Roberta Gellis (35 page)

Bell sighed again. “But you did not tell Master Newelyne to keep the matter in confidence, did you? And he had no idea how Bertrild had got that money, or how much it was, or that it was from extortion. Is it not possible that he spoke of the matter to others?”

“Of course he didn’t know it was from extortion! Neither did I, until I learned the amount. Pers thought she had saved it from what I gave her and from starving the slaves. He always said I allowed her far too much. He was pleased because he thought I would be getting my own back again.” Now Mainard sighed. “I suppose he did tell others.”

“Which of the men was at the funeral?” Bell asked, releasing Mainard’s arm, and then before Mainard could answer, he groaned. “Never mind, I know. All of them. I remember them myself, all hanging together and looking as if they expected to be summoned
to answer for some crime. So, they heard about the tally sticks and that Gerlund was Bertrild’s goldsmith, and one of them pried Gerlund’s mouth open and learned about the other precious item he held, the packet.”

He stood thinking, then narrowed his eyes and asked, “Who knew you were not going back to the Lime Street house after work yesterday?”

Without answering, Mainard started walking across the Chepe toward his shop. Bell strode after him. “You told FitzRevery,” he said grimly. “He was at Magdalene’s on Thursday, and he came to ask you to spend a few hours with him on Friday because he knew Sabina was not with you, and you told him you were going to the Old Priory Guesthouse to be with her….”

There was no counter in front of Mainard’s shop. There was no sense in getting saddles, saddlebags, and reins soaked, even though they were treated to resist wetting, and the finer, softer suedes would definitely not be improved by the rain. However the door was invitingly open and they could hear Henry’s voice, friendly and persuasive, rehearsing the fine points of some piece of work to a hardy customer. Mainard hurried past, his face concealed by his hood, and reached for the door to the workroom.

Bell caught his arm before he opened it. “Do not forget,” he said softly. “Arrange for
all
five men to meet Sir Druerie before he returns to Swythling.”

“Very well,” Mainard conceded unhappily. “Guild meetings are mostly on Wednesday. I will ask them to come to my house after their meetings.”

“Good enough. I will be there to make sure that Saeger does not attack Sir Druerie.”

“And where have you been?” Master Octadenarius, already in the workroom and in a temper as foul as the weather, snapped at Mainard as soon as he walked through the door, and, turning on Bell asked, “What brings you here? Do you scent murder and follow it as a hound does a stag?”

“I was at home,” Mainard said. “At the house on Lime Street. My—”

“Your man did not know you had gone home?” the justiciar asked sardonically.

Mainard smiled slightly. “My man is loving and loyal.” He shook his head at Codi, who looked harassed and had tears in his eyes. “He did not wish to tell you that I had gone to Mistress Magdalene’s, to the Old Priory Guesthouse, before Vespers yesterday, and I expected—” a look of pain crossed his face “—ah…hoped to spend the night.” He frowned at the justiciar. “But, you must have known that. I spoke to your man outside my shop yesterday, the one who asked about Borc—”

“Who is now dead!” Master Octadenarius, paused, watching Mainard’s face, and then said, “You are not at all surprised, I see.”

“He was when I told him,” Bell put in. “I am sorry Master Octadenarius, but I do not think it worthwhile
coursing this hare. Master Mainard could not have killed Borc. His uncle-by-marriage, Sir Druerie of Swythling, was with him at the Lime Street house from—” he turned his head toward Mainard “—from when, Master Mainard?”

“The bell for Vespers had not yet rung from St. Mary Overy Church when I left the Old Priory Guesthouse
,
and it took a little less than a half candlemark—I did not want to press poor Jean—to walk to Lime Street. So, I guess, you could say I was with Sir Druerie from Vespers on.”

Master Octadenarius sighed. “At least your witness this time is more reliable than a whore. Very well, I will accept that you did not kill the man. Why should I believe that your journeyman Codi did not?”

Codi’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He shivered, hugging himself as if he were suddenly cold.

“Codi?” Mainard echoed, and smiled again. “Codi blanches if he has to kill a louse. Pardon me, Master Octadenarius, but that is ridiculous. Why should Codi kill Borc?”

“To protect you?” Octadenarius asked sharply.

“From such a thing as Borc was?” Mainard asked, shaking his head. “Besides, how could he know Borc threatened me, not that he did. I do not believe Codi ever spoke to him.”

“No, Master,” Codi’s voice trembled, “but I did pull him away from Henry once.”

“When was this?” Mainard asked.

“Yesterday, just before he got into the workroom. I was outside, moving the saddle Henry had sold to that yeoman to replace it with another, when that—that
thing
slid past Henry on the other side. Henry reached out to stop him, but he pushed past through the door to the shop. I had to put down the saddle, but Henry followed him, and he turned in the doorway and struck at Henry’s hand with something—mayhap a broken knife. Henry cried out, and Master FitzRevery stepped out of his shop. I suppose he intended to help Henry, but I was closer, and he just gestured to me to follow Henry. I went in and grabbed Borc, but he twisted loose and ran into the workroom.”

“Why didn’t you follow him there?” the justiciar asked.

“Master Mainard is more than strong enough to deal with that creature, and the two boys were there to call me if Master Mainard should need help, so I bound up Henry’s hand, which was bleeding, and then went back to changing the saddles. A few moments later Borc came out and went away.”

“Did you ever see or meet the man before?” Octadenarius asked.

“Not that I remember,” Codi said, and then frowned. “Oh. I think I once saw him go into Master FitzRevery’s shop. It was late. Henry had gone home and I was taking down the counter. I remember because he was so…so unlike a customer or even a messenger likely to visit Master FitzRevery.”

“But you never mentioned this before?”

“Why should I?” Codi cried. “Did I know the man would die in our alley? And no one ever asked me about him before.”

“Please, sir,” Gisel put in, taking Codi’s hand. “He couldn’t have done it. We were all in the shop together and the…the body wasn’t there at dusk when I went to pull in the latch string on the back gate for the night. I looked out, and the alley was empty. And at
night, Codi can’t get out. Ever since we…I found Mistress Bertrild, I have bad dreams, so Codi let me and Stoc put our pallets right against his. He’d have to step on us to get out. I know we sleep sound, Lord Justiciar, but not that sound.”

Bell cleared his throat. Master Octadenarius gave him a sour look. “You want to stand out in the rain to look at the body? Go ahead. And how do you come to be here anyway? You never answered that.”

“I had gone to the Old Priory Guesthouse this morning to….” Bell’s voice faltered as he remembered the miller’s blood running over his hands and why he needed to be with Magdalene on the previous morning; he cleared his throat again.

“To discover if her whores had learned anything more about the five men who could have taken Codi’s knife. She had just told me that Bertrild herself had been in the workshop that day and could have taken the knife herself—apparently she was in the habit of picking up this and that in the hope of causing trouble—when Stoc, the younger apprentice, came to find Master Mainard to tell him about the body in the alley. The boy was soaked and overworn from running all the way, and it so happened I had my horse, so I told him I would fetch Master Mainard. Magdalene said she would keep Stoc and get him dry and warm. He was terrified. He had found the body and said something about Borc’s face…?”

Octadenarius sighed again. “Likely Brother Samuel at St. Catherine’s will explain it. Go look if you like.”

Bell promptly went out the back door, across the yard, and out the gate, which was standing open. A miserable watchman huddled against the fence, holding a worn piece of leather over his head. “I have permission to look,” Bell said, and lifted the tattered, torn, and stained blanket that had been thrown over the body.

The face was indeed something that could frighten a boy unaccustomed to death. It even startled Bell because it was twisted in a terrible grimace, and the vomit that had dried around the mouth was full of dirt as was a broad bruise on the forehead. There might have been other bruising, but Borc’s face had been filthy to begin with and what might be dried blood was indistinguishable from old smears of grease and gravy that had run and mingled in the rain.

The tunic had been rucked up so the braies were exposed. As with most corpses, Bore had wet and soiled himself, but Bell stood staring at the stained garments, his brows knitted in a puzzled frown. Something was wrong, different. In another moment he knew what it was. Not only the upper part of the braies were soiled, the part around the anus and penis, but the legs, the hem of the garment, and the stockings beneath it, too, were marked with filth. That meant the body had been upright when urine and feces were released.

A man does not stand upright when death relaxes the body’s control. No, but for some fear can bring about the same result. Was Borc held upright as he was killed? after he was killed? Bell blinked. How was he killed? The head seemed round. There was no blood—well, maybe there was. Between the rain and old stains it was hard to tell. But the face? Was that grimace one of fear, or was it a twisting of the muscles as in a fit? Was the bruise deep enough…?

Nonsense! How could a body have a bruise on its forehead and dirt around its mouth and be lying on its back?

“Watchman,” Bell said, “did you turn the body over?”

“Didn’ touch it a’tall.
Didn’ even see it, ‘till you took off the blanket.”

Bell guessed that Codi had put the blanket over the body and that Octadenarius had not bothered to examine it at all. It was not really an abandonment of his duty. He said he had made arrangements for the body to be carried to the brothers of St. Catherine’s Hospital; Brother Samuel would examine it and tell him the cause of death. But how had it come to fall on its face hard enough to make those bruises and now be lying on its back? And when had it been turned?

It had been raining for hours…. Bell nudged the body with one boot; the flesh gave a little, and the body was not so rigid that it would lift in one piece like a board of wood. As it was, he could not shift it far enough to see whether the ground underneath was wet or dry. He made a horrible face as he leaned closer—Borc stank even worse in death than he had in life—to pull the blanket back over the corpse.

The change in angle of vision showed him a pile of rubbish beyond the watchman’s feet and lying beside that…surely that was the neck of a flask. A flask and Borc connected immediately in Bell’s mind. He went over to look and found a handsome leather flask, its gold-decorated stopper still tied to the neck by a finely braided gold silk cord. When he shook it, a small amount of liquid sloshed within. The watchman was looking at him in amazement.

“‘eard somethin’ fall when I backed up against the wall, but I didn’ see nothing,” he said. “Too bad. I coulda done wit a spot t’warm me.”

Bell looked from the flask to the corpse. “You do not know how lucky you are that you didn’t take a ‘spot’ out of this flask.” He twitched his head at the body and slid the flask under his cloak. “I think he did.”

“Excuse me,” he said to Octadenarius when he was back inside the workshop, “but I must ask Codi a question.”

“By all means,” the justiciar replied sourly. “The answers I am getting are doing me no good.”

“Codi, did you touch the body at all after Stoc told you it was there?”

“No, Sir Bellamy.” The man shuddered. “I only went as far as the gate. When I saw him…it…I told Stoc to run to the Old Priory Guesthouse to fetch back Master Mainard, and I sent Gisel for Master Octadenarius. Then I took one of the old blankets out of the shed and sort of threw it over the body. I didn’t touch it. I didn’t even go near it.”

“And it was lying as it is now, face up?”

Codi shuddered again. “Yes.”

“Do you know when it started raining?”

“I happen to know that,” Octadenarius said. “I left my bed just before dawn for the usual reason and looked, as I often do, out of the window. The path was dark with wet but not under the trees where they overhang it, so it could not have been raining hard or long. Say the rain began in earnest at dawn. But why does it matter?”

“Because Borc fell forward, onto his face—there are bruises to show
that—but he was lying on his back when Stoc found him. The child said something about his face, which he would not have been able to see if Borc was lying face down.”

“So someone turned him over.” Octadenarius shrugged. “Any passerby might have done so to see if he could help.”

“I am not so sure of that,” Bell said, his lips twisting with distaste. “I am not sure I would have touched anyone who smelled like that, but if the ground is dry under the body, the turning would have been done before dawn…when it is not very likely that a casual passerby would have been abroad.”

“True enough,” the justiciar said. He cast an irritated glance at Mainard, Codi, and Gisel, all standing close together in a defensive half circle, and another at Bell.

“One more question,” Bell said, withdrawing the flask from under his cloak. “Does anyone know this flask?”

His glance was fixed on Gisel who examined what Bell held with innocent interest before he shook his head. Codi took a little longer, coming closer to look carefully at one of the designs.

“Mercer,” he said. “That’s the guild symbol. “I’ve seen it on some things Master FitzRevery has—a leather cup, I think. But I’ve never seen a flask like that.” Codi glanced at his master, who had stiffened up. “It’s not Master FitzRevery’s own seal,” he added hastily. “It’s the guild seal. Any mercer could have a cup or a flask like that.”