It had only been when she had glanced around her just as Elise had been stabbed that her attention had been torn from the diversion in a horrible manner. She could hardly believe what she had seen. Retreating a few paces, her first instinct had been to scream out an accusation, but her innate good sense had overridden the impulse, for she thought she knew the identity of the person who had committed the crime and, if she was correct, there could be dire repercussions to her family if she made the knowledge public. Trying to set her tumbling thoughts in order, she hurried off down the street. It was imperative that she go to Simon Adgate and tell him what she had seen.
Twenty-four
As Elise’s body lay crumpled and bleeding on the cobblestones of Mikelgate, Willi was standing in front of Lady Nicolaa in the castle solar. Petronille and Alinor were seated alongside her and Richard was by the fireplace, sipping a cup of wine as his mother spoke to the young runaway. A few paces behind the lad Ernulf stood, and Gianni was in his customary place in the corner, seated on a stool and taking notes.
“Do you know why you have been brought here, Willi?” Nicolaa asked the young boy.
“’Cos I stole a blanket,” Willi replied disconsolately.
Suppressing a smile, Nicolaa said, “No, that is not so. Neither I nor Bailiff Stoddard would begrudge you the means of keeping yourself warm.”
Willi looked up at her in surprise. He knew the woman in front of him was a great lady and had not expected her to be kind.
“You told Mark, the other boy at the foundling home, that you had seen the person who murdered my sister’s servant. If that is so, you are the only one who can identify him, or her, and we were fearful you might be killed because you can do so. That is why we have been looking for you, to bring you back here and keep you safe.” Nicolaa leaned forward. “If you told Mark an untruth, you will not be punished, but you must tell us if you really did see the murderer.”
Willi’s eyes stretched wide as he admitted that he had.
“Was it someone you had seen before-about the town, perhaps, or in the hall when you and the other children were brought before the merchants?”
This time Willi shook his head. “I only saw ’un when they wus comin’ out of that old tower across the bail. And later I heard the washerwoman sayin’ as how that’s where the crossbow what killed that man up on the ramparts was kept.”
“And did you see the murderer clearly? Was it a man or a woman?”
Before Willi could answer a servant burst into the solar. “Milady, I am sorry to interrupt, but Lady Alinor’s maid, Elise, has just been brought into the hall. She was stabbed while in the town and is like to die. Margaret thinks it was done by the same person that killed the cofferer.”
Alinor jumped up from her seat. “I must go to her,” she said and ran from the room.
“Richard, attend her!” Nicolaa said to her son abruptly. “Caution must be used until we find the person who is wreaking this havoc. And we cannot be certain that it is not someone within the castle walls.”
The castellan’s son, his hand going to the dagger at his belt, left the chamber with hurried strides.
Nicolaa looked at her sister, who was on the point of following her daughter, and lifted a hand to forestall her. “You, too, Petra, must be careful. Two of your servants have been attacked and you might be the next target. For now, you must stay here in the solar where Ernulf can keep guard over you.”
The serjeant nodded and moved to stand a little closer to the two women, loosening the short sword he wore at his belt as he did so. Willi, frightened by the report of the stabbing, was thankful of Ernulf’s presence and now, instead of trying, as he had done in the town, to escape the serjeant’s notice, crept closer to his reassuring bulk.
When Petronille would have made a protest, Nicolaa overrode it. “You cannot do anything to help Elise. We must leave her to the care of the castle leech and trust that if she can be saved, he will do it. It is more important, at the moment, to try and find the villain who is perpetrating these crimes.”
She beckoned to Willi. “You are safe here, lad. Now, come forward and tell me about the person you saw.”
When Alinor rushed into the hall,Richard was close behind her. In the middle of the huge chamber, Elise had been placed on one of the trestle tables used at mealtimes. The castle leech, a man named Hedgset, was bending over her. Closest to the stricken maid was Nicholas; when he had seen Elise lying bleeding on the ground, he had scooped her up in his arms and run from Mikelgate all the way up Steep Hill and into the bail. His exertions had left him gasping for breath but even so, his face, beneath a sheen of heavy perspiration, was ashen.
Margaret rushed forward when she saw her mistress’ daughter. “Oh, lady, the leech says the injury is a grave one.” She, too, was panting, for she had followed Nicholas as quickly as she could, arriving just after he had taken Elise into the hall. Her sallow cheeks were tinged bright red and she was wringing her hands in agitation.
Alinor walked swiftly over to the table and looked at her maid. Elise was unconscious, her breathing shallow. Her coif had been removed and the coils of her chestnut braids shone with a vibrant lustre above her ears, as though belying the deathly pallor of her face. Hedgset noticed Richard’s presence and, without pausing in his examination of the wound, said succinctly, “A clumsy piercing, lord, with a thick blade, but it has gone deep and penetrated her abdomen just below the rib cage. I do not think any of the vital organs have been damaged, but I cannot be sure.”
As he spoke, Elise’s eyelids fluttered and she began to regain consciousness. Her hand, instinctively, flew to the gash in her side, and Hedgset took hold of her fingers. “I have to stitch the flesh together, Sir Richard, and quickly. She must be kept still while I do so.”
The castellan’s son nodded and, grasping her wrists, held them tightly at her shoulders. He then gave Nicholas a command to take hold of her ankles. “Hold her fast,” Richard instructed softly as the groom moved reluctantly forward. “You have brought her thus far, do not fail her now.”
With a grimace of fear lest he give further hurt to the girl he so admired, Nicholas gently took hold of Elise’s feet and held them still. At the touch of his hands on her bare ankles, and the pressure of Richard’s weight on her shoulders, the injured maid began to stare wildly around, moaning as she struggled against the double restraint and making an attempt to rise, but she was securely pinioned, and the leech set to work.
Hedgset had not been with the castle household long, having only recently come there after having been recommended for the post by a London friend of Gerard Camville, but it was soon evident that his hands were deft. Although not above five and thirty years of age, he exuded a calm assurance as he ripped Elise’s kirtle and gown apart to expose the site of the injury more clearly, and then pulled the edges of her clothing tight across her stomach so that the material screened the more intimate portions of her anatomy. Taking up a bone needle threaded with catgut from his bag of instruments, he began to sew the ragged edges of the wound together. All was done with an economy of movement and speed, despite Elise’s agonised screams as the needle pierced her flesh. Richard surmised that the leech, although young, had gained his expertise during the years of his apprenticeship in London, while attending the many victims of assault on the notoriously violent streets of the city.
As Hedgset prepared to make the final suture, the pain became too great for Elise to bear and, her eyes rolling back in her head, she swooned again, her body going limp and offering no resistance as the leech finished his task. Adroitly he wrapped strips of linen over the site of the wound and around her stomach, crisscrossing them at her waist to keep them secure. Then he extracted a small vial from his bag and dribbled some of the liquid it contained into his comatose patient’s mouth.
“She should be taken to a chamber where it is quiet,” he said as he straightened and replaced the stopper in the vial. “I have given her a small dose of juice of poppy and, if she awakens, it will help keep her drowsy so that she does not tear the stitches I have put in.”
“You said if she wakes, leech,” Richard said. “Is there a danger she may not?”
Hedgset did not answer immediately, first instructing two servants to fetch the top of another trestle table for use as a makeshift stretcher. When they had done so, he bade them hold the litter steady while he eased Elise’s
