Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

‘No. We dined at a neighbour’s.’

‘Did you ask the injured servant whether any others were in the house?’

‘He is past speaking.’

‘Not dead?’

‘Not yet, but how he can survive with such burns — ’

‘Has anyone searched the upper storey?’

Fitzbaldric shook his head. ‘They were …’

Owen did not wait to hear the man’s repeated assurance. Anyone in a crowded city knew to search a house on fire. Servants had friends, neighbours might be visiting. Having moved from a village near Hull a few months ago, perhaps Fitzbaldric did not understand that — fires were a regular occurrence here. Owen pushed past the human chain passing buckets, dipping the cloth he carried into one of the pails of water. Tying the wet cloth over his nose and mouth, he mounted the stairs, which were shielded so far from the flames by the stone wall of the undercroft, pushed open the door and shouted, ‘Is anyone here?’ Stepping within, he found the crackle of fire and the shouts of the people muted. His voice echoed loud in the hall as he called again. Smoke seeped up through the floorboards, a flame licked over in the front corner. Two lamps were alight on the trestle table, and a lantern on a wall sconce. Already their flames were blurred behind the smoke in the air.

Something clattered up in the solar at the far end of the hall. As he rushed towards the steps his eye watered from the smoke coming up from below. ‘Come down! The undercroft is ablaze!’

A foot appeared on the steps, then a second. So much for Fitzbaldric’s stubborn certainty. It was a woman, her skirts hitched up to descend. She moved slowly, looking about her as if confused. Her cap was askew, her dark hair tumbling down her back.

‘Poins?’ The woman’s voice trembled.

‘Hurry. This is too much smoke for anyone to breathe.’

Seeming only now to focus on him, she crouched down on the steps and reached towards his outstretched arms as if she thought to take his hand, but she was now so unbalanced that she lost her footing and slipped down the last few steps, landing in Owen’s arms. She had fainted.

He pulled her away from the steps, crouched, lifted her up and hoisted her over his shoulder as he rose. His back would wreak vengeance for that on the morrow. Pray God he lived to suffer it. He blinked against the smoke, took a step forward, checked himself. The smoke was obscuring his vision. He cursed the Frenchwoman who had cost him the sight in his left eye. Trying to establish the angle at which he had approached the steps to the solar, he prayed he was headed in the right direction. The cloth over his mouth and nose had dried in the heat. The smoke burned deep in his chest. He felt from the vibration of the floorboards someone striding towards him.

Alfred, his second in command, materialized. ‘This way, Captain.’

Out on the porch Owen crouched down and slid the woman from his shoulder. He did not trust himself to bear his own weight and hers down the stairs, not with his lungs on fire. He ripped the cloth from his face and gasped the cool air.

Alfred took up the woman. ‘Mistress Wilton awaits you below, Captain. She has been passing round a syrup for our raw throats.’

Fitzbaldric met them halfway up the steps. He lifted the woman’s head. ‘But this is May, my maidservant. I thought … What was she doing up there?’

Owen wiped his face. ‘Sleeping, from the look of her. Turn round, the steps will catch any time.’ Alfred had already continued down, keeping well to the outside edge. Nearer the house, the steps were catching sparks from the upper storey.

Fitzbaldric turned, shouted, ‘Wet the steps!’

One of the human chains shifted direction.

Lucie awaited Owen on the ground, standing still in the roiling sea of people, too close to the fire for his liking. When he reached her, she embraced him, hugging him tightly, then stepped back, plucked off his cap, ran her fingers through his hair, took up his hands and examined them. ‘Thank God you are unharmed.’

‘I did nothing foolhardy.’ He gladly accepted the flask she offered. ‘Did you see where Godwin Fitzbaldric headed?’

‘Across the way. Come.’ Lucie guided him through the crowd passing buckets, shouting, away from the house, the smoke, the sound of cracking timbers.

The Fitzbaldrics stood beneath the overhang across the way, watching Alfred. With the maid in his arms, he was following Robert Dale and his wife Julia to their house at the corner of Stonegate and Petergate.

Lucie had paused in a pool of torchlight set in the wall of one of the houses opposite the bishop’s, far enough from the Fitzbaldrics that they would not be able to hear her. ‘The Dales hosted a banquet to introduce the Fitzbaldrics to some of their acquaintances this evening,’ she said. ‘Now they have offered the couple a bed for as long as they need, as well as the maid and cook.’

‘You have spoken to them?’

‘A little.’

‘What of the injured manservant?’

Lucie did not answer at once. She watched not Owen but the mass of people working on the fire.

Owen touched her arm. ‘Lucie?’ He had come to dread her silences.

She pressed his hand, a gesture she had made seldom of late. ‘They might yet save the upper floors. Listen. It is quieter now.’

It was difficult for him to block out the sound of the people, but gradually he was able to hear what she did — the fire hissed rather than roared. Yet he remembered the burning corner in the hall. ‘I do not think we can hope for that.’

Still facing the burning house, she said, ‘I told them to take the manservant to our home.’

He had forgotten his question and did not at first grasp what she was saying.

Lucie turned to him. ‘Owen?’

Her meaning dawned on him. ‘We cannot care for him. You are yet weak — ’

‘It is done. He is on his way and Magda Digby with him.’

In the torchlight Owen could see the set of Lucie’s jaw, the challenge in her eyes, and against all reason he was glad of it, for he had not seen that spirit in her for a month. ‘So be it.’

She pressed his arm. ‘Come home?’

‘Not yet. I want to see the dead woman.’ He shook his head at her. ‘Why would you do this? You do not know these people.’

‘Why did you go in search of the maid?’

The Fitzbaldrics were looking their way. It was not the time for an argument.

‘We have been noted,’ Owen said. ‘I would talk to them. Your flask is empty now.’ He handed it back to her. ‘Go home. I’ll follow when I can.’

‘We are most grateful to you, Captain,’ said Fitzbaldric as they drew near. ‘God help me, but I was certain the house was empty.’ He did not look Owen in the eye.

‘We could not know she was up there,’ said his wife.

Owen was not interested in their excuses. ‘Have you seen the woman found in the undercroft?’

‘I did,’ said Fitzbaldric, ‘when they carried her out.’

‘You had identified her as your maid. Does she look like her?’

‘Have you seen the body, Captain? I could tell little else than that it was a woman. I assumed it was May.’

‘And you?’ Owen asked of Mistress Fitzbaldric.

‘I saw no cause to upset Adeline,’ Fitzbaldric said.

Owen ignored him, wanting his wife to answer for herself. ‘You cannot account for her?’

Adeline Fitzbaldric shook her head. ‘Our cook assisted at the Dales’ dinner. But May and Poins stayed at home. I do not allow my servants to entertain while they are in charge of the house.’

A crash drew all eyes back to the fire across the way. Flames shot from the doorway at the top of the steps.

‘We are ruined,’ moaned Adeline Fitzbaldric. ‘All the goods you had stored in the undercroft lost.’