Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2) (5 page)

“My sister,” the soldier offered Faucon in explanation. “She’s apprenticed here to learn the art of needlework from Mistress Alina. Calm yourself, sweetling,” he told his sister. “We’ve brought a knight, our shire’s new Coro–” the soldier looked up, frowning as he sought to recall Faucon’s title.

“You may call me Sir Crowner,” Faucon replied, then smiled at the girl. “Come little Jeanne. My clerk and I must meet with your master’s wife or your steward, if your house employs such a man. We are ordered by our king to pursue the matter of your master’s death.”

The child stepped away from her brother, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands. Although her lower lip still trembled, she offered her Crowner a quick curtsey. “We have no steward here, sir,” she said, “and even if we did, all the men of the house are gone. They all raced after–” her voice broke and she drew a ragged sob, then forged on. “I fear our mistress is distraught past speaking, but come within and I’ll fetch Mistress Gisla for you instead.”

Turning, she hurried through the gate. Faucon followed. There was no need to beg her companions to make way for him. Upon noting the arrival of a strange man, even one accompanied by a monk, the maidservants and other female apprentices had all eased back to stand in fearful clutches against the wall as they watched him. While the guardsmen went to assure their neighbors and kinswomen as best they could, Faucon made his way into the linsman’s cobbled courtyard, with Edmund close on his heels.

Like most merchants of Bernart’s ilk, his home and outbuildings stood right off the lane, no doubt because that was where his ancestors had set their roots. However, his exterior wall enclosed a good deal of land. Although only a little wider than the courtyard, the end of this spacious rectangle of property couldn’t be seen in the distance, not with a line of apple trees hiding the back wall. This more rural portion of the merchant’s home started at the back of what must be the household’s kitchen. The sizable wooden shed stood at the west end of the courtyard, directly in front of Faucon, a few chickens and ducks wandered around its edges. To one side of the kitchen, a pair of hogs, tethered to a post by thongs tied to the rings in their noses, lazed on the sun-warmed cobbles. A great iron pot stood to one side of that post, suggesting that Bernart’s unexpected death had granted these creatures one more day of life.

On the northern side of the courtyard, to Faucon’s right, was a slate-roofed wooden storehouse. The barn-like structure was as long as the house, but not as tall. Its door stood wide, revealing a good number of worktables on which linen fabric was spread. Some of the pieces retained the natural color of the flax from which they’d been woven, while others had been dyed in as many colors as Faucon could imagine. The shortest and most forward of the tables held several feet of fabric bleached to a stark and snowy white. This cloth was so fine that the day’s breathy breeze sent it fluttering and drifting across the tabletop.

The house to the south, across from the storehouse, was everything Faucon expected. There had indeed been a ground level workshop in the structure at one time, proving that like many other of England’s new men of commerce, Bernart had risen from humbler stock to his present wealth. But the usual long window that allowed passersby to view the craftsman at his work had been bricked shut. This created a slightly off-color rectangle in the house’s front wall. Three windows, each about the shape and size of half a small cart wheel, had been cut into this new brick, saying that the old workshop was still used by the household. One of those windows was open, for the arched opening showed no sign of the interior wooden shutters that darkened the other two.

Gone was the small door that had once led into the workshop. More new brick filled in its former space beneath an modest arch of stone. Now folk found their way into the house through a door as grand as any king might claim for his home. Set at the exact center of the structure, it was framed by a pointed arch of decorative stone that soared high onto the house’s second storey. Beneath the arch was a massive wooden door with a great loop of iron as its door handle, complete with a slot for a key.

Faucon knew both that handle’s form and its function. When the handle turned, gears on the inside of the door rotated, lowering bars into brackets to protect the house. From the outside it took a key to unlock the gears, so an opposite turn of the handle could lift the bars back into the open position.

Just now the door was both unbarred and ajar. Jeanne slipped into the narrow gap, then shoved at the heavy panel so Faucon could follow. But by the time he stepped inside, the child was nowhere to be seen.

He looked from the set of stairs directly ahead of him to the short entryway that included a small door to his left. This could only be the interior access to the workshop. Faucon choose the stairs, certain that they would lead him to the linsman’s hall. It was curiosity that drove him; he wanted to see how the wealthy merchant lived.

The first set of stairs rose only a few steps before turning back on itself to go higher still, taking him to a landing with a door on either side. The door to his left was closed while the one to his right stood ajar. He touched the rightward door. With a gentle creak, it swung a little wider.

Faucon caught his breath in admiration. This chamber rivaled any he’d ever seen, including those belonging to his wealthy kinsmen. What he could see of the walls was coated in thick plaster, painted the same shade of pale blue worn by the maidservants. Four carved stone columns lined the south-facing wall. Each column was painted yellow and trimmed in a green so fresh it reminded Faucon of spring. The carved foliage decorating their capitals had been picked out in a darker green, from which the occasional red berry peeked. That berry-red hue had been used on the arching stone ribs that rose from the capitals to hold aloft the floor of the uppermost storey.

This arrangement of columns had created three substantial bays between them. A tall window was cut into the wall of each bay, each window divided into thirds by carved stonework. These stone dividers had also been painted red, as had the decorative pointed arches that framed the windows.

Rather than the fabulously expensive glass Faucon had seen in some churches while he traveled the world, the linsman had filled his windows with his own product. Fine linen cloth, surely either greased or waxed to stave off the elements, had been stretched tightly in the openings. Although this did nothing to stop the chill air from entering, the sun flowed through almost undaunted. Today, that was light enough to tease glints of gold from the dried rushes strewn across the wide wooden planks in the floor.

Each bay held three wooden benches, one on each side of the bay. Stored beneath these seats were baskets of all shapes and sizes. Threads in as many colors as the rainbow trailed from each of these woven containers. Stacked carefully atop the benches were dozens of wooden frames, both square and circular. Stretched within each frame were narrow lengths of linen onto which a colorful repeating pattern was being embroidered. It took Faucon a moment to realize these cloth strips would soon be ribbons, trim for the hems and necklines of gowns or tunics. He even owned several garments decorated with this sort of ribbon, but he hadn’t purchased that work. Instead, it had been done by his mother’s maids.

Three standing frames, each as tall as a man, were aligned with the openings of each bay, their placement calculated so that sunlight would illuminate them for the greater part of the day. Piled on either side of these frames were soft folds of fabric as wide as the frame and the loom that had woven it. On one side of the frame, the cloth was yet undecorated. By the time it had been folded into the pile on the opposite side of the frame, the needlewomen who labored in this house had added a colorful and intricate design.

Bernart of Stanrudde wasn’t the usual sort of linsman, the merchant who sold coifs and braies or the occasional shirt made of that fabric. Nor would the folk of Stanrudde ever wear garments made in his house. Nay, these fabrics were the sort purchased by earls and princes.

“It is easier to thread a rope through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven,” Edmund muttered. Every line of his body radiated disapproval.

“Perhaps,” Faucon replied, wondering just how much it might cost to purchase a tunic made from Bernart’s work, “but you cannot deny that this is a beautiful chamber.”

Edmund made a rude sound. “Beauty is the devil’s tool, meant to confound us.”

Shaking his head at his clerk, Faucon gave the door another push, wanting to see the opposite side of the room. Where order reigned on the south side, chaos held sway to the north. What had surely started out as a normal household meal, with three tables all in a neat row and set with thick bread trenchers, horn cups and carved wooden spoons, was now a mess. Benches had been pushed this way and that as those sitting on them had leapt to join the hue and cry. Spoons lay scattered on the floor. One thick bread trencher had slid over the edge of a table, spilling whatever stew it had contained onto bench and floor. The far tabletop had been shoved almost off its braces, toppling horn cups of dark ale that was soaking into a once white tablecloth.

The door behind them opened. Faucon and Edmund turned as one. Little Jeanne exited, her eyes once more leaking tears. As she flew back down the steps, a slender young woman of no more than six-and-ten stepped unescorted onto the landing, her arms crossed before her. Despite her youth and grief, the girl bore herself with a certain confidence that told Faucon she was a daughter of this house.

That, and her attire. Her linen overgown was a pure deep blue, an expensive color, embroidered with a white diamond pattern. At the center of each diamond was a tiny star sewn from precious gold thread. Beneath her upper gown she wore a pale yellow undergown made of the finest wool.

She was no beauty, not with so long and narrow a face, but there was something inherently attractive about the arrangement of her features. Or there would have been, had her dark-brown eyes and nose not been swollen and reddened with grief. Her fair hair must have started the day contained in sober plaits. Now, one plait had lost its thong and had half-unraveled, while fine strands of hair straggled this way and that from the other braid.

Affording Edmund a mere glance, she gazed boldly at Faucon without according him the show of humility required of a woman when she confronted a man who was her equal or better. “I am Mistress Gisla. You are Sir Crowner?” she asked in Faucon’s native French. Her pronunciation was flawless and her voice steadier and stronger than he expected.

Her introduction made him blink. Mistress? Did she claim that title because she was the master’s daughter or because she was married to one of the man’s sons? Perhaps she was the one that Peter the Webber was to have married.

“I am indeed, Mistress Gisla,” Faucon replied with a brief nod of greeting. “I am Sir Faucon de Ramis, Crowner for this shire. It is now my duty, and not your sheriff’s, to view your father’s body and call the inquest jury. My apologies for intruding at such a time, but I must see him.”

His request teased a ragged breath from her. As if she meant to hide her reaction from him, she looked away. That sent a strand of hair tumbling over her brow. In unconscious reaction, she lifted a hand to brush at it only to freeze as her gaze caught on her fingers.

They were foul with blood. So were the lower edges of the sleeves of both her gowns. Swallowing, she dropped her arm and closed her eyes for an instant. Tears dripped unheeded from her eyes.

“I have not even had time to summon the priest,” she murmured, her voice so low that Faucon was certain she meant the words only for herself.

Then her resolve returned. Her eyes opened and she once more met his gaze without flinching. “Come with me,” she said and started down the stairs.

With Edmund behind him, Faucon followed her to the ground floor. Mistress Gisla opened the small side door in the entryway, then stepped back, doing so without looking into the workshop beyond it. She drew a bracing breath. “Do as you must, sir, but I cannot escort you into this chamber.”

“Nor need you enter,” Faucon assured her. “There are three men of the guard outside, mistress. Send them to fetch your priest and to remind your menfolk who joined the hue and cry that they are now needed at home. When your servants have returned, send men to bear your father’s body out of this chamber for you.”

Edmund made a sound. “But the inquest jury,” he began, his voice low.

“Cannot fit into this small chamber to do a proper viewing,” Faucon finished, sending a chiding look at his clerk.

“Ah,” Edmund breathed out in agreement.

Gisla looked from the clerk to the shire’s new Crowner. Her gaze was flat, her eyes narrowed. Without a word or an acknowledgment of what Faucon had said, she turned on her heel and rounded the larger open door to exit the house.

Signaling Edmund to stay where he stood, Faucon stepped into the workshop and ducked instinctively. Because it was located directly beneath the hall, this chamber had the same arrangement of columns and bays on as the one above it. But here the arched ribs holding up the hall floor were much lower.

As he had noted from outside, the first two of the three small windows in the bays were closed, their solid wooden shutters held in place with wooden bars resting in metal brackets. The far window’s bar lay on the floor beneath it. With its shutters thrown wide, enough light entered to show Faucon that the floor in here was slate, and that iron strapping bound each of the heavy wooden chests lining the walls and bays. All the chests were closed, each one secured with a keyed lock threaded through its metal straps.

A long high wooden worktable with a tall back stood against the wall opposite the windows. In one corner of the table was the checkered board that many merchants used for counting. Blood-drenched pennies were strewn across its surface. So too, had blood sprayed the worktable’s tall back. Three thick wooden pegs studded that raised back panel. The one closest to the counting board held a handful of knotted measuring cords while two pairs of small scissors, neither of them longer than Faucon’s hand, hung from the central peg.