Read The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) for Free Online

won’t have you destroy everything you’ve built up. What will you say to your daughter when you are dead in the gutter and she has no husband nor means to find one?’ Mabilla snapped.
    Henry snatched the mazer before she could remove it, and defiantly lifted it in a mock salute before draining it once more. ‘She will be all right. So will you,’ he said thickly.‘There’s enough money saved for you both.’
    ‘And what of you, my husband?’
    Her tone was softer, he noticed, and was relieved that the spat was probably already over. ‘My love, I don’t know. Just now I can’t think straight.’
    ‘The wine won’t help you.’
    ‘It may not clear my head, but it eases the pain,’ he slurred.
    ‘What pain? Are you suffering?’
    He looked at her, but couldn’t answer. The pain he had was a forty-year-old guilt, and he had never heard of a cure for that.
    Vincent the apprentice joiner stretched his arms high over his head and yawned.
    ‘Oi! Get out here, will you, you lazy shite! It’s Master Ralph come to see his frame.’
    Vincent grinned to hear his master speak like that. Master Joel Lytell always made a loud noise to let his customers feel that he was jumping to satisfy their every whim, and today was no different. When a customer appeared, Joel bawled at his apprentices without pause, determined to create the right impression.
    Picking up the heavy demonstration frame, Vincent carried it out from the workshop into the main hall at the front of the building. There he found his master talking to a shortish figure, well-padded, with bright blue eyes and an easy, smiling appearance. Vincent had seen him before about the city. He was a physician known as Ralph of Malmesbury.
    Vincent took the frame over to the two men, and set it on the tall bench which had been made to display this and other works for clients. Standing back, he watched as Joel led the man to the frame, pointing to the strengthening points, pulling at the joints to demonstrate how firm they were, and how sturdy the entire saddle would be.
    ‘I’m known as the best joiner in the city,’ Joel finished with pride.
    ‘Really? And I’m the King’s physician,’ Ralph said disdainfully.
    ‘I am! I build the frames for Master Henry, and no one can buy better than his saddles, master,’ Joel said with a hurt tone.
    ‘Ha ha! And you think that might be a recommendation? I’ve only just treated the last of his clients.’
    Joel’s smile grew a little fixed. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Udo the German’s saddle broke when he was testing it the first time, and he was thrown onto the cobbles. A terrible dislocation. Very unpleasant. So don’t tell me that selling your frames to Henry is any sort of endorsement! Christ’s Bones, maybe I oughtn’t to be here after all. I’d heard your equipment was better than that.’
    ‘Ah well, Master, I can assure you that my frames
are
the best in the city, and if one of Master Henry’s broke, no doubt he bought it in as a cheaper piece of work from someone else for a poorer quality saddle,’ Joel said smoothly. ‘Perhaps this Master Udo didn’t want to pay full price for one of Henry’s top quality saddles.’
    ‘I wonder. I’d want to know that the workmanship on this would be as good as it could be,’ the man said.
    ‘I would have my best man build it,’ Joel said.
    Vincent preened himself. He knew he was the best joiner in the shop out of all the apprentices – probably better than Joel himself.
    ‘Hopefully not that little runt, then,’ Ralph said, peering at Vincent with a look of contempt on his face. ‘He doesn’t look like he could put a simple stool together!’
    When Henry was young, he’d never have thought that the crime could affect him so much so late in life. Here he was, damn it, almost in his grave, and he’d hardly ever given a moment’s thought to the night when he’d trailed across the city with the others, huddled close to the Chapel of St Simon and St Jude,