Bone of Contention (40 page)

“He is not clever,” Magdalene said as the brother led her through the dim room toward a cot lit by a single candle, “but he is a good man. I am an embroideress in a good way of trade. If there is any comfort he desires, will you see that it is given him? I will pay.”

The infirmarian shook his head. “I do not think he will be with us long enough to desire any further comforts. He is bleeding deep inside, and I have no way to stop it. What you bring, your care and your kindness, will provide all the comfort he will need.”

Magdalene choked back a sob and brought out five pence from her purse. “For whatever purpose can bring him the greatest ease,” she said, pressing the coins into the hand of the infirmarian.

He looked down at the silver and sighed. “We will pray for his soul,” he said but he went away to fetch a stool, which he set beside the cot so she could sit in comfort and stay longer. “I will leave you with him. If you sit for a while, he may wake. He drifts in and out of sleep because of his weakness. Also we have dosed him for the pain.”

He left her then, disappearing into the shadows at the end of the long chamber, where Magdalene could barely make out the oblong deeper shadow of a doorway. She sat down beside the cot, loosening her veil so her masked face would not startle the wounded man.

“Manville,” she said softly, “can you hear me and speak?”

At first there was no response, but at a second repetition, his eyelids fluttered and then his eyes opened. He stared at her for a few moments and then asked, “Are you an angel?”

“No,” she said, smiling although tears stung in her eyes. “I am a friend of Hertha’s. She could not come, but she sent me to tell you how sorry she was that you were hurt. She is very angry also, that anyone should hurt you. She asked me to come because I have a strong, brave friend who will avenge your hurt—if you can tell me who did this.”

“Hertha likes me?” he asked in a small, wondering voice.

“Yes, she does, and she wishes to see you avenged. Who wounded you, Manville?”

“Didn’t see,” he said. “Pissing. Heard someone at the door. I moved aside to make room…” His brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “He hit me. Why did he hit me? I was moving out of the way.”

“He is an evil man. I think he is the man who killed St. Cyr. Do you know who did that?”

“Yes.” He smiled a little. “Know who. Make…make trouble for him. Spoil…spoil the game.”

“But who is it? My friend will punish him for what he has done to you and to St. Cyr.”

“Aimery.” Tears came into his eyes, ran down his face. Magdalene found a cloth on a little table near the cot and wiped his face. He said, “Thirsty.”

She saw a covered pitcher and a cup and assumed since it was there that he was allowed drink. She poured a little into the cup and lifted his head. He drank. His eyes fluttered shut. Magdalene laid his head on the pillow again.

“Knew Carl when he was…butcher’s son…Culham,” he whispered. “Long ago. Not me. From Sutton. Never saw him. Never knew name Carl, no Aimery…Aimery recognized him. Saw him go in…”

His voice faded and his eyes closed again. Magdalene bit her lip and waited. After a little while she said, “Manville, can you tell me nothing about this man? How will my friend find him?”

His eyes opened again. “Aimery knew him. He said…he had come up in the world.”

“What did he look like, Manville?”

“Look like?” His head moved a fraction to and fro on the pillow. His brow furrowed. “Could show…if I saw.”

He looked distressed because he was unable to satisfy her. Magdalene said, “Never mind,” abandoning any hope of a description. Instead she asked, “But why should he attack you?” hoping that Arras would give her some clue.

He tried to smile again. “Figured…what Aimery meant. Tell them not to go…there. Spoil…”

“Surely he wouldn’t try to kill you for that. Did Aimery tell you anything else he knew about that evil man, not about the lodging?”

“Told me, long ago…” His eyes opened wider but his voice was weaker. “Long ago, Carl saw…girl killed. Carl had…maid… Late to meet mistress. Carl…no, Aimery…must call him Aimery. Followed…saw…dead girl. Then…killed maid too. Carl was afraid. Hid… Then he…became my friend. Wanted…learn to fight.”

“No, not long ago, Manville. Something that happened here, in Oxford,” Magdalene said urgently.

His eyes had closed again, now they opened only to slits and closed again. “Met again…Oxford. Lodging…” It was a thread of a whisper and tears glittered in the slit his eyes were open. “Tried…”

The last word was more a movement of his lips than a spoken sound. Magdalene took his hand and squeezed it. “You did very well, Manville. Very well. You did everything right. You remembered.”

His lips twitched, perhaps he meant to smile at the praise. Magdalene would have said more, but tears choked her voice as she sought for new words of comfort. She was angry with herself for having plagued the dying man, but if he was to be avenged she had to discover whom to be avenged upon. Perhaps if she let him rest a while, he would regain some strength and be able to tell her more.

His broad, coarse-featured face was smoothed now of the worried frown he wore most of the time. Poor man. He had spent his life puzzled, trying to understand, trying to please. And she was planning to make his last moments as miserable as the rest of his life. Tears filled Magdalene’s eyes and she had to look away from his peaceful face.

Fighting her pity and guilt, she glanced around the room, back to where she had seen some shelves when she came in. She could not see the shelves now, only an irregularity in the darkness that shifted as she watched. She looked more intently, but all was still. Had a shadow moved beside the shelves or was it only the wavering light of the candle?

The room was really dark now and her vision impaired by the lighted area in which she sat. She turned her head away from the light and closed her eyes to allow them to adjust— When she opened them again, she stared purposefully at the place where she had sensed movement. No movement now, but was there a darker shadow there?

Suddenly Magdalene remembered Bell calling her a fool for drawing the murderer’s attention with her questions. She swallowed. This interview with Manville was worse. If someone was watching, he would have heard her questions but not Manville’s faint replies. Now she also remembered her promise not to go out alone. Rand was supposed to have followed her. Where was he?

Trying to control her breathing so she would not appear panic-stricken, she looked down and then, keeping her head bent toward Arras but letting her eyes glance around the room she said, “Manville, Manville, wake up.” And gasped, rising to her feet, as a shadow detached itself from the wall and came deliberately toward her.

She reached for the pitcher to use as a weapon, but before she could decide whether to throw it or strike with it, Brother Infirmarian came into the light. Relief turned her knees to water so that she sat down on the stool again. Doubtless the infirmarian had been waiting politely out of earshot until he saw that the wounded man could not respond. His actions confirmed her supposition. With his eyes carefully averted from her face, he went to the cot and bent over it.

“I do not think you will be able to rouse him again,” he said gently.

“I must have exhausted him,” Magdalene admitted guiltily.

“I am so sorry. I hoped he could tell me who had attacked him.”

The infirmarian straightened up but still did not look at her. “We asked him also, but he could not or would not tell us. I do not understand this. He did not seem like a person who could arouse a stronger feeling than irritation, yet apparently this stabbing was not the result of a brawl. He seems to have been attacked, and with intent to kill, while using the privy. He would have been dead at once—the knife was well placed—but he was wearing boiled leather armor so the blade did not go quite deep enough. Did he expect to be attacked? Do you know why he was attacked?”

Magdalene bent forward to squeeze Manville’s hand one more time, then placed his arm by his side and stood up. “There have been two other killings, Brother. I do not know whether you have heard about them. One was Manville’s friend Aimery St. Cyr, and the other was Sir Jules of Osney. I am much afraid that the killer believed Manville knew something about those deaths and tried to silence him.”

“That is dreadful. Was he able to tell you anything?”

“He was wandering. If some fact was mixed in with all the memories of which he spoke, I will need to winnow it out. If I come back tomorrow…”

The infirmarian bent over the cot again, touched the wounded man’s cheek, moved his fingers to the base of his throat and then under his ear. His lips thinned and he straightened up. “You can try, but I cannot hold out much hope that he will be able to speak to you—that he will even live out the night.”

Magdalene nodded and used the edge of her veil to wipe away a few tears. Seeing how flaccid Manville’s features were, she too had little hope that he would wake again, or be able to tell her more than he had. She sighed.

“I know he is not penniless,” she said. “He had some small income, but he never told me from where it came. It was willed to his friend St. Cyr, but St. Cyr was killed two or three days ago. There should be enough to bury him decently. I know he was a man-at-arms in a troop captained by Raoul
de Samur, one of Waleran de Meulan’s men. He should have more information than I, since this was the first time I had seen Manville in many years.”

“Thank you. I will send a lay brother to ask about the burial. Would you like a lay brother to see you home? It is quite dark.”

Magdalene’s lips parted to accept the offer and then she closed them together tightly. That shadow she had seen was only the infirmarian, and she did not want anyone at St. Friedesweide to know that she was lodged at the Soft Nest, a whorehouse. Men sometimes made miraculous recoveries. If Manville became able to speak again, she did not want to be denied the opportunity to question him further.

“I thank you, but I have only a little way to go beyond the churchyard. I am sure I will be safe.”

She drew her veil over her head and across her face and the infirmarian uttered a little sigh. “Then you will want the north door of the church,” he said. “It is shortest to go across the cloister, and since you are veiled and we will not linger, I am sure that will be best.”

He set out briskly, assuring her as they went that he had earlier sent for a lay brother who would sit with the wounded man now that she was gone. Magdalene breathed a sigh of relief. That explained the shadow much better than that it belonged to the infirmarian. The door to which he had gone and doubtless come back from was not near enough to the wall where the shelves were for the movement to have been his. But if a lay brother had come in without her noticing and had waited by the shelves…

They entered the church by the door that connected to the monastery. It was almost black inside, and only the faint reflection of the altar lamp on the columns along the aisle saved Magdalene from crashing into one. Sensing her start, the infirmarian slowed his pace while they made their way across the nave, both crossing themselves and genuflecting as they passed the altar.

“Careful, there are more columns,” the infirmarian murmured as they reached the north aisle.

Magdalene sensed him stepping to the side and peered right and left to pick a path. Something moved, and her heart seemed to leap into her throat. Then she saw it was the infirmarian, gesturing past the columns to a rectangle that was a paler gray against the black, and she breathed again.

“There is the door,” he said, “I will leave you here. It is lighter outside and I must get back to my patient.”

“Thank you,” Magdalene said, and he was gone, passing swiftly through the darkness with the ease and confidence of long familiarity.

She stood still, staring into the dark, and caught what she thought was a single glimpse of him as he crossed in front of the altar light. Then she heard the scritch of leather on stone. With an indrawn breath, she rushed toward the open door, only to strike one shoulder against a column. Pushing herself away from it, she ran headlong for the rectangle of gray light. Something caught her veil; she yanked it free, stumbled out the door and almost fell down the two broad steps of the porch, her body twisting as she bent and staggered, trying to regain her balance.

Something whistled past her head, and she thought she heard a man’s angry shout. Magdalene gasped, too frightened to scream, and leapt forward, tugging at her eating knife. Someone was behind her. She could almost feel the heat of his body, sense a motion that was a threat. She grabbed the sheath of her knife to free it more easily, but before it came loose, a hand seized her and pushed her hard. She fell, rolled, freed her knife, and drew breath to scream for help. But no one was near her now, and a man’s heavy steps pounded past her and up the church porch. Rand? Magdalene rolled over, and sensing no threat managed to sit up.

There was light enough to see, at least light enough at the end of the long twilight of summer for her to see a tombstone nearby. She knew she should run, try to reach the safety of Blue Boar Lane, but her legs shook and she thought she would fall if she tried to walk so she sat down on the tombstone to catch her breath. What a fool she was! She should have gone out the east door into the South Way, where there would have been others in the street. She shivered. That was no protection. He could have come up behind her…

Stop it,
she said to herself.
Stop imagining horrors that did not happen
.
Nothing happened
.
You are safe.
But was she? What if the killer cut down Rand? She clutched her eating knife and tried again to stand.

A dark figure appeared on the porch. Once more Magdalene drew breath to scream for help.

“Sorry, Mistress Magdalene,” Rand said as he started down the porch steps. “It’s black as pitch in that church and I ran into one of the columns.” He rubbed his head ruefully. “He got clean away, and I never caught a glimpse of him.”