On Simon’s cloak there was a twig caught among the threads. Reaching down, he lifted the heavy cloth and studied it. Pulling at the stick, he murmured softly, “It must have been hard, having to be suspicious of your own son. I don’t suppose you really wanted your partner killed so that your son could take over his position. It sets a rather unpleasant precedent to have partnerships dissolved by death. I must admit, though, I don’t understand why he wanted to kill old Agatha Kyteler.” He plucked the twig free and gazed at it ruminatively for a moment before tossing it into the fire.

The older man stared at him for what seemed a long time, then he turned to gaze at the fire, as if debating with himself whether to tell his story or not. After a minute or two, looking up, he said to his wife, “You had better leave us.” She stared at him, and appeared to be about to say something, but then thought the better of it, rose, and swept out.

It was some more minutes before Walter de la Forte began to talk, “It was so long ago, we never thought it could hurt us. You don’t worry like that when you’re young, do you? You think you’re immune to any problems caused by your actions. You don’t realise that they can return to haunt you in your later life. In our case, we thought the past was far behind us, but it was lying dormant, waiting until we should be so arrogant as to think ourselves safe. Then it pounced.”

The room was silent apart from the crackling of the logs on the fire, but even they looked subdued, as if the flames too were listening.

“When Alan and I were much younger, when we were beginning our business, we set up as traders from the money we made during the evacuation from Acre. There were no English knights to take over our ship, Alan and I did it ourselves. Our captain had died in the city. He was hit by shrapnel from a catapult’s stone. We took charge of the ship. It was so easy!

“There were people thronging the docks, trying to escape, looking like ants swarming over all the land, streaming on to any old cog or carrack that would carry them. We were careful, we took on board only those who had money or gold. With the wealth in the city we could afford to be choosy. We had no need of furs, so if that was all the people had, they stayed. We took men and women and children. The children were best. They took little space and the mothers were often glad to see them sent away safely.

“There was one couple, a mother with her boy, who tried to persuade us to take them. She was a little older than us, a strong girl, but what a beauty! The boy was only a baby. Well, I was happy enough to take her for the jewels she carried, but Alan took a fancy to her. He was adamant. He wanted her, and that was to be her price for freedom. He always was a randy fool. I think it was because he had never managed to father a child. If it had been me, I would have taken her on board and then raped her, but he always was a fool about that sort of thing. He told her what the price of her passage would be and she refused. And with obvious loathing. So! He refused to take her or her child, no matter what she said. That was that!” He glanced up bleakly.

Sighing, he continued, now holding the bailiffs eyes as he spoke. “Later, another woman came, one who was not the same in looks or in position. She had a young child, and she had money. We let her aboard. How were we to know that she had the son of the first? And we could not tell that the first was the woman of a powerful man in Gascony, the Captal de Beaumont, who had been in Acre to help defend the city.

“The boy was his son – his bastard, apparently. The woman was his nurse: Agatha Kyteler, curse her! When we let her off the ship at Cyprus, she managed to make her own way back to Gascony and delivered the boy to his father. The mother must have died. To our shame!” His head dropped into his hands, and although he did not weep, his emotion was all too clear.

Sighing, Baldwin tried to keep the contempt and disgust from his face as he watched the man. That any Christian man could have condemned a woman to the mercy of the Egyptians was horrific enough, but for so paltry a reason? It would have been kinder to have simply killed her. He sighed again as the man began talking again.

“And there the affair ended, as far as we were concerned. Alan and I began our new lives. We had made plenty of money in the escape from Acre, and we used it wisely. We bought new ships – heavy cogs for bringing wine over the channel – and spent years trading peacefully between Gascony and England. But then, of course, the troubles began to get worse in France, and our ships started to get attacked. We lost one ship sunk by pirates and another captured, with all the men aboard murdered. That only left us the one, and we needed finance to keep it going, which is why we had to go to the Genoese. Doing that we managed to survive until about ten years ago.”

His face was almost wondering now, as if in amazement at how far he and his partner had fallen after the high point of their lives. “It was that bitch Kyteler, the old hag!” he declared, his head shaking slowly from side to side.

“I had only just built my house when she came to town. I don’t know how she got here or how she found out where we were, but she did. She came here, to my house and introduced herself. Then she recalled the trip from Acre and told me whose son the boy was. I was horrified! I thought that at any time we should expect to have the Captal’s men storming the house, but that was nonsense.

When I told Alan, he said we should kill her, but I was against the idea. I thought we had enough dead on our hands already, so I said I would have no part in her murder.

“He went and tried to threaten her. He wanted her to leave the area, but I think she had decided to stay as a constant reminder of our action at Acre. A living token of our guilt. She threatened to tell the Captal if anything happened to her. That was why Alan built his house up and had the castellations added. He was scared of being attacked by the Captal’s men.”

“So all she did was stay nearby? She only lived here, and that made Trevellyn go in fear of his life?”

“Yes! The Captal de Beaumont is a powerful man. If he wanted to attack us, we could hardly protect ourselves. Alan said we ought to have had her killed off years ago, it would have been easier, at least we’d have known where we stood. But it was too late after a while.

“Stephen got to hear about it somehow. He felt that she was a danger to us all. He wanted her gone, but what could we do? And then, when she was out of the way, he decided that our partnership was useless as well. He told me that Alan must be bought off. He said that Alan was a harmful partner, that he was destroying the business, that there would be nothing for Stephen to inherit if Alan remained. When I asked him what he meant, he told me to have Alan killed. At first all I could do was stare at him, and then I lashed out. That was where he got his bruise. It was after that I heard Alan had been killed.”

Just then they heard a horse approaching outside. The merchant looked up as if searching for sympathy, staring at Simon with a kind of desperate yearning, as if he was pleading for understanding.

He was surprised to hear the old woman’s dog begin to snarl and then growl and bark savagely out by the front door. There was a sudden flutter in the screens, and then they heard the front door thrown open. Almost before Simon could comprehend what was happening, Baldwin had uttered a most uncharacteristic curse and hurled himself at the door, and Edgar had followed, leaving the bailiff and the merchant sitting in astonishment.

“Don’t kill him, Bailiff. He’s a good son,” said the man softly, and then Simon’s senses recovered. Realising what was happening, he lurched to his feet and ran at full pelt.