The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19) by Michael Jecks

Author:Michael Jecks [Jecks, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, _MARKED, blt
ISBN: 9781472219800
Google: ovwiAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2014-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Baldwin was already contemplating his bed when he heard the door open. He smiled with relief to see his wife. ‘I was beginning to grow anxious lest you were in danger.’

‘No, not with Edgar at my side,’ she said calmly.

‘Did you learn anything about the widow?’

Jeanne sent for wine before attempting to collect her thoughts. The walk back in the gloom of early evening had unsettled her more than she wanted to think. And the story was all a little too close to her own concerns. So she sat and considered until the wine arrived, and when it did, she drank deeply and studied her husband awhile before beginning.

‘The woman is called Kate, Simon of Bristol’s widow. She lived a few doors from the house where Daniel and his woman lived for so long. Apparently Juliana and he were married at the height of the famine, and at the time Juliana’s family was rich. But her father died, and their savings went not very far at a time when prices kept rising. All their wealth was bound up in the merchant business the father had created, and with the famine there was no market for their expensive spices and fripperies. There was no profit for them. Their money was quickly used up and the family fell into poverty. Their house on Correstrete was sold off, but during the famine prices were very low, and that helped them only very little. The mother died, and the sister, Agnes, lived with Juliana and Daniel.

‘Juliana and Daniel always struck the people of the parish as being a happy enough couple. He was a very stern enforcer of the law, and she was a proud woman who never forgot that she had been born to money, so they had few friends in the neighbourhood, but that tended to make them more close, so people thought. And then there were rumours that Juliana was lonely. As Daniel’s job grew more demanding, so apparently she grew more desirous of attention. In the end she started seeing a man.’

‘Was this speculation, or malicious gossip, rather than actual observed fact?’ Baldwin asked.

She looked at him seriously. ‘Husband, you know full well that when a servant in your household makes eyes at a maid, it’s all over the place. He would only have to have been seen once.’

Edgar grinned. ‘The household usually knows before the wench.’

‘Yes,’ Jeanne continued. ‘There can be no secrets in a frankpledge. The only one who didn’t know in that area was probably Daniel himself, because no one thought it was their business to tell him what his wife was doing while he was away.’

‘If there was such certainty about it, who was this mysterious lover? I presume he has a name?’ Baldwin said.

‘That was the part that struck her neighbours as particularly disloyal. It was the man who had bought her family house. Taking him as a lover seemed especially treacherous since it was he who had partly helped to impoverish her own family.

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