Latest Release

Spring brings new life. It’s the time of love and weddings

​​​

Feet of Clay

​

The woman’s shaking hands sought the fresh-baked loaf in the brick oven, but instead touched the prized iron bread pan, which drove her fingers back without drawing a noise from her throat or a change to her glum expression. She pulled out the loaf on the second try and dropped it on the haystack of loaves that already threatened to spill off the oak table. She drew a haphazard measure of flour from the barrel, then mechanically worked it into the water and an old piece of dough. Spots of flour peppered the yellow snood that covered her deep brown hair, her ruddy face, the ruff around her neck, the red woolen bodice that clung to her broad shoulders, her apron, and the orange skirt that brushed against the slate floor.

The door behind her creaked, sparking no response. A girl of perhaps ten in all blue with a brilliant brass perched dove livery pin on her breast tiptoed in. “Rebecka? Becka?” The baker kneaded away at the dough. The girl waved a hand in her face and said, “Rebecka?” again. When she got no reply, she reached over and yanked the baking dish away.

Rebecka blinked. “Agnes?”

“Please, talk to me. You were there for me when my father died. Now I want to be here for you.”

Rebecka stared at her flour-caked hands. “What is there to say? The Yuan vase is gone. So no matter how much I love him, Master Inwood will marry Danyell to someone else.”

“Maybe the constable will find it.”

“Maybe. In a year or so when it’s too late.”

Agnes squeezed her face into a fake smile. “Or maybe tomorrow.”

The dough squeezed through Rebecka’s clenched fingers. “No. Not tomorrow.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. There’s always hope.”

• ​

Agnes stretched her arms out. Rebecka shook a swarm of white specks from her hands, and the two hugged. When they parted, Agnes looked over the flour down the front of her livery and said, “It was worth it.” Rebecka slid the baking dish back.

Agnes winced, “How long can you keep this up?”

Rebecka slapped some flour from her hands. “I’ve got to do something.”

Agnes waved her hand at the pile of loaves. “What’s going to happen to all this?’

Rebecka stared into the dish until she said, “The poor can always use some bread.”

Agnes ran a finger under her ruff and examined the wet it picked up. “At least let me open the door and get some air in here.”

Rebecka pushed up her snood and wiped the ample sweat from her forehead. “Go ahead. Is it any better outside?”

“Yes, been trying to rain for the past hour.” Agnes pushed open the door, and the early spring air swept in the smell of earth, growth, and rain. Across the dubious gravel road, past Master Upton with his beautiful legs resplendent in his Venetians and silk hose, rose a splendid house in ancient brick, with the new upper floor in half-timber. A little further down the almost-empty street, a very tall woman in green walked with a girl in blue she overtopped by at least two feet. The girl pointed at the sky, and the woman nodded. The girl pointed again, and the woman nodded again.

Rain poured as though a divine bucket had overturned. Master Upton sprinted into his house. The other two dithered among the pounding drops.

Agnes shouted, “In here!” and waved them in.

The small girl scurried for cover like a mouse, reaching the kitchen in three heartbeats. Up close, she was perhaps fourteen, haggard enough for a woman much older, and shorter than Agnes. Her dark, hollow eyes blended with her hollow cheeks and drawn mouth. Someone so inclined could count all the bones in the ragged pink hands that clashed with the lush, fashionably auburn curls atop her head.

The other woman slipped through the door. Her pale pink, spidery fingers caught the strands of chestnut hair that had come loose in the run and tucked them back into place. She turned her liquid brown eyes to her companion and said, “Skade, I’m afraid we’ll have to go hungry a while longer. Next time I insist I can read the sky better than you, be a dear and kick me.”

The small woman spoke with an odd sing-song lilt to her voice. “Yes mi- Sybil.” Her gaze wandered through the kitchen until it intersected the pile of loaves and locked there.

Sybil’s skirts squelched as she curtsied. “Very kind of you to shelter us. May I ask who our hosts are?”

Agnes shuffled in place. “This is the Cely house. I’m Agnes Gorst, one of the maids. That’s Mistress Rebecka Cely, the daughter of the house.” She pointed to Rebecka, who kneaded the dough without responding. “I’m sorry, she’s usually better… I mean she’d normally… I’m afraid we’ve had some troubles today.”

Skade stared at the pile of steaming bread. Her hand reached toward the nearest loaf as though some force compelled it. Sybil said, in a voice barely a whisper, “Courtesy to the host” as she reached over and touched Skade’s arm with just a hint of pressure, raising two glints of gold from her hand.

Agnes twitched. “Madam. Your companion is smaller than anyone in the house, but I think we may have something dry you can borrow. Can you come with me, please?”

 “Ah, thank you.”

Agnes led Sybil through the sitting room, where the master sat with a book in his lap staring at nothing and the mistress swirled a mug of ale, weighing and reweighing the benefits of the stupor it would bring. They stopped on the stairs, and Agnes turned and said, “I’m afraid we don’t have anything that would fit you. I just wanted you to know your secret’s safe with me.”

Sybil’s eyebrows arched. “Secret?”

“You’re not who you’re dressed to be. Not with those rings.”

Sybil ran her finger over the raised harp on her signet ring. Her mouth stretched into a bow. “Indeed I’m not. I could probably come up with some story to give you, but secrets are such a dreary bother. I am Sybil Trevor, the Baroness of Seis. My companion is my maid, Skade of Oslo. She’s off today and finds it difficult to enjoy herself, so I dressed down to give her some encouragement.”

“Oh.” Agnes had no idea what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

Sybil said, “Now perhaps you’ll answer a question for me. You said you had troubles today. Your mistress is staring at nothing while she bakes enough bread for an expedition to the new world. Everyone else is wandering about in a daze. What’s happened?”

Anges bit her lip. “Oh, I’m sure my lady has better things to do than worry about our troubles.”

“I doubt it.”

Agnes pulled in a deep breath. “Well, you see, it’s the vase.”

Sybil blinked. “Vase?”

“Yes, the family owned a vase made of Yuan, which makes it very valuable to certain men who collect pottery. Mistress Rebecka was engaged to Master Inwood’s son Danyell in a love match. Master Inwood is an ambitious man that wants to make expensive matches for his children, but he’s also a pottery collector, and there’s only ever been enough Yuan in England to make six or so vases. So he let Danyell marry the woman he loves in exchange for our vase.”

“Very simple and straightforward arrangement. What mucked it up?”

A note of excitement crept into Agnes’s tone and built as she spoke. “Well, see when Master Colkins, he’s the steward, got up this morning, he’s always first up, he went into the music room and saw the vase was gone! Some thief stole it last night, and now the wedding’s off, and poor Mistress Rebecka is heartbroken.”

Sybil tapped her lip. “You called the constable, of course?”

“Of course.  But nobody saw anything, so what can he do?”

“And it was kept in the music room? Could I see?”

Agnes brightened. “You think you’ll find something?”

“I don’t know. But if there’s something to find, that’s the place to look.”

“I better ask the master. Can I tell him about…”

Sybil smiled. “I don’t see it’ll do any harm.”

Agnes led Sybil back into the sitting room. Master Cely sat in exactly the same position, his book open to the same page.

Agnes curtsied. “Master Cely, this is Lady Seis. She wants to help. Can she see where the Yuan vase was kept?”

Neither his body nor his lips moved. “Uh.”

Agnes waited for something more. When she got nothing, she shrugged, curtsied, and said, “Thank you, sir.”

 

            In the kitchen, the pile of hot bread swelled larger and larger in Skade’s eyes as the smell of heat and crust filled her nose. Unbidden, one hand edged toward the nearest loaf, trembling as it dreaded to reach its destination.

            Sybil said, “Skade?”

            Skade snapped bolt upright. “Yes bread! What are your orders?”

            “Skade dear, I know you’re better than that. You mustn’t let mere bread distract you from more important things. Now come, I need your knowledge.”

 

The door whined as Master Colkins pushed it open. “This is the music room.”

            Sybil hadn’t taken in the small room with its single window and stenciled linen wall hangings before her gaze snapped to the ornate wood box on legs. A keyboard nestled in an indentation, and a river meandered through a green countryside inside the raised lid. “What a lovely set of virginals!” She touched the case. “Are they Italian? How old? They look well kept.”

            Colkins pointed to a corner. “The vase used to be there.” He shifted his finger to the window. “He got in here. I found the shutters open this morning.” He moved to a far corner. Agnes and Skade watched from the doorway.

            Sybil pried herself away from the virginals and glided over to the vase’s corner. She eased herself to her knees. “Well, there are some advantages to going about with no farthingale.” She poked around the spot for a while before she lifted a few rushes from the floor. “No useful marks so far. These rushes have been walked over too many times.” She brushed the rushes aside. “There’s a discolored ring on the floorboards here. Well, most of a ring. Is that from the vase?”

            Colkins nodded. “Yes, it sat on that spot at least since I entered the Cely’s service. That’s… almost twenty years now.”

            Sybil ran her fingers over the ring. “It even left an indentation. Rather heavy for pottery. Was there anything in it?”

            “Can’t say I ever looked.”

            Sybil backed a little and bumped against the virginals’ leg. “The ring is a good eight inches wide. How tall was the vase?”

            “About three feet.”

            Sybil poked at the keyboard. “Very well-balanced.” Her fingers tapped each key down an infinitesimal amount.

            “My lady, what about the vase?”

            “Oh! Well, three feet tall and eight inches wide… that might be heavy enough for the ring by itself. Do you happen to know how much it weighed?”

            Agnes shook her head, “No one ever tried to move it.”

            Sybil pressed one key and licked her lips like she was savoring a rare spice. “Do you happen to know the maker?”

            “Master Yuan,” Colkins replied.

            “No, of the virginals.”

            “Cockayme, I think.”

            “Hm. Skade, have you found anything?”

            Skade jolted out of her spot in the doorway, then scurried to the window and flipped the shutters back and forth as she wondered what to look for. Her mind drifted back to “Found the shutters open.” She swung the shutters closed and stretched on her tiptoes until she could drop in the shutter bar, then slipped out the knife at her waist and pushed it between the shutters until the point stopped well short of the other side. She slid the bar free, looked it over, opened the shutters, then checked their newly-exposed ends. “

Mistress? I found something.”

            Sybil shifted back to her feet and glided over. “Yes?”

            “There’s no marks on the bar or the shutters.”

            Sybil paused to analyze the news. “Should there be?”

            “A thief pushes a knife between the shutters.” Skade mimed a knife thrust. “And works it.” Her imaginary knife quivered upward. “Until they lift the bar off.” She swung the shutters closed. “But if you did get a knife between these, it would scratch them. So a regular thief didn’t do it. But the… the other thieves. The …”

            Sybil ran a finger across the lines of the virginals. “The thieves that fancy themselves the aristocrats of their kind?”

            “Yeah, the snotty ones. They don’t use knives. They have special tools they make themselves and never let anybody see.”

            “Ah. And since there’s no marks, you think one of them was used here?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            Sybil tapped the bar. “So a master thief. Which fits with the way he left no traces in the room. But it is  helpful in a way. Fewer to pick from. Anything else?”

            Skade strained for a moment. “No. Nothing I can think of.”

Sybil looked over the shutters at the pounding rain. “Not much to go on, is it? There’s only one other thing to look at and… well, I think we can safely say that if there were footmarks outside, they’re gone now.”

Thunder rumbled.