Alfred stoked the fire, adding bricks of peat. ‘No wood or coal?’ he asked Will.
The silversmith sank onto a stool and leaned his head back against the wall. ‘No.’
Once seated, Owen leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked long at Carl, then Will, curious about their partnership. Time to question them, while they were humbled, cold, no doubt hungry. He saw no evidence of a recent meal.
‘I want to know what led up to Ronan’s murder,’ he said.
Will sat up, glaring at Carl. ‘You’ve told him?’
‘I’ve said nothing, you dalcop.’
‘I want to hear all of it,’ said Owen. ‘Who would like to begin? Will? I took you for the honest sort.’
‘I am! But that monster—’
‘Honest, are you?’ Carl spit on the floor. ‘I came upon you trying to rob the vicar of his scrip.’ He looked to Owen and the others. ‘Found him wrestling the man to the ground and kicking him as he lay in the snow.’
‘Then you fell upon him and stabbed him,’ Will cried. ‘You’re the murderer. Only you murdered the wrong man. I heard you curse when Ronan’s hat rolled away. You cursed at him and came at me.’ Will looked at Owen. ‘Mistook the vicar for the musician in that costly cloak and velvet hat. The man he murdered last night.’
‘So Will knocked Ronan to the ground, and Carl made certain he was dead.’ Alfred looked from Will to Carl. ‘Both guilty.’
‘I murdered no one,’ Will whined. ‘I just wanted his scrip. I’ve been mad with grief, out of my senses, but I never meant to kill him. I wanted the account book. Thought it was in his scrip. Always was when he came here. It would have been my salvation. I meant to prove he tried to ruin us all to fill his purse, and the archbishop’s.’
Carl laughed. ‘But that isn’t what the vicar had in his scrip that morning, was it? Had the whore’s beloved prayer book is what he had.’
‘And now this monster has murdered two men,’ said Will. ‘Last night. That’s how he was wounded.’
Denis shook his head. ‘Ambrose Coates lives.’
‘The cur lives?’ Carl let out a string of curses as he held up his hands, the bandages on his fingers as bloody and soiled as the one on his arm. ‘His work, the traitor. He lied to us, used us to spy on the Nevilles. How does he thank us? Takes off with the Percy girl. And there we are, looking like we helped the traitor spy on the Nevilles and run off with the prize.’
‘I heard it was Sir John Neville who broke your fingers, not Ambrose Coates,’ said Owen.
‘Because of him! Sir John’s men dragged me to their lord. Who was the white-haired musician? For whom was he spying? Where has he taken the lass? His men held down my hands, splayed my fingers. Neville had a wooden mallet. Every I don’t know rewarded with a thwack.’ He stomped his foot. ‘Thwack. Thwack.’ Tears of anger turned to despair and pain at the memory. ‘Took the lass I protected with my life for months. My treasure. I knew who she was. The missing Percy, the nun who abandoned her lover, let the villagers burn him. I meant to turn south after Cawood, deliver her up to Sir Thomas Percy. But he stole her. And ruined me. I will never play again. Never. A musician with crushed fingers?’ He stabbed a hand at Denis. ‘Your comrade destroyed me.’
‘You did it to yourself, you greedy cur,’ Stephen growled.
‘You failed her that night at Cawood,’ said Denis. ‘Took off to the fields with the cook while one of your men crawled onto her pallet. How could Ambrose leave her?’
‘Time enough for that after you finish the tale,’ said Owen. ‘Tell me all that happened the night of Ronan’s death.’
As they bickered through the telling, Carl cursing, Will moaning, Owen pieced together a picture of the moments leading up to and past Ronan’s murder. Will’s excuse – cajoled into investing in a shipment of goods, promised riches, celebrating with his partner’s maidservant, and then the terrible news, pirates, complete loss, a loss of his daughters’ dowries, the business partner threatening to expose him for getting his maidservant with child, the cost of caring for her. An endless trap. His wife’s disbelief when he obeyed his confessor and told her everything. Her flight south to her parents with the children, where the pestilence of summer took one of his daughters.
‘I wanted the account book. God forgive me, that is all I wanted. I meant to take it to Dom Jehannes. He’s a kind man. He would listen. He would convince my Mary that I had been one of many Ronan ruined. That I meant to restore the dowries.’ Will groaned. ‘But that wasn’t what Ronan carried. I am cursed. It was not the book.’
‘How could you tell in the dark?’ Owen asked.
‘What he carried was too big. The account book is smaller. Thinner.’
‘What did you do with the book he carried?’
‘Tossed it away. No use to me.’
‘And you took it up.’ Owen nodded to Carl. ‘How did you come to this house?’
‘I followed him home that morning. I wanted a place I could slip in and out while watching for Ambrose Coates.’
Will groaned again. ‘I ran from the minster yard. Never looked back.’
‘Course not,’ said Carl. ‘A whipped pup running to hide in his den, lick his wounds. I followed him. Watched. Saw he had troubles, no sign of a wife, family, his apprentices cursing him for cold food and little of it.’
‘Who was the partner who ruined you, Will?’ Owen asked. It might be useful to have that name.
‘No!’ Will shook his head with a vehemence. ‘I could never again show my face in the city. And with Neville now the archbishop. No.’
It stank of Gisburne. Was that why Owen found himself devising a way to keep Will’s name out of this, to spare him?
