The Service of the Dead

When Berend and Alan had opened the shutters and doors, she sent them down to the undercroft – Berend knew how they had last left it. How long had it been? A fortnight? More?

When they withdrew, she turned back to her elderly tenant, who was shivering and whining about the cold despite the cloak he had draped round himself. Dirt had settled into his wrinkles, accentuating them, and his eyes were rheumy and bloodshot. Perhaps he was ill. Who would not be ill living in this smoke? “Tell me about the intruder. From the beginning.”

As the man spoke of noises down below, his account wandering, Kate began to see him in a different light. He was not simply a churlish man set in his ways, but an aged man frightened by failing health, failing sight, and a mind that danced away from him, down paths in which he became lost. One moment he knew it was the Sabbath, the next he complained about slipping on the autumn leaves when he went out to the midden. Odo needed care. Perhaps St. Leonard’s Hospital would take him.

“Have you any kin in York, Odo?” she asked, interrupting his wandering. She had heard enough to guess that the intruder might have been down there for several weeks. Which made her wonder where Lionel had warehoused the most recent shipment of spice.

Odo shook his head. “All my kin are long gone.”

“I thought they were long-lived.”

He frowned, started to talk about his brother’s accident on the road south – a broken axle, his being thrown from the cart, his head hitting a rock. “No pain,” he whispered. “They said he felt nothing.”

Kate patted his hand. “We will see what we can do for you. Tell me about the noise. What is the noise the intruder makes?”

He hummed a tune that was no tune. “Like that,” he said, then shrugged and told her of a whistle his father had given him one Christmas, his voice trailing off as his head nodded.

“I will send Seth, the Fletchers’ boy, over to help you. And I will see to having the chimney cleared. Have you any food in the house?”

Chin to chest, Odo began to snore.

Kate blinked her eyes to ease the sting of the smoke as she rose and toured the hall, groaning in frustration at the damage – the gouges in the walls, the wall paintings blackened by the smoke, the stench in a corner that was either Odo’s indoor cesspit or that of an animal companion she had not yet discovered. Tears of frustration joined those caused by the smoky air. She cursed herself for avoiding the old man. She had loved this house. Now her poor stewardship had ruined it. Another crisis. How was it that they were all arising at once?

No. That was the wrong question. More to the point, what did this have to do with the deaths? She did not believe in coincidence. How was the intruder connected with her other problems?

“What has happened here?” Jennet asked from the doorway. “Has there been a fire?”

Kate skirted a pile of debris to join Jennet by the snoring tenant. “I will explain.”

Jennet gazed down on Odo. “How he has aged since the accident.”

“What accident? When?”

“A few months past, he and his brother had a cart accident. The axle snapped, tossing both of them and Odo’s elderly servant onto the road. His brother and the servant died. Odo survived, but it looks as if he was far more seriously injured than anyone realized.”

“How did I not hear of this?”

Jennet shook her head. “It is the sort of thing I would have reported to you, him being your tenant. I am surprised that Griselde did not notice the condition of the hall. I thought they were friends.”

“I do recall her saying that she and Odo had argued. Much complaining on her part about his stubbornness. After a while I stopped listening.” Kate pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I pray you came to tell me my cousin has arrived.”

“I did. He and his man Roger. We are ready.”

So William had kept his word. Kate bent down to Odo, lifted his hands, felt the gnarled joints and the too-thin flesh without warmth. He required more help than Seth would know how to give. Jocasta Sharp would surely know of someone willing to take on the task for a little while. Kate would send Seth with the request. While he was gone one of Lady Margery’s servants could stay with Odo.

It seemed so little, and Kate felt wretched leaving Odo. It took but a moment to cross the alleyway, but she had been so busy with her own troubles that she had neglected her tenant, conveniently assuming he was a man never pleased, never satisfied. She had become so focused on her goals that she had become willfully blind to the suffering round her. One visit had lifted the veil from her eyes.

Or perhaps Alice’s death had lifted the veil. She had lain awake in the night imagining Alice’s last night, last day. How her heart must have ached when she discovered that William was trading her to a stranger. No doubt she believed he had never meant to help Connor, that he had intended from the start to betray her. Then the horror of the attack. Her escape. How frightened she must have been. And William’s callousness.

She had tried to focus on the problems, not the suffering, reminding herself to ask Phillip whether something Connor said in his cups, something he did not realize as significant, might provide a hint about what had happened in the guest chamber that night. What had Alice witnessed? How had the attacker ensured she would not interfere? The wine. Had Alice, Griselde, and Clement all had something in their wine to make them sleep through the attack? William had entrusted Kate’s servants and the mother of his son to a stranger without questioning how he might treat them. And the next day, William himself threatened Alice with the stocks if she approached him again. When had the murderer caught Alice? Had it been at the other end of the alley? Kate had been sick in the night, imagining Alice’s terror.