The Riddle of St Leonard's (24 page)

‘Is she not entrusted with physicks in her work?’

Owen watched with interest as the cellarer realised his faulty logic. A mere ripple in the brow, averted eyes.

‘Yes. She is indeed entrusted with physicks in her work.’

‘Then why did you feel these particular physicks dangerous in her possession?’

Cuthbert pushed his hands up his sleeves, looked down at the floor. ‘You will think me a fool, Captain. But I see that I am not clever enough to dissemble with you. So I shall speak plain. I envied you when Sir Richard told me you were to help him discover what is amiss at St Leonard’s. When I saw the bag, I presumed it was yours. And thus I hid it. To spite you.’

The candour silenced both of them for a time. They stood facing one another yet not looking each other in the eye. Owen leaned against a pillar, stared off into the shadows. Cuthbert rocked back and forth on his small feet and studied the floor.

And yet it seemed an oddly companionable silence to Owen. At last he said, ‘Thank you for telling me. You have saved me from rushing down the wrong path.’

Cuthbert rose to the tips of his toes, then settled. ‘I wish to help the master, Captain.’

‘Dame Beatrice mentioned that you have agreed to take in a child, Alisoun Ffulford.’

‘Ah, yes. The orphan.’

‘But one with kin.’

‘Her mother grew up in the Barnhous, Captain. The girl says her mother urged her to come here. How could I send her away? But you can be sure I shall alert her kin to her whereabouts.’

‘Mistress Ffulford was an orphan?’

‘I do not remember the details, Captain. But yes, she married from here.’

Interesting. ‘I would speak with Anneys.’

‘Shall I have her summoned now?’

‘If you would be so kind. And while we wait for her, would you describe for me the wounds you saw on Masters Taverner and Warrene?’

Anneys had bold eyes and a confident bearing. Once again she struck Owen as an unlikely servant. But she had evidently come at once, and she thanked Don Cuthbert most courteously for offering to leave them alone to talk. Owen had purposefully left Wulfstan’s bag in sight. Now the woman gazed at it with interest.

‘You have seen this before?’

She turned to Owen. ‘Captain, it is obvious that Don Cuthbert told you he found me with this in his garden.’

Clever woman to begin so. ‘He did.’

‘He did not believe me when I told him I had found it there.’

‘As simple as that? You saw no one with it?’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Don Cuthbert tells me you were reluctant to give him the bag.’

‘Indeed. He does not work with the sick. I thought it best to take it to the infirmary.’

A familiar argument, though this time it seemed more likely to be true. Owen was about to release Anneys when something occurred to him. ‘It would not be customary for a lay sister or brother to walk in the cellarer’s garden. How came you there?’

Hands clenched, head bowed. ‘I had been sitting with a child who is dying, Captain. Not of pestilence. A brain fever. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to watch a child sink deeper and deeper towards death.’ She was silent a moment. ‘I wished to walk somewhere lovely. I wished to be alone. I wandered into the garden.’ She raised her eyes to him. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

‘God go with you.’

It was difficult for Owen to think about his work as he walked to St Mary’s postern gate. All he wanted to do was ride for Freythorpe Hadden and see with his own eye that his children were safe and well. He left Brother Wulfstan’s bag with the porter, with a message requesting that the infirmarian examine the bag and let him know what, if anything, was missing.

And then, without planning it, Owen delivered himself to the minster, where he knelt down before the lady altar to pray for his family, for Lucie as well as the children. Each night she crawled into bed exhausted, yet she slept only fitfully, worrying about the children. Owen feared that in her weak state she would succumb more readily to melancholy, and thence to illness.

When prayer had quieted his mind, he left the great cathedral and headed home. As he walked, he wondered how he was ever to unravel all that he had learned and choose what was of use. As he went through the day, he discovered much to question. How had a stranger found his way into the cellarer’s garden? Had Anneys been following Don Cuthbert? Why had Cuthbert not believed her? Why had Alisoun Ffulford chosen St Leonard’s?

Kate greeted Owen at the door with the news that Gilbert awaited him in the garden, with news of the children.

Gilbert dined with Owen and Lucie, who plied him with queries about Gwenllian and Hugh, most of which he could not answer. After Gilbert had taken his leave, Owen asked Lucie to withdraw to the garden with him.

As they walked along the paths, he recounted his day, hoping she might see what he could not. The riddle play amused her.

‘How clever of you. Do you mean to try that on all those you question?’

‘Do you think that I should?’

‘You learned something about Ravenser you had not known.’

‘Melancholic. It is not difficult to see. But do you think Thoresby sanguine?’

Lucie squeezed his arm. ‘I daresay few would be so quick to think of a riddle describing themselves.’

‘I might silence them for good.’

They laughed, then grew quiet.

‘Owen, my love. What of this child? Does it not seem that God is keen to cross your paths?’

‘Or the Devil.’

‘Is she that unlovable?’

‘Do you not think it odd that they admitted her without a sponsor, a gift to the hospital …’

‘You said she had a pack with which she was loath to part.’

‘She carried something with which she might pay her way?’

‘It is possible. Perhaps she sold the nag.’

Owen stopped, gathered Lucie in his arms. ‘You are weary and I have burdened you with my troubles.’

‘Not at all, my love. You have distracted me with riddles. I am grateful for that. It is far too quiet in our home at present.’

Kate found them after sunset, Owen sitting with his back against a tree, Lucie with her head on his lap, both soundly asleep.

A
s the sun sank behind the hulk of St Mary’s walls and the monastic buildings beyond St Leonard’s, Dame Beatrice supervised the laying down of six tidy rows of pallets, blankets and pillows. When Alisoun had first arrived she’d wondered where the children slept – she had foolishly imagined individual cells, as for monks. Instead, the undercroft served as the day room, refectory, and bedchamber for the children of St Leonard’s. And if one counted the curtained areas far back in the corners, it also served as their infirmary and bathhouse – to which Alisoun had been subjected on the first day. The Riverwoman had not been the only one who’d thought she’d stank. She had submitted without argument, as long as she was allowed to keep her pack beside her. Now the pack lay beneath her feet, covered by the blanket. No one could pull it out from under her without waking her.

A full hour of anxious bustle ensued, with Dame Beatrice and her lay helpers herding the children to their beds and making certain they were down for the night. At last the only lights in the long, high-ceilinged room were at the doorways. All the sisters had withdrawn except for one lay sister who sat beneath the light farthest from Alisoun. In time, the whisperings and rustlings of her fellows ceased, and Alisoun drifted into a dream.

It was night, a cool spring evening. Alisoun slept in her own bed with the babies. Her mother stood in the doorway, clutching her elbows as she did when she worried, facing out into the night, waiting for her father who had been too long at the market. Her mother at last turned away from the door, a slow, heavy-hearted turning, and crossed over to Alisoun and the babies. Alisoun drifted back to sleep, woke to find her mother’s face bent close to hers, wetting it with her tears. She reached for her mother’s hand, but her mother shook her head and backed away.

Alisoun woke on the narrow pallet, chilly beneath her itchy blanket. No babies surrounded her for warmth. Her eyes were drawn to the light that shone over the nodding sister, then to a figure who stood in the shadows at the foot of her pallet. Alisoun blinked.

‘Mama?’

Whoever it was took a few steps backwards, then turned and hurried off into the darkness. Alisoun stretched out slowly, searching for her pack with her feet. Nothing. She ducked under the covers, crawled to the foot of the pallet, searching. Searched the floor round her. It was gone.

Of course it had been him. The figure had been too tall for her mother. And her mother was dead.

How had he discovered she was at the hospital? Had he followed her? Or had the Riverwoman told him? Alisoun should have known better than to trust the heathen midwife.

Now he had her treasures. Some of them. The ones she had not buried. Alisoun’s face was hot, her eyes tingled with tears. The Riverwoman had betrayed her. She could trust no one.

Dead blossoms to trim, rosehips and mint to harvest. Lucie kept herself busy in the garden till mid-morning while Owen helped Jasper open the shop. It was Owen’s gift to her in gratitude for her patient attention in the evenings, despite her long days in the shop. Lucie’s cat, Melisende, stayed close to her, rolling in the path beside her, sniffing the plants she had trimmed, now and then insinuating herself beneath busy hands for a scratch. Jasper’s orange tabby, Crowder, watched from the workshop windowsill. The morning grew warm, and as she tired Lucie fought thoughts of her children.

‘Thirsty work on such a hot morning.’

‘Magda!’ The elderly woman crouched beside Lucie in the path, scratching Melisende’s long ears. Lucie had not even noticed the cat’s movement. ‘How long have you stood there?’

‘Long enough to see thee blot thy neck and forehead. Hast thou no work in the shade?’

Something of import must bring Magda here so soon after her last visit. ‘Come,’ Lucie gathered her tools, stood up. ‘Have a cool drink with me in the kitchen. Then I must free Owen from the shop.’

In the kitchen, as they waited for Kate to bring water from the cellar, Lucie and Magda bent over the embroidered cloth spread out on the table.

‘An altar cloth. The Ffulford girl gave it to you?’ Lucie wondered whether it could be the cloth missing from St Leonard’s. But how might it then have come to the child?

The Riverwoman folded the cloth with thoughtful care. ‘Aye, the child traded it for Magda’s help at Bootham Bar. Thou sayest an altar cloth. Magda thought it had the look of a church ornament.’

‘You must wait here for Owen. He might know something of this.’

Owen rubbed the scar beneath his patch. Douglas had described the cloth in enough detail for him to recognise the chalice of gold thread lifted in delicately embroidered hands. He did not like this development. ‘What mischief has that child got into?’

Magda shook her head. ‘She says little. Thou hast seen this piece before?’

‘I believe this to be the altar cloth stolen from St Leonard’s.’

Magda snorted. ‘A child who cannot pass the guards without escort has not been thieving at the spital.’

‘I would agree. But whence came this cloth to her, eh? And why has she asked for the protection of the hospital?’

‘That is what she sought in the city?’ Magda frowned as she folded the cloth, handed it to Owen. ‘Mayhap her kin fear her. All in her house died but Alisoun. They wonder how she came to be saved. Fools oft see evil in good.’

Owen placed the cloth in his pack. ‘I must show it to Don Cuthbert.’

‘Be patient with the child, Bird-eye.’

Cuthbert lifted the cloth in his spidery hands. ‘Alisoun Ffulford, you said?’

‘Aye.’

The cellarer held the cloth close to his bulging eyes, examining the fine needlework. ‘I am certain it is ours, Captain.’ He put down the cloth, tucked his hands up his sleeves, rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘What do you think it means?’

Owen wished he knew. ‘Have you learned any more of her mother?’

‘She was sponsored by a wealthy Yorkshire family who wished to remain anonymous. Two children were left in our care. One died of sweating sickness: a boy.’

‘So Judith Ffulford and the boy were from a wealthy family?’

‘I think it unlikely. Such people take care of their own.’

‘But sponsoring means they paid well for the children’s care?’

‘Well enough.’

Owen felt the prick of trouble beneath his patch. ‘Where is the child?’

‘You will question her about this cloth?’ ‘

I will indeed.’

All dressed alike in undyed gowns and leggings, a group of small children sat quietly on stools or on the floor listening to a lay sister who told a story about Christ and St Christopher. A group of older girls sat in the yard by the shed, frowning over a sewing lesson. Three tall boys were at work on the roof of the storage shed. Owen did not see Alisoun at once; Dame Beatrice pointed her out among the needle-workers. She was a lighter shade of brown now that she was clean. Her hair was neatly tucked into a kerchief, her legs were covered, her feet shod. ‘You have transformed her.’