Blood Moon (14 page)

Chapter 15

ROSABEL

Plans
were rapidly forming in my head as I hurried out once again through Anselm’s gate. The old gatekeeper had been replaced and this new one was unknown to me. I had to assume he was one of de Saye’s men and so took a circuitous route through the town to reach my destination. Once I was certain I had not been followed, I came back down through the town to the marshlands - a remote area to the south of the town, low-lying and damp. Here Onethumb and Rosabel had a room in her parents’ house in a street that ran down to the Linnet River. It had to be remote because of the type of industry that was carried on here. Rosabel’s father worked in the tanning trade curing leather hides which is a notoriously noisome and evil-smelling activity. Neighbours tended to shun them as a result which suited my purpose. The process also required a constant supply of urine, the more acrid the better, which Rosabel’s father stored in earthenware jars in the back yard and could get very ripe indeed, especially in summer. Crucially, they also had a cow.

It was Onethumb who answered the door to my knock. They were in the middle of eating their evening meal and he invited me to join them. But I was too agitated to eat. We went instead out into the back yard where we could talk in private.

Before I revealed the de Gray family’s whereabouts I needed to be sure Onethumb was as convinced as I was of Raoul’s innocence for only then would he be likely to help me with the rest of my plan. I asked him first if he remembered the curfew bell the night I met him on the street. He answered that the bell was still sounding when we met
- in fact it had been the signal for him to stop work and start for home. So far so good. Next I asked him about the blacksmiths in the market. He signed that he knew the blacksmiths from his days as a street urchin when he would hang around their fires for warmth and companionship. He corroborated what the beadle had told me that the smithies were nearly always the last to pack up usually well after the curfew bell sounded.

‘So do you see the point I’m getting to?’ I urged him. ‘Effie’s body couldn’t have been dumped
in the market before the curfew bell or the blacksmiths would have seen it. And since Raoul was in the tavern at the time and with us thereafter, he had no time to deposit the body.
Ipso facto
he couldn’t have been the murderer.’

Onethumb screwed up his face.

‘What?’ I asked him impatiently. ‘Tell me, what have I missed?’

Onethumb signed that Raoul could have killed the girl before we saw him, hidden the body somewhere and put it in the market square some time later.

I shook my head. ‘He was never out of sight again until the next morning.’

Onethumb still looked unconvinced.
Are you sure he was never left alone even for a short while?             

‘Positive,’ I affirmed. ‘Dominic was with him all night – well, except for a few minutes around
midnight when he answered a call of nature. But he would have seen if Raoul had left the laboratorium.’

And Dominic didn’t fall asleep?
Or leave the room even for another few minutes?

‘He assures me not. Oh God, now you’re putting doubts into my head again.’ I scratched my naked pate
in thought. ‘No,’ I said resolutely. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have had the time. He’d have had to kill Effie then gone off to the tavern to see Netta and someone else would have had to dump the body. It’s all too elaborate. And another thing, he was drugged – I found enough henbane in his vomit to kill a horse. He wouldn’t have done that to himself,’ I grimaced. ‘Would he? To throw us off the scent?’

Onethumb walked away thinking while I nervously bit my nails waiting for his decision. Eventually he came back nodding. To my enormous relief he seemed as convinced as I was of Raoul’s innocence. I was about to tell him the rest of my news when he started signing again. Watching him, I couldn’t help but smile.

‘Nothing gets past you does it, my friend? Yes, you are right, I do know where they are.’

I took a deep breath and told him. He listened with a serious face. When I’d finished he signed that they would need milk for the baby. Being a father himself
of a young child, he’d know all about that.

But that’s why you’re here
, isn’t it?

‘Naturally I’ll pay you,’ I said. ‘But first there’s something else I have to ask. Something of a delicate nature…’

‘No, absolutely not. Don’t bother asking again because the answer will still be
no! No, no and again I say no. No!’

Ah, sweet Rosabel. If I were twenty years younger and not already betrothed to Christ
and His church, I could easily lose my heart to this beauty. Full and rounded and voluptuously feminine, she was my ideal of a true woman - none of these skinny, boyish girls with flat chests that seem to be the fashion these days. She combined the face of Helen, the form of Aphrodite, the complexion of a rosebud - and the temper of Tisiphone, the fiercest of the Furies. Her parents must have had a premonition of how their daughter would turn out for no-one could have been more aptly named: Rosabel,
Bella Rosa
- a beautiful rose indeed, but every rose has its thorns and none sharper than Rosabel’s. Many’s the time Onethumb has threatened her with the cucking-stool for a scold, and many’s the time he has come home to a burnt supper as a result - or no supper at all. How he managed to win her in the first place has long been a source of wonderment to me. Not uncomely of face himself nor unmanly of form, Onethumb nevertheless did not strut with his fellows or excel with the longbow as they did. And try as we might, we cannot ignore his natural handicaps which surely must put off many a would-be suitor. I once asked her what she saw in him, and Rosabel simply smiled secretively and winked. He clearly has attributes that appeal to woman but evade the eye of the casual male observer. I put it down to the same spirit that won him the pennies I’d thrown in the air when we first met on the street fifteen years ago. Competing with other fully-limbed lads, Onethumb had managed to collect more of the trophies than they did despite having no tongue and only half their complement of fingers. But that was typical of Onethumb. Once he had determined upon a quest, little could deter him. And he had been determined upon his Rosabel.

They made a fine couple and all the finer when their son, Hal, arrived to bless their relationship six months ago. For all their apparent discord in public, clearly in private they harmonised well – Hal was the living proof of that. Five years younger than Onethumb, Rosabel was quite a buxom wench made all the more so by her recent pregnancy
- which was the reason I risked venturing into the tigress’s den tonight. But it was clear from her initial response to my suggestion that we were going to have difficulties persuading her. Arms akimbo and brow exquisitely furrowed, she tapped her toe impatiently upon the garden path.

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she sneered, ‘I have a child of my own. I don’t need another.’

Onethumb smiled at me and shrugged as if to say “I told you so”.

But I wasn’t about to give up just yet. ‘Madam,’ I said to her in my sternest
patrician’s voice. ‘Your husband commands you. It is your duty to obey him.’

That was the cause of the first pot of urine to be tipped over. Onethumb angrily rebuked her for her wastefulness and threatened to beat her for her obstinacy - and that was the cause of the second pot going over and for good measure this time she picked up the ladle brandishing it
threateningly at her husband. Like cowards before this great Bathsheba we both cringed in a corner. She was magnificent! Onethumb winced at the mess in the yard and glanced anxiously back at the house where his father-in-law must have heard the crash and known what it was. Since he did not come out he evidently guessed who had caused the damage and thought better of challenging his daughter.

Threats having got us nowhere, Onethumb tried a different tack. He explained in some of the most exquisite choreography I have ever seen him execute the plight of the lady Adelle and poor little starving Alix. The hunger pangs, the mother’s tears, the despair. His performance certainly convinced me. I thought I saw Rosabel mellowing after his efforts and sought to press home the advantage:

‘Madam, there is no disgrace in being a wet-nurse,’ I ventured. ‘King Richard had one and she greatly prospered from the association achieving wealth and status after the king’s death.’

‘And will I prosper too from your proposal?’ she asked haughtily.

I squirmed. ‘God will reward you in heaven I am sure.’

‘H
a!’ Rosabel nodded knowingly. ‘I thought not.’

I looked imploringly at Onethumb who insisted that it was because Rosabel was such a wonderful mother - a caring,
loving
mother - that we ask her. He also pointed out, delicately, that although Hal was weaned she still retained plenty of milk on the tit and so could easily cope with the needs of a young baby girl.

She frowned suspiciously.
‘Why do you need me? Why not a proper wet-nurse? A proper
paid
one.’

‘It is a delicate matter,’
I said. ‘We have to keep this arrangement
private
.’

‘Why? What have they done?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied rather too quickly. ‘At least, nothing proved.’

Then light dawned in her eyes. ‘It’s that dead girl, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘The maid. The
child’s father’s the one accused of murdering her. And this is the household you want your wife to enter?’ She turned angrily on her husband and smacked the ladle hard against Onethumb’s thigh. It is the only time I have ever heard Onethumb utter any kind of a sound – a sort of strangled animal whimper.

‘He didn’t do it,’ I insisted.

‘Well, that’s easy to say,’ she said whacking my thigh now and making me yelp in surprise. ‘You’re not the one he’ll murder next.’

Onethumb guffawed as it to say “He wouldn’t dare!”

That got him the second slap making him hop about in pain.

‘I suppose when I’m butchered and lying on a dunghill somewhere, you’ll be able to look after your son, will you?’ she snarled at him.

Right on cue, Rosabel’s mother appeared at the back door with little Hal in her arms. From his grizzling he’d evidently been woken up from his sleep by the noise in the yard and looked about him wide-eyed and fearful. When he saw Rosabel he started to bawl and put out his arms.

She nodded with satisfaction. ‘There’s your answer. Your son needs his mother. Here, chick, mummy’s not leaving you. She’s going nowhere, don’t worry.’

She went to take the child from her own mother’s arms, but as she approached, Hal’s bawling grew worse and as Rosabel went to take him he screamed pushing out past her towards his father. Onethumb took his son from his mother-in-law’s arms and Hal’s bawling instantly stopped as he grizzled contentedly in his father’s arms. Mouth open in astonishment, Rosabel threw her ladle down in the dirt in disgust.

‘Men!’

I
t has always intrigued me that in a world rightly dominated by men it is often the female that turns out to be the most useful - and not just among humankind but right across the animal kingdom. It was a cow, after all, that provided the milk that will give life-giving sustenance to little Alix. The herdsmen on my mother’s estate will very often kill off or sell any young male-cattle for meat while heifers are nurtured to full maturity with many productive years ahead of them. Likewise chickens provide eggs while the cock merely crows and struts. How odd that God should arrange things so.

Men, of course, are the more capable of the two sexes – that is self-evident and the reasons why are simple to explain. Men’s brains are bigger than women’s which is a scientific fact established long ago by Aristotle. And we mustn’t forget that it was a female, Eve, who brought sin into the world without which Adam would still be enjoying the innocent delights of the Garden of Eden, as God originally intended. I suppose the real answer is that men are stronger in body and spirit and are thus better equipped to order society. I shudder to think what a mess the world would be in if ever a woman was put in charge. So I suppose the correct balance between the sexes has been struck - at least in terms of human society if not that of animals.