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sidelong glance. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘Fulford, despite his rages, has acquired a measure of respect. Maybe it’s the nature of his calling. There’s no quicker way to men’s hearts than through their bellies, as they say, and he knows what he’s doing in that department. He’s a real craftsman. A taskmaster, true, but fair-minded after he’s let fly.’
    ‘“Let fly”?’ asked Thomas with interest.
    Edwin nodded. ‘Anything that comes to hand.’
    ‘We had a cook at Meaux like that but he seems to have calmed down since the abbot took him aside.’
    Hildegard looked impatiently towards the door.
    Edwin continued. ‘Fulford prides himself on it – “I tell them what for” and “I speak as I find”. They call it talking plain. He’s just an old Saxon, of course.’ He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. ‘Be that as it may, he runs a tight ship. No complaints from His Grace. And when people come to work for him they tend to stay. Nothing much else to say about him. Unmarried, of course. His work is his life. His kitcheners are his family.’
    ‘Can you see him hitting anybody over the back of the head?’
    ‘Never. No matter how riled he was.’
    ‘Where’s he from originally?’
    ‘Some village near York. He worked for the Bishop of Durham as an apprentice after a stint as a scullion with a
York merchant when he was a lad back in the Dark Ages. He boasts he’s never been further south than Doncaster.’
    ‘Not even when His Grace was called to attend previous Parliaments?’ Hildegard asked.
    Edwin shook his head. ‘Left to hold the reins at Bishopthorpe. This time His Grace insisted. Something to do with putting up a good table for guests in Westminster.’
    ‘With his commitment to His Grace, then, his testimony should be reliable.’
    ‘I’m prepared to trust it.’
    A page boy poked his head round the door. ‘The master of the kitchens approaches.’ He bobbed back out of sight.
    A few moments later Fulford hove into view. He addressed the two men as if Hildegard were invisible.
    She didn’t mind, of course. It was a lesson in humility and gave her chance to observe the cook more closely than she would otherwise have been able.
    She noticed how he groped around behind him to find the bench before settling his vast bottom on it, and once firmly seated, began folding and unfolding his hands until eventually they found a resting place on his paunch. He was breathing hard as if having run up a flight of stairs. She couldn’t imagine him being able to hit a man. No wonder he threw things instead.
    Edwin opened the questions with an invitation to tell them when he had last seen Martin. ‘We’re just trying to establish how he came to fall into the vat,’ he explained.
    ‘I can’t rightly remember when I saw him,’ Fulford admitted. ‘We were run off our feet that morning. I know I saw him near the wagons at one point. Mebbe putting his stuff on board.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘There was
more on my mind than the whereabouts of one servant.’
    ‘Don’t know, then,’ Edwin made a note. When he stopped scratching his quill over the vellum, he asked Fulford to explain where everyone was meant to be from matins to prime on the day they left the purlieus of Bishopthorpe. The dead man had been found just after prime when they all came out of the service and assembled in the main courtyard ready to leave.
    ‘And so they were,’ replied Fulford. ‘Remember, we had all that tomfoolery with the Pope’s man and his vultures, counting heads?’
    ‘Run us through everybody’s movements, then.’
    ‘At matins they’d still be in their beds. No necessity to go and pray at that time of night. We’re not monks.’ He bowed his head courteously towards Brother Thomas.
    ‘I can verify that none of the kitchen staff was in church at matins,’ agreed Thomas. ‘In fact there was just myself, His Grace and his acolyte, the sacristan, a priest from—’
    ‘We’ll get your