Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2) (21 page)

“Now mistress,” Faucon chided with a shake of his head, “you of all people know that’s not true. Peter the Webber couldn’t have killed your husband. By the time Roger the Webber’s son crawled into the workshop through an open window, Bernart le Linsman was already dead.”

This time, there was nothing muted about the sound of surprise that exploded from those watching. Edmund shifted sharply to stare wide-eyed at his employer. Alina paled. Hodge moaned and took a step to the side, as if to distance himself from her, when it was far too late for him to do that.

Behind them, the massive door creaked open. No doubt drawn down the stairs by the change of tenor in the yard, Mistress Gisla stepped outside to join her mother. She also wore white. Today as yesterday, her nose and eyes were reddened in grief for the man Faucon now doubted was her sire.

Mistress Nanette followed Gisla out of the doorway. Unlike mother and daughter, the master needlewoman wore blue. This, when Faucon thought she of all three women ought to be wearing the color of mourning. Save that Nanette had been the one to plan her lover’s death.

“Why are you here, Sir Crowner?” Gisla asked, her voice thick with tears. Then forgetting all caution, she cried, “Has something happened to Peter?”

Faucon offered the girl a quick smile of reassurance, wishing he could spare her these next moments. She didn’t deserve what would follow. “Take heart, mistress. Your love is well and safe, and so he will remain. He waits eagerly to fulfill his father’s promise as regards your marriage.”

Hoping that would be enough for her, Faucon again looked at her mother. “Mistress Alina, who is the father of the child you bear?”

The only sound in the yard was Alina’s sharp gasp. She betrayed herself by lowering her hand to cup the slight bulge of her womb.

“You are with child?!” Gisla cried, her face alive with confusion as she stared at her mother.

Hodge swayed, his eyes closed. Only Nanette remained unmoved by this revelation. Instead, she aimed her hard and angry gaze at Faucon.

Alina caught herself and reclaimed her authority. “How dare you speak such words to me on this day of all days? Aye, the Lord granted me a miracle. I am with child. Bernart’s child, just Gisla and her brothers were of his line.”

Faucon shook his head. “I think not, mistress. I think Bernart’s thrusts were empty, that he never had seeds to sow in you, not even when you were first wed. Had he, then I think the woman he preferred would surely have come with child at least once. Yet she never did, not in all the years he used her.” As he spoke, he let his gaze shift to Nanette.

Gisla gave a shriek as she understood her Crowner’s meaning, and who she was. Lifting her hems, the girl raced away from what remained of her family, rounding the corner of the kitchen to disappear into the garden.

Still Faucon watched Nanette. The master needlewoman stood with her shoulders squared, her spine straight, a soldier preparing for battle when the war was already lost. Her chin lifted until it was at the same angle as the woman who was her better, made so by simple right of birth. Still, she said nothing.

Faucon wondered if Nanette would ever again speak, even on the day the hangman wrapped his noose about her neck. For of the three who had plotted Bernart’s death, Nanette alone would be unable to call upon witnesses to speak to her character and prove her innocence. Despite her mastery of her craft, despite the profit she brought into Bernart’s home with her needle and through those she trained, she had never been more to him–to anyone who knew her heritage–than the child born to sweep ashes from the hearth. For that reason alone was Bernart now dead.

Hodge was weeping silently now, tears streaming down his face. In the pleykster’s reaction Faucon saw there’d be no need to open the sack he carried, the one containing the tunic Hodge had worn when he drew the half-scissor across his dearest friend’s throat. Hodge was not as rich as Bernart. Unlike Gisla, he couldn’t afford to burn a serviceable garment. Instead, he’d tried to bleach the blood from his tunic. As the launderers at the convent had suggested, all he’d achieved was to remove the color, leaving darkened splotches where Bernart’s blood had forever marked his tunic.

Nor did Faucon need to look at Hodge’s shoes. It had taken no more than the mere mention of the pleykster’s name to Gisla’s shoemaker to elicit the man’s hearty and disbelieving laugh. Who would ever think that a man as big as Hodge would have so small a foot?

Alina shifted closer to her lover, the father of her children. As she leaned her head upon his shoulder her eyes closed. There was nothing but sadness in her expression. Faucon wondered if she regretted the miracle of her mother and those ribbons given to a queen. If not for them, Hodge might well have been the man her father chose for her. Where Bernart’s ambitions would have naturally driven him into a trade that could feed his greed, just as Roger’s joy at working with his hands would have sent him seeking out what he now did, there could have been no more straightforward a trade for Hodge than turning linen into braies and head scarves.

Nanette yet stood where she was, silent and still.

Otto, son of Otfriend, joined Faucon. “Is it time, Sir Crowner?”

“It is,” Faucon replied, then looked at the three. “Hodge the Pleykster, Alina, daughter of Elinor, Nanette of Stanrudde, I do accuse you of both planning and murdering Bernart le Linsman.”

The words struck Hodge like a blow. As he jerked, he set Alina off balance. She stumbled back from him crying out. With a great howling moan, the pleykster pivoted toward Nanette. She sidestepped him, then backed into the doorway and disappeared. Two of the town’s soldiers picked up their heels, racing past Faucon to chase her. They need not have hurried. There was no escape for her in Bernart’s fine home. Like a dragon’s treasure cave, there was only one entrance and exit from the structure.

“This is all on that woman!” Hodge screamed after her. “I wasn’t going to do it. I loved him!”

Tears streaming, he looked at Faucon. “But she threatened Alina. She said she’d tell the world the truth about our babes if I didn’t ply the blade! I couldn’t let her do that.”

His fury spent, he collapsed to sit on the courtyard floor. Alina drifted down next to him, taking his hand. He looked at her.

“You know I loved him,” he told her. “I loved him as much as I love you. I swear I wasn’t going to do it. I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t put the damned scissors in my hands.”

With that, the last unsettled piece in Faucon’s mind slipped into its proper place. He would find Rob’s missing bolt in Nanette’s possession. When Alina had returned from the workshop that second time, doing so in distress, Nanette had left the table to do what her mistress could not and force Hodge to do the deed as he promised. It was Nanette who had taken the scissors from Rob’s table and parted them outside the workshop. It was she who had put the separated tool into Hodge’s hands before sending him into Bernart’s workroom to kill her lover.

“I still don’t understand how you knew that all three together had arranged the linsman’s death, Sir Faucon,” said Abbot Athelard. The Churchman was middle-aged, portly and good-natured, his hair so thin and fair that it was hard to tell where his tonsure ended and his hair began. He wore a simple habit, albeit decorated around the sleeves with needlework that wasn’t as fine as that done at Bernart’s house.

As the abbot spoke, he picked up his bejeweled cup and sipped at his wine. A wave of his hand indicated that Faucon should do the same. “Do you understand it, Oswald?” Athelard asked of the other man with whom Faucon had shared this rich meal.

Oswald de Vere, Bishop William of Hereford’s grandnephew and private secretary, was the august visitor for whom the abbot had held aside the guest house. Although ten years Faucon’s senior, there was no mistaking that he and Oswald were kin. Nay, they were more than kin, they were de Veres. They shared the same black hair and dark eyes, lean cheeks and long nose, both of them hiding the too-pointed chin given to the family under a neatly-trimmed beard.

Faucon’s cousin stared distractedly down into the remains of his meal. Although trained in the Church, Oswald was no monk. Indeed, as Faucon watched his cousin, he was grateful that his mantle and pin were of good enough quality to make him seem less of a ragtag relation. Oswald wore his own clothing, a fine red tunic beneath a rich blue mantle. The purple stones in the pin that held his outer garment in place sparked in the light of the dozen candles the abbot used to restrain the shadows in his private hall.

“Oswald?” Faucon prodded when his cousin still didn’t offer an answer to the abbot’s question.

The older man looked up with a start. “What did you say, Pery?” he asked, using Faucon’s pet name, Pery being short for Peregrine, a play on the meaning of Faucon.

“The abbot was asking about the three who plotted to murder the linsman,” Faucon said. It wasn’t like Oswald to drift, especially when there was an influential man at the table with him.

“My pardon. My thoughts wandered for a moment. So tell us. How did you know?” Oswald asked, bringing his attention back to the abbot and his future.

“It was how Mistress Alina told the tale of finding her dead husband in the workshop. She and Mistress Nanette were very careful about the story, relying on each other to supply pieces. Later, when I heard Mistress Gisla tell her side of the tale, I found they’d done the same to her, making sure she knew only what they wanted her to know.

“And then there was the matter of the tally sticks,” Faucon added with a laugh. “Neither of the women spoke a word when I asked why Master Bernart’s tally sticks might have been locked away if the linsman was hard at his counting. They couldn’t say anything. Mistress Alina didn’t know Nanette had locked away the sticks after the pleykster had done the deed. Since Mistress Alina couldn’t say anything about it, neither could Mistress Nanette, not without potentially contradicting the other or revealing something untoward.”

He grinned at Oswald. “When you next see our uncle, tell him that this was an incredibly successful day for him. Mistress Alina’s estate is all I anticipated, while even the pleykster’s meager trade proved to have more value than I would have imagined.”

The man who’d seen to it that Faucon received that parchment and wax seal testifying to Faucon’s rights as Coronarius offered a weak grin at that. “I knew you would do well at this, Pery. I said as much to our uncle when he told me he’d settled on you as the first of the Coronarii for this shire. Well done.”

At the head of the table, the abbot nodded, offering another warm smile. “Although I wasn’t initially convinced our shire needed such a man, not when we already have a sheriff, I must admit you’re changing my mind, Sir Faucon. I doubt Sir Alain could have done as well with the linsman’s murder, or have brought the matter to a close so swiftly. Only two days, Sir Faucon, and peace is restored to our city. Well done, indeed.”

“You are kind to say so, Father Abbot,” Faucon said, very much enjoying what he’d just stolen from Sir Alain. Aye, if he’d been the hare in this encounter, then, as hares were occasionally wont to do, he’d just delivered a vicious and stunning blow to the fox who chased him.

***

Colin’s plum wine was tasty and heady. Faucon lifted his horn cup in salute to the brewer, then took a second sip. The monk grinned, and raised his own simple wooden bowl to his lips and drank.

A half dozen tallow lamps again sat upon Colin’s cluttered table, their flames jigging and dancing as they drove back the depths of night. The monk had just returned from singing the Compline service. After redressing Faucon’s back, he’d offered this potent stuff as a way of celebrating his Crowner’s success this day. What else was there to do at this hour save enjoy each other’s company until Colin left to celebrate Matins and Faucon at last sought out his pallet?

“I’m glad she’s gone to stay at Roger the Webber’s home, rather than returning to her own bed,” Faucon said of Gisla. “That house will be a painful place for her from now on, I think.”

Alina’s daughter had run to Peter when she left the wake, where she’d wept out the whole tale to her love. To Roger’s credit he’d already stated that it made no difference to him if the girl who wed his son were Bernart’s child or Hodge’s bastard. Not that Faucon didn’t think it was greed driving the webber. After all, Gisla was still heir to all her mother owned, and that was everything, since none of it had ever been Bernart’s to pass along. Moreover, the skills Gisla had learned at Bernart’s knee could only improve any man’s estate.

“So what do you think? Will she part with coin to see her mother released?” Colin asked. “I say she will.”

The guard had taken Bernart’s murderers to the town’s sole keep tower, the place that served as Stanrudde’s gaol. There the three would stay until someone paid the fees required to restore their freedom.

“Her mother for certain,” Faucon agreed. “But not Mistress Nanette, I think. I cannot know this, but I suspect it was at Nanette’s insistence that Alina lied about the plans for Gisla to marry Peter. With Peter dead, the two planned to see Gisla wed to that London goldsmith. With Alina’s heir removed, Nanette could have then moved the trade to some other place, perhaps even London, making an alliance of her own with that mercer. That would have left Alina free to marry Hodge.”