Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

‘Of course you may.’ Lucie tucked a lock of his straight, fair hair behind his ear, but it slipped out at once. ‘You thought quickly today, bolting the counter, pushing the box in Eudo’s way. And I saw you were ready to fight him when you followed him to the kitchen.’

Jasper ducked his head, a boyhood gesture she seldom saw these days. ‘I did not want to hurt him, but I could not let him hurt you, or any of the family.’

‘I was thankful to have you there. Go now, tell Kate not to wait for us.’

Lucie noticed how dark the house was beyond the doorway, wondered at Owen’s delay. By now he must be tripping over his own feet with weariness. Gathering the darker dress, she offered to carry it down to the hall for Phillippa. ‘I am on my way there, it is no effort. I mean to sit with Gwenllian and Hugh while they eat. It has been a confusing day for them.’

Cursing himself for spending hours unravelling an accident, Owen stood in St Helen’s Square debating whether to go into the house or to keep on walking. Everything seemed more muddled than ever. What he needed was a quiet hour in a corner of the York Tavern with a tankard of Tom Merchet’s ale.

Bess Merchet was near the public door of the tavern when Owen entered. Already the room buzzed with voices. ‘You look in need of ale, my handsome friend,’ Bess said. Her dusty red hair had escaped from her cap in tendrils that clung damply to her neck and cheeks. She freed them with little flicks of her fingers.

‘Sleep is what I sorely need, but ale will do for now. I could pour it myself, if it please you.’

‘Go through to my parlour. I shall fetch us some ale.’

Companionship was not what Owen had planned, but at the moment he could think of no one with whom he would rather discuss the day. Time and again Bess Merchet had proven a trustworthy and helpful confidante. So he moved on to the kitchen and slipped behind a screen to an alcove with a small table and two high-backed chairs — Bess’s parlour. He took his own tankard and Bess’s down from the top of a cupboard.

In a moment she joined him with a large pitcher of ale. He poured while she fussed with her sleeves, taking off the cloths that protected them, pushing them down, buttoning one, then the other. She lifted a hand to her cap, thought better of it and let it be. She took a drink, then settled back, arms crossed, nodded to Owen. ‘In need of sleep, you said. Was it the fire that kept you awake last night? Or the wounded man?’

‘Both. My head was too full to settle. Tonight might be much the same but that I’m too tired to think any more.’ He told her about his day.

Bess made sympathetic noises throughout his accounting and took a long drink when he was finished. Owen drained his cup and sat staring at the table for a few moments, letting the ale numb him.

‘You are wrong about a day wasted,’ Bess said. ‘Now you know you need not worry about the tile. To think those lads made such mischief. Ferriby’s is a joyless house this night, I warrant. How is Lucie?’

‘Better until she found this in my scrip when she was dressing this morning.’ Owen drew out the girdle. ‘It was she who identified it as Cisotta’s. It fell from her as she was pulled from the burning house.’

‘Oh, my poor lass,’ Bess said, fingering the ruined leather, the charred beads.

‘Lucie took it very hard.’

‘Aye. God has much to answer for of late.’ Bess lifted the girdle and turned it over and back so that the glass beads twinkled. ‘I recall how this caught the light as Cisotta walked.’ She laid it on the table, pushed it towards Owen. ‘Was it murder?’ she asked, her voice catching. ‘Is that why you are so grim?’

‘Aye.’

They were silent a moment.

‘You are one of the few who know,’ Owen said as he tucked the girdle back in his scrip.

‘I shall keep my ears pricked, my tongue silent.’ Bess sighed. ‘To hear some talk of her, well, they were jealous, eh? Beautiful and gifted. Some folk cannot bear another’s fortune. The gossips had never crossed her threshold, seen the state of Eudo when he was not insulting someone in the shop, watched poor Anna minding the children while struggling for breath. No wonder Cisotta cheered herself with bright colours.’

Owen had not been aware how well Bess had known Cisotta. ‘Jealousy, aye, I believe it. But can you think of anyone who hated her enough to murder her, and so brutally?’ He drew out the other belt now, handed it to Bess.

She set it down on the table and tilted the buckle towards the lamplight, ran her fingers along the leather. As Owen explained how he had found it, she pushed it aside and withdrew her hands, clenching them to her breast. ‘I cannot think who would have done such a deed.’

‘Do you recognize the belt?’

‘Sweet heaven, I see many buckles in a day, I cannot remember them all.’ Her fisted hands and red eyes belied the brusqueness of her response.

‘Forgive me. I did not come here to torment you. I had intended to sit in a corner with a tankard and my thoughts.’

Bess leaned on one elbow and with her other hand stroked the wood in front of her, as if smoothing away the waters to see herself. ‘What you need to hear is the rumours about Cisotta, God give her peace.’

‘That might help,’ Owen said.

Bess pushed the belt towards Owen and shivered. ‘I have it well in my head now, put it away, I would not look at it more. If I see aught like it, you will know.’

Owen removed it from her sight.

‘Many folk feared the charms Cisotta wove,’ Bess said.

‘She wove what they requested.’

‘Aye, the problem was the charms she called her fending charms — some considered them curses. Knowing that, they feared she might curse them some day. I do not think many folk believed it of her, but there was talk.’ Bess watched Owen over the rim of her tankard. Setting it down on the table, she added, ‘I disappoint you.’

‘I see no passion in that, nothing that could lead to such a murder.’

‘Passion. As for that, wives did not like the way their husbands eyed Cisotta.’ Bess gave Owen a weary smile as he began to ask a question. ‘Had they cause to distrust her? Now and then she strayed from Eudo, I think. I do not know how she kept it quiet — her lovers must have been a loyal few. It is possible a woman might have had the strength to strangle her.’

Owen instinctively touched the patch over his left eye, thinking he knew well what a woman was capable of. ‘It is not a woman’s belt.’

‘It is small, though. Is this all of it?’

‘You saw how the edge was burned. I do not know how much longer it was.’

Tom called to her from the tavern. Bess pushed her chair back. ‘Can’t leave my husband alone all the evening.’

‘Just one more question. One of the bishop’s clerks claims to have eaten here last night, then departed with all the others to help with the fire. Alain. He would have been …’

‘Handsome and almost as tidy as Brother Michaelo.’ Bess nodded.

‘Aye, that would be him.’

‘He sat so straight and ate so well I did not believe he could truly be a cleric, but his hands are soft and elegant, and he owned he was part of Wykeham’s household. I thought better of him for joining the others who rushed out to the fire. He did not hesitate, though he is a stranger here.’ She touched Owen’s shoulder gently as she passed. ‘Sit here as long as you like, have some quiet. We must find the man who did this terrible thing.’

Owen felt his energy ebbing. He should go home. But he could not bring himself to waste the gift of peace, something he had enjoyed precious little of since Lucie’s accident — even longer, now he thought about it, with Jasper’s occasional threats to ask to be accepted into St Mary’s as a novice, Dame Phillippa’s incoherent days, Gwenllian’s stubbornness, Hugh’s delight in disappearing and sending the entire household searching the streets, and most of all Lucie’s difficult pregnancy, for it had given her far more discomfort than her earlier ones. Now and then he missed the simpler days, when he was captain of archers and his men all jumped at his command. Owen pushed his tankard aside and rested his head on his arms.