A Mortal Bane Page 32

  “I am surprised you were able to come here if the thief struck you hard enough to knock you down and render you unconscious,” Bell remarked.

  Master Domenic grinned at him. “Ah well, God works in His own wondrous ways. As you may guess, I was not overly pleased when I woke with a sore throat day before yesterday, nor when the tisanes and potions did not stop the cold from spreading to my head. It ached so much yesterday morning that I wrapped a poultice in a warm, woolen cloth around my head under my hat. That shielded me from the full force of the blow—and it was a strong one, for it knocked me off my chair and stunned me, even with that protection. I was helpless, but fortunately my apprentice came running so quickly to see what was wrong that the thief had no time to steal.”

  And no time to deliver several more blows and finish the job, Bell thought. The goldsmith had no idea of how lucky he had been. Maybe when he realized it, he would be a little less cast down to learn that the bishop had not summoned him to order work. But Bell decided he had better not tell Master Domenic anything about that yet. He did not want the man sullen with disappointment.

  “If you will wait just a moment or two more,” Bell said, “I will go in and tell the bishop you are here. I know he wishes to speak to you, but I told him you had been hurt, so he might not be expecting you so soon.”

  “I will wait upon his lordship’s convenience very willingly,” Master Domenic said, and sniffed liquidly again.

  Bell went back through the door just in time to see the bishop lean from his chair toward Magdalene, who was now seated on the stool the prior had vacated. Bell froze for a moment, struggling to conquer an insane impulse to pull his master away, made even more insane by the fact that he knew Winchester took his vows of chastity very seriously. He could not speak for an instant, and then kept silent because the bishop was obviously in the middle of a conversation.

  “Do not be so hard on him,” Winchester said. “His manner is irritating, but it is because he is too aware that he is not so well-born as the others, who are mostly second, third, and fourth sons of noblemen—like Bell. His grandfather was a butcher—”

  “Oh, dear,” Magdalene said, trying hard not to giggle. “Think of being a butcher’s son and trying to maintain your dignity against all those noble-born cockscombs.”

  The bishop smiled. “It was not so bad as that,” he said. “The butcher had grown rich, and his father had come up in the world. He was a physician, and a good one. He was my own physician until he died some years ago.”

  Bell suddenly stiffened to attention and his glance flashed across the room. However, the bishop’s voice had been low, no doubt because he did not wish to waken curiosity about his easy conversation with a whore, and no one in the room was taking notice. Brother Patric was listening with an expression of mingled joy and anxiety to what Father Benin was saying; Brother Elwin and some of the other monks were nodding agreement, and the infirmarian had a hand on Brother Patric’s arm. Knud had moved to stand nearer the sacristan, who was staring across the room at a window, his face pallid and stone hard. Buchuinte was now listening intently to the priest of St. Paul’s and nodding, while the archdeacon seemed to have won some argument, because Guiscard was using a pumice stone to smooth over a line he had scraped off the record he was writing.

  “A physician?” Suddenly the laughter was all gone from Magdalene’s voice, and Bell turned to look at her. Her eyes had become unnaturally large as she stared at Winchester. “A physician,” she repeated. “My lord, was he always meant for the Church, or did he first study to be a physician?” she asked urgently.

  Bell stared at her, startled again by the quickness of her mind. She never forgot anything, it seemed, and saw the significance of the man’s first training.

  “What does it matter?” Winchester asked, puzzled but also slightly amused by her interest.

  “It does matter, my lord,” Bell said, coming quickly to the table and leaning forward across it to speak softly. “I cannot remember whether I troubled you with a description of Baldassare’s death wound, but it was delivered in one clean stroke by a man who knew just where to put his knife. That wound always made me doubtful of Beaumeis’s guilt. I thought it must have been dealt by a man accustomed to bearing arms—and I wasted a great deal of lime discovering where Magdalene’s noble patrons were on that night. Fool that I was, I never thought that a butcher or a physician would have the same knowledge.”

  Winchester’s face had frozen, the half-smile still on his lips. “He did study to be a physician,” he said, the smile disappearing into a grimly set mouth. “It gave him Latin and made him specially good at writing a clear letter of explanation. He wrote more simply than a clerk trained in theological disputation. I told you I knew his father and that he had attended me. He was a good man, and when he came to me and asked if I could find a place for his son because the young man hated being a physician, I was glad to do it.”

  “Then he would know exactly where to put a knife,” Bell said even more softly, nodding. His eyes flicked around the room again, came back to Winchester, and he took a deep breath. “And there is no one in St. Albans for him to visit. His mother died two years ago.”

  ‘Two years ago,” the bishop repeated.

  “Well, my lord,” Bell said, still softly but now with a brisk intonation, “we will have proof very soon, I hope. The goldsmith I was about to send for came all on his own and is waiting in the hall without.”

  “Came on his own,” the bishop repeated, as if he did not understand what Bell had said. He was a little pale and had some difficulty preventing himself from staring.

  “Yes. Master Domenic knows we found the craft-mark. He is very proud of his copies and thinks you wish to order more work from him.”

  “This is no time for worrying about a thief. We must—” Winchester blinked and shook his head, seeming to remember that the thief and the murderer were almost certainly the same person. “Did he name the man who ordered the copies?” he asked eagerly.

  “A Master William, a clerk, he said.”

  The bishop’s face showed his anger and disappointment. “But there is no Master William—” He stopped abruptly and uttered a bark of laughter. “I am so surprised and shocked that my wits are wandering. Of course he would give a false name. Very well, bring in the goldsmith.”

  While Bell and the bishop had been talking, Magdalene had risen, pushed the stool under the table, and stepped back against the wall, now a foot or so to the right of Winchester. In rising, she had stepped on the trailing edge of her long veil so that it fell on the floor. Her mind was on the discussion they had had and she absently picked the veil up and stood staring down at it, holding it loosely in her hands without draping it over her head again. She was as shocked as the bishop, hardly able to believe the near conviction she shared with him and Bell. It seemed strange to know someone so long and never suspect that kind of evil in him.

  She looked up but was careful not to stare. And it was strange also that so momentous a truth had been uncovered without in the least affecting anyone but those who had uncovered it. Everyone else seemed most innocently occupied with his own immediate concerns. Then the door opened and Bell quietly ushered in a tubby man with a red nose and a blue bruise on his temple. Placing himself so that his body shielded the goldsmith from casual scrutiny, Bell guided him toward the table. The prior turned to look, but Magdalene thought he could see little except the back of the man’s head. The prior looked anxious, but there was reason enough for that if he thought the bishop was going to be diverted to business other than the reconsecration of his church.

  Master Domenic meanwhile was bobbing a whole series of bows to Winchester and babbling in an awed whisper about how much he was honored by the bishop’s approval of his copies.

  “They were good copies,” the bishop said, also quietly. “At first we could not tell them from the originals.”

  No guilt disturbed Master Domenic’s expression; in fact, he beamed. “Oh, were th
ey compared? I did not know that would be possible. I knew the originals were Master Jacob the Alderman’s work and were borrowed and had to be returned quickly, but I thought….” His brow wrinkled. “Surely Master William told me the copies were to go into his master’s chapel in Oxford. Oh, well, it does not matter. As long as you saw them, my lord, and appreciated the work.”

  “Oh, indeed I did,” Winchester remarked dryly. “They were brought to my attention” —irresistibly his head was drawn around, and his eyes fixed for a moment before he went on— “by some very unusual circumstances.”

  The goldsmith had naturally followed the direction in which Winchester had looked. “Why, there is Master William,” he said with pleased surprise, his voice much louder than it had been when he spoke to the bishop.

  In that moment, Guiscard de Tournai looked up from the parchment on which he had been trying to squeeze the priest’s and archbishop’s phrasing into a space too small for it. His expression changed the goldsmith’s pleasure into doubt as he realized that “Master William” should not be scribing at the Bishop of Winchester’s table, but in Oxford with his copies of the candlesticks.

  “I only wanted to express my gratitude, Master William, for bringing my work to the bishop’s notice,” Domenic said, his voice now somewhat tremulous with uncertainty and his eyes shifting swiftly to gauge the bishop’s expression.

  “You fool!” Guiscard shouted and snatched up the knife with which he had sharpened his quills.

  The roar of his voice startled everyone into immobility, except Bell, who thrust himself between the goldsmith and Guiscard, pushing the tubby man back so hard that he staggered well away from the table. Bell started to draw his sword, but Guiscard had no interest in a worthless revenge. He leapt instead for the bishop, right past Magdalene, who was as frozen as anyone else, and before Winchester could move, he had seized the bishop’s head in his left hand and with the right pressed his knife, which was small but very sharp and with a keen point, to the bishop’s neck, just under the ear where a big vein pulsed.

  “Stand still and be silent,” Guiscard hissed. “I assure you one more death will not trouble me at all. One move, one shout for help, and the bishop dies. And you need not think I do not know that if I kill him, I will free you to kill me. I will die anyway if I cannot use him to help me escape, so I will either be free or take him with me.”

  “My son—” Father Benin whispered, stretching out a hand.

  “Shut your mouth and stand perfectly still,” Guiscard snarled and shifted his eyes to Bell, who was scarlet with rage and frustration, frozen with his sword half drawn.

  “You” —his lips curled down in bitter distaste— “strutting peacock, go out and order the bishop’s litter to be brought to the door. When it comes, you will raise the curtain on the side facing this door, I will get in with the bishop. You will lower the curtain and then walk with the litter to my lodging. There you will go in and get from the chest at the foot of my bed the bags of coin and—”

  “I will need the key,” Bell said, sliding his sword fully back into its sheath and placing both empty hands on the table. “And do you want any other valuables? The candlesticks? The golden pyx?”

  “They are not in the chest. I am not such a fool as to keep them….” Guiscard’s voice faded and his hand tensed so that a small bead of red blossomed on the bishop’s neck where the knife pricked him. “Oh, you think you are so clever, that you have tricked me into admitting that I stole those things.” He laughed. “Why should I deny it? I will either be safe and far out of your reach…or dead…very soon. Neither way will lying be of any benefit to me.” He laughed, but not hard enough to move the knife from its position. “Half the pleasure of taking the things was doing it under all your noses. And all of you cared so little for me that you did not bother to discover that my mother had died, so I had a perfect place to dispose of my gleanings.”

  “It must have been…amusing.” Bell’s eyes flicked to Magdalene, but not for long enough for Guiscard, whose attention was mostly on Winchester, to notice. “I suppose the whore let you in and out through her gates so you could enter the priory in secret anytime you liked.”

  Magdalene bit her lip in mingled hurt and fury, but she had sense enough to be silent. She was entirely too close to Guiscard to want to attract his attention. One thing she was sure of, he would be as happy to kill her as to leave her standing. Then she realized he had discovered he enjoyed killing, and even if he escaped safely, he would not let Winchester live. Her hands tightened on the scarf she held and she twisted it, tears misting her eyes.

  “I would not trust a whore!” Guiscard had spat. “Not that one, who will cheat an agent out of his just fee and whine to the bishop about it. She would have run to Winchester the moment I asked.” He laughed again, a little more heartily. “You are all such fools, even the so-wise, so-powerful Bishop of Winchester. I had copies made of all the keys to the Old Priory Guesthouse when I showed her the place.”

  The bishop twitched, and Guiscard gripped his head tighter.

  “Of course,” Bell said, very quickly. “I forgot you held the keys to that place. But it could not have been so easy to get the key to the priory safe box.”

  “But it was.” Guiscard raised his brows superciliously. “It only took a little planning. Brother Knud was a priest, but he has a little secret; he is a bit too fond of little boys. When he was sent to the bishop for punishment, I received the charges against him and offered him the alternative punishment of being the sacristan’s lay brother in St. Mary Overy. Naturally, I came now and again to make sure he was doing well. We talked about his duties, so I knew the days and times when he cleaned the plate. Once I came when he had just begun to clean. The key was on the table. I said I saw he was busy and went away—with the key. When I returned, he was almost finished with his work and I had a copy. If he suspected” —Guiscard smiled across the room at Knud, who had fallen to his knees with his hands over his face— “I knew he would never mention it to anyone.”

  “I thought Knud knew more than he was saying,” Bell said. “I intended to question him again, but….”

  He leaned farther forward over the table, as if totally absorbed in what Guiscard was saying. He seemed to be putting all his weight on his hands, which should immobilize him, but Magdalene saw how the table cut into his thighs and she realized he was balancing himself against it so that his hands were really free. Unfortunately, Guiscard was no more deceived than she.

  “Stand back,” he snarled, and the red bead marking the point of his knife against the bishop’s throat enlarged into a thin trickle of blood.

  Bell straightened up. “Sorry,” he said. “I was—”

  “You thought you were distracting me by letting me talk and were about to leap on me. You are a fool. I am not. You were misled because I was willing to talk, but I have time, until the bells ring for Tierce. There are several ships in the river that will sail on the tide. I thought it would be safer to wait here, but you are getting too cocky.”

  “Ships?” Bell echoed, eager to distract him.

  Guiscard laughed once more. “How surprised you look. I have kept myself informed of every sailing on every day we were in London for near a year. Safe is better than sorry, but I am afraid you will make a mistake and I will have to kill Winchester before—” He cut his words off and added quickly, “I would rather get away than kill him. You had better go and order his litter now, and do not warn those in the outer room, either, or call your men. You may succeed in stopping me, but the bishop will be dead before I am.”

  Magdalene had held her breath when Bell leaned forward. She had seen from the angle of his body that he intended to throw himself across the table and try to push Guiscard to the right, toward her and away from Winchester. Although the bishop had not apparently moved, she thought she had seen a shadow under his chair shift very slightly, and she hoped he was setting his feet so he could lunge away from the knife.

  Guiscard had b
een too wary, however. Worse, Magdalene knew the abortive effort had fixed his attention on Bell so firmly that Bell would not be able to try again to attack him. She caught her lip between her teeth and bit down hard when Guiscard’s slip about not wanting to kill Winchester “before” confirmed her fear that he intended to murder the bishop no matter what. And if Winchester were dead, her easy life and prosperity might also be over—and one of the few churchman who had at least tried to be fair to a whore would be lost. Bell, too, if Guiscard could somehow manage it.

  She stood as still as the stones themselves against the wall, hardly breathing. Guiscard did not care enough about her now to try to hurt her, but if she interfered, she would be the only one close enough on whom to vent his rage. Was it worth the risk to try?

  “The key to your chest,” Bell said desperately. “You never gave it to me.”

  He moved an open hand slowly toward Guiscard, who instinctively started to relax his grip on the bishop’s head. But he did not make that mistake, either, and instead, shouted, “Out! Get the litter!”

  In the same moment, never having answered the question she had asked herself, Magdalene took two steps forward, threw the scarf she had been holding between her hands over Guiscard’s head, and yanked him toward her with all the strength she had.

  As she pulled, she screamed, “Jump!” at Winchester, who showed himself as brave as he was clever. Instead of trying to wrench himself to the left, away from the prick of the knife but against the pressure of Guiscard’s hand, he rose straight upward, knocking his heavy chair backward with the force of his movement. The knife scored a long line down his neck, but because Guiscard’s left hand had lost its grip on his head as he rose, he was able to lean away from the pain, and the blade did no more than slice the skin.

  When his victim and safe-conduct tore free of his hold, Guiscard knew he was dead. Unable to find better prey—he knew the bishop’s layers of rich vestments would armor him against the blade of the little knife, and that the bishop was no physical weakling—he turned on Magdalene as he tore the scarf from his head.