Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

It took him only a moment to reach an arm out to her, and he felt her shiver deliciously as he pulled her towards him. But she froze when she felt his dagger’s point beneath her chin.

Henry blinked with concern as he stood before the serious-faced knight and his friend, but his fear was not based upon the two men before him; his concern was focused on the figure whom he knew was standing behind him: the Succentor.

‘I know that Adam has accused Luke of trying to poison him and it’s not true,’ he asserted.

Baldwin had an easy manner with children. Simon often found it annoying that while he was careful to behave with suitable, as he saw it, distant authority to children, they often responded far better to his friend Baldwin’s solemnly respectful manner. It appeared to be working yet again right now. While Gervase hovered in the background, scowling viciously at the back of Henry’s head and Simon tried to maintain a diffident aloofness, the child met Baldwin’s gaze with a quiet conviction as he told what had happened the previous night, how Adam had assaulted Luke and left Henry to take the blame.

Luke was near to bursting with fury as he heard what Adam had done ‘You mean he attacked me? I thought it might be him at our meal today but when he was poisoned I forgot it. If only the poison had killed him!’

Baldwin nodded. ‘I can understand your thinking, although at present he may wish the same, after being forced to be sick and then having a bladder squirt something revolting up his arse. I don’t know about you, but having all that happen in front of his Canon can hardly make him feel good.’

Luke and Henry exchanged a quick look. They were by no means allies, but there was a mutual satisfaction in knowing that Adam had suffered. It mitigated the bullying they had endured at the older youth’s hands. Luke frowned briefly, glancing at Gervase, thinking of how Henry had been thrashed the previous evening. Henry saw his look and grinned. Both had been beaten worse by Canons and others.

Baldwin continued, ‘We must still discover where the poison came from.’

Simon looked at Luke. ‘The bread Adam ate was not the loaf which he stole from you?’

‘No. It was a new one. The one I had was older – it had dried with age.’ Luke hesitated, then said, ‘I got that loaf from Peter, sir, the night that he collapsed.’

‘Did you eat any of it?’ Gervase asked.

‘No, sir. I was going to last night, but Adam stole it before I–’

‘So he wasn’t poisoned by eating the same one which Peter ate,’ Gervase said.

‘We don’t know that,’ Simon pointed out. ‘He may have eaten it before going into the meal.’

‘But what then of the bottle?’ Gervase asked.

Another thought had struck Simon. ‘Tell me – when you eat, is the bread brought in later with the meats, or is it served on the table already when you arrive?’

‘Oh, it’s already there.’

‘So anyone could have gone in and poisoned the bread, knowing who would eat it,’ Simon said with a look at Baldwin.

Baldwin stood staring thoughtfully at the ground. ‘And the killer left the pot behind to implicate someone else in the room.’

‘One thing is certain, Adam was not poisoned by that orpiment. It is too bright. No, he was poisoned with something else.’

‘Yes. Gervase, could you tell us when this pot would have gone missing?’

‘I noticed it was missing last night,’ Henry said. ‘I thought Luke had taken it. He often takes different colours for his pictures.’ He hesitated, realised that his words sounded snide, and added, ‘He is the best at drawing and painting among us all.’

Baldwin smiled gently. It was clear to him that there was a considerable amount of rivalry between the two boys, but he was also sure that Henry was offering an olive branch.

‘Who has access to the Choristers’ hall?’ Baldwin asked the Succentor.

‘Everyone. Adam to change the candles, another to sweep and clean, the Choristers, me… If you want the truth, I suppose anyone who came to the Cathedral could drop in here,’ Gervase said.

‘And the Canon’s house – I suppose the same is true there?’

‘Provided the poisoner went there when all was quiet, yes.’

Nicholas Karvinel had been about to go straight home, and although he didn’t know it, his death would certainly have been hastened had he done so, for he would have walked in upon Sir Thomas with his wife.

Instead, Karvinel was delayed as he left the Cathedral. In the High Street he bumped into Coroner Roger and the City Bailiff, both standing angrily glaring up and down the road.

‘Coroner? Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m damn well not!’

‘What on earth is the trouble?’

‘That bastard Vincent. Do you know where he is?’

‘He usually attends an earlier Mass. He’s in around the middle of the day, so no, I fear I have no idea where he is – unless he’s in the Guildhall or his home.’

‘No, I’ve checked both,’ Roger spat. ‘The bastard could almost be deliberately avoiding me. And so he bloody should!’

Karvinel’s confused expression made the Coroner relent a little. ‘Vincent apparently got his son to try to ruin Ralph.’ He explained what Jolinde had told him. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘Ralph’s death seems to become more confusing by the day,’ Karvinel said.

‘Well, not for much longer. I intend clearing up the whole sorry mess.’

‘Good.’

Roger was about to walk off when a thought struck him. ‘Tell me – cordwain and basan: Ralph bought some a short while before he died – I witnessed the deal – but it has disappeared from Ralph’s shop. Do you know anything about it?’

Karvinel felt his heart stop in his chest. ‘Ralph’s shop? Why no, no one has offered me anything like that,’ he said. ‘When was it taken?’

It was a short while later that he suddenly realised what had happened: Vincent’s cart had been seen by Peter outside Ralph’s shop only a short time before the discovery of the glover’s body. Only with difficulty could he stop himself bursting into delighted laughter.

Simon was staring at the grass as he walked a short distance behind Baldwin towards the Fissand Gate. ‘I don’t understand what is going on here at all,’ he said at last. ‘I thought we had a case of Peter’s poisoning, and that he died because of someone inside the Cathedral, yet now it seems it could have been anyone.’

‘It is not so complicated as it may appear, I think. No, not by any means. You have to bear in mind the sort of people we are dealing with. There are the city folk and the Cathedral, and the two don’t mix very easily. The city respects the Cathedral and is grateful for the money the Cathedral spends in the city, but does not truly like the Dean and Chapter. They are an alien race to the secular people who live outside the Close.’

‘But we have an appallingly tangled mess here.’

‘Perhaps – yet the more tangled this knot appears now, the more I am convinced that a small tug at the right point will unravel the whole thing.’

‘Two men dead; a third almost killed and two boys who have cause to hate him; outlaws attacking merchants… I don’t see how matters could get much worse.’

Baldwin gave him a sideways look. ‘Are you happy that Jolinde was innocent of the murders?’

‘I suppose so, since he admitted to buying the bread and meat with which Peter was poisoned.’

‘If he was. We have no proof that Peter was poisoned with the bread or meat. In fact, we have a lot of evidence that he wasn’t. Jolinde and Claricia said that they ate the food Jolinde had brought, which seems odd. And still more odd, if someone wanted to kill Peter, why should they poison food which Jolinde was buying?’