Ellis Peters - The Sanctuary Sparrow

“I’ll bear that in mind, too. Tell me, Cadfael,” said Hugh, eyeing him shrewdly, “how strong is the scent you got wind of? Say I find no such witness—no second such witness, ought I to say?—shall I be justified in wagering on the accuracy of your nose?”

“In your shoes,” said Cadfael cheerfully, “I would.”

“You seem to have found your witness in very short order,” remarked Hugh drily, “and without leaving the precinct. So you got it out of him—whatever it was that had him choking on a simple lie. I thought you would.” He rose, grinning, and set down his cup. “I’ll take your confession later, I’m away now to see what I can get out of the new wife.” He clouted Cadfael amiably on the shoulder in passing, and looked back from the doorway. “No need to fret for that weedy lad of yours, I’m coming round to your opinion. I doubt if he ever did worse in his life than sneak a few apples from an orchard.”

The journeyman, Iestyn, was working alone in the shop, repairing the broken clasp of a bracelet, when Hugh came to the Aurifaber burgage. It was the first time Hugh had spoken with this man alone, and in company Iestyn kept himself silent and apart. Either he was taciturn by nature, thought Hugh, or the family had taken care to make his status clear to him, and it was not theirs, and there should be no stepping over the line that divided them.

In answer to Hugh’s question he shook his head, smiling and hoisting impassive shoulders.

“How would I see what goes on in the street after dark or who’s on the prowl when decent folks are in bed? I sleep in the back part of the undercroft, beneath the rear of the hall, my lord. Those outside stairs go down to my bed, as far from the lane as you can get. I neither see nor hear anything from there.”

Hugh had already noted the stairs that dived below the house at the rear, a shallow flight, since the ground dropped steadily away from the street level, and the undercroft, completely below-ground at the street end, was half above-ground at the back. From there, certainly, a man would be cut off from the world outside.

“At what hour did you go there, two nights ago?”

Iestyn knotted his thick black brows and considered. “I’m always early, having to rise early. I reckon about eight that night, as soon as my supper had settled.”

“You had no late errands to do? Nothing that took you out again after that?”

“No, my lord.”

“Tell me, Iestyn,” said Hugh on impulse, “are you content in your work here? With Master Walter and his family? You have fair treatment, and a good relationship?”

“One that suits me well enough,” said Iestyn cautiously. “My wants are simple, I make no complaint. I never doubt time will bring me my due. First to earn it.”

Susanna met Hugh in the hall doorway, and bade him in with the same practical composure she would have used with any other. Questioned, she shrugged away all knowledge with a rueful smile.

“My chamber is here, my lord, between hall and store, the length of the house away from the street. Baldwin’s boy did not come to us with his trouble, though he well could have done. At least he would have had company. But he didn’t come, so we knew nothing of his master being still astray until the morning, when John came. I was sorry poor Griffin worried out the night alone.”

“And you had not seen Master Peche during the day?”

“Not since morning, when we were all about the yard and the well. I went across to his shop at dinner with a bowl of broth, having plenty to spare, and it was then John told me he’d gone out. Gone since mid-morning and said something about the fish rising. To the best I know, that’s the last known word of him.”

“So Boneth has told me. And no report of him from any shop or ale-house or friend’s house since. In a town where every man knows every man, that’s strange. He steps over his door-sill and is gone.” He looked up the broad, unguarded stairs that led up from beyond her door to the gallery and the rooms above. “How are these chambers arranged? Who has the one on the street, above the shop?”

“My father. But he sleeps heavily. Yet ask him, who knows but he may have heard or seen something. Next to him my brother and his wife. Daniel is away to Frankwell, but Margery you’ll find in the garden with my father. And then my grandmother has the nearest chamber. She keeps her room today, she’s old and has had some trying seizures, perilous at her age. But she’ll be pleased if you care to visit her,” said Susanna, with a brief, flashing smile, “for all the rest of us grow very tedious to her, she’s worn us out long ago, we no longer amuse her. I doubt if she can tell you anything that will help you, my lord, but the change would do marvels for her.”

She had wide eyes at once distant and brilliant, fringed with lashes russet as her coil of lustrous hair. A pity there should be grey strands in the russet, and fine wrinkles, whether of laughter or long-sighted pain, at the corners of the grey eyes, and drawn lines, like cobweb, about her full, firm mouth. She was, Hugh judged, at least six or seven years older than he, and seemed more. A fine thing spoiled for want of a little spending. Hugh had come by what was his as an only child, but he did not think a sister of his would have been left thus used and unprovided, to furnish a brother richly forth.

“I’ll gladly present myself to Dame Juliana,” he said, “when I have spoken with Master Walter and Mistress Margery.”

“That would be kind,” she said. “And I could bring you wine, and that would give me the chance to bring her, with it, a dose she might otherwise refuse to take, even though Brother Cadfael comes tomorrow and she minds him more than any of us. Go down this way, then, my lord. I’ll look for you returning.”

Either the goldsmith had nothing to tell, or else could not bring himself to spend even words. The one thing that haunted him day and night was his lost treasury, of which he had rendered an inventory piece by piece, almost coin by coin, in loving and grieving detail. The coins in particular were notable. He had silver pieces from before Duke William ever became King William, fine mintage not to be matched now. His father and grandfather, and perhaps one progenitor more, must have been of the same mind as himself, and lived for their fine-struck wealth. Walter’s head might be healed now without, but his loss might well have done untold harm to the mind within.

Hugh stood patiently under the apple and pear trees of the orchard, pressing his few questions concerning the vanishing of Baldwin Peche. Almost it seemed to him that the name no longer struck any spark, that Walter had to blink and shake himself and think hard before he could recall the name or the face of his dead tenant. He could not see the one or remember the other for brooding on his voided coffer.

One thing was certain, if he knew of anything that could help to recover his goods, he would pour it out in a hurry. Another man’s death, by comparison, meant little to him. Nor did it seem that he had yet hit upon one possibility that was hovering in Hugh’s mind. If there was indeed a connection between the robbery and this death, need it be the one to which the town had jumped so nimbly? Robbers can also be robbed, and may even be killed in the robbing. Baldwin Peche had been a guest at the wedding, he had made the locks and keys for the strong-box, and who knew the house and shop better than he?

Margery had been feeding the fowls that scratched in an arrow run under the town wall, at the bottom of the garden. Until a year previously Walter had even kept his two horses here within the town, but recently he had acquired a pasture and an old stable across the river, westward from Frankwell, where Iestyn was regularly sent to see that they were fed and watered and groomed, and exercise them if they were short of work. The girl was coming up the slope of the garden with the morning’s eggs in a basket, the bulk of the wall in shadow behind her, and the narrow door in it closed. A short, rounded, insignificant young person to the view, with an untidy mass of fair hair. She made Hugh a wary reverence, and raised to him a pair of round, unwavering eyes.