Player's Ruse (18 page)

“It’s Ebb Dorn, the tapster.” He sounded as stunned as I felt. “He’s dead. I think his neck is broken.”

Only then did the doors fly open, lamplight glaring as Burke’s guards spilled out, charged up the steps, and seized Michael.

“A bit late, aren’t you?” I asked.

The screaming subsided to choking sobs. Michael’s expression closed as understanding descended on him.

“It wasn’t me,” he protested stiffly, no doubt sounding utterly guilty to a stranger’s ears. “He fell. I was trying to stop him.”

“That’s for the sheriff to decide.” But the armsmen’s tight grip proclaimed that they’d already made up their minds.

Todd was fetched out of the party—discreetly. Master Burke wouldn’t want his entertainment interrupted by so trivial a matter as a man’s death. Dorn lay on the stair where Michael had halted his fall, so the sheriff might see the scene just as it was when they found it. The step beneath his head was dark with blood, his eyes open and blank. I shivered and looked away.

Then Todd arrived, his already grim expression darkening to a scowl as he took in the scene. The guardsmen told their story, and it sounded cursed convincing with Michael standing there, his stained hands dangling.

“He didn’t push him, Sheriff.” I put all the assurance I could into my voice, squelching the despairing whisper in my heart,
no use
. “He was standing by the fountain when Dorn fell. I was under the steps over there, watching him.”

“Sure you were,” said Todd. He turned to one of Burke’s guards. “I need you to ride to town. I want half a dozen deputies, the doctor, and a wagon to carry the body back. Tell them—”

“But it’s true, Sheriff,” a girl’s voice said nervously.

We all spun. She was clearly a maid—pretty, as I’d guess all Burke’s maids must be, with curly hair peeking from under a cap that looked as if it had been donned in haste. The lacing on her bodice was tight and tidy, as if she’d just knotted it. But it was the protective hovering of the young manservant behind her that really gave the game away.

“We both saw,” she went on, gesturing to her companion, who looked profoundly uncomfortable. “We were . . . we were in the arbor there.” She nodded at one of the leafy nooks that gave such good cover. “Then he came out and stood by the fountain. We hoped he’d leave, but he just stood there, like he was waiting for someone. He didn’t budge till”—her gaze lit on Dorn and skittered away—“till that poor man fell.”

Todd weighed this a moment and turned to the man. “Is that true?”

“Yes sir, it is. But, um, could we go now? I’m supposed to be on duty in the stables. If Master Perkin knew . . . Can we go, please?”

Todd got their names and dismissed them—if he didn’t promise not to tell the master of house what they’d been up to, he didn’t threaten them with it either. Myself, I was so grateful that I hoped they not only got away with it but married and had twins.

“What brought you out here, Master Sevenson?” Todd asked.

The story of the note sounded incredibly fishy, even when Michael produced it, and Todd’s frown deepened. “Are you in the habit of answering an unsigned summons?”

“Yes, he is,” I replied before Michael could. “It’s a mental deficiency.”

“It said someone had been making inquiries about Rosamund,” Michael put in defensively. “I thought Father might have sent another bounty hunter.”

Todd sighed. “And you, Master Fisk?”

“I saw him get the note and followed him,” I said.

Michael looked indignant. “I told you not to.”

Todd and I ignored him.

“So we were just in time to witness another accidental death,” I went on. “The sheerest coincidence, no doubt.”

Todd winced. “Did you see anyone at the top of the stairs before Dorn fell? Or aft—”

Light burst from the opening door and Joe Potter hurried into the courtyard. “What’s going on, Lester? They say Ebb—”

His gaze found the corpse and his face went blank with shock. “What in the . . . Did he fall?”

“We’re not certain,” Todd admitted. “He came with you?”

“Of course,” said Potter absently. “Guild’s clerk. But how could this happen? He wasn’t all that tippy. How could he have fallen so hard?” His face darkened, anger and grief replacing shock, and I took one man off my list of suspects—not even Hector Makejoye could have put on a performance like that.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Todd patiently. “He was with you; when did he leave the hall?”

“About . . . I don’t know, fifteen minutes ago? Twenty? He just slipped out. I assumed he was going to the privy, or maybe out for some fresh air. It’s hot in there. He left just after the start of the puppets.”

About the same time as Michael and I. Potter’s gaze found Michael, resting on his stained hands.

“No,” said Todd quickly. “We’ve got reliable witnesses who saw Master Sevenson at the bottom of the steps when Ebb fell. He couldn’t have done it.”

“But he’s . . .”

“Unredeemed.” Michael sighed. “But this is none of my doing, Master Potter. And I’m afraid I’m a poor witness. I saw the man falling, and by the time I thought to look to the top of the stairs, anyone who might have been there was gone. Fisk?”

“I did the same,” I admitted. “I heard him cry out, and looked up just in time to see him fall. I was watching Michael before that.” So were the young servants, and the tumbling body had arrested their attention too. There could have been a dozen men up there, and none of us would have seen them.

“He fell hard,” I said slowly. “Very fast. But I couldn’t say whether he was pushed or not.”

That was pretty much where the matter ended. Todd dismissed Michael and me and went on to question Potter about any enemies Ebb Dorn might have had.

Michael washed his hands in the fountain, and we returned to the hall to watch Gloria dance, but I was barely aware of my surroundings. If not for the note that had summoned Michael to be blamed for the crime, I might have been able to dismiss it as an accident. As it was, it had to be murder—the second murder, if Michael was right about how Quidge had died. But except for that note, there was less to link us to Dorn than to the bounty hunter.

There had to be some connection—not only to the murders, but also to the harassment the players had suffered. Jack didn’t believe in coincidence, and there were too many at work here. But I’d be hanged if I could make sense of the matter.

We told the players about it on the way home, and they were as shocked and baffled as we were, though more inclined to think it was an accident.

Michael agreed. In fact, Michael agreed so easily that my suspicions were roused, and I finally noticed the air of suppressed excitement about him, totally inappropriate in a man who had just escaped the gallows by sheer luck. If those lovers hadn’t been there . . . I shivered again.

It wasn’t till we were finally alone, in the familiar dark of the prop wagon, that I got a chance to ask, “All right, what are you up to? You know something.”

“Not yet.” The satisfaction in his voice sent a chill washing over me, even before he went on, “But I should know more soon. We’ve a clue, Fisk! Our first real clue in this whole wretched affair.”

“What clue?” I demanded, too alarmed for subtlety. Michael in pursuit of a clue is about as safe as a cocked crossbow in the hands of a jealous husband.

“Todd missed it, too.” He sounded smug, curse him. “The lad who handed me the note, Fisk. He wasn’t ‘just passing through’—he was local. If we can find him, we can find out who hired him and trace the thread all the way back to the killer.”

I got very little sleep that night.

“H
ow do you intend to locate one boy out of the hundreds, maybe thousands, in this town?” Fisk picked a stocking out of the tangle we’d left on the prop wagon’s floor, squinting to determine if ’twas his or mine. He was unreasonably exasperated this morning, but he’d finally stopped asking if I realized where I’d be right now if not for the young lovers who’d witnessed Dorn’s death.

I realized it so well that I’d slept rather badly, but as I told Fisk, the best way to be certain our enemies could do us no further harm was to reveal them to the law. And the first step was to find them.

“I’ve an idea about that,” I told my squire. “I think you’ll approve, for ’tis perfectly safe though it may cost a bit.”

Fisk grimaced. “If it buys us some safety, I’d be willing to pay. Although”—he rummaged in our bags and fished up my limp purse—“we’d better pawn another of Rosa’s jewels if you’re planning on spending more than a few fracts.”

“We can’t do that,” I objected. “ ’Tis our quest, not Rosamund’s. Oh, I should mention that I found her jewel bag—that false bottom is quite clever. If I hadn’t known what the case should look like, I’d not have suspected it.

“I meant to tell you.” Fisk looked even more exasperated, and I wondered why. “But so much was happening that I forgot.”

“ ’Twas a good idea,” I said. “So much so that I thought they’d be even safer in the Makejoyes’ hidden cupboards, so I gave them to Mistress Gwen for safekeeping.”

Fisk dropped the boot he’d just lifted and stared at me.

“I was going to tell you,” I said. “But we were changing clothes to burgle the town hall when I found it, and after that I forgot.” I had intended to tell him, for I’d a clear notion of his reaction should he suddenly find them gone. I saw no need to mention that I’d deliberately refrained from discussing it with him beforehand, fearing he’d not care to let the precious things out of his keeping. Fisk has reformed to my complete satisfaction, but some habits die hard.

“It figures,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. But I hope your boy-finding scheme doesn’t cost much, Noble Sir, because if you won’t hit Rosa up for it, we don’t have much to spare. I’m sure she’d be glad to loan . . .”

She might have, but I refused to ask her. I still had some lingering hope of overcoming her blindness where I was concerned. I had loved too hard, too long, to simply give up now. And in any case, my scheme was cheap enough.

We rode into town, since Chant’s leg was fully healed, and my fear of being framed for further crimes helped me to forget that Rose had chosen Rudy over me for a long . . . well, minutes at a stretch.

There were few clouds, but the air had a sodden feel to it that I feared presaged a storm. The town seemed sleepy; people walked more leisurely in the heat, with their starched caps and collars wilting.

I accosted the first likely-looking urchin I saw. “Lad, would you like to earn a few fracts?”

He looked wary but approached me. I dismounted so as not to loom over him more than need be. I’d have knelt, but he was of the age to find that insulting. He had crooked front teeth and dark hair—though clean, it might have been several shades lighter.

“I’m looking for a boy who brought me a note last night,” I said. “I mean him no harm nor trouble; I only wish to know who gave him the note.”

“What’s his name?” asked the urchin, sensibly enough.

“I don’t know it,” I admitted. “But I’d recognize him if I saw him. He’s about your age, a bit taller, with thick, straight, light-brown hair and eyes a bit darker.”

The boy snorted. “There’s hunnerds of kids look like that. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can find him.”

“I probably couldn’t,” I admitted. “But mayhap you can. I want you to choose some helpers, and each of them, along with you, will get a brass roundel. For every youth they bring me who answers my description I’ll pay two brass octs; one for them, one for the boy they bring.”

“Huh,” said the child. “One brass oct’s not much.”

“But as you said, there are hundreds of lads who might fit my description, so it should add up. And if I find him, the boy who brought him to me will get a silver roundel, and you get a silver roundel too.”

A gleam lit the child’s eye. “If I bring him, do I get both roundels?”

“That seems fair,” I said. “But you’ll want some helpers anyway. There’s a lot of boys to go through, and I’d like to find him today.”

“What happens if you don’t?” the boy asked.

I thought fast. “The reward goes down. From a roundel to three quarts, then to a ha’.”

“Got it.” The lad nodded and darted away, and I turned to Fisk, torn between pride and apprehension. He really doesn’t like to spend money.

Fisk’s gaze was somber. “Noble Sir, I’m afraid we have a problem.”

“What?” I confess I was stung; I had thought the scheme a good one.

“You’ve been traveling with me too long,” said Fisk. “You’re getting clever.” A slow grin spread over his face. He turned Tipple and set off for a nearby shop.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To collect some brass octs. We’re going to be paying out a lot of them.”

Indeed we did. The boy I’d first approached—whose name turned out to be Jed Potter, though he claimed no relationship to our erstwhile landlord—deputized half a dozen cohorts, and they produced a parade of boys, of all ages, shapes, sizes, and walks of life. After I refused payment for a few who bore no resemblance to my description, the selection became less random.

There might not be hundreds of boys answering my specifications, but there were enough. I wondered if my enemies had deliberately chosen a child of common appearance and coloring to make a search more difficult. It seemed too much cleverness, but when I said as much to Fisk, he pointed out that our enemies had been clever enough to murder two men and almost get me hanged. He added that underestimating them would be a really bad idea.

Fisk appointed himself head of the exchequer, but the sack of sharp-pointed octs he wielded was growing thin when young Jed came panting up to us in the late afternoon.

“I think I’ve found him, Sir Mike, but he won’t come. He says if you get him in trouble, his da’ll wallop him; but I know where he’s hid.” He slowed a bit, eyeing me. “You meant it when you said he’d not get in trouble? His da drinks.”

“I meant it,” I answered. “His father need never know a thing about it, and we’ll pay well for his assistance.”

Jed thought that over, then nodded. “Follow me.”

I took Jed up before me on the saddle, to his delight and Chant’s snorted resignation. He directed us seaward, to the part of town where the docks and warehouses lay. ’Twas lower and flatter than the residential part of town, for here the river broadened, branched, and slowed, allowing the townsfolk to dig canals so the barges could bring in cargo.

Fisk was looking at the harbor, still some distance off. “I count eighteen sets of masts,” he said. “Big convoy.”

Jed snorted. “It’s all right, but it’s the only large shipment we’ve had this summer. My mam says if the wreckers scares off many more ships, this whole town’ll dry up and blow away. Your horse is a destrier, isn’t he? Like they ride in the tourneys? How fast can he go?”

“At a gallop in the countryside. In towns he only walks.”

I saw what his mother meant—though the convoy was large, the harbor was less than half full, and only a few of the tall, creaking cranes were in motion. The cry of the gulls sounded louder than it should.

“That’s still a lot of space to search,” Fisk murmured. “I wonder how small the mysterious unidentified cargo is.”

I wondered if Fisk realized that he wanted the wreckers to be caught as much as I did. The trail we followed must lead back to them—who else had cause to kill Quidge? But I confess I could think of no reason for the wreckers to harass Makejoye’s troupe, or to kill Dorn. Two murders in the space of weeks—they had to be connected. But how?

“Nobody knows what the cargo is,” said Jed. “Sheriff’s men are keeping real quiet about it. They’ve tried to find cargoes the wreckers took before but they couldn’t, and my mam says they won’t find it this time neither. How much does a destrier eat?”

“A lot,” I said.

Fisk looked startled. “You know the deputies are looking for the wreckers’ loot?”

Jed grinned. “You think they can search every crate loaded onto all those ships and keep it secret? Everybody knows. The captains are sore about the delay, but I don’t see why ’cause none of ’em would be leaving till after Hornday anyway. Old Nutter says we’ve got another big blow coming in that night.”

Three nights hence.

“Ten-year-olds know they’re looking,” Fisk muttered. “No wonder they never find the cargoes. It’s at the bottom of the bay now, whatever it was.”

Jed nodded sagely. “That’s what my mam says. There’s another ship due in same time as the storm, the
Night Heron
, and Mam says likely the wreckers’ll get it too. We’re here, gents.”

He guided us down a narrow alley between a warehouse and a cooper’s yard, and into a small, weed-covered lot behind. It held naught but abandoned equipment, crates, and broken casks, and I saw at once why ’twould appeal to boys. If the lad we sought chose to avoid us, we’d never find him in this warren.

But Jed slid down Chant’s shoulder, stepped up to the ramshackle remains of a water tank, and called confidently, “Come out and talk, you wart. I know you’re there, and if you don’t show your face, I’ll climb up and make you.”

For a moment I thought his confidence misplaced. Then a muffled thump sounded in the broken tank and half a face peered through a gap in the crumbling slats. A familiar half a face. My heart began to pound.

“You and who else,” a young voice answered. “I’m not afraid of you, Jed Potter, and they’re too big for the ladder.”

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Jed demanded, and I heard Fisk fishing out our purse without waiting for my reply. Jed slipped away, and I tethered the horses and approached the old tank.

He was right about the ladder; I’d not have trusted the decrepit wood with a child’s weight, much less my own.

“You’ve no need to climb down,” I told the boy. “We only want to know who asked you to give me that note last night. And we’ll pay well.”

Fisk, always alert, pulled out a silver roundel and flipped it.

The eye widened, then narrowed warily. “No, you’re not getting me down. I didn’t have nothing to do with it. I just brought the note.”

“You’ve heard about Master Dorn’s fall?”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with it!” His voice grew shrill. “We used to tease him sometimes, but that was all. I didn’t do
anything
.” His breath caught.

“Of course you didn’t.” I said with all the assurance I could muster. “Master Dorn fell down a flight of stairs. How could your note be responsible for that?”

The single hazel eye searched mine, hope dawning. How long had this poor lad hidden, fearing he was somehow responsible for a man’s death?

“You’re sure? Honest, for real?”

“Yes. Think about it. Notes don’t make people fall down the stairs.”

“What if you did it?”

“Then Sheriff Todd would have arrested me,” I said. “He was there last night, you know. You’ve done nothing wrong, and neither have I. But if you tell me about the man who gave you the note, mayhap between us we can make something right.”

The boy’s face vanished, and for a moment I thought I’d failed—then the hatch at the bottom of the tank squealed open and a pair of scuffed shoes emerged, followed by grubby legs, in grubby britches. He wasn’t wearing stockings.

I sat on one of the crates to appear less threatening, and Fisk followed my example. He spun the roundel between his fingers, making it flash. The implicit invitation drew the child several steps nearer, though he stayed well outside our reach. His face bore a spattering of freckles I’d not noticed in the candlelight; his expression was deeply suspicious.

“What do you want to know?”

“Who gave you the note?” I asked patiently.

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Never seen him before.”

Not a surprise, but disappointing. “Can you describe him?”

Another shrug. “He was old.” For a boy his age that covered anything from twenty to ninety, but he went on without prompting. “His hair was almost all gray—just a bit of dark in it.”

“Was he a sturdy old man,” Fisk cut in, “or feeble?” He rose slowly, so as not to alarm the boy, and walked a few steps in an old man’s tottering shuffle. The boy giggled.

“Not like that. He looked like a working man.”

“And a stranger,” I said thoughtfully. “I’d guess you know many of the working men in this town. Was he a sailor, mayhap?”

“No,” said the boy. “They dress different. I thought . . .”

I waited.

“I thought he might be a farmer, in for the day. They sometimes look like that when they come into town.”

“Were his hands hard or soft?” Fisk asked.

“Hard.” The reply was confident. “That’s part of why I thought he was a working man.”

“Did you notice anything else about him?” I touched the place below my eye where I’d ridden into a jagged branch when I was only a little older than the boy before me. “A scar? The color of his eyes? Something about his clothes?”

If there was anything distinctive about the man, he hadn’t noticed it, and I rather thought he would’ve. Those hazel eyes were as sharp as they were wary.

“A middle-aged countryman with no distinguishing features.” Fisk summed it up. “That’s even worse than a boy with straight brown hair.”

He flipped the coin and tossed it to the child, who caught it but didn’t run off. “You swear that note didn’t have nothing to do with Ebb dying?” he asked again.

“I swear,” I said. “It might have been sent to bring me to the scene, but he’d have died exactly the same no matter what you did with the note.”

Color seeped into the child’s face; now that we’d paid him, we had no reason to lie.

“Would you . . . What’s your name, lad? Oh, don’t look like that, I just want something to call you. I’m Michael Sevenson, by the way, a knight errant in search of adventure and good deeds, and this is my squire, Fisk.”