The bailiff grinned. “So have we all, but John just denied them most convincingly, and won’t tell us who it is that he has been seeing.”
“Yet he was in Godfrey’s yard and saw the bodies, I understand?” Clifford was perplexed. He had also heard the rumors about John and Martha, but didn’t want to prejudice Baldwin’s investigation.
“That’s right,” Simon nodded. “And disappeared when Matthew Coffyn arrived.”
“Well, that would be no surprise, if he knew that Coffyn could be searching for him.” He sighed, passing a hand over his eyes. “It all seems so confused. And while we speculate, a murderer is loose. He might strike again.”
“I would hope not,” Baldwin said dryly. “It’s my job to see he doesn’t-and in any case, I have to believe that Godfrey was killed for some logical, comprehensible reason. In England people don’t kill for no purpose; there is always a motive if one can only see it. But I have to win over Cecily and get her cooperation. I am sure she somehow holds the key to this whole mess.”
“Why should someone attack John?” Peter wondered.
“I think we already know the answer to that question,” said the knight. “Many of your congregation think that John has been carrying on an affair with Martha.”
Peter blinked, then gave a sheepish grin. He should have realized that the knight would already have discovered something that was so readily discussed in the town. “So you had heard that? I must confess, I always thought it extremely unlikely. She thinks herself a great lady-that she might get involved with a tranter seems somehow incredible.”
“John is certain that it was Coffyn who beat him.”
Peter Clifford screwed up his face as he considered this. “Because Coffyn thought John had been committing adultery with his wife?”
Baldwin gave a shrug that showed his own confusion. “That is the logical conclusion. It’s possible, but why should Coffyn think John was toying with his wife if he wasn’t? He must surely have had some convincing evidence to make him take such drastic action.”
“I would certainly hope so!” said the Dean faintly. He poured himself a large goblet of wine and drank it straight off. “We cannot have our town disturbed in this way-men wandering the streets at night, breaking into private homes and beating the occupants.”
Baldwin shook his head. “There is nothing random in it, Peter. John was thoroughly thrashed for a reason, whether the reason was justified or not. In the same way Godfrey was not the victim of a wild and unthinking attack. He was murdered deliberately. This mystery has a simple explanation, if only we can find it.”
“Yes,” offered Simon gloomily. “And if we can get Cecily to tell us the truth.”
At that moment the object of their thoughts was walking quickly up and down her hall, her hands clasped firmly at her breast as if in prayer.
It was ludicrous! There was no reason for anyone to attack John! Nobody had wanted to steal from him, and there was little to take if they had wanted to. No, she was sure that whoever had committed this hideous crime was motivated by some kind of desire for revenge, but for what? Had he unknowingly insulted someone? Or was it simply that someone in the town hated the Irish?
That was mad, though. Nobody could hate John. All who met him were forced to laugh at him, or with him. He was too inoffensive to make enemies. Yet her mind kept coming back to the fact that John’s injuries were inflicted not to kill but to cause maximum pain, as if they were intended solely to punish him.
There was a scratching sound, and she spun around, startled.
In the garden, Thomas smiled dryly. She looked so like a fawn scared by the breaking twig under a hunter’s foot. “It’s all right, Cecily. I haven’t come to rob you.”
“Thomas! Oh, dear, dear Thomas! I wasn’t sure you’d still come. Oh, your poor face! How are you?”
He leaned uncomfortably on his old ash staff. “A little the worse for wear,” he admitted.
“I heard about what happened to you. The whole town seems to have gone mad.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
Quickly she told him about John, finishing, “And now the Keeper of the King’s Peace realizes I’ve been lying. I think he guesses I know what happened to Father.”
“But he can’t! No one else saw anything.”
“Sir Baldwin is very shrewd. He has eyes that are hard to fool. They seem to see right through any deceit.”
Rodde sneered contemptuously and tilted his hat back on his head. “Let him try to convict a leper. A leper doesn’t exist under the law.”
“A leper can still burn. That’s what they do to lepers found guilty in other parts, Thomas,” she pointed out helplessly. “And they say that this knight is very determined once he’s on the track of a felon.”
He shrugged. “He must be very determined indeed if he intends to catch Godfrey’s killer. He won’t find it easy.”
“Oh, why did we have to come here!” she burst out, and covered her face in her hands. “If we’d only stayed in London, you’d still be settled and resigned, and Father would be alive. Instead he’s dead, and it’s all my fault. If only I hadn’t seen you and-”
“Hush, Cecily,” he said more gently. Watching her through the window, he was tempted to pull off his rough, clumsy glove and give her the comfort she needed. But he couldn’t. “It’s not your fault. If anyone is to blame, I suppose it’s me for trying to see you again. If I hadn’t come here, if I hadn’t brought my friend, if I hadn’t spoken to you so often, then he might still be alive-but none of that is your responsibility.”
“You cannot know how much I have missed you, Thomas.”
“Nor you I, Cecily.”
“How many years is it?”
He considered, as if the memory was difficult to trace. “Is it seven years? Or eight?”
“It’s nine years since you left London. You always pretended not to remember dates!”
“What makes you think it’s a pretense?”
She laughed then, not the constrained, miserable laugh he had heard so often recently, but the old belly- laugh she had used when he joked with her.
“It’s good to hear you laugh again like that.”
She smiled at the softness in his voice. “We have not so very much to laugh about, do we?”
“No,” he agreed quietly. “We have very little to laugh about.”
Jack drained his mug and belched, wincing at the sour taste. When he moved toward his barrel of ale, he knocked a hammer from his bench, and the iron rang on the flagstone, making him wince and groan.
It was the wine, he told himself. If it wasn’t for that, he’d be fine. The inn’s ale was of good quality, and never gave him a head like this. No, it was the fact that he had mixed his drinks: the ale at the smithy in the afternoon; wine at the inn, until William had left them; more ale at the inn; then ale at home after seeing Mary’s father. His mouth tasted like the bottom of the forge’s grate. There was a gritty texture on his teeth that he longed to sluice away with ale, and a bitter, near-vomiting taste at the back of his throat. His head was pounding so hard it felt like someone was using one of his own hammers on him.
He tilted the barrel to fill his mug and glowered when there wasn’t enough, kicking the barrel from him. Sitting on a low stool, he closed his eyes a moment, keeping the bright sunlight from them.
The knight was a fool. Why should Jack listen to someone who couldn’t even see the danger? Knights thought they were better than everyone else, just because they were born with money in their purses, but money didn’t buy brains. Jack knew that he was fortunate. He had been born poor, and he’d had to learn how to make his own path in life the hard way, learning about people and his trade as he struggled to earn a living. That was something you’d never find a knight succeeding at, he thought as he grimly took a pull of his ale.
If he had enjoyed an easier life, Jack might have turned out very differently. He wasn’t cruel by nature, and neither was he dim, but he had been marked out for a hard life, breathing in foul smoke from his charcoal all day, slaving bare-chested over red-hot bolts of steel and iron, pausing only long enough to slake his thirst with his barrel of ale. If he had been educated, if he had enjoyed intellectual debate with men who reasoned and appreciated his logic, he might have grown to understand that those who wore a different appearance were not necessarily different in their motivations.
But Jack had only the companionship of the tavern or inn, where his prejudices were reinforced by others who
