‘I was here in the early hours,’ an old man sitting opposite told them. ‘I saw the doomed young fellow with my own eyes. Live as a cricket, he was, as spark as you or me. Fancily dressed,’ he added.
‘If he was fancy what was he doing in here? Why not at one of the inns in town where they like that sort of thing?’ asked the woman in a sharp, critical tone. Her question saved Hildegard from asking the same.
The old man gazed lugubriously into his stoup of ale for a moment before answering. ‘Wenching, wasn’t he?’
‘I knew him,’ another one butted in. ‘Used to come in here when he could get out of the palace, nights. A mate of his used to leave a back postern unlocked for him. Putting one over on the pope’s guards, he used to say.’
‘I knew him well,’ the old man reminisced as if it had all taken place long ago.
‘Was he with a girl that night?’ asked Hildegard.
‘Of course he was. Yolande. His favourite.’ The old man gazed deep into his ale as if reading something in it.
The conversation turned to other things while Hildegard waited until eventually, after her patience was tested, she heard the same name above the buzz of conversation. It was the inn keeper, shouting over his shoulder to someone in a back room. A girl appeared, flushed, scantily dressed, her eyes red rimmed as if she’d been crying. She patted her hair as she came through and looked the customers over.
‘Get yourself in here and do some work, will you, Yolande? What do you think I pay you for?’
The girl grimaced and went to a group of men taking up the end of the main table. ‘Come on fellas, let me earn an honest living tonight. What’s wrong with you all?’
There was some muttering, an agreement was reached and one of them put his arm round her waist and led her out.
Not much chance of talking to her for a while, thought Hildegard. She turned to the old man. ‘Let me fill your stoup, master.’
He pushed it towards her. ‘An angel from heaven, bien merci, ma dame.’
The landlord came over again. When Hildegard put more coins on the table he hovered, aware he had a reliable customer.
She looked up at him. ‘I heard about the trouble you had last night, sir. The poor young man was in here, then?’
The inn keeper leaned his untidy bulk against the edge of the trestle and wiped both hands on his apron. ‘It’s a sad business, ma dame. You wouldn’t believe it. Young gentilhomme comes in here after a dagger. Said it was stolen from his lord from inside the palace and there’d be trouble if it wasn’t found.’
‘Did he find it?’ she asked, pretending ignorance.
‘Found more than what he was looking for, that’s for sure.’ The inn keeper guffawed in a heartless manner.
Cautiously she asked, ‘So was somebody trying to sell such a thing?’
‘Fella comes in here, never seen him before, said he was just passing through and had something of value he wanted to find a buyer for. You know how it is, we spread the word. That must have been how the young’un heard about it, to his rue.’
‘This stranger?’
‘Scar faced. A mercenary in the French wars? I didn’t ask. He was looking for a buyer for a little jewelled dagger. Showed it me. Pretty little thing worth a small ransom.’
‘And you thought it was the one the young courtier was looking for?’
‘Me, middle man. Word gets out. No harm. Pope gets enough in taxes.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The young lad asks around and somebody points out the stranger and says, ask him, so what does he do? He goes right up to the fella, looks at the dagger and offers money, straight off.’
‘So did he have to pay a large sum to get it back?’ She wondered where Taillefer had got the money.
The inn keeper shook his head. ‘Not a bit of it. The strange fella refused point blank. Said his instructions didn’t involve entering into a bargain with some losel without a silver coin to his name and to bugger off.’
‘That wouldn’t go down well.’
‘It didn’t. But this is the bit that made us laugh. The lad insisted, the stranger refused, the lad insisted again so the stranger says, “All right, let’s see the colour of your money or go to the devil,” and you know what the lad does? He offers him a bill of credit! Laugh? We nearly wet our britches.’
‘So what next?’
‘This is where he brought trouble on himself. He scraped to the bottom of his money pouch for a night with Yolande then when we were all asleep he creeps out in the dark and sneaks this dagger from out of the stranger’s pack, brazen as you like. He gets out into the street before the fella realises his pack has been tampered with. When he finds sout he lets out a bellow enough to wake the dead. I thought, there’s a stabbing now. I’m down them stairs in a trice with my knife at the ready but I only got there in time to see scarface disappearing down the street. The wench he’d been with, Juliette, stands at the top of the stairs with just a sheet round her shrieking, “Leave be, master!” she says. “He’s a violent bugger and he’s in a fury. Leave him or get a knife in your gut!” And she was right there, wasn’t she, considering what happened next? I had my angels watching over me that night, praise the saints.’
‘So you stayed inside?’
‘I did. Not my business, is it? An ill star was shining. I didn’t reckon he’d catch the lad but he did and that’s that. Pity. He was a regular paying customer, the lad I mean.’
He wiped his hands on his apron and went to the tun to pour more ale into one of the jugs a customer was holding out.
‘So the stranger got away with it,’ Hildegard’s neighbour observed. ‘Me, I wouldn’t want to be walking around here at night by myself with him on the loose.’ She touched her companion on the arm and they exchanged glances.
She turned to Hildegard. ‘I don’t want to alarm you in view of what we’ve just been saying, mistress, but there’s a fella watching you. Don’t look now. He’s sitting over there by the door.’
When she had an opportunity Hildegard half turned her head. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Hubert de Courcy. His give-away white robes were concealed under a thick black cloak but his features were unmistakable despite the hood he wore. She gave an involuntary scowl and he raised his stoup of ale to her.
‘You’ve got custom,’ chuckled the woman’s man friend.
‘He’s well set up by the looks of that cloak,’ observed the woman.
Hildegard accepted the offer of ale in return for the one she had bought them and turned her back on Hubert. Let him sit there all night. She refused to leave just yet. Not until she was sure there was nothing else to discover. Who was the scar-faced stranger? That was the question. It must be the one who had stolen the dagger from the mortuary. At last, she was getting somewhere.
‘Did this stranger not return?’ she asked the inn keeper when he came over again.
He nodded. ‘He was back a while later as brazen as you like. “Damned thief got clean away,” he said. “I’m getting my pack. I’m not staying here in this den of thieves.” And he got his gear and left.’ He gazed off into the distance. ‘Of course at that time we didn’t know he’d done for the lad.’
‘Surely there was blood on his hands?’
‘None that I saw.’
To her new companions Hildegard said, ‘At least we know the fellow over by the door isn’t the murderer of that poor boy. No scars.’
They all turned to stare at Hubert’s hawkish, alabaster features in silence.