Chains of Folly Read Online Free PDF

Someone could have gone to Gloucester and urged him to write the letter.”
    “To take advantage of my anger over Stephen’s latest outrage. Yes. I thought of that. But to give the letter to a whore? A dead whore?”
    “For that I cannot suggest a reason, my lord. Frankly, I think it ridiculous. If the intention was to smirch you with friendship to Gloucester, who is a traitor to the king, surely the enemy who obtained the letter could have pretended to have discovered it by accident and carried it to the king or bawled aloud of what he had found.”
    The bishop’s lips folded into a thin line. “So I thought myself.”
    “There is one other possibility, my lord. The woman was not a common whore in the sense that she lay in ditches or worked in the stews. She was likely a woman who had a keeper or several clients and she entertained those clients in some chamber of her own. It is possible that she stole the letter from one of those clients.”
    “Stole a letter? How would a whore know anything about the importance of a letter?”
    Bell shrugged. “Magdalene says that men tell whores the strangest things. Could he have been attempting to make himself important in her eyes? Could he have boasted that he had come from the great Robert of Gloucester’s court?”
    “Boasted to a whore?”
    Bell shrugged again, a tinge of color in his face. “Men do. Especially to the better kind of whore. And this one—she did not look very attractive dead, but her face was pleasant and if it were full of expression, lit with laughter and playfulness, she might have been quite enchanting. At least attractive enough to make a man wish to please her.”
    Winchester sighed. “Perhaps I have been a priest too long. I cannot see it.” Then a brief smile touched his lips. “No. No. I cannot say that. The delicious Magdalene is still far too tempting and requires stern discipline and a prayer or two to dismiss from my mind. Well, what did she say?”
    “That she would do whatever she could to discover who the woman was and to whom she was connected. And when I described the woman, Diot and Letice both said they might know who it was. I will take them to the mortuary chapel tomorrow morning.”
    “Why did you not take them then?”
    “It was too late. Clients were on their way. Magdalene will serve you to the best of her ability, but—” Bell smiled bitterly “—she will not allow anything to disrupt the smooth functioning of her business.”
    “And what is the point of taking the mute with you? She cannot tell you anything.”
    Bell laughed. “Do not you believe it, my lord. Oh, Letice cannot make a sound. She cannot scream if she is hurt nor laugh aloud when she is happy, but look…” Bell’s fingers played out the pattern that Letice’s had shown him.
    The bishop frowned. “She implied that the woman we found had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. How did she know that?”
    “I don’t think she did know anything, my lord. That was just the easiest way to point out that a woman with a broken neck does not get up, walk up a flight of stairs, and sit down in a chair.”
    With a discontented moue, Winchester said, “All those women are far too clever for anyone’s good but their own.”
    Bell swallowed, a cold finger running down his back. He felt like the worst kind of traitor. If what he had told the bishop caused Winchester to turn against Magdalene, Bell would never forgive himself, but he did not dare say anything in defense of the women of the Old Priory Guesthouse. The best he could do for them was to look patient and indifferent. And to his relief, the bishop turned to a low pile of parchments at his elbow.
    He picked them up and handed them to Bell. “Here are complaints, some from Father Holdyn, a few from local people about churches ill maintained in one way or another. I want you to visit them and see with your own eyes whether the complaints are justified. If the complainant was not Father Holdyn,