Free The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker by Michael Jecks

brother, Canon Stephen Soth of Exeter Cathedral, had no answer.

Chapter Five
     
     
    ‘Come in and be seated, Lady Jeanne. Sir Baldwin, a cup of wine with you, sir?’ Vincent le Berwe was effusive as he waved Lady Jeanne inside and directed her to a large chair near a hearth of roaring logs while Baldwin sent Edgar off to the Talbot’s Inn in Paul Street where le Berwe had arranged a room for them.
    It was a good-sized property, Jeanne thought, looking around. Situated on the High Street itself, with a shop at the front where Vincent sold his furs, it had a large undercroft, a basement area, in which Vincent stored his wines and cloths ready for selling. Here in the hall there was as much space as Baldwin had in his entire house. The hall was open all the way to the ceiling, where a thin haze of woodsmoke drifted from the fresh logs which had been thrown on the fire. Above the shop was a small chamber reached by a staircase in which Vincent and his wife slept. All was highly decorated, with ivy and holly dangling in readiness for Christmas. Red berries glistened and twinkled in the light of the guttering candles set about the room.
    Vincent himself was the picture of a successful merchant. His face was florid and jowly, his belly so expansive that he must lean back to balance his weight like a pregnant woman; it billowed out voluminously above his belt, dragging it down. His hair was grizzled like Baldwin’s, but his eyebrows were of a paler colour. From looking at his face Jeanne felt sure that Vincent was considerably younger than Baldwin, but worry had prematurely aged him.
    Jeanne had to remind herself that her husband and she were here not for pleasure, but because Sir Baldwin was to be rewarded with gloves. Baldwin’s friend Walter Stapledon, the present Bishop, had insisted that Baldwin should be rewarded for his work earlier in the year when he had helped save Belstone’s convent from shame. The knight had protested against it long and hard, pointing out that his friend Simon Puttock, Bailiff of Lydford Castle, had in fact solved the mystery such as it was, but the Bishop had replied that someone who suffered while serving his See deserved a reward. Thus Sir Baldwin had been summoned to the city against his wishes, and Jeanne had refused to remain at home while her husband was being so signally honoured.
    She was surprised by Vincent’s wife, Hawisia. Where she had expected a sharp, strong-willed woman with a solid grasp of politics, she found a rather vapid blonde with pale, chubby features, and a dumpy frame. In her company Jeanne felt a sense of smug superiority, a feeling she was at pains to conceal.
    Hawisia motioned to the bottler to pass drinks and ensured that Baldwin and Jeanne were given pots of wine. Then she tried to engage Jeanne in conversation. It was hard going, for Jeanne did not know any of those about whom Hawisia spoke, nor did she have any interest in the doings of the various dignitaries of the city. Hawisia, Jeanne decided, was one of those women whose experience, life and interest revolved about her husband. There was no time left for her to have developed her own character.
    Vincent de Berwe had been elected as one of the four stewards of the city last Michaelmas, and Hawisia apparently went in awe of him and the men with whom he had dealings. It was a natural reaction in one reasonably young, but Jeanne found it annoying in a woman of some twenty-four summers like Hawisia, just as she was irritated by Hawisia’s fawning attitude towards Jeanne herself. The other woman appeared painfully aware of her duties as the wife of an important man: she complimented Jeanne on her dress, politely enquired after the manor and expressed her joy on hearing that Jeanne was pregnant. Hawisia told her that she had borne a daughter herself two years before, but the girl had died in the summer when the people of the city were affected by a strange affliction. Jeanne felt a little unsettled to hear about