Free Blood Moon by Stephen Wheeler

from Bury - a fact that prompted my next question:
    ‘These men of noble rank - was Geoffrey de Saye among them?’
    They hadn’t mentioned the name. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Geoffrey de Saye had been out of circulation for a long time - those London merchants might not have known of him. But if he was at this meeting in Stamford, and it was as clandestine as Onethumb suggested, that might explain why he arrived here unannounced like a thief in the night. I was rather hoping he had since it meant his presence here might have nothing to do with me after all and so Onethumb might well be right: I’m really not that important. But what it didn’t do, of course, was explain why de Saye was here at all - or the nature of Prior Herbert’s involvement with him.
    ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’ I urged Onethumb. ‘Anything at all?’
    He shied impishly. Not really - except to say that while round the back of the shop filling the Londoners’ orders he had pissed in the bottles of perfume they had bought for their wives in payment for their insults and then charged them double for the privilege.
    ‘Oh, did you just? And what do you think that will do for my brother’s reputation, his cologne stinking of piss?’
    Onethumb grinned and shook his head. He didn’t think the Londoners would be back. They thought Bury a very dull place and couldn’t wait to leave. And I have to admit the thought of them getting back to London and unstopping the bottles of perfume for their wives to inhale the fragrance made me smile. I could just imagine their reaction.
    We were interrupted by a disturbance at the far end of the room. Someone was being thrown out by our host.
    ‘Oh good lord,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘No, don’t look. It’s Raoul de Gray. What’s he still doing here? I thought he’d gone.’
    It was Raoul all right. He was drunk again, and this time it wasn’t the arrival of his new baby he was celebrating. He had his arm around the neck of one of the whores and seemed to be trying to take her with him as he was being ejected. The girl clearly didn’t want to go with him and was protesting angrily, trying to free herself from his grasp while two other men attempted to help her. I had to remind myself that this was the nephew of His Grace the Bishop of Norwich and tutted to myself. Noble rank is evidently no guarantee of noble bearing - or maybe this behaviour was what passed for it these days. At any rate, one of the men punched Raoul in the stomach winding him and eliciting more whoops of laughter from other customers. But it did mean he released her long enough for the other two men to bundle him out through the door and into the night. But Raoul wasn’t to be deterred so easily. Barred from coming back inside again, he started shouting abuse from the street. The two men jeered and threatened him with the beadle if he didn’t go home which only made Raoul even more belligerent and he tried to get back inside the ale-house again. But he was no match for the two burly men who pushed him back every time he tried to get in. Most of what he was shouting was the incoherent nonsense of a drunkard, about a man’s rights and the fact that he had paid good coin to get them. This brought more jeering particularly from the girl he had been pawing who yelled abuse back at him. Doubtless it was the regular sort of banter that occurs in most alehouses on any night of the week, but I thought it was just desserts for the way he had treated his maid the previous day and I secretly applauded the girl’s spirit. This was one female he was not going to be able to bully.
    Entertaining though the exchange might be, a rowdy ale-house is no place for a monk and certainly not a senior obedientiary of the abbey. It wouldn’t do for me to be on the premises when the beadle arrived. So I signalled to Onethumb that it was time we were leaving and pushed my way out of the ale-house nearly knocking Raoul to