Masques of Gold by Roberta Gellis Page B

traced; however, they had not been so ignorant and had moved as quickly as they could onto a well-traveled way. Justin shrugged when Halsig reported that everyone his men questioned on Friday Street had laughed. Two-wheel carts on Friday Street, at dawn, were as common as fleas on a dog.
    Still, Justin wondered, why Friday Street instead of Bread Street? Friday Street was west, farther from the bridge they would have to cross to reach Canterbury, which lay to the southeast. Unless…unless young Peter and Edmond intended to take a boat, which would be very easy to come by on Friday Street. Justin uttered an obscenity that made Halsig stiffen.
    â€œNot your fault,” he said to the guard captain. “Mine. I was not at my best this morning. Because the horse and cart were taken and because L—Madame Heloise said Flael’s sons might be going to Canterbury, I never thought they might take a boat…elsewhere.”
    â€œThen we’ll know for sure where they’re going,” Halsig said quickly, eager to soothe the only superior officer he knew who took the blame on himself instead of placing it on his men. “Any man who took a cart and horse on his boat will remember. And anyone else on the dock will remember too.”
    â€œYou can send two men to ask after you have eaten your dinner,” Justin said, much more calmly. It had occurred to him that if Peter and Edmond had taken a boat, they probably did not intend to return to London—and that meant they could not have conspired with Lissa. “But bear in mind,” Justin went on, almost cheerfully, “that they may have abandoned the cart and even the horse. What they will surely have kept with them are the two strongboxes, so be sure your men ask about those as well as asking about the horse and cart.”
    Firmly suppressing an impulse to go upstairs, Justin left the men to eat the dinner Binge was preparing and walked to Goscelin’s house, where he had left his horse. He intended to ride to the gates and see what had been netted, but as soon as he entered the shop, one of the journeymen excused himself from the client to whom he was speaking and asked Justin to go above, where Master Goscelin awaited him.
    The solar was even more richly furnished than the one in Flael’s house. There was a thick, intricately patterned carpet on the floor and hangings on the walls and two chairs on which the highly polished, elaborate carvings picked up gleams from the leaping fire. And the window—Justin hesitated for just a moment in his advance toward his host as he realized why everything in the room was so brightly lit—the window was made of clear pieces of glass like a few he had seen in rich churches.
    A servant had been laying a table for dinner under the eye of the alderman’s wife, but as soon as Goscelin saw Justin in the doorway, he spoke a low word to her and she dismissed the servant, coming forward herself to take Justin’s cloak and make him a stiff curtsy.
    â€œI beg you, Sir Justin, do not keep Goscelin until our dinner is all overdone. And what of that poor child down the street? What did you do to her? Goscelin would not let me go there and comfort her.”
    Justin bowed deeply and took Madame Adela’s hand to kiss. He knew Goscelin from many meetings of the mayor’s council, but he had never before spoken to his wife. She was some years younger than her husband, plump, and dressed in a plain homespun gown with her brown hair in simple plaits, and Justin found her far more attractive now than the haughty woman in brilliant, bejeweled satins he had glimpsed on Goscelin’s arm at state banquets. He was sorry to see how uneasy she was in his presence, for Goscelin smiled at her fondly and Justin thought she might be clever and amusing if she could accept him more easily.
    â€œJustin will not keep me from my dinner because he is going to join us,” Goscelin said. “And as to that