Chains of Folly (4 page)

“But why would a
whore
have a letter from Gloucester? And why should Robert write me such a letter?”

“Because you are the pope’s legate and Gloucester hopes you will hold neutral if he should invade? Because he knows of your influence with your fellow bishops? My lord, surely you know the possible answers to that question better than I. And there is another possibility. Someone could have gone to Gloucester and urged him to write the letter.”

“To take advantage of my anger over Stephen’s latest outrage. Yes. I thought of that. But to give the letter to a whore? A
dead
whore?”

“For that I cannot suggest a reason, my lord. Frankly, I think it ridiculous. If the intention was to smirch you with friendship to Gloucester, who is a traitor to the king, surely the enemy who obtained the letter could have pretended to have discovered it by accident and carried it to the king or bawled aloud of what he had found.”

The bishop’s lips folded into a thin line. “So I thought myself.”

“There is one other possibility, my lord. The woman was not a
common
whore in the sense that she lay in ditches or worked in the stews. She was likely a woman who had a keeper or several clients and she entertained those clients in some chamber of her own. It is possible that she stole the letter from one of those clients.”

“Stole a letter? How would a whore know anything about the importance of a letter?”

Bell shrugged. “Magdalene says that men tell whores the strangest things. Could he have been attempting to make himself important in her eyes? Could he have boasted that he had come from the great Robert of Gloucester’s court?”

“Boasted to a whore?”

Bell shrugged again, a tinge of color in his face. “Men do. Especially to the better kind of whore. And this one—she did not look very attractive dead, but her face was pleasant and if it were full of expression, lit with laughter and playfulness, she might have been quite enchanting. At least attractive enough to make a man wish to please her.”

Winchester sighed. “Perhaps I have been a priest too long. I cannot see it.” Then a brief smile touched his lips. “No. No. I cannot say that. The delicious Magdalene is still far too tempting and requires stern discipline and a prayer or two to dismiss from my mind. Well, what did she say?”

“That she would do whatever she could to discover who the woman was and to whom she was connected. And when I described the woman, Diot and Letice both said they
might
know who it was. I will take them to the mortuary chapel tomorrow morning.”

“Why did you not take them then?”

“It was too late. Clients were on their way. Magdalene will serve you to the best of her ability, but—” Bell smiled bitterly “—she will not allow anything to disrupt the smooth functioning of her business.”

“And what is the point of taking the mute with you? She cannot tell you anything.”

Bell laughed. “Do not you believe it, my lord. Oh, Letice cannot make a sound. She cannot scream if she is hurt nor laugh aloud when she is happy, but look…” Bell’s fingers played out the pattern that Letice’s had shown him.

The bishop frowned. “She implied that the woman we found had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. How did she know that?”

“I don’t think she did know anything, my lord. That was just the easiest way to point out that a woman with a broken neck does not get up, walk up a flight of stairs, and sit down in a chair.”

With a discontented moue, Winchester said, “All those women are far too clever for anyone’s good but their own.”

Bell swallowed, a cold finger running down his back. He felt like the worst kind of traitor. If what he had told the bishop caused Winchester to turn against Magdalene, Bell would never forgive himself, but he did not dare say anything in defense of the women of the Old Priory Guesthouse. The best he could do for them was to look patient and indifferent. And to his relief, the bishop turned to a low pile of parchments at his elbow.

He picked them up and handed them to Bell. “Here are complaints, some from Father Holdyn, a few from local people about churches ill maintained in one way or another. I want you to visit them and see with your own eyes whether the complaints are justified. If the complainant was not Father Holdyn, speak to the person, and try to speak to others in the parish. If the complaint is justified, then speak to the priest and…ah…see that the problem is amended. With this other trouble we have, I do not want to use Church discipline if I can avoid it.”

“Yes, my lord.” Bell glanced out the window, saw that the sun was still well up. “If you have nothing else for me to do, I will start on this at once.”

* * * *

Magdalene watched Bell go out the door and then returned her attention to the smoked salmon on her trencher. There was a warmth in her, a sense of familiar comfort that slowly cooled into misery. He had been much as always, but she knew the breach between them was not mended.

More the fool he. He was happy here. His patience with Ella was remarkable. He was as quick to understand Letice’s signing as any of them, and he knew Diot for what she was. Why, why could he not just accept the Old Priory Guesthouse as his home, the women as his family, take his joy with her when he desired, sleep in her bed like a long time husband when he was weary? He did not despise the other women for being whores. He understood their necessity and, despite Church training, did not judge. Why did the fact that she loved William too drive him mad?

What a fool she had been to tell him that! It was one of those things he had no need to know. She should have found another excuse for staying in Oxford…that she dared not refuse any request William made. Bell would have believed that. He had learned to accept the fact that she lay with William when he asked…her lips curved wryly. Well, if no one mentioned it. Bell would not think about it, but acceptance was too positive a word for his reaction.

Suddenly Magdalene stopped chewing and swallowed the mouthful of fish. She took another with more appetite. It had occurred to her that just thinking about Bell made her feel better. Why should she be miserable? It was ridiculous. Because she feared to be hurt again, she would suffer for who knew how long now?

Utter foolishness, specially when Bell missed being with her—with them all—as much as she missed having him. She had seen tears in his eyes twice. She had seen how he looked at her women, as if they were dear ones he had believed dead and had found restored to him.

Moreover, Ella was not all wrong about Bell and his long sword making the house safer. Magdalene pursed her lips. Now there was a ploy she had never thought of using. What if she paid him for his protection of their premises with her body, as most whores paid for services provided for them? If she suggested it. Bell would have a fit! But really, it was not such a bad idea to remind him that she
was
a whore, not a wife who happened to be running a peculiar business. A stifled giggle escaped her.

Diot’s head lifted. “Has that dark cloud begun to lift?”

“Perhaps,” Magdalene said. “Perhaps it has. It is something I need to think about. We will see.”

“He is a very peculiar man—half very fine, half a natural killer. Do you know how he got that way?”

Magdalene smiled. “Yes, I do. Pillow talk, but not secret. He would tell you if you asked. He came from a large and happy family. His father was a knight of very comfortable circumstances but little ambition and he had two older brothers and three older sisters.”

“Ah. And he was the pet of the sisters, no?” Diot asked with a smile.

“He did not put it that way, but yes, I think so. He is very comfortable with women and does not immediately see them as bedmates.”

Diot nodded. “But how did he come by reading and writing and not only French but Latin?”

“What was his father to do with a third son? The estate would bear a small living for a second, but to divide it farther would make all three too poor, so Bell was educated for the Church.”

Letice laughed soundlessly and shook her head.

Magdalene laughed too. “You are right. Bell was not cut out for the Church. He told me that at first he was quite content. He has a keen mind and he enjoyed what he was taught at the abbey and readily learned to read and write and cipher. But unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on the way you look at it—included with the saints’ lives were tales of the Knights Templar and the Hospitaliers. And there was a knight who held abbey lands and came with his troop.”

Diot shook her head. “Once. I would wager he would not need to see armed men more than once. I said he was half killer.”

“He is
very
good. I have seen him fight.” Magdalene nodded. “And he enjoys it. He craves excitement the way a drunkard craves drink. Apparently when he first said he wished to be a knight, he was lessoned in how hard a path it was by—” Magdalene’s voice faltered as she remembered Sir Ferrau, who had murdered three people and had nearly killed her before Bell came to her rescue “—a man now dead.”

“I warrant Bell did not need a second lesson.”

“No, he bribed the men-at-arms who stayed at the abbey to teach him, and at fifteen he ran away. He took service as a mercenary aboard a trader.”

“Ah, clever. That way his father could not reach him and drag him back.”

Magdalene chuckled. “He told me his father was furious and it was years before his mother could soften him. But she, poor woman, all that time had been having nightmares of her baby dead and drowned and she wept and pleaded until Bell’s father relented and appealed to Winchester for a place for his son. That Bell could read and write Latin as well as French was enough of an advantage to win him a trial. That he was Bell made him a favorite.”

Diot nodded again. “From what you have told us, Winchester is the kind to appreciate Bell’s cleverness.”

“Oh, yes, and the fact that he is not coarse and crude but can be vicious when necessary. But did I not see you frown when Bell described the dead woman? Do you think you know her?”

“I hope not,” Diot replied. “When I first came to London, before I found a place for myself, I stayed with a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman who had a mole just where Bell pointed. Her charge was reasonable and she was pleasant enough, but she would not let me bring men to her place and when she heard her patron was about to return, she told me to go. She did not want me to meet her patron, I suppose.”

“And you, Letice?”

The mute nodded, then made a sign for her compatriots and then, looking frustrated, signed that it was too complex to explain, even to write. Nonetheless she went and fetched her slate.

“Se,”
she wrote and then, “
Cum wit to
…” and she drew a head wearing a turban.

Magdalene nodded and pushed away the remains of her meal. “If it is the woman you think it might be, I will have to come to the Saracen’s Head for an explanation.”

Letice smiled and nodded also. Then she stepped back over the bench and began to gather up bowls and spoons. Diot collected what remained of the fish stew and the vegetables and carried them into the kitchen. Dulcie also went to the kitchen to return with a damp cloth and vigorously clean the table. In just a few moments more, all the women were seated around the hearth with their work in their hands.

None too soon. They had hardly set five stitches, when the bell at the gate pealed. Magdalene smiled and went to answer. She tempered her smile as she opened the gate. Master Gerome was terminally shy. If she smiled too broadly, he might flee.

Master Gerome, a cordwainer, had been brought by Mainard who had explained Gerome’s needs to Magdalene. She had first thought of Letice, who could not speak and thus might seem not to require him to do so; however, perhaps her knowing black eyes frightened him. He shrank back toward Mainard when Letice approached him, but when Ella bounced into the room and held out her hand with a giggle, he followed her.

He had been a
very
good client ever since, coming three, sometimes four times a week. There was something in Ella’s childishness that made him comfortable, and he very nearly matched her sexual insatiability. Many men tired of her near mindless babble and some were embarrassed by her urging them to couple repeatedly because they could not perform. Not Gerome. Ella said he seemed too shy to initiate sex, but was more than willing each time she did.

“Ella has been looking forward to seeing you,” Magdalene said softly.

Master Gerome twitched and Magdalene was sorry she had spoken, but after a moment he whispered, “Is that true?”

“Indeed it is,” Magdalene assured him.

Suddenly he stopped dead in the path, Magdalene went on a step and then also stopped and turned back toward him. She was afraid to ask him a question, so she just tilted her head a trifle and waited.

“Longer,” he said.

For a moment Magdalene was blank, then she thought of Letice to whom every word needed to carry more meaning. “You mean you would like to stay with Ella longer.” She did not make it a question so he would not need to answer. “That can easily be arranged. Perhaps you would like to spend the whole night with her?”

His eyes widened and he nodded.

“That is more expensive,” Magdalene said. “It costs five pence, but, if you like, the evening meal will be included and a little supper during the night and you are also welcome to break your fast with us.”

He wrung his hands.

“You need not if you would not like that. Nothing is mandatory. I just wished to explain why the cost is so high. Ella has something she must do after you leave her this afternoon, but she is free this evening. If you come after vespers, she will be ready to welcome you.”

He did not reply, only took five pennies out of his purse and handed them to her, and before she could thank him and assure him again that Ella would be his for the night, he scurried quickly through the door. Magdalene stood staring after him and shaking her head, wondering whatever could have happened to the poor man to reduce him to such a state.

The bell pealed again and she pushed her hand through the slit in her skirt, loosened the ties of her pocket, and dropped in the coins. Her smile was much broader when she saw who had rung.