Candace Robb - The Riddle Of St Leonard's

‘A boat, then?’

‘Aye, that’s what I’m thinking. And if we see to it, they might stay long enough to explain what they’re about.’

Lacking customers and unable to keep his mind on his lessons, Jasper shut the shop for a while and went in search of Lucie. He found her up in the solar, kneeling over a small chest, lifting items from it: toys, a child’s gown … He knew that it had been her mother’s chest; in it she kept her memories. Jasper’s mother had had such a chest.

‘I have nothing of his in here. Nothing,’ Lucie whispered.

Jasper knelt beside her. ‘Brother Wulfstan means as much to you as he does to me.’

Lucie gathered the items she had spread on the floor, placed them back in the chest. ‘I have never known a gentler soul than Wulfstan. I cannot say that I have always been good to him.’ She blotted her eyes on her sleeve.

‘I should have asked you to come with me.’

Lucie hugged herself. ‘I feel frightened. Fearful of what will take the place of such goodness.’

Jasper did not know how to comfort her. ‘I must return to the shop,’ he said.

‘I will come with you.’

Lame John backed away, shook his head. ‘I cannot.’

His son lifted his hand over the boat, was about to bring the jagged rock down on the curved prow when his father caught his hand. Rich dropped the rock as he yanked out of his father’s grasp. Lame John lunged for the rock.

‘What is this?’ Rich hissed. ‘You have changed your mind?’

‘’Tis the Riverwoman’s boat.’

‘And what if it is? She was not with them. You think she loaned it to them? Those two?’ Rich spat in the grass.

‘I would not be cursed by her.’

‘How will she know? ’Tis that changeling, Alisoun, stole it. She damaged it. Who is to say otherwise?’

‘The Riverwoman might know otherwise.’

‘A midwife? Herb-gatherer?’

‘She is more than that.’

‘She is a good woman. She would think us in the right. Alisoun is our kin. We must protect her from that woman.’

Lame John laughed. ‘You want the gold and silver.’

‘Did you see it? When are we to see the likes of that again, eh?’

Lame John handed his son the rock.

When the prow had been sufficiently splintered, Rich tossed the rock aside, brushed off his hands.

‘You’ve taken the skin off your palms. Down to the river with you, wash them off.’

‘What then? Do we await them here?’

‘Nay. We must see what they are about.’

Lucie and Jasper found no customers in Davygate, but they opened the shop door in the hope of distraction. Jasper sat on the bench by the window; Crowder climbed up on his lap, and as the lad absent-mindedly stroked the cat, Lucie told him of her first visit to Brother Wulfstan’s garden.

The trussed man on the stretcher attracted much interest at the hospital — until word spread that he stank of pestilence.

‘The gaol? And keep him under guard? But what has he done?’ Don Cuthbert found them puzzling suggestions.

‘Captain Archer did not say,’ replied one of the stretcher-bearers.

Cuthbert tucked his hands up his sleeves, considered the alternatives. He had so far managed to keep the deaths from pestilence quite low by separating the sufferers from the other infirm. The hospital was not crowded, but to place him in a room that might be secured would require inconvenient shuffling.

‘The gaol it is, then. Put him far from Mistress Staines.’ In truth, she should be released to the house of the lay sisters, but he was not about to do so without the master’s order. He must tread lightly for a time.

Alisoun stared into one of the crimson bells of the tall foxglove. Might the plant have grown in this spot after she’d buried the treasures? Had it been long enough since she’d disturbed this earth for a weed to seed itself and grow? Perhaps she had sped its growth by loosening the earth round it. That had been her principal task each spring, to loosen the soil round her mother’s older herbs.

She did not wish to ask Anneys whether it was possible that the treasure lay below the plant. Alisoun was not yet ready to admit to her that she could not find the last of the treasure. Anneys did not seem patient with failure. They had dug up the trench that Alisoun remembered digging: from the second post in the fence beyond the tree from which she’d fallen when she was small to the old ditch. This plant was growing at the edge of the ditch. Alisoun might have gone that far, though she did not think so. It was a measuring point on the property. She had feared her uncle would notice if it was disturbed. But she had been weary on the evening she had buried the goods. Perhaps she had gone farther than she had intended.

‘We have not the time to stare at flowers.’ Anneys’s voice was hoarse with exhaustion, though she had done precious little of the digging. In fact she had stopped after losing her balance and slipping into one of the holes shortly after they had begun. ‘A moment ago you feared we would be interrupted,’ Anneys reminded her.

It was true. Alisoun had sensed someone watching them, but the feeling had gone away. She had stood very still, trying not to breathe. Only the insects and the birds disturbed the afternoon, and, farther away, the river. Whatever Alisoun had heard, she did not hear it again. Still, she had bent back to her digging with more energy, and in a short while she had retrieved all but the cross.

Was it under the foxglove? Alisoun pushed herself up from her crouching position, retraced her steps to the spot at which they had begun their dig, crouched over the hole, dug a little beyond, until she reached hard, undisturbed soil. It was indeed the end of the trench.

‘Where is the rood?’ Anneys asked from above.

Alisoun took a deep breath. ‘Under the foxglove … I think.’

‘You think? You do not know?’

Alisoun flinched at the tone, and the foot that tapped impatiently, perhaps even angrily, beside her. ‘It is the only part of the trench we have not tried.’

‘Meaning?’

Alisoun rose, faced her interrogator. The tall woman leaned on her shovel, glaring at Alisoun with dark eyes. Soil smudged her face and made her even more malevolent. ‘Meaning I hope it is there, because if it is not, someone has been here before us.’

Anneys straightened. ‘Foolish child. That was the most valuable piece.’

‘I did not take it.’

‘But you let someone else take it.’

Alisoun ran down to the foxglove, sank down beside it, began to dig with her hands, plunging them into the soil, which was rough with pebbles that stung her with scratches.

Anneys knelt beside Alisoun, caught her wrists and pulled her hands from the soil, shook her head at the torn fingernails. ‘You have hurt yourself. Let me dig.’

But Alisoun was not listening. Anneys’s hands were hot and clammy. Alisoun withdrew her left hand, touched the woman’s forehead, then her right cheek. ‘You are sick.’ Her eyes were bloodshot and heavy-lidded. ‘Grandame, you are sick!’

Anneys pressed Alisoun’s hand. ‘What does it matter? Tomorrow we shall float downriver as rich as the Master of St Leonard’s. Come. Use the shovel. Try this last place.’

And at last, much to Alisoun’s relief, she found the pearl and silver cross. But by then Anneys’s breath was coming in gasps.

‘By Christ’s thorns, these are riches indeed,’ Lame John muttered to his son. ‘I told you we would do well to watch the farm.’ They lay in the tall grass beyond the old ditch, hidden by more foxgloves growing wild in the field, gazing upon the items heaped on the cloth beside the woman and Alisoun.