concerning the English monk’s lord?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I did ask him but he says he does not know.’
There was something in her tone that made him pause. ‘But?’
She smiled again. ‘But,’ she echoed. ‘Yes, Sir Josse; there is indeed a but.’ She drummed her fingers on her table and he could sense her impatience and tension. ‘I asked Thibault a very simple question: did he know the name and domicile of the English lord in whose company the runaway monk had gone out to Outremer?’ Her eyes met Josse’s. ‘I expected an equally simple answer: yes or no. It was not what I got.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He made a great show of appearing to think, but I am sure it was only to give himself the time to make up a credible lie. Then he said he hadn’t known the English monk that well and when they were together it was usually in the press of battle and they had never got round to talking of the past. It was,’ she added dismissively, ‘a shower of words that said precisely nothing. He knows the identity of this English lord perfectly well, Sir Josse; but for some reason he doesn’t want to tell us.’
Ten
Josse took a guilty pleasure in his ride over to Rotherbridge the following morning. There had been a hard frost overnight and now the sky was a clear, brilliant blue and the early sunshine was making diamond sparkles of the melting drops of water on tree and grass. It was a relief to leave the complex problems at the Abbey for a few hours. There was, he told himself, nothing that he could do for the time being, anyway. Akhbir was still refusing food and water and he lay curled up on his side, his face to the wall. Sometimes his voice could be heard keening in a peculiar high-pitched, animal-like wail. It was unnerving, to say the least.
Brother Augustus had volunteered to ride down to inform Gervase de Gifford of Akhbir’s presence at Hawkenlye. When Josse had asked if he could manage to deter the sheriff for a day at least, Augustus had replied glumly, ‘I’ll tell him about that inhuman howling that kept us all awake and chilled our blood. That ought to do the trick.’
Josse smiled at the memory. Gussie was a solid and dependable young man and, in his own modest way, as much of a force to be reckoned with as the sheriff himself.
He clucked to Horace and encouraged him to a reasonably sprightly canter. Rotherbridge was still an hour’s ride away and the morning was advancing.
He was shown into Brice’s hall by a young maidservant with a shy smile and a dimple. Brice’s wife Isabella sat on a settle before the hearth, a girl of about two and a half sitting beside her and a baby of perhaps a year clutching on to its mother’s skirts as it tried to stand up. At Josse’s approach, the smaller child, a little boy, turned and gave him a wide and endearing smile that displayed four top teeth and five bottom ones.
‘Josse,’ said Isabella, ‘how lovely to see you! Tilda, bring some mulled ale and some of those little cakes, for Sir Josse will be hungry and thirsty after his ride and it is a chilly morning.’
The maid gave a bob curtsey and hurried away. At Isabella’s invitation, Josse sat down beside her. The little girl immediately scrambled over her mother’s lap and held out a rag doll. ‘E’nor,’ she said. Then, peremptorily: ‘Kiss!’
‘E’nor?’ Josse repeated, lifting up the doll and placing a light kiss on the cloth face.
‘Eleanor,’ Isabella said. ‘Fritha has grandiose plans for her doll.’
Fritha had now elbowed her way onto Josse’s lap. She leaned her head against him and, after a slight hesitation, he put his arm round her. To have a little girl treat him with such affection was a poignant reminder of his own daughter and for a moment he did not feel able to speak. Fortunately he didn’t have to. Not only was Fritha keeping up a long monologue about her doll’s likes and dislikes — of which there seemed to be an unreasonable number — but in addition Isabella was chatting away about her little boy’s progress.
‘And just yesterday he clambered up onto the end of the settle and jiggled around pretending it was a horse, so you can imagine how delighted Brice was about that since he just can’t wait to have another man in the family to go hunting with!’
Josse smiled. ‘How old is Olivar now?’
‘He’ll be a year old next month,’ she said. She held out her arms to the child and he threw himself at her. She sat him on her lap and he put a thumb in his mouth, regarding Josse with wide dark brown eyes.
‘You named him for Brice’s brother,’ Josse said.
‘Yes. I never met him, although you did, Josse?’
‘Aye.’ It was an old tragedy but Josse still remembered the tormented young man. ‘I hope his little nephew here will tread an easier path through life.’
‘Amen,’ Isabella whispered. Then, her smile breaking through, she said, ‘The omens are good, Josse. I know he is mine and therefore I am probably prejudiced, but I have never encountered a child with a sunnier nature.’
The maid brought in a tray containing mugs of warm, spiced ale and a platter of small cakes. ‘The cakes are Tilda’s speciality and quite delicious,’ Isabella said, dismissing the maid with a smile of thanks. ‘The main ingredient is dried marigold petals.’
Both children were eyeing the cakes and Josse decided he had better help himself quickly before they disappeared. He ate one, then another, then one more; they were indeed delicious. Then he brushed the crumbs from his tunic and said, ‘Where’s Brice?’
‘He has taken Roger and Marthe out for a ride,’ she replied, referring to her children by her previous marriage. ‘They’ll be back soon, for they set out early and have been gone some time. You wish to speak to him?’
‘Aye. I’ve a question for him but — ’ he grinned at her — ‘there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask you.’
She returned his smile. ‘Ask away.’
‘There’s an unpleasant business at the Abbey. Some people are hunting for a couple of men who have returned to England from Outremer. One probably went out to the East with a lord from this area, and I wondered if Brice — or you — knew of anyone locally whose family have interests in Outremer?’
Isabella considered. ‘I can think of families who sent a son or a husband off to the crusades,’ she said after a while, ‘but in each case save one the man has returned, and the one who did not died at Acre.’
‘Oh.’ It was disappointing.
‘Unless,’ Isabella added, ‘you mean the de Villieres clan?’
‘The de Villieres?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, Josse, I thought everyone knew about them! They’re famous and people have been known to commit murder for an invitation to one of their grand gatherings. I’m joking,’ she added.
He grinned. ‘Sorry, Isabella. I’m not much of a one for socializing.’
‘Oh really, Josse?’ The irony was unmistakable. Then she took his hand and squeezed it affectionately. ‘Don’t worry,’ she murmured, ‘as long as you don’t stop coming to see us, I shan’t complain.’
He returned the squeeze. ‘Thank you.’ Then: ‘Who are they, then, and what can you tell me about them?’
She settled Olivar more comfortably on her lap and said, ‘They hold estates to the west of Robertsbridge. They manage their land efficiently and carefully and their wealth has grown accordingly ever since Robert de Villieres was awarded it back in the middle of the last century.’ This Robert, Josse thought, must have been one of the Conqueror’s Normans. ‘He went off to fight in the First Crusade,’ Isabella was saying, ‘and he won lands in Antioch. He married the daughter of a wealthy family of Champagne merchants who, like so many others, turned themselves into noblemen out in Outremer, and she and Robert settled down in Antioch and raised their family.’ She turned to look at Josse. ‘They say that Mathilde de St Denys was a woman in the mould of our own Queen Eleanor,’ she added, ‘a matriarch who lived to the ripe old age of eighty and died in Antioch after fulfilling her ambition of visiting the newly refurbished Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.’
‘Quite a pilgrimage for a woman of eighty,’ Josse remarked.
‘Indeed it was, but apparently nothing deterred Mathilde once she had made up her mind. What was I saying? Ah, yes. Their elder son inherited the Antioch lands. The second son, whose name was Baldwin, was sent home to Sussex. He married the daughter of another noble family and they had several children, although the eldest
