Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2) (17 page)

Faucon nodded. “As I thought. You came in here, barred the door, then opened the far window for Peter to crawl through, aye?”

The far window was close enough to the courtyard wall that a determined man could move from wall top to window and slither through the open into the workshop. There was little chance he’d be seen doing so, not with the men in the storehouse, standing with their heads bowed over fabric and their backs to the yard. There was also little chance that such a man would detour to the storehouse to retrieve a pair of scissors to use as a weapon.

“Aye, that is what I have done,” she admitted, then continued more boldly, “but not what I did today. My father had no delivery so I never sent for Peter. I don’t know why he came today.” She shook her head in true confusion.

“By what means did you tell Peter when and where to come?” Colin asked, patting her hand.

She glanced between the two men, her love for Peter at war with her shame. “Each morning, he walks past our house. There’s a broken stone in the wall near our front gate. I made two ribbons, both embroidered with flax flowers.”

Here she sighed, then her lips lifted into a small sad smile. “Years ago, we promised each other that the flax flower would be the emblem for our house when once we wed. On one ribbon the flower is scarlet. That’s the one I would tuck beneath the stone when he was to meet me amongst the apple trees. The other flower is blue. That meant he was to come to the workshop. As for when, I would put pebbles on the ribbon. One pebble was one hour after None, two for two hours.”

“So this morn, if your love had seen the ribbon that had the blue flower upon it and no pebble, he would have believed you wanted him to come to the workshop around the hour of None?” Colin again asked.

Gisla’s face was a ghostly white within the frame of her fair braids. “Aye, I suppose he could have thought that, but I don’t see why he would have. He must know that we can never meet at None because that’s the hour for the household’s meal. Unlike my sire, I’m never allowed to be absent from the table. Moreover, I left no ribbon for Peter today, so he shouldn’t have come at all.”

“But he did come,” Faucon replied. “He did, because the one who needed him in the workroom at that hour left that sign for him. Where do you keep those ribbons when they aren’t in the wall, Mistress?”

The girl gasped and reached for the purse threaded onto her embroidered belt. She thrust her hand into the pouch, only to cry out in dismay as she pulled back empty fingers. “They’re gone!”

Faucon stifled his urge to grin in triumph. Peter’s presence in the workroom had indeed been very carefully planned. Of course it had. One of the terms of the union between Gisla and Peter had included Peter becoming master here after Bernart. What better way to negate that contract, such as it was, than to see Gisla’s love hanged for her father’s murder?

After Colin had bid Mistress Gisla to find her bed, sending her up the stairs with the promise that God and His angels would keep her safe, Faucon and the monk returned to the courtyard. The jurors were gone as was Elsa’s body, but Bernart yet lay on the table. In the dimness, the gaping gash across his throat looked blue against the pallor of his cold skin.

Edmund yet sat on his stool, bathed in the oily glow of a flickering torch. He had his arms outstretched before him and was flexing his fingers as if to ease their aching.

“Sir Faucon,” he called when he saw his master, “you are just in time. The inquest is complete and all is recorded as it must be. A good day’s work done and done efficiently, if I do say so myself,” he added in satisfaction.

“Then so you should say, Brother Edmund,” Faucon called back as he and Colin started toward him.

“Sir Crowner, your patterns,” Tom said, stepping out of the open doorway of the now-darkened storehouse. He held out the bits of linen Rob had cut. “I’m glad I found you. Once we take our master back within the house, the door will close and we’ll not be out again until the morrow.”

Faucon took the thin sheets of fabric, folding them until he could tuck them into the purse that hung from his belt with his gloves. “My thanks again to you and your brother.”

Tom’s reply was a single nod. “I hope you find the one who wears that shoe, sir. Our master may not have been the best of men, but no one deserves to die thusly in his own home.”

Then, turning toward open door behind him, he called, “Come all of you. It’s time to fetch the master inside so he might be washed and wrapped.”

Two men came with Rob to join Tom. The four of them hurried ahead of Faucon and Colin to lift Bernart’s unresponsive weight between them. Then, grunting, they bore their former master on their shoulders as they returned him to his fine house for one last time.

As they departed, Faucon smiled at his clerk. “Brother Edmund, I cannot speak for you, but I know my belly reminds me of how little I’ve eaten this day. Brother Colin and I are meeting an acquaintance of mine at an alewife’s shop. Will you join us?” Just as Bernart put food upon his table for those he employed, it was Faucon’s duty to supply Edmund’s meals.

“Nay, I’m for the abbey,” his clerk replied, then aimed a hard look at his fellow monk. “It’s a fast day today, Brother. I think you should return with me to the abbey as well rather than courting temptation by lingering where men make a show of savoring food and drink.”

It was no request. While Faucon bit his tongue to keep himself from chiding his small-minded clerk, something Colin wouldn’t allow him to do, Colin bowed his head. In that instant, his demeanor shifted from the intelligent friend Faucon appreciated to the humble lay brother Edmund expected.

“Indeed, it is a day of fasting, Brother Edmund, and so I have done all the day long,” the commoner said. “Please harbor no concerns my behalf, secure in the knowledge that Abbot Athelard does not. I but go with Sir Crowner to show him this place, he being a newcomer to our town. Once he’s there, I’ll return to the abbey.”

Colin paused to look at Faucon. “Tell me, Sir Crowner, now that you are locked within our city walls for the night. Have you accommodations?”

“Not as of yet,” Faucon replied. “I’ll admit I hoped Abbot Athelard might offer me your guest house.”

“I fear that isn’t possible, not tonight,” Colin replied with a shake of his head. “Our abbot holds aside that space, expecting the arrival of a bishop’s private secretary who comes either late this night or on the morrow. I cannot promise you that the alewife will have space for you, but should you find nothing else, there is a comfortable corner in my stillroom. It’s not much, but it would suit a man who isn’t overly fastidious about where he lays his head.”

Faucon caught back his laugh. Just as Colin knew his way around a corpse, so too did the monk understand how to circumvent Edmund’s unbending attitude.

“That would be a gift, indeed. I’m sure your stillroom will be quieter and cleaner than an alewife’s house,” he replied. “Would you mind remaining with me for the duration? The man I’m meeting isn’t one to chat, so I doubt I’ll linger long at the alewife’s house. It would be a welcome boon if you were to stay to lead me to your stillroom when the time comes. Perhaps Brother Edmund will be comforted with my promise to see you aren’t tempted to break your fast.”

“That I can do, Sir Crowner. With Brother Edmund’s permission, of course,” Colin said, his head still bowed.

“Go then with Sir Faucon, Brother,” Edmund said, “knowing that I will be looking for you at Compline service tonight. Sir Faucon, if it’s no trouble to you, I’d like to attend morning prayers with my brothers before we leave Stanrudde on the morrow,” Edmund continued as he slid off Bernart’s stool. He picked up his traveling basket and prepared to pack his tools. “Perhaps we might stay our departure until after Terce?”

Faucon grimaced at the thought of leaving Stanrudde without resolving the matter of Bernart’s death. But there was nothing more he could do with what little he had at the moment. Nor had he any hope that he might have gathered anything more before mid-morning on the morrow. Somehow he doubted that the shoemakers would put aside paying business to sort through who knew how many patterns on the behalf of a man they didn’t know. Nay, if the shoemakers were willing to find that pattern for him, it would happen in their leisure hours. He feared Peter would have to linger a good while longer in his wrongful prison, even if the webber managed to confirm what Faucon now suspected.

“After Terce it will be, then,” he said to Edmund, nodding his agreement. Well, at least that gave him until almost midday to distribute his patterns, doing so without his clerk’s interference. “On the morrow, then.”

Leaving Edmund to make his own way to the abbey, Faucon and Colin started out Bernart’s gate, once more following the path of Peter’s flight, this time moving in the proper direction. As they walked, Colin entertained his Crowner by pointing out this shop and that home, offering tales of the lives that had been lived in them.

It was on their second turn that Faucon sensed those who followed. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. There were five. Unlike the groups who sang their drunken way down the lanes, laughing and shouting insults to one another, or those who strutted along, seeking trouble or a whore, these men came on with purpose and moving as one. It was the precision of their movement that named them soldiers, and in that precision Faucon identified the one who’d sent them.

His mouth set in a grim line. However inconvenient, their appearance in Stanrudde at this particular moment wasn’t unexpected. He’d seen their master today on the road after he’d departed from Blacklea. All that remained was to determine who would play the fox and who the hare in this encounter.

Keeping his head bent in the posture of a listener, Faucon again released the pin that held his mantle close around him, fastening that pretty bit of metal to his tunic. With no buckler for his left hand, the possibility of wrapping his mantle around his arm was the best he could do. That was, if he could manage to turn his garment around his hand without tripping over it or otherwise hampering his own defense.

Pulling his shoulders forward to keep his outer garment balanced on them, he claimed his gloves from where they’d spent the day tucked into his belt. He donned them beneath the shield of his mantle, then repositioned and loosened his sword.

Colin led them around the next corner and into a narrow alley. The inviting aroma Faucon had noted earlier was muted now, no doubt much of the alewife’s wares having been consumed in the past hour. With nightfall, her daytime trade wisely departed for their homes, finding safety behind their own barred doors, as should all good folk do. That left her her nighttime trade, those from whom good folk should always flee, free to creep out of hiding, ready to seek out what perverted pleasures they could under the cloak of darkness.

Faucon eyed the alleyway. This was the perfect place for the assault he expected. Not only were there no windows overlooking the alley in any of the houses that lined it, he suspected those who lived here knew better than to involve themselves in a stranger’s misfortune. Moreover, those who followed him would come for him here as they no more wanted to be seen than Faucon wished others to see them.

Colin laughed at something he’d just said, something Faucon hadn’t heard.

“Brother,” he said softly, “I need you to do me a boon, one that may well save my life. I’ll be needing the man you call Richard Alwynason at my side in a moment or two.”

Even in the dark, he could see the monk’s eyes fly wide at his request. Colin’s mouth opened. Faucon carefully shook his head in warning. God bless the man, he understood, and neither looked behind them nor blurted questions.

“What do we do now?” Colin whispered, bowing his head as he crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his sleeves.

“We do nothing. All the help I need is in the man you’ll warn, begging him as you do to come to me in silence,” he replied. “After that, you’ll stay inside the alewife’s door until he or I call for you. For the now, we walk until those behind us force the issue.”

Then, raising his voice to its normal tone, Faucon said, “So, tell me about this alewife and her wares. Not that I need you to speak words when my nose tells me I’ll enjoy this meal.”

Again, Colin followed where he led without hesitation, starting in on the alewife’s tale. The five steadily closed the gap between them for another half a perch. A sharp whistle pierced the air.

“Now, Brother,” Faucon said calmly.

As Colin sprinted down the alley, Faucon turned, swinging his mantle out over his head with his left hand. Although only fabric and fur, his unexpected movement was enough to confuse his attackers for an instant. That was hesitation enough for Faucon to draw his sword and get his mantle wound twice around his left hand.

Then they were on him. Holding his wrapped arm before him as a shield, he caught the first one’s shorter sword on his own. With a shriek of metal, he twisted his weapon free, then smashed its hilt into this one’s face. As the man’s nose and cheekbone broke, he screamed and fell to the side, colliding with two of his mates.