“Yes, and not in my house, thank God.”
She let go of the gate, and the secretary closed and locked it. Magdalene sighed and then thought perhaps it was just as well. If more mayhem took place in the priory, she and her women would be safer with the gate locked. She thought Father Benin had been joking about stealing the pyx to obtain money to repair the leaking belfry, but a chill went down her back. Was Brother Paulinus insisting that she was guilty to cover his own crime?
She did not voice that doubt to her women, who rushed to greet her and discover what the prior had wanted. She did tell them about the missing pyx and Paulinus’s accusation, which drew gasps of alarm until she pointed out that the fact the safe box was kept locked had absolved her completely. Reassured, Ella and Letice picked up their embroidery and Sabina began to practice a new song. Magdalene went to her chamber and pored over a copy of the list she had given Bell, putting a check here and there.
“Magdalene?” It was Sabina at the door. “The bell at the gate is ringing.”
Chapter Eleven
22 April 1139
Old Priory Guesthouse
“Master Hugo Basyngs,” Magdalene said as she opened the gate to a familiar but not frequent visitor. “You are very early, but do come in.”
Basyngs smiled and apologized for his untimely arrival. He said he knew that Saturday was a busy day for the women of the Old Priory Guesthouse and that he wanted to catch them when they still had time for him. Magdalene led him in, offered Sabina’s company, which he accepted and paid for graciously, but it soon became apparent that he was in no hurry to go off with her. What he wanted was to talk about the murder, particularly to ask if a letter of credit had been found and to bewail the fact that he had not offered Baldassare lodging for the night.
“He was with me that very afternoon,” Basyngs said, shaking his head slowly. “He came from Messer Buchuinte’s house after dinner to change Italian money for English and to draw some silver against his letter of credit. I should have bade him lodge with us, but I was promised to spend the night at my son’s house in Walthamstow, his wife having delivered a third son the day before. I only came back on Friday.”
Walthamstow was north of London, and Basyngs’s son would be easy to find. Another to cross off her list, except…. “How did you hear of Messer Baldassare’s death?” she asked.
“From Buchuinte.”
She should have guessed that, she thought. Likely Basyngs was Buchuinte’s banker, and Buchuinte might even have recommended him to Baldassare. She told him then what she had told almost everyone, but Basyngs had no new information. Baldassare had not mentioned any meeting to him. And, since Sabina had been standing beside him and tickling his ear, he rose and went off with her a few moments later.
He was not the only one who came to ask about Baldassare’s death. About half a candlemark later, a cordwainer, Bennet Seynturer, arrived. He pushed roughly past Magdalene as soon as she opened the gate. Slamming it closed behind him, he hurried her back to the house, where he also slammed the door. He told her, in a voice choked with fury, that he had heard of the murder from the sacristan, whom he had come to see on business. Was it true, he asked, that Messer Baldassare had come from her house?
Seynturer, married to a frigid, fanatically religious wife who had taken all too seriously the Church pronouncement that one should eschew any sexual congress except for the purpose of procreation, was one of those regular clients who came through the priory gate to conceal his visits. Having been told, with significantly raised brows, that the gate between the Old Priory Guesthouse and the priory was now locked, he had leapt to the conclusion Brother Paulinus desired and assumed the whores were guilty.
Desperate to assure himself his secret would be kept, Seynturer had come to the front gate, hooded to hide his face. He was livid with fury, excoriating Magdalene for “her crime”—less, it seemed to her, because he minded the murder than because it might lead to his exposure—and demanding that she keep his use of her establishment a secret. Although she felt like bursting into tears and shrieking curses at the sacristan, Magdalene dared not make a counteraccusation. She made herself laugh lightly.
“If you can prove to me that you are innocent of murder,” she said, “you need not fear that any of my women will spread the news that you are our client. Silence is part of our service.”
He gobbled at her, incoherent with anger for a moment, then gasped, “You are mad!”