Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

The Coroner eyed him with distaste. ‘So now you’ll put the blame onto another unfortunate? Karvinel is no kind of a threat to anyone, not in his present state.’ He frowned as he considered his words. Often in the past he had found that the most meek and humble people could turn to violence when they felt they had no alternative. Karvinel was moderately courteous and mild-mannered, it was true, but he also wore a dagger. He could have become so bitter that he had decided to take matters into his own hands.

‘Why should I have killed Ralph?’ Vincent said, holding both hands out, palms upwards. ‘He was no threat to me once I had put my little plan into operation. There was no point in my killing him.’

‘Maybe he realised what had happened,’ the Coroner said speculatively.

‘Not so far as I know. If I had to bet, I’d say Karvinel did it.’

Simon and Baldwin returned to their inn as dusk was giving way to full night. Jeanne met them in the crowded and smoke-filled hall, Edgar standing at her side to keep unwanted visitors at bay, glowering at any stranger who approached too close. Both appeared relieved to see the two men return.

Baldwin took his seat and motioned to the host to serve them. While waiting, he looked enquiringly at his wife. ‘Are you well? Did you enjoy your tour of the city?’

‘Yes, it was interesting enough, but not so fascinating as your enquiries. I heard another man was poisoned – is it true?’

‘I am afraid so. It was one of the Secondaries called Adam, although, thank God, he should recover. So long as the apothecary’s intervention does not put an end to him first!’

‘Who did it?’

‘There we have the difficulty,’ Simon grunted, throwing a leg over a bench and surveying the crowd in the bar. ‘Two folks have been suspected, but neither seem probable. One is only a child, while the other is le Berwe’s illegitimate son, who has no reason to want to harm Adam.’

‘I think I have news for you, then,’ Jeanne declared, and told them of Hawisia’s terrified appearance and her assertions about Jolinde.

‘She suggests that he poisoned them?’ Baldwin breathed. ‘My God. That would follow on from what the Dean told us.’

Simon nodded. ‘He said rumours suggested Jolinde had tried to kill his father’s wife and got the wrong woman – Ralph’s wife. Now Hawisia says she thinks he succeeded with poison. God’s bollocks!’

Baldwin agreed. ‘I loathe and detest poison. It is so cowardly. There is no courage in attacking someone with such an indiscriminate weapon. It is a tool used by the weak and feebleminded.’

Simon looked at him. ‘I have never heard you so scathing, Baldwin.’

‘The older I become, the more appalled I grow to see such foul behaviour. It is obnoxious to consider putting orpiment or somesuch in a man’s food or drink. A man should be able to trust that his food is safe no matter what.’

Jeanne put her hand on his arm. ‘Calm yourself, husband. Try to think of happier things.’

‘How can I, Jeanne?’ he snapped. ‘The murderer is in the city somewhere and could well strike again at any time. Perhaps it is Jolinde, perhaps it was truly the child Luke! How on earth can I relax when anyone picking up a lump of bread or piece of fruit could be poisoned? How many more will be dead by morning?’

Vincent himself was little happier. He was filled with a deep moroseness which lay heavily on his soul as he walked into his hall.

Hawisia sat waiting for him at their table, and seeing him enter she poured warmed wine into his favourite silver-chased mazer and brought it to him beside the fire. He smiled weakly at her before emptying it in one go. She took it from him and refilled it, passing it to him with solemn assurance.

‘Husband, you are troubled?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Troubled?’ He stared at her as if awoken from a slow lethargy and despair attacked him with renewed force. He shot nervous looks about him, agitatedly biting his nails. Standing, he strode over to the table and was about to place his mazer on it when the urge suddenly took him to smash it. He lifted it high as if to dash it on the floor in a rage; but as soon as the urge took hold of him, it left him, and he let his hands slowly fall to the table, setting the cup down.

In an instant she was at his side, an arm about his shoulder as he began to sob. ‘My love, my darling, what is it? Oh, tell me what has happened!’

He couldn’t speak for some while. The words felt as though they would choke him. After so much effort and work, after all his careful planning to recover from the disastrous loss of his ship, he would now be ruined. ‘The Coroner came to see me just now.’

‘Yes, he was here earlier while I was out. Apparently he was in a foul mood,’ Hawisia said.

‘Not so foul as when he saw me! He knows everything – how I had Jolly take Ralph’s money and jewels, how I had Jolly get the fool to sign his mark on the receipt so that Ralph could be shown to be a thief when the gloves were presented… everything!’

Hawisia didn’t know what to do or say. She kissed his cheek, murmuring soft words to ease him, but Vincent stood resting his hands on the table-top, his eyes closed. ‘We are ruined, Hawisia. There’s nothing else I can do.’

‘Why? He hasn’t arrested you. He obviously doesn’t think he has enough proof to present you before the King’s Justice.’

‘Christ alive, woman, it’s not only him ! Karvinel came to see me as well. He said he would accuse me of being there when Ralph died; said he would allege his clerk saw me there.’

‘His clerk is dead,’ Hawisia pointed out.

‘True, but if he swore it, I could be lynched!’

‘A man must be alive to accuse you.’

‘But Karvinel could convince others. Oh, Christ!’

‘Darling, there is something you could try. I know you had your own men rob Karvinel.’

‘You mean my friend in the woods?’ He turned to her with a terrible understanding in his eyes. ‘You mean pay Sir Thomas to kill Karvinel?’

‘Why not? He has robbed the man and fired his house on your orders.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Vincent said. But he knew that he could. His eyes were staring into the distance as he wondered whether this could indeed provide him with a solution. And he knew the alehouse where Sir Thomas would be staying. He always chose the same low dive: the Cock.

Sir Thomas was disgusted by her. When she felt the blade at her neck she had thought he was playing some kind of game, that it was a sign he enjoyed inflicting or receiving pain with sex and she had moaned with desire for him.

He shoved her from him and asked her his questions. She had not been much help. He felt no nearer a solution, an answer as to why his comrade had died. He was forced to the conclusion that it was the whim of a wealthy man, someone who had picked a scapegoat simply because he could. A suspected outlaw would fit the bill – why not make use of him?

Juliana had tried to tempt him into her bed, with a kind of desperate passionless longing. She wanted a man, she said, a strong man who would rescue her from her husband. No price was too high for her freedom. All the man need do was kill Nicholas, the useless fool and she would give herself to him completely.

He had slapped her, hard, three or four times, until her lips swelled and the blood ran, but still she asked him to help her – offering her body, her few jewels, all her money. She repelled him; with her disloyalty and shabby, sordid advances. In the end he left her lying semi-naked on her bed, watching him leave with large empty eyes, as though he was her last hope and prayer and he was leaving her desolated.