Masques of Gold (18 page)

Lissa sighed. “I wish I could be more help in finding him.”

Those words reminded Justin of his earlier suspicion that Goscelin was affronted because Lissa was hiding something from him. The idea only stirred up the roiling mix of conflicting emotions in him. “Can you tell me nothing?” he asked almost bitterly.

“I will gladly tell you everything I remember and any idea that has come into my mind. And I will answer any question you wish to ask. Only the whole thing, from the beginning, is completely beyond my understanding.”

There was a difference in the way the eye she could see him from met his. She looked honestly puzzled, not afraid, but nonetheless Justin asked, “Then why did you not want to tell Goscelin what happened? Was it not because you knew I was so bedazzled by you that I would believe anything you said and he might not?”

She laughed aloud, not a chuckle of satisfaction but a peal of joy at this further confession of love. “How can you be so silly?” she asked, turning her hand in his so that she could fold it between both of her own. “I wanted a chance to see you and talk to you again.” Then all the laughter disappeared from her voice and expression, and she clutched his hand. “I wanted to plead with you, to tell you that if you could not love me I would not ask more if you would only be my friend.”

Justin did not answer that in words, only bent forward and kissed her mouth.

Lissa laughed again, more softly. “I am not saying that I would have been telling the truth, you understand. While you were being friendly, I would have been trying my best to incite you to a more passionate frame of mind.”

It was Justin's turn to laugh. “You would not be so cruel. I am ill enough with wanting, and you in no case even to listen to my pleading, all bruised—” He stopped abruptly as anger flooded him again, and then he said, “I should let you rest now, but if you can bear to tell in short form and without questions whatever you remember, there might be some hint therein that will work with what I see in the house to show me a direction in which to seek.”

Because she had to explain what she was doing on the stair in the middle of the night, Lissa began with the quarrel between Binge and Witta and her growing concern for the old woman. “So when I started down to unlock the door and see what was wrong, I had the night-candle,” she said. “I should have been able to see the man's face, even in the single moment that I looked at him, but it was all black. Now I think he had wrapped a cloth around his head—and, Justin, does that not mean I should have been able to recognize his face? But there is more than a face to knowing a person, and I swear I did not know the body either.”

She spoke with the sincerity of a clear conscience. Lissa was perfectly certain that the man who had hit her was neither her father nor his disgusting friend Hubert. When she had first regained consciousness, she had been in pain from the blow and totally disoriented, unable at first to remember what had happened to her, where she was, or anything else. The crashing noises, total darkness, and difficulty in breathing caused by the gag and the blanket her father had wrapped around her, including her head, had added to her confusion. She had drifted in and out of reality, hearing strange distorted voices and seeing lights and images she knew could not exist because her eyes were closed. She thought she might have slept for a while, too; later she wondered about that, but decided that the pain, the suffocation, the cold, and the confusion had induced a kind of exhaustion.

What Lissa was certain about was that the man was gone by the time her head had cleared. Then, although her physical discomfort had become worse and distracted her so that her thinking was fragmentary, she had pieced together the event, returning again and again to that horrific vision she had seen on the stair. At first all she wanted was to convince herself that the creature was altogether human, but persistent review of what she had seen had fixed the image strongly in her mind. Later, when good sense had conquered superstition, she had plenty of time to wonder who had attacked her and why.

From her position two or three steps above him, the man seemed about her father's height, but twice as broad. To Lissa's mind, the foreshortened stature also eliminated Hubert, who was broad enough but much taller than her father. She was so convinced of these facts that neither man even crossed her mind when she described the events to Justin and stated so positively that she had not recognized the body shape of the man on the stair.

“I have thought and thought,” she went on, frowning and then smoothing her brow as the expression hurt her swollen eye, “but I cannot think who it might have been. I have seen many men like that, but none with whose face I am so familiar he would need to hide it.”

“The shape, was he like Goscelin?” Justin asked.

Lissa giggled. “Please! I have insulted Master Goscelin enough. One of us will have to give some reason for my reluctance to confide in him. Do not use him for a model for my man on the stair.”

“What about young Peter or Edmond?”

“Not close, although the height is near right. Both are too slender, and they have the thin shoulders of boys. Goscelin is closer to what I remember but he is round and that man was flat, like a wall.”

“A powerful man, then, more likely to be a fighting man than a simple thief.”

“Yes, yes,” Lissa agreed eagerly, her impression of the man suddenly coming together with something that had been at the back of her mind. “Oh, Justin, would any thief clever enough to break into a goldsmith's house bother with Peter's? Even if he knew that there were only two women and a child there, surely as your men sought young Peter and Edmond the word would have spread that they had taken with them Peter's strongboxes.”

Justin nodded slowly. “By now I am sure that fact is well known. If the robbery had taken place earlier, I would be less certain. Still, all goldsmiths are believed to be rich. There would be clothing, personal jewelry, and the plate—”

“But clothing and jewelry and plate can be found in any merchant's house,” Lissa said. “Why attempt a goldsmith's house, which is always doubly and triply protected, when the real wealth is gone? Besides, there was no plate. I asked Master Goscelin to take everything but the pewter. He was kind enough to ask if he could help in any way, and I begged him to sell the pieces for me to give me some ready money to pay small merchants' bills—a mercer and Peter's baker had already been to the house. I thought that if I tried to sell the pieces myself I would be offered less because many would think me desperate.”

“A clever piece of business.” Justin chuckled and then shook his head. “Yes, but surely Goscelin would not have spoken of the matter, nor would you, so a thief might expect to find the plate.”

Lissa put a hand to her head. “Merciful Christus,” she whispered, “can it be because a thief found nothing that such damage was done?”

“Damage?” Justin repeated, and then remembered Halsig's first words, that Flael's house had been torn apart.

Before he could say more, common sense had reasserted itself and Lissa said more calmly, “No, it cannot have been a thief. I am not thinking straight, and you have not seen the house. No thief would do what was done. You must go and look to see what I mean.”

Suddenly the eye Justin could see dropped half shut and the color drained from her skin. He jumped to his feet, frightened. “I have tired you too much and made you ill. I will call Mistress Adela to you—”

“No,” Lissa murmured, clinging to his hand. “She thinks the maid is with me, but I sent her down after I heard Goscelin go to the door. I told her to mix a poultice for me—a long, complicated poultice with much grinding.” She smiled, still carefully keeping her head half turned from him, so the curl of her lip looked natural. “I am tired, but I will be better after I sleep. And you, after you look at the house, should also go back to bed.”

“I will,” he promised. “Unless I find some sign of who did this thing. I have your leave to pursue at once, I hope?”

“You have my blessing, and I hope you hang him by the thumbs while you question him,” Lissa responded with as much enthusiasm as her exhaustion would permit.

“Sleep now,” he said, and she squeezed his hand once, then released it and shut her eye.

Justin walked toward the stair, then placed his feet most softly and carefully as he crossed the door to Goscelin's bedchamber. It was open a little way, and he scratched softly, hoping the goldsmith would not call out or that Lissa was already so deeply asleep that she would not hear. His luck was good. There were steps on the stairs, and the maid entered the solar just as Goscelin came to the door.

“Can you come down with me?” he asked softly. “I do not wish her to hear.”

Goscelin nodded at once and followed him down into the shop. There was a brazier with ash-covered charcoal by the counter, and they stood near it for the little heat that remained.

“All she told me that she would not say to you, though I cannot guess why,” Justin said somewhat mendaciously after repeating Lissa's description of the invader, “was that she did not believe the man was a thief. At least, she did not believe that his first purpose was to steal. She said no thief would do such damage. Halsig also spoke of the house being torn apart. Do you wish to come with me to look?”

“No, it would take too long for me to dress and keep you from your work and then from your bed unnecessarily,” Goscelin replied. “I doubt there will be more to see by night than by day tomorrow.”

Justin nodded, then asked, “Did you feel that Mistress Lissa did not wish to explain what happened to you for fear you would see she was hiding something?”

The goldsmith looked surprised. “I did not think of that. Why should she? No, all I felt was that she was the stubbornest young woman I had come across in a long time. She looked half dead, but would not agree to rest until she saw you. But I hardly spoke to Mistress Lissa myself. When she was carried in she was like a stick of ice and had to be put to bed and warmed at once. Adela was attending to her while I spoke to the men who brought her and the boy—good Lord, I had forgotten the boy. I had him put in with my apprentices and bade them warm him. But he told me he had seen and heard nothing, that he had gone to sleep by the fire in his mistress's solar and woken freezing, bound and gagged, with an aching head. Do you want to speak to him?”

After a moment's thought, Justin shook his head. “It does not sound as if it is worthwhile waking him if he is sleeping. In any case, I will be back in the morning to look at the house again, and we can talk to the boy and to Mistress Lissa together, if you have time.”

“Good enough,” Goscelin agreed, his good humor restored. “But do not arrive here at first light. We have all had a disturbed night and will benefit from sleep.”

The knocking on the door William Bowles had been fearing since he had parted from Hubert not long before dawn came just after the sun peeped over the horizon. He shivered with terror. It was too soon. The idiot Hubert must have awakened FitzWalter to tell him the bad news instead of waiting, and FitzWalter must have been furious. William now bitterly regretted that he had acted so confident that the seal would be in the house. It had seemed best at the time, a way to get Heloise back and to provide FitzWalter with the expectation of obtaining what he wanted until he was almost ready to leave for France. By then William hoped Lord Robert would be so busy that the failure to find the seal would shrink into insignificance.

He heard the door of the shop open, and rose from the curtained bed near the door to the stair on the inner wall of the solar. He had slept in that bed from the time he had abandoned hope that his wife would bear him another child. There were advantages to leaving the bedchamber to her and Heloise; not only could he now have a woman who would give him some pleasure whenever he desired but he could also listen in secret to what went on in the shop below. At this moment, he blessed himself again for the foresight that had prevented him from moving back into the bedchamber as he heard an excited voice asking his journeyman for leeches and unguents and explaining that Flael's house had been broken into and Mistress Lissa injured.

Wiping a broad grin off his face with an effort, William pulled on his bed robe and rushed down the stairs to ask what had happened. He did not wait for a full explanation, ordering his journeyman to provide everything while he dressed himself. Like a good, anxious father he told Goscelin's servant not to wait but to hurry back with the medicines, saying he would follow as soon as he could.

When he arrived, William found the same servant waiting for him with polite apologies. Master Goscelin and Mistress Adela were still abed, and Mistress Lissa begged him—that, William thought caustically, was the servant's way of putting it, not Heloise's—not to trouble her yet but to let her rest and treat herself until the next day. This was exactly what William had expected and, indeed, hoped for. He could think of nothing duller or more exasperating than needing to sound shocked and sympathetic over his daughter's injuries, so he was able to say with good grace that, of course, he would do whatever she wished. He then spent some time questioning the servant about how those injuries had been received, which the man considered perfectly natural in a concerned father, and willingly told him everything he knew about the robbery.

The servant's tale was more good news for William. Hubert had sworn that neither guard had seen him or suspected any attack before he was felled, but William never completely trusted Hubert's judgment. In this case, however, the servant told the same tale. The guards had been brought to Goscelin's house to be warmed and revived, and they could give no information.

Having thanked the man and dropped into his hand a packet of spices, William asked the servant to send a message when his daughter or Master Goscelin was ready to speak to him and returned home in better spirits than he had left. He grew even happier and more confident when he found there had been no messages or visitors, except some customers on ordinary business, while he had been away. By now Hubert must have seen FitzWalter. Had Lord Robert been really angry about their inability to find the seal, either Hubert or a messenger or, at the very worst, four or five men-at-arms would have been waiting for him.

Good-humored with relief, William walked back to the workroom and called to Oliva, the woman who had been his maid and occasional bed partner for some years, to bring him something to eat. Then, without finding fault or striking the apprentice just for pleasure, he retired to the solar, where he broke his fast and savored his triumph. Heloise had got the beating she deserved for not obeying him and coming home when he bade her do so. Had she done so, she could have acted as if she were doing him a favor; now she was the one being helped. Should he refuse to take her in at first and make her beg? No, that devil would just as likely find another place to live and tell the world how he had denied her in her need. Besides, to refuse her would fit ill with his “concern” over her hurt, and William wanted no questions on that subject.

When he was pleasantly replete and had dozed a bit to ensure good digestion, William went down to cast an eye over what his journeyman was doing. He was halfway down the stair when the sound of horses' hooves made him tense and hesitate between running up again or dashing out to the back where he could escape. His hesitation saved him from looking a fool; he saw a woman's riding skirt through the open door as the horses stopped. The garment was a rich, dark but brilliant blue that William knew must be a most costly dye, and he hurried down the rest of the stairs in time to hear an imperious voice ask for a pound of the rose-damask cream and a quarter-pound of the cherry cream for the mouth. Mistress Lissa was to bring them herself, the woman said, because she wanted a word with her.

Before he could reach the door, his journeyman had bowed deeply and uttered a profound apology. “The creams are not ready-made, my lady. Mistress Lissa was married and went on a journey thinking there was stock enough—”

“My lady.”

William had reached the back of the wood planks set on trestles, which made the counter that stood just outside the shop. It was laden with heaps of dried herbs of the common sort—basil, bay, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, sage, mint, parsley. At the ends of the table, to weight the boards and keep the lighter, untied bundles from blowing or rolling off, were covered crocks—most small, some larger—filled with seeds of anise, coriander, fennel, caraway, and cumin, or with the dried flowers of marigold, chamomile, rose, and lavender. Where the counter ended were baskets of pepper, black and white, and peony seeds set into weighted barrels. These were conveniently placed to keep a customer from blocking the front of the counter while the condiments were weighed by an apprentice. The barrels also helped to discourage unnoticed entry into the shop itself, where more precious and some more dangerous substances as well as expensive creams, lotions, potions, and philters were kept.

Pushing past these obstructions, William hurried to the front of the counter to bow and repeat, “My lady,” adding quickly, “I beg you only to allow me to say that my daughter will be back in the shop on Monday. If it is inconvenient for you to come here again, my lady, I am sure Heloise would most gladly bring to you the creams you desire.”

The woman, who had lifted her rein and was about to urge her mare forward with a tap of her heel, paused. “I am not sure I will be still in London on Monday.” Her face was set, cold and indifferent. “However, if your daughter wishes to take the chance of coming”—there was another pause, then a shrug—“tell her Lady Margaret de Vesci might have work for her.”

She moved away before William could make any reply, and he took a step or two after her, wishing to ask where Heloise should bring the creams. He was cut off from Lady Margaret, however, by two mounted men-at-arms who fell in behind her as others forced pedestrians ahead of her to scatter out of her way by driving their horses into the street. She was going north on Soper Lane, but that told William nothing. She might as well be going toward the Chepe as toward her house. As he went back behind the counter, under his breath he cursed the stupid sluts who, because they were noble born, were so proud they thought the whole world knew where they shit and believed the place would shine like gold to the common folk. Now, no doubt, she would take him in spite because Lissa did not know where she lived and would not take the trouble to find out.

“Is it true?”

William turned to see that his journeyman's face, which had not lost its frown since Heloise's marriage, had lit up as if a torch had been kindled behind his eyes. “What?” William snarled. “Is what true, Paul?”

“That Mistress Lissa will be coming home on Monday?” Paul was too eager for a confirmation to fear the blow William might give him for asking a question he did not want to hear or for knowing too much.

But William only nodded. He had said Heloise would bring the creams on Monday, but even if Heloise did know where to find Lady Margaret and he could force her to go, the journeyman had said there was no stock of the creams the idiot woman desired. William had not dealt in creams or lotions beyond the most crude and common sort before Heloise took an active part in the business, but he knew the compounding of fine products took several days.

“Yes,” William said, “she will be back here, possibly even before Monday, but she is all bruised and might not feel ready to work. If she is to take those creams to Lady Margaret, you had better get that useless Ninias to mix up a batch of them.”

“He cannot,” Paul answered, stepping back out of William's reach. “We do not know the proportions nor all of the ingredients. The mistress herself mixed the special creams for the great ladies.”

“Surely the receipts are in her book,” William began and then uttered a violent obscenity and snarled, “but the book is—” He stopped abruptly. He had remembered seeing Heloise's book crumpled under a pile of splintered bedposts and torn bedding in Flael's house and had nearly spoken of it. Fearing he had exposed knowledge he should not have, he raised his hand and took a step toward the journeyman, his face threatening.

“The book is not in the workshop,” Paul gasped nervously, backing up still farther.

William dropped the hand he had raised to strike the journeyman. Clearly Paul had sensed nothing unusual in his angry remark. To explain his fury, he muttered something about losing Lady Margaret's custom, and then raised his fist again as he thought of the possibility of gaining her enmity and having her warn her friends against his shop. Before he could blame Paul or strike him, however, two more customers approached, one lifting a bunch of sage and sniffing at it while the other asked the price of pepper. William recognized both and wasted no more than a curt nod of the head on them, as neither was rich nor powerful. On the other hand, he was not a man to forgo a profit for the pleasure of beating his servant—he could have that pleasure any time—so he turned his back and went into the shop.

Behind him he heard one woman say to the other, “I would not buy here from that sour churl but for the quality of his goods.” And Paul's voice following quickly, saying, “The pepper is ten pence the pound, and Mistress Lissa chose all we have from her own uncle's ship.”

“You are four pence higher than Master Bartholomew down the road,” the woman countered.

Paul laughed. “Now mistress, you know and I do too that that price is for last spring's shipment, not for what came before the last storms in the autumn. Master Bartholomew would not sell that pepper as new-come any more than I. I can give you a farthing on the quarter-pound, or I can ask Ninias to see if we have some spring-shipped pepper left, but you cannot have our best—and we have none but the best—for last year's price.”

“You will do no better,” the other woman said. “Cheaper may be come by, but what is chosen by Mistress Lissa has a most excellent savor!”

William continued into the shop and on up the stairs. He was irritated by the fact that such folk dared express a low opinion of him, but that was unimportant compared with his renewed satisfaction in having made Flael's house unlivable for his daughter. The realization that Heloise had taken her book of receipts with her had made him wonder whether she might have thought of beginning a rival business. That would have meant certain ruin for William, for her uncles might well have refused to sell to him and far too many of his clients would certainly have abandoned his shop for hers. Of course the brothers of the pepperers guild might have rejected her and forbidden her to sell on her own, but William was not very sure of that. Heloise was a great favorite with the brethren of his guild.

Just within the door of the solar, William paused and stared thoughtfully at the floor by his bed. Did it matter what Heloise did? Perhaps now was the time. A nasty grin split William's face. Heloise had always believed she would be his heiress, inherit his business; William, however, had always intended one day to sell everything—house, furniture, stock, business—convert everything to silver and gold, and simply ride away, leaving her behind. Yes, with Flael's house destroyed, perhaps now was the time.

William took two steps to the right, bent, and drew a flat box from under his bed. He carried it to the hearth, where he sat down in his chair beside the fire, pulling to him a stool, on which he set the box. From it he took a single sheet of parchment. Several small sacks slid off it with soft metallic clinks. William frowned at them. On the one hand, he hated to see money lying idle when it could be making a profit at usury. On the other hand, he had determined never again to be without funds to escape his “friends” if escape became necessary.

As he examined the listings of probable worth, William's frown deepened. It was not enough. Oh, he could eke out an existence with what he would have, but he could not buy a rich property and be indifferent to pennies. And it was Heloise's fault, that dowry he had been forced to settle on her. He had thought then that he would make it back in a day or two out of the favors he would obtain from FitzWalter. But the seal was gone, and so was the money, and there was no way to get it back. Ungrateful bitch, she would not leave the money with his goldsmith but insisted it be placed with Hamo Finke, who was hard as stone and rigid as steel. With the money in her own hands, there was no way he could control her properly. She could marry again without his permission, marry another pepperer and gain a home and begin a rival business that way.

He considered the problem for some time, even wondering if he should arrange to have his daughter disfigured or maimed, but he could not see that crippling her would solve the problem. First, unless she was damaged so badly that she could not work or serve in the shop, she would still be able to marry or to live alone. Second, she might die, which would ruin him just as surely as if she started her own business. And third, even if it worked right, he would end up in the power of whoever did the work for him. That made him think of Hubert, and he remembered that he had convinced the man not to come to his house unless he was specially bidden to do so by FitzWalter. Instead, he had arranged to meet Hubert, “as friends will,” to dine together at the cookshop in the Strand. With a sigh, William put aside his thoughts of selling out. He closed his box and replaced it under the bed. His luck had been good that morning, he thought. Perhaps it would continue good and Hubert would not be at the cookshop. That would mean he was engaged in other tasks or errands that FitzWalter thought more important than any message to him. It would also mean that FitzWalter now assigned a low importance to the counterfeit seal and, if matters went well for him in France, might forget it entirely. However, William had not walked the length of the lane before he saw Hubert coming toward him.