The Guilt of Innocents (33 page)

‘Country,’ Alfred growled, kicking it away. ‘Full of death the country is. Give me a city – full of life, a city is.’

They were upon the outbuildings of Aubrey’s farm before Owen realised it, so changed was the clearing without the house. The charred remains were a scant memorial to a home in which a family had lived.

‘God was watching over her, to have escaped that,’ said Alfred as he crossed himself.

They stepped with care through the slushy debris in the ruin, gently nudging piles with their boots, but they found nothing of help. Footprints in the ashes gave evidence that others had already moved things about, so even had Owen found something of interest he wouldn’t have known whether or not it had been moved.

‘A hoard.’ Owen gazed round. ‘Let’s search the outbuildings while it’s light.’

Alfred looked doubtful, already stomping and blowing on his fingers. ‘What are we searching for?’

‘I don’t know,’ Owen admitted. ‘But I’ll know when I find it.’

Despite opening the doors of the outbuildings as wide as the snow and terrain allowed, they
found the interiors dark and difficult to search. In the one closest to the house, scorched on one corner but remarkably intact for having been so near, they found four large jugs of cider and a small barrel of wine.

‘They enjoy their drink,’ said Alfred. ‘Their food stores were likely in the house – ashes now, but I doubt they’ll starve. Their lord seems a generous man, eh?’

‘Dried apples here,’ Owen said, poking a sack hanging from a rafter.

Avoiding the building with the livestock for now, they tried one farther away from the house. When Alfred tripped over something near the rear wall they both crouched down, feeling with their hands how the floor bulged there. Alfred went for a shovel they’d noted in another building, while Owen kicked a hole in the wall to let in what little light was left.

‘This will warm me,’ Alfred said as he began to dig.

Gradually he uncovered a chest an arm’s length long and half as wide. He rested on the shovel once he’d uncovered the lid, watching Owen lift it.

‘God’s blood,’ Alfred murmured.

Owen gazed down at the contents: cloth, a pewter plate, a mazer, several lamps. He reached beneath the cloth, which felt like silk, and found a small box – inside were perhaps two dozen sterlings.

‘A hoard indeed,’ he said, sitting back on his heels. He wondered whether the gold cross had been but one minor part of this treasure, and who had helped Ysenda bury it. ‘I have a feeling Sir Baldwin might recognise some of this. Let’s dig it out and carry it back to the hall.’

‘I feared you’d want to do that,’ said Alfred.

‘I’ll share the work,’ Owen assured him.

By the time they reached the hall the shadows were very long. It was no small hole they’d had to dig, and though the chest was not full it was heavy and awkward to carry so far in the snow, across unfamiliar ground.

Lady Gamyll expressed great relief at their return, having feared for them in the dark and cold. ‘But what is this? Did you salvage some things from the fire?’

‘From one of the outbuildings,’ said Owen, sighing with relief as a servant pulled off his boots. ‘Where is Sir Baldwin?’

‘In the stables,’ said Lady Gamyll.

The servants asked where to put the chest.

‘By the fire,’ Owen suggested. ‘Sir Baldwin will wish to see it. Where is Aubrey?’

‘In the stables with my husband. Might we talk before I send for them?’

Owen readily agreed. ‘It has lain hidden a long while, there is no cause for hurry now. What is it?’

‘Dame Ysenda. She’s frightened the boy, moaning and calling out for my lord’s son.’

Osmund?’

Lady Gamyll took a deep breath and nodded. ‘I was glad that she spoke – it is a sign that the fever is abating and that she is still with us. But I cannot explain her calling for him.’

‘And it frightened Hubert.’

She met his eye, and he saw that she was worried. ‘He ran out to the stables. Perhaps it was not so much whose name she cried out but how she sounded.’ As Janet spoke she led them to a small table set with drink, near the fire. ‘I do not know her well, but I trow her voice sounds too weak for him to bear. Come, rest yourselves. We are quiet here this evening, but do ask for whatever you need.’

Owen thought that the tragedy had brought out a calm strength in her. Sir Baldwin was a fortunate man.

‘Where is Osmund?’ Owen asked as he took a seat. ‘I’ve not yet met him.’

The question made her ill at ease. She fussed with the drape of her wimple. ‘He was in a temper after the fire, arguing with his father about the smallest things. My husband said it was best that we leave him alone. Osmund would likely stay in his room behind the stables and take his meals at the inn in Weston for a few days, then rejoin us in the hall when he’d forgotten his anger. It is their way.’

‘You’ve not seen him since the searches yesterday?’

‘I have not seen him since the evening before.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘I know it must sound as if we’re a family at war, but my husband was away, and I’m not so much older than Osmund …’ her voice trailed off. Owen guessed she realised that he had not asked for an explanation and felt she’d revealed too much.

‘Ysenda’s calling out his name has you wondering what there is between her and Osmund,’ Owen said.

Blushing, she nodded.

‘Might one of the servants show us to Osmund’s room?’

Lady Gamyll seemed to finally grasp the significance of Owen’s questions. ‘To his – have you had news of him? Has he done anything wrong? Has something happened?’

Owen thought the order of her questions interesting. ‘Not so far as I know,’ he said, ‘but his name being the first on Dame Ysenda’s lips when she woke is of concern to me.’

‘I thought perhaps I should tell my husband – out of Master Aubrey’s hearing, of course. He might –’ She shook her head. ‘I cannot think but that they have been lovers.’ She called a servant over. ‘Escort Captain Archer and his lieutenant to Master Osmund’s room behind the stables.’

A weariness was settling over Owen despite thinking that he might finally get some answers. Riding so hard for a day and part of the morning was no longer the pace of his life, had not been
for a long while, and the aches were settling in and stiffening his stride. As they passed the front of the stables he could hear Aubrey’s deep voice and he realised how like his own father’s voice it was, a powerful singing voice. He must be tired to be thinking of the father Owen had not seen since leaving Wales as an archer in his youth. When Owen had at last returned to Wales a few years past he’d learned his father was long dead, and that he’d died horribly, struck down by lightening. It was not something he wished to think of right now.

The stables were of more solid construction and fabric than Aubrey’s hall had been. In the back was a high stone wall that broke the wind from the fields beyond, and in the courtyard a wooden stairway led up to a well-fitted oak door. The servant knocked, and another servant answered.

‘Master Osmund is away,’ he said.

‘You said naught of this at dinner,’ said Owen’s guide.

‘I don’t need to inform the household of my master’s comings and goings.’

Having no patience for servant chatter, Owen thanked their guide. ‘You are free to return to your duties in the hall.’

Clearly disappointed, the man shuffled down the steps.

‘He isn’t here, sir,’ said the servant, a man of perhaps twenty years with a deformed ear and a drooped eyelid.

‘What is your name?’ Owen demanded.

‘George, sir. I know you’re Captain Archer. I heard about you in the kitchen.’

‘You did, did you, George? Then you know that I’m on the archbishop’s business and you’ll stand aside while I look round your master’s room.’

Alfred put his hand on the door and pulled it open wider, startling the servant. ‘Whether you will or no, we will come in,’ said Alfred.

George moved aside, muttering something about hell.

The room was high-ceilinged though small, with one shuttered window. It was furnished with a curtained bed in the far corner, a brazier, several chests, and a small table with a pair of campaign stools. Owen thought it strangely lacking any indication of the man who lived there.

‘When did your master depart?’

‘Not sure, Captain.’

Weariness made Owen impatient. He grabbed the man by the shoulder. ‘If you bide here in this room you know when he departed.’

‘Morning after the fire,’ the servant gasped. ‘At dawn.’

Owen let him go. ‘Did he tell you where he was going, or when he’d return?’

The servant shook his head. ‘I knew he wasn’t just going to the inn in Weston because he took another shirt.’

‘Thank you for your help. You might want to
sit with your friends in the kitchen while we are here.’

‘I don’t think I should leave you unattended.’

‘I do,’ said Owen.

The servant nervously departed, peering in once more before shutting the door.

‘Let’s search the chests,’ Owen said.

One contained a number of documents and a ledger indicating a wide variety of business transactions.

‘He’s not an idle young man,’ said Alfred.

‘He’s certainly not sitting back to await his father’s passing,’ Owen agreed.

Another chest was filled with linen and hides, and Alfred was straightening out what he’d rumpled when he called out, ‘Here, now.’ He drew out a casket, no larger than two hands long and shallow. ‘Captain,’ he said, holding it out to Owen.

‘Remember the poison. Wipe your hands.’ Owen was thinking of the knife used on Drogo. He used some linen from the chest to protect his own hands as he took the casket and set it down.

Within were several small pouches of powder and a jar of unguent. Physicks or poisons, Owen could not immediately tell.

‘What is the likelihood that he would save the poison?’ he wondered aloud.

‘If this were his chamber in York, I’d say it was most unlikely – he doesn’t sound like a fool,’ said Alfred. ‘But so far from York, and in his father’s home, he might have felt safe.’

Owen nodded. ‘We’ll take this back with us, for Dame Lucie to examine.’

In the third chest they found an elegant pair of boots and several elaborate hats, including a green one trimmed in fur that sported several peacock feathers attached with a circular brass pin. Owen wondered whether Osmund was the finely dressed man whom Alice Tanner had seen on the riverbank with Nigel, the man with the furred and feathered hat. Many men might have such hats, but that Osmund owned one was of particular interest to Owen.

As they passed through the yard, Owen noticed Hubert standing in the stable doorway, cuddling a cat. He was glad the boy had found something warm and living. He’d looked so forlorn when sitting with his mother.

As Jasper headed down past the minster towards home, the late afternoon light reminded him of the afternoon less than a week earlier when he’d hurried after his friends and boarded the abbey barges. So much had happened since then. Drogo’s murder, Jasper’s journey to Weston with the captain, Nigel’s murder. And now, nothing. Waiting. For all the captain had praised his help on the journey, he’d left him behind this time. Dame Lucie had explained that this time might be more dangerous, and he should not miss more school. But Jasper was still upset. He felt betrayed, that he’d believed the captain’s praise only to learn it had been false.

He was fuming when he passed a finely-dressed man heading into the minster gates, but something made him turn to look again. He was glad that he had, for it was the young man who had talked to Father Nicholas the night of Drogo’s death, the one called Osmund, who Jasper had later realised must be Osmund Gamyll. He wondered what he was doing in York. The captain would be sorry to have missed him. Jasper turned back through the gate to follow him, but he’d vanished. He hurried towards school and, catching sight of Osmund just turning down Vicar Lane, he followed, trying to stay hidden in the long afternoon shadows.

Osmund stopped at Master Nicholas’s school and when the guard had passed around the corner on the near side, he tried the door. Jasper thought that worth the chase to witness. Failing to open it, Osmund turned down the alley on the far side. Jasper followed and peered round the corner, watching the man try a door farther down the alley that would lead into the same building. Jasper ducked back as Osmund looked around. Waiting what he hoped was long enough for the man to be walking away, Jasper peered around the corner. The alley was empty. Might he have broken in? Jasper crept carefully down the alley, listening for footsteps, and then tried the door himself.

‘Why is Captain Archer’s foster son following me?’

Jasper jumped. Osmund stood less than a hand’s breadth behind him, breathing down his neck.

‘Christ Almighty,’ Jasper cried. ‘I wasn’t following you, I’m looking for Master Nicholas.’

‘He does not seem to be in,’ said Osmund.

He was quite obviously Sir Baldwin’s son, though his hair was paler and his build much slighter. He was studying Jasper in a disturbingly focused manner as if he was boring into his soul.