A Murdered Peace

Micklegate was abustle in late morning, and Kate kept the hounds on a short lead as she pushed through the crowd heading toward the river and the city center. She and the dogs were in the minority heading out toward the countryside. At the Bar the gatekeeper fussed over Lille and Ghent, “gray beauties,” and wished her well, then grew serious, advising her that he had been commanded to look for Berend and hold him for the sheriffs. Chilled about Berend’s deepening danger, she nodded her thanks and continued on out the gate, past the hovels piled up against the walls, cook fires smelling of onions and grease, past a few small but more substantial houses. As she arrived at the wide gate opening onto the blacksmith’s yard she took a deep breath and forced her worries to the back of her mind. She needed to be sharp for this conversation, learn all she could. That, and not worry, would help Berend.

Inside the tidy yard she paused to let Lille and Ghent commune with a plow horse waiting to be shoed by one of Ben Coffey’s workers, the mare curious about them. Did she imagine they were colts, Kate wondered. Beneath a one-walled shed a man stroked the back of a nervous palfrey and made soothing sounds while lifting a blood-encrusted hind leg to examine the hoof.

A boy left the bellows he’d been working to see to Kate, asking whether the hounds wanted shoeing.

Laughing, she told him she wished to speak with his master.

“Round back. In his workshop.” He shook his head at Lille and Ghent. “I’ll bet they never feel the cold.”

It seemed an odd comment from a lad who worked the bellows. But, remembering the hovels near the wall, she thought perhaps his home was among them.

“There is a benefit to growing your own warm coat, to be sure,” she said. Thanking him, she softly called Lille and Ghent to attention and the three moved on.

Behind the more open smithy was a long shed, and beyond that a tidy house with some chickens pecking about. The door of the long shed was open, and she could see Ben Coffey standing within. She called out, but he did not turn. So she stepped inside.

He was alone, running a hand along a panel of intricately patterned ironwork. Feeling for flaws, she imagined.

“Might I have a word?” she said in a voice that he might hear but not so loud he would startle.

Now he glanced up. Soot and sweat streaked his pale face and the front of his linen shirt. Beneath the rim of a leather hat that hid his graying hair, his dark eyes moved to her, then the two hounds.

“Mistress Clifford?” he said with some uncertainty in his voice, lowering the panel and moving in front of it, as if trying to conceal what she had already seen. It was not the accepted work for a blacksmith. He was no doubt concerned that she might report him to the guild.

“Yes. Forgive me for intruding on you, but the lad–” she gestured back toward the smithy.

“Good boy but for his mouth.”

“I will tell no one what I saw,” she assured him. Brought up in the countryside, she did not understand the fuss about strict guild categories. A skilled craftsman should not be hindered by such rules. “I must say, it shows remarkable skill.”

With a crooked smile and a shrug he stepped aside and motioned for her to come closer.

She traced the swirling pattern with a gloved hand. “It flows,” she said.

“Yes,” he whispered, pleased.

“What is it for?”

“Grillwork for a tomb in the church in Galtres,” he said. “I’ve been working on it since Martinmas. This is the last panel.”

“Much more satisfying work than shoeing a horse.”

“In some ways, in others – I like knowing I’ve eased their burdens, the beasts.” A flicker of a smile at Lille and Ghent. “They are kinder than people. Closer to God than we can ever hope to be.”

Kate reached down to stroke her hounds’ ears. “I could not agree more.”

“But I am forgetting myself.” He tugged at his sleeves, straightened his hat. “You came to see about some work, Mistress Clifford?”

“No. Not today.” She explained the purpose of her visit.

The man’s genial expression darkened as she spoke. “Ah. Merek, the bloody–” Coffey caught himself, made the sign of the cross. “I can tell you he did not want anyone to see whatever it was he pressed into Horner’s hand. It was a small object. I could not see anything but a bit of a glint – gold? No bigger than my thumb, I would say.” He held up a sizable digit, blackened by his work. “Maybe as big.” He squinted as if peering into his mind’s eye, reliving the incident. “Merek sent Horner off, and then he walked away himself. Walked away and left me standing there without the– What he’d promised that day.”

“Did you ever get it?”

Coffey shook his head and spat sideways. “Brings up the bile to think of it. I paid good coin for the potion and he died before handing it over. I say God rest his soul, for I am a God-fearing man, but he robbed me.”

“Do you happen to know where he lodged?” Kate asked.

A look of distrust. “You don’t think I went after him?”

“No. I hoped to see his lodgings. If you described to me what it was you had purchased, I might notify the sheriffs’ men.”

“Oh, it is no matter. Do not trouble yourself.” He directed her to a house near the Thursday Market and excused himself. “I am blessed with more work than I can manage, at present,” he muttered. He was a handsome man beneath the grime of days spent in hard labor. And prosperous. Some woman would snatch him up quickly, Kate was certain, and, with any luck, he would have no need of Merek’s potion.

“I am glad to hear your business is thriving.”

“I would be glad but for the fact that I’m benefitting from folks’ fear. In dangerous times they bring a smith all manner of old weapons for repair.”