The Guilt of Innocents by Candace Robb

Drogo?’ Owen asked.
    ‘Aye, and you?’
    ‘No. Abbot Campian has asked that I try to discover what really happened last night.’
    ‘Good. That is good. I’m Hal. You’re Captain Archer, aren’t you?’
    ‘I am. Did you know him well?’
    ‘As well as any of us on the barges did. He wasn’t much of a talker until he was drinking, and when he was drinking I wanted no part of his company.’
    ‘Drogo was an angry man in his cups?’
    The man nodded. ‘Violent sometimes, which you’ve no doubt already heard.’
    Nodding, Owen said, ‘I would like to talk to your fellows on the barges. Would you accompany me?’
    ‘With pleasure, Captain.’
    They were watched with curiosity by the men on the staithe, almost all of whom wore the abbey livery. Hal introduced Owen, and once they understood what he wanted they seemed eager to answer Owen’s questions. Unfortunately they were able to provide little new information. No one recalled seeing Drogo and Master Nicholas together.
    ‘But he was secretive about many of the trips that took him away down the river,’ said the man who did most of the talking for the group.
    Several nodded.
    ‘Drogo was often away?’ Owen asked, happy to sense in the group an eagerness to talk.
    ‘Oh, aye,’ said the spokesman. ‘We sometimes wondered why he wore the abbey livery. There are other pilots in the city, but none work as much as he did.’
    ‘Pilots are paid well, you see, and abbey bargemen live tolerably well,’ said an older man who had been whittling while listening to the others.
    Another man said, ‘Yet his wife and daughters wear rags and eat no meat.’
    ‘Aye, he’s right about that,’ said Hal.
    ‘He drank his earnings,’ said the spokesman.
    The whittler vigorously shook his head. ‘He’d never make it out of bed if he drank so much as that. And the wife and girls are not ragged.’
    ‘What do you suppose he did with the money?’ Owen let his eye rest on each man in turn, but he saw no sparks of insight. The spokesman merely shrugged. Owen tried another approach. ‘You said he was secretive about many of the trips. Why was that, do you suppose?’
    ‘He’d talk in riddles,’ said the spokesman.
    ‘Aye. I stopped asking him,’ said another man. ‘He made no sense.’
    ‘Smuggling,’ said another, ‘that is what I thought he was about.’
    ‘Then why not spend the coin?’ asked the spokesman of the others.
    ‘Mayhap he had another family downriver,’ the whittler suggested with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
    ‘Not him, Sly Pete,’ said the man sitting next to him. ‘He was the ugliest among us!’
    That raised some hearty laughs, though the spokesman remained grim-faced.
    ‘We have no proof of another family,’ he said.
    Owen left them with a plea to come to him or to leave word in the shop about anything they might recall about Drogo, assuring them that anything might be useful.
    He could still hear them arguing as he entered the abbey gate. It was quiet once inside, and he was soon in the abbot’s house, comfortably seated in the abbot’s parlour.
    After he recounted to Abbot Campian his conversation with the bargemen Owen asked, ‘Why did you maintain him in the livery if he was so often gone? Did you not know about his absences?’
    The abbot had listened without apparent interest. Now he frowned a little. ‘I knew. But the others did not complain, and more importantly he was an excellent pilot so he’d been of use to me. When we ship our wool we want it safe.’
    It seemed to Owen the abbey was wasting riches better used elsewhere if it retained a pilot/ bargeman who was seldom at his station, but he kept that thought to himself. He was about to take his leave when George Hempe was announced.
    Campian glanced at Owen. ‘Would you care to stay?’
    ‘I would,’ said Owen, curious whether Hempe had learned anything new. He resumed his seat.
    Hempe removed his hat as he entered the room, exposing his bald head, which, with his