In an instant she was at his side, an arm about his shoulder as he began to sob. ‘My love, my darling, what is it? Oh, tell me what has happened!’
He couldn’t speak for some while. The words felt as though they would choke him. After so much effort and work, after all his careful planning to recover from the disastrous loss of his ship, he would now be ruined. ‘The Coroner came to see me just now.’
‘Yes, he was here earlier while I was out. Apparently he was in a foul mood,’ Hawisia said.
‘Not so foul as when he saw me! He knows everything – how I had Jolly take Ralph’s money and jewels, how I had Jolly get the fool to sign his mark on the receipt so that Ralph could be shown to be a thief when the gloves were presented… everything!’
Hawisia didn’t know what to do or say. She kissed his cheek, murmuring soft words to ease him, but Vincent stood resting his hands on the table-top, his eyes closed. ‘We are ruined, Hawisia. There’s nothing else I can do.’
‘Why? He hasn’t arrested you. He obviously doesn’t think he has enough proof to present you before the King’s Justice.’
‘Christ alive, woman, it’s not only him! Karvinel came to see me as well. He said he would accuse me of being there when Ralph died; said he would allege his clerk saw me there.’
‘His clerk is dead,’ Hawisia pointed out.
‘True, but if he swore it, I could be lynched!’
‘A man must be alive to accuse you.’
‘But Karvinel could convince others. Oh, Christ!’
‘Darling, there is something you could try. I know you had your own men rob Karvinel.’
‘You mean my friend in the woods?’ He turned to her with a terrible understanding in his eyes. ‘You mean pay Sir Thomas to kill Karvinel?’
‘Why not? He has robbed the man and fired his house on your orders.’
‘I couldn’t,’ Vincent said. But he knew that he could. His eyes were staring into the distance as he wondered whether this could indeed provide him with a solution. And he knew the alehouse where Sir Thomas would be staying. He always chose the same low dive: the Cock.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sir Thomas was disgusted by her. When she felt the blade at her neck she had thought he was playing some kind of game, that it was a sign he enjoyed inflicting or receiving pain with sex and she had moaned with desire for him.
He shoved her from him and asked her his questions. She had not been much help. He felt no nearer a solution, an answer as to why his comrade had died. He was forced to the conclusion that it was the whim of a wealthy man, someone who had picked a scapegoat simply because he could. A suspected outlaw would fit the bill – why not make use of him?
Juliana had tried to tempt him into her bed, with a kind of desperate passionless longing. She wanted a man, she said, a strong man who would rescue her from her husband. No price was too high for her freedom. All the man need do was kill Nicholas, the useless fool and she would give herself to him completely.
He had slapped her, hard, three or four times, until her lips swelled and the blood ran, but still she asked him to help her – offering her body, her few jewels, all her money. She repelled him; with her disloyalty and shabby, sordid advances. In the end he left her lying semi-naked on her bed, watching him leave with large empty eyes, as though he was her last hope and prayer and he was leaving her desolated.
It was in the hall that he heard the knock. Instantly he ran to the ladder and slipped down to the ground. Crossing the floor, he peered round the door into the hall. The room was clear, and he hurried to the screens door, looking into the passageway.
The tapping at the door came again and he glanced about him. He had limited options. There were the two doors opposite, leading to the buttery and storerooms, or he could run to the back door. Making a quick decision, he crossed to the buttery and squeezed behind the door. There he waited.
He heard the door open, soft footsteps entering. They passed through into the hall, then out at the far end, going into the solar.
Sir Thomas slipped from his hiding place and was at the front door in a moment, but then he hesitated, seeing a large chest. With a cruel smile, he untied his cloak and gathered it up, setting it upon the chest in full view of Karvinel when he entered. Only then did Sir Thomas open the door and walk into the street.
In the road he saw Hob waiting anxiously, hopping from one foot to the other in agitation, wondering what would happen when the visitor saw Sir Thomas. The knight’s smiling face reassured him and he looked relieved as Sir Thomas strode towards him.
‘That woman hasn’t the brain she was born with,’ Sir Thomas said contemptuously. ‘But Hamond’s revenge has begun. I look forward to hearing how Karvinel responds to finding a man’s cloak in his hall.’
‘God’s teeth!’ he continued a short while later. ‘What would a man want a gross woman like her for? Give me a lissom wench like your sister. She’s much more life in her, more pleasure and amusement. And she has a brain! That fat bitch in there only thinks of herself. She ever looks to the next comfort, not caring what may happen to others.’
It was Karvinel himself, however, whom Sir Thomas wanted to pay for the crime, not Juliana. Before him rose the vision of Hamond swinging from a rope. Hamond had died in order that there should be proof of a robbery. It mattered not a whit that Hamond had been nowhere near the robbery and could not have been involved; Hamond was accused by a merchant and his clerk and that was enough.
But if Hamond had not been there, so the rest of the story was false.
‘Why should Karvinel fake a robbery of his own money,’ pondered Sir Thomas aloud. ‘How would he gain by pretending that his own money was gone?’
Hob skipped at his side as the knight strode to the Cathedral. As they reached the Fissand Gate he suggested self-consciously: ‘Because there was more than his own money.’
‘Eh?’ Sir Thomas looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The m-merchant,’ Hob said, stuttering nervously. ‘He was carrying money for the Cathedral too. It wasn’t just his own.’
‘What? Who told you this?’
‘The… the cripple at the gate,’ Hob said, terrified of the expression on his master’s face.
Sir Thomas stood a moment staring at Hob and then, slowly, he began to chuckle.
Later, much later, in the Cock, in the poor, shabby district of the city, Sir Thomas settled his remaining cloak over the top of the thick blankets to protect himself and Jen against the cold.
‘This place is an embarrassment,’ he grumbled, pulling her to him. ‘I would never come to such a hovel when I owned my own manor. A flea has bitten me!’
‘But the manor is gone,’ she reminded him. ‘And this is better than the mud and cold. Your tent is fine when the weather is still, but when the wind blows…’
Sir Thomas cast a sombre eye at Hob, who had begun to snore over at the door. ‘Shut up!’ he hissed before planting a kiss on Jen’s lips. ‘You’re right, I suppose. I think maybe I’m too old for the life.’
She stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? I can’t keep on striving as an outlaw. It’s no life for an old sod like me. No, I have to try to win a pardon. God knows how.’
Jen rolled over onto his chest, staring down at him, her hair falling about their faces. ‘You mean that? You’ll seek a pardon and settle?’
‘That bastard Karvinel must die first. I must repay Hamond’s debt, Jen. It’s a matter of honour.’