Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

Owen pushed away the food and leaned his elbows on the table as he related the events.

Thoresby listened with growing concern. ‘What is this city coming to, a man attacking a woman for a pair of gloves?’

‘The gloves were not visible.’ Owen raked a hand through his unruly hair. ‘I can make no sense of it.’

‘Are you certain that her only injury is the hand? Did she fall?’

‘And addle her pate?’

Owen’s eye grew so dark that Thoresby rose and went to his writing table. Atop other documents for his consideration was a note in Brother Michaelo’s hand saying that Wykeham wished to discuss arrangements for a meeting with Lady Pagnell to take place the next day.

‘So Lady Pagnell has relented,’ Thoresby murmured. Life might soon return to a calm rhythm, God willing.

‘Aye,’ said Owen. ‘The bishop wants a full guard on the palace tomorrow, in case Lady Pagnell alerts the Lancastrians of it.’

‘This feud he began in self-righteous anger will be his undoing.’

‘So fall great men,’ Owen agreed. Setting aside his cup, he prepared to rise.

But Thoresby was still disturbed by Owen’s mood. ‘I am fond of Mistress Wilton, as you know, and I ask this in that light. What is her condition, Archer? Is she pressing herself to work when she needs rest? Has she seen the best physicians?’

Owen studied him but said nothing for a while. Thoresby kept still, allowing the man to decide whether or not to confide in him.

It was Owen who shifted his gaze at last, casting his eye at some point just beyond Thoresby. Despite the food he looked more haggard than before. ‘If anyone can return my wife to her true self it will be Magda Digby, I think. I trust the Riverwoman with my life. But Lucie claims that work is her solace, that lying abed as Magda has ordered is agony for her. God knows what she is thinking, what she is suffering.’

‘Does she suffer in both flesh and spirit?’

‘Aye, Your Grace. But the spirit is the worst.’

‘Might it be good for Jehannes to see her?’ The Archdeacon of York was a close friend of the family.

‘She has sought him out as confessor and guide, Your Grace. He has comforted her, but nothing eases her for long.’

‘I am sorry Wykeham’s problems have drawn in your family, Archer. Let us pray that tomorrow’s meeting is satisfactory, and then we’ll be free of him.’

‘Amen.’

Lucie woke to a knock on her chamber door. Her mouth was woolly, her eyes swollen. She had cried herself to sleep, God’s curse on her at last crumbling all her reserves. Self-pity was ignoble, sinful, yet she preferred it to the self-hatred that had poisoned her days and nights of late. Now she woke with a new emotion — anger.

‘Come in,’ she called out, coughing at the effort.

Alisoun entered with a cup of Magda’s tonic. ‘You had a visitor, Mistress Wilton. The bailiff George Hempe.’ Lucie looked up sharply, saw the distaste in Alisoun’s expression. ‘He stayed only a moment, saying he did not wish to wake you. He begs your pardon for his unpleasant behaviour this morning.’

‘George Hempe said that?’

‘He did, Mistress.’

Lucie stared out of the window. The day had grown wanly fair but the breeze still held dampness. ‘How long have I slept?’

‘It is midday, Mistress.’

‘Are Gwenllian and Hugh behaving themselves?’

Alisoun’s colourless face lit up. ‘They are the best children I have ever minded, clever and cheerful. They are no trouble at all.’

Lucie smiled. They were good children. Heaven knew what they must think of their mother, always abed, always in bandages. She drank some of the tonic, then pushed back the covers.

Alisoun brought a bedpan from beneath the bed. ‘Do you need help with this?’

‘I do not need it. I am going out to the privy.’

Instead of backing away, as Lucie had expected, Alisoun shook her head. ‘Mistress Digby said you were to stay abed, that you are weak, and only rest and a good appetite will strengthen you.’

‘I shall have little appetite if I do not move about.’

‘May I look at your hand?’

As Lucie lifted it, a pain shot up her arm. She clenched her teeth. ‘Dear God.’

‘I’ll pack the wound with the Riverwoman’s paste that will cool it and draw out the bad humours.’

‘First help me with the chamber pot,’ Lucie said. ‘An injured hand does not make me a cripple. And when we are finished, bring the children up to play for a while.’

Alisoun’s hands were strong and her presence comforting.

‘Do you know the ingredients of the tonic Magda made for me?’ Lucie asked.

‘I do, Mistress.’

‘I would have you and Jasper remix it without the sleeping potion, which is valerian and something else — sleepwort? It is difficult to taste.’ The girl had paused in her ministration. ‘Did I guess correctly?’

‘Aye, Mistress. But the Riverwoman says it is important that you rest.’

‘Rest I will, when I have seen to my affairs. Will you give Jasper the instructions to make the tonic without the sleeping draught?’

Alisoun, tucking the rag bandages and ointment in a basket, hid her face from Lucie. ‘The Riverwoman is watching me for signs that I am not a healer born, Mistress. If I disobey her …’

‘Then it is best that I go without the tonic until I am ready for rest.’

From the set of the girl’s shoulders Lucie could see that she was annoying her.

‘That is not doing as the Riverwoman wishes, either,’ Alisoun groaned in the pure tones of a child weary of unpleasant responsibilities.

‘But I shall disobey, not you.’

‘What do you mean to do?’

‘When Magda tells you to do something, do you question her intentions?’

‘Aye, Mistress.’

‘And does she allow it?’

‘No, Mistress. I’ll bring the children to you now.’ Alisoun departed.

Bolton, the Fitzbaldrics’ cook, was a bald, well-fleshed man with scars that suggested he had experienced a much more adventurous life before becoming a domestic. He was sitting cross-legged on the rushes beside Poins’s pallet, singing a bawdy ballad when Owen entered the screened-off section of the kitchen. Poins lay with eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

Bolton swallowed the end of a note and scrambled upright. ‘Captain,’ he said, bobbing his head.

‘I’ll relieve you for a little while. But first, have you ever seen these before?’ Owen drew the gloves out of his scrip.

Bolton bent close, making an odd sound in his throat. ‘I don’t like it when gloves dry like that, like claws ready to grab you.’ He crossed himself. ‘No, I’ve never seen such fancy gloves. Ladies are not commonly dressed so fine when they’re in the kitchen.’ He retreated to the screens.

‘I’ll stay long enough for you to go to the privy and have something to eat.’

‘Bless you, Captain.’

Poins had closed his eyes.

The kitchen had high ceilings, and a small window was open near the bed. Even so, the man’s burns smelled like rotting greens and made Owen’s recently filled stomach queasy. Thoresby had been kinder than Owen realized in sitting with the man last night. Poins’s face was partially visible now, the bandages only covering his right eye and upper cheek, the scalp over his left ear. His lips were still swollen and cracking. Owen found the ointment for them and smoothed some on.

‘Poins, do you remember me?’ he asked as he worked. ‘I’m Captain Archer. My wife and I took you in after the fire.’

Poins’s lips trembled, and a tension in his jaw suggested that he heard and held himself back from responding.

Before a battle the best commanders envisioned the thoughts of the enemy, trying to predict their movements. Owen sat back and thought about how he would feel if he had suffered the wounds and the burns Poins had, the loss of a limb. Magda said that some of his deepest burns were painless. Did that mean he was numb in those places? Owen thought that might be almost as frightening as pain. And there was the pain in the limb he no longer had, as well as the pain of his burns and the stench of his own decaying flesh. He wondered whether Poins was aware that he had moved from Owen’s house to the palace. And what he thought their purpose was in their attempts to question him about the fire. He must be frightened, confused, despairing, and perhaps angry that Magda had removed his arm without telling him what she was to do. It was no wonder Poins did not choose to talk. But he might be the key to that night. Owen must find a way to reach him.