Candace Robb - The Lady Chapel

"Why?"

"I would guess that the boy fears the murderers will come for him. Just in case he saw something."

"In the dark?"

"If you had murdered someone, Bess, wouldn't you try to erase your steps?"

Bess sighed. "Poor lad."

Lucie was quiet for a time, enjoying her friend's cooking. "I hated asking. All those years in the convent, being told over and over that gossip was a sin. I cannot do it with an easy conscience."

Bess sniffed. "I cannot see why gossip is considered a sin. How else is a body to know what's going on?"

Lucie smiled.

"So did anyone have an idea where the poor lad might be hiding?" Bess asked.

Lucie shook her head. "But the man I met on the road-you know, the one who helped me free the cart from the mud when I was coming back from Freythorpe Hadden-he has offered to look for the boy in the places where such orphans usually wind up."

"The man Owen had such a fit over? The stranger with the nice voice?"

Lucie laughed at what Bess had chosen to remember. "You know, the man had mentioned Will Crounce to me on the ride that

night. Told me to watch for Crounce in the Mercers' play. At least he had a reason to ask about the death. He must have been a friend of Crounce."

"You didn't ask him?"

"I did, actually, but all he said was, 'Boroughbridge is a small town.' "

"He's a foreigner, you said?"

"His accent is odd-not quite like my mother's, not Norman French, but more like hers than anyone's here."

"A Fleming, perhaps? Like those weavers who settled here under the King's protection?"

"I've never spoken with them, so I couldn't say."

"What's his name?"

"Martin."

Bess winced. "Unfortunate."

Lucie shook her head. "It is a good name, Bess. I cannot mourn my baby forever." Lucie and her first husband had lost their only child, Martin, to the plague.

"Owen should give you a child," Bess said.

"It's not for want of trying that we are not yet blessed."

Bess shrugged. "So you don't know whence came this Martin?"

"I didn't ask."

Bess disapproved of so much mystery. "You invited him into your house?"

"He came into the shop, Bess, not the house."

"What about the ride in the cart?"

Lucie looked closely at her friend. "What is this, Bess? Why all the questions? What about all the other people who asked about Will Crounce today?"

"This Martin knew Crounce before. He's a stranger. He could be the murderer."

"Bess, that's nonsense. Why would he risk coming here if he were the murderer?"

"Like a moth to a flame, Lucie, my child. He wants to hear what folk have to say about his crime."

"Why would he offer to look for Jasper de Melton?"

"I don't know. What did he say?"

"He was out on the streets at about that age." Lucie shoved the

trencher out of her way and replaced it with the ledger. "I am busy, Bess. I have no time for any more gossip."

Bess shook her head. "You will work yourself into an early grave, Lucie."

Lucie looked up with a smile. "So will you, Bess." Bess snorted. "Aye. And I must get back to check on Tom." After Bess left, Lucie found it hard to focus on the ledger. It was true she felt Martin was hiding something. So why did she trust him? The question spun round and round in her head and made it impossible to work.

"Perhaps it's time for bed," she said to Melisende, who was napping near the hearth, resting up for the night's hunt. Lucie closed the ledger, damped the fire, and scooped up the cat, who complained.

"It will be cold up there without Owen," Lucie told Melisende as she determinedly carried the squirming Queen of Jerusalem upstairs.

It was after dark when Owen and Ridley rode through a stone gate and into the yard of Riddlethorpe. From the size of the house and how long they had ridden since Ridley announced they were on his land, he had made a respectable fortune in Goldbetter and Company. The house was stone below, half-timbered above. A tall woman waited up the steps in the doorway, in the light of a lantern held by a serving girl. Other servants helped Owen and Ridley to dismount, then led the four horses away.

"My wife, Cecilia," Ridley said as they approached the woman in the doorway. "Cecilia, this is Captain Archer. One of Archbishop Thoresby's men."

Cecilia Ridley ignored Owen and asked her husband, "Is there trouble, Gilbert?" Large, dark eyes in a narrow face gave her the look of a frightened deer. In white wimple and veil and a russet wool gown, she was plainly dressed, without any of her husband's ostentation. There was a quiet nobility in her bearing.

"No trouble for me as such," her husband replied, "but Will Crounce has been killed."

Cecilia Ridley frowned as if she did not understand. "Did Will not come with you?"

"Did you hear me, woman?" Ridley snapped. "Will is dead. Murdered."

The shock registered on Cecilia's face, making her eyes even more prominent, drawing the skin even tighter along the bones. "Will? Dear God." She crossed herself.

"Perhaps you should sit down inside," Owen said gently.

Cecilia Ridley clutched at her stomach and nodded, her eyes fixed on some spot beyond her husband's or her guest's faces. "1 cannot believe- He was here just four days ago."

"Cecilia," Ridley said in a warning tone.

The woman started, glanced at Owen, then her husband, and stepped aside for them to enter the hall. "Forgive me. You will want something to fortify you after your journey." It was a toneless recital of ritual. As her husband passed her, she touched his arm. "Did it happen while you were there?" she whispered.

Ridley nodded and pushed past her, striding into the hall with an air of irritation. He sank down on a bench near the hearth, and a boy helped him out of his travel-stained boots. "Will was murdered after spending the evening with me. His throat was slit wide." The boy, who was helping Owen now, sat back with a gasp.

"That's a good boy, Johnnie," Cecilia Ridley said, shooing the boy out of the hall. She shook her head at her husband. "You'll have the servants deserting us if you speak of such things in front of them." All said in the toneless voice of habit.

Ridley shrugged. "That's not the worst of it, anyway. Someone cut off Will's hand and put it in my room while I was downstairs paying my bill this morning."

Owen watched Cecilia Ridley, ready to help her to a seat. But Ridley's comment seemed to snap her out of her shock. "How uncomfortable for you, Gilbert." She said it softly, but it bit all the same. She glanced at Owen, then back at her husband. "Does Captain Archer attend you because he suspects you of the murder?"

"Dear God, no, wife." Ridley gave Owen a pained look. "She always suspects the worst. Such a gloomy woman." He looked back at his wife. "Get us some refreshment and leave us."

Cecilia Ridley left after pouring them some wine. The girl who had held the lantern brought them cold meat, bread, and cheese.

Ridley noticed Owen examining the surroundings. With his one good eye, Owen was obvious in his curiosity, moving his whole head to see all around him. "You wonder at the simplicity when the manor itself is so grand," Ridley guessed.

Considering Ridley's rings, Owen had expected tapestries and embroidered cushions, all the trappings of a family proud of its wealth. But the great hall was almost bare. Its wooden floor was scrubbed, the few chairs and benches pushed back against the walls, out of the way, but for the two chairs and a table set for the master and his guest. The few tapestries were unremarkable and were positioned to keep drafts from the area near the hearth. The only sign of Ridley's taste was a set of shelves against the far wall on which polished silver plates and cups were displayed, and, Owen guessed, never used. They had been served on wooden plates, in pewter cups. Owen concluded that Ridley's wife resisted the ostentation her husband no doubt wanted. Owen approved. "The house is quite new," he said. "You have storage cellars below this?"