The Cross Legged Knight Read Free Page A

‘And your worry weakens me.’ She had made this argument before. ‘You think – she fell once, she shall fall again. You think the accident has changed me for ever.’
    He did not know how to answer this. It was true and not true. He knew now that it could happen. ‘I meant nothing but that I had promised to harvest the mint. Guarding the Bishop of Winchester put it out of my mind. He wishes to ride to his former parish of Laughton. He means to rebuild the church.’
    ‘Where is that?’
    ‘At the south end of the shire. Near Sheffield.’ Several days’ ride, he guessed.
    ‘He wishes to go soon?’
    ‘Aye. He had thought to leave it until his business with the Pagnells was concluded. But Lady Pagnell refuses to see him yet. The journey would fill the time.’
    ‘Poor Emma. Her mother’s presence is making everyone in her household ill at ease.’
    ‘She is a difficult woman?’ He had met Lady Pagnell only at formal events.
    ‘Yes, both she and her steward are intrusive guests. Emma came today, asking for a sleep potion for herself. I shall make up something to soothe her – Jasper!’
    Their fourteen-year-old adopted son had come rushing in, panting and flushed from a good run, skidding to a halt by the table. Lucie steadied the pile of books as he dropped his hands on to the table, leaning, catching his breath. He raked his pale hair back from his face with an impatient gesture. ‘There is a fire in Petergate. The house of the Bishop of Winchester.’
    ‘God have mercy.’ Owen got to his feet. So did Lucie. He leaned across the table, took her hand. ‘Stay within, eh? One of us heading into danger is enough.’
    She shook her head. ‘I can help those who breathe too much smoke. Passing round a soothing drink is not dangerous.’
    He did not like it, but he saw she was determined. ‘Aye, you are right.’ He grabbed a cloth from a basket of laundry by the door to the kitchen, thinking he might need something to protect his nose and mouth from smoke, then headed for the door.
    Jasper was right behind him with a bucket.

Two
     
A FIRE IN
PETERGATE
     
    S moke already masked the October smells when Owen stepped out into St Helen’s Square. Shouts drifted down from the scene. Owen looked up, expecting to see the glow of fire in the sky above Petergate. But the sky was a deep blue, the stars silvery white. Perhaps God was with them and the fire had been caught early. People ran past him. By the time Owen reached the top of Stonegate several chains of folk stretched along Petergate passing buckets of water from the nearest wells. A boy clutching an empty bucket emerged from the smoke near the burning house and headed down one of the lines. Another followed close behind.
    Owen stopped him. ‘Where is the fire? I see no flames.’
    ‘The fire is down below, in the undercroft, Captain. They pulled out a servant – his clothes ablaze. They doused him with water and rolled him in the dirt. The other is dead, they say. A maidservant.’
    Owen let him go, hurried on. The street was already slippery with spilled water. As he moved closer, thevision in his one good eye blurred with the smoke that belched from the undercroft doorway. The walls of the undercroft were stone and the roof tile, but the support posts and the storey above were of timber. Near the door stood Godwin Fitzbaldric, the bishop’s new tenant, here in York only a few months. He was calling out orders, hurrying the bucket wielders along. His face was streaked with soot, his shirt torn. He was a tall man, leaning towards fleshiness, almost bald but for a dusting of dull red hair running from temple to temple across the back of his head.
    ‘Is everyone out of the house?’ Owen asked him.
    Fitzbaldric drew an arm across his broad brow. His wide sleeve was heavy with water and torn, the tight sleeve of the shift beneath soiled. ‘They pulled two of my servants from the undercroft. They were alone in the house.’
    ‘You were not at home when it