Michael Jecks - Dispensation of Death

‘I know a few corridors, if that’s what you mean.’

‘It is precisely what I mean. Can you show us the quickest way from the Great Hall to the Queen’s solar?’

Pilk looked at him and then shrugged. If that was the way to get rid of them … ‘Yeah. If you want.’

With his assistance Baldwin and Simon soon reached the Queen’s cloister. They were led along a passageway with windows that looked out over the river, then up some stairs and down others with enough turns to make even Simon confused.

‘It is easier in the countryside where you can keep an eye on the sun,’ he grumbled.

Pilk said nothing, but his contempt for rural peasants who could not make sense of a simple set of corridors was evident in the look he gave Simon. At the door to the Queen’s chambers, he left them with a scowling pair of guards.

‘We are looking into the murder of the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, on the orders of the King,’ Baldwin said, but the guard shook his head.

‘I’ve been told no one’s to go through here today. If I could, I’d let you pass, Sir Baldwin. I want to know who was responsible for killing Mabilla as much as the next man, but I can’t break my orders.’

‘Could you do the next best thing then, and pass a message through to the ladies inside? We wish to speak with Lady Eleanor and Madam Alicia.’

‘I can try. If you’ll wait here,’ the guard offered, and when Baldwin and Simon agreed to wait, he opened the gate and passed inside.

He was gone some little while, and then the gate opened, and a petite blonde woman came through it.

She was young, with a round face and thinnish lips that could have looked hard, if it were not for her laughing eyes. They were slanted, and the clear blue of cornflowers in the summer. When she looked at Simon, he was convinced that she was a flirt. She had that kind of slightly over-wide eye, an appraising look to her, that spoke of a maid keen on the natural pleasures.

‘I am Alicia. You wanted to speak to my mistress, Lady Eleanor? I am afraid that my Lady received a message this morning advising her against aiding you, gentles. Perhaps it was thought that your interrogation might unsettle her delicate spirits?’

‘Perhaps it was,’ Baldwin agreed. He smiled. ‘I assume you would not suffer in a similar manner, then?’

‘Oh, Sir Knight, I do not think that there is anything a man could do would alarm me overmuch.’

‘I believe you, if all I have heard is true.’

‘You mean the attack when Mabilla died? Yes. That was a dreadful experience.’

‘Can you describe the man?’

‘No. I am afraid I didn’t take much in — I was so shocked and fearful. All of us were.’

Simon frowned. ‘But we heard that you were fine. You stood up to the man boldly enough.’

‘Ah, but I am only a woman, sir. He was a fearsome man, masked and armed. The picture of masculinity and malice. I could not recall anything about him.’

‘You are sure of this?’

She looked up at him with wide, less-than-innocent eyes. ‘But of course, Sir Baldwin. Why, would you like to put me to the test?’

There was a lazy eroticism in the way she spoke, tilting her head and moving ever so slightly, the skirts of her tunic swaying suggestively. And as he coloured, she laughed with genuine delight, walking back through the gate, nodding to the guard, and glancing once over her shoulder at them, before she disappeared.

‘You shouldn’t trust all she says.’

Simon and Baldwin turned to see Joan. She was the lady-in-waiting to the Queen who had fled at the sight of the man, Baldwin recalled. ‘Mistress?’

Unlike Alicia, who appeared fully recovered, Joan had clearly not got over her shock yet. Baldwin supposed that it was natural enough in the circumstances. Sadly, it made almost anything she could tell them largely irrelevant. Baldwin had often found that eyewitnesses were unreliable, but the worst were those like this woman, who had been so terrified that, after a mere glimpse of the scene of horror, she had run away.

‘Alicia says things to spice up her life,’ Joan explained. ‘She likes to flirt, Sir Baldwin.’

‘What would you not trust about her evidence?’

‘She said she did not remember the man? I think she did.’

‘Do you remember what he looked like?’ Simon asked.

‘Of course, sir. He was a little under your height, Sir Baldwin.’ She stepped towards the knight and studied his face. ‘And younger. Much younger. Less of a paunch, I would say, and very light on his feet, like a dancing man.’

‘I thank you for your observations,’ Baldwin said, smiling a little. ‘Why do you think he was younger than me?’

‘You mean because of his little mask? Ah, even in the candlelight there were very few wrinkles or worry-lines about his mouth. And his hair had no hints of grey,’ she added, reaching up to gesture at his own greying temples. ‘And the way he moved, it was plain to me that he was a fit, young man — although he wasn’t a knight.’

‘Oh? How do you know that?’

‘His neck was not so thick and muscled. A knight who is trained to the joust will always have a neck that is built to hold the weight of a tilting helm, will he not? And this man’s shoulders, too, were not so bulky. He was altogether a smaller-framed man than you, Sir Knight.’ She glanced back towards the gate to the garden.

‘His clothing?’

‘He had all grey and brown, except for his gipon. That was different, because although it was not emerald, it was a good, fresh green.’

Sir Baldwin gruffly cleared his throat. ‘Joan, we are keen to learn all we can about the man who entered the palace and was killed. Do you know of anyone who could help us?’

‘There is one, I think,’ she said. ‘Arch, the guard up at the wall, was found the next morning, snoring.’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s said that he’s often up there in the morning, usually snoring because he drinks so much.’

‘What of him?’

Joan shrugged and pulled her mouth into a little moue. ‘I am often sent to fetch wine and ales for my Lady and the other ladies-in-waiting. When I spoke to the steward in the buttery next morning, he said that Arch hadn’t been near the ale that night. He reckoned he must have gone somewhere else. But I wonder whether Arch could have been telling the truth, and had been on the wall as he should have been.’

‘He was a heavy sleeper? He snored?’

‘A man may snore and sleep heavily without ale, Sir Baldwin,’ she said, but there was no cheekiness now. ‘If he is knocked down, he will also snore.’

‘Who would have done that?’

‘An assassin entering the palace clandestinely would want no one to give the alarm, would he?’

Ellis was exercising his brain, an activity to which it had grown unaccustomed, and he was finding his conclusions more confusing than enlightening.

If what he had heard from the discussions between his master and Sir Baldwin were correct, someone had been trying to kill his sister and not the Queen after all. But who could have wanted Mabilla dead? She was a sweet girl, no one’s enemy.

Except the Queen’s, he thought with a start.

And then there was Jack’s death.

The only people who’d known about Jack were him, his master, and Jack himself — and Ellis knew full well that Jack would never have told anyone about his mission. Equally, he knew that he himself had said nothing, and so perhaps the confession from Sir Hugh that he might have given away the plan to Piers was not so wide of the mark.

Piers was a spy. His trade was lying and passing on news to others. Perhaps he had sold Sir Hugh’s plot to someone else. Earl Edmund was his master when he wasn’t with Sir Hugh, so had he mixed his loyalties and found solace in the fact that for once he was acting in some form of good faith by aiding the Earl? The only alternative to that was that the Queen herself had plotted to remove Mabilla.