The Wayward Apprentice (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 1)

by Jason Vail

  “Whatever would you do with a pair of shoes? Wear them on your ears?”

  “I’ll need shoes after I buy myself some legs!” Harry hooted.

  Chapter 18

  Stephen went up College Lane to the wake. He had not been invited, but he didn’t think he’d be questioned in the press.

  A group of apprentice-aged boys and servant girls blocked the doorway. A boy came out with a small keg on his shoulder to the acclaim of those clustered about the stoop. The assembly, among whom doubtless were the servants charged with regulating entry, followed the keg-wielder away from the doorway, and Stephen took advantage of the distraction to slip into the hall.

  Chairs and benches were arranged before the two enormous fireplaces to catch the best of the blazes. A band of musicians bravely plucked and fluted away by the biggest fireplace, the music unheeded by anyone and almost submerged in the hubbub. A long table laden with food, including a pig complete with its head and feet, occupied the center of the hall, while barrels of wine and ale stood against the left wall. The windows were tall, and mottled glass in the panes threw a greenish hue over everything.

  Stephen scanned the crowd for the butler, Muryet, and Clement

  He didn’t see them, but there were so many people that he could easily have missed them.

  He spotted the Widow Baynard in the master’s high-backed chair surrounded by a cluster of matrons. Stephen would sooner approach the king than brave that formidable court and make what the widow and her friends must think was a strange request coming from the likes of him.

  As he plotted how to approach her, he wandered over to the food-laden table. He washed his hands in the bowl set out for that purpose, and as he dried his hands, Gilbert and Edith appeared at his elbow. Gilbert’s trencher already held a litter of bones.

  “They have these little partridges that are excellent,” Gilbert said. “Cooked in a lemon and pepper sauce. There, right behind the pig.”

  Stephen looked at the bones. “How many have you had?”

  “Only three,” Gilbert said defensively.

  “Tell the truth.”

  “Well, I have. And if you want a partridge, you better move fast. There won’t be any left soon.”

  “At the rate you’re going, I’m not surprised. And you’ve only just got here.”

  Edith laughed. “I told him that if he didn’t slow down, he’d be swallowing those birds whole!”

  Gilbert looked miffed.

  Stephen filled a trencher. He said, “Gilbert, you know the Widow Baynard, don’t you?”

  “We’ve met,” Gilbert said. “But the Baynards aren’t the sort to have much to do with innkeepers.”

  “I’m told Baynard had a library.”

  Gilbert brightened. “I’ve heard that too.”

  “Now that we’re here, it would be interesting to have a look at it, don’t you think?”

  “Why, yes! Yes! What a fine idea. I didn’t know you had an interest in books.”

  “I am a connoisseur of books.”

  “I’ve never seen you read a book.”

  “If I had a book, I’d read it. But I’m too poor.”

  Gilbert confided, “I have three!”

  Stephen was surprised. “You don’t say. I didn’t know that.”

  “One’s a Bible,” he said with pride.

  “How did you get hold of a Bible?”

  Gilbert was suddenly evasive. Bibles cost a fortune and there weren’t many outside abbeys. Edith looked at him sharply.

  Stephen saw this was a question better left unanswered. “Well, you’ll have to let me read it sometime.”

  “It’ll do you good,” Edith said.

  “I wonder how we could get a peek at Baynard’s library?” Stephen mused after a bite of pork.

  “We shall have to ask the widow! That’s what we’ll do. Ask her. I’m sure she won’t mind. What do you think, Edith?”

  Edith looked skeptical. But she said, “I suppose you can.”

  “Right, then.” He regarded his trencher. “Now? You want to go now?”

  “Why not?” Stephen said. He’d finished his meal. It had been very good. He could do for more, but now that he had a plan, he was eager to get on with it.

  “Oh, all right.” Gilbert handed his trencher to Edith and moved through the crowd to the benches and chairs before the main fireplace, where the widow had established her court.

  Edith put a slice of roasted peach in her mouth. She asked off-handedly, “Why didn’t you just ask the widow yourself?”

  Stephen felt himself start to blush. She at least had seen through him, if Gilbert had not. “The request would have been odd coming from me, and I don’t want to draw attention to my interest.”

  “Why not?”

  “There may be something in there of use in the case of Baynard’s murder. Something others might be concerned that I not acquire.”

  “Why not just demand to search for it?”

  “It’s not really an official inquiry.”

  “We’re not going to get in trouble for this, are we?”

  “Not unless we’re caught.”

  “Hmmph,” Edith grunted.

  Gilbert came back, beaming and rubbing his hands together. In his excitement about inspecting the library he had forgotten about his trencher. “Are you ready? Let’s not dally!”

  They met a servant at the foot of the stairs. They had to climb to the upper floors in full view of those in the hall, and Stephen worried that Muryet or Clement might spot him. Gilbert, who was right behind him, thought Stephen was looking at the widow in her circle before the fireplace. She was laughing and seemed to be enjoying herself.

  Gilbert said, “For some women, widowhood is a release, not a time of grief.”

  “What’s that?” Stephen asked.

  Gilbert nodded to the Widow Baynard. “Some women are happier with their husbands dead than alive.”

  “You can’t understand that because you’re a man,” Edith said.

  “Are you unhappy, my dear?”

  “I could be happier.”

  “Oh, dear. What can I do to assure your bliss?”

  “You could listen better.”

  Stephen, who could recall only one instance when people didn’t leap to obey when Edith commanded, said. “Let’s get off the stairs.” He took the remaining steps two at a time until he was out of sight of the floor below. He breathed a little easier now he couldn’t be seen. But it transpired that they had to make one more exposed passage, the walkway above the hall to the front of the house. Stephen wished they could make the passage quickly, but the boy wasn’t in any hurry.

  The servant opened the door of a room which overlooked the hall below, and stood back. “The library, sirs, mistress,” he said.

  Stephen went in, followed by Gilbert and Edith. It was a small room, no more than eight feet wide by ten feet long. There was a window on the far wall which gave a view of the street. A window on the right, the south side of the house, opened to the space between this house and the neighbors. The shutters of both had been thrown back, which rendered the room bright and sunny, good for writing and reading. A set of shelves stood along the left wall, which held perhaps twenty books. Gilbert gasped at the sight of them.

  “Good lord, what riches!” he said. “What riches indeed!”

  He reverently took one of the books, bound in blue leather, and sank into the cushioned chair before a large writing table.

  Stephen turned to the servant, who had remained in the doorway. The boy lingered there, as if he intended to watch them. Stephen couldn’t have that. He said in his most bored tone, “Would you be so kind as to fetch us wine?”

  “Of course, sir,” the boy said.

  “Thank you so much.”

  The boy turned back toward the stairway. Stephen closed the door. “Edith,” he said, “will you keep a lookout?”

  Edith looked startled, but nodded and positioned herself with an ear by the door so she could hear anyone
approach.

  Stephen hoped the boy would be in no more hurry to carry out that chore than he had been to lead them here. But even so, Stephen wouldn’t have much time to search until the boy came back. As he surveyed the room, his dismay grew. It was barren except for the books, the writing desk, the cushioned chair and a stool. There was no box for documents, nor any indication of any place they might be kept — no cabinet, no hide-hole, no cupboard. Had Muryet been wrong? Stephen couldn’t believe he had been — unless someone had removed the documents.

  In his worry, Stephen inspected the most conspicuous piece of furniture of the room, the writing table. The top, like many such tables, lay at a slant to facilitate writing. He said, “Gilbert, move your elbow for me.”

  Gilbert blinked, shifted his position, and kept reading.

  Stephen smiled. Below the front lip of the slanted top was the tooled mouth of a bronze keyhole. He jimmied the writing surface. It wiggled slightly but did not come up. It was locked. He thumped the top and sides, which gave back a hollow thunk. There was a document box and the desk was it.

  “Do you know anything about lock picking?” Stephen asked Gilbert.

  Gilbert said, “What do you take me for?”

  Stephen drew his dagger and inserted the point between the desk top and the frame, intending to force the lock. But he hesitated at the damage it would cause.

  “You want to get into that?” Edith said from the door.

  Stephen nodded.

  “Push the pins out of the hinges.”

  “Hinges?”

  “On the back,” she said with studied patience as if he was being a particularly stupid child.

  “Hinges, back. Right.” Stephen turned the desk to get at the hinges. Sure enough, there was a pair of bronze ones holding the slanted board to the desk’s back. He inspected the pins, which were just little rods of bronze. They seemed to be in there pretty firmly. They wouldn’t come out without the help of a tool, and of course he had brought nothing sufficient for the task.

  He’d have to improvise.

  All he had handy was his dagger. He drew it and set the point against the top of one of the pins. “Hand me your dagger, Gilbert,” he said.

  Gilbert put down his book, curious now at what was going on. He handed over his dagger.

  Stephen held it by the blade and, using its pommel as a hammer, began to tap the head of his own weapon. The pin resisted for a couple of taps, then began to slide through the hinge. After a few more taps, the width of the dagger point prevented Stephen from forcing it any further. But it had come out enough that he was able to grasp the other end of the rod with his fingers and worm it out the rest of the way.

  The other rod came out the same way.

  He set aside the top.

  As expected the interior of the desk was filled with documents, most of them parchment, but some of them written on Italian paper and vellum. They were covered with writing, mostly in English, some in French. Stephen began laying them out one by one. Two of them consisted simply of lists of names. On one list, there were a series of numbers entered. It looked like an account of payments made in shillings and pence and, on occasion, in pounds. Often there were multiple payments noted in what looked like different inks and pens, although with the same hand. Stephen spotted a familiar name on the list, one Hamo, although whether it belonged to the Ludford vicar was impossible to tell. The other list simply held names. Four of them were marked through with wavy lines.

  Looking over his shoulder, Gilbert sighed heavily. He put his finger on the list that looked like an account. “I’ll wager those are Baynard’s spies and these are his accounts of how much he’s paid them.”

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “But what of this other?”

  Gilbert stroked his chin. “The barons’ men?” He indicated one of the names. “I knew that fellow. He used to come up here on business and stay at the inn. A squire from Hereford. But I had word not long ago that he was killed. A robbery, they said.”

  “Bromptone said that the kings’ men killed a barons’ spy in Hereford.”

  “So this could be Baynard’s enemies list.”

  “So it seems.”

  “What’ll we do? Men would die if those lists became known.”

  A terrible idea flitted through Stephen’s head: he could sell one list to one faction and the other list to the other, and profit doubly from this find. How he could use the money. It was certain to be substantial. But he said, “Nothing.”

  Stephen continued searching the box.

  At the bottom of the pile, he came across a folded scrap of vellum. It was a narrow, ragged, uneven piece, as though it had been cut from a letter. It had been sealed with a daub of green and white wax, a few flakes of which still clung to the leaf. Stephen opened the fragment. A message was written there in a blocky hand: “I need to see you. Across from the Broken Shield After Compline.”

  He was sure he’d found the note, but it was so cryptic that it gave him no clue who had written it. And alone it would not be enough to exonerate Peter Bromptone.

  “He’s coming,” Edith hissed, her eye pressed to a crack in the door.

  Stephen plunged the note under his shirt and scooped up the remaining parchments and papers, which he dumped hurriedly in the box. He put the lid back on. He slid one pin in. There wasn’t time to restore the other. He’d have to think of another way to get rid of the servant first.

  Footfalls thudded on the floorboards outside. The latch rattled. Stephen snatched a book from the shelves and flung it open. To his astonishment, it was a beautifully illustrated book on sword-and-buckler fencing, showing two men in blue and greenish-brown priestly robes poised against each other, one in the under-arm ward and the other in half-shield. The marginal text explained in Latin what they were doing. He had no more than a moment to admire it before the door swung open.

  The boy entered carrying a wooden tray bearing wine cups and a pitcher. Stephen began a smile that froze momentarily on his face.

  Behind the boy came Clement, his black shirt and red hose stained from travel, and Muryet.

  “You’ve found the library, I see,” Muryet said.

  “I had no idea that Baynard was a fencer,” Stephen said with more heartiness than he felt. “Look at this! It’s astonishing! Marvelous! What a work! Unparalleled in England, I have no doubt!”

  Muryet grunted.

  “You’ve an interest in fencing?” Clement said.

  “Of course. A most essential manly art. And you?”

  Clement nodded shortly.

  “Do you think,” Stephen asked almost too breathlessly, “do you think the widow might part with this?” He held up the book.

  “I doubt you could afford it,” Clement said. “It cost as much as a fine horse.”

  “Oh,” Stephen said, putting as much disappointment into the syllable as he could. “Well, perhaps one day. Say, do you think she’ll let me consult it now and again?”

  “I’m sure,” Clement said without conviction. “If she doesn’t sell it first.”

  Stephen returned the book to the shelf. He was sorry he hadn’t the time to look at it more, although sword-and-buckler wasn’t an art he regularly practiced. It was a civilian’s art, and he had been a soldier. “I understand that the earl’s men practice every morning at the castle. We’ll have to take a turn together sometime.”

  Clement looked sour. “I doubt they’ll let me.”

  “Oh,” Stephen said lightly. “Too bad. We’ll have to find another place to meet then.” He said to Gilbert, “Are you through? Dally long here and all the food will be gone.”

  “Quite right,” Gilbert said.

  They took the wine cups and streamed out of the room under Clement’s and Muryet’s suspicious eyes.

  As the servant closed the door, Stephen saw Clement place his hands on the lid of the desk.

  “I think we’d be well advised to leave as quickly as possible,” Stephen said.

  “Better sense never
came out of your mouth,” Edith said.

  Chapter 19

  The hall of the Broken Shield was deserted when the three returned. Dinner was over and the refuse of it had been cleared away. The guests had gone about their business, and only Jennie and Oliver, a manservant, were there sweeping the floor.

  Gilbert settled by the fire as Edith inspected the floor under Jennie’s anxious eyes.

  Stephen fled to the yard in case a dispute over cleanliness arose. He wondered if Harry had returned from the church and was about to go into the stables to check on him when he caught sight of Amicia at a fire burning before the inn’s small orchard.

  She stood by the fire stirring the contents of a large iron kettle with a long-handled wooden spatula. Her back was to him, and she was unaware of his presence. She had worn her hair piled up on her head, but now it was down, tied at the back of her slender swan’s neck with a green ribbon. The delicate profile of her cheek was visible from this angle. He could have stood there for an hour and admired her.

  But she turned and broke the spell. She said, “Come to check on your laundry? I shall not abuse it.”

  Stephen looked into the kettle, where he saw his shirts and hose.

  “I’m sure it’s safe in your hands,” he said, noting as he spoke how red and chapped her fingers had become in only a few days.

  He held the note out to her. Their fingers brushed as she took it. He felt light-headed at the touch.

  Her brow wrinkled in a question. “What’s this?”

  He crossed his arms, watching her reaction closely.

  When he said nothing, Amicia unfolded the parchment. Her eyes swept over the writing and rose to meet his. “I don’t understand,” she said, puzzled.

  “Do you recognize the handwriting?” Stephen asked.

  Amicia shook her head.

  “It’s not Peter’s?”

  “No.”

  “And not your’s.”

  “Of course not.”

  Stephen took the note back. “Whoever wrote this note killed Baynard. It was sent to lure him out after dark.”

  Amicia said, “And you thought we wrote it!”