A Mortal Bane (40 page)

Magdalene gasped, and both men looked at her. “The morning after the craftmark had been discovered. Could that attack have been a coincidence?”

“I did not think so,” Bell said, looking a bit smug. “I left four men to keep a guard on the goldsmith, so he should be quite safe.”

“Yes, but…but….”

Magdalene’s glance flew around the room, and she drew a deep and calmer breath when she saw that no one was paying any attention to their little group or trying to listen to them. The sacristan was still deep in his own thoughts, and not pleasant ones judging by his expression; the prior and the other monks were listening to Brother Elwin urging something on Brother Patric; and the priest and archdeacon were now arguing with Guiscard about the way he had phrased something in his report. Reassured, she turned to Bell, who was frowning.

“Well? But?” He was a little annoyed, thinking she was about to raise an objection.

She waved a hand at him to indicate he should lower his voice. ‘There is no need to tell everyone about the goldsmith. Do you not remember there were only a few of us who knew a craftmark had been discovered? Do you not see that it must have been one of the people in the prior’s chamber when we talked of that who tried to silence the goldsmith? And we are all here again—except for the priest and the archdeachon.” She looked up at Bell. “How badly was the man hurt? Is he awake yet? Could he be carried here on a litter?”

“I do not know, except to say he was not hurt to the death. I asked and was told he would recover. But I can find the answers to the other questions quickly enough. I will send a man to my guards and they will bring him, if it is at all possible.”

Now Magdalene turned eagerly to Winchester. “My lord, is there any way you could keep all of us here until the goldsmith arrives? If he has before him most of those who were near when Brother Godwine died and he can pick out one as the person who ordered the copies made—”

The bishop nodded curtly.

Chapter Twenty

28 April 1139

The Bishop’s House, Southwark

Before Bell could look for a messenger to send to the goldsmith’s house, the man he had sent to St. Albans to ask about Beaumeis accosted him and reported that Beaumeis
had
been with his uncle from Tuesday evening until midmorning of the previous day. The man-at-arms seemed a bit disappointed when Bell merely nodded over what he had thought was startling information, but he had come across another tidbit. He thought it less important, but it got the reaction his first news had failed to produce. Bell’s lips parted and his eyes widened.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes, indeed,” the man-at-arms said, and recited what he had done.

“So.” Bell pulled a coin from his purse to reward the man for not being afraid to go further than his strict instructions, but he did not explain why he was so pleased, then dismissed his man.

He stood for a moment digesting what he had heard, now certain they would find the plate stolen from St. Mary Overy church in St. Albans. He had started to turn back to tell Winchester when another man-at-arms, one of the guards he had left to watch over the goldsmith, spoke his name. His heart sank heavily because the fact he had learned was not proof of guilt—they needed the goldsmith’s testimony—but the man relieved his fears by telling him that Master Domenic was right there in the bishop’s house.

“When ‘e slept off th’ potion th’ ‘pothecary gave ‘im ‘nd woke up this mornin’, ‘e wanted t’ know what we was doin’ in ‘is ‘ouse ‘nd who we was. Then when Michael told ‘im we was the bishop’s guards sent t’ be sure ‘e weren’t attacked again ‘nd give ‘im yer message ‘bout the craftmark, ‘e got all excited like and insisted on comin’ ‘ere.”

“Well, no harm’s done.” Bell smiled. “I was just about to send a man to you to ask if he was well enough to be carried here. I gather that wasn’t necessary.”

“No, sir.” The guard grinned back. “Fact is, we ‘ad a time keepin’ up with ‘im. Real eager to get ‘ere, ‘e were.”

That information was rendered superfluous while the guard was speaking. A short, tubby man with a large bruise on his temple, a very red nose, and marks of its dripping on his sleeves, had got to his feet as he saw the guard approach Bell and now came forward.

He sniffed richly and then said in a rather thick, hoarse voice, “So the bishop saw my copies and found my craftmark. I am very pleased, indeed I am. Master William, the clerk who ordered them, did not want me to put a craftmark on because they were copies of Master Jacob the Alderman’s work, and I agreed that it would be wrong to put my mark where he put his, as if the work were mine, but they were
good
copies, well done, and I thought it could do no harm to put my small mark off in a corner.”

“No harm at all, Master Domenic,” Bell said, suppressing a grin. In fact the mark had done much good. And then, masking what was important to him in politeness, he said, “I hope you did not lose anything to the man who attacked you. Did you recognize him?”

The goldsmith began to laugh, then bent his head quickly to sneeze into his sleeve. “One does not recognize thieves,” he said, wiping his nose; he sniffed again, then looked thoughtful. “No, I lost nothing, although not through my own wariness. I did not suspect him. He did not look around to see what was most valuable, as a thief might, but came right up to the table where I was working and struck me. At least so says my apprentice, who ran out to see why I had fallen.”

“But you did not see or remember his face? Did your apprentice see him?”

“No, he wore a scarf over most of his face under his hood. I suppose I should have suspected then, but I had such a dreadful cold that I guess I just thought he had a bad cold, too. Luckily, my carelessness did not cost me. He did not even seize the pieces in the window, which he could have done as he ran. And of course I thought nothing of a man wearing a monk’s robe. With the archbishop’s palace right behind my shop, as it were, we have monks and nuns aplenty passing by, and even stopping in. Of course it has been very quiet since Archbishop William of blessed memory died, and the new archbishop may not…who knows if he will use Lambeth Palace as much as Archbishop William did? So when I heard that the Bishop of Winchester was interested in my work, I hurried right over.”

Bell was disappointed that the goldsmith was unable to recognize or describe his attacker, but he had plenty of time to recover from the disappointment as the man rambled on and on. The fact that the attacker had taken nothing indicated that he was more interested in harming the goldsmith than in stealing, which made him no common thief—unless he was a particularly inept and timid one. Bell wondered whether the attacker knew he had not hit the goldsmith hard enough to keep him stunned and so fled without stealing.

“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.