Cathedral of Bones

by J G Lewis

  “What about my cow?” The man looked at his impassive beast.

  “Bring her,” said Ela. Another guard took her husband by the arm. He looked like he wanted to protest, then apparently thought better of it. Slimy yellow egg hung in his blonde hair.

  Ela hated to return to the castle that she’d just left to get away from De Burgh, but her duty to peace and justice in Salisbury superseded her personal concerns.

  They entered the castle, and she instructed a groom to take the cow and bed it in the stables temporarily. She was tempted to buy the beast—which was a likely looking dairy cow with good udders—just to eliminate it as a problem, but she didn’t want to be seen haggling with a man who might be a murder suspect in a few moments. The cow could be dealt with later.

  Normally she’d have them brought into the hall, but a short spell in the castle’s lightless dungeon might make them more biddable—and give De Burgh time to make himself scarce. “Put them down below. I’ll talk to them in half an hour.”

  First she was going to the chapel to resolve another matter.

  Chapter 8

  In the quiet sanctity of the castle’s small chapel, Ela pulled out her rosary and said a few decades to clear her mind and invite the Holy Spirit into her heart. Her breathing eased as she murmured the familiar words under her breath.

  The burial, a visit by the foul De Burgh, and then having to lay down the law in the marketplace had rattled her. She’d been tempted to yell at the woman to be quiet, which would make her no better than the red-faced harridan and would excite the tongues of all Salisbury.

  She needed to remind herself that she was here to represent God’s peace on earth, not exert her own authority over all around her. That would be the difference between her and so many other sheriffs, lords, barons and other men in a position of authority.

  When in doubt, stop and listen to God’s word.

  Easier done in a nunnery, to be sure, but she’d have that luxury later on in her life, God willing. She’d pleaded with her husband to heed her advice on many occasions, when his words and actions seemed prompted more by excitement and ire than common sense or piety. She was getting firsthand experience of how challenging it could be to exercise authority and be humble at the same time.

  No wonder Richard Poore struggled with arrogance and puffery despite being one of God’s bishops.

  Ela chastised herself for thinking about the irritating Poore when she’d come in here to cleanse her own mind and heart. It was God’s business to judge men like Poore and De Burgh, who were out of her jurisdiction. And indeed God might prefer Poore’s grand new cathedral in its quiet and well-watered plain to the old cathedral on the castle mound, buffeted by winds and surrounded by rowdy soldiers.

  When she’d quieted her thoughts and strengthened her resolve, she rose from her knees and headed back into the fray. She knew from the burning of the candles that about half an hour had passed, long enough for the coroner and the jurors she’d summoned to arrive, so they could attend when she questioned the unhappy couple downstairs in the castle dungeon.

  “The men are waiting in the hall, my lady,” said Deschamps, who hovered outside the chapel door. So, he was back. How long had he been standing there?

  “Thank you for bringing them here. Have the two prisoners brought up to the hall for questioning.” De Burgh and his entourage were nowhere to be seen, thanks be to God.

  She sent Sibel to make sure the male prisoner was cleaned of as much egg as possible before entering the hall. She didn’t want a spectacle that would make her children titter with laughter. “Isabella, could you take your brothers and sisters outside for a while? Perhaps you can find bluebells to gather.” It would be good practice since she’d soon be shepherding her own brood.

  Isabella rounded up her younger siblings with a rather sullen expression and headed for the doors with the dogs leaping at their heels. Ela climbed up onto the platform and arranged her skirts in the chair as the guards ushered the man and his wife—redder in the face than ever—in front of her.

  “Hold your tongue, woman,” hissed the man as they approached.

  “I’ll hold your tongue, you rogue!”

  “Silence!” cried Ela, more shrilly than she would have hoped. “Or I’ll have you both clapped in the stocks.” She waited for them to be obedient for a moment, then said, “Tell me your names.”

  “I’m John Brice,” the man said so quietly she could barely hear him. “And this is my wife, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie looked like she wanted to argue, but to Ela’s relief she held her tongue.

  “Is Katherine Morse the dead woman you spoke of earlier?”

  “Aye. Brazen hussy! A married woman.” She sucked her tongue in a noise of disgust. The man started to mutter something, but Ela held up her hand to silence him.

  “And what makes you suspect your husband was with her?”

  “He knew her from when she worked at the dairy. Used to drive our cows there morning and night just to see her.”

  “I drove the cows there to get them milked,” he protested.

  “Oh yes? Then how come you had me do it before she turned up there?”

  “You were pregnant and needed to rest at home.”

  “I were pregnant with my fourth child, not half dead!” Her voice rose to a squeal. “While she worked at the dairy he couldn’t head there fast enough or return home slow enough. Then when she left to marry, he found other ways to see her.”

  “What other ways?” Ela wondered how long this woman had known her husband was committing adultery. And why she hadn’t made a hue and cry about it before.

  “Fussing over errands to and from the dairy, in hope of running into her while she was there doing her husband’s business—bringing the cows in for milking and all—then sneaking off with her and doing only God knows what.”

  Ela turned to the husband. “Are you the father of Katherine Morse’s baby?”

  “You son of a she-wolf!” The woman raised her arms as if to beat him, and the man cowered as if expecting to be beaten.

  “Silence!” yelled Ela, loud enough to startle the old, half-blind hound by the fire into a volley of barking that reverberated off the high stone walls. “Do not speak unless you are spoken to.”

  The two jurors gathered behind them, with Deschamps standing off to one side. It was as important to maintain her authority in front of them as with the miserable man and wife in front of her.

  “I repeat,” she said, daring him to lie to her, “were you the father of Katherine Morse’s baby?”

  He stood for a second in apparently stunned silence, then started to blubber. “I didn’t kill her.”

  Ela wished she had some eggs to throw at him. “I didn’t ask you if you killed her. Did you tup her?” Her crude language cut right to the point.

  She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed and fidgeted. He glanced at his wife and flinched. Apparently even her gaze could rain blows on him.

  “The Lord is your witness,” said Ela, praying to keep her wits about her and not be overwhelmed by exasperation. “He knows and sees all. Will you lie and condemn yourself to eternal damnation?”

  She knew plenty of men would and did.

  “I did—know Katherine.” His face was pale and the words barely audible.

  “Know her? You lay with her and—” His wife’s voice rose in the air.

  “Silence!” Ela’s voice cracked. Putting this woman in the stocks grew more tempting with each word that left her mouth. But she knew the pain and shame of learning that your husband stayed with other women and that half the world knew about it before you did.

  Ela looked directly at her husband. “When did you last see Katherine Morse?”

  “More than a month ago. When I didn’t see her at the dairy for a full week, I went to her house looking for her on the pretext of buying a milking stool. But she weren’t there and her husband slammed the door in my face.”

  “Did he know you were the ma
n she—lay with?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. He’d have likely tried to kill me if he did.”

  Brice was also painting Katherine’s husband as a potential killer. Which might be his intention.

  “Did Katherine ever tell you her husband beat her?”

  “Aye, she did. She sometimes had bruises from where he cuffed her or knocked her to the floor.”

  Ela felt emotion rise inside her. She regretted not bringing Alan Morse to the castle for questioning and vowed to send guards out to bring him back before dark.

  Then she realized that this man in front of her had, if anything, more motive to kill Katie Morse than her husband did. She had been about to give birth to his bastard child, which would cause no end of trouble for him if her husband refused to claim it as his and she wound up on his doorstep seeking money or shelter.

  “Did her husband seem concerned about her disappearance?”

  “I can’t say, as I didn’t directly ask about her. She’d told me many times he were a violent man. I just hoped to catch a glimpse of her and satisfy myself he hadn’t killed her. I could see from the doorway that there were no sign of a woman’s presence in the cottage that day. The fire weren’t tended, dirty dishes on the table, the hearth and floor unswept—”

  “But he shoved you out of the house? Why would he chase you away if you came there on an innocent errand?” Something about his story didn’t add up for her.

  “Perhaps he didn’t want anyone to know she were gone.”

  Ela hesitated. If Alan was in fact innocent, and wondering where his straying wife spent her nights, he might be hoping she’d come back and he could save face by not letting on that she ever left.

  But if he’d killed her? Might he hope to conceal her absence and pretend she was still alive? That didn’t make sense with her being in the river. A man wishing to pretend his wife was still alive would bury her somewhere she’d never be found.

  Ela needed time to think. “Do the jurors have questions for this man and this woman?”

  “Aye.” Thomas Pryce, the thatcher, shuffled forward. He was the oldest of the jurors and his two sons did most of the work on the village roofs these days. “Mistress Brice, you’re a strong woman, with a muscled back and arms.”

  Elizabeth Brice cocked her chin. “Aye, and you would be too, doing three-quarters of the work on the farm as well as raising your children.” She shot her husband a dirty look.

  “Strong enough, perhaps, to take the life of a young woman who threatened your marriage and family?”

  “Never!” She exploded, her face growing bright red. “I never killed no one in my life!”

  “Have you ever killed and dressed a sheep or pig or goat?” Thomas Pryce was calm as if he inquired about her laundry.

  “Well, aye, of course I have. I’m a farmer’s wife. We all have to eat, don’t we?”

  Thomas Pryce looked at Ela. “It’s a possibility worth considering.”

  Ela nodded. Elizabeth Brice certainly had a temper, and sometimes—or even most times—a murder was the result of a fit of rage. Lizzie Brice was as tall as most men and broader than her own husband. Katie Morse was tall but slight of build and lacking muscle. She probably couldn’t have fought off an assault from the older, stronger woman.

  She heard a sigh escape her chest. Now she had three suspects, Alan Morse for killing the wife who made him a cuckold, John Brice for killing the girl who threatened his marriage by bearing a child who’d soon be living proof of his infidelity and now Elizabeth Brice, who had motive as much as they did.

  Woman don’t kill with violence. The words echoed in her mind, and she tried to remember where she’d heard them. Her husband, perhaps, while sitting in judgment on a case? She searched her brain and remembered the case of a woman accused of killing her husband over a purse of silver left to her by her father that he’d spent on drink. William had judged that the man was killed by one of the drinking cronies who helped him waste her silver. Women were more inclined to subtle crimes like slipping poison into a man’s pottage.

  Was De Burgh still somewhere in the castle? He’d committed such a womanly crime against her husband and she imagined for a moment that she might accuse him of such in front of all gathered here.

  A flight of fancy. She had to keep her silence and protect her children. And he was nowhere to be seen. Something, at least, to be grateful for.

  “More questions?” She knew that each of these jurors had years of experience considering cases and studying their fellow men and women. They lived among the common people, not in the relatively sheltered enclosure of the castle walls, so they were privy to knowledge of human nature that she couldn’t claim.

  “Master Brice, did you know Katie Morse was with child?” Giles Haughton asked the question, stepping forward and pinning him with a steady gaze.

  Brice hesitated, perhaps wondering how deep in trouble a lie would get him. “Yes.” He snuck a glance at his wife, who huffed indignantly.

  “And you knew it was your child?”

  Brice stared down at the worn toes of his leather boots. “She said it were. I knew she didn’t have any children by her husband. But a man never knows for sure, does he?” He raised his eyes and met the coroner’s stare.

  They’d never know whose baby it was now. The two men looked different enough that a living child might have inadvertently pointed to its true father. Morse was big and burly with dark eyes and graying black hair, whereas Brice was fair, of slender build and had light eyes like Katie.

  “How did you come to have an affair with Katherine Morse?” Ela asked the crude question baldly. “How did it start?” She wanted to gain a sense of Brice’s character. Right now he seemed the least likely murderer of the three, but appearances were often deceptive.

  “Like I said earlier, I drove the cows to the dairy to be milked.” He glanced at his wife. “Sometimes my wife would drive them and sometimes I would. Katie always had a kind word and a smile.”

  “So Katie knew you were married?”

  “I don’t doubt it, though we never spoke of it. I married young, and I’d been married for eight years by then.”

  His wife shook her head as if she rued the day. Ela had a gut feeling that Lizzie Brice had orchestrated their entire marriage from the first glance to the marriage rites. She seemed a far stronger character than her husband.

  “I didn’t get much in the way of kind words or warm smiles in my home.” He spoke quietly, with a sly glance at his wife.

  Ela liked him less every minute. If a man wasn’t happy with his home life it was his business to fix it, not whine about in front of the sheriff and jurors.

  “I found my heart warming to Katie, and as time went by I looked forward to seeing her.”

  “Would you say she flirted with you?” cut in Stephen Hale, the cordwainer.

  Ela shot Hale a look. She couldn’t see how the question was relevant.

  “Oh, aye. She acted like she were in love with me. She weren’t married at the time, of course.”

  “And you encouraged her, despite knowing that you were a married man?” Ela spoke sharply.

  “To my shame, I did.” He had the decency to hang his head a little. Ela wished she’d left the egg on his face. He deserved it.

  “When did you first lay with her?” Ela was glad her children hadn’t returned to the hall.

  “Not that year. Not until about two years later. I wanted to but she didn’t. She were looking to catch a husband not a lover.”

  “So you didn’t begin your affair until she was already a married woman?”

  “Aye. She didn’t work at the dairy anymore, but now, as a farmer’s wife, she brought her cows in the morning and evening to milk, much as I did.” He hesitated and licked his lips. “And my wife were in confinement and I had opportunity to meet and talk with Katie while our cows were being milked.”

  His wife’s hands knotted into her apron, and if steam could have poured from her ears and billowed h
er veil out sideways, Ela was sure it would have.

  “One day we agreed to meet in a copse between our two farms while her husband was at market and my wife was busy tending to the children. After that we met more often but never very regular. She were unhappy in her marriage. Her husband were rough and cold and—” He glanced at his wife and the look she gave him silenced him.

  “Thank you, Master Brice.” He was weak, lascivious and ungodly, but that hardly made him a ruthless killer. She could half see what Katie might have seen in him. With his boyish features, soft speech and blonde curls he presented a stark contrast to her brutish husband. “That answers my first question. My next one concerns the last time you saw Katherine Morse.”

  She stared hard at him, again daring him to fabricate a lie. If he was the killer he’d have last seen her disappearing beneath the cold dark water of the Avon.

  “It were some months ago. Before Advent. Once Katie realized she were pregnant she didn’t dare risk meeting me. She were afraid her husband would kill her once he found out she were pregnant.”

  “Did her husband know she was expecting?”

  “Not at that time, at least I don’t think so, but he was bound to realize sooner or later, wasn’t he? Later I wondered if she might have wanted to get pregnant by me since her husband couldn’t get her with child.”

  Ela felt the hairs on the back of her neck prick up. “You think she might have used you just to get with child?”

  Brice stared at her. “I thought she were fond of me.”

  “Do you still think that?” He might have motive for murder if he were a jealous spurned lover, furious that Katie had left him to go back to being faithful to her husband.

  He shrugged. “I think she fancied me. She flirted with me before she was married, after all. If I hadn’t been married myself, perhaps things might have been different.”