The Winter King--A Hawkenlye 13th Century British Mystery Page 9

  ‘Is Sabin no longer here?’ he asked her. He ought, he realized, to have asked her last night, only he’d been so dog-tired, and so preoccupied, that he’d forgotten all about Sabin.

  Meggie looked up. He had the distinct impression that, for some reason, the question was unwelcome. ‘She went home yesterday, Father.’

  It seemed rather a terse reply. ‘Were you able to help with the matter over which she sought your help?’

  ‘I – yes.’

  Evidently his daughter did not want to discuss the matter. Perhaps it was professional discretion? He did not know. Sabin had left, presumably satisfied with whatever aid Meggie had been able to give, and, for the moment, Josse was happy to leave it at that. There were, after all, more important things to discuss.

  ‘Will has shown me the bay gelding,’ he began, ‘and he told me a body has been found.’

  Geoffroi looked up at him. ‘I found the dead man,’ he said quietly. ‘Or, to be honest, Motley did.’

  ‘Ah.’ Motley, Josse thought. Geoffroi’s hound. The brindled dog had turned up in the yard one cold night, shivering with cold, fear and hunger. Geoffroi had tended her, mending her hurts and restoring her to what seemed to be her usual self: a courageous, friendly bitch who never gave up as long as there was a trail to follow. She repaid Geoffroi’s meticulous care (he had stayed up with her all one long night, feeding her tiny amounts of warmed milk and honey at regular, brief intervals) by the sort of total devotion that only a good dog can give.

  It was illegal for ordinary households to keep a hound unless its front paws had been mutilated; the high lords of the land were keen to keep the hunting for themselves. Josse sometimes woke in the night in a cold sweat, worrying what would happen if Motley were to be discovered. They would just have to say she had wandered in, presumably lost, and persuade whoever came asking that Josse was doing everything he could to discover the identity of her owner.

  ‘Good for Motley,’ he said now to his son. ‘Where did she make this discovery?’

  ‘It was quite late in the day, and we were deep in the forest, south-west of here, south-east of the abbey,’ Geoffroi replied. ‘Someone had pushed him under the bracken, right inside a bramble thicket, and we’d never have found him if it hadn’t been for Motley’s nose. She smelt the blood, I expect,’ he added, with an attempt at nonchalance. ‘There was quite a lot.’

  Beside him, Helewise gave a soft sound of distress. He turned to her, noticing she looked pale. She still grieves for the young man she could not save, he thought.

  ‘Then what did you do?’ Josse asked gently, looking down at Geoffroi. It was better, he decided, to encourage the lad to talk. He’d be thinking about that dead, bloody body constantly, in any case.

  ‘I called Motley out of the thicket before she – er, before she was tempted, and held on to her good and tight. Then I yelled out for Ninian and Meggie, and Ninian went into the bracken to have a look.’

  Aye, Josse thought. Wise lad. Motley had sniffed out the corpse late in the day, and she’d been running hard for hours. She’d have been hungry.

  Josse turned to Ninian. ‘Well?’

  ‘He’d been dead a while,’ Ninian said. ‘His throat was cut. Meggie thinks –’ he shot his half-sister a quick smile, as if to acknowledge the fact that he was speaking for her – ‘he’d have died instantly.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Josse asked Meggie.

  ‘Yes.’ She met Josse’s eyes, and he saw her give a tiny shake of the head. She’ll tell me more when the lad isn’t listening, Josse thought.

  ‘We made a litter out of lengths of dead wood and my cloak,’ Ninian said, ‘and brought the body back here, since the house was marginally nearer than the abbey. He’s down in the undercroft.’

  Where it’s good and cold, Josse thought.

  ‘Will reported that the horse was found on the road,’ he said, ‘but that’s all he told me.’

  ‘I found the horse,’ Helewise said. ‘I stayed with the dead man up at the sanctuary until Gus and Will came to take him to the abbey, and then I walked up the path to the road.’ Still looking for the other man, Josse thought. For Symon. ‘I walked for quite a while, first one way and then the other, and I came across the horse in a little clearing on the edge of the forest. His reins had become entangled in the branches of an oak tree, and his twisting and turning as he tried to free himself had tied him fast. He was very nervous, until he seemed to realize I was trying to help. I managed to untangle him, and I led him back to the house, where Will saw to him.’

  ‘We reckon he must be the man at the sanctuary’s horse,’ Geoffroi piped up, ‘because he was found nearby, and he had lots of blood on him. If the other man had a horse too, he’d have had to find his way right through the forest to have come out on the road above the sanctuary.’

  Josse nodded. He wondered what had happened to Symon’s horse. If it was of similar quality to the gelding in the stall, then it was too good an animal to be left to its own devices out in the forest. I am not going to worry about that tonight, he thought wearily. It is time my family were asleep.

  He got up, stretching his back. The ache had diminished to a dull pain. ‘Go to bed,’ he said to Geoffroi. ‘You too,’ he added, looking first at Meggie and then at Ninian, sitting with his arm around Eloise, his head resting on the top of hers. ‘You’ve all had a long day.’

  ‘Your father is right,’ Eloise said, looking at Josse with a smile. ‘If we sleep now, we’ll have a few hours’ peace before Inana wakes us all up by informing us she’s hungry.’

  Meggie hung back as the others left. ‘Father?’ she said softly. ‘Will you come with me now to look at the body?’

  He suppressed a sigh. Glancing at Helewise – there was sympathy and understanding in her eyes – he nodded. ‘I’ll be back,’ he whispered to her as he left the hall. ‘Warm some more wine.’

  He followed Meggie out of the door, down the steps and round to the little door leading to the undercroft. Meggie had lit a torch and, once inside the low, vaulted space, she stuck it in a bracket on the stone wall.

  The dead man lay on a trestle table, covered with a length of linen. Meggie drew back the linen, and Josse looked down on the evidence of a shockingly violent death.

  Someone – Meggie, no doubt, perhaps aided by Helewise or Tilly – had cleaned up the corpse. The wide, deep slash had cut the throat so efficiently that the head was only attached by the bones of the spine and some gristly sinews. The terrible wound had been carefully cleaned, and the only blood that now remained was that which had soaked into the beautiful fabric of the pale crimson tunic. There was so much of it that Josse might have thought the tunic was blood-coloured, had he not known otherwise. A reddish-brown tunic that stank of the butcher’s yard …

  ‘Were there any other wounds?’ he asked, his voice gruff.

  Meggie leaned forward, picking up one of the still, white hands. She indicated the wrist, which had a bracelet of bruises. ‘The other wrist is the same,’ she said softly.

  ‘He was held, then,’ Josse muttered. ‘Someone held his hands, behind him, perhaps, while another person cut his throat.’

  ‘It could have been the same person,’ Meggie suggested. ‘This man is not particularly big. A man with large hands could have held both wrists in one hand while he wielded the blade with the other.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Josse agreed.

  But we have a witness, he thought suddenly. He tried to recall what the man in the sanctuary had said.

  He – they – he came for us, and they fell on us with their terrible, sharp weapons, and he slew Symon right there before my eyes.

  He – they came for us. He slew Symon.

  One man or two? Josse wondered. Two, and only one of them the killer? Or just one man working alone? He did not know, and was not sure it mattered. If there had been two, weren’t you just as culpable if you held another man’s wrists while someone else slit his throat?

  He stared down at the dead man.
Meggie gave him a quick, questioning look and, at his nod, covered the corpse once more with the sheet.

  Symon, Josse thought. We know that about him: his given name. He is cousin to the man found at the sanctuary, and both were seeking Lord Wimarc at Wealdsend. Everything else remains to be discovered.

  He sighed. Weary as he was, just then the task ahead was more than he felt able to contemplate. ‘Ninian and I will take him to Hawkenlye Abbey in the morning,’ he said, putting his arm round Meggie. ‘We can do no more for him tonight.’

  Back inside the house, Meggie kissed him and slipped away to her bed. He wandered back to his chair by the hearth, accepting the mug of wine from Helewise with a murmur of thanks.

  ‘Who were those poor young men?’ she asked, although he knew she did not expect an answer. ‘Why were they looking for Lord Wimarc?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Josse said wearily. He forced his tired mind to think. ‘I’m wondering why they ended up where they did, one at the sanctuary and this one – Symon – in the forest to the south of the abbey.’ He turned to meet Helewise’s anxious face. ‘I spoke today to the nun who saw them at Hawkenlye, and she repeated the directions for Wealdsend that she gave them. Why, I wonder, did they not follow those directions? Or, if they did, who made sure that their bodies were found elsewhere?’

  ‘It’s almost as if …’ Helewise began.

  ‘What?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh – nothing.’

  ‘Nobody visits Lord Robert Wimarc,’ Josse said slowly, breaking a brief silence. ‘He does not encourage it, and they say he keeps his fences high and his gates firmly barred.’

  ‘He does not venture out, either,’ Helewise added. ‘I have only once encountered him outside his walls – when he came to the abbey, as I told you – and I’ve never heard of anyone having seen him out in the world since then. He is,’ she added with a sigh, ‘a veritable hermit.’

  ‘Yet two young, handsome, wealthy young men were asking how to find him,’ Josse said, frowning. ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s something else.’ Helewise’s tone was sombre. ‘Whatever their reason – whatever their business with Lord Wimarc – someone went to extreme measures to make sure they did not reach him.’

  SEVEN

  Meggie was awakened the next morning by Tilly, bending over her as she lay huddled beneath the bedclothes, shaking her by the shoulder and hissing, ‘You’ve got to wake up, miss! There’s someone here come to fetch you because they need your help.’

  As soon as Tilly was sure that Meggie would not relapse into her warm bed and go back to sleep, she hurried away. Meggie forced herself out of her snug cocoon and, cracking a thin film of ice in the bowl of water beside the bed, splashed her face, neck, wrists and hands. It was the most effective way she knew to wake yourself up when you’d rather be asleep.

  Tidily dressed, her hair arranged neatly, she made her way into the hall. It was quite common for people to seek her out and beg her help, for her reputation as a healer was spreading among those who lived on the forest borders. However, she was quite surprised to see who was waiting for her, warming hands pale with cold before the fire in the hearth.

  It was a nun, clad in black with a white veil: a novice.

  ‘I’m Meggie,’ she said, striding towards the nun. ‘How can I help?’

  The nun spun round, revealing a long, plain face smooth with youth. The girl broke into a smile, the parted lips showing large teeth with a gap in the middle. The resemblance to an amiable horse was unfortunate, and Meggie drove the image from her mind.

  ‘I’m Sister Maria,’ said the novice. ‘They sent me from Hawkenlye to fetch you. No!’ Her face flushed, and she threw up her hands to hide the flaming cheeks. ‘I mean, they sent me to ask you if you’d come to the abbey, my lady, as there’s a patient that Sister Liese – she’s the infirmarer – is worried about, and she reckons you can help.’

  The nun had uttered her request without drawing breath, very fast, and now she was panting slightly. Meggie couldn’t suppress a chuckle. She reached out for the novice’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

  ‘I’m not my lady,’ she said. ‘I’m just Meggie. And of course I’ll come with you. First, and unless it’s a matter of life or death, warm yourself a little longer.’ She paused, studying the novice with a professional eye. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  Sister Maria’s eyes widened at the question, and Meggie had her answer. But, loyal to her abbey, and presumably not wanting to give the impression that she didn’t get enough to eat, the novice said, ‘I supped last night, thank you, my – er, Meggie.’

  Meggie smiled. ‘I’m sure you did, but that wasn’t what I asked. Tilly – she’s the one who admitted you – will be cooking, I’m sure, since there’s always people to feed around here. Come on – we’ll go into the kitchen and see what we can scrounge.’

  A little later, leaving word with Tilly to tell Josse where she was going – nobody else seemed to be about – Meggie and the novice set out for Hawkenlye Abbey, accompanied by the sturdy young lay brother who had escorted the nun on her mission. Sister Maria had saved some of her food to give him, and he accepted it with an eager smile. The novice rode a belligerent-looking mule, and Meggie felt quite guilty saddling up Eloise’s horse, which seemed particularly fine in comparison. In addition, the grey mare was full of lively energy, her dark, intelligent eyes wide with curiosity as she looked with interest at the world around her. Eloise had asked Meggie to ride her out whenever she could, since Eloise, her hands full with Inana, didn’t have the time or the inclination, but Meggie had rarely found the time.

  She sensed that the novice and the young lay brother felt slightly awed by her presence and, after a few not very successful attempts to engage them in conversation, she let them ride a little ahead of her, slipping in behind. After a while, she heard them talking quietly to each other. Happily, she retreated into her own thoughts.

  She had very much wanted to confide in her father what she had discovered concerning Benedict de Vitré’s death. Nearly two days had passed now, and still she hadn’t found an opportunity. The night she had returned from Medley Hall, with that alarming conversation with Sabin still echoing loud in her head, she had waited up for Josse, wanting above all else to confide in him, and ask him what she should do. But when he had finally come in, fresh from dealing with that gruesome death up at the sanctuary and clearly worried at having left Helewise there by herself with the dead man, she just couldn’t bring herself to add to his anxieties. And then last night, when he’d come in dirty and exhausted after hunting all day for signs of the dead man’s companion, there had been other, more urgent matters to address. She’d taken him to view the corpse in the undercroft, sensing his distress even though he tried to conceal it from her. He is looking careworn and old, Meggie thought with an ache in her heart, and what I want so much to tell him would only add to his worries.

  It was, however, no reason not to tell him. Straightening her shoulders, she resolved to speak to him as soon as the two of them found a moment to be alone.

  She left Eloise’s mare in the abbey stables, bidding farewell to Sister Maria; the lay brother – who said, blushing, that his name was Watt – asked her to summon him when she was ready to leave, since the abbess did not allow women to travel unescorted.

  Oh, these wretched times, Meggie thought to herself as she strode off to find Abbess Caliste. While she understood the necessity for a guard, she still resented with all her being the fact that she rarely got the chance to ride out alone any more.

  Abbess Caliste answered her gentle tap on the door with a warm ‘Come in!’ then greeted her with a smile. ‘Thank you so much for coming, Meggie,’ she said, coming over to give her a hug.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Meggie asked, settling down on the visitors’ chair.

  The abbess was silent for a few moments, clearly thinking. Then – and her words were not at all what Meggie had expected – she said, ‘Your mother, I believe,
studied with the learned men of the Brocéliande; those who study sickness of the mind?’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Meggie replied, her mind reeling. What could this possibly be about?

  ‘So I thought,’ the abbess said. ‘And you: you too have travelled in those regions. Have you also had the benefit of their teaching?’

  How does she know I’ve been there? Meggie wondered wildly. In that first moment, it seemed all but unbelievable. Then she heard a soft, low voice speak inside her head: Remember her ancestry.

  Of course. Caliste hadn’t always been a nun. She was born to the forest people, and her twin still dwelt with them. The abbess, it seemed, had access to at least a little of the knowledge that those mysterious people usually kept to themselves.

  It was not for Meggie to question the abbess’s sources, however; she had far too much respect for her to do that. And, anyway, where was the harm in telling her what she wanted to know? Meggie knew instinctively that whatever confidence she shared with Abbess Caliste was utterly safe.

  ‘I have visited the place of healing where they specialize in sickness of the mind, yes,’ she said softly. ‘It lies deep within the forest, hidden from outside eyes, and it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to find, unless you have a guide. It is called Folles Pensées.’ She was back there, in her imagination. She saw once more the circle of simple dwellings, made out of the local rosy granite; she felt the soft grass under her bare feet as she trod the forest path up to the holy fountain; felt the clear, bubbling water urging up against her outstretched hands as she plunged them below the rippling surface.

  ‘Did they teach you?’ the abbess prompted.

  ‘A little, yes,’ Meggie answered, still half in her dream memory. ‘What they tried to explain to me accorded with things I had already learned, so that it did not feel that I was starting right at the roots of it. It is, of course, a vast subject, and I was only there a short while. I … they explained how to reach inside another’s mind,’ she said in a rush, instinctively dropping to a whisper. ‘In order, you see, to understand what is amiss.’