The Guilt of Innocents Read Online Free PDF Page A

hall before Lucie was on her feet. Her ample curves and the pale red hair that escaped her cap belied her age. She breathed life into a room merely by entering it.
    ‘Sit, my friend,’ Bess said as she hugged Lucie, always the hostess even in another’s house. The ribbons on her cap quivered as she glanced around the room. ‘Where are your men?’
    ‘Owen and Jasper are not yet home,’ said Lucie. ‘Edric is in the shop.’
    ‘Pity.’ Bess eased herself down across from Alisoun. To Lucie, at the head of the table, she said, ‘Your new apprentice is a comely lad.’
    Lucie laughed. ‘Trust you to notice, Bess.’
    ‘Edric is no lad,’ Alisoun blurted. ‘He’s eighteen.’
    Her outburst and its accompanying deep blush surprised Lucie. Edric had not seemed to her a young man who would catch a young woman’s interest. But considering him now, she realised he was comely in a delicate way, though part of that impression might be his shy demeanour. Still, she’d thought Alisoun preferred Jasper.
    Bess leaned forward on her strong forearms to peer at what Alisoun was doing. ‘I see you are practising your letters. What a fortunate day it was for you when you joined this household, eh? And when Nicholas Ferriby opened his school. Let us pray that the dean and chancellor hear nothing of your grammar master’s peculiar ideas about the bible being translated into the common language or, even worse, how unacceptably wealthy the canons of York Minster are.’
    So these were his heretical ideas. He sounded like a follower of John Wycliff, an English priest both famous and infamous. Lucie’s stomach burned, and she took a slow, deep breath for the baby. With the dean and chapter already feeling threatened by the laity they would certainly pounce on the heretical idea of lay peoplebypassing their priests by reading and interpreting the bible for themselves.
    ‘Master Nicholas’s ideas are tavern talk?’ Alisoun asked in amazement.
    ‘On dull evenings,’ Bess said with a wink. ‘But tonight people have something of more substance on their minds – or less, depending on your taste. Have you heard that Drogo the steersman almost drowned today?’
    ‘Who is he?’ Lucie asked.
    ‘He’s a pilot on the Ouse?’ Alisoun asked. ‘I should think they were often nearly drowned.’
    ‘That is so.’ Bess crossed her arms, relaxing. ‘But not from the barges anchored at the Abbey Staithe, and not because one of the scholars of St Peter’s School pushed him overboard.’ She grinned at the surprise in both her listeners’ eyes. ‘Let us pray that he lives, or Captain Archer will be sent out to find the lad who pushed him in.’
    ‘I pray Jasper was not among them,’ Lucie said, worried because he was not yet home, though she could not imagine him doing such a thing. But neither could she imagine his fellows pushing a man overboard, and said so.
    ‘Ay, but this steersman had kept a scrip one of the scholars lost in their last skirmish onboard the barges,’ said Bess.
    ‘Jasper told me about that,’ said Alisoun. ‘Hubert de Weston. He’s a charity student at St Peter’s this year. His father was in a siege in France – all of our countrymen died there. TheSpanish devils got them. Master Nicholas told us about it.’
    ‘La Rochelle?’ Bess asked.
    Alisoun nodded. ‘Jasper said that Hubert was very upset when he lost the scrip.’
    Lucie vaguely remembered hearing something about the incident from Jasper. ‘It sounds as if the lad can ill afford a loss like that. But why didn’t the boys send Master John to speak to the man?’
    ‘Why would they think he’d still have the scrip?’ Bess asked. ‘Sounds to me as if they just wanted to punish him, and it went much further than they’d intended.’
    ‘You keep saying “they”,’ said Lucie. ‘So it was not Hubert who pushed the man into the river?’
    Bess hesitated, frowning as she considered all she had heard. ‘Everyone speaks as if the lad wasn’t