‘I do.’
‘And now he has slyly pretended to be Father Francis for the day, the very day on which Father Francis meets his death.’
‘Go on.’
Geoffrey wrung his hands. ‘That is it. I know it does not tell us where Edern has gone. Nor what part the lovely Tangwystl plays in all this.’
‘Perhaps we should wait till they return in the morning and ask them. Or have you forgotten that it is still possible they did go to see Tangwystl’s mother?’
Geoffrey seemed saddened by the possibility. With a great sigh he swung his feet up on to the bed, shuttered the lantern that hung on a hook beside him, and lay back. ‘For a moment I forgot myself,’ he said to the dark.
Repenting his anger, Owen said, ‘Best to sleep now. The morrow may bring more questions than answers.’
He turned on to his left side, discovered that his shoulder still ached, and rolled over on to his right. He thought of Lucie, wondered whether she still kept their one-year-old son beside her in his cradle or whether Hugh now shared a pallet in the corner with his sister Gwenllian. It was a large bedchamber, and when Owen was away Lucie said she liked Gwenllian’s company. Gwenllian enjoyed it, too, though as a pragmatic three-and-a-half-year-old, she worried that Jasper was lonely all alone in the chamber next to them. Gwenllian could not know that at thirteen Jasper likely felt relieved to have the children out of his chamber for a while.
With those domestic thoughts, Owen gradually sank into a drowse that signalled sleep.
But a soft knock on the door woke him at once.
Geoffrey, too, sprung up at the noise. ‘Who is it?’ he whispered.
‘I doubt they can hear you.’
‘I might not wish them to hear me.’
A louder knock.
‘An attacker would not announce himself so,’ Owen muttered as he rose to go to the door, pulling a blanket round him for warmth. ‘Could you rouse yourself enough to open a shutter on your lantern?’
Geoffrey did as requested.
Owen opened the door. A cloaked figure rushed into the room.
‘Close the door!’ It was a woman’s voice, breathless, the language Welsh.
Owen closed the door, walked over to the woman, who had perched on the edge of his bed. He pushed back the hood that hid her face. ‘Gladys.’ Her eyes were swollen and her nose red, apparently from weeping.
‘Sweet Jesu,’ Geoffrey muttered, pulling up his legs as if cringing from the presence of the woman who had so embarrassed him two days earlier.
‘You must protect me,’ Gladys whimpered. ‘As the Duke’s men you must protect me.’
‘What is she saying?’ Geoffrey asked.
‘She is asking for protection.’
‘I would not have thought her one who felt the need for protection,’ Geoffrey said.
Owen knelt by the woman, studied her face. She was far younger than he had realised. ‘Such eyes. You have cried for a long while.’
She nodded.
He took her hands in his. They were ice cold despite the heavy cloak she had wrapped round her. ‘You are very frightened.’
The sympathy begat tears.
‘Can you speak English? Or French?’ Owen asked.
‘A little,’ she said in English. ‘But you speak my tongue.’
‘Master Chaucer does not. If you are asking for his protection as well as mine, he must understand you. But from whom are we to protect you?’
Gladys wiped her nose on her cloak, looked round to Geoffrey. ‘They say you are the King’s man as well as the Duke’s.’
‘I am,’ he said with a hesitance more appropriate to a less certain response.
She hiccuped.
Geoffrey rose, checked the flagon on the table, found a bit of wine left in it, poured it into a cup, brought it to her. She blessed him and sipped daintily. He backed out of her reach.
‘Father Francis is dead, did you know?’ she said. ‘And
she
is gone. With the Welsh priest.’
‘Mistress Lascelles?’ Owen asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What has frightened you?’ Owen asked. ‘The chaplain’s death?’
Gladys’s bottom lip began to tremble, her eyes filled. ‘She pushed me into my master’s bed.
She made Father Francis watch us.
And now he is dead.’
‘So Father Francis told the truth,’ Geoffrey whispered.
Gladys looked at Geoffrey in alarm. ‘Why did he tell you? Did he know of the danger?’
‘What danger?’ Owen asked.
‘I did what she asked me to do,’ she sobbed. ‘She frightens me. The moment I saw her ride through the castle gate I feared for my master. She has the look of a demon, she does. I told the master I was no good as a lady’s maid, I would knot her hair and stain her dresses with my clumsiness. But he said she liked me, she chose me, and then she made me lie with him. Before it was different, but now he was married, and I was his lady’s maid. It was not right.’
‘What happened today, Gladys?’ Owen asked.
Gladys’s eyes filled again. She clutched the cup to her bosom. ‘She told me to meet her in the chaplain’s cell, told me that I was to be a witness. Was someone to be wed, I asked her, and she laughed, and when she laughs, she does so with her mouth and her voice but not her eyes, have you seen? It is like she is two people.’ She hiccuped again. Owen gently took the empty cup from her hands. She blotted her eyes with a corner of the cloak. ‘I went to the chaplain’s cell. I knew something was wrong and I thought it was the vicar crouching there, his back to me, like he had lost something on the floor. I called his name, but it was Father Francis’s voice that answered. His voice was so weak, I knelt beside him, tried to help him up, but he shook his head.’ She shook her head once, again. ‘And all that blood! I thought he had fallen. So I said I would get help, and then she was calling for me.’
‘Mistress Lascelles?’ Owen asked.
Gladys nodded. ‘And Father Edern, too. “Run, my child,” Father Francis told me. His eyes were so sad, he was dying, he used his last breath to warn me. “Run,” he told me. “Save yourself.”’ She began to sob again.
‘Save yourself from whom? Mistress Lascelles?’ Geoffrey asked, his tone sceptical.
‘I know not,’ she sobbed.
Her tears did not stop Geoffrey. ‘And why did you not get help for Father Francis?’
‘I was afraid!’
‘Of whom?’
But the tears were flowing freely now. They learned little more. It had been mid-afternoon when she had gone to the chaplain’s room. Since then she had hidden in the undercroft. She did not know how long Tangwystl and Father Edern had spent searching for her.
When Gladys was at last asleep in Owen’s bed, the two men crowded into Geoffrey’s bed. But sleep was gone for Owen. Scattered strands were joining in his mind. The unhappy marriage. The maid sent to the husband’s bed. She made Father Francis watch us. Owen had asked how many times the chaplain had observed. Gladys did not know. Thrice, he guessed. There was an old Welsh law, a way for Tangwystl to dispose of an unfaithful husband. Is that what Father Francis was to do? Write a letter stating what he had seen? But what would that do to Tangwystl’s family, who were here by the grace of her unwanted husband? And how could an old Welsh law bind John Lascelles, the Duke’s man? Why would Father Francis die for it? No. Owen grew confused. Father Edern had been the intended victim, not Francis. Which made even less sense.
Gladys began to snore. God’s blood, what were they to do with her?
In the morning, Gladys hid beneath one of the beds while the servant lit the brazier and set their morning ale, bread and cheese on the table. Geoffrey insisted on such luxuries when on official business. Today Owen was glad of it. The ale helped clear his mind. Gladys looked better for a bit of sleep; though the swelling around her eyes had gone down just slightly, she seemed calmer, not so close to tears, and she had a hearty appetite.
‘We cannot continue to hide her here,’ Geoffrey said.
‘You have a knack for stating the obvious,’ Owen said. He watched Gladys attack a small loaf of bread, devour it in three bites, then wash it down with mouthfuls of ale.
‘Gladys, why did your mistress ask you to lie with her husband? And I would be grateful if you would speak so that Master Chaucer might understand.’
Gladys put down her cup, wiped her mouth with her sleeve. ‘To prove to him she had not put a curse on his manhood.’
‘Why would he believe such a thing?’
‘Because he could not lie with her as he does with me. He never could. He says she put hawthorn leaves in the bed.’
‘Hawthorn is used in weddings to bring fertility,’ Geoffrey said.
‘It is,’ said Owen, ‘but the leaves are also used just in that way to safeguard a young maid’s virtue when temptation is near.’
‘I forget you have apprenticed in an apothecary.’
‘My wife would say such things are not the business of an apothecary, but folk will ask. And they pay good coin for the leaves.’ Yet Owen could not imagine Lascelles pulling up his mattress, much less recognising hawthorn leaves that had been crushed beneath it. He needed to drop back further. Why was the marriage so unhappy? He had a thought. ‘Is your mistress in love with another man?’
Gladys dropped her eyes to her hands. ‘I do not know.’
‘Why else would she continue to push her husband to your bed?’ Owen asked.
Gladys did not lift her head. ‘It is not my place to wonder such things.’
Owen shook his head as if to a child who had told an obvious, though harmless, lie. ‘You could not help but wonder, surely.’
Gladys silently examined her toes.
Geoffrey looked from one to the other, exasperated. ‘More to the point, considering he has been murdered, why did your mistress make Father Francis spy on you with Sir John?’ Owen had not told him his theory; he doubted Geoffrey would have credited it till now.
‘She called him her witness.’
‘Witness for whom?’
Gladys looked up, her bottom lip trembling. ‘I do not know such things, Master Chaucer. I am but a servant!’
Geoffrey threw up his hands. ‘None of this makes any sense, and none of it is benefiting the garrison.’ He rose. ‘The porter offered to show me round the south gatehouse this morning.’
Owen thought Geoffrey had chosen an odd time to remember his official business.
Owen was of two minds. He was here on the Duke’s business; the discord in Lascelles’s household was not part of that business. On the other hand, he could not swear that none of the trouble involved the mysterious Lawgoch, nor could Geoffrey be assured of the castle’s readiness if Lawgoch had supporters here. Indeed, even if the troubles had nothing to do with the Welshman, chaos in the castle jeopardised its military readiness.
And though Geoffrey could not support his suspicion that all the troubles were connected, he might very well be right.
Promising Gladys that he would consider what must be done, Owen took his leave of her and walked out into the courtyard of the inner ward. He was just in time to see two Benedictine monks enter the ward, led by a servant. Heads bowed, they moved without curiosity through the ward to the hall and disappeared through the door. So Father Francis’s requiem Mass was to be said this morning. Owen guessed that it also meant Father Edern had not returned.
Owen fought to order his thoughts. Tangwystl and Edern. How might they have bonded together? He remembered his puzzlement when Tangwystl neglected to include the priest at their table. ‘Father Edern of St David’s?’ she had asked. She knew him. So did her father. It had been clear that Gruffydd disliked Edern; but Owen had been unable to judge his daughter’s feelings.
And what of Edern? As Geoffrey had pointed out, Edern had come forward to offer himself as John de Reine’s escort. What was their connection?
The time had come to put the skills to work that Owen had learned in Thoresby’s service. Nothing would be accomplished while the castle was in chaos. But first he must do something about Gladys.
Thirteen
AN ARGUMENT OVERHEARD
O
wen’s pacing took him through the inner ward and towards the practice yard. Divine inspiration it must have been, for Harold and Simwnt were loading several empty barrels into a cart cushioned with a good mound of hay.
‘Are you going far?’ Owen asked, interrupting an argument about whose clumsiness had caused a barrel to drop out of the cart on to Harold’s foot.
Simwnt turned round at the sound of Owen’s voice, his face brightening. ‘Captain Archer! God go with you, Captain. We are on a mission for you, truth be told.’
Harold made a great show of leaning against the cart, yanking off his left boot, and rubbing his foot. ‘I will not hold
you
responsible, Captain,’ he muttered.
Owen laughed, recognising a friendly quarrel. ‘I am glad of that, for I know nothing of your mission.’