Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) (25 page)

At the forward center of the space was a narrow table, naught but four loose planks set atop a pair of braces and covered in flour. Bits of stolen dough were piled in one corner. Overhead, bunches of herbs and smoked meats hung from the beams that held the roof aloft. So did two small, well-made iron pots and an array of wooden cooking implements.

Stacked high against the wall to his left were hempen bags filled with Meg's winter provisions, be that unshelled nuts, whole grain or dried fruits. The right wall was lined with barrels and casks of all sizes, set one atop the other. They would contain brines, vinegar and fermented drink. Filling the floor space under the table were an array of clay pots. That they held milled grain was proved by the powdery stuff that caked their exteriors.

All that clutter left only a thread of a path on either side of the table for access to the sleeping area at the rear of the chamber. A pair of straw-stuffed pallets was stacked against the back wall. Fastened to the wall above them were two shelves. One held bowls and spoons, the other a fine wooden coffer.

The box was as long and high as Faucon's forearm, and of startling quality for a place as impoverished as Wike. Bossed in brass, it had been polished to a glossy sheen where it wasn't decorated with a colorful painted design. Although it had a hasp with a loop, the lock that should have held it shut lay on the shelf next to the chest, its pin yet inserted into it.

Faucon gave vent to a harsh breath. Meg had taken his threat to heart this morn. She'd fled with her treasure.

Easing his way along the narrow route, he took the box from the shelf. When he turned to place it on the end of the dusty table, he found Edmund standing at its opposite end. Alf, yet bearing Jessimond's wrapped corpse in his arms, remained just outside the shed, watching his employer through the doorway.

Faucon opened the coffer and answered one of his remaining questions. He removed the carefully folded garments. Rich they were not, being nothing but a clumsily made and plain green gown and an undyed linen shift. But they were hardly worn and, despite their poor construction, still worth whatever coin Meg had originally paid for them.

Holding them up, he displayed them to the soldier and the monk. "Brother, when you put pen to parchment, note that we found Jessimond's garments in the kitchen of Wike's bakestress."

"It doesn't surprise me that such a woman might have killed a child," the monk said in disgust.

In the doorway Alf shot a startled glance to the side. "'Ware Brother!" the soldier shouted as he darted out of the doorway and Faucon's view.

Edmund started to look over his shoulder, only to scream and arch backward. His hips jammed into the edge of the table. The resting planks shot toward Faucon, bringing flour and dough with them and sending the coffer flying. Holding tight to Jessimond's gowns, he reared backward into the pallets. They slid and he careened to the side. Planks crashed into the wall, then clattered to the floor. The braces toppled. He fell onto the nearest pile of sacks. A cat screeched.

"Get out of my home!" Meg shrieked at the same time.

She stood inside the door, holding a shovel high, ready for the next blow. Then the shovel was torn from the old woman's hands. Roaring in rage, Meg whirled, fists closed and raised. Alf was the quicker. The woman's head snapped back as he struck. Stunned, she reeled, then dropped to sprawl into the cold fire pit.

Stuffing the gowns beneath his arm, Faucon scrambled toward Edmund, who lay face-first on the earthen floor. Whatever semblance of order there had been in here before Meg's attack was gone. Bags lay helter-skelter, jars were tipped, their contents spilling out onto the floor. His feet slipped on balls of dough, the ooze from barrels, and the nuts that rolled out of toppled bags.

As Alf stepped closer to the prone clerk, Faucon crouched alongside the monk. Edmund hadn't yet stirred. The clerk's precious writing implements were strewn about him in the grain dust. If his basket was no more, the piece of wood he used as a desk yet rested across his back, whole and solid. Faucon lifted it. And now marked by a new shovel-shaped dent on its surface. With a finger, he traced the shape. Only his clerk could have been saved by a desk.

Setting aside the wood, he put his hand between the remains of the basket and Edmund's back. There was no obvious break. Still the monk lay still and silent.

"Brother, are you awake?" he demanded.

"I'm not certain," came Edmund's weak and shaken reply.

Faucon grinned, so great was his relief. "Are you hurt? Did your head hit as you fell?"

"Nay," the monk breathed, still not moving.

Looking at Alf, Faucon said, "Together."

They both took an arm and brought Edmund to his feet. The monk swayed for an instant then caught his balance. Drawing a deep breath, thus proving he had no broken ribs, he squeamishly tightened his shoulders and his arms.

"You can release me," he told soldier and knight.

When they didn't instantly comply, he raised his hands in protest. "I'm whole and unbloodied. Let go." This was a command.

Alf did as he was bid, backing into the doorway to block the opening despite that Meg yet lay stunned in the pit. Faucon wasn't so quick to comply. "You're certain?"

"Aye, it's only my pride that's damaged," Edmund admitted as he wrenched his arm from his Crowner's grasp.

His movement sent bits of his ruined basket raining from his back. The monk gasped and reached behind him. When there was nothing for him to feel, his eyes flew wide.

"My supplies!" he cried, dropping to his knees to scrabble through the wreckage, seeking his precious bits and pieces.

Faucon crouched with him and found the monk's quill knife. "Best you take time to give thanks to our Lord for that piece of wood of yours. The old woman meant her blow to break bones," he said as he handed it to Edmund.

His clerk paused in his search, his gaze yet fixed on the floor before him. He drew a shaken breath, then closed his hand about the stoppered horn in which he stored his powdered ink. As he lifted it, his hand trembled, the aftereffect of Meg's attack. He drew the horn to his chest as if he meant to disguise his reaction.

"So I shall," Edmund said, yet refusing to meet Faucon's gaze, "but I think we're better praying that I have what I need to complete this inquest. Best you leave me to gather my things so I can get at assessing the damage."

The monk had peculiar courage, indeed. Faucon dared to lay a final touch on his clerk's arm, a comrade's acknowledgment of bravery. As he expected, Edmund flinched away from him. That made him smile.

"I'm glad you're unharmed, Edmund," he said, then retreated to stand with Alf so his clerk could collect himself under the pretense of gathering his supplies. "That's no measly monk I have scribing for me. That's a soldier, albeit one in Christ," he told the commoner, still smiling.

"So he is," Alf agreed with a nod, then gave a jerk of his head toward Meg. She whimpered as she began to stir. "And that is a woman who needs more than her tongue torn from her mouth."

"Such is the arrogance of one who finds value only in coins. To achieve her riches, such as they are, she has traded all that is good and right for unfettered control over her body and her piece of our world," Faucon replied.

As if she heard him, Meg groaned and came upright with a start. Her lip bled where Alf had split it. Hidden behind the fall of her plait, the side of her face was bright red. Yet, despite the pain Alf's blow had surely caused, not a single tear moistened her eyes.

An instant later, her senses steadied and her panicked gaze shot straight to the empty shelf at the back of the room. "Thief!" she trumpeted weakly as she looked to her Crowner. "You've taken my box."

"Your box is on the floor, right where you sent it when you attacked my clerk," Faucon said flatly.

Then, taking Jessimond's clothing out from beneath his arm, he displayed the garments to the woman. "It's not the box you seek, but what was in it. You removed these from Jessimond's corpse on the night she died."

The old woman's face whitened at his charge. Then her eyes narrowed as she again raised that shield of hers, ready to once again engage him in battle. "She was dead when I found her. I wasn't going to let new garments rot on her, not when I'd just spent good coin for them."

Faucon cocked a brow. "Ah, I see. But why would a miser and a thief like you ever open your purse to buy these garments in the first place, especially to clothe one you despised? Let me guess. Could it be because you didn't want Lina the Bawd to see the child she intended to buy dressed in rags? You didn't want the procuress to think you desperate. That might have encouraged the whore to short you on the price you two had finally agreed upon after almost a month of haggling."

Shaking his head, he said, "I fear you overreached yourself this time, and it will cost you far more than just the loaves you lost when Jessimond finished your baking. Your downfall already begins. Until today, no one has dared raise a hand to you. Look at you now, sitting in this pit with a bleeding lip and bruised face."

Meg wiped the blood from her mouth, still glaring at him.

"What a shame you've just buried that fat purse of yours," Faucon continued, speaking as if he commiserated with her. "Now, who among your neighbors will you trust to retrieve it after you're charged with Jessimond's murder? Without that purse, how will you buy your freedom from whatever gaol holds you?"

That sent panic again darting through her gaze. She began to strain and push, trying to lift herself out of the pit. All the while, she kept her gaze locked on her Crowner as if she feared he might attack her if she looked away.

"It wasn't me," Meg cried as she at last levered herself onto the earthen floor. Using her heels, she shoved herself backward until, panting, she collided with a barrel. "It was Gawne who killed her. It had to have been him. He took her to that hidden spot and killed her, then put her body in our well so it seemed that she had drowned."

"I fear not," Faucon replied. "Rauf and Dob will both swear Gawne spent the whole of that night sleeping inside their walls with their father in a drunken stupor and blocking their doorway."

"Nay!" she cried, her tone filled with new concern. "We didn't kill Jessimond!"

"We, is it?" he replied blandly. "And thus your late return on so many nights this last week, including the one on which Jessimond died. You weren't delayed in Alcester by a friend. You and Lina were waiting beyond the pale for the child to pass so you could snatch her as she escaped into the forest. That way, Lina could carry her off in secret while you tucked more coins into your purse and told your neighbors your ward had run away to whore like her mother." His words were as sharp-edged as his sword.

Jessimond had wanted to meet with Gawne that night to tell him she'd divined Meg's intention, if not the whole of the bakestress's plan. Meg's final beating hadn't been about the bread or the girl's defiance. It had been meant to drive the lass into fleeing to the forest, just as she had eventually done to seek comfort from a friend.

If only
. Again, that refrain sang within him.

If only Amelyn had come to Wike early. If only the girl had but held tight to the kitchen for two more short days until her mother's arrival. Amelyn would have instantly understood what Jessimond could not. Faucon wanted to think that mother and daughter would then have run, even if all that lay ahead of them was starvation and death.

From a distance he caught the faint sounds of men and women shouting and singing. The folk of Wike were returning. He glanced behind him to see how far his clerk and Alf were in preparing for the inquest.

Not far. Edmund sat in the wreckage, some of his bits and pieces in his lap as he listened to his employer and the bakestress. Alf stood in the doorway, arms crossed, still as stone, watching with too much interest in what went forward. This, when Faucon needed no witnesses to what he intended.

"They come for the inquest," he said. "Alf, we need that table outside, plus whatever Brother Edmund requires for his use. Brother, best you ready ink and quill," he added as a prod to Edmund.

As both monk and soldier instantly turned to their tasks, Faucon leaned closer to Meg. "But you were doomed to fail from the start. Although Jessimond might not have known the fate you intended for her, she knew you were waiting for her near the hatch. When she finally left Wike, I wager she did it through the holly. How frustrated that bawd must have been by the third night. She must have been demanding that you bring the girl to her in Alcester. But you knew that was impossible. Jessimond would have resisted and Johnnie was devoted to her. I've heard his cries. They're ear-piercing. Nay, the only way to wring the profit you wanted from Jessimond was for the child to flee this place on her own, having convinced her uncle to abet her escape as she'd done in the past."

Meg was pressed as flat as possible against the barrel. As her Crowner spoke, she steadily and slowly shook her head side to side, negating his every word. Faucon dipped his fingers into his purse and brought out the bits of thread he'd found in the glade.

"If the bawd was angry at the pale, she must have been furious when the two of you entered that glade to discover her prize was dead. I'm guessing she was so enraged that she tore your apron when she attacked you." As he spoke, he pressed the threads to the breast of Meg's worn apron, right over the new patch.

The woman drew a sharp breath. Her hands began to shake. To hide that, she closed her fists then raised them to her heart. He drew back his hand, returning the threads to his purse.

"These tiny bits are all I need to show the folk of Wike. When I tell them where I found them, and my suppositions about how they came to be there, I'll share my speculations about the fate you intended for Jessimond. I don't even need to mention that your motive was coin. Everyone here will know that," he added, then cocked his head.

"What think you, Meg? If, after I speak my piece, I then call out some other name for them to confirm as Jessimond's killer, someone who doesn't steal food from their hungry babes, what do you think they'll do? Do you think they'll protest that they've heard you more than once threaten to kill the innocents you were meant to protect? And there Jessimond's corpse will be, stretched out upon your table in front of your door. Do you think they'll argue, telling me I'm wrong about who I name? Might they insist that it was you and no other who killed that poor beaten lass? They might even do that in full knowledge that you are truly innocent, instead seizing the moment to rid themselves of the woman who steals from them but is protected by their lady."