Candace Robb - The Cross Legged Knight

‘Where is this servant?’

‘At my house.’

Thoresby nodded. ‘If he talks, it will be to a member of your household. You can trust your servants?’

‘Aye, Your Grace.’ Owen was more uneasy than ever about taking Poins in.

‘Where have the Fitzbaldrics gone?’ Wykeham asked, as if only now remembering that his townhouse had been occupied.

‘To the home of a goldsmith on Stonegate, Robert Dale and his wife Julia.’

‘Such charity might not be long extended once the gossips spread fear in the city,’ Thoresby said.

‘It was aimed at me, it is plain,’ Wykeham said with a catch in his throat.

Thoresby’s expression was cold as he glanced at the bishop. ‘You must work quickly, Archer,’ he said. ‘The good bishop’s name must not be dragged through the mire.’

It is too late to prevent that , Owen thought as he departed. And the bishop’s reputation should suffer if that was the extent of his concerns. What of the dead? What of the family now homeless?

Owen fought to put the two clerics out of his mind as he walked through the now quiet city to his home. In the dim kitchen he found Magda nodding in a chair beside Poins. Seeing the stump where the injured arm had been, Owen felt sick at the thought of Lucie assisting in the amputation. He would have spared her if he could. He took a flagon and two cups up to their chamber.

She had fallen asleep waiting for him, lying atop the covers, still in her clothes though she had removed her cap and her long hair fanned out on the pillows. A lamp burned brightly beside the bed. As Owen began to undress, Lucie turned, asked sleepily, ‘Is the fire out?’

‘Aye.’ He bent to her, kissed her cheek. ‘I saw your night’s work below. You held him down?’

Lucie sat up, blinking. ‘It took little effort. Magda’s dwale mixture is potent.’

What a beautiful woman, this wife of his, Owen thought, despite a softening to her jaw, silver strands in her warm brown hair. Carrying a child took a toll on a woman and with each child a little more, it seemed. It was a brave thing, to bear a child, and to bear the loss. He tried to remember whether those signs of ageing had appeared before her fall.

‘Help me with my sleeves?’

He sat down on the bed, untied her sleeves from the bodice of her gown, kissed her neck.

She reached back and held his head there a moment. ‘Your hair smells of smoke.’

Thank God that was all she smelled. Though he had stripped down to his leggings Owen still smelled death on himself.

Lucie stood to step out of her gown. He noticed how she held on to the corner of the bed to steady herself. She had not done that before the accident. ‘Did His Grace send for you?’ she asked.

‘He did.’

She looked so weary and so thin — he had not realized how much weight she had lost this past month. Or was it the loss of the child, the bloom of carrying the baby shattered? He would save the worst news for the morrow. ‘I brought wine.’

She had crawled beneath the covers. ‘Why did you post a guard on our house?’

‘You saw them?’

‘Magda and I saw Alfred in the garden. He said that Colin watched, too, out in Davygate. Why?’

‘I thought it best to protect Poins, in case he is a witness. Has he said anything?’

‘Nothing. Was the bishop of help?’

‘He fears that the fire was set because the house belongs to him. He glances over his shoulder at the slightest sound.’

‘Do you think he’s right?’

Owen could not answer that. To murder a woman and set fire to the house in which she lay was a terrible act, but to have done it to teach a lesson or threaten the absent bishop would be even worse. ‘My mind is a muddle.’

Lucie drew his hand to her mouth and kissed it.

He thought to coax the conversation into less dangerous territory. ‘You are a good woman, to bring Poins here. But it means more work in the household.’

‘I cannot deny that. I should not have put off finding a new nurse for the children. It is too much for Kate, with Aunt Phillippa underfoot.’

Owen knew why Lucie had put it off — first she had hoped Phillippa might recover enough to return to Freythorpe, then they had hoped being with the children might balance her. And once Lucie knew she was with child, no one had seemed quite right to take care of the older children and the baby to come.

‘Magda suggested I have someone help while Poins is here,’ said Lucie. ‘She suggested Cisotta.’ Cisotta was a young midwife who had helped Lucie in the first days.

Owen poured a cup of wine, handed it to Lucie. She shook her head.

He slipped into bed beside her, sitting up to drink his wine. ‘You truly want none?’

‘I need no wine to coax me to sleep.’ She turned to face him, though she did not sit up and barely opened her eyes. It was not like her to be so drowsy when so much had happened. ‘It is passing strange, that of all the houses in York, it is Wykeham’s that catches fire, and less than a week after he arrives,’ she murmured.

‘It is a dry autumn.’

‘Still.’

‘I pray you do not dream of the surgery you just witnessed.’

Lucie did not respond. Her breathing was deep and slow.

Thoresby paced his parlour long after Wykeham had retired for the night. Never had Thoresby disappointed the Church when he might help her and he would not fail her now. He would protect the Bishop of Winchester even against his ally the Duke of Lancaster, putting aside his disapproval of the man himself.

But how? He must try to reconstruct the events since the mishap with the tile a few days earlier. The Pagnell steward had come but a few hours after the incident at the lady chapel with a note from Lady Pagnell angrily denying a rumour that her family was behind it and requesting that under the circumstances Wykeham absent himself from Sir Ranulf’s funeral — as if the bishop had intended to play the uninvited guest. It was the first Thoresby had heard of the rumour. But by the following day even Sir Ranulf’s level-headed daughter Emma Ferriby was caught up in the atmosphere of ill will.

*

After presiding over his old friend’s requiem mass, Thoresby had been restless, unable to apply himself to any task. He had returned to York Minster seeking a quiet moment in the Pagnell chapel to make peace with Ranulf. But he found Emma Ferriby still kneeling before her father’s tomb, her veiled head bowed, her gloved hands pressed in prayer. A wisp of incense hung in the air over the marble effigy, not yet dispelled by the drafts that criss-crossed the great minster.

Thoresby had imagined the family and mourners long dispersed. Not wishing to interrupt Mistress Ferriby’s grief, he began to back away, but a pebble betrayed him.

Emma raised her head, turned towards him abruptly, her back tensed. ‘Who is it?’ As the veil swung away from her face Thoresby saw the marks of her weeping and was even sorrier for having disturbed her.

But the damage had been done. ‘Forgive my trespass. I did not think to find you here still.’

‘You are welcome here, Your Grace.’ Emma had a low voice for such a small woman, a calming voice, even when ragged with emotion, as now.

Thoresby knelt beside her and bowed his head in the prayer that had been his purpose in returning to the minster. His old friend’s death had been difficult to bear, dying in a French prison of a wasting disease while his ransom was being negotiated. Wykeham was sadly right, Sir Ranulf had been too old to return to France and resume the persona he had created thirty years before as a spy for King Edward — his failing memory had betrayed him. Thoresby had warned Ranulf, but the knight had insisted that God called him on the mission. Despite his frailty the old knight had been honourable to the end, refusing to divulge any other names to his captors. For that he had been tortured, Thoresby was sure of it, though diplomatic channels denied it, claiming that it was the heat of summer that had led them to bury Sir Ranulf in haste, saving only his heart, now buried here.