‘You have been fortunate. Now I need you to sit up and look away.’
‘Look away?’ The man straightened and glanced away just as Owen pressed the shoulder with one hand and yanked the arm with the other.
The servant screamed.
‘It will begin to feel much better in a while,’ said Owen. ‘I am going to bind it close to you and send someone from my wife’s apothecary with a salve you need to put on it twice a day while it aches. Do you understand? Is there someone who can help you?’
‘Cook should be back soon.’
‘Good.’ Owen examined the man’s lip. ‘I’ll send something for that as well. For now, this will stop the bleeding.’ He plucked a cloth from a shelf and filled it with snow outside the door. ‘What do you drink to ease pain?’
The man glanced toward a small barrel on a shelf as he began to rise. Owen patted his arm, then found a cup and poured some wine.
‘Bless you, Captain.’ The wounded man took a long drink. ‘They are not the first strangers I have seen about since the vicar was murdered, but the first who came in. There are rumors that the dead man handed something over to Master Thomas before he was killed. But we would have known if he had come back that morning. We would have known.’
‘And he did not?’
‘No. I tend the fires early. By the time I heard the shouts I had stoked them and fetched wood for the hall.’
On departing, Owen passed a man he presumed was the cook rounding the corner of the house. A lad followed him, stumbling beneath the weight of a fat goose.
The chancellor expected guests.
Of course, the city would soon be filled with potential patrons for the minster. And Owen much feared that this morning’s rash of intruders meant that whoever was behind Ronan’s murder was becoming desperate. Crispin? Was it him? Or was he hoping to restore calm and order before the archbishop and his family arrived? Owen stopped outside the chancellor’s gate, considering where they might try next. His home? He trusted Ned, but he would check there on his way to the castle to talk to Pit.
ELEVEN
A Maid’s Tale
On Davygate a cluster of neighbors argued with Bess Merchet, who stood so that she blocked their view into Owen’s garden. Over the din of their fuss he heard the twins shouting something about a man unable to breathe with his face in the mud. Owen pushed his way through the crowd mouthing apologies.
Bess opened the gate and motioned him into the yard. ‘Heaven protect us from the fair Alisoun’s suitors,’ she muttered behind him.
Fair Alisoun? She stood toward the rear wall of the garden training an arrow on Ned where he sat astride a man lying face forward in the slush, head twisted to one side. It was the fallen man who gasped for air. He did not look like either of Crispin’s men. A relief. But Ned’s behavior sounded an alarm. He was not one to panic.
‘Let him stand, Ned, or you won’t sit for a long while,’ said Alisoun with a menacing calm.
Rose and Rob looked on in horror.
‘He attacked a man in the king’s service,’ said Ned in a cold, equally menacing voice.
‘Who is on the ground?’ Owen asked Bess.
‘A trespasser. From what I’ve heard he shut Ned in the garden shed and took over his watch on the house. I leave you to deal with them while I drag a pallet near the kitchen fire so the victim might lie down while you tend his wound. I would not be so kind to him, but you are a household of healers. Though I must say, at present Mistress Alisoun seems more a warrior.’
Owen called to Rose and Rob to watch the gates, and headed toward the drama. If it was true Ned had been humbled in front of Alisoun, he understood the temptation to lash out, but past experience would have suggested the young man would hold his discipline, remember his responsibilities. Grasping a handful of Ned’s clothing, Owen yanked him up and tossed him aside. The man lying in the mud made choking sounds as he attempted to prop himself up to breathe, his effort stymied by an arrow in his right arm just above the elbow. Owen grasped him around the chest and lifted him high enough that he could use his legs to turn and sit while he gulped air.
Releasing her stance, Alisoun slung her bow over her shoulder and tucked the unspent arrow in the quiver. ‘He was watching the house. When Rob and Rose approached him he dashed for the wall, tried to scale it. I stopped him with the arrow while the twins let Ned out of the shack.’ Stepping closer, she added in a low voice, ‘His name is Gabriel. According to Marian he’s Sir Thomas Percy’s man.’
Percy. God in heaven. ‘How does she know?’
‘He was the partner of the one who fell from the roof. They were following her. I did not stay for more.’
Marian’s story involved the Percys as well as the Nevilles, the two most powerful families in the North. Owen cursed under his breath. ‘Did he give Ned any trouble after you’d shot him?’
‘How could he?’
Owen offered Gabriel a hand. ‘Let us see to that arm.’
Ned scrambled to his feet. ‘Captain—’
‘I will deal with you
