The Lord Bishop's Clerk Read Online Free PDF Page B

lady?’ Mistress Weaver had little doubt, and it was more an assertion than a question. Her own eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips.
    Lady Courtney nodded dumbly, and made no demur when the Winchester widow took her by the arm, and guided her towards the guest hall. The ‘mastiff’, watchful, followed at a respectful distance.
    ‘I have my own knowledge of that snake, the lord Bishop of Winchester’s clerk, and none of it is good,’ Margery Weaver whispered, but with anger ripe in the tone.
    Lady Courtney, who was regaining her calm, would have normally dissociated herself from such as Mistress Weaver, but this gave her pause. ‘He is evil.’ She too whispered, as if he could hear her words from the distance of the cloister.
    The two women had reached the doorway of the guest hall, and would have entered but for Miles FitzHugh barring their path. He stood aside politely, though it was clear that he deferred only to the lady Courtney, but both women ignored him as they passed by, and he frowned.
    ‘Not only is Brother Eudo a man who would seek to threaten honest folk with wicked lies, but,’ Mistress Weaver’s voice had risen with the bitterness in her tone, though she now dropped it confidingly, ‘it is widely rumoured in Winchester that Eudo was deep in the lord bishop’s confidence when he changed sides two years past and deserted his brother the king. The lord bishop was keen enough then to seek approval of the Empress Maud while she held the upper hand, and that conniving …’ Mistress Weaver bit her lip lest she use a term unsuitable for a refined dame’s ear and the religious surroundings. ‘Well, anyway, he was the chief go-between. It’s not for the likes of me to say how Henri de Blois should conduct himself, but suffice it to say that any member of the guild who reneged on a business deal as the leaders of Church and State do, would be cast out. That Eudo does not even hide behind the excuse of politics. He loves his work of intrigue so well he could not cross a street in a straight line.’
    Lady Courtney was all attention, and Margery Weaver could not resist a dramatic pause before her final announcement. ‘He is even said by some to be dealing with all sides now, the dirty spy.’
    Emma Courtney’s slightly protuberant eyes bulged further, and she made no complaint as the weaver’s widow led her companionably into an inner chamber. Each was keen to know the tale that might be forthcoming from the other, and the social divide between them was temporarily bridged by a shared loathing. Lady Courtney’s silent guardian stood impassively at the door.
    Miles FitzHugh remained very still, the frown of offence at the ladies’ slight deepened by what he had overheard. He was a young man who wore his emotions upon his sleeve, and who regarded double dealing with a distaste that his liege lord had found naïve and vaguely amusing until voiced in his presence. In changeable times, options were there to be kept open, and Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, was assuredly nobody’s fool. Spies had their uses, and he had no objection to dealing with them. FitzHugh was young enough to hold to ideals that older and more powerful men could not afford. The squire had fallen foul of his lord for daring to express his distaste for treating with men of the opposite faction. That the man in question was the earl’s own twin, Waleran de Meulan, Earl of Worcester, compounded the offence. After several weeks of demeaning tasks and being in his lord’s bad books, Miles had taken swift advantage of his father’s ill health to withdraw to his family’s estates and hope that Robert de Beaumont’s ire would fade. Life in the bosom of his family would be slow, and his mother would fuss like a hen with one chick over her surviving son, but he would lie low as long as possible.
    Being the heir appealed to his sense of self-importance, but he was not so shallow as to think it worth the loss of his elder brother.