instead he contented himself with trying to wound her pride.
'I thought you always said that not even a tick from a dog could crawl in or out of here without you or Talbot knowing about it. Are you telling me a simple girl managed to escape and get herself back in here and murder someone without you seeing her? You're getting old, Ma, losing your touch. Eyesight failing? Nodding off at your window?'
But if he hoped to needle her, he should have known better. She merely raised her thick black brows, like a schoolmaster warning an errant pupil.
'Talbot and I were attending to other things. The girl could easily have slipped out through the door. And there are other ways out of here,' Ma said. 'I found her in the cellar with that boy Finch; who knows what else she or that little brat has discovered. Too inquisitive for their own good, the pair of them. Besides, there's some that have the power to send out their spirits to do mischief while their bodies lie sleeping, even when they are locked in a gaol.'
But Raffe wasn't listening. 'The cellar, you found her in the cellar, what has she seen there?'
The ghost of a smile slid across Ma's mouth. 'My pets, all my pets.'
A chill ran through Raffe's frame. You told her about the man?'
Ma pulled the ruby pin from her hair and spun it idly in her fingers so that sparks of blood seemed to fly from it around the room. Told her? Now just what could I tell her, Master Raffe?'
Raffe tried to resist staring at the whirling ruby lights. He struggled to pull his thoughts together. Think! Hugh, that's what mattered now.
'Why did Hugh come here?'
Ma laughed again. 'Why does any man come here? He has needs, desires he can't satiate anywhere else, well, not without a deal of questions being asked. I dare say even he can't do as he pleases with his servant boys without raising a few objections. And, you know, men are curiously shy about having the whole world know the exact depths of those stinking mires in which their desires frolic.'
'Does Hugh know Raoul came here too?'
'According to Talbot's informants at the Adam and Eve, Raoul didn't know of this place until he arrived in Norwich, so he won't have told anyone in the manor where he was going, and Talbot saw to it that the bailiff made no report of it to the sheriff.'
Raffe frowned. He sensed Ma knew something, something she had no intention of telling him. That night Hugh had almost caught the priest anointing Gerard's body, Hugh had claimed to have been waiting for Raoul to return from Norwich. Raffe had been so preoccupied that he hadn't even considered why Hugh was so anxiously waiting until now. If Hugh feared that Raoul had discovered his treachery, or was about to do so, might he not have sent someone to follow Raoul and silence him? Had he been waiting in fact not for Raoul's return, but for news that the deed was done? And now Hugh had come here. Ma had said it was for pleasure, but what if he had realized that Elena had overheard his plotting in the manor? Having got rid of Raoul, he would certainly not hesitate to murder her too to keep his secret.
Raffe moistened his dry lips with his tongue. 'I must move Elena to a safer place. If Hugh has been here once, he is very likely to return, and even with her dyed hair, he will surely remember her eventually.'
Ma's brows arched for the second time that evening. 'And if she's caught and tells them where she's been hiding and where she met Raoul? I don't think so, my darling. I want her here where I can make quite sure she doesn't get the chance to open her mouth. Besides, she's hardly paid for her keep and my trouble. And think of all the effort we've put into protecting her.'
'You can trust her not to talk, I swear, and I will pay what is owed for her keep,'
Ma's lips curled in a humourless smile. 'Anyone can be made to talk. And unless you've suddenly come into a fortune, my darling, I rather fancy you'll find that paying me and whoever you next ask to shelter the girl will leave you with a debt you cannot possible repay. And not everyone is as patient as I am when they are asked to wait