“To establish your alibi.”
Putthe gaped. It felt as if a fist of ice had clenched around his bowels and he was aware of all the flesh on his back suddenly chilling with a frozen expectation. He was no fool. If a man could be accused of aiding or abetting in a murder, the justice was likely to be swift and predictable. The bottler considered his position quickly while the knight rested his chin on his cupped hand. Putthe had done all he could, but loyalty was one thing: the certainty of a noose was another.
“Sir,” and now his tone had a persuasive certainty to it, “I swear before God and as I believe in the life to come, I had nothing to do with the death of my master. I didn’t even know anything was going on. My Lady Cecily did ask that the smith should come here, but it was not with any malicious intent.”
“Tell me all you know.”
The bottler sighed and took his seat on a barrel. As an afterthought, he reached between his knees and poured himself a jug of ale. He seemed to have no intention of drinking, but held the drink as an aid to his concentration, much, Baldwin considered, as a knight might toy with a sword or dagger while he regaled an audience with a story.
“I told you before about the master finding John in the garden. It was true. And later the master told me about it. He thought it was quite funny, the way that he caught the little Irishman. But now I have heard something a little different. Now I am told that John never had an affair with Martha Coffyn; the man who was going over to see her was not the Irishman, but my own master!”
Baldwin nodded slowly. “So each time Coffyn went off on his travels, your master used to say he was going out to keep an eye on things and protect the garden from the hired thugs next door, whereas in reality he was visiting Coffyn’s wife?”
“That’s it, sir. Every journey Coffyn made, he would warn his partner, my master, so my master knew exactly when to go and see Martha.”
“But why should Godfrey have invested in the business in the first place? Oh, of course!”
“The last thing he wanted was for Coffyn’s business to fail. That would have meant an end to the trips away. No, my master was happy to make sure that Master Coffyn’s business did well enough.”
“What has this to do with the smith?” Simon demanded.
“Sir, my mistress had to have the mare’s hoof fixed, and she didn’t want the master to find out about it, because he was always berating her for the money she wasted. Not that it was fair. Mistress Cecily has always been quite frugal. Still, that was why she asked Jack to come here and refit the old shoe, to save money.”
“It would have saved more if she had sent the mare with the shoe down to the forge, and not asked the smith to come up here,” Baldwin commented.
“Jack doesn’t charge for coming up here,” Putthe corrected him.
“But her father came in here and saw the smith,” said Simon.
“She didn’t know he would come in here. As it was, it was so long after Jack had done her mare, it didn’t matter. Master Godfrey thought the smith was here socially.”
Simon scratched at his head. “There’s one thing we still don’t know, and that is what you promised to tell us: why did Cecily want the smith here?”
Putthe gave him a lugubrious stare. “I couldn’t tell you for certain. That smith is a rather repellent character and isn’t the sort of man I’d want to entertain in my buttery usually, but the mistress asked me to look after him, and I was happy to.”
“What did she actually say to you?” Baldwin frowned.
“She just asked if I could fill him with ale once he’d finished playing about with the horse. In fact, I remember she said she was sorry to ask me to do it, because she knew Jack wasn’t the most generous soul in the town. She made some comment about how intolerant he was.”
Simon gazed blankly at him. “”Intolerant?“ What would she have meant by that?”
“Jack can be a complete fool on occasion. Look at his behavior with the lepers last night. There was no excuse for that. No excuse whatever.”
Baldwin nodded, then he went perfectly still, staring into the distance. After a few minutes his brow cleared. “Very well, Putthe. You’ve been very helpful. Let me know if anything else occurs to you, won’t you?” He rose and stalked from the room.
In the screens, to Simon’s surprise, he stopped and peeped into the hall. When Simon went to his side, he saw what the knight was staring at.
The maid, Alison, was at the cupboard, rearranging the pewter on the shelves. Simon’s eyes opened wide as he saw that the shelves had all been filled. On the top was a pair of silver plates and a drinking horn; beneath were six pewter plates and a silver salt cellar shaped like a swan; below that was another row of six plates, flanked by two large flagons; on the lowest was a row of eight smaller plates. Simon gasped, but before he could speak, Baldwin put a finger to his lips, and led the way from the building.
The sun was waning as Rodde reached the top of the high street, and he moved more slowly as the air cooled. His hip held him back, for every step he took made it ache. Many years before, he had fallen from a ladder and broken his shoulder, and this reminded him of that, a dull, throbbing pain that expanded when he put his weight on it. It made him wonder whether he had actually broken something.
At the inn he paused. Cristine saw him patiently leaning on his staff and came out with a jug of ale. Giving her a smile of sheer gratitude, he held out his bowl. It was illegal for a leper to touch a jug or pot that could be used by a healthy person, but the girl poured straight into his bowl, and he drank greedily.
Cristine filled the bowl again, and watched solicitously while he drained it a second time. There was no need for her to try to say anything; her kindness in giving him ale to drink was itself enough. She couldn’t think of anything to say to him in any case. Thomas Rodde was not yet so hideously deformed as some of the others, but the sores on his face were enough to make her want to keep her distance.
Finishing his drink, he gave her a slow bow and made off back to the leper house. Cristine stood some while watching him go, his staff tapping regularly at his side while he shuffled away. She was trying to imagine how he would have looked before he had been struck down.
In her mind’s eye she straightened his back. That would surely add six inches or more to his height, she realized, which would make him a tall man, possibly almost six feet. Then his hair, now so lank and besmeared with mud, still showed signs of its underlying tawny hue, a color which would make him stand out. His eyes were unchanged, he hadn’t yet lost his sight, and were a peculiarly bright blue, while his flesh was bronzed from exposure. He was just the sort of man she had always fancied. The sort of man she might have chatted to in the tavern before he became scarred with leprosy.
She felt a shiver pass down her back. Someone’s walked over my grave, she thought, and crossed herself automatically.
“Hello, Cristine. Can you get this filled for me?”
“You’ve finished the barrel already? Jack, you must have too much work if your thirst is that bad!”
“My thirst is bad enough, I reckon,” he muttered, but his eyes were fixed on Rodde’s back.
As Cristine watched, he made off after the leper, and when she called to him, “Hey, what about your ale?” he merely waved.
“I’ll come and get it later.”
His urgency made her hesitate, and her gaze moved off toward the limping man. 23
B aldwin and Simon walked out to the street while Edgar unhitched their mounts and followed after them. In the roadway, Baldwin glanced at Simon.
“Interesting.”
“Baffling! What on earth can it mean? Someone stole all the plate, and has now returned it?”
“No,” Baldwin chuckled. “No, I think it’s a great deal simpler than that. Simon, we are coming closer to a solution to this problem.” He bit his upper lip, sucking at his moustache contemplatively. At last he gave a slight groan. “Enough speculation! Right, it is not a pleasant duty we must go and perform now, but it must be done. Are you ready?”