Defiant Unto Death (24 page)

Blackstone stopped as the woman called Mathilde kept her nerve and her offering.

‘Even a common man can know beauty when he sees it,' she said to him. ‘Look, sir, look. See my skill? A man could not fail to win a woman's heart with such a gift, wouldn't you say?'

Blackstone looked at the simple but elegant depiction of a rosebud and the skill required to embroider the creeper that entwined itself around its stem like a lover's arms.

‘I would,' answered Blackstone.

‘Then—'

‘I'll buy it from you, if you can help me,' he said, interrupting her sales patter.

‘Count your fingers, Mathilde. If you let him take that from your hand, there'll be some missing!' her friend warned again.

Blackstone saw the woman was losing her nerve.

‘I'll take it,' he said.

‘But … you have not asked the price,' the woman spluttered, barely able to conceal her joy at snaring a country bumpkin. ‘Five deniers …' she said.

‘No. I will give you three, though you know it's worth two,' answered Blackstone. ‘You have already more than doubled the price because you think me a fool,' he told her and dropped the coins into her outstretched hands, but made no attempt to take the cloth and its embroidered pattern.

It was a good profit. Her fist closed over coins and material as the thought of keeping both went through her mind. At worst this rough-looking man would call the Provost's men, an argument would take place and the other women would back her story that the man tried to take the cloth without paying. Except for one of them – Isabeau. She would always find a way to stab her in the back, jealous of her skills. Old bitch. Her hand unclasped and passed the cloth to Blackstone. She grumbled as she untied her purse and dropped in the coins. ‘That's a good piece of silk thread you have there. At a good price.'

‘It's a piece taken from a lady, cut from a bolt, likely without her knowing; someone you sell work to,' Blackstone told her and saw that he was probably right about the theft. He showed her Christiana's stained needlework. ‘Have you seen this before?'

She took it reluctantly from him. ‘An amateur's hand, I can tell you that – but a good one,' she conceded. ‘The futaine is of good enough quality,' she told him, her finger tracing the few strands of cotton mixed with silk. ‘A coarse linen to stitch. Not a noblewoman, that's for certain. And she's no guild member, either.' She handed it back. ‘I've never seen it before.'

‘And if it were offered would you buy it? In order to sell it on.'

‘We have our own to sell. Superior work, as you can see,' she said defiantly.

He ignored her self-regard. ‘And no person, man or woman, has come here and shown such an embroidered cloth to any of you and asked the same question?'

The piece of cloth passed through the women's hands as they all looked at Christiana's embroidery.

The old woman at the end of the stalls barely glanced his way. ‘You want to sell that get yourself over to the whores by the riverbank. They'll buy a piece of cloth even though it's not fancy,' she said.

‘He's not trying to sell it, Isabeau! Merciful Mother of God, you witter like an old crone,' Mathilde rebuked her, and glanced warily at Blackstone. ‘This is little more than an old bloodstained rag. Not even a whore would want it,' she said.

Blackstone showed no sign of displeasure. He simply nodded and tucked the cloth away. ‘How do I get to the noblemen's quarter? There's a grand street somewhere, isn't there?'

‘Ha! You'll get short shrift knocking on their doors. If their dogs don't have you the constables will,' said one of the women.

The women murmured amused agreement among themselves.

‘Find your way north, and you'll start to see the big houses, big windows and courtyards,' said Mathilde, relenting because he had paid her well. ‘Up past the market and graveyard towards the Porte Saint-Denis.'

The woman called Isabeau chirped in from the end of the table. ‘You'll not get there before dark, so you'll spend the night in a doorway with the beggars and get yourself a good kicking from the nightwatchmen,' she said.

Blackstone knew he needed no issue with anyone official. ‘Is there a tavern nearby that might not steal a man's boots in the night?' he asked.

‘Take your pick. They'll only take your boots once your throat's been slit,' Mathilde answered as the other women laughed with her.

‘Get yourself to the Half Wheel. There's no bed, but there's food and a hearth,' Isabeau told him. ‘Across a dozen streets, up that way. You'll see their sign. As big as a nobleman's door, it is.'

Their blank stares told him there was nothing more to be got from them. But it confirmed that Christiana had not yet reached these stallholders and, to his mind, that someone had used an unsuspecting Joanne de Ruymont to draw Christiana into the city. And to make him follow. As he turned into the crowd the woman who had given him the name of the tavern gathered her pieces into a broad cloth, which she tied off in a neat bundle.

‘Isabeau!' one of the embroiderers called. ‘You're packing up so early?'

‘I'm cold and I'm hungry. There's no trade today, and it's almost gone anyway,' the woman answered.

‘Some of us have sold fine pieces at a good price,' the embroiderer teased. ‘Your fingers are too bent and crippled for fine stitching. Perhaps it's time you went over to the bakers' quarter and started making meat pies with hands like those! You'll starve to death otherwise.'

The other women laughed and bent their heads back to the work beneath their fingers. Old age was coming to them all, and sooner or later they would end up like poor old Isabeau, and when that day came they could only hope for a rich woman's charity that might allow them to stitch hems on undershirts before being cast into the street. Such was any woman's life. Better to be a baker's wife; at least they wouldn't starve.

Blackstone eased his way through the crowds. Paris was a confusing jumble of alleyways, dead ends and thoroughfares. Only a few doorways had any distinguishing marks above them, and most likely they were occupied by someone with money or who held some kind of minor status. He was a long way from the merchants' houses, but women from all walks of life bustled around him dressed in bright colours, some with their wimples fastened to plaited hair, surcoats trimmed with fine embroidery, as they sought out bolts of cloth or silks. A number of the women had a maidservant accompanying them carrying a basket of bought items. Any one of these women could have been Christiana, who always wore a simple coif instead of an elaborate or fashionable wimple to conceal her auburn hair.

The city had every possession and enticement anyone could desire. Paris was like a kept whore that could provide pleasures on demand. It was a far cry from the stillness of the countryside where strangers were noticed and homes provided their own food and entertainment.

Blanche had explained that the Grand'Rue that led to the city's northern gate housed the nobility and those who, through their commercial success, aspired to be part of them, and it would be there that de Ruymont would rent rooms. Fearful for Christiana's safety, Blanche had wanted to accompany him but he and Jean convinced her that it was foolish to draw more friends into jeopardy at a time when the Norman lords were playing their own dangerous game. Christiana had been in Paris for only two days with Guy and Joanne and Blackstone and Jean agreed that there was little reason for King John and his Savage Priest to strike against any Norman lord in the city if Blackstone's suspicions of a trap were well founded. They would let the deception play out so that Blackstone would be drawn to her. She would, Blackstone thought, be safe while she attempted to trace the whereabouts of her father. Those who hunted him would be waiting in the shadows.

Despite his reasoning Blackstone still felt the pull of two conflicting objectives. As much as the need to find her and escape home pressed him, he also wanted to discover who had sold the piece of cloth to Joanne de Ruymont. If this was a trap to seize him then he had to find who had sold the bait. Like a snag on a piece of linen, the unravelling thread would lead him to them. Then, when he exposed the deception to Christiana, she would accept that her father had died years before.

And Blackstone's secret would remain buried with him.

As Blackstone moved away from the embroiderers through the alleyways, the old woman Isabeau scurried towards one of the bathhouses. She loitered at the corner of the building waiting for the boy to appear, then grew impatient and beckoned a man going in to bathe.

‘There's a boy inside who helps with the water. Send him out to me.'

The man knocked aside her outstretched hand. ‘I'm not here to do your bidding, old woman.'

He was a common man, no different from any other who went through the bathhouse doors, and she knew that if there was a chance of saving a coin in his purse then he would.

‘You'll not pay for the water if you do as I ask,' she told him. ‘The boy will see to that.'

The man considered for a moment, and then without agreement went inside. By the time the old woman had settled on the steps Raoul had appeared from the bathhouse.

‘You have the money?' she asked the urchin.

The boy watched, his feral instincts twitching like a rat's whiskers. If the old woman had brought him news of a stranger asking about a certain piece of cloth, then he would be rewarded again by the man who had snatched him at the execution. They had beaten him and thrown him into a shit-fouled dungeon in the Châtelet until the Norman's men had hauled him out weeks later. From a shadowed doorway they pointed out a noblewoman who shopped among the cloth sellers. Be the beggar you are, they told him, and sell this embroidery to the woman. Take whatever she offers, they ordered, and when she asks, as she surely would, tell her it was sold to you by an old man who lives among the poor and begs near the cemetery and at Les Halles. It made no sense to Raoul, a fairy tale to lure a lady to the marketplace, next to a graveyard where the dead were buried in vast trenches. If it was rape they were after they could have picked a less severe-faced woman. In fact he could have pointed them in the right direction for any of their carnal desires. They had slapped him, drawing blood from a split lip, and making his ears ring from the blow. Did he understand? He did. And when he had done as ordered, then he was to go back to his wretched life. Wretched it might be, but the street stench never smelled sweeter. There was no chance to abscond with the coins they had given him with the promise of more when he did their bidding, because Raoul was a shit collector who was known to most. And he was cunning enough to know how the streets worked. Betray a man of status and wealth and they would dig him out as a dog would a rat. It was an offer that would give him a way out of the stinking streets.

‘Two deniers, as promised,' he answered the old woman.

She nodded and held out her hand. She wouldn't try to squeeze more from him, because she knew that if she did it would not be long before the bastard child would have someone step from an alleyway and slip a knife into her ribs. Or do it himself. Where the boy got the money from she had no idea, but he spent all his days now helping at the bathhouse, he no longer cleared human waste from doorways. He had placed word with some of the women on the stalls for information. And for once luck had blessed her. No, she wouldn't take anything more from this one, she decided; there was another way to make money from this.

‘He's a big man with a scar down his face. He carries his left arm slightly bent like a broken wing. He stands taller than most. I sent him to the Half Wheel. He'll be there before the Angelus. He doesn't look the kind of ruffian who'd want to be questioned by the constables after dark.'

Raoul pressed the reward into Isabeau's hands. It was too late to run to the Norman lord who had paid – and threatened – him. It was likely he would be on his knees at vespers. So he would wait until morning and then, as the faithful were summoned to prayer, he would count each bell strike as that of a tinkling coin falling into the palm of his hand. And then he would try his luck on the Grand Pont and use his skills as a cut-purse on those who frequented the money changers and silver- and goldsmiths who traded there. Misfortune would be sidestepped like a dollop of shit in the street.

There were no linen sheets on a feather mattress or pewter plates to eat from in the Half Wheel tavern. The straw-covered floor and the burning grate was as much comfort as any traveller with a few coins in his pocket could expect. Blackstone ordered food and drink and found a table in a half-lit corner. Easing himself onto the bench he sat with his back against the wall. The main entrance to the tavern was clearly in view and a side door, nearer to him, would make a convenient escape. It would be impossible for those hunting him to find him in the seething mass of this part of the city. But a chance encounter with the Provost Marshal's men might expose him. It was always better to have caution as a travelling companion. His urgency had bypassed his hunger but now he felt ravenous. He ate a plate of rough milled bread and sausage, and ordered ale rather than wine. He spoiled the tavern's undernourished cur with its bowed ribs and fed it tidbits. As darkness fell the tavern became choked with men seeking shelter for the night. No one made any approach to him and the men he watched showed no sign of violence or bad temper. As the evening lengthened and the Angelus bell rang, the ale and cheap wine, its grapes picked too late making it a sour and cloudy drink rejected by better hostelries, soon played their part and eased the tavern into a melancholy hum of muted voices and snoring men. Blackstone claimed the dark corner as his own and lay down, pressing his back into the security of the wall. The dog whimpered and crawled nervously the few feet to him on its belly. Blackstone laid a hand on its neck, soothing it. Like all dogs grateful for not being kicked away it gave Blackstone its trust and lay close to him.