Silken Threads (4 page)

Graeham still had every intention of
bringing her back to Paris, of course. Not only was her delivery
from the likes of Rolf le Fever a just cause, but Graeham’s very
future rode on it. Somehow, despite his injuries and le Fever’s
defiance, he would manage to execute his mission
—
but
without the dubious assistance of the Sheriff of London.

Thinking as quickly as he could, given his
throbbing leg, Graeham said, “This mongrel’s not worth the trouble
of bringing him up on charges. We’d have to give statements,
testify at the sheriff’s court, all that bloody
nonsense
—
just so they can deal him a few lashes and toss
him out onto the street again. ‘Tisn’t worth it.”

He must have been convincing, because after
a moment’s thought, the stranger stepped back from Byron and said,
“Why don’t you go find your friend and help him get that knife out
of his throat?”

Byram hesitated, casting an anxious glance
in Graeham’s direction
—
troubled, perhaps, at leaving
unfinished business
—
then turned and sprinted down the
alley toward Milk Street.

Graeham shoved the knife under his belt,
then slumped to the ground, gripping his leg and cursing like a
sailor. The criss-crossed thong that secured the leather legging
was stretched taut over his bulging shin; it thudded with pain.

The stranger sheathed his sword and squatted
next to Graeham, frowning at his leg. His right earlobe, Graeham
saw, was pierced by a small gold ring etched with an exotic design.
Graeham had once seen an infidel in a turban walking down the Rue
de la Lanterne in Paris; he’d had an earring like that.

“Is it broken?” the stranger asked.

Graeham nodded. “Rather badly, I suspect. I
can’t tell too much with it wrapped up this way.”

“Don’t unwrap it. ‘Twill act as a splint
till you can get a proper one from a surgeon. Is that all they did
to you?”

“They cracked a few of my ribs. But they
would have done the same thing to my head if you hadn’t shown up
when you did. I’m Graeham Fox, by the way. And I owe you a debt of
thanks.”

“Hugh of Wexford
—
and I’m the one
who should be thankful. ‘Twas the best sport I’ve had all
week.”

“Will that fellow really bleed to death when
he takes the dirk out of his neck?”

Hugh grinned and shrugged. “I’ve no idea. I
made that up.”

“It sounded good.”

“I thought so. Come.” Hugh stood up and
hauled a woozy and pain-racked Graeham to his feet, pressing the
four-foot shaft of the sledge-hammer into his trembling hand. “This
should serve fairly well as a cane. Let’s get you inside where you
can lie down.”

“Inside?” Graeham rested most of his weight
on the sledge, but Hugh aided him with a hand under his arm.

“This is my sister’s house,” Hugh said,
patting the earth-and-straw wall against which Graeham had been
leaning. “I was on my way here for a visit when I saw a rather
mangy cur leading a handsome sorrel stallion out of this
alley.”

“A handsome sorrel stallion with fifty marks
in his saddlebags,” Graeham said as Hugh guided him by torturous
little hopping steps into the rear croft and around to the back of
the house
—
one of a long row of attached two-story
dwellings facing Wood Street. Outbuildings dotted the croft; a
privy shed had been built against the back wall of Hugh’s sister’s
house, and in the shadow of a tree behind it stood a stone hut,
which probably housed a kitchen. She had a little garden plot, bare
of plants this early in the spring, but no livestock.

“Fifty marks!” Hugh let out a long, low
whistle from between his teeth. “Rotten luck, falling prey to
robbers when you’ve got a fortune like that on you.”

Rotten luck had nothing to do with
it,
Graeham thought,
and one of those “robbers” just happens
to be manservant to the master of the Mercers’ Guild.

Hugh pounded his fist on the oaken back door
of his sister’s home. “Joanna! Joanna, it’s me, Hugh. Open up.” He
tugged on the latch string trailing from a hole in the door; from
inside came the metallic scrape of the bolt being lifted. Pulling
the door open, he called down a narrow hallway, “Joanna?” No sound
came from within. “She must not be home. Come on in, but step
carefully here
—
it’s a sunken floor.”

Hugh escorted Graeham down the hallway,
which opened into a humbly furnished living chamber with a ladder
in the corner leading upstairs. The rushes that blanketed the floor
of this modest salle smelled fresh. In the middle of a rough-hewn
table flanked by benches sat a sort of poor man’s oil
lamp
—
a lump of fat in a clay dish with a burning rush in
it
—
which cast a wavering corona of light. Two deep little
iron-barred windows looked out onto the alley; a white cat observed
them dispassionately from the ledge of one.

“That imperious creature is Petronilla,”
Hugh said. “Her brother’s around here somewhere.
Manfrid
—
he’s the timid type. With the exception of Joanna,
he’s terrified of people
—
especially men. There’s usually a
dog or two in residence, but not at the moment, apparently. Where’s
your mum, Petronilla?”

Petronilla turned to look out the
window.

“Joanna lit that lamp,” Hugh observed, “so
she must not have left that long ago. The sun has just set.”

Through a wide, arched doorway Graeham could
see a small front room
—
a shop stall, for next to the door
that led to the street was an enormous window with horizontal
shutters, now bolted shut. Near this window stood a large
rectangular embroidery frame laid flat on trestles, on which a
length of sky-blue silk, partially stitched in vines and flowers,
was stretched taut by means of lacings around the edges.

Noticing the direction of Graeham’s gaze,
Hugh said, “Joanna’s husband is a mercer. He imports silk and they
sell it out of the shop
—
or rather, she does. He enjoys the
buying, but he can’t bear the peddling.”

Graeham nodded politely, straining for
composure despite the howling pain in his leg. “You mentioned some
place to lie down...?”

“Right in here.” Hugh pushed a leather
curtain aside and helped Graeham to limp into a tiny back room with
no rushes to obscure the floor of beaten chalk. By the dusky
twilight filtering in through the windows, Graeham made out various
chests and sacks and implements, as well as some bolts of
jewel-toned silk and a few small baskets on a bench. A narrow cot
stood against the back wall.

“Who sleeps here?” Graeham grunted in pain
as he lowered himself onto the linen-covered mattress of crackling
straw and stretched out, searching for the position that was least
agonizing for his leg.

“Prewitt.” Hugh punched a limp feather
pillow and shoved it under Graeham’s head.

“Who’s that
—
the apprentice?”

“The husband
—
Prewitt Chapman. They
don’t have an apprentice. Here.” Dumping his satchel on the floor,
Hugh handed Graeham his wineskin. “Have some of
this
—
’twill ease the pain and warm you up. You’re
shivering.”

Graeham gratefully uncorked the skin and
squeezed some wine into his mouth, not bothering to sit up. He was
tempted to ask why the master of the house had to make do with a
cot in the storeroom when there was apparently a solar upstairs,
but it would ill repay his new friend’s hospitality to start prying
into private family affairs. “Won’t your brother-in-law be a bit
put out to find his bed commandeered by a complete stranger?”

“Prewitt only sleeps here when he’s in town.
He spends most of his time abroad, buying silks.”

“Is that where he is now?”

“I couldn’t say. This is my first visit to
Joanna in almost a year.” Hugh shook out a woollen blanket that had
been folded at the foot of the bed and covered Graeham with it.
“You rest here. I’m going to go get you a surgeon.”

“Is there one in the neighborhood?”

“I seem to recall seeing a shop with a red
and white striped pole out front up toward Cripplegate.”

After Hugh left, Graeham set himself to the
task of draining the wineskin in the hope of inducing a state of
numb oblivion before the surgeon arrived. Having held down
screaming men more than once while their cracked bones were shoved
back into place, he reckoned he’d rather not be in full command of
his senses for the procedure.

Time swam; night fell. Just as Graeham
realized the wineskin was empty, he heard a door open and close;
the sound came not from the back of the house, where he was, but
the front. From his position, he could see through the open
storeroom doorway into the lamplit salle and beyond that to the
darkened shopfront. A shadowy figure in a hooded mantle moved
through the shop. Graeham was about to call Hugh’s name when he
realized this person was smaller than Hugh
—
and wearing a
lady’s kirtle.

The woman
—
Hugh’s sister, no
doubt
—
entered the salle, hung her mantle on a peg and
placed a parchment-wrapped bundle on the central table. Drunk as
Graeham was, it was taxing to keep her in focus. She was tall for a
woman, though not excessively so. He saw that she wore a plain blue
kirtle with no overtunic; her hair was concealed beneath a white
scarf twisted and tucked around her head, a few golden brown
tendrils having escaped at her nape; keys and various small tools
jangled on the chatelaine hanging from her embroidered girdle.

The cat jumped off the windowsill and joined
another
—
a large black and white tom
—
in rubbing
against its mistress’s skirts. One of them yowled something that
sounded like “Now.”

She chuckled. “It’s eel turnovers you smell,
but you must wait till I’ve eaten my fill before you get yours.”
Her voice sounded young, and had a scratchy quality to it that was
not unpleasant.

Graeham knew he ought to announce his
presence. He raised himself onto an elbow, groaning when things
spun sickeningly.

He heard a sharp gasp. The woman stilled,
staring into the darkened storeroom with wide, unblinking eyes.
“Who’s there?” she called out in a quavering voice.

“Don’t be afraid,” Graeham muttered thickly
as he collapsed back down, squeezing his eyes shut against another
wave of drunken disorientation. He heard the rushes rustling
beneath her feet; the footsteps grew closer.

“Get out.”

He opened his eyes, squinting at her as she
stood over him, holding an enormous axe with both hands, its blade
aimed at his head.

“Did you hear me?” she demanded shakily.
“Get out of my house this instant, or I’ll split your skull open
where you lie.”

* * *

“I can explain,” the intruder said, his
words slurred, a hand raised as if to ward off the blow of her axe.
Another drunken vagrant trying to find refuge in her home; she
really must get better about locking up when she left the place
unattended.

“Get out!” Joanna repeated, cursing her
wavering voice; she knew better than to let one of these street
rats sense her fear. But he was such a big man
—
his booted
feet, emerging from beneath the blanket in which he was wrapped,
extended past the foot of Prewitt’s bed
—
and his face was
grimy, and he stank of wine. His drunkenness would only stoke his
capacity for violence. If he leapt at her, she must be prepared to
strike back, and hard.

“Mistress...” he began.

“Get up!” she ordered, brandishing the axe.
“Go! I’ll use this, so help me God I will.”

He took her measure with oddly unruffled
calm, his eyes glowing like blue fire in the semidarkness. “No, you
won’t,” he said quietly, sounding almost sober. “You couldn’t. Your
hands are shaking.” He lifted himself on an elbow.

Joanna backed up a step, holding the axe
before her like a talisman. Was he preparing to leave...or to
attack? “My husband’s due home any moment now,” she lied. Thinking
that might not be enough to discourage him, given his size, she
added, “And my brother is with him. Hugh’s a master swordsman.
He’ll run you through if he finds you here.”

She saw amusement in his eyes, and something
else that might, under different circumstances, have almost looked
like compassion. “Actually, ‘twas Hugh who brought me here.”

“What?”

“Aye, he
—
”

“Liar. You just want me to let my guard
down. Hugh’s not even in London. He’s off fighting in the
Rhineland.”

The bastard’s mouth quirked. “If your
brother’s not even in London, how could he possibly be on his way
here with your husband?”

Joanna cursed inwardly; she’d never been
adept at lying. “My...my husband
is
coming.”

“I don’t think so. If he were, you’d leave
right now and let
him
oust me instead of trying to do it
yourself. He’s not in London either, is he? No one’s coming. You’re
all alone.”

“Get out of here!” She advanced on him, the
axe at the ready, keeping toward the foot of the cot so he couldn’t
make a grab for her.

“Mistress...”

“Get up! Go on!” Flipping the axe in her
hands, she whacked him on the legs with its handle.

“
Fuck!”
He contracted into a ball,
clutching his legs.
“Oh, shit! Fuck! Shit!”

Joanna backed up swiftly to the doorway,
unnerved by his reaction.

He growled a torrent of ragged expletives
before sinking, ashen-faced and quivering, onto the cot. “By the
blood of the saints, mistress,” he rasped. “Did you have to do
that?”

“If you don’t leave right now,” she
blustered, “I’ll do it again.”

“If I could walk, I’d leave,” he said
breathlessly. “My leg is broken.”