A Conspiracy of Wolves

Owen left by the shop door opening onto the street, and quickly stepped back in to avoid a handcart careening toward him. A baker’s boy pushed the cart piled high with bread into the yard of the York Tavern. ‘Sorry, Captain!’ he called out. ‘This goes where it will of a morning.’

‘If he weren’t the baker’s son–’ Jasper shook his head, grinning. ‘Have a care now, Da.’

Bess Merchet was giving the baker’s lad a piece of her mind when Owen ventured out into the morning crowd. If the lad did not learn to control the cart he’d soon be out of work no matter that his father was his employer. Yet Owen silently blessed him for a moment of laughter in a grim time. As he headed to the hospital he was stopped every few steps. Several asked if Old Bede had been found. He lied with a shake of his head. A merchant’s wife said she would take some fresh bread to Winifrith and the children. An elderly clerk noted that as long as no one found Old Bede’s body, there was hope. ‘After this long?’ A young woman with a newborn in her arms shook her head. In Blake Street Owen came upon a man carrying a dog with a bloody rump, the lad with him weeping loudly. A red-faced woman followed them wringing her hands. ‘You should know better than to let dog loose after what’s happened to the Swanns. How was I to know he was your old hound, snuffling round me in the dark before dawn?’ There would be more such canine injuries before this was over.

The twins’ report, added to Ned’s sighting of the man at the Fentons, the whispers of a hellhound in the minster yard, and Old Bede’s fright at the staithes bothered Owen more and more. It was an organized siege, not just the murder of two enemies. He must find the connections so that he might anticipate the next potential victims.

‘Captain!’ George Hempe hurried toward him. ‘Alfred told me about today’s service. I will ensure there are sufficient men to protect the two families. I am turning a deaf ear on the aldermen’s complaints – they say the Braithwaites are using us as their personal guard.’

Owen thanked him.

‘I do not know how long I can continue to support you.’

‘I know.’

‘If you were captain of bailiffs …’

‘Did they say that? I’d have their full support if I accepted the post?’

‘They did, but that should not influence your decision.’

Owen heard his humorless chuckle and knew himself to be in danger of saying whatever he need say in order to keep the city safe. His city, the city in which his family and friends depended on his strategy. He cursed the bind he was in, cursed Thoresby for dying and leaving him at the mercy of city and prince.

‘Where are you heading?’ George asked as he hurried to keep up with Owen’s angry pace.

‘St Leonard’s. Erkenwald might have some information for me. And then to the Braithwaites.’

‘I will meet you there. Or at the church.’ George touched Owen’s arm. ‘I will do all I can, my friend.’

‘As will I. Pray it is enough.’

St Leonard’s yard seemed a haven of peace, canons and lay brothers and sisters going about their chores. Spying the barrel-chested Erkenwald rounding the far corner of the church, Owen hastened to catch up with him, sending pigeons flying out of his path. The canon glanced up at them, then round to see what had startled them. A grin and a nod. ‘Owen, my friend.’ He gestured to a bench at the edge of a garden still colorful at the waning of the season. ‘Matilda de Warrene’s garden. She would smile to see it so lovingly tended.’ A corrodian of St Leonard’s, she had loved this garden. ‘You are not come to steal me away for a bowl of ale and conversation at this early hour, and looking so solemn.’

‘You would be right.’ Owen settled beside him. ‘I am in need of information. Geoffrey Chaucer tells me you know Crispin Poole.’

Erkenwald raised his thick brows. ‘Was it for you he asked about Poole? Had I known that I might have been more forthcoming.’

‘But not for himself? You do not trust Geoffrey?’

‘Do you?’

‘For the most part.’ Owen could not lie to the good canon, a friend who had come to his aid during an outbreak of the pestilence when all the city was mad with fear. It was the death of Matilda de Warrene’s husband he’d investigated then.

‘Then I leave it for you to decide whether or not he can be trusted to know more than I told him,’ said Erkenwald.

‘You met Poole in Avignon.’

‘Earlier. As a soldier. He was new in the camp, struggling to find his place, his value. With no particular martial skills, he spent his time lurking, listening. The sort I wanted nothing to do with. I was glad when my company moved on. The next time I caught his name it was grumbling about how he was rising in the ranks on the backs of his fellows. “He does favors,” they said, “injuries, rumors, whatever his betters want doing,” they said. He’d become skilled with a knife, even better with his hands. A strong man. He rose to sergeant, and then his arm was mangled so badly there was nothing to do but remove it.’

‘Fell beneath a horse? Lay on the field all night pinned beneath the dying destrier?’