Free Liars and Thieves (A Company of Liars short story) by Karen Maitland Page A

a resentful look. ‘They pay me to keep people out as shouldn’t be in there, not to ask their business, which is their own affair.’
    Frustrated, Robert lumbered back up the stairs, steeling himself to re-enter the stuffy chamber.
    The debate had not moved on by a jot or tittle since he’d left. He wondered, not for the first time, whether the Common Council ever managed to reach agreement about anything. He pictured them still sitting round that table in a hundred years, their beards grown to the floor, cobwebs hanging from their ears, wagging their gnarled fingers and repeating for the thousandth time what someone else had said not five minutes before.
    Robert had never been accustomed to consulting others. Once he had made up his mind to do something, he began it at once. He’d no more patience for these endless discussions than he would have to stitch a tapestry. Perhaps that was why he found his thoughts constantly wandering to the still figure who’d stared up at him so intently. He couldn’t drive her image from his head.

Chapter 2
    If you fear that you are in the presence of a witch, clench both your hands into fists with the thumbs tucked under your fingers. Then she cannot enchant your mind.
Mistress Catlin
    I did not intend to fall in love. In truth, I had not set eyes on Master Robert before that hour when I stood outside the guildhall. I didn’t know then that he was the man looking down from the window. But on that sultry September afternoon, Robert of Bassingham and I were about to find ourselves both pieces and players in a game of romance, both slayer and sacrifice. But of all the players who were to be drawn with us into that dangerous game, none could have guessed who would finally call checkmate.
    Although I did not know Master Robert, I knew well his reputation and had come to the guildhall that day for the sole purpose of speaking with him. My children and I were newly arrived in Lincoln and I had no kin in the city to whom I could turn. Many men, and women too, delight in seeking out the vulnerable to gain their trust, only to rob them of all they have. I was determined not to become their prey.
    But if I had believed the gossip of my neighbours, as they waited for the butcher to slice a piece of cow’s tongue or the fishmonger to knock a live carp on the head, I would have concluded there was not a single man of sound character left within the city walls. A woman called Maud, who lived in the same street as I, was the worst of the tale-bearers, with a tongue as sharp and malicious as the devil’s pitchfork. Before long I knew which men drank, who beat their wives and who had a string of whores. I learned the name of every feckless husband who’d lost his money in wagers on the fighting cocks, and all the miserly fathers who made their children wear splintered barrel-staves on their feet to save on shoe-leather.
    But I knew how to sift the words of others and so it was that, in spite of what the witch, Maud, had said about him and his little weaknesses, or perhaps
because
of what she had said, I came to believe that of all the men in Lincoln the one I should seek out was Robert of Bassingham.
    I thought carefully about how I should approach him. A merchant like Master Robert would be pestered by all manner of people begging for his precious time and I feared I might be brushed aside. But if you want to capture the attention of a thief you flash a gold coin, if a scholar a rare book, so I had taken care to dress in a gown that would gladden the heart of any cloth merchant.
    I’d meant to wait patiently outside until the meeting of the Common Council ended and ask someone to conduct me to him, so we might speak in the privacy of the empty chamber, but as I waited a man came to the window and stared down at me so fixedly that I was ashamed to be seen loitering and approached the watchman to ask if Robert was within. I was dismissed as though I were a stew-house whore.
    A weaker woman might