Death on A Pier (Part 11)
Ch. 11 New Look
Brynhild scampered back up to her room. There were more letters for Strausser and such a burden off her shoulders…
Light streamed over her bedspread from the open shutters. A Bluebird chittered at her, clearly aggrieved that she was interrupting his snooze. She hushed him and told him to mind his own spinning.
The bird flicked his tail at her in a show of great bird-itude and shot past her into the hall, broadcasting his complaints to the rest of the castle. Liesl and Conrad started shouting at the feathery invader, not at all taken with the bird’s poor appreciation of personal property.
Brynhild groaned and rolled her eyes. Even the non-human creatures in Meiser got above themselves. She plunked Ursula in her cage and swooped up her writing utensils to write out missives for Bergstaat and points between about Hildebert’s fort and watchmen plan. The mattress crinkled under her weight. She wrote and dried her letter in a blur, one ear cocked to the bird and servant battle in full swing in the main hall. Liesl was yelling about a net and bird pie, while Conrad threatened arrows.
She would have to join them, if only to help find all the spare nets. She tucked the new letters into her pocket and rolled back off the bed.
Under the noise downstairs, there was another crinkle. What in the name of the benne Deus was that?
She pushed down on the feather pallet. No noise came from it. Brynhild ran her hand over the blanket and pillows, tracing the knap and patch seams. Fur lining brushed the inside of her wrist until something thinner poked out from under the blanket and touched her palm.
She pulled out a thin, crumpled piece of parchment with a smidge of wax on it. It read exactly like the letters she had handed to Fredi just a bit before. It must have gotten shoved under the blanket when she was sorting Choegan’s belongings.
This one was addressed to Hansea. She breathed out. Had Strausser been confused about the thing Choegan was holding? It couldn’t have been Anne’s letter.
Brynhild fished a bit of scrap paper from her pile of books, took out her pen, and scribbled all the recipients she could remember. She had seen all of them from Magdeburg on. So they weren’t missing any letters? What did Strausser see? Did he lie?
Her stomach roiled as panic pulled at her. She had been so certain Strausser was innocent.
She squeezed her eyes closed. Then she squinted at her list.
There was a missing letter. She hadn’t thought of it because she was so accustomed to it. The letter to Meiser’s leather worker was missing.
Had she remembered wrong?
The leather worker could be at the inn to hobnob with the fur guild at some point. And if she wasn’t, the fur guild could help anyway. She jumped to her feet, stuffing all the letters into her pocket, and bolted out to the main hall.
Liesl and Conrad were stalking the bird with a tablecloth. The bird hopped uneasily along the floor.
Brynhild stood still and held her breath. The bird stumbled by her ankles, and tensed, willing it still.
Conrad whipped around the front and the pair slammed the cloth over the intruder. It chattered in alarm as they swept the bird out the front door and into the bailey.
Brynhild followed them and watched them bounce the intruder into the air over the low-walled gardens. It shrieked and high-tailed it into the clouds, blending into the blue of the sky.
Conrad and Liesl collapsed on the nearest bench and watched its retreat. Brynhild sighed and patted Liesl’s shoulder. “Thank you. Tell your parents I’ll be home before dinner.”
Liesl gave her a half smile.
Brynhild hustled down to the pier and let herself into the yard of the inn. The burble of merchants and sailors swirled around the yard, and the smell of Ingrid’s beer brewing followed them. Fur merchants poked around the sellers’ tables. Klaus stood in the doorway of the inn, scanning the grounds with his knuckles on his hips.
Thibaut wandered up from behind Klaus and asked what he was watching. Klaus waved toward the groups churning up the mud of his yard. The two men who had been checking in with the Ingrid when she had first seen Thibaut moseyed over with pelts over their shoulders.
The big hipped, dimpled blonde that was Meiser’s leather-worker wasn’t present. Brynhild lips twitched in irritation.
Brynhild decided this was the biggest grouping of fur merchants she was likely to catch at one time and sidled up to the quartet at the doorway. Thibaut bowed to her.
“Good afternoon, my lady. Have you decided what to do with the foreigner?”
“There aren’t many options, I’m afraid. He’s buried, thank you. But I have something of a proposition for all of you.”
Klaus and the other two fur merchants turned to her, brows up and ears cocked.
The taller of the fur merchants moved his pile of fox pelts to the floor. “Indeed, my lady? Were you looking to buy?”
Klaus smirked. “I can’t say that I would be able to sell furs, and we have plenty of fine furs from the foxes here.”
Brynhild met his smile. “I should begin by introducing myself and explaining my predicament. Klaus and Thibaut know me, but I have been remiss in not showing myself to the good fur traders gracing my port. I’m sorry. I am Burgravine Brynhild of Meiser.” She curtsied to the fur merchants. “And you are…”
The taller merchant bowed. “Georg of Serrick. This is my colleague from Furstrasse, Gottlieb.”
The shorter one, still clutching mangy pelts to his chest, smiled enough to make dimples crease the mole on his cheek and bowed.
She said, “This actually concerns the foreigner that your friend Thibaut mentioned. Perhaps you know of the solution that his friend from Ainum brewed up.”
Gottlieb lit up. “The arsenic tanning solution? It’s been the talk of the leather guild in Magdeburg for days. I was hoping to hear where he had put it on the market.”
Thibaut wrinkled his nose. “It’s a massive expense when you can get the same results with stale urine. I don’t see what he was thinking to fiddle with it. All that’s going to happen is the leather workers will get uppity and refuse our good furs.”
“Nonsense. When I was up in Ainum, I managed to sneak into a leather-maker’s meeting when he demonstrated its efficacy. It’s faster and it bleaches at the same time. It can only help both of us if we could finagle it out of them.”
Brynhild nodded. “I had thought that the inventor would of course want sell to everyone who dealt with skins. Choegan was bringing letters to one person in certain cities, and I had to sort them once he died. I already handed the letters to a courier to deliver.”
The fur merchants jumped. Georg yelped, “To who? Who has them? Did you read it? What was in it?”
Gottlieb asked, “Did it have the recipe? Do you remember?”
Brynhild had to check herself from asking what they were so excited about. Clearly, the guilds were secretive about their methods and were eager to steal each other’s tools. Equally clearly, it was an industry she didn’t know much about beyond the price of enough to line a cape. She picked her words with care. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand the contents of the letters and they are on their way already. I have no wish to interfere with things I don’t understand. However, the distribution of the letters confused me. I assumed…” And here she fixed Thibaut, Gottlieb, and Georg with was sheepish smile. “I assumed he was sending some invitation or recipe to everyone who was dealing with furs.”
Thibaut shook his head.
Gottlieb’s eyes widened in distress. “I certainly haven’t seen any letters from Harold. And I told all the fur merchants the second I came back from Ainum so we could plan how to get ahold of the stuff.”
Georg nudged him. “I told you to steal the recipe when you were there. Now we’re going to have to pay those rotten leather workers for the stuff.”
Thibaut crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “I told you this was trouble. It’s just going to make the price of doing business more expensive.”
Klaus cocked his head to the side. “Choegan had a letter at the game last night. He started waving it around and saying he’d be good for his debts once the letters did their work. I was wondering what that was all about. Man, I missed another business opportunity! I should have taken the letter off him then. God just hates me.”
Brynhild swallowed back irritation. The sounds of busy vendors and sailors, all of whom paid something toward Klaus, rebuked him enough, if he cared to think about it for a minute. He didn’t, of course, and the fur merchants spared him a sharp glare before demanding of Brynhild what she wanted for the letters.
“I don’t have them, but I can tell you where they are going. I hope you can help me figure out which ones are missing and who might have them.”
She knelt on the ground, tucking her skirts out of the mud, and tracing a map of the high road, the River Arunder, and the towns along both down to Pirrip.
Klaus and the fur merchants drew in their breath. Two more merchants came over to watch as she drew stars in each town that would receive a letter.
Gottlieb leaned over the map and traced the path with his foot. “Are you sure these are all the addresses?”
“All that I remember.” She had included Hansea, and the Hansea letter crinkled in her pocket. They, nor Hildebert, needed to know that little detail.
“Why didn’t he want to send anything to Meiser? We’re all here…”
Georg snorted. “Because we, the direct competition, are right here, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Thibaut echoed.
The two new merchants agreed with Gottlieb, however. “We were keeping our meeting secret, remember? It’s why we moved it from Magdeburg and couldn’t reveal the date until late.”
Gottlieb scooted around the map and squinted at it. “Meiser is where all the fabrics have to unload. It would be idiotic to not give the leather worker here an invitation to buy the stuff or the recipe. Having the finished materials here to send to Magdeburg, sell to the sailors…it’s an obvious move. Besides, the other fiefs along the high road are included. They go straight to Pirrip, and the only reason to go to Pirrip is because it gets a lot of sheep skins to make vellum from Hansea.”
“There could be other letters missing,” Thibaut remarked. “Ritter could have it, with the silver mines needing leather for their operations.”
Gottlieb wrinkled his nose. “The miners would buy the finished leather gloves from people along the road that are buying and working the skins coming down the river.”
“Ritter is just off the main road.”
“So is Stichen, and they skipped the abbey.”
“Nuns don’t work leather.”
“They can if they figure out the process.”
Thibaut rolled his eyes at Gottlieb. “Why would they when they are already raking it in with their orchards?”
“Why would Ritter do anything with leather when they are raking it in with the mines?”
The furriers eyed each other, speculation writ large on their expressions.
Brynhild stood and studied her map. Her gaze traveled over the furriers. Their brows were furrowed, and their expressions shaded from worried to hopeful. Gottlieb muttered to one of the newcomers, and his companion nodded energetically. Thibaut kept his arms crossed over his chest and his lips pressed tightly together.
Georg poked at Magdeburg. “That’s not the first city along the main road. Were the more Southern ones delivered earlier?”
Klaus said, “Must be. Choegan arrived from the road, not the pier. I wonder why he skipped Magdeburg.”
Brynhild cast an inquisitive look at Georg. “You said you had put out the original meeting place for your guild in Magdeburg. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the competition.”
“Or he knew the recipient in Magdeburg would be here at the real meeting…”
“Who is here from Magdeburg?” Gottlieb asked.
Thibaut swept back into the inn, and Gottlieb followed him, calling for the fur merchant from Magdeburg to come out for questioning.
The culprit seemed to have dipped out of town. The furriers came out, grumbling. Brynhild considered them for a moment and quietly slipped away.
The first leather-worker in Meiser had been a pikeman in the civil war, and his widow had been left with the business. Fortunately, her son was helping and she was Gerta’s granddaughter. She had plenty of assistance. Brynhild found the family in the leather-worker’s little workshop and hut abutting the forest between Meiser and Saxe-Kline. It had to be well-back from the fields and have an open pit next to it to keep the smell and refuse from contaminating the rest of the town. Even that day, the smell of stale urine wafted around the kiln in the front yard.
Gerta sat by the pot and watched her granddaughter scrape fur off the skin of a calf. The son could be heard singing to himself as he collected kindling behind the hut.
Brynhild knocked on the fence by the pit. A gust of rot and urine rose around her, but she swallowed back her distaste.
Gerta looked up and shoved herself to her feet. “Hey, Agathe, the burgravine is here.”
The other woman jerked up from the calf, dropping her razor on the supple skin. “Huh, what? Where?”
Brynhild curtsied, and the other two curtsied back. She pulled her pocket out of her dress and opened it. “I’m sorry to interrupt your day, but I thought I owed you a hint for all the fine work you do for Meiser.”
She plucked the letter for Hansea’s leather-worker out from the other papers and gave it to Agathe. She studied it for a moment and stuffed a blonde lock that had worked itself free back under her wimple. “Oh…yes, I was wondering if the rumors were true. I’ll write right back. Eh, once this calf is done and my hands are clean.” She sniffed her fingers and wrinkled her nose.
Gerta poked the skins soaking in the kiln with a wooden paddle. “Where did you find that? I didn’t think that fellow from Ainum was just handing out invitations to buy his stuff to strangers.”
Brynhild said, “Choegan brought it. He was delivering them for his friend there. He was sending them to other leather-workers along the river. He had quite a stack on him at some point.”
“Must have been heavy.”
“Well, he brought at least one to the dice game at your house, so…”
“Oh, was that what that was about? I thought he was waving around Anne’s letter, like he’d be able to pay his debts to us when Anne paid him for his expenses.”
“So did Strausser…” And everyone else at the game?
Agathe tucked the letter into her belt and knelt back over the calf to scrape the last of the velvet from the pristine white skin. Brynhild tilted her head to better watch her strong hands deftly swipe down the skin.
“Did Choegan ask for your husband, do you know?”
Agathe lifted one shoulder. “Ludwig said something about a man looking for my poor Ethelred, but I think he got the address wrong. We went looking at the inn a couple nights back but whoever it was had left. We figured we would look the next day, but everyone was just so busy chatting about the dead foreigner and I had this calf leather to complete. Missed communication, I guess.”
Brynhild shifted to look at Gerta. “Did Choegan ask about your son-in-law?”
“No, not during the game. But…oh, now that you mention it, he did ask if there was a leather-worker named Ethelred of Anders, and Anders told him about what happened to poor Ethelred. Choegan shrugged it off and said he guessed he would deal with that early the next morning before he left then. It was before everyone started dicing, and the beer had just arrived. It was an off-hand comment no one thought to ask about. After all, horses get leather bits and such. Maybe that was what he was talking about.”
Brynhild nodded. “Makes sense.”
It also made sense of why he had the letter on him. And the more Brynhild thought about the participants of the dice game, the more she suspected that the letter was the cause of Choegan’s death.
She thanked Gerta and wished Agathe luck with the tanning solution. She turned and scampered as fast as her legs would allow back to the inn.
She burst past Klaus, still haunting the entrance door and surveying the yard, and hustled up the inn stairs.
Ingrid was swiping down the railing, humming to herself, on the second floor. Brynhild halted beside her. “Which room is Thibaut’s?”
Ingrid looked up. She waved toward the end of the hall. “Most of the furriers are in that back room. They aren’t in though. They stormed off looking for one of their own on the pier.”
“Great!”
Brynhild had been formulating what to say once she was in the room, but with the news that everyone was out, she shot into the room like a ferret tackling a mouse.
The back room had a large window with a window seat, and the shutter hung open, letting light cascade over the row of bags hanging from nails along the wall.
Brynhild’s heart leaped to her throat. She flattened the nearest bag and read the name on the bottom. Then the next one and the next, until she found the one with Thibaut’s name painted on in gold. She jerked it off the nail and dumped it on the floor.
Brushes, towels, and combs scattered over the floor along with pens and bits of wax. On top of it all, like flakes of snow, three strips of vellum flopped out of the bag.
Brynhild scooped up the vellum and held them up to the light. The addressee’s name stood in stark relief on the top, and the first half of the first sentence stopped neatly at the rip. The second half ran on the second strip. It had been ripped, but it was one letter.
“The letter to Ethelred. From Ainum.”
“What are you doing?”
Brynhild looked up. Thibaut stared back from the doorway.
She crumpled the pieces up and lowered them. She glanced over his shoulder. The hallway was empty and dark.
Thibaut said again, “What are you doing?”
Something thrummed in her throat. “Oh, good afternoon, good man Thibaut. Did you find your friend from Magdeburg?”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. “I gave up the search. The others are looking for him. They’ll be a while.”
“Well, best of luck to them.”
“What do you have in your hand?”
“Vellum. Why do you ask?”
He stepped into the room. He towered over her. She could yell for Ingrid and Klaus, but he would be at her throat before they reached her. The window let in muffled noise from the yard below, too far down to safely break her fall.
She stuffed her fist in the slit in her dress and edged to the middle of the room.
Thibaut took another step in and started to close the door behind him. “I hope that didn’t come from my bag. I would hate to find out you were snooping in my personal belongings. Klaus would complain.”
She sidestepped him. “I wouldn’t close the door if I were you.”
He paused.
She said, “Your guild will find the letter on me. Then all that trouble you took to avoid your fellows finding the tanning solution and using it will be for naught.”
“Only if I can’t find the Magdeburgian’s letter first.”
Brynhild cocked her head to the side and eyed him. “Since your thief failed to steal Choegan’s belongings off Fredi, you really are desperate for it, aren’t you?”
He took another step closer and raised his hand, watching the door and her at once. “What do you know about it?”
“I can only assume that you are too deeply in debt to try a new solution, and it will give the likes of Georg and Gottlieb an edge over you.”
“None of your business.”
“After all, you did go gambling on the night before a big meeting. Lucky you.”
Someone banged the banister. Thibaut stiffened and looked over his shoulder. Brynhild slipped up beside him.
His arm whipped out and grabbed throat. “Stop.”
She gulped. She dug her fingers into his belt. “You’re not going to be able to stab me the way you stabbed Choegan.”
“Why do you think I would…did that?”
“The letter. And the fact that you were gone. I would suggest you let go of me.”
His grip tightened. “Why?”
Brynhild’s heart hammered in her ears, but her mouth moved on its own. Her throat hurt and voice croaked. “I had time to ask when you came in of Klaus. You didn’t come in with him. He knows.”
There was a shuffle behind her. Footsteps grew. She slid her fisted hand from her pocket to his elbow and pushed the arm up to her chin. “This fist holds the letter to Meiser’s leather-worker. It’s the one you took from Choegan when you stabbed him in the back right before dawn. It’s going to match the blood on the handle of your knife, isn’t it?”
She pulled on his belt, rattling the dinner knife on him.
He yipped and dropped her. She collapsed, coughing. Thibaut spun around and ran right into Klaus and Ingrid.
Brynhild climbed to her feet and grasped Thibaut’s arm.
Ingrid and Klaus stood in front of Thibaut, glaring at him with slitted, angry eyes. Ingrid shot one raised brow at Brynhild.
Brynhild smiled back. “I think we can keep this quiet if we take him to Fredi and give him a guard to take him to Ogodai. I suspect the Luronians would like the chance to deal with him in their own way.”