Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

Lucie touched his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘It cannot be worse than telling Peter and Emma.’

‘No. But that is small comfort this morning.’

She worried to see him exhausted at the beginning of his day.

As Owen approached the Dale residence he slowed, thinking it a good time to talk to Robert and Julia. He would not keep them long and he might feel better having accomplished something before facing Wykeham, who was sure to be difficult. He should have time for both before the requiem mass.

The goldsmith shop occupied the ground floor of the Dale dwelling. A young man, an apprentice by the look of his clothes, opened the door and invited Owen to sit while he found his master and mistress. Already at this early hour the apprentices and journeymen sat at their work at two tables, one near a great hearth, chiselling, hammering, polishing. Along the walls were racks with various types of hammers, chisels and tongs, shelves holding earthenware pots, trays, sticks of wax. The side of the room with the hearth was warm, the air acrid with the scent of hot metal. But the breezes from the open windows, front and back, freshened the air on the opposite side.

The apprentice reappeared, his face flushed with the activity. ‘My mistress requests that you attend her in the hall above, Captain Archer. My master will join her in a moment. The stairs are just outside the door, on your left.’

Up in the hall, which stretched the length of the shop below, Julia Dale rose from a cushioned bench, framed in the light of several oil lamps. She was a vision in a blue silk gown that matched her eyes, her dark hair caught up in delicate filigree netting beneath a gossamer veil, a gold circlet crowning all. She had bold features and a powerful voice, tempered by her beauty and warmth. Had she married a man who could afford to provide her only the simplest of ornaments, she would have shone no less. Her daughters passed through the far end of the hall, pushing one another and giggling. They had her colouring, but not yet the presence that drew one’s eyes and held them. Owen cleared his throat.

‘I trust this will be a more comfortable place in which to talk than the shop,’ Julia said. ‘Certainly my husband will be less distracted up here.’ She lifted her chin at the sound of her daughters greeting their father. ‘There he is now.’ She awaited him, quietly composed.

So Lucie once was, full of smiles for Owen, welcoming, soothing, loving. Was it the children who had changed her? This last child, so eagerly awaited, so violently lost? Was the shop too much? Perhaps the strain of motherhood and work were too much. And yet he could not imagine Lucie without her work. He rose abruptly when he noticed Robert Dale extending his hand.

Julia’s husband was a pleasant-looking man except for the poor vision that drew his face into a perpetual squint. Owen often wondered why Robert did not use some of his wealth for a pair of spectacles such as Thoresby’s.

Robert greeted Owen amiably and sat down beside Julia. ‘You are here about the evening of the fire,’ he said. ‘It is good you have come so soon, while it is fresh in my head.’ He nodded to his wife. ‘You might name the guests.’

She ticked them off on her fingers.

‘How long had the evening been planned?’

Julia glanced over at her husband, who shrugged and shook his head. ‘I had spoken with Edwina Hovingham,’ she said, ‘and she agreed that we must introduce Adeline and Godwin to our acquaintances. Being connected in Beverley and Hull as well as York, they are good people to know.’

‘Julia, the captain asked when, not why,’ Robert said in a fond tone.

‘Forgive me. It was that Monday. The laundress arrived just as I was leaving.’

‘Tell me about the evening,’ Owen said.

Robert nodded. ‘All the invited guests had arrived, save William Hovingham, who is ailing. We were a dozen for dinner, as Julia said, which is why Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was assisting ours. We had completed the fish course when Hovingham’s servant came to fetch Edwina home. William was asking for Master Saurian.’ Robert pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, sighed. ‘May God watch over his family.’ He fell silent, staring at nothing.

‘We were about to have the cakes when Godwin excused himself,’ Julia said. ‘I should think that is the most important detail. He was so long about it — I had finished a piece of cake and saw that the sauce on his was separating. I sent a servant to check the yard, fearing he had taken a fall, or was ill, and he returned with news of the fire.’

Robert had shaken himself from his fears for William Hovingham and sat forward now. ‘Adeline Fitzbaldric was first to the door, crying out for her husband.’

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘I thought it strange at the time. She cried out, “Dear Lord, not Godwin! Have I not given enough?” But afterwards I remembered she had lost both children to the pestilence.’

Robert caught her hand and they looked at one another for a few moments.

A happy marriage. Three healthy children, the boy at the minster school, the girls showing promise of their mother’s beauty.

‘And that night, where did the Fitzbaldrics sleep? How was your household arranged?’

‘We put Godwin and Adeline in the solar, near us,’ said Robert. He rose, took a few steps to the hearth. ‘The children slept here — it is chilly in the evenings now, though the hearth in the workshop below warms the floor through the night. The servants were sleeping behind a screen just over here.’ Robert strode a few paces. ‘Except for the cooks and the scullery maid — they were out in the kitchen. And my apprentices down below in the shop. That is what troubled me so, we were all spread out. If the intruder had come through this door …’

‘The servants would have caught him, husband,’ Julia said, rising to coax him back to his seat.

‘But he came only to the kitchen and fled at once?’ Owen asked.

Robert nodded. ‘I shall walk down with you and show you where he climbed the wall.’

‘It needs repair,’ said Julia. ‘One can scramble up with little trouble. The children have done so many a time.’

‘It shall be mended,’ Robert said, nodding energetically.

‘What of May, your guests’ maidservant? What did you notice about her injuries that night?’ Owen spoke directly to Julia.

‘She had a few scratches on her legs, a good bruise forming on one knee, a grazed wrist and she said her hip was tender. Her eyes were smeared with blood. Dried, caked. She kept blinking and I washed them out. I urged Adeline to send for a physician, someone, thinking she must have injured her eye and we could not tell. But she assured us that her eyes were fine, she saw well enough. And Adeline was content with that. Fretting over her loss, I am sure, and her manservant’s terrible injuries.’

‘How did the Fitzbaldrics behave after the intruder?’

‘Crossing themselves and praying,’ Robert said. ‘It was too much for them in one evening. And then that poor man in the morning. Though I can tell you I cursed him from here to the devil when he woke me. I had just managed to fall asleep after spending the night checking the doors and windows over and over again.’

‘Robert could not rest, that is true,’ said Julia, touching his arm lightly.

Perhaps it was Owen who had changed, not Lucie.

‘Is that all, Captain?’ Robert asked.

Owen straightened. ‘I’ve no doubt you found it difficult to rest after the fire, the intruder. Have you any idea whether the Fitzbaldrics slept?’

‘I do not believe Adeline did,’ said Julia. ‘But Godwin had the red, creased face of someone who had slept deeply.’