“I hope so, Sir Baldwin.”
The knight eyed the merchant sympathetically. Lybbe was eager to see his brother released, and as keen to make sure Hankin was all right. Only a short time ago he had thought he would never be freed, and that after a brief trial he would be taken out to the Abbot’s gibbet. Yet now he was safe; his life could begin again.
“Will you stay here, or go back to Bayonne?”
Lybbe didn’t meet the knight’s glance. “I don’t know, sir. After twenty years, it’d be hard to come back for good. Especially knowing what people wanted to do to me. All the folk here wanted to see me swing, and none of them would believe I might be innocent. I don’t know if I could ever be happy here again.”
Baldwin nodded understandingly. “It would be difficult to look someone in the face when you know he had expected to watch your final moment on the end of a rope. All I would suggest is that you don’t make a quick decision. Wait awhile, and rest here. You may be surprised by how understanding people are, and I know the Abbot will want to help you to try to compensate you for the loss of everything you had.”
Lybbe said nothing, and Baldwin let him be. It would indeed be hard for a man to accept the justice and kindness of another who had once already condemned him wrongly.
Simon, seeing Lybbe’s mood, was about to ask the port-reeve to confirm the good will of the Abbot, when he noticed how cheerful the official was. While the watchman at the door went inside to fetch out Elias, Simon nudged him. “Holcroft? I know it’s good that we’ve solved the murders as well as the robberies, but you look as if you’ve lost a penny and found a bar of gold.”
Holcroft nodded. “Soon I will be able to retire as port-reeve, and some other poor bugger can do it. It’ll be such a relief to be plain ‘Master’ Holcroft again, burgess of Tavistock, without all the aggravation of the port’s business.”
“My congratulations,” Simon said, but as he spoke, Elias walked, blinking, into the sunlight. “Welcome, Elias.”
Jordan stood by his brother, who stared from one to the other. It was as if the cook couldn’t come to terms with his sudden change in fortune. He was nervous before the port-reeve, knight and bailiff, as though fearful that a wrong word could lead to him being incarcerated once more.
“Come on, Elias, It’s all sorted out now,” his brother said gruffly.
“You have my apology, and the Abbot’s, for being arrested,” Baldwin said encouragingly. “It was largely for your own protection, in case your neighbors thought you might be the killer, but I know it must have been hard.”
Elias nodded dumbly, but when he spoke his voice was petulant. “So you had me stuck in there even though you knew I was innocent? I reckon I ought to be given money to pay me back for the damage done to my business, let alone to my good name.”
“That’s fine,” Holcroft said. “But while we’re looking at that, we need to see to the garbage outside your shop. Oh, and there’s the matter of knowingly talking to an outlaw, your brother here, without telling the watch or the port-reeve.”
“But he was innocent! The Abbot’s said so!”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that, did you? As far as you were aware, he was still guilty. I think that lot should add up to more than twenty shillings’ worth of amercements.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Oh, I could. But maybe if you were to forget about trying to fleece the Abbot, he’d be prepared to forget your offences,” Holcroft grinned, and the cook subsided, grumbling to himself.
As they entered the fairground, Elias left them, hurrying off to his stall. Holcroft went off to check on the larger transactions. It was down to Baldwin and Simon to accompany the older Lybbe to find his lad.
Their path took them past the glovers’ stalls, and the spicers’, and they were soon taking a shortcut through the butchers’. It was here that suddenly a small figure burst from between two stalls and cannoned into Lybbe. “Hankin? What are you doing here?”
Will Ruby leaned against his awning pole, arms crossed over his chest. “Looks like you’re his master, right enough.”
“Aye, and he should have been looking after my stall,” Lybbe said gruffly, but without real rancor, his relief was so great to see his lad again.
“Your goods are all right. I sent my own apprentice to look after it all. He’s there now, and if he’s lost anything, tell me and I’ll see he pays for it.”
“I’m grateful to you.”
“It’s nothing. If a man comes to a fair to trade, his goods must be protected. And his boy too,” Ruby added, explaining how he had found Hankin. “After the thrashing they got, the watchmen won’t have touched anything near your stall. They wouldn’t dare return.”
The butcher was right. When they checked on Jordan Lybbe’s goods, all were there, bar some items the boy had sold, the money for which he had wrapped up in a square of cloth in his purse.
“It would seem that everyone is happy with the result, then,” Simon said as they left Jordan and Hankin and began to make their way back to the Abbey.
“So far,” Baldwin said. “I will be interested to see what happens to Pietro and young Avice.”
His wish was to be granted sooner than he realized. At the Abbey, they went straight to the Abbot’s room, where they found the Camminos, freshly scrubbed and clothed in clean tunics and hose, sitting with Arthur.
“Sir Baldwin, Antonio has been explaining about his problems. It seems that it was not only the Lybbe brothers who deserve my apologies,” Champeaux said.
“With the murders, and especially with Luke changing into a monk’s habit, I suppose I shouldn’t blame you for suspecting us,” Antonio said. “But we were completely innocent.”
“Why the poor horses, then? And the warning from Bishop Stapledon?”
“It is as we said: we were robbed on our way from London some days ago. The thieves broke into the inn where we were staying and stole our horses, but they didn’t try to steal from the people sleeping there, and our money and valuables were safe-even the horses’ tack, which was kept separate.”
The Abbot broke in, seeing Simon’s dubious expression. “Bailiff, there is another thing. My letter to Walter Stapledon was replied to by his steward, but fortunately he sent it on to the good Bishop. Today I have received a message from the Bishop himself, and in it he says that although he does not know the Camminos well, his good friend John Sandale, Bishop of Winchester, recommended Antonio to him. Sandale has used Antonio before to assist the Exchequer.”
Walter Sandale was the King’s Treasurer, and Simon knew as well as all in the room that if Sandale himself vouched for Antonio, there could be no doubt of his honor. Not where money was concerned, anyway, the bailiff amended. He nodded.
Baldwin was gazing at the Venetian with candid interest. “You must be rich, Antonio, and you are known to the most important people in the country, yet you travelled to Bayonne for the fair, and then came here to Tavistock.”
Antonio smiled at the note of enquiry. “Sir Baldwin, every now and again a merchant finds himself in an embarrassing position. It is easy to make great profits from importing spices-for one shipload can be enough to guarantee a man’s prosperity for life, but the risks are huge. Pirates, other cities which are no friends to Venice, or even a crew which decides to steal the whole cargo and disappear, can all ruin a man. I have been unlucky. The French King has defaulted on a loan I made him, a ship of mine foundered off Crete, and to cap it all, a second was stolen by the mercenaries who have taken over Athens when it put into harbor for water. They demanded a massive toll, and when my captain refused, his ship was wrested from him. My son and I have travelled to many fairs to try to recover a little of our fortune so that we can furnish a new vessel to trade with the Byzantines, and that was why we went to Bayonne, but you know the ill turn our servant served us there.