endured, while the negotiators parleyed and wrangled. The end was assured.
Nicholas Harnage, with the list of Julian Cruce’s valuables in his pouch, went doggedly about the city of Winchester, enquiring wherever such articles might have surfaced, whether stolen, sold or given in reverence. And he had begun with the highest, the Holy Father’s representative in England, the Prince-Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, just shaking together his violated dignity and emerging with formidable resolution into the field of discussion, as if he had never changed and rechanged his coat, nor been shut up fast in his own castle in his own city, in peril of his life. It took a deal of persistence to get admission to his lordship’s presence, but Nicholas, in his present cause, had persistence enough to force his way through even these prickly defences.
“Do you trouble me with such trifles?” Bishop Henry had demanded, after perusing, with a blackly frowning countenance, the list Nicholas presented to him. “I know nothing of any such tawdry trinkets. None of these have I ever seen, none belongs to any house of worship known here to me. What is there here to concern me?”
“My lord, there is a lady’s life,” said Nicholas, stung. “She intended what she never achieved, a life of dedication in the abbey of Wherwell. Before ever reaching there she was lost, and what I intend is to find her, if she lives, and avenge her, if she is dead. And only by these, as you say, tawdry trinkets can I hope to trace her.”
“In that,” said the bishop shortly, “I cannot help you. I tell you certainly, none of these things ever came into the possession of the Old Minster, nor of any church or convent under my supervision. But you may enquire where you will among other houses in this city, and say that I have sanctioned your search. That is all I can do.”
And with that Nicholas had had to be content, and indeed it did give him a considerable authority, should he be questioned as to what right he had in the matter. However eclipsed for a time, Henry of Blois would rise again like the phoenix, as formidable as ever, and the fire that had all but consumed him could be relied upon to scorch whoever dared his enmity afterwards.
From church to church and priest to priest Nicholas carried his list, and found nothing but shaken heads and helplessly knitted brows everywhere, even where there was manifest goodwill towards him. No house of religion surviving in Winchester knew anything of the twin candlesticks, the stone-studded cross or the silver pyx that had been a part of Julian Grace’s dowry. There was no reason to doubt their word, they had no reason to lie, none even to prevaricate.
There remained the streets, the shops of goldsmiths, silversmiths, even the casual market-traders who would buy and sell whatever came to hand. Nicholas began the systematic examination of them all, and in so rich a city, with so wealthy a clientele of lofty churchmen and rich foundations, they were many.
Thus he came, on the morning of this same day when Brother Humilis entreated passage to the place of his birth, into a small, scarred shop in the High Street, close under the shadow of Saint Maurice’s church. The frontage had suffered in the fires, and the silversmith had rigged a shuttered opening like a fairground booth, and drawn his workbench close to it, to have the full daylight on his work. The raised shutter overhead protected his face from glare, but let in the morning shine to the brooch he was handling, and the fine stones he was setting in it. A man in his prime, probably well-fleshed when times were good, but now somewhat shrunken after the privations of the long siege, for his skin hung on him flaccid and greyish, like a too-large coat on a fasting man. He looked up alertly through a forelock of greying hair, and asked if he could serve the gentleman.
“I begin to think it a thin enough chance,” admitted Nicholas ruefully, “but at least let’s make the assay. I am hunting for word, any word, of certain pieces of church plate and ornaments that went astray in these parts three years ago. Do you handle such things?”
“I handle anything of gold or silver. I have made church plate in my time. But three years is a long while. What is so notable about them? Stolen, you think? I deal in no suspect goods. If there’s anything dubious about what’s offered, I never touch it.”
“There need not have been anything here to deter you. True enough they might have been stolen, but there need be nothing to tell you so. They belonged to no southern church or convent, they were brought from Shropshire, and most likely made in that region, and to a man like you they’d be recognisable as northern work. The crosses might well be old, and Saxon.”
“And what are these items? Read me your list. My memory is not infallible, but I may recall, even after three years.”
Nicholas went through the list slowly, watching for a gleam of recognition. “A pair of silver candlesticks with tall sconces entwined with vines, with snuffers attached by silver chains, these also decorated with vine-leaves. Two crosses made to match in silver, the larger a standing cross a man’s hand in height, on a three-stepped silver pedestal, the other a small replica on a neck-chain for a priest’s wear, both ornamented with semi-precious stones, yellow pebble, agate and amethyst…”
“No,” said the silversmith, shaking his head decidedly, “those I should not have forgotten. Nor the candlesticks, either.”
“… a small silver pyx engraved with ferns…”
“No. Sir, I recall none of these. If I had still my books I could look back for you. The clerk who kept them for me was always exact, he could find you every item even after years. But they’re gone, every record, in the fire. It was all we could do to rescue the best of my stock, the books are all ash.”
The common fate in Winchester this summer, Nicholas thought resignedly. The most meticulous of book- keepers would abandon his records when his life was at risk, and if he had time to take anything but his life with him, he would certainly snatch up the most precious of his goods, and let the parchments go. It seemed hardly worth listing the small personal things which had belonged to Julian, for they would be less memorable. He was hesitating whether to persist when a narrow door opened and let in light from a yard behind the shop, and a woman came in.
When the outer door was closed behind her she vanished again briefly into the dimness of the interior, but once more emerged into light as she approached her husband’s bench and the bright sunlight of the street, and leaned forward to set a beaker of ale ready at the silversmith’s right hand. She looked up, as she did so, at Nicholas, with candid and composed interest, a good-looking woman some years younger than her husband. Her face was still shadowed by the awning that protected her husband’s eyes, but her hand emerged fully into the sun as she laid the cup down, a pale, shapely hand cut off startlingly at the wrist by the black sleeve.
Nicholas stood staring in fascination at that hand, so fixedly that she remained still in wonder, and did not withdraw it from the light. On the little finger, too small, perhaps, to go over the knuckle of any other, was a ring, wider than was common, its edge showing silver, but its surface so closely patterned with coloured enamels that the metal was hidden. The design was of tiny flowers with four spread petals, the florets alternately yellow and blue, spiked between with small green leaves. Nicholas gazed at it in disbelief, as at a miraculous apparition, but it remained clear and unmistakable. There could not be two such. Its value might not be great, but the workmanship and imagination that had created it set it apart from all others.
