14 - The Burgundian's Tale (14 page)

‘Was it you, Master Morgan, who attacked me in Needlers Lane last night and warned me to mind my own business?’

The housekeeper’s head jerked up at that and she spilled some of her food as she looked from me to her fellow servant. I thought I heard her breathe, ‘You fool!’ but I couldn’t be certain.

‘Why would I want to attack
you
?’ the Welshman growled; but he bent closer over his plate and refused to meet my eyes. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘You must have heard of me, both from Dame Judith and from Mistress Graygoss here,’ I said, glancing at the housekeeper as I did so. Her expression confirmed my guess.

William shrugged. ‘Perhaps I did – what of it? It’s no business of mine what arrangements Duke Richard wants to make to solve this murder. Besides, how did I know what you look like? This morning was the first time we’d met.’

‘You may have been looking out of a window when I spoke with Mistress Graygoss yesterday. Or she may have given you a description of me.’

He shovelled another spoonful of mutton stew into his mouth, which he wiped on the back of his hand. ‘I was home all yesterday evening,’ he said thickly.

‘You didn’t go into the city to see the festivities in honour of the Duchess Margaret, then?’

He shook his head vigorously. ‘Why should I? Seen enough of them during the day.’

‘So my attacker wasn’t you?’

‘Told you, I was home.’

I didn’t believe him, but there was no point in arguing about something I was unable to prove. I changed the subject. ‘What was your opinion of Fulk Quantrell?’

Another spoonful of stew was shovelled out of sight and swallowed before he answered. ‘Not my place, is it now, to form o-pin-i-ons’ – he gave ironic weight to every syllable – ‘about my betters?’

I turned to the housekeeper. ‘Did you have an opinion, Mistress Graygoss?’

She was busy stacking dirty dishes into piles and did not look up from her task. ‘Fulk was a nice enough young fellow,’ she replied in a colourless tone.

‘Oooh! He was lovely,’ the smaller of the two girls protested. ‘Ever so kind. Talked to me a lot, he did.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh … Just things. My family, where I lived.’ She giggled and blushed. ‘Once he kissed me.’

‘Take no notice of Nell,’ Mistress Graygoss advised me calmly. ‘She’s a daydreamer.’

‘I am not!’ Nell expostulated wrathfully. ‘Master Fulk did kiss me. Ask Betsy if you don’t believe me. She saw him do it.’

The bigger girl nodded. ‘He did kiss her, it’s true, but it was only a peck on the cheek.’

‘And did he talk to you, as well?’ I asked her.

‘No. He could never be bothered with me.’

This surprised me. Of the two, she had by far the more attractive face and figure – something I should have expected to weigh heavily with any man. But then I recalled that Jocelyn St Clair had accused Fulk of really preferring men to women, which might explain the matter. I turned once again to William Morgan, who had finished his meal and was picking shreds of meat from between his teeth.

‘What
did
you think of Master Quantrell?’ I pressed him.

He spat into the rushes covering the kitchen floor. ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? He was the mistress’s nephew. If she was fond of him, that was good enough for me.’ He tossed back some ale, got up and went out.

Paulina Graygoss said, ‘You musn’t mind him. William is devoted to Mistress St Clair. His father was servant to Edmund Broderer, her first husband, and his mother died, I fancy, when William was born. Owen Morgan seems to have been a harsh father and by all accounts beat him a lot. When Judith married Edmund, she put a stop to all that – said she wouldn’t have an unhappy child under her roof and made herself responsible for the boy. William’s never forgotten it.’

A thought occurred to me. ‘Of course, William must have known Fulk as a child. Didn’t Mistress Quantrell live with her sister and Edmund Broderer for some years after her husband was killed?’

Paulina Graygoss nodded, sitting down again in her chair at the head of the kitchen table. Betsy and Nell, who were waiting to wash the dishes, subsided gratefully on to their stools, glad of a further respite from their chores.

‘Now that you put me in mind of it,’ the housekeeper said, ‘yes, he must have done. Funny, he’s never mentioned it. There again, William doesn’t say much about anything. He’s a deep one. Welsh people are usually very voluble, but not him.’

‘Have you been Mistress St Clair’s housekeeper for long?’ I asked. Bertram was ogling Betsy. I let him get on with it.

‘Ten years. I came to her just after she married her second husband, Master Threadgold. Alcina would have been about eight at the time. A rather sad little soul I thought her. But not surprising, I suppose. Her mother had died when she was one and she’d been brought up in that house next door with just her father and that brother of his for company. But with Mistress St Clair to pet her and make a fuss of her, she soon blossomed.’

‘Mistress St Clair seems very fond of children. A pity she’s never had any of her own.’

‘A great pity,’ the housekeeper sighed. ‘But that’s so often the way of things, isn’t it? God has his reasons, I suppose, and it’s not for us to question them. All the same, one can’t help wondering … Of course, she had Fulk for six years, but as I’m sure you know by now, her sister went to Burgundy in the Lady Margaret’s train, taking Fulk with her.’

Mistress Graygoss was growing loquacious and I was careful to keep refilling her cup from the jug of ale still standing on the table. ‘Wasn’t that also the year her first husband died?’

‘Yes, I believe it was. He was drowned, poor soul, in the river. Mind you, he was a bit of a drunkard by all accounts. Spent a lot of his time in various city ale houses. Lost his way coming home one night and fell in the Thames. Not an uncommon history.’

‘He left Mistress St Clair a very wealthy widow,’ I remarked in what I hoped was a noncommittal tone; but the housekeeper eyed me sharply.

‘That’s as may be, but you needn’t read anything into that. She was very fond of him, I fancy. I think, too, she must have missed him dreadfully after he died and her sister went to Burgundy, or she wouldn’t have married Justin Threadgold.’

‘You didn’t like Master Threadgold?’

‘No, I did not,’ was the positive answer. ‘A vicious man, who didn’t hesitate to raise his hand to both the mistress and his daughter. I reckon Mistress St Clair knew she’d made a mistake in marrying him almost before the marriage was a few months old. Certainly by the time I came to her. I’ve seen bruises on her body that would make your hair stand on end, chapman. And I fancy she often protected Alcina from his anger and took the punishment herself. She must have been very lonely indeed even to have thought of wedding him in the first place. And he took his fists to all the servants – well, to those that stayed. In the end, it was just myself and William Morgan. Fortunately, after they’d been married four years, Master Threadgold caught a bad fever and died of it. No one mourned him, believe me. Then, two years ago, the mistress married the master and became stepmother to young Jocelyn. He and his father are a nice enough pair.’ Mistress Graygoss sighed again. ‘But I was quite happy as we were.’ She suddenly seemed to recollect herself and jumped to her feet. ‘Now, what in the Virgin’s name am I doing sitting here gossiping to you?’

She emptied her half-full cup of ale into the rushes and ordered Nell to bring a bowl of water, together with a bundle of twigs and some sand with which to scour the dirty pots and pans, making it plain that our conversation was at an end. But I was quite satisfied with what I had learned. I gave Bertram a nudge and ruthlessly dragged him away from his flirtation with Betsy.

‘Will the family have finished their dinner yet?’ I asked the housekeeper. ‘If so, I’d like to speak to Mistress Threadgold.’

I
was informed that the family had been served before us, and that a plate of apple fritters had been left in a chafing-dish for consumption after the mutton stew. I at once felt hard done by. I could have fancied an apple fritter, had any been on offer, a sentiment echoed by Bertram in a disgruntled whisper as we again mounted the stairs to the same parlour where, only an hour or so before, the family had breakfasted. This brief interval between meals seemed not to have blunted the appetites of either Master or Mistress St Clair or of Alcina, judging by the scarcity of food remaining on the table. (There was no sign of Jocelyn; presumably our talk had delayed him and he had not yet returned from the cordwainer’s in Watling Street.)

‘What now?’ demanded our reluctant hostess, glancing up and becoming aware of Bertram and myself hovering just inside the door. ‘Has Paulina given you your dinner? And if so, why are you still here?’

‘Mistress Graygoss has fed us and fed us handsomely,’ I said, nobly suppressing a complaint about the lack of apple fritters and averting my envious gaze from the one that was left in the chafing-dish. ‘But I need to speak to Mistress Threadgold. Then my henchman and I will be on our way.’

The henchman gave an indignant yelp at this description, but I took no notice.

Mistress St Clair looked enquiringly at her stepdaughter.

‘Oh, very well,’ Alcina conceded, glancing at my companion’s royal livery. ‘I suppose I must.’ (Bertram continued to have his uses.)

Judith St Clair rose to her feet. ‘You’d better stay here, then. Nell and Betsy can clear the table later, when you’ve finished talking. Godfrey, I’m sure you’re wanting to return to Marcus Aurelius.’ There was a hint of long-suffering in her tone.

‘Indeed, my love!’ he readily agreed, clapping me on the shoulder as he shuffled in his down-at-heel slippers towards the door. ‘“Love the trade which you have learned and be content with it,”’ he advised, obviously quoting his favourite author. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not this was meant for me and had a double-edged meaning, so I made no answer, merely seating myself opposite Alcina in the chair vacated by her stepfather. I turned to bid Bertram take the stool next to mine just in time to see him wolfing down the lone fritter that I had had my eye on.

‘It was going cold,’ he mumbled defiantly, meeting my accusing gaze.

I maintained a reproachful silence and turned my attention back to Alcina. ‘Mistress Threadgold,’ I said, ‘I know that on the night of Fulk’s murder you followed him to the Broderer workshop in Needlers Lane. I also know from Lionel Broderer and his mother what transpired there. After Master Quantrell had spoken to you so unkindly and left, you ran out after him. What happened then? Did you catch him up?’

Alcina shook her head. ‘There was no point. He was in one of his moods. He was punishing me because I had spoken up for Brandon when he and Fulk had come to blows that morning, during the maying. Fulk was very jealous of me,’ she added, her eyes filling with tears. (She had obviously worked things out to her satisfaction. In her own mind, her lover’s reputation had been salvaged.) ‘I knew he’d be off drinking for the rest of the evening, but I guessed he wouldn’t go to the Bull, as he usually did, in case he ran into Jocelyn and Brandon. So it was of no use looking for him there. He could have been in any of the inns or ale houses in the city.’

‘So what
did
you do?’

‘I came back to the Strand and went next door to see my uncle. I hadn’t visited him for quite some while.’ She grimaced. ‘We … We’re not all that fond of one another’s company.’

When I asked her why that was, she shook her head, but I suspected the reason to be that Martin Threadgold had made no push to protect her from her father when she was young.

‘How long did you stay at your uncle’s?’

‘For the rest of the evening, until it was time for bed.’

‘Even though you don’t like him?’ queried Bertram, spitting an apple pip into the rushes.

She flushed. ‘I didn’t say I don’t like him. “Not fond of his company” was the expression I used. We get on well enough provided we don’t see too much of one another.’

‘What time was it when you returned home?’ I asked.

‘Not late.’ Was the answer just a little too emphatic? ‘It was dusk, but not perfectly dark.’

‘Was anyone about?’

‘Paulina was in the kitchen. I looked round the door and said goodnight to her.’

‘Was she alone?’

‘Yes. At least, I didn’t notice anyone else. I expect Betsy and Nell had gone to bed. They knew my stepmother wouldn’t be needing them again because she had one of her headaches and had taken a poppy-juice potion. I don’t know where William was. Off in some alehouse, I expect. My stepfather was in his room, reading. I heard him coughing. I called out to him as I passed his door, but he didn’t answer. Once he gets absorbed in one of his folios, he’s oblivious to everything else.’

‘How did you get into the house?’

Alcina looked surprised. ‘From the street, of course. Paulina always waits up until the watch has cried twelve; then she goes round and bolts all the doors. It’s one of my stepmother’s few rules – but the one she’s strictest about – that everyone shall be home and in bed by midnight.’

‘And does Mistress Graygoss make sure that all of you are in before she locks up?’

Alcina looked startled. ‘I shouldn’t think so. She’d have to peep into all the bedchambers, wouldn’t she? And I hope she wouldn’t do that.’

‘Has anyone ever been locked out?’ I queried.

Alcina shook her head. ‘Not that I know of. Certainly not Josh or me. I told you: we respect my stepmother’s few rules because she’s generally very tolerant of the liberties we take.’

‘What about William Morgan?’

‘Oh, him!’ Alcina was dismissive. ‘I wouldn’t know. That man’s a law unto himself. But if he ever
has
spent a night out of doors, it’s never been mentioned.’

‘There’s the so-called secret stair,’ I reminded her. ‘The one that leads from Mistress St Clair’s bedchamber to the passageway outside the kitchen. Where, of course, there’s a door that opens into the garden.’

‘But to use that, even if it was left unbolted, you’d either have to climb the wall from the lane that runs between this property and my uncle’s … Mind you, it’s not impossible,’ she admitted after a moment’s hesitation. There are plenty of footholds on both sides. I’ve climbed it myself when I was a child and didn’t mind hoisting my skirt above my waist. But I wouldn’t attempt it now.’ She smiled primly and cast down her eyes. I had no faith in this sudden modesty.