Masques of Gold (4 page)

“I can indeed do so,” Justin remarked, giving way and chuckling. “But I must warn you, Madame Heloise, that you are making me very suspicious with these attentions. Are you trying to seduce me away from my duty and blind me to the fact that when a man or woman is murdered it is most often the spouse who is guilty?”

He noticed that Lissa did not even blink at the warning—which he had delivered in earnest, even though his tone was light. She merely shook her head as she poured ale into the goblet. Then she laid a thick slice of bread on the plate and, while she cut eating-sized chunks from the cheese, said, “I do not think you are the kind of man who can be seduced from his purpose.”

“More flattery?”

The woman did not answer his question, only shook her head again, unsmiling now. She left the plate and goblet in the center of the table too, so that Justin could choose his own position, and sat down. Justin drew a stool close to the end of the table where she was sitting rather than opposite. He would not be able to see her full face unless she turned her head toward him, but it would be interesting to see how often she looked directly at him and how often she turned away. Seated, Justin took several healthy swallows of the ale. It was soothing to a mouth dry with the aftermath of too much drink, but the worst of his other symptoms were gone, his headache no more than a faint dullness and the queasy heave of his stomach replaced by a faint appetite. He was scarcely famished, but he drew his eating knife and speared a piece of cheese with a fair pretense of eagerness. After all, he was not about to admit that the reason he had not broken his fast was not his passion for justice but because he was too sick to eat.

“You said before that knowing the worst was better than remaining in doubt,” Justin said, putting down the goblet and taking a bite of the bread. “Does that mean you feared what happened?”

“No,” Lissa said hesitantly, a worried frown wrinkling her brow. “At least I do not remember being afraid until last night when Peter did not come home. I do not know why—” Her voice quavered and she dropped her eyes, which were suddenly swimming with tears. “But in the past he had told me each time he expected to be out late, and yesterday he said he would be out for dinner but back for the evening meal—and he did not come back.”

She does know some reason to be afraid Flael would be hurt or killed, Justin thought, but he asked mildly, “It did not occur to you that he met a friend and changed his mind, or that his business took longer than expected?”

“Oh yes, but soon after Vespers I had sent Witta to Master Hamo Finke's house—that was where Peter had dinner—with a message that Master Richard FitzReiner's servant had come to ask Peter to call on his master. Only Peter was not with Master Hamo. He had left at the same time as the others, about Nones.”

“Where did he go?”

“I do not know,” Lissa replied, her lips tightening with remembered fear and frustration. “Witta did not ask because I never thought to tell him to ask, and at that time I still expected Peter home soon after dark so it did not seem worthwhile to send the child out again. I did not really begin to worry until Compline, and then when I spoke to young Peter and begged him to ask Master Hamo where his father had gone, he laughed at me and said Peter had had enough of me and had gone back to the woman he kept before we were married. I did not believe him.”

“Why?” Justin asked, wondering if Madame Heloise could possibly have been jealous.

It did not seem likely for a young and passably attractive woman to be jealous enough of an old man to have him tortured and killed. Then Justin remembered that Flael had not been tortured; the wounds had been inflicted after his death. He was about to dismiss jealousy as a motive until he noticed that Lissa looked astonished at the question. Justin suddenly realized a woman did not need to care for a man to hate him for wounding her pride by preferring a common whore.

Neither her reply nor her manner confirmed that theory, however. Smiling faintly and clearly puzzled at Justin's lack of comprehension of so obvious an answer, she said, “But why should he not simply say that he would be back very late or even that he did not expect to come home at all? He had done that before. Why say he would definitely be home for the evening meal?”

It was so logical and her voice was so indifferent that Justin did not know whether to accept what she said as simple truth or credit her with even more skill at hiding her emotions than he had first thought. “You were very fond of your husband,” Justin stated, his voice carefully neutral.

“No, I cannot say that,” Lissa replied frankly, “but I respected him. He had been kind to me from the day we were betrothed, and his manner was no different when he left the house that morning. Nor had I given him any reason to wish to hurt me.”

Her color rose a little over the last few words. Justin took that to mean that she had not refused her husband's sexual advances. The idea made him slightly uncomfortable, which was ridiculous. With one out of every three women dying in childbed and older men being best able to support a wife, there were many young wives with much older husbands. Still, Justin did not like to think of Peter de Flael, with his wrinkled skin, his few wisps of gray hair straggling over a shiny skull, his swollen, flabby legs, mounting this fresh-faced girl.

That thought brought Justin's eyes up from his plate, where they had been fixed unseeing on the graceful arcs of the design. Her wholesomeness was what was so attractive about her. She was no striking beauty—a pleasant, ordinary face surrounded by soft brown hair. But her eyes were remarkable, not only for their changeable color but for an aliveness, an eagerness of spirit, that looked out of them even when they were also full of fear. Her mouth was pretty too. She shifted on her stool suddenly and dropped her eyes, her color deepening further, and Justin realized he had been staring at her without speaking for far too long. He cleared his throat.

“Nonetheless,” he said, “we cannot discount the possibility that Master Peter's son might have been aware of something you were not and merely described his father's intention in the way most likely to hurt you. It is possible, for example, that your husband visited this woman to retrieve something he had given her, or money he had lent her, and that he intended to be home for his evening meal but was killed there? Do you know the woman's name, Madame Heloise?”

“I never thought of that.” She looked up at him again, her eyes wide with a stronger emotion than Justin felt was reasonable, but he could not read the emotion in her face. “I am sorry,” she went on. “I do not know her name or anything about her. Peter never mentioned any woman except, once or twice, his late wife. The first I knew of any leman was when young Peter spoke of her. Oh, wait! Binge mentioned her also. Binge might know.”

She was now eager for him to find the woman. Because she thought he would be glad to lay the blame on someone poor and helpless? Justin reached for the goblet, more to give himself time to think than because he was thirsty, but it was empty. He put it down, and she filled it, smiling at him suddenly and adding, “Would you do me the kindness of calling me Lissa? Only my father calls me Heloise, and I have never cared for the name.”

Now that was interesting, Justin thought, as he drank. Her voice was entirely different when she spoke of her husband and in that last sentence when she spoke of her father. The cold distaste with which she mentioned her father was unmistakable, while her voice was pleasant if dispassionate when she spoke of Master Peter. A strong indication that she preferred Peter to William Bowles, but not proof that she would not like best of all to be a widow with control of her own dower. Nonetheless, Justin smiled back at her as he put down the goblet, but before he could answer her request, they heard a pounding on the door.

“Who—” Lissa gasped, then relaxed. “It must be the priest,” she said. “I suppose he did not wish to come in the back door with Witta like a servant. Shall I go, Sir Justin, or will you?”

“I would prefer that you open the door,” he said. “And if it is not the priest, please do not say anything about my being here.”

“Very well,” Lissa agreed, but she felt puzzled and wanted to ask why she should keep his presence a secret.

The pounding began again, however, and she ran out of the room and down the stair. The heavy bar on the door lifted easily, swinging up into the rest built to hold it. Then Lissa pulled out the metal rod that fixed the latch and raised it. The door swung in so quickly that it almost hit her, and she jumped back behind it, uttering another gasp as her father burst in shouting, “Heloise! Damn you, you bitch! Heloise, where are you?”

“Right here, father,” she replied, coming out from behind the door and taking a certain amount of pleasure in his faint cry of alarm, despite expecting a blast of rage to follow.

He did seize her arm, but instead of cursing her again he asked, “Is it true? Is it true? I heard that Peter had been killed! Murdered! It was a lie! Surely it was a lie!”

There was such shock and terror in her father's face that Lissa almost embraced him in the flood of relief that washed over her. She was now certain that William had had no part in her husband's death and no knowledge of it until he had heard the news this morning. She did not wonder if he was acting a part for two reasons. First, she knew William Bowles; she had studied him with wary dislike ever since she had understanding enough to do so. She knew his every expression, and the fear he was displaying was real. Second, her father had never bothered to act a part for her; he seemed to delight in her anguish and disgust when he connived at small dishonesties. She knew he was well aware that she would never betray him no matter what he did, since any punishment visited on him would indirectly fall on her. A merchant was not put in prison for crimes; that was a punishment for the great nobility. A merchant might be put in the stocks for cheating or dragged through the town on a hurdle. He might lose a hand for a minor theft or be hanged for a major one; however, a rich merchant was usually punished by crippling fines. Fines and restrictions in the right to trade could ruin her father's business, and Lissa knew they would also ruin her, for what was his would be hers when he died.

Lissa's relief did not last very long. Although it was true that her father had neither arranged nor known of Peter's murder, his shock and terror meant he knew the reason for it. Otherwise, he would not have cared the shaving of a farthing about Peter de Flael. William Bowles cared for no one besides himself; thus he must be involved in some way even though he was not guilty of the crime. Still, the fact that he was innocent of murder lifted a great weight from Lissa's spirit, and her voice was gentler than usual when she answered him.

“It is true, father. Peter was murdered.” She hesitated and then added, “He was tortured too.” Perhaps it was possible for her father to disentangle himself from his involvement, and she felt it right to give the warning.

“Tortured?” William's voice squeaked with fear and horror. “But—” He looked wildly around the room, shied back almost out of the door when he saw the covered form on the table near the shop counter, then seemed to steady himself. “But why?”

There was a false note in that question. Lissa was sure her father knew very well why Peter had been tortured, and what he knew was so important that it was worth lying about to her. But she was not going to challenge him with Sir Justin listening upstairs. She was shocked as the thought came to her. How could she have been so stupid as to wonder why Sir Justin had said she should not tell anyone he was there? She felt a spurt of anger over the trap he had laid, but she reminded herself that Sir Justin was only doing his duty. She was really angry with herself. She was not ordinarily a naive innocent who took everyone at face value and trusted blindly.

Meanwhile, her father had noticed that the door to the workshop was open. “Are you alone here?” he asked, realizing how unusual it was for Lissa to come to the door. Then, dismissing that question without waiting for an answer, he asked more urgently, “Where are Peter's sons?”

Relieved that she would not have to tell a direct lie to keep her promise to Justin, Lissa replied, “I do not know where young Peter and Edmond are. They left as soon as the body was found.”

“They left?” her father repeated, staring at her. Then without another word, he released her arm, which he had been holding, and went out the door.

“Wait!” Lissa cried, stepping out of the door after him, but he was striding swiftly away, already within the stream of people going to the market, and she hesitated to follow him.

Lissa did not think it would be proper for so recent a widow to go running through the West Chepe. The market was already busy. She could hear the cries of the bakers and fishmongers, who had stalls nearest to the west end where many of the goldsmiths lived and had their shops. The goldsmiths did not cry their wares, of course, nor did they as a general rule expose them on a public stall, which would be an open invitation to thievery. But handsome salts or platters of silver or gilt were displayed behind stout bars in the windows, and the doors of the shops were invitingly open. Just as Lissa shuddered slightly and started back inside, feeling that everyone behind those open doors must know of Peter's death and be watching eagerly for any activity from his house, a hand was laid on her arm.

“Mistress de Flael?”

The face of the priest, who had spoken, was familiar to her, but she did not know his name. She believed she had seen him chanting the mass either in Saint Matthew's, on the nearby corner of Friday Street, or in Saint Peter's, directly across from the house. She had been to mass with Peter only once in each church since they had returned from Canterbury, and she had had no time to become familiar with any of the priests who served in either one.

She realized she must look utterly distracted for the priest squeezed her arm gently and said, “I am sorry I did not come sooner, but I did not recognize your servant and I believed at first the child was trying to make mischief.”

“The fault is mine, Father,” Lissa assured him diplomatically, wondering what kind of a priest feared being the butt of a boy's jest. “I should have sent Binge, whom you would have known.”

He made soothing noises as he urged her gently back inside the shop, asking once they were within, “It is true, then, that Master Peter is dead?”

“Yes, quite true, Father.”

Sir Justin's voice made Lissa sigh with relief and the priest start slightly with surprise. Suddenly she felt totally unable to explain how her husband had died; in fact she felt barely able to stand and found herself clinging to the frame of the door. She heard Sir Justin identify himself to the priest. Then he turned to her and gently bade her go upstairs, taking on himself, to her intense relief, the duty of explaining to the priest what had happened.

It was an infinite effort to climb the stairs, and the terrible exhaustion that had overtaken Lissa blurred her mind so that none of the words she heard made the smallest sense. She thought she would collapse in the few steps between the top of the stair and the door, and she leaned on the wall, not really listening but somehow comforted by the murmur of Justin's voice, speaking softly. Twice she heard the priest exclaim, once in surprise and once in protest, but both times he lowered his voice immediately.

Lissa sighed and shivered, then gathered enough strength to walk as far as the chair beside the fire. She sank into it, remembering it was Peter's chair and that he would never sit in it again. She knew she should feel grieved, but fatigue dulled her mild sorrow, reducing it to nothing. She would not have wished Peter dead, and most certainly not in the dreadful way he died, but she was not sorry to be free of him—and of his sons also.

A loud snap drew her attention to the fire again. It was burning brightly, the flames licking greedily at new logs. Sir Justin must have replenished it, she thought, and tears came to her eyes at the thought of his kindness. Wearily she reminded herself that, kind or not, she must not trust him too far. Had he not intended to listen slyly to what her father said? Then a tired smile curved her lips. How silly she was! Justin could not have known her father was at the door. It might have been anyone, even Peter's sons, who might have spoken unguarded words to her that they would not have said in Sir Justin's hearing.

Lissa's eyes closed, but instead of the blank, soft dark that usually preceded sleep she saw Sir Justin's face. It was not an especially handsome face, nor was it kindly. It was long and hard, with high, prominent cheekbones, a jutting chin, and a beak of a nose; the lips were thin, drawn in at the corners in a habit of severity. But Sir Justin's eyes gave away his true nature. They were gentle when he looked at her, a soft color between blue and gray, and when he smiled, his mouth was beautifully shaped. His hair was wrong for an officer of harshness and importance too; it was all unruly curls, falling over his forehead and around his ears. She smiled, only now feeling surprised and delighted by something she had been too tense to enjoy when she had first noticed it. She must tell him, she thought with sleepy pleasure, that if he really wished to cow someone, he must wear a hat.

***

Justin had less trouble with the priest than he had expected. When he learned the manner of Master Peter's death, Father Denis made only a few shocked exclamations and a token protest over his doubts about whether Peter could have received extreme unction. He agreed with Justin that there could be no certainty he had not, however, and agreed even more readily that there was no reason to exclude Peter from the grave he had already chosen in the churchyard of Saint Peter's. To Justin's further remark that, considering the questionable manner of Master Peter's death, someone more skilled than his young and inexperienced wife should deal with the body, Father Denis responded by suggesting that he send for lay brothers skilled in medicine from Bartholomew's Hospital to wash and prepare the corpse for burial.

Justin nodded approval of that plan and said that the brothers should be sure to come to him if they discovered the cause of Peter's death. The priest looked startled, but asked no further questions, and Justin said no more, thinking that Peter must have made generous donations to Father Denis's church above and beyond his tithe. It was also likely that the church expected even more generous endowments to be defined in his will. Not only were goldsmiths wealthy, but most of them had tender consciences about their money lending activities. Justin did not mention to the priest that Peter's sons had carried off most if not all of his worldly goods, and that if they were not caught it might be difficult to fulfill the provisions of the will.

After Father Denis had gone to make the promised arrangements, Justin started up the stairs to tell Lissa—his foot hesitated over the next step as the pet name, stripped of Madame or Mistress, came easily into his mind. Then he continued up with his mouth set more grimly than ever. Perhaps Flael's sons had fled with their father's wealth because they feared this woman.
She
had said she would not profit from Peter de Flael's death, but perhaps the old man had changed his will—or been about to do so—and the sons were not sure they would not be stripped of everything. Justin had dismissed that notion at first because she did not have the kind of beauty that turned men's heads. Yet she had turned his—at least enough to make him think of her as Lissa rather than Madame Heloise.

Justin entered the solar with an angry determination to place a proper distance between himself and the wife of a murdered man. In the doorway he stopped abruptly, barely preventing himself from laughing aloud. What a perfect picture of innocence and an easy conscience, Justin thought, but then he lost his smile and took a few careful steps closer. No, she was not pretending. She really was asleep, and deeply asleep. Her mouth was open, and between a snap and hiss from the fire, he heard a little snort and a soft whistle, a delicate snoring. No woman pretending sleep would expose two common features of the state that she would consider very unattractive.

For himself, Justin found neither repulsive. The open mouth exposed very pretty, sound white teeth, and the snort and whistle were rather charming. The last word of his thought sounded an alarm in his head. What the devil was it about the woman? He examined her more intently than he had while they were talking and shook his head. She was pleasant looking: Her hair was an ordinary shade of light brown and framed a face neither thin nor fat. As he remembered her eyes, they were neither brown nor green but a soft color that could be either according to the light. Her nose was short, perhaps a little too short for the long upper lip, but the curve of that lip was lovely, even with her mouth open, and Justin could recall how the full lower lip pushed the upper into a bow and pouted provocatively. Still, she was by no means beautiful. Why should he use words like “charming” when he thought of Lissa—and he had done it again, used her pet name without thinking.

He took a few more silent steps, picked up his cloak, and went out, amazed that he had stood watching the woman instead of working. The boy must have come back with the priest. This was a splendid opportunity to question him without raising fears and suspicions over the absence of his mistress. The boy would accept that Lissa—mentally, Justin shrugged and put aside the question of why she was Lissa to him—must not be wakened. But, having thought he had put aside the problem of why he called her Lissa, he found that it was solved as soon as he began to question Witta.

The boy was in the workroom, playing with a lump of clay. The activity was approved, Justin assumed, because Witta did not start guiltily or try to hide his plaything. Yet when Justin said mildly he had some questions to ask, there was uneasiness and fear in the blue eyes the child turned up to him. Justin was accustomed to the reaction and did not take it as a sign of guilt, but it came to him as he watched Witta wrap the clay in a wet cloth, that Lissa had never shown either of those emotions. In fact, she had cried out in relief when he arrived and laughed and teased while he ate. She had been worried and frightened—but not of him!