A Twisted Vengeance

Jennet stood at the top of the landing, holding out the leather-sheathed axe. “The girls are tucked up in your bed. I heard you down below and retrieved this as quietly as I might, thinking you might need more than a dagger.”

Kate thanked her. “Keep them safe. I’m taking Matt and the dogs to the gardens.”

The four slipped from the house, down the alleyway, and crossed Castlegate. Kate opened the lantern shutter as they moved down into the gardens, Lille and Ghent leading. In the silence before the dawn their descent sounded loud in her ears and she glanced around, realizing how vulnerable they were with the light, the noise. But the hounds showed no sign of alarm, focused on moving down the hill. Matt limped more than usual as he kept up with them, though it had been months since an accident that had hobbled him for a while. The dogs led them to a tree with broken branches dangling, the ground churned up beneath.

“It looks as if something was dragged across that flower bed and over the rosebush,” said Matt. Easing himself down by the bush he teased a piece of cloth from the thorns, holding it up to Kate.

“Not something, but someone,” she said softly.

Now they dropped farther down toward the water, the hounds watchful, pausing now and then to sniff the air before returning their noses to the ground. Kate brushed against flowers and shrubs, releasing their scents. Thorns caught at her skirts. A root almost brought Matt down, but she reached out in time to steady him. Down, down they wound, the smells less sweet as they neared the water. In the quiet before the city awoke she could hear subtle interruptions in the Foss’s current, flotsam and jetsam thumping against the bank, eddies gurgling. Suddenly the dogs halted, standing alert, on guard.

She touched Lille’s head, Ghent’s, and they moved aside to flank her for protection. She handed Matt the lantern. He crouched down, shining it on a body. The man lay on his stomach, his arms outstretched, not crumpled beneath him – he’d not had time to break his fall. Drunk? Or already dead? Kate smelled nothing until she crouched beside Matt, then she caught the scents of urine, shit, ale – and blood, but faintly.

“God help us,” said Matt. “The intruder?”

“Let us roll him over and see.”

“I can manage.” Matt set the lantern aside, crab-walked uphill from the body, grabbed hold of the shoulder and hip closest to him, and began to roll the man, but stopped with a gasp as the head moved unnaturally. He looked to Kate, visibly sickened. “Neck’s broken.”

“I can help,” she said. “Go gently.” She held the head so that it moved with the body as Matt eased the man down on his back.

“Sorry. I’m not hardened to this yet.”

“Pray you never are.”

He sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead, then turned and emptied his stomach.

Kate shone the lantern on the dead man’s battered face. “Hans,” she whispered. One of the menservants her mother brought from Strasbourg. As the beguines were accustomed to having no men on the premises, the two menservants had gone to work for Thomas Holme for most of the spring and summer. She crossed herself, saying a silent prayer for his soul.

She had seen bodies more badly beaten, but, as with Matt, she hoped she never found it easy to witness such suffering. Hans’s nose had been broken, the blood crusting his face, and beneath that, bruises discolored the flesh. She lifted his hands, examining his fingers. A few split knuckles. He’d fought back. Whoever had done this might wear the scars. Another broken nose? A blackened eye?

“A brawl,” Kate whispered to herself, thinking of what Griffin had seen at the camp on Toft Green, and later what Severen had described. But Hans had impressed her as a gentle man.

“To the death,” Matt said. His breathing was easier.

“So many soldiers in the city,” said Kate. “Any one of them might have the strength. They are all hungering for blood.” Thinking of Griffin’s description of the men dragging the body off Castlegate and into the gardens, she added, “I pray Severen can provide some description.” But why here? In the garden? Mere chance that he fell on the street above it?

Matt lifted the man’s tunic and shirt. “I see no sign of a wound that would have bloodied Sister Dina,” he said. “Shall I check his arms and legs?”

“That can wait until later, when he is stripped and washed, prepared for burial.”

Kate gave Lille and Ghent the order to track. They led her down to the water, sniffed along the bank, then sat, looking out over the water. She remembered the splash she thought she’d heard.

Matt was close behind, clearly preferring not to be left alone with the corpse. She understood. “Thomas Holme should know at once. Go to him. Ask him to send a servant to the sheriff. He may want to return with you to watch the body. If not, ask if Hans’s friend Werner is there, and bring him back to wait with you.”

Matt nodded and headed up the hill.

Leading the dogs back to Griffin and Severen, she found Griffin curled up beneath his blankets, seemingly asleep. Severen still snored on the bench in the kitchen. And Nan? The door to her bedchamber swung wide. No Nan. Kate slipped back into the hall to check whether the maidservant was there. There was enough light coming through the chinks in the shutters to see her mother kneeling on a prie-dieu before the Lady altar.