The Marsh King's Daughter (35 page)

Outside, the spring air was sharp with the last echo of winter. Stars glittered between scudding clouds like tufts of scrap wool. Hugging his cloak, Nicholas breathed deeply and tried to shake off a feeling of aversion so strong that it was almost a bad taste in his mouth.

He knew that de la Pole was testing him, feeling his way to see if he could damage Robert Willoughby's business by taking away his means of transport. Even though he had refused, he still felt sullied, not least because of what had happened between himself and Miriel. While it did not put him in the same skin as Maurice de la Pole, it certainly made them rub shoulders. It was just a matter of degree, of how deep the stain.

Frowning, Nicholas stopped at the midden pits near the stables, raised his tunic and parted his loin cloth to relieve himself. Behind him the noise from the tavern was a raucous testament to the power of Gascon wine. Torchlight flickered over the courtyard immediately outside the hostel, painting the white daub and wattle walls with a yellow gloam between the ragged banks of flame-shadow. A figure was-briefly outlined in the doorway. Nicholas pulled a face as it stumbled away from the threshold and into the illumination of the torch flare, then began heading down the path towards the midden. He had stomached all he could of Maurice de la Pole for one night.

He looked down to shake the last drops from his penis and readjust his clothing in the hopes of making a swift escape. When he raised his head, it was to see a piece of shadow break from the fluttering darkness, seize Maurice de la Pole round the neck, and make a vigorous plunging motion. De la Pole fell from the light with a single, startled cry, the sound abruptly cut off as his attacker stabbed down again.

Shouting the alarm, Nicholas sprinted from the midden towards the scene and the killer took to his heels, but not before Nicholas had glimpsed the man's full red beard and battered, aquiline features.

Maurice de la Pole was beyond mortal help, Nicholas could tell that just from the lake of blood, shining black in the torchlight. Shouting again for help, Nicholas ran in pursuit of the assassin, but the man was fleet of foot and had a good head start, and the dark, twisting alleyways of the tavern's neighbourhood were a labyrinth. Nicholas caught a single glimpse of what might have been a fleeing figure and pursued its elusiveness to the wharves and the dark barrier of the river. There was nothing. Black as de la Pole's blood, the water shone in the light of a watchman's fire, and the flames cast deep shadows in which a hundred men could have hidden with knives. The watchman himself had seen nothing.

'Save for a fisherman in a rowboat,' he said to Nicholas's enquiry. 'Or at least that was what he seemed to me.'

Giving up the chase, Nicholas returned to The Ship. Maurice de la Pole had been brought inside and laid on a bench. The two stab wounds had bled him white. His money pouch was missing, slashed from his belt by the same blade that had taken his life. Nicholas shuddered, thinking how nearly it might have been himself lying there. De la Pole had stood no chance against the suddenness and ferocity of the attack. Usually cut-purses were more circumspect; it was the money they wanted, not the notoriety that came with murder - unless murder had been the intent all along. Nicholas shivered, the cold he felt not of the flesh, but of the spirit. When death of this ilk breathed on him, it evoked memories of his father, of the accident that was no accident, of grief and loss and injustice.

'He's dead as you ordered,' Serlo Redbeard reported to his employer with the satisfaction of a job well done.

Robert Willoughby stared out over the tenting ground by the fulling mill. Bolts of newly washed and thickened cloth were being stretched on frames to dry before the process of napping and shearing. It was a good day for the task, blustery and bright. He withdrew a pouch of silver from beneath his cloak and weighed it in his hand. 'How did you do it?'

Eyes on the pouch, Serlo licked his lips and told him. 'Two thrusts of the dagger to make sure, and I stole his purse. The authorities think that the deed was done by a common thief

Robert nodded. A surge of triumph tingled through him, but even so his eyes narrowed. 'You have fulfilled the task I set you,' he said, 'but it was a foolish place to carry it out. You might easily have been caught.'

Redbeard shrugged. 'But I wasn't,' he said with an impatient scowl. 'I knew what I was about.'

Robert arched his brow and handed over the coins, which disappeared into Redbeard's tunic faster than a weasel into a coney burrow. That was the difficulty with employing a man like Redbeard. While he would not balk at whatever had to be done, he was not always reliable in the detail, and that led to risk.

Dismissing the man, Robert went home to wait for the news to break in town.

'I did not like the man,' he told Miriel that evening when a barge-master from Sleaford had made the tale public. 'I could be uncharitable enough to say that he got what he deserved, but in truth, it is disgraceful that such a thing should happen. It goes to show that you can never trust anyone.'

'No,' Miriel said with downcast eyes.

She had been quiet these past few days and Robert wondered if she had somehow found out about himself and the whore from The Green Bush.

'There is to be a mass said for his soul at St Botolf's. I said we would both attend. It would be churlish of us not to do so.'

'As you wish.' She gave him a sidelong look. 'Although I suspect that you will not be so much praying for the soul of Maurice de la Pole as thanking God for removing him from your path.'

Robert cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly. 'I am not a saint,' he said, and decided to commission a jewel-covered Psalter for her to carry when she went with him to worship. She deserved the best, and it would assuage his guilt over the tavern whore.

Besides, with his rival removed, his profits this year would be large enough to allow several little luxuries. At the mass for de la Pole he could talk to clients who had changed their allegiance and persuade them to return to him. After that he could visit the wool producers who had relied on de la Pole to sell their annual crop of fleeces and offer them his services. Life could not be better.

Bound in calf hide and gold leaf, the Psalter gleamed from a cedarwood box inlaid with mother of pearl. The front of the book bore an ivory centre panel, exquisitely carved in a representation of the Virgin and Child. Miriel gasped at the sight, hardly daring to take the object from her husband's extended hands.

'It's beautiful!' she said with awe. 'Rob, it must have cost a fortune!'

'I count it worth every penny if you like it.' His expression was warm with pleasure. 'You do, don't you?' 'Oh, yes, but I'm overwhelmed!'

He laughed and kissed her mouth. 'That wasn't my intention. You know it delights me to give you presents. Besides, I wanted you to have a reminder of me while we're apart.' He lifted the Psalter gently out of the box and unfastened the ornate silver clasp. 'See, there's a dedication to you on the first page.' He pointed to her name, inscribed in Latin, and turned the vellum pages to reveal lovingly executed illuminations in jewel-rich colours.

Miriel shook her head, lost for words, swimming in a sea of guilt. 'I don't deserve this,' she said in a choked voice.

'I know of no one more deserving - except perhaps myself.' He chuckled and kissed her again, this time with more purpose, squeezing her haunches to his.

It was mid-morning and through the open shutters of the hostelry, the clamour of Boston's busy dockside surged into the room. 'There isn't time,' she protested. 'It'll be high tide soon, and I need to be on board before then.'

'Time enough,' Robert muttered thickly, his hands already gathering her skirts in folds around her hips. 'I won't see you for at least a month.'

'No, but I—'

He covered her mouth with his and bore her back on to the hostelry's truckle bed. She heard the frame groan in protest as it took their weight. His hands cupped her buttocks, raising them, drawing her on to his hugeness. Miriel bit her lip and stifled a scream. It would soon be over, she told herself. Robert was always as vigorous as a ram in rut, but he was as fast as one too. A mixed blessing because, as he said, there was always time enough and, true to his word, within moments he was gasping his pleasure as he collapsed on her.

Half smothered, Miriel listened to the thunder of his heart battering against her body, the roar of his breath in her ear, the solid rock of his manhood impaling her. She felt as if she had just been devoured by a wild beast. At last he softened and withdrew. Rising on one elbow, he gazed down into her face and stroked her cheek. 'I will miss you,' he said softly.

'And I you.' Miriel forced a smile, wishing him gone, wishing the time her own. And then, feeling guilty at such thoughts, she stroked his face in return. He captured her fingers in his and kissed them.

'You are my heart's treasure. I would come with you if I could.'

'I know.' And because there was no chance of that happening, she was able to fill her voice with generosity and reassurance.

Robert left soon after that, murmuring regrets which were genuine, but with his eye already on the horizon. He had escorted her to Boston because he was fishing for new clients in the territory so recently vacated by the demise of Maurice de la Pole. He had catches to land before anyone else hooked them.

Miriel herself was bound for the great cloth fair of St John at Troyes. It was not an event that she visited every year, but it did no harm to be seen now and again and besides, she had a longing to wander this year. There was a restlessness in her spirit, as if she were an autumn swallow preparing to take wing.

Bidding Robert farewell in the hostel courtyard, Miriel returned to the room above to secure her travelling chest. With a small grimace, she picked up the Psalter. It was a costly personal gift, beautifully crafted. As a symbol of the store that Robert set by her it weighed like a shackle because she knew herself unworthy.

It was so hard pretending that she was unchanged when a single evening had altered the balance for ever. She had tried to shut the memory of that night away, concentrate on her business, be a good wife to Robert. Outwardly she had succeeded. Only she knew of the chaos within. Jesu, if only Nicholas knew the craving he had awakened - or perhaps he did. Perhaps he too was craving. She told herself that in time the sharpness of that need would dull. Layers of work and domesticity would blunt the pain - but they could hardly bring her to her senses when it was Nicholas who had shown her what senses were.

Walter and Samuel carried her travelling chest to the dockside and she boarded Pandora's Daughter, joining the cargo of wool sarples and bales of cloth. Nicholas's ship, she thought with a frisson as she trod the deck and ascended to the aft castle. Even though it was not captained by him, but by his senior master, Martin Wudecoc, she could feel his presence in the creak of the timbers and the bold scarlet flag snapping from one of the wooden turrets.

Martin Wudecoc came to greet her, a smile on his long, pleasant face. He stooped to make a fuss of Will and the little dog wagged around his feet, yapping ecstatically.

'Aye, you still remember me then, lad,' he said with a grin and looked at Miriel. 'I bought my wife one o' these little creatures on my last voyage. She was so taken with this little chap when she saw him that she nagged me day and night for one of her own. Mind you,' he added, 'I prefer a bigger dog myself, something more than a mouthful.'

'He suits me well, Master Wudecoc,' Miriel defended Will. 'And he makes up in courage what he lacks in size.'

'Oh, no doubt, I would not missay the little thing, but his sort are bred for the lap and the bower, not to run for miles at a man's side.'

'Women's dogs,' she said with a smile, and then asked nonchalantly how Nicholas was faring.

'Well enough last I saw him, mistress. He commissioned another ship some time ago, and he's in Antwerp to fetch her.'

'Another ship?'

The sailor smiled at her raised eyebrows. 'Master Nicholas has no home on land, no family ties to make demands on his profits. What he earns he puts back into his trade.'

'And he has no need of other company?'

Martin tugged at his beard. 'Of an occasion, he sups with me and my wife when we're in port,' he said. 'And there are customers such as yourself and your husband who provide the kinder comforts of life.'