The Final Toll

by Denise Domning

  "My ladies," Faucon said, addressing all the gentlewomen at the table, "may I present Brother Colin, a lay brother and herbalist from the abbey of Saint Peter in Stanrudde. I requested he visit, hoping he might be able to identify the illness that took Sir Robert's life."

  Colin shot Faucon a startled look. As well he might, since he had already identified the cause of the man's death. Faucon offered a tiny shake of his head, warning the monk to silence. With a lift of his brows and an equally tiny nod, Colin agreed.

  Although the mention of her father's death made tears glisten briefly in Lady Bagot's eyes, her voice remained steady as she again spoke in Idonea's stead. "Well come to Offord, Brother," she said. "Would that you had might have visited two days ago. Perhaps you might have recognized what affected my sire on that night and known how to save him."

  Colin gave a quick bend of his head. "My lady, your grief is mine," he replied. "I will add your father to my prayers." His offer won a trembling smile from Sir Robert's mourning daughter.

  Unable to avoid his seat any longer, Faucon made his way behind Lady Offord's chair to where Lady Helena sat. As he went, he gave thanks that this was the morning meal, the one meal that didn't require him to play the swain. "Good morrow, Lady Helena," he said in greeting as he took his seat next to her.

  Bright color stained the girl's face. When their gazes met, she gasped and swiftly bowed her head. "Good morrow to you, Sir Faucon," she whispered.

  Faucon looked beyond her to Idonea. "And to you as well, Lady Offord."

  Although her injured eye was yet swollen, Idonea was no longer the beaten child of yesterday. She offered him a quick smile, then stifled another giggle behind her hand as her one-sided gaze shifted from him to Helena. "And to you, sir," she replied, ever-so-politely.

  Lady Bagot touched her stepmother's arm, drawing the girl's attention. "Ask if one of the brothers might lead us in prayer," she instructed at a whisper, and with that the meal began.

  Served with fresh bread and the same soft cheese that Sir Luc had enjoyed, the potage proved to be as tasty as Faucon had hoped, and Helena as well-behaved as she had seemed yesterday. Although Lady Bagot more than once reminded her daughter to be a good seatmate, Helena managed to choke out only a few questions. Faucon suspected she was as relieved as he when the maids came to clear away all trace of their meal.

  "It has been my pleasure to share this seat with you, my lady," Faucon said to her as he rose, offering the required phrase and bow.

  This time, Helena's face lost all color. For an instant he worried she might swoon. She caught a deep breath and came back to herself. "As it has been my pleasure to share it with you, sir," she replied, reciting her own required rote phrase.

  His duty as a guest complete, Faucon gratefully retreated to stand behind the monks. While Edmund, who had eaten sparingly and said nothing, sat hunched unhappily at the end of his bench, Brother Colin looked very much at ease. Colin's mastery of the Norman tongue and the way he balanced the conversation between the two gentlewomen suggested that the former apothecary had interacted frequently— and successfully— with his betters during his years as a tradesman.

  "Thank you, my ladies," Colin said with a nod as he came to his feet. "Your company has brightened an old man's day. Now if you will excuse? It seems our new Crowner—" he used the English word— "has need of me."

  "Crowner?" Lady Bagot said in surprise. "What is Crowner?"

  "It is the word the commoners use for my title. They find it more pleasing to their tongues than Coronarius or Keeper of the Pleas," Faucon explained, then looked at Idonea. "Lady Offord, would you like Brother Colin to examine your bruises and your swollen hands while he is here?"

  "If he pleases," Idonea replied, her voice more alive than Faucon had heard it since he arrived. But then, Colin had asked her to describe her life in the great town of London, something it seemed not even her husband had asked of her.

  "Come into the light, so I can better see you," Colin said, leading Idonea to the fire. Both Faucon and Lady Bagot followed, Lady Joia moving close to her stepmother as if to chaperone. Turning the widow until she best caught the light from the shifting flames, Colin studied her face.

  "I have a salve with me today that will serve for both the bruise and your eye," he said, then raised his hand to touch the tail of the sheer wimple that covered her shorn head. "Do you often fever?"

  "Not of late. My mother has said that I may once again allow my hair to grow," Lady Offord replied shyly, repeating what she'd already told her Crowner.

  The monk then took her hands into his and ran his thumbs gently over her swollen knuckles. That drew a pained gasp from her. He turned her hands palms up in his. The skin on her palms was flushed and red. He gave a 'tsk' and a shake of his head. "You ache all the time, poor thing," Colin said to her, speaking in English this time.

  "I do," Idonea replied in the same tongue, her voice trembling. "But lately my belly swells and aches even worse than my fingers and knees."

  "As would happen, given your affliction," the healer agreed with a nod. "You suffer from an excess of cold and wet humors, and too much water, hence your distended belly," Colin told her, then paused. "And so it will always be for you, I fear."

  Idonea freed a little squeak at that, and pulled her hands from his to fold them anxiously in front of her. "That's what our apothecary in London told Mama, but she swore he was wrong. She promised that my health would improve once I gave birth to a child, because she said that was what happened to her."

  "I pray that your mother is correct," Colin replied, regret still filling his voice, "but know that this is not what happens for most who suffer as you do, my lady. You should prepare yourself for the possibility this ailment will always be your cross to bear."

  "What are you saying?" Lady Bagot almost demanded, glancing from the English lay brother to the tradesman's daughter. "I cannot understand you."

  "Please, Brother. You must be wrong," Idonea begged, speaking over her stepdaughter. She put one hand on her swollen abdomen. "Are you certain this is bloat? Perhaps I am with child?"

  "Idonea," Lady Bagot said more forcefully. "In my tongue if you please. You as well, brother."

  Colin nodded to Lady Joia. "When was the last time you had your woman's flow?" he asked Lady Offord in French.

  Idonea gasped at the question, one more usually asked by a mother or a midwife, not a monk. Color flooded her face. She bowed her head, her hands again folded tightly in front of her. "It arrived four days ago," the widow whispered, still speaking English.

  "And the last time you lay with your husband?" Colin even more boldly inquired.

  "Not since we arrived at Offord," Sir Robert's wife again whispered in her native tongue.

  Stunned, Faucon stared at the widow, wondering if she was lying. What man married a woman to get an heir then didn't bed her?

  Colin glanced at his Crowner, then shook his head at Idonea. "If that's so, then you cannot be with child," he said told her gently.

  Idonea freed a quiet moan. A tear escaped her uninjured eye. "But I so wanted to be! I want to be hale and whole. I am tired of always being ill," she whimpered, at last reverting to French.

  "Take heart, my lady," Colin offered swiftly. "Who's to say what sweetness our Lord holds in store for your future? Although I cannot banish your ailment, I do know treatments that can offer relief. Do you use anything now, anything that works well for you?"

  Everything about Idonea said she wanted to run, to be as far from this place and the fate Colin had laid upon her as she could get. Her lips still trembling, she said, "I do have something, but lately it helps only a little. I keep it in Sir Robert's chamber, in his chest. Shall I bring it for you to see?"

  Colin offered a smile and a nod. "That would be helpful, my lady."

  "I'll fetch it then," the widow said, already turning toward the tower wall.

  Her stepdaughter caught her by the arm. "I've told you before, you mustn't do these things for
yourself," Lady Bagot warned, her voice low. "Command a maid to go in your stead."

  Idonea shook off her stepdaughter's restraining hand. "Leave me be, Joia. I have to get it because I keep it in Sir Robert's locked chest and they aren't allowed to open that," she cried, tears of disappointment already staining her face.

  As she turned to limp as quickly as she could toward the tower door, Lady Bagot freed a frustrated breath. "Commoner!" she muttered after her father's widow.

  "Lady Bagot!" a maid cried as she jogged around the screen, then trotted toward the hearth. "My lady, Sir Adam returns and has brought Prior Thierry with him. Take heed," she added breathlessly as she stopped across the fire from them. "All is not well with Sir Adam," she offered, her voice low.

  Lady Bagot groaned at that. Faucon drew a bracing breath. All was not well with Sir Adam, and Will had returned.

  An instant later Sir Adam, his cloak sodden and his rusty hair dripping where it escaped his brown cap, rounded the wooden panel. Everything about the knight suggested that he raged as hotly now as when he'd left Offord. Following him was a tall, broad-shouldered man who looked more baron than Churchman.

  Rather than a habit, the prior wore a thick dark blue woolen cloak, its hood thrown back, atop a well-made short, green tunic and chausses of the same color. The hem of his tunic was decorated with a thick band of embroidery, from which silver and gold threads gleamed. His nose was narrow, his cheekbones high and his jaw clean-shaven. His only nod to his holy vows was the tonsure carved out of his thick steel-gray hair. And, just like Sir Adam, the prior's expression said he raged. His jaw was tight and his dark eyes narrowed beneath heavy, grayed brows.

  Neither man carried a bell in his hands.

  More shuffling than walking, Will brought up the rear of this discontented party. He moved slowly, his head lowered and his shoulders hunched. As he reached the bench closest to the door, he dropped to sit, then buried his face in his hands.

  Faucon watched in horror. God help them both! Will's head ached.

  "Where is our bell?" Lady Joia asked her husband as he stopped across the hearthstone from her.

  Her worried question freed what little control Sir Adam exercised over his rage. "He claims he doesn't have it," he roared, venting what consumed him on all their ears. "We didn't believe him when he told us this, so we searched every corner and crevice of that place and found nothing! That's when I demanded that he," the jerk of his thumb indicated Prior Thierry, who came to a stop next to him, "put his hand on that reliquary of his and swear on the saint's bones that he didn't have our bell."

  "He, he, he!" Prior Thierry snarled, glaring at the knight. "You speak as if I don't stand right here. Take heed! God will punish you for your effrontery!" His accent confirmed that he was from across the Channel. "How dare any of you accuse me, one of our Lord's servants, of theft! How dare you drag me here to speak to—" The Churchman's gaze shifted from the knight and his lady, across the two monks until it came to rest on Faucon.

  "You?" he demanded. "Are you this Coronarius, who goes about the countryside accusing innocent Churchmen of burglary?"

  "Sir Faucon de Ramis, Keeper of the Pleas for this shire," Faucon offered in introduction. "You are mistaken; I have accused no Churchmen of burglary. However it is my duty to identify those in this shire who have committed burglary, murder, and rape. Have you?"

  The prior frowned in confusion. "Have I what?"

  "Committed burglary, murder, or rape?" Faucon asked without inflection or emotion.

  Ruddy color stained the Churchman's lean cheeks as his eyes widened. "I have not," he spat out. "But even if I had taken that bell, I would have committed no crime, nor any sin. The bell belongs to Mother Church. It is blasphemy that it was ever in Sir Robert's hands! So I told Sir Robert when he first showed it to me and so I say to you now. Sir Robert understood. He vowed to return it to me. He confirmed that promise on his deathbed."

  "With what tongue?" Lady Bagot shot back, as bold in addressing a Churchman as she was monks or her Crowner. "He could no longer speak by the time you arrived."

  The prior turned his raging gaze on Lady Bagot. "Lying daughter of Eve," he accused. "You were there! You saw. He needed no tongue. He nodded when I asked him if he still wished to give me his bell."

  "That's not what you asked him," Sir Adam shouted. "You asked if he wished to be alone with you! And he didn't nod, he but blinked his eyes."

  "In agreement," the prior snapped back.

  Lady Bagot spoke over him, her voice rising with every word. "And then you forced us to leave. You locked us out, separating me from my father, leaving him to suffer alone until his last breaths," she wailed, emptying her aching heart on the one who had done wrong.

  Her grief had no effect on the prior. "If you do not make right where your sire has sinned, your father will burn for all eternity," he threatened. "What was taken from our Church must be returned to her!"

  "Enough!" Faucon shouted, holding up his hands in a plea for peace. "Enough, all of you," he said more quietly when he had their attention.

  "Sir Adam," he said, looking at the knight, "if Prior Thierry has sworn on holy relics that he doesn't have your bell, then he doesn't have your bell. Surely, you can see that."

  "But—" Sir Adam started to argue.

  "Let me speak," Faucon insisted, then looked at the Churchman. "Father Prior, I have not accused you of theft because I do not believe you took Sir Robert's bell. However I do believe you entered his chamber the night he died intending to take it. Now, tell me true. What did you see when you used the key to open the bell box?"

  His jaw tight in refusal, the well-dressed Churchman said nothing.

  Brother Edmund came to his feet. "Father Prior, you are a foreigner here and may not understand," Faucon's clerk said. "By royal decree, if Sir Faucon questions you, you must answer, and do so honestly."

  "I am not bound by your laws or to your king," the Churchman retorted.

  "And I am no Churchman to pronounce sin," Faucon replied just as sharply. "I deal in the law of our land. Our law does not find wrong when no wrong was done. You don't have the bell, so you couldn't have taken it. Now, tell me true. The coffer was empty when you opened it, wasn't it?"

  The prior freed a harsh breath, then gave a single sharp nod. "When I opened the lock, I found the coffer empty."

  Lady Bagot freed a horrified cry, the force of her reaction driving her back a step. When she collided with Brother Colin, she dropped to sit on the edge of the hearth, gasping for breath.

  "That cannot be," Sir Adam cried in panic as his wife broke into noisy sobs. "This man has to have the bell. If he doesn't have it, that can only mean he's given it to another with a command to keep it hidden from us. Or he's already spirited it out of our land! Keeper, you must command him to tell us who has our bell!"

  "Think about that night, Sir Adam," Faucon said, with little hope the knight could actually be brought to reasonable thought. "How could Prior Thierry have taken the bell out of Sir Robert's chamber without someone here at Offord noticing? Where could the prior have hidden it in Sir Robert's chamber that you couldn't have seen it while you and he knelt at the dying man's bedside?"

  Sir Adam shook his head. "There could be places," he started.

  Faucon spoke over him. "But how could you not notice him retrieve the bell when it came time for him to leave? How could he have taken it out of that hiding spot while you watched? You and your wife were both in Sir Robert's bedchamber with him."

  The knight's jaw tightened at this. "Then he must have hidden the bell on his person while he was alone with Robert," he insisted stubbornly.

  "Could he have?" Faucon asked, glancing at Eustace. Unlike the rest of Offord's servants who had swiftly and quietly disappeared upon Sir Adam's angry arrival, the bailiff had remained at the table next to Alf. Both men were watching what went forward with undisguised interest.

  "I'm told that all of you prayed together for a goodly while after Sir Robert's de
mise," Faucon continued, watching Sir Adam. "Could the prior have hidden the bell in his clothing and you not notice a bulge? Could he have knelt, bent in prayer, arisen and walked, and that bell not have shifted to reveal itself or sounded as he moved?"

  "But he has to have it," Sir Adam cried as if his heart were as broken as his wife's. He fell to sit on the edge of the hearthstone across the flames from Lady Joia. His head drooped and his shoulders slumped. "He has to have it," he repeated quietly, his tone pained.

  "So Coronarius, since you're convinced I don't have the bell, who does?" Prior Thierry demanded.

  "I don't know," Faucon admitted. "I'm not yet convinced that it was stolen. It was Sir Adam who believed you had the bell."

  The prior sneered. "Of course he did. But now you have heard my tale and you also know how these—" His lips drew back from his teeth as he glanced from the defeated Sir Adam to the knight's grieving wife— "people have profaned a holy relic. As you search, you will remember that this bell belongs to our Church, not to them. And when you find it, you will return it to its true owner," the Churchman warned more than requested.

  It was Edmund who replied. "Father Prior, Sir Faucon cannot declare in a matter of disputed ownership. His only powers are first to command the inquest jury to accuse the thief then to assess the accused man's estate on our king's behalf. If God is good, perhaps Sir Faucon will find this bell. But know this. If he does, he has no choice but to return it to the one who made the complaint of burglary. Did you make such a complaint?" the monk then asked, his tone making it clear the question was rhetorical.

  Prior Thierry shifted the full force of his attention on Edmund. "Brother, this is a sanctus bell. Although ancient, it was anointed and blessed. A holy object does not belong in the hands of the impious. If you, an avowed monk, do not claim it on behalf of our Mother Church, if you allow the unholy to keep what belongs to our Lord, you betray your vow to God and his Church."

  Brother Edmund did not flinch under the assault of a superior. "You are correct, Father Prior. A sacred artifact should not be held by anyone save those bound to our Lord. But Sir Faucon is not a representative of our Father in Rome. He is a servant of the English king. He cannot help you in this matter. Instead, if you have not already done so, you should make your complaint to your bishop or our papal emissary."