The Wayward Apprentice (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 1)

by Jason Vail

  Edith of course understood but took no offense. “If not that, I could use another laundress.”

  “Well,” Amicia said reluctantly, “perhaps. If only for a while. Until I find something more suitable.”

  “I’ll ask Sir Geoff when he gets back,” Stephen said. “He’ll know someone. No reason why you have to stick with the town.”

  Amicia said, “I would be forever grateful.”

  Stephen said, “She’ll need a place to stay in the meantime.”

  “Naturally,” Edith said. “There’s a spare bed in Sarah’s room. You can sleep there.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  Edith smiled. “Perhaps you’ll think differently when you get those pretty hands chapped at the washboard.”

  In the corner, the backgammon game erupted into a fistfight. The table tipped over, the board went flying, and the game pieces scattered along with the money. Spectators scrambled on the floor for the coins, while the two fighters stood toe to toe slugging it out.

  Gilbert’s jolly demeanor evaporated in an instant. Edith tossed him a stout oak stave as long as a man’s arm, which Gilbert caught with practiced ease. He rushed to the fighters with Stephen right behind to back him up.

  But Stephen wasn’t needed. Gilbert grabbed the nearest fighter on the shoulder and kicked him behind the knee, which brought the man to the ground. Then Gilbert struck the other man a hard two-handed blow on the shoulder. The victim of his blow shrank back, holding his shoulder and whining.

  “Be glad that wasn’t your head,” Gilbert said. “Now get out of here — all of you.”

  “But our money,” one of them protested.

  “You know there’s no fighting in the Shield. You can come back for it tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to cool off.” He wagged the staff at the people on their knees. “And you — drop every pence. Now! I’m watching you like a hawk. And I’ll break any man’s — or woman’s — head who doesn’t comply.”

  Gilbert’s threats were not empty, as they all knew from previous experience, so coins that had found their way into fists and purses clattered on the floorboards. Gilbert said, “That’s better. The door’s that way. Stephen will show you the way, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Stephen grinned. He bowed them toward the door in his best imitation of a butler. “Gentlemen, ladies, may I escort you . . .”

  The guests had no option but to comply and they trooped out sullenly. “I’ll be counting it tomorrow morning!” one of them said in a parting shot on the threshold. “I want a full accounting! It best be all there!”

  “Don’t you be suggesting I’m a thief, Adam Fitzowen,” Gilbert shouted back.

  Stephen cut off any further rejoinders by shoving the last of the group through the door. He followed them out and stood at the doorstep, arms crossed, to make sure they dispersed. As they disappeared into the shadows, muttering and grumbling, he called through the closed door, “You can bar up. I’ve got the horses to tend to. I’ll be in shortly.”

  He went through the gate to the yard, where he paused to drop the bar on the gate. The two mares were waiting patiently at a water trough by the side door, which was disconcerting because he’d left them tied at a post by the gate. He wondered how they had come loose. He had been tying horses to posts since he was a child and had never had this happen. He pulled the double doors open, standing back to allow them to swing free, and paused at the black cavernous entrance. It was so dark he couldn’t see a thing. He wished now he had thought to bring a candle.

  “Harry,” he called, “you asleep?”

  “Nay,” Harry’s voice came from somewhere on the left. “How can a man sleep with all the racket you’re making?”

  “Which stalls are free?”

  “There’s two on the right at the wall not taken.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He groped his way to the right, found the stalls, and put one mare in the first and the other in the second. Light from the moon splashed in the open doorway and gradually, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, vague shapes began to emerge. There was a thumping from the left and Harry clumped through into the rectangle of light. “Need some help there?” he asked.

  “Anything for a penny, eh, Harry?”

  “Man’s got to eat. I was good with horses, once. Would have made a good groom, if the lord had given me a chance.”

  “Are there any oats left?”

  “Ought to be. Gilbert had half a dozen sacks in day before yesterday.”

  Stephen leaned his sword against the wall and found the oats in their bin. He scooped twice into a bucket, which he put on the hay in the older mare’s stall. She went for it immediately, and he had to warn her off, “Slow down, girl. I’ve got to get that tack off first.”

  Stephen removed the bridle and let her go to the bucket while he unhitched the saddle girth.

  He was lifting the saddle to a saw horse beside the stall gate when Harry slapped him on the thigh and hissed, “Quiet!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s someone in the yard,” Harry whispered urgently.

  “What’s odd about that?”

  “They don’t belong. Listen!”

  Stephen couldn’t hear anything untoward at first but the sighing of the wind. Then he heard a faint, snick, snick, snick. Coming this way. Not the sort of careless noise an ordinary person might make when crossing the yard, but the furtive, cautious sound of someone trying to move quietly and in a bit too much of a hurry.

  A voice murmured beyond the door.

  Then two men slipped into the rectangle of silver light at the doorway.

  “‘Scuse me,” one of the men said at the sight of them, “but are there any rooms at the inn for the night? We knocked on the door but nobody answered.” The two men did not wait for a reply. They came toward Stephen with elaborate casualness. They obviously wanted to put Stephen off his guard, but everything about them screamed threat.

  Harry grabbed Stephen’s calf in alarm.

  Stephen edged away from Harry, trying to keep the light behind the two men. They weren’t armed, except for knives. But that was bad enough, if they were what he thought. Two against one in a knife fight was a losing proposition for the one.

  He looked desperately for his sword, but the two men were even with the place where he’d left it. There was no chance now that he could get to it if they meant to attack. And they were so close that he dared not look around for another weapon because they’d be on him if he turned to search for one.

  He was trying to make up his mind what to do when they attacked.

  The one on his right grasped his arm and the man on the left drew his knife. It seemed like a move they had practiced before: one to hold the victim immobile and the other to do the butchering. Quick and certain death. But Stephen knew tricks from hundreds of hours spent wrestling in castle baileys and village churchyards, and they came easily to his mind. He moved to the right almost before the first man had a complete grasp on his sleeve and coat. He levered the near elbow upward, grasped the hair at the top of the head, and pitched his nearest attacker to the ground in the path of the knifer. The knifer stumbled and fell to his knees with a curse. Stephen aimed a kick with his bad foot at the knifer’s head but struck a rock-like shoulder instead. The impact was intense and Stephen nearly cried out. But there wasn’t time for that kind of weakness. The knifer stabbed at Stephen’s legs but and he only snagged a big hole in a stocking.

  For a moment, Stephen saw what he had hoped to create — a way clear around the attackers to the open door. Just a few, brief steps. That’s all he’d need to be away and safe.

  But then Harry propelled himself forward with surprising speed and was upon the first man and wrestling on the ground.

  If Stephen ran now, they’d kill Harry just to get away.

  He couldn’t leave.

  Stephen swept the saddle off the saw horse and threw it at the knifer.


  The saddle struck the knifer full in the chest and it carried him backward to the ground.

  Stephen drew his own dagger as the knifer threw off the saddle. He kicked at Stephen’s legs to keep him away, and only when Stephen had danced back did he rise.

  They measured each other for a few moments. Then the knife-man attacked with a quick lunge at the belly. It was a fake because as Stephen reacted, he shifted the blow to the head. Stephen barely twisted aside in time to avoid the blade, the man’s arm so close that the hair on his forearm brushed Stephen’s cheek. Without conscience thought, Stephen’s own blade lanced out for the man’s ribs, but a hand caught Stephen’s forearm in an iron grip. For a moment, it seemed that Stephen was finished, for the other’s blade drew back for the killing stroke. But Stephen twisted his hand to slice at the man’s arm as he delivered the killing blow, Stephen set it aside with his free hand, and there followed such a rapid and improbable exchange of blow, parry, and counter-blow, of turn and avoidance, of push and step, that no spectator would have believed it possible, for knife fights never as a rule last more than seconds before one of the antagonists is bleeding on the ground.

  The flow of battle put the knife-man between Stephen and the door again. At a brief pause, the knife-man realized this, and he turned and ran. Stephen heard his footfalls across the yard to the front gate, then a shuddering of wood as he vaulted over to the street and was gone.

  Stephen turned back to help Harry. He and the other assailant were locked in a death struggle side by side on the ground. The attacker had pulled his knife, but Harry had caught his arm with one hand. With the other hand Harry clasped the man by the throat. Harry’s eyes were wild, his nostrils flared, his teeth barred in a soundless snarl. The other man’s face made Stephen want to turn away. The eyes bulged, the mouth distended as if in a scream cut off by the massive strength in Harry’s hands.

  Stephen knelt beside them. “Harry,” he said, “you can let go now.”

  Harry glared insanely at him, panting through clenched teeth.

  “He’s finished, Harry,” Stephen said. He took the dagger from the dead man’s hand and laid it on the ground. Gently he worked at Harry’s fingers.

  Slowly Harry came back to earth. The panting subsided. The mad gleam in his eyes began to fade. The rigidity in his great arms slacked. He allowed Stephen to pry his hand lose from the man’s throat and sagged onto his back.

  “I killed him?” Harry said.

  “Yes.”

  “I never killed a man before.”

  “There’s always a first time for everything.”

  “It’s homicide. I’ll have to answer. A man like me — I’ll never get a pardon.”

  The law was precise and implacable on this point. Every homicide required the killer to stand trial. Pleas of self defense were not enough to avoid the gallows. Only a king’s pardon could buy that, and pardons cost much in money and influence.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Stephen said.

  He went to the door and took a deep breath of the chill night air. The town and the inn were silent under blazing stars and a half moon. A dog barked in the distance. A woman laughed in the neighboring house. Nobody, it seemed, had any inkling that violent death had occurred in this ordinary place.

  Stephen went back into the stables. Harry’s hands were cupped over his face.

  “How can I run without legs?” Harry said.

  “You’ll not need to run anywhere,” Stephen said. “You’re going to bed, where you should have stayed in the first place.” He offered his hand to help Harry sit up, but Harry ignored it and levered himself upright. Stephen turned toward the other side of the stables, where Harry lived but stopped in the doorway.

  “If anybody asks,” Stephen said as Harry lumbered by, “I killed him.”

  Chapter 11

  Gilbert examined the dead man in the light of his candle. With this illumination, it was possible now to see that the corpse had an unpleasant, rat-like face marked from small pox. He wore a much patched brown coat and stockings that had once been green.

  “Good Lord,” Gilbert sighed. “You’ve a penchant for trouble, my boy.”

  “Any idea who he is?” Stephen asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Harry shuffled into the light for a closer look. “I know him,” he croaked.

  “Oh?” Gilbert asked in an interested tone.

  “Name’s Simon Butcher, though he’s not a butcher. His dad was. He works — or worked — at the mill that burned last week.”

  “Baynard’s mill,” Stephen said, surprised.

  “Yes,” Harry said. “He’s a loud mouth, a drunk, and a braggart. Kicked me once for no reason.”

  “Not someone who would be missed,” Gilbert said in a musing tone. “A wife? Children?”

  “There’s a wife and three,” Harry said, “but he don’t live with ‘em. She threw him out because of drink. He had a doxy in Ludford, but I heard even she’s gone too now.”

  “Ah,” Gilbert said contemplatively.

  “With the mill burned, he probably needs money,” Stephen said.

  “He’s the kind who always needs money,” Harry said. “Makes an extra penny or two collecting debts and beating people up. He’s especially fond of opponents of the king.”

  Gilbert said, “Too many of that kind in this town and not the sort Fitzsimmons or Bromptone would turn to.”

  “He’d kill his mother for a penny,” Harry added.

  “Well, then, perhaps I’m wrong,” Gilbert said. “It’s a pity he’s not here to tell us who put him up to this. You didn’t have to kill him, did you?”

  There was a pause. Then Stephen said, “I lost my head.”

  “A pity,” Gilbert said again. “Well, there’s the question of what do we do now.”

  “What else is there to do?” Stephen said. He wondered if his cousin could be prevailed on to pay for the pardon once he was convicted of homicide. “We’ll have to inform the sheriff and convene a jury.”

  Gilbert stood up and blew out the candle. “You know,” he said, “that old latrine needs burning out again. Funny how they get so filthy so quickly.” He turned to Stephen. “There’s a pile of rubble by the back fence. Go fetch a couple of stones. Big ones. We don’t want our friend here floating to the surface if we can help it. And wipe that look off your face. You don’t want to be found out, do you?”

  Chapter 12

  The knock on the door seemed to come almost as soon as he put his head on the pillow. Stephen’s eyes flew open. The first thing he thought was, someone’s found the corpse in the latrine.

  The knock sounded again, more insistent.

  Stephen thought about jumping from the window, but he was naked and the fall was too far in any case. He wrapped a blanket around himself and drew the dagger from under the pillow.

  Then he cracked the door, prepared to fight if anyone barged in.

  Amicia regarded him with surprise and alarm: not because of the dagger, because he held it out of sight, but because of the blanket and his obvious nakedness.

  She studied a corner. “I’ve been asked to summon you for mass,” she said.

  No one having found a dead man in a latrine would say something as commonplace as that. “Mass,” he croaked.

  “Yes, mass,” Amicia said, continuing to study a point outside his room.

  “You’re going now?”

  “That is the mistress’ desire.”

  “What time is it?” Stephen asked.

  “Almost time for Terce.”

  “Ah.” It was hard not being physically affected by her presence, which was accompanied by the aroma of some clean flowery scent he could not place.

  The door had swung open slightly while he stood there, wits dulled, and he heard Amicia gasp. He saw she was looking at the bare stump of his left foot.

  He drew the foot out of sight, embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “About what?”

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nbsp; “Your …”

  “Foot.”

  “Yes.”

  “Just some bad luck. A Moor cut it off. With an axe.”

  Amicia winced. “It’s God’s will.”

  Stephen snorted.

  Amicia was shocked. “That’s blasphemy.”

  Stephen put a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  She started to turn away. “You won’t be attending mass, then, I see.”

  He said, “I’ll come.”

  “It will do you good,” she said firmly.

  “Edith says that too,” Stephen said. He closed the door to a mere crack. “I’ll be right down. Have to get dressed first.”

  “That would be wise.”

  Amicia was waiting by the door with the rest of the Wistwodes, so Stephen gave up on the thought of breakfast and followed them out to the street

  At Broad Street they turned uphill toward the parish church. Terce was the most popular time for Sunday mass and there were streams of people headed the same way. By the time they reached the churchyard, the streams had congealed into a crowd.

  Amicia stopped abruptly just short of the church entrance. Stephen had gone two paces beyond her before he realized she was not at his side. He turned to look for her and found her glaring at Anselin Baynard, who stalked by with his wife, daughters, servants, and apprentices forming a rather formidable procession in his wake.

  Amicia smiled, for there was Peter at the tail end of the parade, with a bruise on his left cheek. Amicia gasped and hurried to him. She put delicate fingers to his face and traced the edges of the bruise.

  “My dear,” she said anxiously, “what more have they done to you?”

  “Nothing,” Peter said evasively. His hands twitched as if he wanted to embrace her. But such a public display was unseemly, so he contented himself with devouring her with his eyes. “I’m fine. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Broken Shield,” she said, gesturing at Stephen. “Your captor graciously found a place for me.”

  Peter looked guardedly at Stephen and was about to say something when a voice cracked, “Bromptone! Come here!”