could sell—she and her women could make their claim to be embroiderers genuine, except that they could not pay the rent nor enjoy the kind of life they had as whores. Nonetheless, she thanked the mercer and agreed to leave the samplers with him.

  With her pay in her pocket, little though it was compared with what she took
each week for her women’s work, Magdalene felt a strong temptation to shop. It was as if the money she made as an embroideress was not real and called out to be used for pleasure.

  She found a soft, gold-colored cap. Hanging from it were thin metal chains interset with bright stones; those would shine and flash through Letice’s dark hair and lend an additional exotic touch while she danced. For Sabina, she chose a shawl of a soft, fine wool of a delicate rose color. Many of Sabina’s clients wanted peace and comfort; that she should look like a woman beside a cozy fire was all to the good, and Sabina would relish the softness. For Ella, she picked a thin shift with delicate openwork around the neck and bright ribbon bows to show above a low-necked gown; the trailing ends of the bows would lie to each side of her high breasts and mark out their strong rise. And for Dulcie, a good white-linen head veil.

  For herself, she bought fine wide ribbons, and hanks of thin thread spun so tightly that they shone. She smiled as she tucked those away with the brass torchette holders; she had bought only materials for her work and to adorn her house. It was too dangerous to adorn herself.

  The sadder mood that such thoughts brought was dissipated as soon as she arrived at home just before dinner and heard that Bell had come after all. Magdalene was rather ashamed at the difference the news made in her feelings, and merely nodded. Sabina volunteered that he had not stayed long. He had said he must attend Baldassare’s burial that morning and that he would try to go to St. Paul’s afterward, as Magdalene had asked.

  St. Paul’s. Then he had believed her message and did intend to question Beaumeis, but it was likely too late now to extract extra truth from him, even if he had actually been shocked and shaken by the news of Baldassare’s murder. It seemed more possible now that Beaumeis had committed the crime and his display of grief was over-pretending. She was annoyed at having been taken in, but few men bothered to pretend for a whore. Still, she should have realized the shock he showed had been too great to stem only from surprise and regret at the death of a friend. That should have been more like Buchuinte’s reaction, which rang true.

  Did it ring true, Magdalene wondered, suddenly critical. Buchuinte had said he was too upset to go to Ella, but he had lingered as though he wanted to be persuaded to stay. And he had had the opportunity to commit the murder. He had been there in her house at the same time as Baldassare. Nothing would have stopped him from going to the church instead of going home when he left Ella. Only, why should Buchuinte wish to kill Baldassare? Certainly not to keep the bull from Winchester or the letter from the king. Still, there could have been some personal matter, some insult or crime Buchuinte had learned of since Baldassare’s last visit. Magdalene shuddered, pushed the thought away, and displayed the gifts she had bought.

  Everyone was delighted, but Ella, holding her new shift up and examining it minutely, said absently, “It is lucky he did not stay. He would have been even angrier when you had no gift for him.”

  “Who?” Magdalene asked.

  “Sir Bellamy.” Sabina hesitated. “I do not know whether he was annoyed or disappointed because you were not at home. He was not angry, precisely, but his voice was…stiff.”

  “Can I try on my new shift?” Ella asked. “And may I wear it when BamBam comes?”

  “Yes, of course,” Magdalene said, hardly hearing, and when Ella had gone, she asked, “What do you mean, stiff?”

  Letice touched her arm. She had put on the cap with a smile of delight when Magdalene first gave it to her and her attention had seemed to be all on lifting her hair to watch the metal chains gleam through it. Now she fixed Magdalene’s eyes with her own and acted out blows, choking, then clasped her hands tightly together.

  “He could not have been so angry as to wish to do violence,” Magdalene protested. “Sabina would have heard that in his voice, surely.”

  Poor Letice shook her head and showed her frustration, but she did not simply sit down and shrug with tears in her eyes as she so often did when she could not communicate. She tried again, even trying over and over to mouth a word with her dumbshow until, at last, Magdalene drew a sharp breath. Jealous, was the word.

  “You think he was jealous?”

  Letice breathed a great sigh and nodded.

  “That could be,” Sabina said. “That could be what I heard, that kind of constraint over anger in his voice.”

  “What can I do?” Magdalene cried. ‘The fool! How can a man be jealous of a whore? And I cannot refuse to let him in and talk to him. We must discover who killed Baldassare.” She sighed and shook her head, remembering her underlying desire to see him, which had sent her to the bishop’s house. “Oh, he is not the only fool! Why did I ask for him, leave a message for him? I hoped he would believe I only wanted him to discover whether Beaumeis was guilty, but doubtless he flattered himself the message was an excuse for us to meet.”

  Sabina protested that it was not Magdalene’s fault, and Letice patted her and hugged her. Magdalene shook her head and sighed some more over her own folly, still unable to put aside all hope that she could come to some reasonable arrangement with Bell. After all, he had gotten over his first fury at learning that she still served William of Ypres, and it was the first time he had ever found her missing from the Old Priory Guesthouse. He would adjust to that, too, she told herself. He must accept the fact that she was free to work her trade if she wished.

  Ella returned, proudly displaying her shift under a bedgown, and Dulcie brought in dinner. By the time they sat down to eat, Magdalene had put aside most of her anxiety, and she mentioned the new requests she had for embroidery. Ella and Letice were laughably proud of their skill, considering how little it earned in comparison to whoring, and they began to discuss new work they could do. The lively talk allowed Magdalene to plan what she would say to Bell when he did return and vow silently she would never again go to seek him out personally.

  The first three clients arrived, took their pleasure, and left according to schedule; those three—a cordwainer, a dyer, and a woodworker—also had had guild meetings on Wednesday and had nothing to do with Baldassare. Of the second set of clients, BamBam came ahead of time because he intended to leave early; he was a wool factor who had to travel at dawn the following morning to collect sheared fleeces. He had been away on the same errand the preceding week, from Wednesday morning to Saturday, and his name could be crossed off Magdalene’s list.

  The two others had come soon after. Sabina’s client was a horribly ugly but gentle man, scorned and derided for his looks by his wife. He had been introduced by a friend who valued him highly and hoped that Magdalene and her women could restore a spark of joy to his life. That hope had more than been fulfilled. He adored Sabina and had already asked Magdalene whether he could buy her and keep her for his own.

  Letice’s “guest” Magdalene thought must, from his complexion and halting French, be a fellow countryman; he had been brought to Magdalene’s by a shipmaster and was apparently very rich. Although he had his own house on the north shore of the river in London, he always stayed the night. Something about Letice fascinated him, and he spent more time playing an odd, high-pitched little pipe and watching her dance than he did in her bed.

  When they were all safely closed away and busy, Magdalene got a large, tight-woven white cloth and a thin piece of charcoal from her workbasket, pinned the cloth to the table, and began to sketch out a design for the altar cloth the mercer wanted. A lock-and-key border for the bottom of the cloth and a large cross in the center would bind together a pattern of interlocking square frames with rounded and barbed sides. Within the frames she would embroider pictures of various saints. It took some time to draw the squares with their convoluted sides, and she rubbed out more than once. When she came to the saints, all she could do was to sketch in some vague forms. The mercer would have to tell her which of the saints his customer wanted shown.

  Magdalene sat back and looked at the design with considerable satisfaction. She lifted her eyes as she heard a man’s shar
p, impatient voice telling Ella to be good and that he would see her again the next Tuesday, and then the closing of the back door. Ella had not named him BamBam for nothing. Doubtless she had been urging him to stay longer, but it did not matter; although impatient, as usual, he seemed flattered, not angry.

  Ella should now clean herself and straighten her room, but sometimes she forgot. Magdalene watched, saw the girl come back down the corridor, reenter her room. Magdalene’s eyes went back to her design. She would use a fine, blue-dyed canvas for the background, she thought; she had seen just the right kind of cloth in the shop of the mercer across the way, too costly to buy on speculation, but now that she had a commission, she could please and profit her neighbor, too.

  The bell at the gate interrupted her thoughts; this time she rose quickly, smiling. Ella would be ready for another client soon and would be delighted to serve him, since BamBam often left her unsatisfied. Magdalene again wondered why he bothered to pay two pence for Ella when he could get a common whore’s service for a farthing. He never wanted to linger and play, she thought, as she went to the gate, that perhaps he disliked the filth or the danger of the common stew. He had the right to do what he liked with his own money.

  She opened the gate, then gripped it tight. Another stranger! She did not recognize the man holding a dusty, tired-looking horse. “Yes, my lord?” she said, polite but distant.

  “I have a friend in the Bishop of Winchester’s Household who told me that I could get lodging for the night and most excellent entertainment at this house.”