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journeyman was a drinker and it wasn’t the first time he lay down in the street to sleep. Said he could have even lain down under the cart, and the old ox could have done the job by backing up while the carter was in the alehouse.”
    That sounded unlikely to Justin, but the incident was nearly a year in the past and an ox-drawn cart was highly unlikely to have knocked down a man on his feet, no matter how shakily. Oxen were just too slow to cause an accident. Justin dismissed the subject from his mind as Dunstan came in to report that there was evidence that a horse had been stabled at the back of the hut in which the servants seemed to live and there were marks of a cart’s wheels. Justin nodded; it was about what he had expected. He sent Dunstan off to Goscelin with a request that he send messengers to the guards at the gates to stop two-wheeled carts leaving the city, but he did not expect any results. Flael’s sons would have passed the gate some time ago, he was sure, possibly before the guard changed. He would have to question both sets of guards, but that must wait until he got a description of the sons, the cart, and the horse from those above.
    â€œCover the man,” Justin said to Halsig, gesturing at the body. “We have learned everything Master Peter de Flael is ever going to tell us. There is no one here to take prisoner, so send the men out to ask the neighbors if they saw anything. Tell them to ask about the sons leaving with the cart too.”
    â€œAnd me?” Halsig asked.
    â€œYou go too,” Justin replied, “I will need no help with those above.”
    He mounted the stairs, signaled to the guard to go down, and pushed open the door without requesting permission to enter. The solar was well and luxuriously fitted out. On one side of the back wall was a hooded hearth in which a brisk fire burned. On the other side was a large, double-lighted window covered with oiled linen. To the right of the fireplace, in the most sheltered corner, stood a handsome chair. To the left between the fire and the window was a bench with an embroidery frame before it. Just opposite the door he had flung open was a table with three stools drawn up to it on which Madame Heloise, the maid, and the boy were sitting. There were signs that they had eaten, but large pieces of bread and cheese, Justin guessed from the shapes, were covered by a cloth at one side.
    â€œWhy did you not tell me Master Peter’s sons had left the house?” he asked in French as he entered the room.
    â€œHave they not yet returned?” Lissa responded in the same language, looking surprised. “I thought they must have gone to some friend of Peter’s to put the strongboxes in safekeeping, but they might have decided to take everything to Canterbury. Only that will take days if they go by road.”
    â€œWhy should they take the strongboxes away?”
    â€œI do not know.” Lissa shook her head and put a hand to her lips, her forehead creased with anxiety. “I assumed that Peter had left orders for them to do so.” She paused and looked appealingly up at Justin, then went on slowly. “I know very little about Peter’s business. We have only been married for six weeks, and I—I was not bred to the goldsmith’s trade. It seemed reasonable. I thought perhaps Peter feared that debts would be claimed against him or—or—I do not know. I think young Peter and Edmond were fond of their father. I cannot believe they would have left him as they did unless the matter was very urgent. Or unless—”
    A tide of color swept up from Lissa’s throat into her face and tears rose to her eyes. The fingers, which had dropped while she spoke of the reasons her sons-by-law might have had to remove the strongboxes in such haste, crept up to her lips again, making her look like a vulnerable child. And the pink in her cheeks combined with the mist of tears to wash the green