‘And could Cecilia?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘What did this Cecilia look like?’ Corbett asked.
‘Oh, young, slender, very beautiful, hair like spun gold. It fell down almost to the floor, very proud of it was Cecilia. Francoise used to comb it for her. Very popular with the lords was our young Cecilia. Francoise made them pay heavily for her favours.’ She looked at the gold coin. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
She left the parlour, asking if they wanted refreshments, but Corbett refused. A vague suspicion stirred in his mind.
‘What do you make of this?’ Ranulf asked once Roheisia had gone.
‘I don’t know. But let’s see what our lady of the night can find for us.’
‘We should go after her,’ Ranulf urged. ‘Search this place from garret to cellar.’
Corbett shook his head.
‘First, Ranulf, that would only alienate our good ladies. Secondly, Francoise has been missing for a month. I am sure the good Roheisia has already been through her documents and papers. She knows there is something which might interest us and she’s gone to find it. If we start stamping our feet and rattling our swords, I don’t think it will be handed over to us.’
Roheisia came back, a sheaf of greasy-edged parchment in her hand. She thrust these at Corbett but held on to them until he handed across the gold piece. By the light of a candle he quickly went through the different pieces of parchment. One or two were items of purchase, one a letter, enigmatic and curt: Corbett suspected it was a message to one of her clients, or at least a draft that had never been sent. He glanced up. Roheisia was watching him closely.
‘Don’t play games, mistress,’ he warned her. ‘I don’t pay gold for an empty cup. You knew all this when we first arrived!’
‘Oh, there’s something there,’ she admitted. ‘Not much.’
Corbett continued searching through the papers and then he found it. A draft of a letter to Cecilia Hocklewell at the Chambard tavern in Dieppe. Corbett felt slightly guilty. Francoise had written it as if she were Cecilia’s lover rather than her friend, vowing how she missed her, that she would return. He noticed the phrase, ‘when your glory has been restored’. He glanced at Roheisia.
‘“When your glory has been restored”, Mistress Roheisia? What on earth does that mean?’
She stared blankly back. Corbett rolled up the piece of parchment and put it in his wallet.
‘Madam, I come here as the King’s officer. You know full well that Francoise has been murdered in the same forest where Lord Henry was killed. Now, there’s more to Lord Henry than being a client of your house. He and Francoise shared a common bond, Cecilia. Lord Henry took her out, ostensibly as his personal mistress, but then he bundled her abroad. Francoise makes careful searches. She finds Cecilia but she apparently refuses to come back until what Francoise calls “her glory” is restored.’ He gripped Roheisia’s wrist. ‘Now, madam, an explanation!’
Roheisia swept across to a chair and sat down on it. She sat like a queen, hands dangling down the side. ‘I hate men. I hate them because they are hypocrites, because they believe they can buy what is precious. They strut in here full of wine, mouths bleary, cocks hard, as if this is nothing more than a barnyard. I liked, even loved Francoise but, as the years passed, this grew cold. It was Francoise who brought Cecilia into our house. A Kentish girl. I never knew whether she loved Cecilia as her daughter or as a man would a maid. Francoise distrusted Lord Henry but allowed him to take Cecilia out. When Francoise discovered that she had gone missing, she became demented. The management of this house, the pleasuring of our clients were forgotten. Lord Henry came here and she confronted him. I heard nothing of their bitter words, only Lord Henry laughing, mocking her as he often did. Francoise became determined. She became a constant visitor to the harbour. She would go out visiting this place or that. Sometimes she was absent for days. She’d curse Lord Henry and said both he and his family would pay for what they had done. Ca ira, that’s all I know.’
‘And Cecilia’s glory?’ Ranulf asked.
‘She must be referring to the girl’s face. What Lord Henry did, I am unsure: in his cups he could be vicious. There are men, master clerk, who like to beat women, see them bleed before they can take their pleasure with them.’
‘And you think this happened?’ Corbett asked. ‘That Lord Henry beat Cecilia so badly, he sent her to Dieppe to hide any scandal?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘So, Cecilia wouldn’t return until these wounds were healed?’
‘Again that’s possible. It’s also possible that Francoise travelled to Ashdown to confront Lord Henry but, to do that, she was very foolish. After all, who cares if an arrow slits a whore’s throat?’
‘Are there any other letters?’ Ranulf asked.
Roheisia threw her head back and laughed. ‘Francoise was like myself, young sir. Our correspondence? Let me put it this way, good whoring and letters do not go together. A love note received on Monday can be dangerous by Friday. Francoise was no different. Before she left she either burned her letters or took them with her. I only found those by mistake. She’d left them in a pocket of a robe hung on a peg in her chamber. Master clerk?’
Corbett was sitting, eyes closed. ‘I wonder,’ he murmured, ‘Ranulf, I really do, what Lord Henry did to that girl?’
In the priest’s house, a narrow, two-storied dwelling built just behind the church of St Oswald’s-in-the-Trees, Alicia Verlian filled a goblet for her father and placed it on the table in Brother Cosmas’ clean-swept kitchen. Outside darkness was falling, the silence broken by the sounds of the forest as it awaited the night. The verderer sipped from the cup and glanced across at his daughter.
‘It will be good to get back,’ he said.
‘We should leave now,’ Alicia replied. ‘You have nothing to fear and Sir Hugh will protect us against Sir William.’
Verlian shook his head. ‘It’s best to wait.’
Alicia looked at her father pityingly. He had aged in the last few days, nervous, unsure of himself. He was even frightened by the shadows in the church. Brother Cosmas had kindly agreed that he could move into his house. Indeed, since Corbett’s questioning in the church, the Franciscan had grown very preoccupied. He had left early in the afternoon, saying he wished to have words with Odo.
‘But make yourselves comfortable,’ he had offered. ‘I have some wine, dried meats and freshly baked bread. Build the fire up. Alicia, if you wish, you can stay, sleep in the church or make up beds for both of you on the kitchen floor.’
With that he had taken his cloak and cudgel and left them. Alicia had repaid his kindness by tidying up the sanctuary and sweeping the floor. She promised herself that, tomorrow, she would return to her own house and bake some pies, recompense for this gruff priest’s kindness.
‘Do you think it will end soon?’ Her father broke into her thoughts.
‘Sir Hugh is a good man. He will execute the King’s justice without fear or favour. However, he keeps his thoughts to himself. I suspect, Father, there’s more to this man than you and I can ever imagine.’
‘And the other one?’ her father teased, trying to lighten his mood. ‘Who walks and looks like a cat? He is much smitten by you, Alicia.’
‘And I by him,’ she admitted.
‘Would you become handfast to such a man?’
Alicia glanced away. ‘And what would you do then, Father?’ She tugged at the Franciscan robe he wore. ‘Become a priest?’
‘I don’t know what I will do,’ Verlian said. ‘But, when this is all over, I am finished with the Fitzalans!’
‘And now you want to marry me off?’
‘He’s an ambitious young man.’ Verlian grasped his daughter’s wrists. ‘Alicia, you don’t favour him because you have something to hide?’
She blushed. ‘I have nothing to hide, Father. Ranulf-atte-Newgate is a personable young man. I have never met his like before. Oh, some of the forest people are kind but Lord Henry was really no different from the rest, except he had the power and the wealth to pursue his lust.’