Juliana looked away. Sir Peregrine saw her close her eyes a moment. When she opened them again, she looked from Cecily to Arthur.
‘There was one man,’ she said.
Baldwin was almost certain that Sir Peregrine had fallen asleep, but when he mentioned the name the Coroner’s head jerked up. ‘Who?’
‘Jordan le Bolle.’
‘That is the man whom Juliana accused tonight,’ Sir Peregrine said. ‘She said Daniel had been trying to gather enough evidence to arrest him for an age.’
Juliana had looked away. ‘He is evil, evil!’ she said, and she drew Cecily to her and hid her face in her neck.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mazeline was nervous when the harsh banging came on her door. She remained in her seat in the hall when the noise started, echoing about the place, and it was only when she heard a voice demand that the door be opened at once that she stirred herself.
The bottler was already there, and he cast an anxious eye at her as he hovered near the door. ‘Open it,’ she commanded quietly.
‘We want to speak to Jordan le Bolle,’ the first man said.
‘You are the Keeper? I recognize you. These others are?’
‘Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple, the Coroner, and Bailiff Puttock from Dartmouth,’ Baldwin answered. ‘Lady, your husband, where is he?’
‘I do not know,’ she said.
And nor did she care. After Agnes had left, while she tried to hold back her tears, he had stumped about the place, and then stormed out, angrily telling her to cool her temper.
‘A woman should be a delight for her husband, not a muling, whining bitch forever weeping.’
‘Did you love her?’ she had said. In God’s name, she had no idea where that question had come from. It seemed to leap into her mouth without bidding, and she felt her eyes widen in shock even as he spun towards her, his fist clenched under her nose. Mercifully, he didn’t strike.
‘Love her? No! But she was useful. I wanted to know about Daniel, and she was the source of my information.’
‘You did kill him, didn’t you?’ she whispered.
‘Everyone thinks that,’ he spat, and he put his hands to his head with a grimace. ‘Why does everyone think I did it? I have plenty of men will swear that I was nowhere near the place that night. I wasn’t there! It wasn’t me!’
‘Did you ever love me?’ she asked, in a voice so small she could hardly hear it herself.
‘You?’ His face cleared and lifted and he frowned at her as though surprised to hear her question him on such a matter. ‘We have been happy, haven’t we? We have a lovely daughter, and we’re content with our lives. I find money and food for you, don’t I? What more do you want of me?’
He left soon after that, and if there was satisfaction that for once he had not beaten her, there was a strange, fresh desolation in her heart.
In all those early years she had lived with the man believing that she had been wrong on occasion, and that he had been justified in correcting her when she was. For her, the fact that he loved her was the overriding point. It had made all the suffering, the humiliation and the pain, somehow bearable; to know that in fact she meant nothing to him was appalling. It made a mockery of her whole life as his wife.
Recently, needing companionship and compassion, she had fallen into the affair. It was by no means intentional, her oaths before the altar meant that her soul was endangered already, but when she began to fall in love with poor Reg, it had seemed both natural and inevitable. Both sought escape from the same man … the same terrors. Even then, she had thought that Jordan still loved her, that his beatings and cruelties were proof of his love.
If he had never loved her, her entire existence lost all meaning. His indifference trivialized her.
‘You must have some idea, mistress!’ Sir Peregrine ground out.
His harsh voice drew her back to the present, but without fear. There could be no nervousness with this man. He could bluster and threaten her, but that was as nothing compared with the torment her husband had inflicted on her over years. She met his gaze levelly. ‘I told you I don’t know.’
The Keeper cleared his throat. ‘Lady, we have to speak to him. What time is he usually about in the morning?’
She gave him a faint smile. ‘My husband? That depends upon where he is now. If he has gone to his gambling rooms, he might be home again early in the morning, but if he’s gone to the brothel, he might be enjoying himself with one of his queans. He has any number of strumpets in that place.’
‘You knew of it?’ Baldwin asked gently.
She rather liked him of the three. He had kindly, gentle eyes that seemed to show that he had suffered in his life too, and knew what it was to be in pain because of another person’s actions. He had known hardship. ‘I guessed, although I only really found out … recently.’
‘What of his thefts from the cathedral?’ Simon asked.
She looked at him and shrugged. ‘I know nothing of that. You’d have to ask him.’
Sir Peregrine set his jaw. ‘I think I should wait here to speak to him when he returns.’
Baldwin shook his head. ‘We can easily have some men guard the door, Sir Peregrine. There is no need for us to take up any more of this lady’s time for now.’
She met his gaze and smiled at him, sadly, but with gratitude. ‘I have not had an enjoyable day. I would be grateful for the peace, were you to leave me alone. Do you wish me to tell my husband that you want to talk to him?’
‘I think,’ Baldwin said, ‘that it may be better if you do not. Either there will be men outside your door to speak to him when he comes home, in which case there will be no need for you to tell him anything, or we might decide to surprise him tomorrow. However, you are his wife, and we cannot force you to keep a secret like that.’
‘I am his wife,’ she agreed, ‘but that means that he owes me respect, as well as expecting his due from me in terms of obedience.’
Baldwin smiled again, and nodded, before leading the other two from the room.
Reg felt almost sick as he walked into the brothel that night. The smell from the lean-to at the back was foul. A mixture of fat and wood ash, the stench was cloying and repellent. It caught in his throat and nostrils, making him gag, and he stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall and choking.
He’d begun his association with Jordan because he’d needed food. There was no other motive: it was steal, rob, even kill, or die. There was no choice. Live or die.
Then, when he was riding back from Topsham after checking a small cargo they’d bought between them, he’d seen her: Sabina. It wasn’t that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, nor that she was the richest, but there was something about her that had attracted him. Perhaps her liveliness, her spark of life, the thrill that there was about her, whatever she did. She served him some of her father’s scrumpy, and he felt before he’d finished the jug that this was the woman he wanted to marry. She’d be comfortable, kind, a good mother. Not a flighty strumpet from the stews, who’d flatter a man; this was a real woman. A real mother. Maybe that was it? His own mother had been dead a while by then. Maybe he just wanted a replacement.
And he wanted a son, of course. Michael. Sweet Jesus, Michael! His boy had gone.
In the time it had taken him to register what she was planning, they had gone. It hadn’t been an instantaneous thing. They’d all sat down to their supper, and he’d thought that she would come round, as she usually did when they had a dispute, but then after his meal he went up to the Boar, and when he returned, she’d gone. With Michael.
The loss of his boy was so overwhelming, he was distraught. If it was just Sabina, he could cope. She’d go, and maybe someday she’d return, but Michael … He knew that with Michael gone, his life was ending. There was nothing more to live for. Everything he’d done recently had been in order to make a good life for his boy. Michael was all that mattered to him.