Read Online The Poisoned Chalice by Bernard Knight - Free Book Online

hospitality but uneasy at the intimate overtones.
    â€˜Is your wife not at home this evening?’ she asked, rather pointedly. ‘I spoke to Mistress Mabel at service in St Lawrence only last Sunday.’
    Fitzosbern’s heavy features drew together slightly in a frown. ‘She’s out visiting some poor sick woman or some such thing,’ he replied shortly, then changed the subject. ‘Your man Edgar – that lucky fellow – told me to give you the bracelet when it was complete, but said that you should keep it unopened until he visits you with his father on the forenoon of Christ Mass.’ Going to a shelf, he took a small wooden box and placed the bangle inside, wrapping it in the square of red silk that was already lining the casket. He gave it to her, and pressed Christina to have more wine, sit near the fire, before going out into the winter night.
    This was too much for her and she shook her head decisively. ‘I heard the cathedral bell just now, I must be there very soon.’ Pushing the little box into a pocket inside her cloak, she improvised quickly on her excuses. ‘I wish to pray at the shrine of St Mary for the success of my marriage. I am meeting my cousin Mary there,’ she lied. Closing her cloak around her, she thanked Godfrey Fitzosbern for his kindness and for the excellent workmanship on the bracelet, then turned, walked resolutely downstairs and through the door into the workshop.
    The silversmith followed her so closely that she could feel his heavy breath on her neck through her thin veil. He grasped her elbow, as if to help her down the step and kept it tight until she reached the street door. Once again, she was acutely aware of the intensity of the inspection that the two silver-workers focused on her, but her inborn good manners made her stumble out some parting words. Alfred chattered out a response she could not catch, while Garth merely made some sucking and blowing noises through his teeth.
    Fitzosbern opened the heavy door and steered her through it, his arm tightening on her waist for a last squeeze as she escaped. Pulling her pointed hood up over her head, she thankfully scurried away down Martin’s Lane, obliged to go towards the Close for her fictitious appointment.
    John de Wolfe pushed open his own front door, which was never locked as someone was always about the place. Matilda was usually to be found embroidering in her solar upstairs or gossiping with her friends around the fire in the hall. If she was out, then either Mary, the buxom cook-housekeeper, or the poisonous Lucille, his wife’s handmaiden, were somewhere in the house or in the yard at the back, where the cooking, brewing and washing took place.
    Tired from a day in the saddle, the coroner shrugged off his heavy black cloak and hung it on a peg in the vestibule. Ahead of him was a passage to the back yard, and on his right, an inner door to the hall, a gloomy vault that rose to the roof-timbers, the dark wooden walls hung with sombre banners and tapestries. He looked inside and saw a small fire burning in the large hearth, but the settle and chairs around it were empty. The long trestle table was bare of dishes, food or drink.
    â€˜A fine bloody welcome for a man after a long day’s ride,’ he muttered to himself, even though he was half relieved that his scowling wife was not there to berate him. He walked wearily through to the yard and found Mary sitting in the lean-to hut that was her kitchen and sleeping place. She was busy plucking a chicken by the light of the fire, his old hound Brutus wagging his tail at her feet. She jumped up in surprise, laying down the chicken and brushing feathers from her apron. ‘Master John, I didn’t hear you come in. We didn’t expect you tonight.’
    Mary was a good-looking woman in her late twenties, a strong and energetic worker with a no-nonsense outlook on life. The bastard daughter of a Saxon woman and a