Candace Robb: The Cross Legged Knight

Luke was waiting at the foot of the scaffolding. ‘I heard you moving around up there. But I do not suppose the bishop would have made note of such noises. He would have thought it was one of us.’

‘You stand by your statement that you saw no one lurking about?’

Luke stiffened. ‘Why should I lie, Captain?’

‘Why indeed.’ Owen silently noted that the mason had answered a question with a question.

Luke reached up — Owen was taller than most men — and touched the beard that followed Owen’s jaw line. ‘Your hair’s so dark, the stone dust shows. It’s on your curly pate as well.’

Brushing dust from his hair, Owen thanked the mason for his assistance and headed for the minster gate. He suspected the mason was holding something back, perhaps the clumsiness of a fellow worker, but Owen had wasted enough of this fine day. There was much to do in the apothecary garden before the first frost, and he did not want Lucie to grow impatient and see to it herself. She was still weak. Bending still sometimes made her dizzy.

Just before Lammas day Lucie had fallen from a stool while replacing a large jar on a shelf in her apothecary. The jar had badly bruised her left hand and cut her arm as it shattered. But far worse, she had lost the child who would have been born a few months hence. She had bled much during and after the accident, particularly when she lost the child, and her strength had been slow in returning despite Magda Digby’s tisanes of watercress, nettle and beetroot, and her Aunt Phillippa’s additional concoctions of eggs and cabbage. The physicks could not restore her spirit.

For days Lucie lay in bed whispering prayers of contrition. Cisotta, the young midwife who had attended Lucie in those first days, had assured Owen that women often behaved so after losing a child, some even after having a healthy baby. But when Magda Digby had returned from a birthing in the country and took over Lucie’s care, Owen could see her concern.

Long after they had closed the account books, Lucie and Owen lingered at the table in the hall in the pool of lamplight. Jasper, Lucie’s apprentice and their adopted son, had gone to see a friend, and Phillippa and the children were in bed. Such a quiet moment seemed rare to Owen these days. Lucie did not seem to welcome idleness, but sought activity until she dropped on to the bed, exhausted. He knew she did not wish to think of the child they had lost. Even now her hands were not idle, she was tying mint sprigs together, her long, slender fingers moving quickly. The ghost of a smile touched her lips, in fact, her pretty face was alight with a calm contentment. She loved her garden almost as much as her first husband had, found in working with the plants a peace much as Owen’s mother had so long ago in Wales. He wished Lucie might have known his mother — they had much in common, a gift for healing, for knowing the right combination of herbs and roots for a person’s ailments. His mother would have liked the level regard with which Lucie viewed the world — though of late there was a darkness in her gaze.

Tonight Owen noted deep blue shadows beneath her eyes. ‘You should have left the mint harvest to me,’ he said.

‘I took joy in it.’ She lifted one of the sprigs, held it close so he could smell it. ‘A few more days and it would be too late. Perhaps if Wykeham forgets about his mishap the other day you can help me with some of the other autumn chores.’

‘I am afraid he means to keep me occupied.’

‘I am sorry for that.’ As Lucie reached for another clump of mint she winced, withdrew her hand and pressed the other to her shoulder.

‘It is painful?’

‘It aches, yes, but lying abed will not mend it.’ She shook her head at him. ‘And your worry weakens me.’ She had made this argument before. ‘You think — she fell once, she shall fall again. You think the accident has changed me for ever.’

He did not know how to answer this. It was true and not true. He knew now that it could happen. ‘I meant nothing but that I had promised to harvest the mint. Guarding the Bishop of Winchester put it out of my mind. He wishes to ride to his former parish of Laughton. He means to rebuild the church.’

‘Where is that?’

‘At the south end of the shire. Near Sheffield.’ Several days’ ride, he guessed.

‘He wishes to go soon?’

‘Aye. He had thought to leave it until his business with the Pagnells was concluded. But Lady Pagnell refuses to see him yet. The journey would fill the time.’

‘Poor Emma. Her mother’s presence is making everyone in her household ill at ease.’

‘She is a difficult woman?’ He had met Lady Pagnell only at formal events.

‘Yes, both she and her steward are intrusive guests. Emma came today, asking for a sleep potion for herself. I shall make up something to soothe her — Jasper!’

Their fourteen-year-old adopted son had come rushing in, panting and flushed from a good run, skidding to a halt by the table. Lucie steadied the pile of books as he dropped his hands on to the table, leaning, catching his breath. He raked his pale hair back from his face with an impatient gesture. ‘There is a fire in Petergate. The house of the Bishop of Winchester.’

‘God have mercy.’ Owen got to his feet. So did Lucie. He leaned across the table, took her hand. ‘Stay within, eh? One of us heading into danger is enough.’

She shook her head. ‘I can help those who breathe too much smoke. Passing round a soothing drink is not dangerous.’

He did not like it, but he saw she was determined. ‘Aye, you are right.’ He grabbed a cloth from a basket of laundry by the door to the kitchen, thinking he might need something to protect his nose and mouth from smoke, then headed for the door.

Jasper was right behind him with a bucket.

Smoke already masked the October smells when Owen stepped out into St Helen’s Square. Shouts drifted down from the scene. Owen looked up, expecting to see the glow of fire in the sky above Petergate. But the sky was a deep blue, the stars silvery white. Perhaps God was with them and the fire had been caught early. People ran past him. By the time Owen reached the top of Stonegate several chains of folk stretched along Petergate passing buckets of water from the nearest wells. A boy clutching an empty bucket emerged from the smoke near the burning house and headed down one of the lines. Another followed close behind.

Owen stopped him. ‘Where is the fire? I see no flames.’

‘The fire is down below, in the undercroft, Captain. They pulled out a servant — his clothes ablaze. They doused him with water and rolled him in the dirt. The other is dead, they say. A maidservant.’

Owen let him go, hurried on. The street was already slippery with spilled water. As he moved closer, the vision in his one good eye blurred with the smoke that belched from the undercroft doorway. The walls of the undercroft were stone and the roof tile, but the support posts and the storey above were of timber. Near the door stood Godwin Fitzbaldric, the bishop’s new tenant, here in York only a few months. He was calling out orders, hurrying the bucket wielders along. His face was streaked with soot, his shirt torn. He was a tall man, leaning towards fleshiness, almost bald but for a dusting of dull red hair running from temple to temple across the back of his head.

‘Is everyone out of the house?’ Owen asked him.

Fitzbaldric drew an arm across his broad brow. His wide sleeve was heavy with water and torn, the tight sleeve of the shift beneath soiled. ‘They pulled two of my servants from the undercroft. They were alone in the house.’

‘You were not at home when it began?’