Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

Fitzbaldric began to rise, but sat back down with a groan, pressing his hands on his thighs. ‘Cursed back. What are you saying? Is it me or Poins you are accusing? I might ask you why you took Poins in, only to pack him off the very next day.’ He caught his breath, eased it out slowly. ‘Forgive me. The pain steals all courtesy from my tongue. I am not myself. But by the rood, Adeline and I have lost everything we had brought with us to York, Captain.’

‘It is more than a fire that I am investigating.’

Fitzbaldric wiped his brow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Cisotta was dead before the fire began.’

The merchant froze, hand halfway from brow. Even his wheezy breath paused. ‘Christ have mercy,’ he whispered at last. He held his back and shifted his weight so that he could look Owen in the eye. He looked haggard and frightened. ‘We speak of murder?’

‘We do.’

‘Oh, dear Lord.’ Fitzbaldric took off his velvet cap, dabbed his balding head with a cloth, set it back on his head. ‘A murder,’ he mumbled as if to himself.

Owen noticed Adeline Fitzbaldric standing in the porch doorway. She nodded to him and approached, her servant May at her heels.

‘Godwin, Captain,’ Adeline said, joining them.

May placed a stool near the bench, but Fitzbaldric had turned too quickly to see his wife and his face now crumpled with pain. Adeline bent to him. She was a sallow-faced woman with a shadowy down on her upper lip and dark hair that dipped into a widow’s peak above her brows. She was finely dressed, in autumn colours, gold and brown. As far as Owen knew, the couple had not yet been given access to the ruined house, yet Adeline had an elegant wardrobe. Perhaps Julia Dale had loaned her the gown. He could imagine her in it.

‘What upset my husband?’ Adeline demanded.

As if all had been well for Fitzbaldric until Owen appeared. ‘I regret imposing on him when he is in pain, but my business cannot wait, Mistress Fitzbaldric.’

‘The body in the undercroft.’ Fitzbaldric frowned and shook his head as if searching for the right words. ‘Mistress Cisotta was not accidentally caught in the fire, Adeline. She was — she had been murdered before it began.’ His voice had grown so quiet that his wife moved towards him to hear.

The maidservant groaned, then covered her mouth as if embarrassed to have made a sound.

Adeline glanced from her husband to Owen. ‘In truth? You know this?’

Owen nodded.

She took a few steps to the side, reached out to a late rose, cupped it in her hand. Owen had noted that her movement and voice were measured, her eyes shrewd. With a sigh she let go of the rose, turned to regard Owen. Her expression was troubled. ‘We did not know her, Captain. How did a stranger come to be murdered in our house?’

‘Adeline,’ Fitzbaldric said softly, ‘that we did not know her does not make her any less dead.’

‘For the love of God, I am not simple.’ She pressed a hand to her forehead. ‘But how can we help the captain if we did not even know the woman?’

‘Had you been unwell, perhaps mentioned the need for a healer to someone?’ Owen asked.

‘I had no need for a midwife.’ Still Adeline pressed her forehead. ‘I must think.’

‘She did not confine herself to midwifery,’ said Fitzbaldric.

Adeline turned to her husband. ‘We had no need of a healer before the fire, Godwin.’

‘Perhaps one of your servants?’ Owen suggested.

Adeline glanced over at May. ‘My servants know to come to me, is that not so, May?’

May stood with folded hands, her eyes averted, and nodded shyly. She was a plain woman past the blush of youth. Her breath sounded laboured, her cheeks unhealthily flushed in her pale face.

‘What is the condition of the bishop’s townhouse?’ Adeline asked, filling the momentary silence. ‘Will it be possible for us to return at all? At least to salvage some of our clothing, our furniture? Or is it all gone?’ Now she looked less chilly, less distracted.

‘I have not been in the house since the fire,’ Owen said. ‘The bishop will be seeing to that. He will certainly keep you informed.’

‘Of course.’ Adeline paused beside her husband, glanced at the space on the bench Owen had vacated and smoothed the back of her gown as if to sit, but did not. Instead she surveyed the garden while idly fingering the buttons that ran down the bodice of her dress. Owen had guessed her to be close to his own age, but in the daylight he thought her younger, as young as thirty. Her hands were certainly those of a younger woman than he had at first thought her. ‘I should think the bishop is concerned about the records his men were working with,’ she said.

At least she had brought the conversation round to something useful, but her lack of emotion was more interesting to Owen at the moment than anything she said.

Fitzbaldric gleaned something from Owen’s expression. ‘Have you quite understood, Adeline? The bishop had more important things on his mind than the old records in the undercroft, and so have we. A woman was murdered in the very house in which we were living.’

‘I have heard you, Godwin, and I thank the Lord that we are not still in a house where someone was murdered. But our lives must go on, and I am certain the bishop will also wish to retrieve what he may.’

Owen wondered at the woman’s indifference. If it was an act meant to hide her true feelings, she was a consummate actress.

‘Did Bishop William’s clerks have access to the undercroft?’ Owen asked. ‘Did Guy and Alain have a key?’

‘Of course,’ said Fitzbaldric, ‘the bishop’s key.’

‘How often were they at the house?’ Owen enquired, looking at Adeline.

She gave him a blank look. ‘I would not know.’

Fitzbaldric shook his head.

Owen addressed May, who now stood behind the bench before which her mistress still hovered. ‘You perhaps spent more time in the undercroft?’

May crossed herself. ‘I did, Captain, but I did not like it down there, it was so dark and — ’ She clamped her mouth shut when she glanced at her mistress and saw the frown she was throwing her. ‘That poor woman,’ she murmured.

‘We were speaking of the bishop’s clerks,’ Owen reminded her, though he was sorry not to hear what else she had wished to say.

She glanced at Adeline, who nodded once. ‘Yes, they were often there in the undercroft, Captain, in the records room.’

‘Would they stay long?’

‘I was not often down there so long as they, Captain.’

Adeline at last settled on the bench beside her husband. She smiled at Owen. ‘You will find us most co-operative.’

‘I am grateful, Mistress Fitzbaldric.’ It was a polite lie. He felt he had lost control of the situation the moment she joined them. He drew the belt out of his scrip. ‘Is this familiar?’

Adeline glanced at it. ‘No. Not at all. Should it be?’

‘Have you ever seen this belt, May?’

The maid leaned towards it slightly, shook her head. ‘No, Captain.’

He glanced at Fitzbaldric, who merely shook his head.

Owen was satisfied for the moment. He put the belt away, his thoughts elsewhere. ‘When did you tell your servants of the feast the Dales were hosting in your honour, Mistress Fitzbaldric?’

‘That is it?’ she said. ‘We are to be left mystified about the belt?’

‘For now, yes.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘How annoying.’ She smoothed the skirt of her gown. ‘But perhaps that is your purpose.’

‘I asked if you could …’

‘Yes, you are asking when they knew the house was to be empty for the evening.’

‘Or spoke of it to others,’ Owen said, glancing at May, who was gazing upwards, shading her eyes with one hand, her expression unreadable.