Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

Hodge stepped off the stair, halting beside Faucon although he yet faced the men of the hue and cry. “Aye, sanctuary Peter, son of Roger, has for the now, but I am a patient man. In forty days I will be here to see that he pays for what he has done to my friend and yours!” he shouted.

The crowd roared their agreement. Faucon wondered whom these men liked so well, the pleykster or the dead linen merchant.

Edmund grabbed Faucon by the arm. His gaze was frantic. “They’re all going to leave now but they cannot, not when I must scribe the name of the one who raised the hue and cry. They can’t go until I know it!”

Faucon shot him an irritable look. “Why are you even here? Did I not command you to stay?”

Edmund blinked in astonishment at that. “Surely, you didn’t intend that command for me. You need me.”

With that, he released his master to race up the steps to the porch. “Stay, all of you! You cannot leave yet,” he shouted. “Sir Crowner and I must know who found the body. Who raised the hue and cry? And we must have proof of Englishry!”

It was enough to make Faucon’s head ache. Edmund was right; these bits of information were what they needed to record. But this was neither the place to do it nor the right way to achieve the townsmen’s cooperation.

“Edmund, come down,” he commanded without heat. “What eats at you that you’ve forgotten the proper order of things? Isn’t our first task to view the body?”

Edmund aimed a horrified look at his master. “Lord save me! What have I done?” he breathed out, his face ashen.

Hodge the Pleykster glanced from monk to master. “It was Bernart’s wife, God pity her, who found Bernart. She saw Peter yet crouching beside my friend, his hands stained with her husband’s blood.”

Now that the confrontation had ended, the big man’s voice had lost its angry edge. His expression sagged with exhaustion and grief. He more fell than sat onto the middle step. His gaze aimed at the cobbled earth beneath his feet, he shook his head like one stunned. “To think I ever felt any fondness for that cowardly murdering boy,” he muttered.

One of the guardsmen stepped around the grieving merchant. Like his mates, he appeared no older than the four-and-twenty years Faucon claimed. His sword was serviceable, its belt and sheath made of sturdy leather, but he wore a leather cap instead of a metal helmet. This was no professional soldier. Nay, if Stanrudde was like any of the towns Faucon knew, this man was a journeyman in one of the local trades. Just as the great barons were only required to lend their swords and soldiers to the king for forty days each year, so did each town require their merchants to provide men to train as soldiers for a similar period so their city’s walls might be protected all the year round at no expense.

“Is it really true that we no longer need to call for Sir Alain in this matter?” the guardsman asked, his brows raised even as he lowered his head as if to conceal his conversation from the pleykster.

“It is,” Faucon assured him.

The young man gave an approving nod. It wasn’t the first time Faucon had witnessed satisfaction at this change in the sheriff’s authority. Although Sir Alain yet had his hand well fastened around the throat of this shire, he was not well liked, at least not by the meanest of its citizenry.

When the soldier continued, he lowered his voice until he was almost whispering. “Then you must come with me to Bernart le Linsman’s home. You must do more than simply view the merchant’s body and call the inquest. You must discern what truly happened, for I and my companions,” the jerk of his head indicated the other two guardsmen, “know in our souls that Peter did not do this deed.”

“I cannot believe I so completely lost my head! Indeed, you were correct, sir,” Edmund muttered, his head bowed as if he were shamed. He and Faucon were following the guardsmen out of the square, returning along the same path they’d run with the hue and cry.

Faucon glanced at his clerk and restrained a laugh. It wouldn’t do to mock Edmund for an apology, not when it was the first one his clerk had offered in their short acquaintance. Although Edmund hadn’t yet confirmed this, Faucon guessed it was the monk’s resistance to admitting error that had cost him his convent home and resulted in his demotion to a mere Crowner’s clerk.

Still, he couldn’t resist asking, “I am right about what?”

The monk shot him a quick glance, then once more focused his gaze on the rutted earthen lane beneath his sandals. “That our first order of business is always to see the body. If we have not determined how the death occurred, then we cannot know how to proceed, can we?”

Edmund fell silent for a few more steps, then began again to mutter. “It must have been the excitement of the chase that addled me. Of course, that’s what it must have been. Untoward excitement on my part.”

“Sir Crowner?” Now fully dressed, Garret, son of Elsa, lifted his hand to capture Faucon’s attention. He stood in the storeroom doorway below the chamber that was his home. “Sir, I know you bade us wait, but it appears you have other business at hand now. Am I free to have my mother’s body washed and prepared for burial, and can my neighbors go on about what’s left of their day?”

“Aye,” Faucon told him.

“Nay!” Edmund called over him.

Faucon’s jaw set. He caught his clerk by the sleeve and dragged him to a halt. Edmund squeaked in surprise and yanked on his trapped arm; he wasn’t a man who much enjoyed human contact. The guardsmen stopped with them, watching in untoward curiosity.

“Brother Edmund, by what right do you countermand my order?” Faucon demanded quietly. “I told Mistress Ida that I would not call an inquest jury in the matter of her grandmother’s death.”

Edmund frowned at him, still shifting uneasily as he tried more surreptitiously to free his arm. “Aye, so you did tell the granddaughter, but you had no right to offer her what you did. Once the charge of murder has been made you must call the inquest jury and instruct them to either confirm or deny the charge. But, before I could inform you that you had misspoken, you were gone as part of the hue and cry.

“Sir, we truly have no choice. It is the law,” the monk added, almost pleading. “As you have just reminded me, all things have their proper order.”

It took every ounce of Faucon’s will not to draw his sword and end his torment by either murder or death felonious. Unfortunately, murder wasn’t an option, not when he owed Edmund his life. Nor was Faucon ready to pursue death felonious. This wasn’t because killing himself assured his eternal damnation. Nay, he wasn’t leaving this earthly vale until he’d wrung every last drop of pleasure from his new home and the unexpected income that came with it. But God take him, this time Edmund would bend!

“I will not call the inquest jury for this death,” he warned the monk. “I have deemed that the old woman died in her sleep. There was no murder and there is no profit to the crown in pursuing the matter further. You may note in your record that I said as much, even if what you scribe results in my being fined by king and court for not doing my duty or breaking the law.”

Edmund’s eyes grew hollow as he contemplated his master so flagrantly violating the rules that structured his every breath. An instant later, his shoulders relaxed. “Aye, sir, I can see your point. But consider this. I’ve already recorded the names of the witnesses and the victim. Now, here we are with a new death to record, one we know for certain is murder and nothing else. When you call the inquest to confirm the verdict for the linsman, why not have them also deny the verdict of murder for Elsa of Stanrudde, confirming instead one of natural death?” New excitement filled the clerk’s dark eyes as if he’d both surprised and pleased himself with his suggestion.

Faucon frowned at the monk. Was Edmund haggling with him? Well, he could haggle as well as the next man, and he was going to get what he wanted.

“So we can do, but it’s already past None. The sun will be setting around Vespers tonight, giving us no more than another two hours or so to call the jury for the murdered linsman. If we aren’t able to do it by then, I won’t prevent Elsa of Stanrudde from being buried on the morrow, as is her right.”

Much to Faucon’s surprise, Edmund merely shrugged. “But if we do call the jury before day’s end, she’ll yet be available for viewing. If not, well then, we can exhume her when the time comes and present her for the jurors to view,” he replied in what sounded to Faucon like casual satisfaction, something he hadn’t believe Edmund capable of.

Then, as Faucon watched in astonishment, the monk’s lips shifted until they were bent into the oddest, flattest smile he had ever seen, and the first that Edmund had offered him. The expression was so startling that all Faucon could do was stare.

When his master said nothing, Edmund’s strange grin faltered. “Will that not suffice, sir?” he prodded hopefully. “Both the law and your dictate will be satisfied, no? And you’ll have no need to worry over fines and fees for doing wrong on your part.”

And that made Faucon gape like an oaf. Edmund was bending on this to protect his master from a fine? Faucon wasn’t certain if he wanted to thank his clerk or beat his brow against the nearest wooden beam. At last, all he could think to do was smile in return. “Aye, Brother Edmund, that will do well, indeed. My thanks.”

The clerk nodded. The unusual lights dimmed from his gaze and his expression once more regained its usual disapproving bend. “I am glad I could clarify for you, sir.”

Wanting to shake his head like one stunned, Faucon turned to look at the weaver. “If I do not call you to bring your mother to an inquest before the sun sets this night, you may bury your mother on the morrow in all peace, goodman, taking with you my condolences on your loss.”

As with most towns and even the great city of London, Stanrudde’s streets were a twisting warren of narrow lanes, some no wider than a man was tall. As Faucon rounded each turn, his respect for Peter the Webber’s fleetness of foot grew. The man’s path had taken him through places so constricted that he could have been stopped if someone on either side of the lane had simply stretched out his arm.

Here in the parish where the middling craftsmen and day laborers plied their trades, the houses were older and more worn, hogs and chickens wandering where they would. All of the structures sat cheek by jowl, the exterior walls of each home almost touching those of its neighbors. To a one, these dwellings were painted white and built of wattle and daub–branches woven into panels and coated with mud and manure–reinforced with dark wooden cross bracing. Most rose no higher than two storeys, although a rare few pressed their thatched roofs to the sky at three.

Just now, every window in those upper storeys was open, every shutter thrown wide. Women and old men, little lads and girls, crowded the openings. While the children laughed and tossed playthings back and forth across the lanes, their elders leaned out as far as possible, chattering and shouting to one another as they shared their excitement over Bernart le Linsman’s murder and Peter the Webber’s race for sanctuary.

As the guard led them around another corner, Faucon caught a delicious note in the general stench of so many lives lived so closely. He dared a deep breath, then savored the rich fragrance of fermenting ale and the more subtle aroma of stewing lamb. An alewife’s home, and one worthy of her trade if those smells bore good witness. He marked the structure in his mind. Should he and Edmund be barred into the city for the night, Edmund was guaranteed a bed with his brethren at the abbey, but Faucon would need a place to lay his head if the abbot refused him the abbey’s guesthouse. Alewives often set aside a corner for travelers.

Their final turn took them out of the crowded city center and into a new world, one inhabited by the town’s most successful merchants. These were the men who ruled Stanrudde with as much power and influence as his great-uncle exercised over his bishopric and its far-flung holdings. In this area of town there were no streetside shop windows in the workshops that surely yet existed in the ground level of these grand stone houses. Nay, the merchants who lived here didn’t need to entice shoppers to buy their wares by announcing to all and sundry what they sold. Instead, anyone wishing to purchase what they had in store had to prove their ability to afford it. With no need to encourage trade, these homeowners had all raised stone walls to enclose their private realms, not only to protect their expensive ware, but also their wealth in workshops, livestock, outbuildings and land that they enjoyed.

It was a simple matter to identify which of these fine homes belonged to Bernart le Linsman. Measuring more than three perches long and a full three storeys tall, and surrounded by an low enclosing wall, the house was not only the largest dwelling on this short lane, but a dozen women and girls, all wearing pale blue linen overgowns, huddled beneath the arch that marked the gateway. Most of them wept gently, but a few had torn at their hair and clothing and were still moaning loudly in their grief.

“Jeanne!” called one of the guardsmen as they drew near the mourners.

His call stirred a child of no more than ten. She broke from the group and flung herself at the soldier with a wordless cry. Burying her face in his chest, she sobbed, “I cannot believe it! How can the master be dead and Master Peter be the one who killed him?”