‘Henry, I am grateful to you for coming here,’ Baldwin said.
‘The boy said you had something to say that would ease my mind.’
‘It is this: we think that we may know who the murderer of Daniel was; whether that is true or not, I feel sure that your friend was innocent of any crime.’
Sir Peregrine was about to protest when he caught sight of Baldwin’s eye on him. It seemed to him as though the knight was asking him to trust his judgement. He shrugged. There was little enough else to be done. Sir Peregrine had nothing better to advance for now. He had only two interests: the man Jordan, and later Juliana. Juliana! He was looking forward to seeing her again. At least the Keeper had stopped accusing her!
However, it seemed to him that Baldwin’s comments were rather strong. If the man thought his comrade would be safe if he appeared in public again, he was being far too hopeful. As far as Sir Peregrine was concerned, as soon as Est reappeared he would be attached and gaoled until the Justices of Gaol Delivery could hear his case. And then, if Sir Peregrine had anything to do with it, the man would be hanged quickly. Any man who routinely broke into other men’s houses to look at their children deserved the rope. Still, if Sir Baldwin wanted to tease the man out into the open, it would make his arrest all the more easy. Perhaps that was all the Keeper intended: to flush the man from his cover. The sooner the better, too. Sir Peregrine wanted to put the whole affair behind him so that the poor woman Juliana could be permitted to put it all behind her.
‘Henry? Could you tell him?’ Baldwin asked.
Henry was in two minds as to what to say. He didn’t know where Est was any more, and the thought that he might be found now, just when he might be thinking he was safe, was an abhorrent idea. Poor Est. Devastated after the death of his child and his wife, he could never know any peace because of the actions of another man.
‘I don’t know where he is,’ he admitted. ‘He was up at a place he and I know, but he wasn’t there the last few times I went to check. I’ll see if I can find him.’
‘You do that,’ Baldwin said, but not harshly. ‘He has been evilly served. It is time he received a little compensation.’
Mazeline glanced out through the window, and immediately saw the two men waiting, just as her bottler had said.
There was a wonderful lightness to her spirit this morning. She felt as though she was almost free of all her troubles. Even Jane; Mazeline had asked her cousins to take the child overnight, and they had taken Jane to sleep with them. The men outside must surely be there to arrest her husband, and although she was not sure what crimes he was guilty of, she was certain there were enough felonies to see him hanged.
It was not the most loyal emotion for a wife to feel at the thought of her husband’s death, but just now uppermost in her mind was only joy. She had no idea what the future might hold for her, especially since her man had made some powerful enemies in the cathedral and in the city, and several might seek to demand money from her. She could lose her house and all inside it, and yet she would remain alive, and free.
Freedom was a strange word. For years she had thought herself free enough; married to a wealthy man who was powerful and important, she had thought herself extremely fortunate, but since the revelation yesterday when he told her he didn’t love her, had never loved her, her mind had been in a turmoil. It was only as she slept that her brain and her heart were able to comprehend what had happened to her. The man who had bullied her had not done so in order to improve her, he’d done it because he liked to see her suffer. He’d beaten her for his own pleasure, no other reason. He had never loved her.
So now she was rid of him. She had no love for him either. Although she did feel something bright and sweet in her relationship with Reg.
If Jordan were to be arrested and executed, what would happen to Reg? Surely he was likely to be taken for the same crimes? They were both engaged on the same plots and stratagems … she must warn him!
She stood, and was about to pull on a warm cotte when there was an odd noise. It was a wet crunching — a strange sound that reminded her of a whole fresh, large cabbage being kicked: slightly damp, but crisp as well. She thought it came from the rear of the house, towards the buttery, and she turned her head to the buttery’s doorway, but saw nothing. She opened her mouth to call to the bottler, but no words came. Instead she found her heart filling with a terrible dread, and she started to walk backwards away from the door that led to the back of the house. Stumbling against a table, she recalled the two men outside even as she remembered the small window in the buttery. A man entering clandestinely might clamber in there and take a short cudgel to the dozing bottler’s head.
The window was near now. She could feel the draught against the nape of her neck, and she was about to turn her head to it, when she saw him in the doorway.
‘Hello, bitch! Didn’t expect to see me again, did you?’
Ralph was seeing another patient when the messenger arrived, and he finished the consultation as swiftly as possible without appearing to rush. He liked Betsy, but paying clients had to be treated with a little more respect than a simple turfing out. They were the ones who kept him in business, after all. Without them he wouldn’t be able to help her.
When he had his small bag filled, he threw it over his back and hurried to the South Gate.
‘Back again, leech?’ the porter asked from his doorway.
‘Another one is unwell,’ he acknowledged.
‘So long as it’s not the evil bastard who cut up Anne. I liked her.’
‘Many did,’ Ralph agreed.
‘Yes. You tell me who did it to her, and I’ll get any number of men’ll see to him.’
Ralph thanked the man, but as he walked out towards the quay and the brothel he wondered whether anyone would ever pay for that foul crime.
The door was wide, and as he entered he could hear the weeping and shrieking from the back. With an awful feeling of encroaching doom, he stepped quietly along the passage and out to the back of the building. The noise was coming from inside one of the little chambers, and he walked along the corridor towards a room whose door stood open. There were lights inside, and their flames cast a lurid glow out into the walkway, where he could see three of the younger whores, their faces orange and red in the flickering light. One turned to him as though in terror, but then her appalled gaze was dragged back to the room.
As he reached it, Betsy came out. Her forearms were bare, and looked like those of a battlefield physician’s, covered in blood. Her face was twisted with revulsion and self-loathing.
‘I could have saved her, I should have. But I was too scared,’ she said, and began to sob.
There was little else to be done that day, other than command that the hue and cry search out Jordan le Bolle if he was not found within the city. Baldwin was loath to do that, at least until he had checked with the two men outside Jordan’s house again.
It was remarkable that the man had not yet appeared. Baldwin was quite sure that he would have returned to his house. Even a man who had need of a quick escape must first put together the means of survival. He would need food, money, some thick clothing in this miserable season. It was unlikely that he would have been carrying much about with him, surely.
Unless he had hurried away last night, perhaps to take cash from a strongbox in his gambling rooms or his brothel. If he had done so, they would have missed him. He could have boarded a ship at the quay and made his way down the river to the coast, there to disappear for ever.
From the end of the street they could see the two men at the house. They were standing and indulging in a close debate. As they watched, one of them lifted his tunic and directed a stream towards the road’s gutter.