The Lady Chapel (10 page)

A good actor, Owen thought.

"Leave me to myself," Anna whispered.

Scorby stood up. "Well, of course I cannot stay here, and you cannot travel." He looked at his mother-in-law. "You will keep Anna here until she is healed?"

"She wishes to go to St. Clement's Nunnery when she is well enough to travel," Cecilia said.

Scorby's mask dropped momentarily. He rolled his eyes, disgusted. "That again."

Father Cuthbert found his tongue. "It will help both of you if Mistress Scorby is at peace with her Savior before she returns to you."

Scorby smirked at the priest. "Oh, yes, I smell the rat of pious counseling in this. Are you permitting her to eat these days, since she is suffering in other ways?"

"Paul!" Cecilia barked. "1 will not have a priest insulted in my house."

Paul Scorby spun round on his heel and marched out of the room.

Cecilia knelt beside her daughter, smoothed the damp hair from her face, and kissed her on the forehead. "Rest now, love. He will honor your wishes, I will make certain of that."

They found Paul Scorby standing by the fire drinking ale. He was a handsome man, if one looked at his features and imagined them without the petulant expression in the eyes and the pouting mouth. Even the shoulders suggested a self-pity that was unbecoming. Such a man was dangerous. Owen wondered at Gilbert Ridley's judgment, to have married his daughter to this man.

Cecilia picked up the pitcher of ale, offered Paul Scorby more. He let her fill his cup. Cecilia put a restraining hand on Paul's, holding the cup from his lips for a moment. "You will honor her wishes, Paul?"

His upper lip curled in a snarl. "Of course I will. It would be a

sacrilege if I refused, I am sure. Any day now the Pope himself will come on pilgrimage to pray at my wife's feet." Scorby downed the ale in one gulp and stormed out of the hall.

Father Cuthbert took a deep breath. "God was with us."

Cecilia and Owen exchanged a glance.

"I should like to go sit with Mistress Scorby and say morning prayers," Cuthbert said.

"That would comfort her, I am sure," Cecilia said.

Cecilia motioned for Owen to sit. She poured two cups of ale, put one in front of Owen, took a sip from the other. "My son-in-law behaves like a spoiled child."

"But he is not a child. He is an angry man."

"I know. I'm not a fool."

"I did not think that for a moment. I just want to make sure that you realize how dangerous he might be."

Cecilia sighed. "You will be relieved to get away from here. We are an unhappy household." She rubbed the back of her neck.

"You are tired."

"Very. I sat up most of the night with Anna. But it was not in vain. While I sat there staring at my daughter's ravaged face, I thought of something that might--I cannot say how, for I know so little about it--but it could perhaps have some bearing on the--deaths."

Owen leaned forward. "Anything you can remember might help."

"Gilbert spoke little business around me, but this incident I know about. It was thirteen years ago. A long time for someone to wait for revenge. But if he had been in prison ..." With her eyes, Cecilia asked Owen's opinion.

"Indeed. Prison gives a man much time to gnaw on bitterness."

"Have you been in prison?"

"No. But I've been captain of men who have. It can twist a man until his soul is wrung out of him and he's more animal than man."

Cecilia held Owen's gaze with her dark eyes, luminous in the pale, thin face. "So. I had best tell you about the incident."

"Why did you sit up with Anna last night? You had thought she was better."

Cecilia shrugged. "I could not sleep."

"It's a curse, isn't it, the restlessness that comes when you most need the forgetfulness of sleep? My wife sent along something to calm you. She was widowed a few years ago and remembers how impossible it was to rest."

"I shall take it gladly a few nights hence, when 1 know that Anna is truly improving and Paul is back in Ripon."

Owen nodded. "Do you want me to make sure that he has gone from here?"

"Please."

Owen was glad for the chance to stretch his legs and empty his bladder. He could smell the ocean in the driving wind. Another storm approached them from the North Sea.

The man at the gate assured Owen that Paul Scorby had ridden off.

"When do you think the storm will find us?"

"Soon, by the smell of it. 'Twill be over by midday."

Owen hoped the man was right about the storm, although he'd meant to be back on the road before midday. The wind whipped Owen's cloak about him as he returned to the house.

Cecilia Ridley paced before the hearth.

Owen sat down and helped himself to another cup of ale. "Now tell me what happened thirteen years ago."

Cecilia sat down again. "You know that Gilbert and Will were members of John Goldbetter's company?"

"Aye."

"The companies of wool merchants financed King Edward's war with France--did you know that?"

"1 can't say I ever wondered."

"Chiriton and Company were the organizers, and about twenty years ago, Goldbetter and Company loaned them money for the King. They all expected to get rich by it in the end, of course. But the King did not gain so much by the war as he had expected. He tried to put them off, tried to satisfy them with customs privileges. And then, just as the privileges began to pay off for them, the King took them away from his own merchants and gave them to the Hanseatic League, a trading federation of German towns that is very powerful. The King proved to be an inconstant friend to his own subjects."

"I did not think the King so unwise. To betray people in their pockets is dangerous."

"More foolish than dangerous, it seems. The merchants found a way to get their money despite the King. Chiriton and Company decided to win back their losses by illegal exporting. But they were caught. The Crown offered to forget their transgressions if they would provide a list of businesses that owed them money; the Crown would call in the loans and make a profit."

"Chiriton and Company were expected to betray their associates?"

Cecilia smiled. "I see why Gilbert, God rest him, said soldiers made bad merchants. You have a strong sense of honor. Gilbert never had soldiers working for him, except for Martin Wirthir, and Wirthir had little to do with the actual deals."

That name again. "Did you ever meet Martin Wirthir?"

"No."

Owen dropped that line for now. "So Chiriton and Company betrayed their associates?"

"Yes. But the company had played so much with their books, it was difficult to interpret them, and the Crown called in some associates in error. John Goldbetter was one of them. He was accused of still owing on bonds and letters of account. With Gilbert's help, he was able to produce documents proving he'd settled the debts years earlier. Goldbetter then countered that Chiriton and Company owed him over three thousand pounds. They settled out of court. That year, Gilbert was even more extravagant than usual on my birthday. I do not know the details of the settlement, but obviously money changed hands."

Owen thought about this. "And do you think that Chiriton and Company may have offered your husband something other than the money? Perhaps names?"

Cecilia shrugged. "That occurred to me. As did many other possibilities. I merely point out that Gilbert's business dealings might have involved some dishonesty. Some betrayals."

"Something that would make someone angry enough to murder?"

"Greed can be quite a passion with some. There is more. Three years ago, John Goldbetter was again brought before the Crown

and was outlawed. A year later he won a royal pardon, at the request of the Count of Flanders. I presume he'd made some sort of deal with the Count. And possibly also the Crown. But something about it disturbed Gilbert. He turned the business over to our son Matthew and came home."

"Just before Crounce's murder?"

"Yes."

"Did your husband testify personally?"

Cecilia nodded. "He was proud to appear before so august a company. He boasted of it."

"Did he meet the King?"

"Much to his regret, no. Gilbert was presented to Prince Edward, however, and that appeased him somewhat."

"The Count of Flanders requested Goldbetter's pardon, eh?"

"The wool trade is the lifeblood of Flanders."

"True. Did your husband know the Count?"

Cecilia shrugged. "He did not boast of it, but he was secretive about anything across the Channel, so he might not have boasted of it."

"And you think all this might have something to do with the deaths of your husband and Will Crounce?"

Cecilia looked down at her cup, which she pushed back and forth between her hands. "When 1 was betrothed to Gilbert, I was angry. Humiliated. He was a merchant. In trade. I was the daughter of a knight and niece to a bishop. My grandfather fought with our King's grandfather, the first Edward."

Owen did not like the direction this was taking. He was a commoner married to the daughter of a knight. "What does this have to do with your husband's death?"

Cecilia looked up, saw the expression on Owen's face. "Forgive me, I do sound as if I've wandered, but there is a connection. You see, I hated the idea of being married to someone whose purpose in life was to amass wealth. A greedy man." She rubbed the bridge of her nose wearily. "I was a simpleton. It is not only the merchants who are greedy. Gilbert was no worse than any of the others involved in this war with France. Even the King is in it for the wealth the double crown of England and France would bring him.

They all guard their wealth more jealously than they guard their wives."

"What are you saying?"

Cecilia Ridley suddenly went white. A hand came up to her mouth. She shook her head. "Nothing. I--Just that Gilbert and Will were probably murdered by a business partner. Greed is obviously the most common reason for murder."

Owen studied her. She had covered well with the comment, but he'd seen that realization, that she had almost-- What? Betrayed herself? Said too much? "That is all you meant to say?"

She kept her eyes averted. "I am sorry I took such a long way round. I am tired."

Well, that was true. But it bothered Owen as he went upstairs to pack.

7/ A Bloody Treasure

Rain pounded against the minster. It drummed down on the paving stones and the supporting columns where the roof was unfinished. The wind played every opening in the stones, wailing, shrieking, moaning, humming. But the sounds did not frighten Jasper. They comforted him. He was curled into a ball and tucked into a small opening in the Lady Chapel wall, inside, near the choir, where he was protected from the rain by the scaffolds of the masons. The masons and carpenters, members of his father's guild, let him stay there; they tried to protect Jasper. But he could not stay long. He must not stay anywhere too long, or the accidents would begin.

Even here.

Jasper had thought at first that he had gotten clumsy, what withhis mother's death and the horror of witnessing Master Crounce's murder and his thoughts being on them all the time, but the Riverwoman told him that it was dangerous for him to blame himself, that he'd best watch his back.

"Thou'rt the only one can point a finger at the men who murdered thy good Master Crounce. Thou sayest it was dark, thou couldst not see faces, but their fear and guilt will make them certain thou sawest, and they will fear thee. They will want thee dead, Jasper. Magda does not like to think of thee wrapped in a shroud like her dear Potter. Watch thy back and come to Magda when thou canst, show her thou'rt alive."

The Riverwoman was strange and frightening, with her piercing eyes and bony but strong hands, her clothes made of many colors, sewn together from others' castoffs, her sudden movements--so unexpected in a person her age, her weird house with the Viking ship upside down on the roof, the sea serpent hanging upside down to greet the visitor with a leer, and her scent--smoke, roots from deep in the earth, river water, blood. But Jasper trusted the Riverwoman as he trusted no one else. His mother had told him that Magda Digby was the only person in York who owed no one, and so she was free to be trustworthy; no one could wring a secret from her. So Jasper had gone to her when he'd broke his arm falling off a roof he was helping thatch, and again with bruises and cuts he suffered when he fell in a stable and grazed his side against a plough that had been half-buried in hay.

After the stable incident, Jasper decided to listen to the Riverwoman's warning. And his caution paid off. As soon as the folk he worked for began asking questions about Master Crounce's murder, Jasper disappeared. And the accidents stopped. Now and again he would return to the protection of the masons and carpenters at the minster, but even that was not safe for long.

So his comfortable cranny in the minster was a temporary home, one he appreciated at the moment with the storm beating against the stones. He curled up in a tighter ball and went back to sleep. But something woke him. A footstep, a sense of someone near. Jasper squirmed to the edge of his cubbyhole and looked out, wondering whether he had pushed too far back into the darkness

and had missed the dawn. He always tried to wake at dawn so he could relieve himself in private before the masons arrived.

At first Jasper could see nothing. It was still dark except for a predawn grayness where the roof stopped. But he heard something. It sounded like the hem of a cloak or skirt dragging on the paving stones. And there was a scent. Lavender water. His mother used to wear lavender water when Master Crounce visited. Jasper wondered whether it was his mother's ghost come searching for him. She would come to comfort him if she could. He would like that. He would like his mother to hold him and stroke his hair and tell him stories of his father.

But Jasper's several months on his own had taught him to be wary. If he was wrong, if it wasn't his mother but someone trying to make Jasper feel safe enough to reveal himself, he could be killed. So Jasper held his breath and listened.