The Captive Heart (45 page)

“You will understand that before I act,” the archbishop said, “I must be absolutely certain of this priest’s guilt, Brother George. I will accuse no man without proof positive.” He looked hard at the two priests.

“I would expect no less of Your Grace,” Brother George said. “When this priest contacts us to turn over his false documents, we will send to you with the time and place so you may be there to see what transpires and catch this miscreant in the very act.”

“Agreed,” the archbishop replied. “I am disturbed by what you have told me, for who knows how many other false documents this man has issued in my name?”

“It is likely he has only preyed upon those he believed without other influence, as Sir Udolf Watteson. Men not clever enough to see through his ruse,” Brother George said in an effort to calm any fears this high churchman might have regarding his office and most especially his reputation. “He is in actuality a petty thief.”

“Indeed you are probably correct in your assumption, Good Brother,” the archbishop replied, but his eyes still held worry. Then he gave them a brief smile and raised his hand in blessing. “Go with God, my sons, until we meet again.”

Dismissed, they turned away from the great churchman and, led by Sister Mary Agnes, made their way from the cathedral gardens. She brought them to a small gate that opened onto the street.

Brother George turned to the nun to thank her. “I am most grateful for all your help in this matter. Without you my path to the archbishop would have been more difficult,” he told her.

“If you are truly grateful, Brother George, then when you retrieve that gold coin you gave Father Walter, stop by St. Mary’s Convent as you leave the city and donate it to my order,” Sister Mary Agnes said with a small smile.

“I will, and gladly!” Brother George told her with an answering smile. “Were you a man, Good Sister, you would make a fine bishop.”

“I have learned well from my master never to let an opportunity pass by,” the nun told him with a little chuckle. Then, with a nod of farewell, she closed the gate behind the two priests, who walked off briskly down the narrow street.

“She would make a shrewd chatelaine for a rich man,” Brother George noted to his priestly cousin. “She is a clever woman.”

“She was her parents’ younger daughter, and betrothed to a wealthy man,” Father Henry explained. “But she always wanted to serve the church. When her betrothed husband died suddenly a month before the wedding she told her parents that it was obviously God’s will that she enter the convent and not the marriage bed. Since their eldest son had been married the year before to the dead man’s sister, she now became her father’s heiress and nothing was lost. My cousin’s elder sister was well married, and the younger brother pledged to a young woman of means. So they gave Mary Agnes her way, and let her enter the convent,” Father Henry concluded.

“And yet she does for the archbishop much of what she would do as chatelaine of her own home,” Brother George noted. “Nor do I find her particularly pious in her manners. How curious she should know and befriend a whore.”

“I have always believed God places us where we are meant to be,” Father Henry murmured quietly. “And many who claim piety do so only for others to see but in their hearts are as worldly as those outside of our calling.”

Brother George thought a moment at this, and then he nodded. “True, Henry. True,” he said.

Five days went by during which time the bishop of St. Andrew’s messenger helped his cousin in the small church that was his domain. He celebrated the Mass. He heard confessions, and he ministered to the poor and helpless. And as he did he understood the sense of Father Henry’s words, for this kind of priestly life was not at all to his liking. He far preferred being in the thick of things as he was in the bishop of St. Andrew’s secretariat. And Brother George smiled to himself as this revelation unfolded itself to him. And, finally, on the sixth day a ragged urchin came into the church as the two clerics were snuffing the precious candles.

“Masters, which one of you is Brother George?” he asked.

“I am,” the Scots priest said, stepping forward.

“I have a message for you,” the lad said. “Didn’t make sense to me, but the man who give it me said I just had to repeat it, and you’d give me a penny.”

Brother George reached into his robe and drew out the pouch that held his coins. After extracting a silver penny from it, he restored the pouch and held the coin up for the boy to see. “And what is the message?” he asked.

“Same place, same time, tomorrow” the answer came.

“Same place, same time, tomorrow,” Brother George repeated.

“Aye,” the lad said, and his dirty hand shot out to catch the silver coin tossed to him. Then he ran from the church.

“We must notify His Grace,” Father Henry said. “I will send to him.”

“Send to Sister Mary Agnes lest the message is seen by the wrong eyes,” Brother George suggested to his cousin, who nodded. “Tell His Grace to come here in disguise with two of his men-at-arms. We will go to the meeting together, and we will go before our dishonest friend gets there so His Grace may secret himself and listen to what is said. Father Walter will incriminate himself nicely before he is arrested.”

“You are enjoying this,” Father Henry said with a grin. “But then you always did like games when we were boys together.”

“Indeed, and I did,” Brother George admitted cheerfully with an answering grin.

Early the following evening the archbishop came with two of his men-at-arms. He was dressed in a heavy, hooded dark cloak. Together the men walked to the small disreputable tavern by the city’s walls. Entering, they saw with relief that they were there before Father Walter. Brother George led them to the same table in the rear of the room where they had met first with Father Walter.

“This place is foul,” the archbishop murmured, his eyes sweeping the tavern.

“It is a perfect place for a villain, Your Grace,” Father Henry said quietly.

“God’s foot! Is that man fornicating with the tavern wench?” the archbishop asked. He pointed discreetly across the room, where a rough-looking man was lustily fucking a barmaid he had pinned against a wall.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Father Henry replied softly. “The wenches are for sale, as is the ale. But you and your men had best secret yourselves in the shadows here,” he advised.

No sooner than the three men had done so a tavern maid came to ask what the two men at the table would drink. She did not notice the others. “Ale or wine?” she asked with what she assumed passed for a seductive smile. “We have both, Good Fathers.”

“Ale,” they answered in unison.

“And would either of you want a little futtering this evening? ’Tis only a ha’penny unless you want my asshole, and then it’s a penny,” the wench said. “You look like two big strong men who could give a lass a good fucking.”

“Not tonight, dearie,” Brother George said, reaching out to pat her bottom. “We’re meeting someone on a matter of business. Bring three ales.”

“Didn’t I see you two the other night with Father Walter?” the wench inquired. She was not a striking girl, but pretty enough in the dimly lit room if a man was half-drunk. Her stringy hair was dark blond, but her skin was pockmarked, and she was missing one front tooth. But she had very large breasts.

“Aye, you did,” Brother George said.

“If it’s Father Walter you’re meeting, then I’ll be back later when your business is done. No one likes a good jogging like Father Walter. He’s as randy as a billy goat,” the wench said, and then she laughed heartily. “I’ll get your ale.” And then she flounced off.

“Turn your head and look,” Brother George said to Father Henry. “The villain has just come in from the street. Ah, he sees us, and comes. He has papers with him.”

Father Walter hurried to the table where the other two priests sat. “I’ve ordered ale,” Brother George said. “Let us wait to finalize our business until the wench returns and serves it.”

“Agreed!” Father Walter said.

The tavern maid rejoined them, three mugs of ale in her hands. Setting them on the table, she sat down in Father Walter’s lap with a giggle. “Do you want a little jog?” she asked him, provocatively wiggling her bottom in his lap.

Father Walter stuck his hand down the girl’s gown and pinched her breast. “Aye.” He nodded. “Come back later, Violet.” Then he tipped her from his lap.

“Here, Violet,” Brother George said and handed the wench a coin.

“A silver penny! ’Tis too much for just three mugs of ale, Good Father.”

“It’s for the ale, and for the pleasure you will give Father Walter later,” Brother George said with a grin.

“ ’Tis still too much,” the girl said slowly.

“Then take what is left over and buy something for your child,” Brother George told her quietly.

“How did you know I had a child?” Violet wanted to know.

Brother George shrugged, and the girl bobbed a curtsy before running off. He picked up his mug of ale and drank a deep draft. It was good, which surprised him, for the tavern was so low. “Now, Good Father, to business,” Brother George said. “Have you brought the documents I require?”

“I have, but one thing is missing. I do not have the names of the parties involved. Will you add them? Or shall I? I have brought my quill and inkpot.”

“Spread your parchments out, and I will tell you the names. You may write them into the document so there is no confusion in the matter,” Brother George said. He watched as Father Walter unrolled the parchments. The work was flawless, and there at the bottom of the bill of divorcement was the seal of the archbishop of York. “Your work is excellent,” he complimented. “No one will ever know it is a fraud.”

“The archbishop’s seal makes it quite official even if the old man hasn’t authorized such a divorce. The names now?” He set his inkpot on the table and drew out his quill.

“My master’s name is Sir Richard Dunn,” Brother George said, watching as the priest carefully wrote the name he had been given. “His wife is Mary Anne.”

Father Walter added the second name.

“Do you do all of this yourself?” Brother George answered. “The work is so fine.”

“I do,” Father Walter said. “I should not like to have to share my gains with anyone else. And, too, I should not like a dissatisfied client returning because the fraud was discovered. Your master should not be pleased when he remarries and gets an heir on his new wife to learn the child is a bastard. No! No! I do all my own work.”

“And the archbishop’s seal? Is it real?”

“His Grace has several seals. I took one once, and no one has been the wiser. No secretariat of a great man is so free from disorganization that everything can be accounted for, which allows for the more enterprising among us,” Father Walter admitted. “Now, if you are satisfied, I should like payment for my work. Four gold pieces I believe we agreed upon, and you have given me one as a down payment.”

Brother George drew a small pouch from his robes, and as he did Father Walter said, “You said you had also heard of my skills from another. Can you tell me who?”

“A priest named Father Peter, whose master, the lord of Wulfborn Hall, needed a dispensation to wed his son’s widow,” Brother George said, cupping the pouch in his hand but not yet releasing it to the dishonest priest.

“Aye! I remember him. I was able to extract three payments from his master, for the old fool lusted after his widowed daughter-in-law. It is not often I find someone as gullible as that lordling. If I had only been dealing with him I might have gotten more, but his priest began to get suspicious of the delay, so I turned over the dispensation I had written up for him to Father Peter so he might wed the woman.” He laughed. Then held out his hand again. “My gold,” Father Walter said.

“I think not,” Brother George replied. He turned to the shadows and said, “Have you heard enough, Your Grace?”

The archbishop of York stepped from the dim recess where he had been listening to everything that was said. His two men-at-arms were by his side. “Arrest him!” the archbishop said in a cold voice, “and take him to the cathedral dungeons.”

“What is this?” Father Walter cried, jumping back. “You have tricked me! And you have cheated me! A pox on you for it!”

Brother George stepped forward, and reaching out, he grasped the priest by the neckline of his robe. “Where is the gold coin I gave you the other day? You’ll have it on you, I know, for you would not hide it for fear it would be stolen. Where is it?” He began to rummage in the pockets of the robe, and then he smiled. “Here it is!” Taking the coin, he stepped back, releasing Father Walter. “I promised Sister Mary Agnes to donate this coin to her convent,” he told the archbishop, “and so I shall.”

“Before you leave York we must have your testimony, Brother George,” the archbishop said to him. “I know time is of the essence to you and so tomorrow you shall be examined by a panel of priests. And you as well, Father Henry.” He turned to Father Walter. “You will be defrocked, and then you will be executed as a warning to others who consider dishonesty,” he told Father Walter. “Take him away!”

“Help! Help!” the dishonest priest cried, drawing the attention of others in the tavern as he was dragged forward.

The archbishop followed, saying in a loud voice, “This is church business, my children. This unworthy priest has stolen and lied.”

“Make way for His Grace, the archbishop!” Brother George said as he stepped before York’s prelate. Father Henry brought up the rear. The inhabitants of the tavern looked the other way, and went back to the business of drinking and wenching. Those who knew Father Walter didn’t particularly like him and saw no reason to go to his defense. His pleas for aid were in vain. The archbishop’s men dragged him off down the street in the direction of the cathedral.

“An unpleasant business,” the archbishop said.