'A cat has nothing on my brother-in-law when it comes to nine lives,' he replied cynically. 'He seems to weather every storm, even when they are all of his own making. But after this humiliation, I hope to God he just goes back to his manor and keeps very quiet for a very long time.'
'But he's not long bought a dwelling up on North Gate Street,' objected the raven-haired maid. 'I wonder if he and Lady Eleanor intend to live there some of the time?'
'I doubt he'll want to walk the streets of Exeter for a while, after his shameful exhibition up in Rougemont,' said John with ill-concealed satisfaction. 'If he's any sense of honour, which I doubt, he'll go back to Revelstoke, which is his manor furthest away from this city. If I never see him again, it will be too soon.'
But this uncharitable sentiment was shortly to be confounded.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It might have been Denise's ointment or simply the healing power of nature, but Geoffrey Trove's arm had improved over the past two days. Although it was still throbbing and painful, his fever had subsided — and, best of all, his mistress's constant nagging for him to attend an apothecary had faded with the infection.
The journeyman was still afraid to go out in the daytime, for fear of being recognised, but in the old black cloak with a deep hood — the one he had worn to attack the sister of that swine de Revelle — he had ventured out to a low alehouse the previous evening to eavesdrop on the city gossip.
He heard about the battle up at the castle and gloated that the two objects of his hate had both come to grief in different ways. He sincerely hoped that Pomeroy's seizure would prove fatal, but the news that Nicholas de Arundell had contemptuously spared the life of Richard de Revelle annoyed him greatly. If he had killed him and Pomeroy had also died, then Geoffrey, who was basically very religious in spite of his disregard for some of the Commandments, would have considered that God had smitten the evil-doers on his behalf.
Now that de Revelle was not only unharmed but a free man, Geoffrey decided that it was up to him to complete the task that the Almighty seemed to have overlooked. Denise was out, buying some food at the stalls in High Street. Now that she had given up whoring and he had left his job, he had to support them both from the meagre savings he had accumulated from his pay as a journeyman — another reason for seeking violent revenge against those who had prevented him becoming a rich man with his own business.
He went to his small chest in the corner, one of the few things he had brought from his shack on Exe Island, and took out a duplicate of his master-work. It was the prototype of the one he had left behind in his hut, as he was afraid that some poison on the springs of that one might again contaminate him. This other device was slightly smaller, but equally efficient in firing a bolt.
He had made the second one with greater care and better metal, finishing it off meticulously to display his skill — yet still those hidebound bastards of guild masters had rejected it. He placed it on the table, checked the mechanism, then fired a bolt against the opposite wall, where it stuck quivering in the whitewashed cob, two inches deep into the plaster. Satisfied, he pulled it out and cleaned it, then wrapped the miniature crossbow in a cloth and put it back into the chest before the nosy Denise returned.
Lady Eleanor de Revelle had been quite satisfied with her new town house in Exeter. When her husband was sheriff, she had firmly refused to spend any time in his official residence in the keep of Rougemont, which she considered a bleak, draughty place unfitting for a woman of her station in life. Eleanor was an even greater snob than Matilda — who she despised — and when Richard was living in Exeter castle, she had insisted on living either at their manor in Tiverton or at Revelstoke. She endured his frequent falls from grace with apparent indifference, keeping his professional life at arm's length. However, his dismissal as sheriff and now his ignominious defeat at the hands of Nicholas de Arundell were hard to bear, but she dealt with this latest embarrassment by keeping herself aloof from any of her husband's activities, and often his very company.
A tall, angular woman with an icy personality, she had long regretted her marriage to Richard de Revelle, as she considered that she had married well beneath her.
She was the third daughter of an earl with estates in Somerset and Gloucestershire and, like Matilda, had been married off as one of the least saleable assets of the family to a moderately acceptable young knight. After twenty years of marriage, she had accepted her fate stoically, settling for extravagant creature comforts bought both by Richard's money and, a generous allowance from her own family. It was Eleanor who had prodded her husband into purchasing the house in North Gate Street, partly with the excuse that if he was entering into this respectable venture to establish a college in Smythen Street, then he needed to be much nearer to it than either of their manors at opposite ends of the large county. The house gave her an opportunity to spend as much time as she wished in a city where there were greater market facilities and frequent fairs and festivals, a welcome change from the boring isolation of their manors.
Though she had little affection for her husband, she had become used to him and had no desire to lose him either to another woman or to death — though his neck had come perilously close to the hangman's noose on several occasions. Eleanor was well aware of his predilection for harlots, though she never admitted to herself that it was her own frigidity that was the main reason for this behaviour. As long as he did not shame her over his amorous activities, she was prepared to pretend this situation did not exist.
Thus that evening, when he gruffly told her that he was going out to meet a friend in the New Inn, Eleanor was indifferent to the news, suspecting that he would probably end up in one of the brothels that abounded in the back streets. She retired early, going to the upstairs solar with her tire-maid to prepare for bed. Waking some time during the night, she found that her husband was absent from his side of the large feather palliasse they shared.
Again, this was no novelty and she turned over under her blankets and bearskin and went back to sleep.
However, in the morning, there was still no sign of Richard de Revelle and he failed to arrive when their servants brought bread, sweet gruel and coddled eggs to break their fast. This was unusual, as he was fond of his early-morning victuals, but questioning of the three servants they employed threw no light on de Revelle's absence.
Irritated rather than worried, she had herself dressed and went with her maid to morning Mass at the nearby church of St Keryans, for rather like Matilda, attending frequent services was one way of filling the empty life of a gentlewoman. On her return, she was approached deferentially by Matthew, the bottler who took on the role of their steward in that small household.
'My lady, I am becoming concerned about Sir Richard,' he said hesitantly, as his mistress had a sharp tongue when dealing with her servants. 'He has still not returned and the old man who comes to chop kindling and draw water from the well found these in the yard behind the house.' He held out a floppy velvet hat with a crumpled feather and a rusty iron rod longer than his arm.
'That is my husband's hat,' snapped Eleanor, snatching it from him and turning it around in her hands.
'And this is another bar pulled from our back gate, a twin to the one the master told us about — the one that was used to slay some guildsman in a churchyard.' As Eleanor stared at him with mounting concern, Matthew added, 'And both are stained with blood.'