Chains of Folly Read online

  “Oh, yes.” Ella smiled. “I never speak to any of my friends when I see them in the market. Today I saw Master Long Robe and I walked right by him, even though I will see him tonight. And now I remember about Bell.”

  “I am glad you remember.”

  “I saw that he took his sword with him. It is safe for us if he is in the house. I remember when that silly student came in the middle of the night and everyone screamed. Bell captured him with his sword. So if that man who fell and hit his head—was he running when he fell? My mother always told me not to run lest I fall.”

  “That is very wise,” Magdalene said, smiling at Ella. The strain was gone from her voice. Sometimes Ella’s babble was priceless.

  But for once Ella did not respond with delight to the words of praise. She frowned, then nodded. “He will not come here and break our furniture because Bell will be here.”

  Magdalene could not help smiling. “Bell is very useful.”

  She lifted her cup and drained the ale, but she did not finish the food she had taken. Ella looked at the pasty and then shook her head. Diot and Letice put the last bites they had been eating into their mouths. Then all the women began to clear the table. Dulcie came and wiped it clean. They had hardly settled on their stools near the empty hearth, when the bell at the gate pealed.

  When all the women were behind closed doors with their clients, Magdalene continued to embroider for perhaps half a candlemark. She looked up when she heard a door open and dropped her gaze hastily to her work again. Bell came softly down the corridor and sat on Diot’s stool, across from Magdalene.

  “Do you have the key to Nelda’s rooms with you?” she asked.

  Bell shook his head. “It is in my strongbox in the bishop’s keeping. I thought of going to get it, but it is really too late to go to Nelda’s rooms. By the time I got there, it would be too dark to see anything.”

  Magdalene laughed. “And I would have murdered you if you did not take me, but I cannot say I am sorry you do not have the key. You know I do not like to leave the house when my women are at work, even though the three men who are being entertained are hardly likely to cause any trouble.” She sighed as she remembered her day-long frustration because she could not get into Nelda’s rooms, and added, “You are a dreadful temptation.”

  “Am I?” A fist clenched on Bell’s knee.

  Magdalene laughed. “You know you are, you pretty peacock, but I am not talking about that. I have been burning up with curiosity ever since Tayte left. If you had had the key, I would have gone with you.”

  He was silent for a while, first looking down at his own hands and loosening the fists. Then he said, as if the previous remarks about temptation had not been made, “As you suspected, I spent the day chasing down the poppy takers. They were all merchants of one kind or another and their seals were easily traced. Fortunately, they had been supplied recently, but they were appalled when I told them that Nelda was dead.”

  “Did any seem to be hard pressed to pay for what they desired?”

  “No. From what I saw they were all prosperous, but…” He frowned and then shook his head. “Perhaps it is old memories that make me distrust any man who loves the poppy. Still, as of today, I will take oath that none of those to whom I spoke threw her down the stairs.”

  Magdalene shrugged. “Whores hear about most dangerous vices, but I never heard of this one. In any case, I cannot believe—even if one of them did kill Nelda—that any merchant in the city would carry a whore’s body to the bishop’s house. And who did that, I think, is the important thing to discover. More and more I am convinced her death was an accident. The attack on the bishop was not. I think we need not worry about the poppy takers anymore.”

  Bell nodded. “Most, I think will shake off their desire, but two…”

  “They need not do without, any of them. I sent Letice to her uncle yesterday morning and he says that Umar will sell to anyone who comes with sufficient silver.”

  “Oh, good! Then I need not worry about them going to Linley and him sending them to you. I will return their rings tomorrow and tell them how to find The Saracen’s Head.”

  For a moment Magdalene was surprised that he knew where the place was and then she remembered that he had taken Letice there one day when she had been threatened. He was a good man, kind, and truly fond of her women without the smallest desire for any of them. Most men, knowing them to be whores would think of trying them out, but Bell acted as if they were sisters. He had sisters, she recalled, and loved them and was loved in return. She had to strangle a laugh when she thought of those sisters’ horror had they known where Bell’s affection for them had led him.

  But thinking of Bell’s attitude toward her women reminded her of how her mention of temptation had stirred him. Now she grinned at him. “I am almost sorry that we will not suffer any threat of invasion by desperate poppy-takers.”

  He had been slumped forward a bit, elbows on his knees, idly watching her use her needle. He looked up, frowning. “That is not a matter for jest.”

  She had been about to suggest that if she had needed protection from desperate men, she could hire him to protect her and her house…and pay with her body. But suddenly her mouth went dry. She suspected if she made the proposal and he refused, he would leave the house and not return. She needed a real threat, needed to be truly afraid herself, before she made that offer.

  So instead she said, “You know the oddest things, Bell. Like the fact that bodies get stiff after death, and what kind of wounds what kind of knives make, and now that eating poppy can make a man desperate to eat more.”

  “I’ve had an odds and ends kind of life,” he said, now smiling more easily. “So my head is full of odds and ends things. You knew that when I fled the monastery where my parents had sent me to be educated to enter the Church, I took a place on a merchant ship. I thought that would make it much harder for them to catch me and send me back. I could not thole the thought of a life of quiet prayer, not at fifteen when I had seen the flash of steel in a man’s hand and the joy of fighting in his eyes. Still the brothers, at least two of them, the prior and the infirmarian, were men with bright and lively minds. They taught me not only to read and to write but to look around me and truly see.”

  As he spoke, his lips stayed curved in a faint smile, his body was relaxed, and his eyes were fixed into the distance of memory. He spoke about the sweet and the bitter of those days in the past, of the hardship of life aboard ship and the danger from pirates and from storm and also of his intense joy in being free and his passionate interest in the strange places where the ship made port.

  He had been fortunate. The captain of that ship was a good man and he had favored Bell not only for his strong arm and skill with a sword, but for his education, his manners, and his ability to learn new things. He had taught Bell out of the experience of a lifetime of strange and harrowing situations, and when experience had honed Bell’s fighting skills to their peak he had made Bell the leader of the marines—where, as the youngest of them, he had to learn even more and faster about human nature to hold his place.

  Magdalene listened eagerly. She knew some of what Bell was telling her from a comment here and there and brief snatches of pillow talk. But she had not heard a connected history, and she was very glad she had not tried to lure him back into her bed. It was too soon, she thought. He needed to remember those wild early years, remember the compromises he had made and that one could live with compromise.

  One and then another of the women slipped out of her room, glanced back into the common room and waved gaily on her way to the kitchen to fetch a midnight bite to eat and drink. When the last had trotted back into her bedchamber, Bell suddenly yawned and stretched.

  “Whatever started me on the story of my life?” he asked grinning at Magdalene and shaking his head.

  Magdalene laughed. “I did. I wanted to know how you picked up all the things you know. You are quite a remarkable man, Bell.”

  He ut
tered an uneasy laugh. “No. I have many faults—” he hesitated and then added harshly, “And many weaknesses.”

  “I did not say you were a saint,” Magdalene retorted. “I said you were remarkable. I would not like you much if you were a saint, but I am very fond of you just as you are.”

  Bell shifted uneasily on the stool. “You are fond of too many people,” he said.

  “No.” Magdalene shook her head. “One cannot be fond of too many people. Did your mother love only one of her children? Was not her heart large enough to hold you all?”

  He stood up abruptly. “But of men there is only my father.”

  Magdalene caught her needle in the fabric of her work and looked up. “Your mother is a fortunate woman. Do not think I do not envy her—but the past cannot be undone. Life must be lived as a compromise between past and future. You have made compromises in the past.”

  Before he could speak or turn away, she put her embroidery frame aside, stood up, and said in an entirely different tone of voice, “Do not you dare go to Nelda’s place without me in the morning. Send Dulcie in to wake me if I am not waiting for you when you come back with the key.”

  Chapter 13

  Bell lay on his belly for some time thinking of what had passed between Magdalene and himself. To his surprise he was not particularly sexually aroused. Whenever he thought of Magdalene, he felt desire but now it was not an urgent need, just a longing for being with her, for talking as they had talked but lying cozily in bed, for the warmth of her soft body beside him.

  Partly the lack of urgency was because he knew that he would only have had to hold out his hand to her and she would have taken him. It was very clear to him that she had thought again about the cold rejection of their first meeting. In a way that made him uneasy. He wondered if she would welcome him and then thrust him away as he had abandoned her.

  Yet she was not abandoned, whether he left her or not. She had a haven and a protector. Bell could feel his teeth set. She had said she loved the man, yet William of Ypres drew her into danger for his own purposes without a second thought. And she knew it. And she did not care. What had she said? That when one was so deeply in debt to another, if you did not hate that other with every fiber of your being, then you loved him.

  Thinking of sharing her was a burning in Bell’s gut and a sour taste in his mouth. He shifted uneasily in the cot. But at least she had never lied to him, never pretended to be other than she was, never pretended there was no other man.

  Would he have preferred the lie, he wondered? Honesty forced him to admit he would, but then when he learned the truth… Suddenly he snorted gently. If Magdalene had wanted to lie to him, he would never have learned the truth.

  He flopped over on his back and stared up into the blackness of the ceiling. Perhaps she was not so far wrong in saying her heart was large enough to hold more than one. She certainly loved her women, and he did not begrudge them her affection. But another man… Could he tolerate that? Nonsense, he had tolerated it for months, just pushing it to the back of his mind. And she wanted him; he could feel that. And when she spoke of William… No, never desire. Affection, yes; desire, no.

  Was that difference enough? His mind winced away from that question and away from why he had asked it of himself. Instead he deliberately turned his mind to Magdalene saying that discovering who ordered involving the bishop was more important than the death of the whore. At first she had wanted to avenge that death because no one else would think it important enough to avenge. Now that it seemed likely Nelda’s death had been an accident, she saw the protection of the bishop as essential. Bell shifted. The cot creaked.

  He must be careful not to read his own feelings into Magdalene. Her care for Winchester was because it benefited her, because he was a reasonable landlord, and perhaps because he was willing to talk to her; many churchmen were not. She had no loyalty to the bishop. Still she recognized his good qualities. It was most unlikely that he and Magdalene would find themselves at political cross purposes.

  Bell drew a long, deep breath. He would take her back. But on his own terms. Suddenly Bell grinned into the dark. No, not his terms…hers. She insisted she was a whore and that he must recognize that fact. Well then, he would pay her like a whore. Smiling, Bell closed his eyes and slept.

  He woke just at dawn feeling well rested. If he had dreamed, he did not remember. Dulcie was already awake, she readily put some cold meat and bread and cheese on the work table in the kitchen and went to the cellar to draw some ale for him from the barrel kept there.

  At the bishop’s house, he left orders for drill and guard duty with Levin and told his man if he were needed, he could be found at the house of the whore who had been killed. He left the same information with the clerk half asleep at the table near the stair to the bishop’s rooms.

  Bell was not surprised to find Magdalene waiting, just finishing breaking her own fast. She was no more likely to oversleep when she had decided to do something than he was. He smiled at her, thinking about how she would react when he offered to pay her. Her brows went up.

  “You are very cheerful this morning,” she said.

  “I had a good night’s sleep,” Bell replied blandly and did not smile at her surprised and suspicious look. “I have the key,” he added. “Shall we go?”

  “Just let me get my veil.”

  Although she threw the fine scarf over her shoulders, Magdalene did not, in fact, veil her face. The distance to Nelda’s rooms was short, and it was still warm enough to make covering her face uncomfortable. She did not think with Bell as escort that anyone would accost her. A single drunk, staggering down the main road, did make a grab, but Bell merely pushed him away. Magdalene’s glance at his face told her nothing. His expression was still deliberately bland; she had to resist an impulse to kick him in the shin.

  The shop on the street level of Nelda’s house was closed but the outer door was as usual unlocked and they went up without hindrance. Bell taking the key from his pouch as they climbed the stairs. What struck them both when Bell unlocked the door and swung it open was not the disorder, the table knocked loose from its trestles and the stools overturned and scattered around, but the terrible stench. Both started to back away from the door and then Bell stopped and pointed.

  “Look.”

  “That is why he never left,” Magdalene murmured. “He was dead.” She peered through the gloom. “But how?”

  “We need a light,” Bell said, backing away farther and turning toward the other door.

  “For God’s sake, open the shutter and let in some fresh air,” Magdalene urged, lifting her veil to cover her nose and mouth.

  “Not yet,” Bell said in a rather choked voice. “I want to look at it first.” He took the few steps to Tayte’s door on which he banged his fist. “There’s been an accident,” he called. “I need to borrow a light.”

  Meanwhile Magdalene had taken a deep breath out on the landing and, taking care not to breathe again, had stepped into the room. There was just enough light leaking through the shuttered window to see a candleholder on a shelf. She hurried to grab it and rushed out of the room again, proffering the candle to Bell just as Tayte’s door opened and the mouse peered out. Bell held the candle forward as the door started to close again.

  “Light the candle for Sir Bellamy, Tayte,” Magdalene said around Bell’s shoulder.

  “What is that dreadful smell?” Tayte cried.

  “A dead man after a day lying in this heat,” Bell said.

  “Dead?” Tayte whimpered. “Oh. Oh. Oh, what will we do? We shall be found. And we had nothing to do with the dead man. I swear.”

  A young man appeared suddenly behind Tayte’s shoulder, carrying a burning spill. He put the girl gently aside and reached beyond her to light the candle Bell held. “How did he die?” he asked. “Tayte told me that she heard a lot of noise yesterday afternoon, like furniture breaking, but she only saw the one man enter Nelda’s rooms.”

  “I don’t know
how he died,” Bell answered. “I am not even sure who is dead. The room was too dark to see from the doorway and, with the way it stinks, I didn’t step in. We need the sheriff or his deputy.”

  “No!” Tayte cried.

  “Don’t be silly,” the young man said to her, putting an arm around her waist and giving her a hug. “I will go off to my work as I was just about to do, and you will help Sir Bellamy as best you can. There will be no reason for you or anyone else to speak of me, will there?”

  “Not so long as Tayte can be found,” Bell said promptly. “In the most unlikely circumstance that it seems you have information I need, I will be able to find you…if I must.”

  “Good enough,” the young man said as he gave Tayte a last squeeze and stepped out past her. He paused for a moment at the top of the stair to add, “Truly I know nothing about any of this, beyond what Tayte has told me. And that she can tell you herself.”

  “I cannot go to the sheriff, I cannot,” Tayte whimpered when her man had clattered down the stair and out the door.

  “No,” Magdalene said before Bell could speak. “There is no need. Run instead to my house—you know where that is—and tell the lady who answers the bell at the gate to rouse Tom Watchman and tell him I need him. He will accompany you back here. Can you do that, my dear?”

  Tayte huddled her arms around herself, but nodded. She went back inside to put on her shoes.

  “I was going to go to the sheriff,” Bell said. “It would be foolish to send her. Who would listen to her?”

  “I know you were,” Magdalene said, “but I did not want to be left here alone with the body.”

  Bell blinked. “You were afraid?”

  Magdalene shook her head impatiently, but she was afraid. The body on the floor sent chills through her, and brought back memories of past terror, such terror as froze the blood in her body. But there was no blood, she told herself staring at the corpse; there was no dark pool spreading from the twitching, dying hulk and dripping from the knife in her hand.