Gabriel wrenched himself round to see the two of them. ‘You would leave me here?’
‘Alisoun will call us back when you are ready to talk.’
‘But the children,’ Alisoun protested.
‘What of my arm?’ cried Gabriel. Yet when Alisoun approached he shrank from her.
Assuring him that she meant him no harm, she knelt beside him, gently resting one hand above and one below his injury. ‘I do not like the feel of the flesh around the wound. I would advise you speak up, and quickly.’
‘You did this.’
‘You might have knocked and stated your purpose. Instead you accosted the bailiff’s man and trapped him in the garden shed.’ She rose and started for the door to the hall.
‘Come back,’ Gabriel whimpered, ‘I cannot lose my arm. I will tell you what you want to know if you help me.’
Owen was back on his stool in a few breaths. The flushed face might be emotion, might be fever. ‘Tell me.’
‘She is Dame Marian, a sister of Wherwell Abbey. Sir Thomas Percy’s ward.’
Owen knew of Wherwell, a fine abbey between Salisbury and Winchester. Bishop Wykeham’s territory. ‘The abbey is far from Percy lands.’
‘But near one of Sir Thomas’s manors. A royal gift in token of his services. His widowed sister Lady Edwina manages it for him.’
‘How came Dame Marian to stray so far from the abbey?’
‘She went missing the night of a fire at the abbey in the week after Pentecost.’
Late May. ‘She escaped a fire?’ Owen asked.
A deep breath. ‘The fire began around the window in the library that holds the nuns’ music. Dame Marian’s pallet was right there. When she was not among the sisters helping pass buckets of water or carrying manuscripts out of harm’s way they feared they would find her bones in the ashes. But when the laborers searched the ashes the next morning they found no bones. The fire had not burned so long that a body would leave no trace. Her nun’s garb was found in a gardener’s shed in the outer part of the abbey enclosure. The reverend mother and Dame Eloise, the cantrice who taught her, both insisted someone had taken her, that she would not have set the fire, she would not have run on her own accord.’
‘Unless she feared she would be blamed for the fire,’ said Owen.
‘You would not be the first to suggest that. Sir Thomas and his sister, Lady Edwina, thought that likely and expected her to come to them. But we searched the countryside between the abbey and both their houses and found no sign of her. Then one of my fellows learned that his brother Phillip, Dame Marian’s music teacher in Lady Edwina’s household, had disappeared a few days before the fire. His family was frightened. He’d seemed obsessed with his former student, enraged when she went to the abbey, saying they had been meant for each other and he would find a way to rescue her.’ Gabriel had been speaking so quickly he needed to pause for breath. His voice had grown raspy. ‘Might I have some of that wine?’
Keen to keep him talking, Owen poured a cup, handed it to him. ‘And so you were sent to find Phillip and Marian?’
‘Four pairs of us, plotting our paths with information Rupert gave us about his brother’s rambling, where he had served, where he studied. We were to track the two of them, take them both, return them to Sir Thomas. Whether we returned with Phillip alive or dead mattered not a whit to my lord. But Dame Marian was to be treated with respect.’
‘Was this Rupert of the party?’
‘He was my comrade on the road.’
The brother of the man suspected of abducting Dame Marian had been trusted as part of the search party? ‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes.’
Unwise. Owen wondered how Sir Thomas justified that. ‘Have you found Phillip?’
‘What we found were rumors of his death. That villagers burned him as a pestilence-carrier, but she escaped. She might have betrayed him to them. Or so the story went.’
‘Did you send word to your lord?’
‘We were in pursuit. That would have taken time.’
‘So then your mark was only Dame Marian, the betrayer of your partner’s brother?’
Gabriel looked away. ‘I was caught up in the chase. I did not think.’
‘Go on. You were now searching for her.’
‘We lost all track of her for a good long while and wondered whether the villagers had not wished to admit they had burned her as well. If they’d learned she had been a bride of Christ they would fear God’s punishment. We were about to turn back north of Bath when we heard of a company of minstrels and players with a comely lad, voice of an angel, fair hair, pale eyes— We kept going.’
‘And once you found her Rupert leaped off the roof of the chapter house?’
‘I don’t know what happened between them. I was waiting outside the minster. I did not see them disappear into the chapter house.’ Gabriel was panting with fear. ‘I pray you, save my arm!’
‘You rode together, drank together, but you have no idea why Rupert would take her somewhere without informing you? I don’t believe you. I think you knew he meant to punish her for his brother’s death and something went wrong.’
‘I knew of no such intention, I swear. We were following the French spy, Ambrose Coates. We thought he would be a fine addition to our catch. I waited without that evening, Rupert went in to watch the meeting. Ambrose had told her he was meeting someone about her stolen prayer book. I don’t think she believed him. I had told her Ambrose was a French spy.’
A stolen prayer book? The psalter? ‘How did you know Ambrose, and the rumors about him?’
‘He is not a man one forgets.’
‘Where had you seen him?’
‘At the French court. A few years past. I offered Dame Marian a trade – information about the French spy for a message to Sir Thomas telling
