“Meet? How could I arrange for anyone to meet him? I had no idea when he would set out or arrive. I hoped Ernulf would get the pope to instruct him or convince him—you say his name was Baldassare?—to have himself set ashore at Rochester instead of London. I would have provided him with a safe escort to Nottingham, gone with him myself directly to the king, been with him when he gave Stephen news of…Magdalene, what was in his pouch?”
“I do not know,” she said, sighing with regret over the lie, but knowing that if she told William the truth, he would insist that the pouch be unearthed from its hiding place so that he could deliver the contents to the king. The exposure would be her death warrant. “I know he was carrying a pouch; I saw it. But he took it with him when he went out.” She uttered a frustrated sob. “How could I know he was going to his death? He told us he had to meet someone, but he was not in the least apprehensive. He joked and laughed with me and with Sabina, who liked him so well that she has been weeping every time she is reminded of his death.”
William let out an explosive, exasperated breath and said, “Now see where all your honor and honesty gets us? If you were like other whores, you would have been in his pouch and his purse—
Magdalene poured a cup of wine and put it into his hand. “And you would be none the wiser for it, even if, like a common whore, I decided to extract a few more pence from your purse by selling you information. If I were like other whores, I would not have been able to make head nor tail of any writings he carried.”
He downed the wine in three long swallows. “And now the pouch is gone, likely destroyed.”
“No, not that. Winchester’s knight—his name is Sir Bellamy of Itchen—believes Baldassare was not carrying the pouch because there was no mark of cutting it loose from the strap, which also was spotted with Baldassare’s blood where the pouch should have covered it. Bell—”
“Another benefactor that you oblige with your favors?” William interrupted sharply.
Magdalene laughed around the spot of ice that had suddenly appeared in her belly. If William turned jealous, she would have another dead man on her conscience. Bell dead? No! Because she did not dare look up, she took the cup from where William had set it and refilled it. He took it from her and she reminded herself that William had never been jealous. He had always accepted that she was truly a whore. And then the curve of her lips grew more natural.
It was not the favors of her body of which William was jealous but his place as her benefactor—which was silly. No one could ever take that. William had taken her out of a house where she had to spread her legs for any man who came, set her up in her own place where she could choose her clients, let it be known that he was her protector so that she would not be persecuted, recommended her to the Bishop of Winchester as a good tenant for the Old Priory Guesthouse, where she would—if she could find Baldassare’s murderer and free herself of suspicion—end up rich enough to retire…. No, William would always come first.
She put her hand on his and squeezed it gently, then drew her eating knife and cut some strips of meat which she rolled into bite-sized pieces. Piercing one, she handed the knife to William.
“Bell is Winchester’s knight, not his own man,” she said, “and must do as he is told. As to my favors—he would wish it, but I would be an idiot to take his coin. He is supposed to be investigating a murder in which I am suspect. How much would anyone believe a solution that cleared me if he were sporting about in my bed?”
Around the mouthful he was chewing, William said, “Cold as yesterday’s roast, are you?”
“Until this murder is solved. I am like to be gutted and hanged if it is not.”
“Not while I hold some power,” William said calmly, taking another drink of his wine and using Magdalene’s knife to spear another piece of meat. “But you had better tell me this whole tale from the beginning. Then maybe I will be able to make some sense out of it.”
So Magdalene began with the arrival of Baldassare at her gate, recounting everything he had said as closely as she could remember. She did not get very far, however. As soon as she mentioned Richard de Beaumeis, William said, “Who? Say again.”
“Richard de Beaumeis. He had been a student at the priory and came here to lie with Ella whenever he could scrape together the price. A nuisance he was, always whining about the expense but not willing to go where the price was cheaper.”
William was staring at her and apparently had not listened to her complaint, because he said, “Are you telling me that Richard de Beaumeis was in the archbishop’s Household and traveled from Rome in the company of this messenger…ah…Baldassare? And that Beaumeis was the man who recommended that Baldassare come to the Old Priory Guesthouse?”
“Yes, love. Why do you think it so strange? I did not realize that Richard had a mischievous streak, but he was just playing a joke on a foreigner…was he not?”