Silken Threads (28 page)

“Oh, God, Thomas.”

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about
Bertrada of Arundel, yearn for her, all throughout the day. At
night I can’t get to sleep unless I imagine her arms around me, her
head on my shoulder.” He chuckled grimly. “Who knows
—
if
I’d stayed in Arundel and married her, I might never even have come
down with this cursed affliction.”

“I am sorry, Thomas.”

“I didn’t tell you this to solicit your
pity.”

“I know why you told me. It’s just that...my
situation...it’s different. It’s complicated.”

He smiled, more or less. “It’s always
complicated. That’s the kind of creatures we are.” Planting his
staff in the dirt, he raised himself awkwardly to his feet. “I must
be off. If I sit still too long, I’m afraid someone will decide to
dig a hole and bury me with the trash.”

After bidding goodbye to Thomas, Joanna
walked down the alley to Milk Street, through Rolf le Fever’s front
gate and straight up to his bright red front door, hesitating only
when she came face-to-face with the iron knocker
—
a rather
lascivious-looking gargoyle with a long, curved tongue.

Looks like le Fever.
That thought
gave her the courage to knock on the door. A plump maidservant
answered. “Good morrow, mistress.”

“Good morrow. I’m here to visit with Ada le
Fever.”

The maid looked nonplussed. “Mistress Ada,
she can’t receive visitors. She’s that ill.”

“I know she’s ill. I’d still like
to
—
”

“Aethel, who is it?” called a man from
within
—
Rolf le Fever.

Aethel closed her eyes briefly in a way that
implied both resentment and fear. “‘Tis...a visitor for Mistress
Ada, sire.”

Joanna heard footsteps pounding down the
stairs, and then Rolf le Fever shoved Aethel aside and said,
“You.”

Joanna raised her chin. “I’ve come
to
—
”

“Tradesmen
—
and women
—
enter
round back.”

“I’m not here as a
—
”

“But don’t bother coming round there,” he
added with a sneer. “I told you, we have no use for your
wares.”

He slammed the door shut. From inside came
his footsteps on the stairs.

Raising her voice so it would carry through
the thick oak door, Joanna called out, “I suppose I’ll just go and
visit my friend John Huxley, then.”

The footsteps ceased at the mention of the
alderman le Fever had cuckolded. Presently she heard them again,
much slower, as they descended the staircase. The door swung open.
The guildmaster scrutinized her with his queer crystalline eyes, as
if he were trying to read her very thoughts. “I didn’t realize you
and Alderman Huxley knew each other.”

“Aye, we’re old friends,” Joanna lied, both
proud and ashamed of her newfound skill at fabrication. “We met
when I served the baroness Fayette de Montfichet.” They did, but
she’d been a child; he would hardly remember.

“You know,” le Fever said, “when I saw you
at the Friday fair, in your finery, it occurred to me that perhaps
you’d discovered there was more profit to be made on your back than
bending over that embroidery frame of yours. Is it John Huxley
who’s keeping you, or someone else?”

“I’m no man’s leman,” she said.

“Come now.” His strangely lucid gaze crawled
over her, making her shiver. “A pretty wench like you, you must
have men begging to slide their swords into that sweet little
sheath.”

“When they do, I can generally find some
convenient place to slide my sweet little dagger,” she reminded
him.

“I should have let you cut me that day,” he
said in a menacingly soft voice. “‘Twould have been worth losing my
nose to watch you choke to death at the end of a rope.”

Joanna marshaled her features, unwilling to
give him the pleasure of seeing how unnerved she was. “I’d like to
see your wife now. Or, if she’s so indisposed that she can’t
receive me, I’ll go pay a call on Master Huxley. We always have so
much to talk about.” She smiled.

Le Fever’s already pale face lost a bit more
of its color. Turning away, he said, “Go ahead up there. She’s
damned poor company. You two ought to get along fine.”

* * *

When Joanna arrived home later that morning,
she found Master Aldfrith in the storeroom, substituting a new,
shorter splint for Graeham’s old one. Hugh was there, too, holding
together the new splints
—
which came up only to Graeham’s
knee
—
while Aldfrith wrapped them in linen.

The serjant was clad in his drawers and
nothing else; the bandage around his ribs had been removed. Joanna
hadn’t seen him in a state of undress since he came here over three
weeks ago, and the sight unsettled her. His confinement and its
attendant inactivity had in no way diminished his musculature. He
had a soldier’s body still
—
powerfully proportioned,
lethally hard.

Merely being in his presence made her feel
starved for air. She tried not to look at him, lest she stare. The
last thing she wanted was for Graeham Fox to find her ogling
him.

“How does that feel, then?” Aldfrith asked
as he tied off the linen bindings.

Graeham sat up and gingerly lowered his
resplinted leg over the side of the bed. He stood with the help of
his crutch and flexed his leg at the knee. “Stiff.”

“Your muscles have tightened up from disuse.
You’ll be able to get about better with this half splint than with
the old one, though. And then, in another month or so, perhaps it
can come off altogether.”

“And you’ll be good as new and on your way
to Oxfordshire,” Hugh said.

Graeham exchanged a look with Joanna. They
hadn’t discussed what to reveal to Hugh about his purpose for being
in London.

Joanna took the decision out of his hands.
“Not Oxfordshire,” she said.

Hugh looked back and forth between them. “I
beg your pardon?”

“I was never on my way to Oxfordshire.”
Graeham lowered himself to the side of the bed. With a glance
toward Aldfrith, packing up his supplies, he said, “I’ll explain
later.”

“He’s healing nicely, mistress,” Aldfrith
declared. “You’ll have him out of your hair in no time.”

“I’m glad he’s doing well.” From the corner
of her eye, Joanna saw Graeham watching her in that penetrating way
he had that made her shiver hotly. He’d seemed pensive since
Robert’s visit yesterday. She wondered at first about how much he’d
overheard, but on reflection she’d swept her worries from her mind.
Surely if he’d figured out that she’d been keeping Prewitt’s death
from him, he would have told her. No doubt he would have relished
the opportunity to rub her nose in her own duplicity after the way
she’d reproached him about his.

As Graeham was paying Aldfrith for his
services, Joanna said to the surgeon, “I was by to see Ada le
Fever...recently.”

“Were you now?” Aldfrith counted the coins
under his breath. “You’re a friend of hers, then?”

“Aye,” she said. Hugh frowned in confusion;
Graeham smiled.

The surgeon shook his head as he stowed the
silver in his purse. “Poor woman’s been indisposed since
Christmastide. Master Rolf called me in. Said she had a rheum in
the head, which she did.”

“Are you sure it was just a rheum in the
head?” Graeham asked.

Aldfrith shrugged. “She was sneezing and
sniffling something fierce when I first looked in on her.”

“She’s not sneezing anymore,” Joanna
observed.

“An excess of black bile is complicating
things,” Aldfrith said, “but Master Rolf assures me it’s just a
head cold.”

Graeham said, “Master Rolf assures you?
You’re the surgeon.”

“I’ve no call to start questioning Master
Rolf’s judgment. He lives with the woman.” To Graeham he said
tersely, “I’ll be back in a month to take that splint off. Send for
me if you have any problems in the meantime.”

After he left, Joanna said, “He wants le
Fever to let his son-in-law into the Mercer’s Guild. That’s why
he’s toadying up to him, I’ll wager. He’d say Ada le Fever was
suffering from an excess of...of monkeys living in her head if it
would keep him on le Fever’s good side.”

Graeham grinned. “Monkeys living in her
head?”

Hugh shook his head in evident exasperation.
“Will someone please tell me what you’re talking about?”

Joanna and Graeham filled Hugh in about his
mission
—
or as much of it as Graeham was willing to
disclose
—
and her visit to Ada le Fever on Saturday. She
declined to mention this morning’s visit, not wanting Graeham to
know that she intended to pay a call on Ada every day, bringing
food she’d prepared with her own hands. Thinking of that bowl of
broth, she’d beseeched Ada to eat and drink only what she brought
to her from now on, forgoing anything from her own kitchen.

Despite what Joanna had told Graeham about
le Fever’s having little reason to harm his wife, the fact remained
that he was an unprincipled wretch. Who knew what he was capable
of? She would bring Ada safe food and keep an eye on things in the
le Fever household, but to her own ends, not Graeham Fox’s. She
cared about Ada’s welfare
—
how could she not?
—
but
she’d be damned if she’d serve as Graeham’s spy after the way he’d
made her his unwilling pawn.

Hugh was unamused by Graeham’s deception,
but being Hugh, he let it pass when it became clear that Joanna had
put the matter behind her. Her brother was never one to hold a
grudge.

“I didn’t know what to think when I got here
this morning and saw that the shop wasn’t open yet,” Hugh said.

“I...went marketing,” Joanna said, dismayed
that her net of lies was growing to encompass Hugh, as well.

“Yes?” Hugh nodded toward her empty basket.
“Didn’t find what you went out for, I take it.”

Graeham was looking at her, his gaze too
inquisitive, too discerning.

“Nay,” she said, backing out into the salle.
“If you’ll excuse me, I...I have to open the shop now.”

* * *

“What’cha doin’?”

Graeham looked up from reading the
Mystère d’Adam
by the dying afternoon light to find the
small, sooty face of another Adam peering in through the bars on
the alley window. The boy materialized every few days for a bit of
idle conversation, always vanishing in a heartbeat.

“I’m reading,” Graeham said.

“You can read?”

“Aye.”

“You a cleric?”

“I was educated to be one, but I became a
soldier instead.”

“Wish I could read.”

“You’re young. You can still learn.”

Adam snorted. “Who’d teach me how to
read?”

That was a good question. “How do you spend
your days, Adam?”

The boy shrugged. “Roamin’ around here and
there. I do odd jobs sometimes, for money
—
mending clothes,
weeding folks’ gardens...”

“Mending? You can sew?”

Spots of pink appeared beneath the filth on
Adam’s face. “Boys can sew, too.”

“I suppose.” But not many of them did.

“That lady,” Adam said, inclining his head
toward the front of the house, where Joanna was waiting on a
customer. “Is she your wife?”

“Nay.”

“Sweetheart?”

Graeham sighed. “Nay.”

“Do you have a sweetheart?”

“Nay.” He’d never even met Phillipa, so she
could hardly qualify as a sweetheart.

Adam squinted at him. “‘Tisn’t boys you
fancy, is it?”

“
What?”

“There are men who like boys,” Adam confided
in a tone that suggested Graeham might find this revelation hard to
believe.

“Yes, I know,” Graeham said, “but I assure
you, I’m not one of them.”

“Good,” the boy said without a trace of
humor. “I didn’t think you were. There aren’t really many of that
sort. Most of the...the bad men...they go after girls.”

“So it would seem.”

“If that lady isn’t your wife or your
sweetheart, why are you living here?”

It was a good question, given Graeham’s lack
of progress in advancing his mission. A week had passed since
Joanna’s visit to Ada le Fever, and although he’d broached the
subject several more times, he’d had no luck convincing her to go
back. And although her attitude toward him had thawed at bit since
their quarrel Saturday over his “using” her, they had yet to regain
the rapport he’d felt previously. And he missed it.

Most days he didn’t even see her till
midmorning, when she came back from her daily marketing
trip
—
curiously empty-handed more often than not. She’d
open up the shop then, and for the rest of the day they would
scarcely interact at all, save for two cursory meals featuring
little in the way of conversation.

He shouldn’t pine so for her company,
shouldn’t strain for glimpses of her, shouldn’t listen for the
squeak of her bedropes when she retired at night. She was betrothed
by now, or would be soon enough. So was he.

This was lunacy.

“Does she, do you think?” the boy was
saying.

“What?”

“Does she have any odd jobs for me?” he
said. “The shop lady.”

“Her name is Joanna Chapman,” Graeham said.
“And I doubt it.” A model of frugality, Joanna did everything
herself.

“Do you, then?” Adam asked. “I’m fresh out
of silver.”

“That depends,” Graeham said. “What can you
do? Besides sew and garden
—
I’ve no use for those
skills.”

“I can deliver messages, fetch water from
the river, mind the cook pot, mind children, keep a fire going, go
marketing, feed pigs and chickens...”

“Go marketing?”

“Aye. Do you need someone to market for
you?”

Graeham closed the book and set it on the
chest. “Nay. Mistress Joanna does it in the mornings. That is, I
think she does. It’s what she says she does.”