‘Dear Holy Virgin!’ gasped Maude, a half-eaten sugarplum suspended on its way to her mouth.
Joscelin ran across the yard to the bucket chain. ‘Milo, what in God’s name’s happening?’ he demanded of his senior serjeant who was toiling hard with the other men.
‘Kitchen fire, sir!’ Milo panted, and stepped out of line for a moment. He was long of body and ungainly like a heron. His linen robe was soaked with water from the buckets he had been helping to carry. ‘Started not long after nones - a stray spark in the kindling for the bread-oven, so the cook thinks. He went to inspect the wares of an oystermonger and when he returned the kitchens were well ablaze.’ He rubbed his long jaw, leaving behind a black smear. ‘A good thing the main house is roofed with tile the way the wind’s blowing, else we’d all be sleeping in the almshouse tonight.’
Kitchen fires were a common enough way for a blaze to start but Joscelin’s scalp prickled. He looked along the row of men on the bucket chain and his unease deepened. ‘You took Gilbert off guarding the strongbox?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Milo said, confident of his decision. ‘I gave Walter the task instead. He’d have been no use on the buckets with that bad shoulder of his.’
‘Leave that, come with me.’ Joscelin stalked towards the main building.
Milo ran at his side. ‘What’s wrong, sir?’
‘Nothing, I hope.’ Joscelin mounted the external stairs to the upper chamber. The door at the top was closed, a good sign, but matters deteriorated the moment Joscelin set his hand to the latch. Although it yielded to his pressure, the door would not budge, as if there was something behind it, blocking entry.
‘Walter, open up!’ Milo bellowed. He thudded the door with his fist, receiving only the vibration of the blow in response. Together with Joscelin, he threw his weight at the door. It gave way the tiniest crack, not even enough to see through with one eye.
‘I’ll get an axe,’ Milo said and pelted away down the stairs. Joscelin hurled himself at the door again, venting his frustration and anger, then took a grip on himself, breathing hard. Milo returned at the run, brandishing a Dane axe. Joscelin grabbed the weapon from him, swung it and sank the blade into the door, close to the hinges. Splinters leaped out of the wood like white javelins. Joscelin wrenched the axe-head free and launched it again with all the strength in his upper arms. A split opened in the oak and he worked on this. A couple more strokes north and south, and wood parted from metal. Milo thrust at the door with his shoulder and it fell inward, slamming down like a drawbridge upon the corpse that had been lying behind it.
‘Christ on the cross!’ Milo leaped over the door and, together with Joscelin, heaved it off the body. Walter’s throat had been cut; the walls bore bright splashes of blood and the room reeked like a slaughterhouse. Making a mental inventory of the room, Joscelin saw that the strongbox was gone from its place beside the great bed. Other items had been taken, too - Giles’s hauberk was no longer on its pole and the fine Flemish hangings had been stripped from the walls.
‘Whoever it was can’t have gone far,’ he said, quickly assessing the span of time that had passed between now and the fire starting, and setting it against the sheer weight and bulk of the goods that had been taken.
‘No one has gone out of the front entrance on to the street; I’d swear my life on it!’ Milo’s voice was hoarse with shock but he was a mercenary, a man who lived by the sword, and his thinking processes remained sharp. ‘The only way to get such weight out in a hurry is by the river!’
‘Fetch six men, take them off the bucket chain if you have to, and meet me at the wharf,’ Joscelin ordered. ‘And post another one here; a servant will do, but tell him on no account to allow the women into the room, and especially not the child.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Joscelin ran down the stairs, sprinted across the neglected garden and down through the small orchard to the wharf bordering the rear of the property. A set of slippery, weed-covered steps descended to the gravel shoreline where several small rowing boats in varying stages of decrepitude were beached.
The tide was out and, on the shingle, two men, their tunics drawn high through their belts, were striving to push a beached Thames shallow boat into deeper water. A third man sat aft of the boat upon the missing strongbox, urging them to greater effort. Before him were heaped several waxed linen sacks, probably containing the other missing items, which were easily worth their weight in silver. The rower’s exhortations suddenly changed to a cry of warning as he noticed Joscelin’s approach. The men on the beach looked over their shoulders and then began to push harder, trying to free the boat.
Joscelin half-ran, half-slithered down the weed-green stairs, only saved from falling by the firm grip of his boot soles. He thrust with his toes on the final step, sprinted across the shingle and launched himself upon the thief to his left. So hard and swift was the impact that the man had no chance of remaining upright and tumbled into the river with Joscelin on top of him. The chill water rapidly saturated their garments and hampered every movement. They thrashed and floundered. Joscelin, having landed uppermost, used the advantage to push his opponent’s head under the water. He lost his grip and the thief broke the surface, choking, but by then Joscelin’s troops had arrived and the man was seized and dragged ashore.
The second thief had succeeded in pushing the boat free but had lost his footing as he tried to scramble into it and had been caught by Milo and another panting soldier. The rower worked frantically to scull his craft into deep water, away from the danger on the bank.
Stripping his sodden tunic and shirt, Joscelin plunged into the river and swam towards his quarry - it was quicker than trying to run, for he was armpit-deep by the time he laid his hands to the prow and hauled himself on board like a dripping merman. The small vessel yawed as the robber rose to a crouching stand and raised an oar to strike at Joscelin. Joscelin ducked and the oar missed his skull but landed a bruising blow across one shoulder. His attacker struck at him again and the boat see-sawed as if in a gale, water sloshing over the sides to form a deep puddle in the caulked bottom.
Joscelin lashed out with his feet and the oarsman staggered backward and landed hard against the side. Immediately Joscelin was upon him, using the oar between them to bear down and crush the man’s thorax. Panic-stricken, the thief kicked frantically. Joscelin grunted in pain as his body absorbed the blows but he did not yield his inexorable pressure. The resistance slackened; the thief choked. Joscelin held him within a hair’s breadth of death. One more push and the windpipe would collapse. His victim went limp as he lost consciousness. Joscelin threw the oar aside and unbuckling the belt around the man’s waist, rolled him on to his stomach and lashed his hands firmly behind his back, jerking the latch viciously on to the last hole of the leather. The thief groaned as he started to recover his senses. His head moved feebly as he tried to avoid the water pooling in the bottom of the boat.
‘Don’t give me any trouble,’ Joscelin said, lifting his victim’s head by the hair and shoving Giles’s hauberk beneath it to prevent him from drowning. ‘I’m quite likely to throw you to the fish, and in that padded jerkin you’d sink like a chest full of silver, wouldn’t you?’ Patting the strongbox, he seated himself upon it, retrieved the oars and turned the boat for shore.
It was well past compline before Joscelin was sufficiently free of his responsibilities to sit down with the women and take a cup of wine and a cold venison pasty - one of a batch fetched by Stephen from a cook shop on King Street, the Montsorrel kitchens being little more than smouldering ruins.
A door had been improvised out of planks from one of the rowing boats on the shoreline and the floor had been laid with new rushes borrowed from a neighbour. All traces of blood had either been removed or covered up. Out of sight but not out of mind, Joscelin thought as he sat down on a stool and leaned his back against the wall. The stolen hanging had been replaced and it cushioned his spine from the scrubbed, damp patch on the plaster. Once he had eaten and reassured the women, he had to go and spend at least the small hours in vigil over Walter’s body. His men were the outer ring of his family and to lose one hurt him. Walter had been a staunch companion, one of the first to join his banner the year that Juhel died.
‘I have three men below in the hall, guarding the strongbox,’ he said. ‘And more within immediate reach should the necessity arise, although I do not believe we’ll be troubled again in London. Leicester and his retinue are leaving at first light, so I gather.’
‘Have you spoken to Richard de Luci yet?’ asked Maude.
Joscelin dusted crumbs from his spare tunic. It was more threadbare than the one he had ruined in the river, and only just respectable. It was better for a mercenary to invest his coin in the best weapons and horses he could afford rather than in fine clothing. ‘No, he wasn’t at home. It can wait until morning now. His prisoners are securely confined, although I doubt he’ll get much out of them before they swing.’ He fell silent for a moment and
