31 - City of Fiends (45 page)

Combe Street

As he walked home, slightly unsteadily, Gregory Paffard was filled with a new purpose. Not only was he now the effective master of the house, he was also the only man who could
save his father.

But Henry had been right when he pointed out that Gregory could scarcely claim that his father had confessed to the murders in order to cover up for his son. That would lead to the rope for both
of them! Worse, if people believed that Gregory had been committing sodomy, it could mean a pyre.

There must be another way to get him released, and all the way home, Gregory tried to think which of the pleaders would be best for his father. It must be a man experienced in matters of this
complexity. A murderer who confessed and then denied his guilt was a rarity.

‘John!’ he called as he entered, slamming the door shut behind him and throwing hat and cotte to the ground.

‘Where is my mother?’ he demanded when he saw Joan in the hall with Thomas.

Thomas looked up at him with a look of terror, quickly ducking behind Joan.

‘What is it, little one?’ Joan asked. She was quiet, and held Thomas closely, Gregory saw.

‘Thomas? Come to me,’ Gregory said. He squatted, as he would before a puppy, beckoning with both hands in as welcoming a manner as he could. ‘Do as I say, Thomas. I am the
master of this house now.’

His brother turned and rammed his face into Joan’s arm. She looked down and threw an accusing glance at Gregory.

‘I’ve done nothing to him,’ he protested.

‘Leave him, please,’ Joan said. ‘He is alarmed. It’s all the murders. Death and his father in gaol. Plus he’s hurt himself.’ She gestured at the bloodstained
bandage about his knee.

‘That’s not my fault,’ Gregory spat, rising. He was tempted to go to Thomas and pull him from the maid, but his legs were still wobbly. Instead, he strode from the room. The
buttery was empty, and he drew off a large cup of ale from the barrel, draining it in one draught.

‘I think you’ve had enough,’ Agatha said, as he refilled it. She had approached from the stairs, and now stood leaning in the doorway.

With her full body, Gregory thought she looked like a goddess. She was painfully beautiful sometimes.

‘Brother, dear, you need to get a grip,’ she said.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, but he knew his voice was thicker than it should be. ‘It’s Thomas. He’s terrified of me.’

‘You know that he’s been like that since last Saturday?’ she said and looked at him.

He remembered. The feel of soft flesh under his hands, the smooth, inner thighs parting for him. ‘Oh, God, Agatha!’

‘Yes. I think he saw everything. Are you surprised he’s a bit alarmed? Perhaps you should have a word with him.’

‘Thomas? I would never hurt him! Thomas is . . .’

‘Our brother, yes. How was Father? Ben said you went to see him.’

‘Worried. He wants a pleader.’

‘Who will you send?’

‘Christ knows,’ he muttered. He reached for the barrel again, but glancing at her, threw the cup aside. ‘John! JOHN!’ he bellowed, and stormed through the house, finally
finding the bottler in the kitchen yard.

‘Master?’

‘I need you to go to our clerk and find out who is the best pleader for the courts. We have to try to liberate Father from the gaol. His confession was an error. It was only to try to
protect . . . well, me. He thought I had committed the murders, and wanted to save me. But I didn’t.’

‘No?’

‘Of course not! How could you even think that! I had nothing to do with them. Either of them. So, John, we need to get the best pleader we can.’

John stared at him, and there was something unnerving about his gaze. Gregory was aware that the bottler was deliberately intimidating him.

‘Well?’ he said coolly.

‘I will ask Madame Claricia first.’

‘Then do so and hurry up about it! Or you will find you are no longer bottler in this house!’ Gregory snapped.

And then John did an astonishing thing. He stepped up close to Gregory and glared at him. Gregory was forced to retreat under the threat of those fierce eyes.

‘You need to remember that I am the servant of your mother: not you, not Master Henry, not anyone but her. And I will make sure that she is happy with your suggestion before I leave her alone in this house. If you don’t like that, you’d best
go and fetch the pleader yourself,
master.
’

And, shaken, the only thing Gregory could do was nod his agreement.

Exeter Gaol

Sir Charles of Lancaster climbed the ladder with a smile still fixed to his lips, but his mind was racing and filled with anger.

The fool had not achieved anything he had been instructed to do! It had been his place to simply gather in some money to pass to Sir Charles to help support the Dunheved brothers. That was all.
But instead, the fool had forgotten his promises and his duty of responsibility to Sir Edward of Caernarfon. He’d got a little money, so he said, but the damned fox-whelp had gone and got
himself arrested for murder. Because he had admitted these crimes!

Sir Charles reached the top of the ladder and pulled it up after him, lowering the heavy trap-door to the cell, and tugging the bolts over.

‘You do realise that the success of the whole enterprise depends upon money?’ he had said to Paffard.

The man was already cowering by then. ‘Of course. But what would you have me do?’

‘You should have kept out of gaol until you had paid us!’

‘Can you free me? All you need do is get me home again, and I can present you with the money I have. There is a chest in my house. It’s a large chest, and it contains my store of
spare funds. If you take me there, I can pay you.’

‘Where is the key to this store?’

‘Here! I have it here.’

Sir Charles eyed him doubtfully. ‘Where is the chest? Anyone might have taken it.’

‘No, no, it’s safe.’

‘Where?’

Henry Paffard was no fool. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it again. As soon as he gave away the location, he knew that his personal value to Sir Charles would reduce to
nothing. Worse than nothing: he became an additional liability, and Sir Charles would not want to leave a stray soul behind when he left.

‘Did you not hear me?’ Sir Charles smiled. He set his hand to his sword and slowly drew it. It gave off a whisper of steel as it came free, and Sir Charles held the tip pointing at
Henry’s head. ‘I asked you where it was stored.’

‘In my hall,’ Henry declared and stared at him defiantly. ‘Beside the fireplace there is a wooden chest. Behind that is a door in the wall. The money chest lies
inside.’

And the key?’

Henry curled his lip. The key was on a thong about his neck, and he slowly pulled it from his chemise and held it up, reaching around with his hands to untie it. But then he rolled and lunged
away, trying to escape.

Sir Charles did not hasten. He stepped after Henry, and then stabbed once, leaning his full weight on the blade.

So now, here he was, with a key bound about his own neck to a chest in a house to which he had no access. All in a city in which he knew he was being hunted.

He closed his eyes and set his jaw. Just for a moment, Sir Charles was exhausted. The last days had worn away at him, and there was a cold certainty building in his heart that no matter what he
did, he would not live to see Sir Edward of Caernarfon back on his rightful throne.

Then he snorted deeply, like an old war-horse sniffing fire and blood, and stiffened his back.

He was Sir Charles of Lancaster. He had survived too many battles in England, France, Guyenne and Galicia, to allow one more set-back to throw him.

Opening the door, he walked out as if leaving his own front door, turning and closing it gently behind him as he went, and then looked about him for Ulric.

The boy was a short way down, near the friary on the High Street, and Sir Charles strode over to him.

‘Come, we have to get over to the other side of this city again,’ he said gruffly, and then he suddenly saw a woman in the road before him.

She was dark-haired, wearing a scruffy tunic, her matted hair framing her horrified features.

Even as she began to scream, Sir Charles ran straight at her: she took the full force of his blow in her face, and hurtled backwards into the road.

The screaming had stopped. But in its place there were shouts and bellows, and a horn blew.

‘I think,’ Sir Charles said as he ran, ‘you will need to hurry yourself, friend Ulric, if you want to live to see tomorrow’s morning.’

Paffards’ House

The bottler made his way to his mistress’s room and knocked gently on the door.

When she called out, he entered.

She looked terrible, the poor lass. Hardly surprising after the way things had gone just recently, but still, it was very sad to see her like this.

‘Mistress, your son has asked if I can go to find a pleader. Your husband has changed his story, and now denies his murders.’

She look at him pretty sharply at that. ‘What do you mean, changed his story? How so?’

‘Apparently Master Gregory spoke to him and it transpired that Master Henry confessed because he thought the felon was your son. Now he’s been told that he’s innocent, he wants
to save himself.’

‘It was impressive that he had the desire to try to protect Gregory, if only for a short while,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think he had it in him.’

‘You don’t want me to find a pleader, do you?’ John asked, and there was a faint tone of surprise in his voice.

She smiled sadly and walked to him, placing her hand on his cheek. ‘Dear John. You don’t understand me, do you? You think only of the insults and shame he has brought to
me.’

‘All the time,’ John said gruffly.

‘But I still cannot discard him without making an effort to save him. He is my husband, and I owe him the debt of chivalry. After all, I was the daughter of a knight. I understand duty. It
is a painful duty, but it is mine. So yes, please, go to the pleader and see how we may have my husband released.’

‘Yes, mistress.’

‘You never know, John,’ she added. ‘Oftentimes a man can change. He can become reborn – with luck.’

John nodded, but as he closed the door and left the room, he was thinking that the main way he wanted to see Henry Paffard change was with a knife in his belly.

He was almost back at the buttery when he realised that he did not have his keys on his belt.

Combe Street

William and Philip had been standing there long enough for the shadows to move from almost overhead to point to the east, and William knew that it was at least one hour past
midday. The bells were the only way to measure the passage of time generally, but he had always spent time watching the movement of the sun and the play of the shadows, and could tell the hour with
great accuracy.

Shadows. That was what his life had become. No work, no money, and now no home either. He was like one of the shuffling tatterdemalions in the streets, the boys and men without homes and no
means of supporting themselves. There was that man he had seen before, the old tramp with his cloth bag containing his belongings gripped to his breast, his ragged beard and his constant look of
terror making him fearsome rather than fearful. He was a shadowman, always hiding in the darker corners, rarely daring to show himself in case he was persecuted, or worse.

William shuddered. Perhaps Philip was right, after all, he thought. Maybe they should just leave Exeter and find themselves new lives elsewhere.

The door to the Paffards’ house opened, and William felt Philip punch his shoulder to warn him. But it wasn’t Gregory who descended the steps.

‘Leave him,’ Philip said.

‘He may know something,’ William hissed. ‘Like, where Gregory is!’

Philip reluctantly agreed, and the two followed John as he crossed Southgate Street and went on up to the Bear Gate of the Cathedral.

William felt hunger gnawing further into his belly. At the bottom of the gate was a stool where an old woman begged, and she held out her hand hopefully as they passed. It made William imagine
how he would look in twenty years’ time, if he would be taking her place there at the gate. The beggars here had to pay good money to be able to keep their posts, he knew. He wondered how
much.

‘Sir? Sir – John, sir,’ Philip called, and the old bottler turned with an enquiring look in his eye.

‘What?’

‘Master Gregory, sir. We wanted to speak with him. Is he at home?’

John looked over their heads towards the house. ‘Aye, he’s there,’ he said at last, ‘but I don’t think he’ll want to see you.’

‘But he’s ordered us to be evicted,’ William said.

Aye. I had heard.’

‘It’s not fair!’ William said hotly.

Philip placed a hand on his forearm. ‘Sir, will he see us if we ask?’

‘No. I’m sorry, boys.’

‘You know,’ Philip said, ‘that his father stole our inheritance? All we want is something to help us start up again. Is that so wrong?’

John bared his teeth in a flash of ferocity so sudden that William couldn’t help but take a step back.