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the woman by the shoulder and pulling her up. Hearing her uncle groan, Bess turned, shouted to the stretcher-bearers, ‘Be gentle with him.’
    Honoria grabbed Bess’s arm. ‘I am a lay sister of this spital and not accustomed to such treatment.’
    ‘I know your station,’ Bess said. ‘And your previous calling.’ Folk said her husband had left her rather than compete with her lovers.
    ‘I took good care of Master Taverner when I served him.’
    ‘I am sure you did.’ Bess turned to the other woman, who was dressed in a similar dark, simple gown and white wimple. ‘You are a lay sister also?’
    The woman nodded. She was older than Honoria – by her greying eyebrows and the lines around her eyes, Bess guessed her beyond her child-bearing days – and had a competent air about her.
    But she was still a mere servant. ‘Where are your superiors?’ Bess demanded. ‘Does my uncle not deserve to have one of the nuns tending him?’ He had paid good money for his corrody at the spital, he deserved the best they had to offer.
    ‘We were near,’ Anneys said. ‘Dame Constance has gone before us to the infirmary to prepare Master Taverner’s bed.’
    ‘Ah.’ The Mother Superior. That was better. Bess watched as Honoria picked up her skirts and hurried after the stretcher. Even in her drab gown she managed to provoke stares from the men in the crowd.
    Another stretcher had been brought for Laurence de Warrene. Don Erkenwald, relieved of his charge, joined Bess and Anneys. He was a muscular canon with the scars of his former life on his face. Bess had always thought him an odd one to be an almoner. ‘Both women have been trained by the sisters and are trusted with our patients, Mistress Merchet.’
    ‘Laurence was dead when you found him?’
    Erkenwald gave a brief nod. ‘I believe he was so when your uncle pulled him from the house.’
    ‘He knows, then?’
    ‘It is difficult for him to accept that God has taken his friend and spared him.’
    He did not wish to know was more like. ‘What happened here?’
    ‘You know that Master Warrene’s wife died of pestilence several days ago?’
    Bess nodded.
    ‘It was recommended that he burn aught that had touched her in her illness – clothes, bedding …’
    ‘A simple task gone terribly wrong,’ Anneys said.
    Bess ignored the woman. ‘Was he ordered to burn her things in the house?’ she asked the almoner.
    He smiled at the suggestion. ‘We are not fools, Mistress Merchet. The fire had been built here, in the yard, before the door. How the house caught, or how the two men came to be within, I do not know.’ He was suddenly distracted by someone in the crowd. ‘ Domine ,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Here comes little Cuthbert.’
    The crowd had parted to allow the passage of a tiny canon who strode forward, hands in sleeves, his face puckered in an expression of disgust as his eyes swept back and forth over the charred scene.
    ‘What has happened here, Erkenwald?’ the newcomer demanded in a high, penetrating voice.
    Anneys took the opportunity to leave. Bess did not blame her. Don Cuthbert was the type of small, delicate man who became a tyrant when given power.
    ‘Master Warrene was your responsibility, Don Cuthbert,’ Bess said.
    Cuthbert jerked as if slapped and turned towards Bess with an expression that proclaimed him surprised to learn she could speak.
    Well, she would let him hear more. ‘Was it your idea to give him such a task, unaided, though he was so recently bereaved?’
    The canon peered at her as if trying to identify her. ‘What had bereavement to do with the fire, goodwife? And how is it your concern?’
    ‘Her uncle, Master Taverner, was injured trying to save Master Warrene,’ Erkenwald explained.
    ‘Ah.’ The cellarer closed his eyes and gave Bess a slight bow. ‘Forgive me, I did not realise. We shall do everything we can for your uncle.’
    And so he thought to dismiss her. Bess paused to ensure enough breath that she