Free Murder for Christ's Mass by Maureen Ash

tomorrow, when the exchange is due to open for custom.”
    Bascot told de Stow he would come back in the morning to speak to Legerton and his staff. The Templar then casually asked, as though in passing, about the condition of the coins brought in for exchange. “I suppose most of them are fourthings or halfpennies that need to be made into whole coin, are they not?”
    “Yes,” de Stow replied. “And there are always a few that have edges badly worn from usage. Sometimes there are a few coins from other countries included, but not often. The large number of foreign coins we are melting down today is an exception, rather than otherwise.”
    “When I was in my childhood,” Bascot added in an offhand manner, “I remember my grandsire complaining about coins from King Stephen’s reign being clipped, but I suppose the new design of a short cross brought in by King Henry twenty years ago stopped that illegal practice.”
    “It did, Sir Bascot. And when King Henry gave an order that all old coins, especially those from King Stephen’s reign, should be exchanged for ones of new issue, everyone was only too pleased to submit to his decree, for some of the parings were so deftly done it was difficult to tell whether a coin was short weighted or not. I do not believe there are many left from before King Henry’s time now, except for the odd single coin or two. I have hardly seen any these last ten years.”
    Reluctant to press the subject of coins from Stephen’s reign any further lest de Stow become suspicious of the reason for his interest, Bascot asked the moneyer to show him the room where Peter Brand had lodged. De Stow led him outside the mint and back into his own house, then through a door into the yard.
    “His room is up there, over the horse stall,” the moneyer said, pointing to a wooden building of two storeys with double doors at the bottom. A staircase wound up the outside wall. The top of the building was completely enclosed except for a small casement window and a narrow door at the top of the stairway.
    Bascot followed de Stow up the stairs and into the room where Peter Brand had lodged. It was neat and tidy, with a palliasse covered by a pair of thick blankets. There were few of the clerk’s possessions in the room; some blank pieces of parchment and some scribing tools lay on a small table, and a spare pair of hose and a lightweight summer cloak hung from a peg behind the door. On the floor near the bed was a smallish bag of heavy linen that Bascot told Gianni to open and search. When the boy did so, he extracted a tunic of good wool, another pair of hose and a small package carefully wrapped in a piece of soft cloth. Looking to his master for permission, he unrolled the parcel and found a tiny ring of silver gilt inside, which he handed to the Templar.
    Bascot glanced at the clothing and then examined the ring. “It would appear your clerk intended to return for this bag before he left on his journey to Grantham,” he said. “Not only would he have needed the change of clothing, I doubt whether he would have left without taking this.” He held up the ring so the moneyer could see it more clearly. It was fashioned in a design of clasping hands popular for betrothal rings. “A hopeful gift for your clerk’s sweetheart, I would think.”
    De Stow nodded sadly. “You are right, Sir Bascot. Its presence here also indicates that Peter lied to me.”
    “How so?” Bascot asked.
    The moneyer gave a regretful sigh. “When Peter asked to leave early on his last day of work, he told me he needed to do so because he had to pick up his good tunic from a fuller who was cleansing it. The fuller’s premises are on the way to the river where the boat Peter was to take lay at anchor. It would not make sense for him to go and collect his tunic and then come all the way back here just to get his extra hose and the ring. He would have taken the bag with him and collected his tunic on the way to the