Roberta Gellis (27 page)

“Yes, I suppose the uncle had to be appraised of Mistress Bertrild’s death.”

“And it gave Mainard the opportunity to say to Sir Druerie that he had not been at home when his messenger came, and Bertrild had been killed before he saw her again. Thus, he had no idea whether Sir Druerie’s message required some action or information from him. Even if Sir Druerie only answers that the message was irrelevant to Mainard,
which he might do if the messenger was a paid assassin—but I cannot believe that. I knew Sir Druerie when I lived at Itchen and he had the reputation of a good man. Well, whatever he answers will tell us whether he actually sent the messenger.”

Master Octadenarius rubbed his chin reflectively. “And if he did?”

“Then I will ride out to Swythling and take Saeger for questioning. I suppose you can give me a letter for the sheriff. We have evidence enough for that.”

The justiciar nodded. “When will you need this letter?”

“Likely on Saturday or Sunday. FitzRevery’s messenger left on Monday and would deliver the letter to Sir Druerie first because Swythling is on his way to Hamble. That means Sir Druerie would probably have the letter on Wednesday. I will be busy with the bishop’s affairs all day on Thursday, but we will likely not hear from Sir Druerie until Friday
or Saturday. I can leave as soon as I know his answer.”

“You will have to remind me as soon as Sir Druerie replies. Depending on what he says, I will know better what to write to the sheriff.” Octadenarius lifted a bell from the end of his table and rang it lustily. The door opened at once, as if the servant had been waiting right outside it. “Have Sir Bellamy’s men arrived with their prisoner yet?” the justiciar asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Call out four men from the guardhouse and bid them take the prisoner to the Tun, and send in my clerk.”

As the servant closed the door, Bell remembered something he had not told the justiciar. “Mistress Bertrild was getting a round sum from her victims,” he said. “I told you that Master Mainard found a bundle of tally sticks hidden in her clothes chest. When Mainard brought them to Johannes Gerlund, the goldsmith who had issued them, he discovered that Bertrild had ten pounds in keeping with Gerlund.”

“Ten pounds!” Octadenarius exclaimed. “No wonder—” He broke off as the clerk came in. “There is a prisoner being taken to the Tun,” he said to the man. “Write an order for the Warder there. The prisoner’s name is Borc. He is to be questioned about men from whom he extorted money on the orders of a Mistress Bertrild, wife of Master Mainard the saddler. She was stabbed to death last Saturday. Note that Borc himself is not suspected of the murder and should not be damaged too severely. We believe
one of the men from whom the money was extorted killed the woman, and we need their names.”

The clerk sat down at the end of the table, pulled a sheet of parchment
and an inkpot and quill toward him, and began to write. Doubtless orders to the Warder of the Tun were familiar to him.

“So she had collected ten pounds,” Octadenarius said, going back to the subject the clerk had interrupted. “That is a round sum. Do you know for what she wanted the money?”

“I am not sure, of course, but she tried to get Master Mainard to buy back the mortgages on her father’s property of Moorgreen. He would not do it. He said he had not enough money and, more important, that he had never held land and would not know how to restore the property.”

“Wise man.”

“I suspect Bertrild cared nothing for restoring the land. She wanted to be the lady of the manor and expected Mainard to remain in London so that the proceeds of the saddlery would support the house and servants in Moorgreen.” Bell shook his head. He was a landowner’s son and knew the costs of keeping up such a property.

The clerk finished his writing, sanded the parchment, and passed it to Master Octadenarius, who perused it briefly and handed it back. “Send it.” The clerk went out and he looked back at Bell. “Is there anything else?”

“Only that I
questioned the five members of Master Mainard’s Bridge Guild—those that his wife had harassed two years ago—mostly because they came to Bertrild’s funeral but looked most uneasy. None has any witnesses, except the members of his own household, as to where he was on Saturday between Nones and Vespers.”

The justiciar shrugged. “That is not surprising. For now, let it go. If Borc marks any of them as having paid extortion to Bertrild, I will look into their whereabouts more carefully. As for Borc, I will see that he is released just before Nones on Friday, my men having had a good look at him from hiding while he is being questioned. I will send one of the men to let you know where he went and what he did at about Vespers, or later if he is still abroad.”

“Thank you, my lord Justiciar. Send the man to the bishop of Winchester’s house by the front gate of the priory of St. Mary Overy.”

“Not to the Old Priory Guesthouse?” Octadenarius asked, laughing.

Bell laughed too. “It might be too tempting for him,” he said. “And their prices, which I cannot afford, would surely put your man in debt.”

Bell had been amused rather than infuriated when Master Octadenarius teased him because
he was going to the Old Priory Guesthouse as soon as he left the justiciar. Had he known that he would have to fight temptation as he passed Magdalene’s gate, he would not have found Octadenarius’s jest quite so amusing. When this fact made itself clear to him as he walked down Gracechurch Street toward the bridge, his amusement faded somewhat. After he completed
the bishop’s commands and seen Bertrild’s killer taken, he had better go back to Winchester
and remain there, away from temptation.

He forgot the resolution as soon as Magdalene came to open the gate for him, her face alive with delight. “Oh, I am glad you are come. Never have clients been so tedious. All I wanted was to see them in the proper beds and get back to those records, but for some reason or another every one of them had something he
must
tell me.” She stepped back and gestured him in. “You look tired and dusty. Do come in. At least now all our guests are safely away, the evening meal is on the table, and we can talk in peace.”

“Look, it is Bell,” Ella cried as they entered, sliding out from the bench on which she was sitting. “This is the second time you have been here today. Surely not for business again. I have no one for tonight. I could—

“Thank you, Ella,” Bell said, turning her around and giving her a little push back toward her seat. “I thank you for your offer, but I am a poor man. I could not afford your price, my pet.”

“But surely—” She began to turn toward him.

“No, Ella,” Magdalene said. “You know you must not offer to reduce the price or to go with a man you fancy or pity for nothing. If you did that, all the guests would soon want the same, and we would not have money to pay the rent on this house or to put food on the table.”

“But he is
such
a pretty man,” Ella said, pouting as she sat down again. “And I am sure—” her glance slid down from Bell’s face to his crotch, all but exposed by his thigh-length tunic, “—that he is more than sufficiently endowed below to make me very happy.”

Magdalene was choking on laughter at the appalled astonishment on Bell’s face and the brilliant color his ears had turned, and it was Diot who interrupted Ella, by saying, “Love, it is not very polite to discuss a man’s parts right in front of his face.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. But it is very confusing because Bell isn’t a friend and yet he is here so often and mostly Magdalene talks to him as if he were one of us but she once said he was not family. If he is not family and not a friend, then…then I am not sure what rules apply to him.”

“Well, he is a man, love—” Magdalene began.

“I can see
that,”
Ella said, giggling faintly and glancing again at the hem of Bell’s tunic.

“I think you had better sit down, Bell,” Magdalene said in a strangled voice. Then she cleared her throat and went on, “Here on the corner near me. I have a good deal to say to you. Sabina, love, move down a little. And what I meant, Ella, was that men are more sensitive and delicate than women, so you must not talk about—” she coughed and cleared her throat again “—about their privates or how hairy they are or any such thing, even if they are not friends. We do not want to hurt
anyone’s
feelings you know.”

Ella sighed heavily. “Very well, Magdalene, I will try to remember, but it does seem silly. I don’t mind if anyone talks about my privates or my breasts or…or anything.”

“I know, love, I know. You are so sweet natured that you never take offense, but not everyone is like you.”

Fortunately Haesel had peeped out of the kitchen when she heard
a man’s voice because she knew Sabina would want to withdraw to avoid solicitation. When she saw Bell and heard Magdalene tell him to sit down, she got across to Dulcie that someone else needed a trencher and a cup, and Dulcie brought out a large round of stale bread, a bowl of pottage, and a cup large enough for ale. Her arrival distracted Ella, who went to the shelves that lined the walls at the back of the room and brought a spoon, which she laid next to the bowl Dulcie had deposited in front of Bell. Letice reached for the flagon of ale, leaned across the table, and filled his cup.

“I am very sorry,” Ella said meekly as she laid down the spoon. “I did
not mean to offend you. I only meant that you are pleasing to me, desirable….”

“That’s all right, love,” Bell said, patting her hand.

She understood no more than a child of five, if she understood that much, but he hastily plunged the spoon she had brought into the soup and took a mouthful. Comforting Ella had its dangers; she was very likely to forget why she had needed comfort and begin all over again.

“I am behind in my eating and must catch up,” he mumbled around the food, and Ella nodded and went back to her seat to pick bite-sized pieces of cheese and cold meat off her trencher.

The moment she was busy, Bell said to Magdalene, much more clearly, “Well? Were any others than Ulfmaer mentioned?”

“All of them!” Magdalene replied in an exasperated voice. “All five. But I do not think that Jokel de Josne or John Herlyoud would have ‘removed’ her to prevent disclosure of their secrets. As Letice told me, Josne deals in stolen goods. Genlis ‘witnessed’ half a dozen bills of sale for him, but from the kind of goods, I think they must have been stolen from foreign merchants, who likely are long gone from London. And Josne’s reputation is not lily white anyway, so I do not see how her evidence could have done him much harm. I am not even sure why Josne paid her, unless she asked very little—or unless there was something more serious that might have been uncovered even though Bertrild did not know it.”

“That should go to Octadenarius,” Bell said, taking a swallow of ale to wash down bites of meat and cheese. “Goden mentioned Josne. He may, indeed, have more to hide.”

Magdalene nodded agreement and then said, “Herlyoud is just the opposite. He is a typical case of what we were talking about, a man who I believe has redeemed himself. He was a runaway journeyman from Southampton. Way back in 1125 Gervase ‘witnessed’ for Herlyoud a letter of release and a recommendation from a Master Mercer who was actually recently dead. That mercer was not Herlyoud’s master. His own master had refused to propose him for mastership in the guild and would not release him to find someone who would.”

“So he came to London, found a master, made good, and has been working here for nearly twenty years. Yet it was he who admitted he rode a horse out of London on Saturday and almost fainted when I told him Bertrild had died between Nones and Vespers.”

Magdalene shrugged. “He has some guilty knowledge, that is sure; however,
there is nothing more about him, and I suppose that Genlis would have squeezed him or added to the record…. Well, he would have if he recognized him. Genlis was such a sot that he might not have remembered his own mother’s face.”

“I will ask around among the mercers and speak to the guildmaster. If Herlyoud has a good reputation, I would agree with you that he should not be exposed—except for one thing.” Bell paused to break off a piece of his trencher and soak it in the pottage, scooping out some vegetables with it. “He comes from the same area.” He popped the bread in his mouth and added, rather indistinctly, “If he were Saeger—”

“No, he is not,” Magdalene assured him. “In fact, I know a great deal about Saeger. He came from a tiny village near Swythling, not from Southampton. There are two wills in which Saeger is mentioned, one obviously false, and an indictment in absentia against him for poisoning his wife and possibly her father, too.”

Bell swallowed hard to down another piece of bread and then let out a long, low whistle. “That’s worth killing over, since exposure would mean hanging in any case.”

“I will show you those documents. I have put aside for you to look over at once everything relating to the five who could have got Codi’s knife. Perhaps you can find something
in them that will hint at which man was Saeger, or knew Saeger and could have given him the knife.”

“Given him the knife,” Bell echoed and then scowled. “Good God, I never thought of that. There is nothing to say where the man who arrived at the Lime Street house actually came from. In fact, I think Hamo told me the horse did not look as if it had traveled far. What if Saeger went first to one of the five and was given Codi’s knife—” he nodded “—that might have been why he…ah….” he glanced at Ella across the table “sent Bertrild away with his belt knife instead of Codi’s. It would not have been so important to him.”

“There is another possibility,” Magdalene said hesitantly, “that…oh, you will not like this at all.” She sighed. “It came to me that
Bertrild
could have taken Codi’s knife.”

Bell stared at her, his mouth open, his spoon halfway from his bowl. He put the spoon back in the bowl. “But then any man in England could have been the one who…did it. No, no one mentioned her as being in the workroom on Friday.”