Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

‘You would tell them what happened here?’ Pagnell asked.

‘They have troubled to come so far, they should be satisfied.’

‘Matthew’s designs upon my mother — you will not mention that.’

‘How else can I explain his motivations?’

‘They will not notice the lack.’

‘But the duke will.’

‘What do you want, Your Grace?’

‘Your word that Wykeham will have no trouble departing from York with Guy in his custody.’

‘The duke would not care.’

‘I think that he might,’ Thoresby said. ‘The clerk will be punished, and harshly, have no doubt of it.’

At the Ferriby home, Owen’s, Hempe’s and Matthew’s departure left a shocked household. John was escorted to the boys’ chamber, Ivo hurrying behind him. Emma thanked Edgar for his help, then sat down heavily on a bench and doubled over, retching. Lucie brought her a bowl into which she was promptly sick.

‘What was he thinking, to attack a grown man like that?’ Emma groaned, then started at a sound above, rising but quickly sinking back down, pressing her hands to her temples.

‘You must calm yourself before you can be of any use to John,’ Lucie said. ‘I’ll go up to see that they are cleaning his wounds properly and send someone to you with wine. Then I’ll go to the shop and have Jasper return with an ointment for John’s nose, and herbs with which to pack it, as well as a tincture for pain.’

‘How shall I explain all this to Peter?’

‘All you can do is tell him the truth. Your mother will surely be full of the tale when she returns.’

‘She will. Sweet heaven, I almost pity Matthew.’

Emma’s colour was returning. Lucie doubted that she even needed the wine. But it would settle her stomach.

‘Where is Peter today?’

‘One of his ships has docked. He is always there for the unloading.’

‘I pray he found no problems, so that he is in good cheer when you tell him of all this.’

In the days that followed, Wykeham alternated between grief-stricken prayer and furious pacing as he deliberated about how to dispatch justice.

Thoresby was blunt in his disapproval of Wykeham’s eventual decision. ‘Journeying all the way to Winchester to try Guy there is foolhardy. Why take such risk?’

‘Thanks to your captain, Guy is unable to cause much trouble on the way.’ Wykeham seemed unable to move past Owen’s attack on the clerk to acknowledge the debt he owed the captain. ‘I hope to talk with Guy more. I am not satisfied with his explanations. He said the king siphoned money, as did I, so he believed it was common practice, that he would be a fool not to seize for himself a small portion of the funds going through his hands. And he was confident that his forgeries were so subtle he would never be caught.’

‘He is a thorough knave, prideful and defiant,’ said Thoresby. ‘But worse than that, he is a murderer. How does he defend himself with that?’

‘He called the midwife a whoring, thieving witch who was trespassing in the Fitzbaldrics’ house. But his voice broke when he said that. He knows his sin deserves death.’

‘He has not explained his former acquaintance with the victim?’

‘No.’ Wykeham pressed his hands together, bowed over them for a heartbeat. ‘But I do not wish him to die before he has understood all that brought him to his fall and repented.’

Thoresby thought it was Wykeham who needed to understand.

‘I wish him to die in peace with the Lord,’ Wykeham said. He fell silent again.

‘You were so fond of him?’ Thoresby wondered aloud.

Wykeham straightened, anger replacing the pain in his eyes. ‘All this transpired because of Sir Ranulf’s desire to go forth into danger in the king’s name one last time. It is as with the king — the elderly are never wise.’

‘I can name many greybeards and grey-headed ladies who have exhibited much wisdom,’ Thoresby said, disliking this turn in the conversation.

Wykeham shook his head. ‘For every one of them there are a hundred, a thousand, with addled minds.’

On the morning of the bishop’s departure Owen ordered his men to line the drive while he stood near the palace doorway. Thoresby seemed confident that Stephen Pagnell’s party would cause no trouble, but Owen meant to take no chances. When Wykeham stepped from the palace his gaze moved at once to the cart in which Guy sat trussed. Seeing the anguish in the bishop’s eyes, Owen looked away. It was a subdued company that rode down the drive.

When the last of the bishop’s men were out the gates, Thoresby summoned Owen to his parlour.

‘You are not smiling,’ the archbishop said, settling into his great chair. ‘Are you not glad to see the backs of that troublesome party?’

‘Their departure does not undo the tragedy, Your Grace.’

‘You must not mind Wykeham’s seeming ingratitude.’

‘He would have much preferred that I’d proven Lancaster was his nemesis. The truth held up the mirror to his own weaknesses.’

‘Hm. He feared you were Lancaster’s man and all the time you disliked his person, not his affiliations. Interesting. Was Lawgoch’s appeal also personal?’

Owen stopped breathing.

‘Come, come, you must not look so. You cannot be so naïve as to think Friar Hewald asked no questions in St David’s.’ Hewald was the messenger Thoresby had sent to escort Owen from Wales.

‘I chose to return to York, Your Grace,’ Owen managed to say.

‘Indeed. And that is the end of it, eh?’

Owen disliked the pleasant tone in Thoresby’s voice, the gleam in his eyes. He would use the secret someday, Owen was sure of it.

‘I should demand some public penance for your brutal attack on a man of the Church,’ Thoresby noted as he began to fuss with the documents on the table beside him.

Ah, now he strikes . Owen was almost relieved.

‘But I cannot bring myself to add to your family’s grief. You may go.’

Owen sat for a moment, uncertain what to say. He’d be damned if he was going to thank the archbishop, but with the knowledge of his treason in the man’s hands he would be a fool to cross him.

Thoresby glanced up with a chilly smile. ‘You are free to go, Archer. Go in peace.’

Still braced for attack, Owen rose with stiff dignity and bowed to the archbishop, who had already lowered his eyes. ‘Your Grace,’ he murmured, and withdrew.

As he crossed the archbishop’s hall, eager to put distance between himself and the archbishop, he noticed Brother Michaelo standing just beyond the doorway to the porch. Changing direction, Owen escaped through the kitchen. Maeve bid him good-day, humming as she bent back to her work, all trace of Poins’s sojourn already erased from her realm. It seemed to Owen a kind of sacrilege that the man’s terrible suffering left no scar on the room.

But not all was as before. The Fitzbaldrics had found a house not so large nor so well situated as the bishop’s, but they had decided not to spend all their time in York. Their house outside Hull beckoned and they intended to go there for a long retreat after settling into the new townhouse. Magda’s herbs had improved May’s sight, but could not restore it completely. Nor could she promise that it would not fail again. Adeline Fitzbaldric decided that May might best be employed as the housekeeper in the country house, instructing the servants beneath her in maintaining the house in her mistress’s absence.

But they would not need to find work for Poins. On the evening of the day on which Wykeham and Lady Pagnell made their peace, Poins had asked Magda if someone might help him into the garden.

‘It has drizzled all the day,’ Magda said, ‘and thou wilt find the ground cold on thy feet.’ He could not yet wear shoes for the open sores from blisters.