The Medieval Murderers - House of Shadows

‘My lord, be silent!’ the midwife snapped, drawing his daughter away as though fearing that he might kill her.

‘Don’t command me, bitch! I wanted a boy, and she’s given me that !’

‘Your child was in God’s hands.’

‘In His hands, eh?’

‘Yes, and He sent you this babe in His mercy, perhaps to show you the error of your ways and give you a happier life.’

‘Leave your moralizing, gossip. I have no need of it,’ he spat, and lurched from the room. But not before he’d seen his wife’s face. She’d been very upset. Indeed, later that night, as he sat in his hall drinking morosely, he’d heard her weeping. That noise stabbed at him – in truth, he had always loved her, ever since he first clapped eyes on her in the company of his best friend.

To his chagrin, he had soon taken a liking to the child. She had a smile that struck at his heart. When she looked at him and gurgled, it made his mood lift. Later, when she was learning to talk, her attempts made him chuckle with delight. Her little mistakes were to him the very essence of joy.

Yet she was also a reminder to him of his callousness towards her mother. If he had not been so harsh on that first night, perhaps his wife would not have insisted on trying to conceive again so soon after Juliet’s birth, and that might have meant that she wouldn’t have…well, there was no point raking over dead soil. She had died in the next childbirth. Her womb wasn’t strong enough so soon after Juliet, the midwife had said, the poisonous old…She’d seemed to have a reproving tone in her voice, as though accusing him. Him! The one man in the world who’d never have hurt his wife intentionally.

But Juliet grew too quickly. He blinked – and she had become a woman. A woman with the desires of all women. And she committed the one crime she could neither help nor regret – any more than he could forgive.

She had fallen in love.

‘Oh, Christ Jesus!’ he blurted, and covered his face with his hands.

Simon had been on many investigations with his friend. The two had proved themselves adept at seeking felons back in their own lands.

Here, though, he felt completely out of his place.

They left the bishop’s hall and made their way along the paths that followed the line of the Fleet River, down to the Thames itself, and there Baldwin gazed up-and down-river before setting two fingers into his mouth and emitting an ear-piercing blast.

‘In God’s name!’ Simon protested, clapping a hand over his ear.

‘Ach, you have to get these men’s attention somehow. Lazy devils, all of them,’ Baldwin muttered almost to himself. But as he spoke he was waving, and soon Simon saw a man in a rowing boat leave a little group of boats a few tens of yards down the river and make his way against the current towards them.

‘Over the river, masters?’

‘We need to get to Bermondsey in Surrey,’ Baldwin stated, grasping the prow.

‘That far? You realize how long it’ll take me to work my way back upstream from there?’

Baldwin gave him a beatific smile. ‘No. Why don’t you tell us as you row?’

The news of Juliet’s death had struck the whole house dumb. Servants went about their business but with a quiet, nervous urgency, scarcely daring to speak to each other, the master’s distress was so evident.

In the main chamber, where her mistress used to sit, her maid Avice sat staring at the needlework Juliet had been working on.

‘Avice? God’s blood, wench, stop that whining.’

She looked up to see Juliet’s brother, Timothy, in the doorway. ‘Master, don’t you know?’

‘That she’s dead? Yes. You expect me to play the hypocrite? No. She was an embarrassment to us all. And a cause of shame. Better that she is dead than carries on to do any more damage to us.’

‘Oh, master! But she was so…’

‘They found her with that man. She betrayed us. Us! Her own flesh and blood. She is better gone. Now, dry your eyes. I won’t have all the maids in the house looking like mourners at a wake. Fetch me wine. I’ll be in the hall.’

Simon hated boats. He always had. The damned rocking motion made his belly rebel at the best of times, whether it was calm or rough sea weather, but at least here the movements were moderately gentle. As though in sympathy, the drizzle had also stopped. In fact, he could almost have described the journey as soothing were it not for the continual swearing of the oarsman, who kept up a running commentary all the way over the river.

He appeared to have it in his mind to explain every little detail of the view to these obvious foreigners.

‘That there, right? That’s St Benet Paul’s wharf. Just here, that’s St Paul’s wharf. Serves the great cathedral there. See the spire? Fuckin’ huge, eh? Then that river there, that’s called the Walbrook Stream, that is. And that there’s the great bridge. Never seen one like it, I dare say. Shit, look at the size of the fucker! Huge, eh? Like a…oh, right, and this here, just beyond that open land. That’s the Tower.’

It was here that his voice grew quieter, as though the mere mention of the name of the Tower was to bring misfortune.

Simon studied it with interest. There was a strong wall about the place, and the White Tower rose within it. ‘It looks impregnable.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘And as a prison, it is hard to equal it.’

The oarsman hawked long and hard and spat a gobbet of phlegm over the side of the boat. ‘Hard, perhaps. Let’s hope no bastard tries to. Enough poor bastards have died in that fucker.’

‘And one escaped,’ Baldwin commented.

‘Him? Yeah. Must have been lucky,’ the man said with a shifty glower.

‘They say that Mortimer escaped over the water to the far bank?’ Baldwin pressed him.

‘So they say.’

Simon followed Baldwin’s gaze. ‘What is it, Baldwin?’

‘That place – is it a new palace?’

The oarsman threw a cursory look over his shoulder. ‘That? Haven’t you heard? It’s called the Rosary. King himself is having it built. Suppose he wants to wake up and see his pretty Tower each day.’

‘And it may make it harder for a man to escape from the Tower and reach this shore,’ Baldwin commented.

‘Don’t know about that. We’re here.’

Baldwin took a coin from his purse and passed it to the man, then climbed out pensively.

‘What is it?’ Simon asked him as Baldwin stood watching the wherryman laboriously making his way back upstream.

‘Nothing. I was just considering how everyone here must fear that place.’

Lawrence saw them as soon as they began to make their way over the marshes towards the bodies.

‘Who are they?’

‘Christ knows. I don’t,’ Hob muttered.

The first, Lawrence saw, was the younger of the two. He was clad in a green tunic and hard-wearing grey hosen, with a leather jerkin. He had brown hair and was clearly used to the hardships of travel, from his sunburned features and scuffed boots. The other was an altogether older man, with a red tunic that had seen many better days. He had a greying beard and hair, and his eyes appeared particularly penetrating even at this distance. The beard followed the line of his jaw, delineating the strong features, and he had a scar that wandered down one side of his face. Lawrence could see that his eyes were darting hither and thither as they approached. He was no foolish man-at-arms who put all his faith in his weapons; he clearly had a brain.

‘Lordings,’ Hob said.

Lawrence was amused to hear the deferential tone in his voice. There was clearly something in the new man’s appearance that persuaded Hob to be cautious.

‘I am Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, and this is my companion, Simon Puttock, bailiff. We have been sent by my Lord Bishop Stapledon to see if we may assist with this dead person.’