Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

‘Was she saving them to give him for a special day?’

‘Nay. Just until she had the hides to give him, so he could make a few pairs using these for a pattern. I thought that was where she was going that night, for the hides.’

Lucie turned the gloves over and back. ‘They are very fine, Anna. Where did your mother get them?’

‘As payment, I suppose.’

‘From whom?’

Anna did not know. ‘She showed them to me a few days ago.’

‘When, Anna?’

‘I think it was the afternoon we found the stranger waiting out in the kitchen yard.’

‘Was he a stranger to your mother?’

‘Anna!’ Eudo shouted from the doorway. ‘If you must come, come now.’

‘Henry! Ned!’ Anna called.

The boys hurried up to take her hands, squirming in their good tunics, their hair slick from an unaccustomed combing. They would be handsome lads, when the terror in their eyes faded.

A sharp wind whipped down the narrow, shaded streets, irritating Anna’s cough. Through the maze of signposts and overhanging storeys Lucie glimpsed high, thin clouds scudding across a blue sky. The city streets were not so crowded today, it not being a market day, and most of those passing along were too busy holding on to their hats and manoeuvring with billowing clothing to gossip, though they did notice Cisotta’s family, especially when the boys grew bold and veered away, returning only after much shouting by their father. But all the party hushed as they approached the door of St Sampson’s. Anna used both hands to muffle her relentless cough. Bowing their heads, they entered the candlelit nave, standing still for a few moments to become accustomed to the gloom.

There were a dozen lay people standing about, a few others kneeling in chantry chapels in the north aisle. Two couples approached Eudo, both women with arms outstretched, weeping. He moved away from their embraces while introducing them to Lucie as Cisotta’s sister and her husband from Easingwold and his own cousin with her husband who lived in York. Once Cisotta’s sister began to speak, Lucie saw the resemblance. Though stouter and a good five years older than her sister, the woman had her liveliness, her musical voice.

Eudo’s cousin looked nothing like him, sweet-faced and petite. She knelt to the children and hugged them one at a time, then scolded her cousin for bringing them. ‘It is too much for them, can you not see?’

‘It is all too much for all of us,’ Eudo mumbled. ‘They begged to come.’ He nodded to his sister-in-law. ‘Where is Mistress Agnes?’

‘Our poor mother cannot eat or sleep for grief. I did not think it wise for her to risk the journey.’

‘If she had wished to come she would have found a way.’

‘You would not have wished her here,’ she said, stepping closer so as not to be overheard by the folk milling past them.

Eudo’s response was lost in the noise of others who wished to express their condolences.

Lucie gathered the children and took them up close to the front of the worshippers. As the mass began, Eudo joined them.

Anna handed Lucie the embroidered cushion she had brought with her. Lucie shook her head, thinking Anna’s knees were far bonier than her own. But the girl insisted. ‘I always carried it for Ma,’ she whispered.

Lucie accepted, but in return she gathered the boys, one on either side of her, to give Anna and her father some peace during the mass. As it proceeded, Eudo fought a fierce battle with his emotions. Anna slipped her hand in his but he shook it off and lifted it to shade his eyes, even though the interior of the church was but dimly lit. What had Lucie been thinking, to fear Eudo so when he came to the house? He would not have harmed her or the children.

By the time Owen arrived at the church the Eucharist was past, the mass nearing an end. There was not such a crowd as to hide the mourners at the front. Eudo’s hunched shoulders reminded Owen of how lost he had felt when he feared Lucie was dying. The pain had been physical, a tearing through the centre of his being, as if his heart were being ripped from him. It frightened him to think of it, more than the memory of any battle, for he had glimpsed the void that would open up and swallow him if Lucie died before him. His children had been a comfort, but they could not replace their mother.

Realizing he was staring at Eudo, Owen turned his head. Near the centre of the small crowd of mourners stood Alain, Wykeham’s clerk. Approaching him, Owen caught sight of Lucie kneeling with Cisotta’s boys on either side. Anna’s slight figure stood woodenly between the trio and her father, her head lifted towards the ceiling of the church, tears glistening on her cheeks. Owen wondered at Lucie’s involvement with Cisotta’s family.

‘You are here representing the bishop?’ he asked Alain.

‘Bishop William wishes to know the temper of the people.’

‘He expects something other than sorrow at a funeral?’

‘He is concerned that the people might blame him for the tragedy.’

‘Why should he worry? He is surrounded by guards.’

‘He is afraid of much these days, Captain Archer.’

As the priest intoned the final blessing, the wind moaned without and from the open church doors a draft sent the candles around the nave flickering, the guild banners snapping. As the worshippers crossed themselves and bowed their heads, the stained glass rattled and the sacristy door slammed shut. Heads turned and a murmur passed among the people. Perhaps it was because the coffin bearers had lifted their burden and begun the procession to the churchyard, but Owen sensed a shift in the mood of the mourners, as if the wind had brought to mind the gossip about the woman whose body was being borne past them.

At the edge of the churchyard a group of women held their skirts and veils, watching the procession. They had not been in the church, and one of them Owen recognized as a midwife. Suspecting trouble brewing, he approached them, but at the same moment George Hempe entered the yard and nodded to the women, who bobbed their heads briskly and dispersed.

Lucie had noticed Owen at the edge of the mourners as she had turned to follow the coffin from the church. Now she started as he reached for her hand. When the priest had withdrawn and Eudo knelt with his children beside the grave, Lucie and Owen moved away from the mourners. Owen had just begun to tell her something about midwives watching from the market place when Henry and Ned ran past, with Anna in pursuit. Lucie abandoned Owen for the chase, cursing the need, for she had seen such concern in her husband’s eyes that it had frightened her.

‘Here, lads. What will your mother think if she is gazing down upon you from heaven?’ Hempe crouched by the boys, each hand firmly gripping the shoulder of a tunic.

Henry tilted his head back and searched the clouds with frightened eyes. Ned held his hands out to Anna, who backed away, then ran to Lucie.

Perhaps it was the bailiff’s presence that worried Owen, as Hempe clearly frightened the children. ‘You have nothing to fear from the bailiff,’ Lucie assured them.

‘Here now,’ Eudo called out, brushing off the knees of his leggings. ‘They are good lads, there is no need to frighten them.’

Hempe let go of the boys, looking bemused as Eudo’s extended family joined them, his cousin and Cisotta’s sister scooping up the boys, who looked cowed and on the verge of tears. ‘I merely thought it would be best that they quieted down and did not run from the churchyard.’

‘It was kind of you to help,’ said Lucie.

‘Aye, I did not understand,’ said Eudo, his face averted. ‘I am grateful you kept them from the street or the market.’ He bobbed his head towards Hempe.