Bone of Contention (27 page)

Magdalene and Bell turned back toward the Lively Hop, but when they were out of earshot, just before they entered the alehouse, Bell asked, “What the devil were you grinning about when you said Count Alain might want the pound of silver? A pound of silver is no light thing, even to a man of the count’s wealth.”

“I wasn’t grinning,” Magdalene said, now smiling broadly. “And it’s quite true that a pound is a pound’s worth even to a man like Count Alain, but I do not think it is equal in weight to his dignity, and that is what the contents of the purse might cost him.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“The forged betrothal, Bell, the forged betrothal. Is it not possible that that pound in silver paid for Count Alain’s name on that document? Remember Gervase de Genlis?”

Bell, who had been about to step in the door of the alehouse, stopped and stared down at Magdalene. Gervase de Genlis had been the father of Mainard the Saddler’s first wife Bertrild. In the course of discovering who had murdered her, Bell and Magdalene had discovered that Gervase had, for a price, witnessed many false documents—and then blackmailed their owners.

“But Gervase was in every way the scum of the earth,” he said. “Count Alain—”

“Not scum. Say rather the cream above the milk. But do you think he cares any more for the rights of others than Gervase did? His wealth is great, but the expense at which he lives for pride’s sake might put a strain even on his income. Who knows whether he has added to that income now and again by witnessing a document or two that…ah…he had no way of knowing was not perfectly legitimate?”

Magdalene was grinning again, but Bell was not. He drew her to the side where a bench flanked the open door and signed her to sit, sitting beside her. “If it is so,” he said softly, “the document in that purse is more dangerous than the charge of a full battle of armed knights. Can you not imagine what a man of such pride will do to prevent such an exposure? When we go to Noke, we must examine the forged betrothal and if
his
name appears, we must deface the document so that Loveday’s name and her properties are no longer listed on it. Then it must be returned.”

Magdalene wrinkled her nose but then sighed and nodded. “Yes,” she agreed, “but not until William sees it.”

“Good God, no!” Bell exclaimed, voice still not above a murmur but eyes wide with horror. “The trail from Lord William to you is far too short.”

“Oh, William would not use the knowledge—without proof it would be far too dangerous and blacken his name as much as the count’s. It is only for his delectation and amusement. He is so irritated by the way Count Alain and Lord Hervey have their noses in the air. It would be a little warm hearth inside him whenever he must suffer their cold courtesy.”

“You will tell him no matter what I say, I suppose.” Bell’s voice grated. “Despite how well you know him. Despite knowing that if it suits his purposes, he will use the knowledge no matter what the danger to you.”

“Why should Count Alain even think of me? It was Niall who took the purse. It was Niall’s betrothed who was threatened by the false document. Niall is William’s man. Surely it will be assumed that Niall told William, even that he offered him the document, and William magnanimously returned it to Count Alain.” She fell silent, then hmmm’d and nodded. “Is that not a good thought?”

“Count Alain will think of you because Ferrau will tell him that you were supposed to get the purse for him and instead you passed it to Lord William,” Bell said, lips tight.

Magdalene laughed shortly. “Oh, but if William gives Count Alain the document, Ferrau will not come into it at all, and even if Count Alain asks why the document fell into William’s hands, do you think Ferrau will admit he asked a whore to get it for him? He will likely say that Niall had sent the purse to William before he was ordered to retrieve it. That will save him from blame as much as he can be saved.”

Bell sighed. “I am not overmuch concerned about saving Ferrau from blame. I would not wish to do him harm—he did me a good turn when he forced reality into my dreams—but he is skilled at looking out for himself, and lucky, too. Fortune smiled on him with an offer from Count Alain just before turmoil broke out in Lord Sutton’s household. Not that Ferrau was suspected of being in any way involved with the death of Sutton’s daughter, but Count Alain would not have touched a man who came from a household in which murder had been done.”

“That tale touches so many that are connected to this business about Loveday,” Magdalene said thoughtfully. “Lord Ormerod was to be betrothed to Lord Sutton’s daughter. Sir Jules was a long-time playmate. Sir Ferrau knew her as the daughter of his overlord. Did you know her too, Bell?”

“I must have, but I have no memory of the girl… Well maybe a dim memory of
a
girl. I went to Culham a few times and Lord Sutton may have brought her with him to the abbey. But I was not of an age to be interested in girls—”

“Oh you liar!” Magdalene laughed. “At twelve? thirteen? I cannot believe you were still innocent.”

Bell laughed too. “Well, I was, cloistered as I was in the abbey. Maybe I had some dreams, but they would not have been of a girl near my own age. If I dreamt, it was of full-breasted, full-hipped women. Come to think of it one of the dairy maids who collected milk from the abbey’s herd…”

Magdalene poked him hard in the ribs and rose, still laughing. He got up too and followed her into the alehouse. There she patted him on the shoulder and walked away to a table in a corner while Bell walked up to the broached tun where the landlord sat. He paid for a mug of ale, shook his head at the landlord’s glance toward Magdalene, and took his drink to the other side of the alehouse where he too sat down with his back to the wall.

Meanwhile Magdalene had beckoned to a serving girl, who cast a quick glance at Bell and came to Magdalene with a definite flounce to her step.

“Too cheap to buy you a drink?” she said to Magdalene in English.

“No,” Magdalene replied in the same language. “I told him to go away. We are old friends.” She took a farthing from her purse and laid it on the bench beside her. “You can bring me a small ale, but I have come to ask questions about a man called Aimery St. Cyr—”

“He was the one who was murdered some days ago,” the girl said, beginning to back away. “That was at The Broached Barrel. We at The Lively Hop have nothing to do with that. We don’t know anything about the killing.”

Magdalene pushed the farthing a little closer to where the girl was standing. “No one thinks you have anything to do with St. Cyr’s death. Indeed, Bell—” she gestured with her head at Bell, who was talking to the only male server in the alehouse “—has already discovered that St. Cyr was killed by a man wearing mail.” She smiled at the girl. “I doubt if you could even carry a chain-mail shirt, much less wear it.’

The girl giggled faintly and came closer again. She looked down at the farthing. “No one in this place has a mail shirt or has ever worn one.”

“I believe that, my dear.” Magdalene looked around but she and Bell and one old man, close to where the landlord sat, were the only ones in the alehouse. “I see that you are not busy now, so will you not sit down with me, perhaps share a cup of ale or of wine if you are permitted, and answer my questions? I promise they will not be about any who work in The Lively Hop.”

“Oh, well, in that case…” The girl went to get the drinks, said a few words to the landlord, and returned to seat herself beside Magdalene on the bench, but on the side where the farthing lay.

Magdalene began by asking the girl’s name, and when she was told it was Mayde, went on to describe St. Cyr with his greasy black hair, bruised eye, cut and swollen mouth, and slurred speech. The girl nodded and said she knew him, and that he had been a frequent visitor since early in June when Lord Waleran had arrived in Oxford.

“The landlord told Bell that St. Cyr was here on the night that he died,” Magdalene said, watching with satisfaction as Mayde relaxed even more, clearly as if the girl had said it, Magdalene understood Mayde thought that if the landlord had already spoken to Bell about St. Cyr, she would not be blamed for doing the same “I want to know to whom St. Cyr spoke and, if you know it, I would pay to know what they said to each other.”

Mayde frowned. “He was here quite a while. Thomas there—” she gestured with her head to the server to whom Bell was speaking “—was serving the two men he was sitting with. He knew them well. He often drank with them, but I’m not sure he had a drink in hand that night. I think those men were from his troop.”

That accorded well with the assumption that St. Cyr had little or no money until later, when he appeared in The Wheat Sheaf. Magdalene nodded. “They were. Bell has already spoken to one of them.” She smiled at the girl, and pushed the farthing a little closer to her, but kept a finger on it.

“I don’t know what they said to each other,” Mayde said, rather resentfully, thinking the farthing might be withheld and she would have done better to make something up. Then, however, she relaxed into a smile because Magdalene pushed the farthing right up to her and removed her finger from it.

“I want the truth,” Magdalene said, “even if it tells me nothing.” She took another farthing from her purse.

Mayde nodded with enthusiasm. “What I saw was after a while, a well-dressed fellow—dark, sober clothes, like a merchant—went over there and tapped St. Cyr on the shoulder. St. Cyr got up and walked away with the merchant-looking man and he called to me and told me to bring ale for both of them. I didn’t hear what they said at first because I had to get the drinks, but when I came back, the merchant man was looking black as a summer storm, and St. Cyr was laughing and saying something about his being a fool if he thought women didn’t need to be well-schooled. I heard the merchant man say he had hoped for better. Then I was called away and the next I knew the merchant man had pushed his ale aside and jumped up with a raised fist. Thomas came running over because he looked as if he were going to hit St. Cyr, but then he just turned his back and went out. Looked to me as if he was going to cry.”

Magdalene handed over the second farthing.

The girl took it and then shrugged. “That’s all I know. St. Cyr sat there for a while, laughing to himself. He finished his ale and the merchant man’s too, but he didn’t call me to bring any more and after a while I stopped looking over at him. Later, though, I saw he was gone from that place and wondered if he’d left. He—” she made a moue of distaste “—sometimes wanted to go out in the back with me, and he liked to hit. So I was glad he was gone, and when I saw him with the other man, I let Mary bring him an ale.”

“Did you see the other man?”

Mayde shook her head reluctantly. “Not really. It was so dark there, I wouldn’t have noticed St. Cyr, except his face was so broken. Maybe Mary could tell you more.”

“Send her over if you will,” Magdalene said, and gave Mayde a third farthing. “This is for thinking and for telling the truth. If you remember anything more, or if something happens, among any of the men you saw with St. Cyr, you can find me at the Soft Nest. I am renting the back room there, I do not work in the house. My name is Magdalene.”

After Mayde’s bright interest, Mary was a sad disappointment. She was an older woman, much harder, her skimpy hair wound into a tight knot, her lips thin and downturned, and her eyes dull. When Magdalene made the same advances to her that she had to Mayde, the woman snatched at the farthing and shook her head.

“Didn’t know ‘em, either on ‘em,” she said. “Didn’ hear nothin’ neither. Who looks at ‘em anyway?”

A second farthing, this one displayed briefly and then held in Magdalene’s closed fist, elicited a little more information. When reminded, Mary recalled St. Cyr’s bruised face and the fact that the man with him had his hair cut shorter in the back than at the sides. The color? “Not blond,” Mary said at once and then shook her head and insisted it was too dark to see more; perhaps his hair had been brown. A knight’s cut, Magdalene thought with a stir of excitement.

Unfortunately that was the end of Mary’s information. First she could remember nothing about the man’s face, and then when Magdalene handed over the second farthing, she remembered quite well far too much. Magdalene discounted nearly everything she said, except that the man’s clothing had been very fine, rich even. That went with the haircut of a man who wore a knight’s helm and if the clothing were rich… Magdalene wondered if St. Cyr’s companion could have been more than one of the hired knights, like one of Waleran’s captains. Perhaps he was a landed knight, even a baron.

She also found herself believing it when Mary said neither man had raised his voice and they seemed to be dealing amicably together. One thing more might have been true: Mary claimed she heard St. Cyr laugh and thank the other man for his generosity. So was the richly dressed man the one who had given St. Cyr money? If Mary was right, he did not seem to mind. Then, Mary said, they were gone. She had served someone else and when she looked back both men had left. Possibly together. But Magdalene asked for no speculations on Mary’s part, offered no more money, and when Bell glanced her way, she waved Mary away and got up to join him.

They walked slowly to The Wheat Sheaf, exchanging information, not that Bell had much more to tell than he had told her that morning. Thomas, the server, had confirmed what he and Magdalene suspected, that St. Cyr, having lost his purse and whatever was in it, had no money and his troop companions, knowing him too well, had declined to pay for his ale.

“But that means,” Magdalene said, “that he had only the ale the merchant bought him—if he was a merchant. Bell, I wonder if that was Tirell Hardel. Remember, I told you what I overheard when Loveday and I were in the cookshop. But that was before St. Cyr was killed… No. It was just after we
knew
he was dead.” She hesitated, then added, “Good God, could it have been Tirell that killed him? He did say something about having taken care of the matter he and his father had discussed. That it was done. Over.”

“Done. Over. That
could
have referred to killing St. Cyr. To take him from behind would not take any armed skill, but this Tirell Hardel was not wearing mail and I doubt would have a way to borrow a mail shirt.”