Ironfoot

by Dave Duncan

  Udela was concentrating on William.

  Huh?

  “I need a word with you,” Matilda announced, heading for the ladder. “It will be more private up here. I will call for you when I am ready.”

  Udela examined the oak bench with disapproval. Then she sat on it and folded her hands demurely in her lap. William stepped in front of her, so I could not see either’s face, but I suspected that they were exchanging smiles.

  I was not so innocent that I didn’t suspect what was about to happen; I just couldn’t believe it, that was all. The grimoires and my satchel I removed and put away in the secret closet.

  “I am ready, Saxon!”

  William looked around in surprise, then up at the hatch. His eyes widened and turned in my direction. They asked, “What are you waiting for?”

  “I will call you if I need your assistance,” I told him. I did not expect to. I headed quickly for the ladder.

  I was not totally naïve. Even then I was a sinner, and partly because nowhere in Helmdon had offered such privacy as my hayloft. In the previous three or four years more than one country lass had slipped into the academy’s stable to visit with the young servitor. I was going to be very surprised now if a medical consultation was the only reason that I was being honored by the baroness’s visit.

  But why would a young beauty of the Norman nobility waste her charms on me? She was betrothed to be married within days and she could not be carrying a child, or even believing herself to be doing so, unless she already had a lover. If she wanted a last promiscuous fling before her marriage, why not a bittersweet farewell with him? Could she really be so wanton as to risk her future for a fleeting moment’s pleasure with a transient Saxon servant?

  Then my head rose above the trap and I almost fell off the ladder. She had closed the shutters for privacy, but they still let in enough light to show her leaning against a bedpost, toying with one of her long flaxen braids and watching my emergence with amusement. She was draped in one of the sheer scarlet webs from the closet, which hid absolutely nothing.

  I laid my cane on the floor, closed the hatch, and then stood up to study her. “My lady, I have done nothing to deserve this honor.”

  “Then you will have to earn it with due diligence during the rest of the afternoon.”

  I limped closer. She was exposing her body to a man she barely knew, and yet she seemed entirely at ease. Her eyes were lustrous, her lashes had been darkened, her lips dyed with madder root. Her breasts were larger than I would have guessed, her waist more slender, and she showed no signs of having once given birth.

  I was trembling. “This is not a necessary part of the procedure to abort a child.” Burbling idiot!

  “Of course not. Quite the reverse. But no matter what you eventually get around to doing, you can’t put another one in me, so why don’t you get started? Or are you going to stand there all day drooling, you uncouth Saxon lout?”

  Ever since Eve, women have been temptresses, as the Church teaches us. What man could resist? I was twenty years old and didn’t even try.

  I took the neck band of her drapery with both hands and ripped it apart to her waist, then pushed the remains off her shoulders to let it fall around her ankles. She reacted with a twitch of surprise and perhaps even fear. Apparently being totally naked was different from being just totally exposed to view; and I, of course, was showing off my strength.

  “I have dreamed of you like this for years,” I said. Except that her name in my dreams had been Edla. “You are lovelier than the Romans’ Venus, or Helen of Troy.” Then I pulled her hard against me and kissed her, long and fierce.

  “Oh!” she said when we parted. “Never mind the fancy talk. Take off your clothes.” She sank back on top of the bed covers, not under them.

  I stripped in a fumbling rush and joined her. Her lovemaking was quite unlike that of the hesitant girls of Helmdon, who had mostly exhausted their store of courage just by coming to visit me in the dark. Matilda demanded things and did things I had never even heard men brag of, until at last I could hold back no longer and insisted on my release. She cried out shamelessly a few times, but I suspected she was feigning.

  As we lay there entwined, breathing hard and damp from our exertions, she murmured, “That was quite good, but far too short. Soon you will do it again, and take much longer, understood?”

  “My pleasure, Your Ladyship, and I hope also yours.” What a day! First the successful incantation, then the priest’s arrival and confession, then the oath to the king and money to secure my future as a sage, and now a voluptuous Norman baroness in my bed. Any moment I would wake up and it would still be yesterday.

  At that point we were both lying on our backs. She turned to me, squirming voluptuously against me. I rolled on my side to face her and clasp her breast.

  That move saved my life, because my other arm was in the way, so I slid it up under the pillow. I found the knife there, just before her hand reached it. She clasped my wrist, but I was stronger than she was. She clawed at my eyes, and I grabbed that wrist and rolled my weight on top of her, keeping my crotch away from any attempt to knee me.

  Two naked bodies with the man on top—it should have been sexual but it was a life and death contest.

  We were nose to nose. She bared her teeth in fury.

  I stared in horror at her eyes. The pearly gray irises had shrunk to tiny rims around gigantic black pupils. They had not been like that when she came to the sanctum, but she would have applied the belladonne just before setting out to visit me, because it blinds you in bright daylight and takes a little while to act.

  “You meant to kill me!”

  She smiled and squirmed like a cat. “Nonsense. I’ve got to marry a hateful old prune. I just came here for a good, hard fucking while I still have the chance. Do it again. Longer and harder this time.”

  “Fucking with an uncouth Saxon lout?”

  “You’re going away soon, where you can’t gossip to the rest of the churls. Besides, you have a rank male smell that intrigues me.”

  “So why the dagger under the pillow?”

  “I don’t know. Do you always keep one there? Maybe it’s Archibald’s?”

  “It wasn’t there this morning. Where did you get the belladonne?”

  Again she smiled and squirmed sensually like a purring cat. “You like it? One of Sage Archibald’s spells. He began by dipping a feather into a bottle and putting a drop of the liquid in each of my eyes. Then he put black stuff on my lashes with another feather, and finally he brought me up here and made me strip so he could dress me in that shameless red thing. By then I realized that he was not procuring a miscarriage, he was adding a baroness to his jousting score.”

  “And afterwards he gave you a bottle of that eye tincture?”

  She kissed the end of my nose and squirmed again. “No. He did give me some of the inky stuff he had used on my lashes, but he said the pupil stuff was much too poisonous to let loose, it could kill people.” She smiled—in anyone but a beautiful noblewoman that smile would have been called a smirk. “Do you think it improves my appearance?”

  “No. I think you are as beautiful as humanly possible just the way the Lord made you. But you had to put up with Archibald’s attentions more than once?”

  “‘Put up with’ is a bit harsh. He was a lot more adept at fornication than you are, Adept Durwin, in spite of your title, although he was flabby where you are all-over solid, so you are more exciting. But when his enchantment produced no results, I realized that he had tricked me. I couldn’t put up with that.”

  Now I knew why she had come calling. It wasn’t lust that had brought her, although she might think so; it was Malefice venite. She had resisted longer than Father Randolf, that was all.

  “So it was you who poisoned him?”

  She shrugged. “Not personally. I came here for a second ‘treatment’ as soon as Wacian and his men had delivered the new wine. I warned Udela to make careful note of which bottle he
ld the eye tincture, and while Archibald was busy bedding me up here, she drank a few swallows from his wine ration and topped it up with some of the tincture. When he finished his supposed enchantment, we dressed and went downstairs, and he insisted on some refreshment. Of course I declined to join him. I knew he would happily finish it himself.”

  “And you took the wine bottle away when you left?”

  “Oh no! He was already suspicious of the taste. If the bottle had disappeared he would have guessed that we had tampered with it. Perhaps he drank more of it. An hour or so later he collapsed at dinner. Very dramatic of him, but I felt I had upheld my honor.”

  She had relaxed her hands, releasing her grip on my wrist, but continuing her seductive squirming, trying to lull me into releasing her. She was utterly crazy, a total lunatic. Was her story the truth, or a delusion, or just more of her perverted sex play?

  “Then how did you get the tincture to make your eyes shine today?”

  She laughed. “Udela again. After she’d doped the wine, she put the tincture bottle outside the door. She didn’t have to go outside and risk the hex to come back in, just opened it a crack. When we left we took it away with us. There’s still quite a lot left.”

  I shivered. If this madwoman was telling the truth she was a completely merciless and unrepentant killer in possession of enough poison to kill several more people. I could think of no way to get it away from her. This couldn’t be true—it mustn’t be true!

  “Father Randolf told us that he committed that murder.”

  “He is a sweetie. He loves me madly, poor man.”

  But she didn’t love him; she didn’t love anyone.

  “It was Father Randolf you thought had gotten you with child?” Why else would the priest have taken the blame, except to defend a lover?

  “Of course. It was sweet of him to shield me, but he’s always been crazy about me. I let him take my virginity when I was thirteen.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Older, of course. It was just before he was to take his vows, and he begged me so nicely. Said it was his last chance! But when my husband died I came back here. . . . He was so handsome!”

  Handsome was as handsome did. “So Randolf did kill Colby?”

  She sighed. “Yes, that one was Randy’s doing. Even as a child he always had a terrible temper, and that snotty little turd had been spying on us! He came to Randy asking for money, threatening to tell the count. Randy flew into a rage. He was very upset about it afterwards, I assure you; terribly upset.”

  “I am relieved to hear that.” I pulled away and sat up, holding the dagger well away from her, and crossing my mismatched legs. “Sorry or not, killing a boy just to hide a secret love affair is too extreme for my taste. Surely the count would have just had the kid whipped and sent home?”

  Matilda sniggered and tried to grab at my privates. I struck her hand away and jumped off the bed, moving back out of reach.

  She sat up also. “Are you so shocked, boy? If I am so terribly depraved, you can copulate with me without feeling in the least guilty. It’s all my fault. I lured you into it. Again, please?”

  No doubt I should feel guilty, but mostly I felt soiled. “Which of you killed Sage Rolf?”

  “That was Randy. He was furious at me for disposing of Archibald. He said the count would send for another sage, who would be able to track down the killer when he got here. And when he heard that Father had summoned Uncle Rolf, he was even more agitated. But he did absolve me, so I won’t go to Hell.”

  Randolf had confessed to a murder he had not committed because he couldn’t be punished any more for three than he would be for two. But I had lied to the count and my king. I had won royal favor under false pretenses. As I stood, still clutching Matilda’s dagger and enduring her mocking stare, I realized that I couldn’t admit to my mistake now. I had no evidence except her confession, which she would deny, and the fact that she had answered my Malefice venite summons—and we had promptly jumped into bed together. How would the sheriff interpret that testimony?

  I stretched up as high as I could and slammed the dagger into a beam, so that it stuck there, out of her reach. “Get dressed!”

  “Oh, I can’t see with the potion in my eyes. You have to help me.”

  “Get Udela to help you.” I began sorting out my own clothes.

  Matilda stretched out her arms in supplication. “Lover, lover! Come back to me. I need you. Besides, if I know Udela, she’s probably still busy with that squire of yours. At his age they can usually keep going for hours. Longer than you did, certainly.”

  I hobbled over to the hatch and opened it. I heard nothing and did not look down to see what was happening. Scowling, Matilda began fumbling with her clothes.

  I let my attention wander for an instant; she leaped off the bed and jumped up to grab the dagger. Her weight pulled it free, but she stumbled as she came down, and that gave me time to snatch up my oaken cane.

  “Drop it!” I said. “Or I’ll break your arm.”

  For a moment we had a face-off. I took a step forward and she must have seen that I meant what I said, and then we might both face ruin. However much my account would be believed or disbelieved, her betrothal would end as suddenly as it had begun. She threw down the dagger and shouted a few curses at me. Her invective vocabulary was limited.

  By the time I was dressed and had started to descend, Udela and William were sitting side by side on the bench. She looked more rumpled than he did, although his hair was a bramble bush. But they were respectably clothed.

  No one said a word until the women had left.

  chapter 35

  william closed the door with a long sigh. “You were very quickly satisfied,” he said regretfully. “I was hoping for a lot more.”

  I was flopped down on a stool with my face in my hands. My pride had blinded me, and I had mistakenly lied to my liege the king! I had taken royal money under false pretenses. To announce the true story now was unthinkable because no one would believe it. Matilda would deny it and even if she didn’t, no one would take a woman’s word over a priest’s. I was a fraud and a perjurer. If I sought out a confessor, I might be told to put the king’s money in the poor box. I knew I couldn’t bear to do that, and it would still leave the murderess at large and unpunished.

  “You were far too quick,” William grumbled again.

  Grunt.

  “That Udela is no chicken, but she’s still a really hot trollop. How was the baroness floozy?”

  Another grunt. I could see no way to bring Matilda to justice.

  After a moment I heard a peculiar noise, then another. I looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  “It hurts,” he mumbled. He was rocking on the stool, hugging himself.

  William complaining of pain? “What hurts?”

  “My ribs, when I laugh.” He made another spluttering, choking sound. “Did you put a piglet in the baronial sty, you suppose?”

  “No chance. She’s probably got one in there already.” That was a breach of confidence, but in my present mood I didn’t care.

  “She has? Eeeey! Oh . . .” The squire hugged himself harder and made whimpering sounds, rocking in apparent agony.

  “What is so accursed funny?”

  “You are,” William gasped. “You have just been sarding my future stepmother and by rights I should kill you for it. Now you tell me I’m to have a ready-made baby sister? God’s blood! That’s the funniest . . . thing I . . . oh, mercy, Lord, spare me!”

  For a moment I could only sit there aghast. Kendryck had said that Matilda’s betrothed was newly promoted to the barony of Weldon, a title William had never heard of before. Matilda had referred to her fiancé as William. Guy had named William’s father as Sir William Legier, who had four sons. William himself had never withdrawn his threat to beat me to a pulp. Many men would say he now had cause to do so.

  “Oh, William! I didn’t know!”

  He looked up with tears running down his swoll
en cheeks. “I didn’t see him when he was here yesterday, remember? I just heard his name at dinner today. Now you say she’s already baking the wedding . . . cake. . . . Ooooh, saints have pity, my ribs!”

  William had surprised me many, many times, but never more than then. “You’re not mad at me?”

  “No, no! I’m delighted you put horns on the old lecher. I wish I could have done it myself. You think I’ll get the chance if we stay here a couple of days?”

  “I’m sure you won’t. If she were spreading her favors widely, everyone would know it in a place this size. She had only one lover. She came here to knife me and avenge him.”

  “Oh, that was why you were shouting at her up there? Udela and I wondered what games you were playing.”

  “You’d better warn your father,” I said, even as I realized how very unlikely it was that the old man would believe the story.

  More painful efforts not to laugh. “Oh, I will. But not until he’s safely married.”

  For a moment I wrestled with my conscience and my honor as a sage, and in the end friendship won.

  “Jade isn’t all she is, William.”

  He caught control of his mirth and nodded. “She was the one who saw Archibald off?”

  “So she claims, but remember that the priest said he did.”

  “He couldn’t have. He wasn’t here. The wine was delivered that morning, but Randolf had gone to Northampton to visit his uncle the bishop on Sunday, and didn’t get back until just before Monday dinner.”

  Oh, sweet Jesus! Of course that was true. Why had I not seen that? Kendryck hadn’t mentioned a day, but he had complained about the priest’s grumbling all the way to Northampton and back, and earlier he had said that he missed that meal. Of course the priest would have dismounted close to the keep, but the knights of his escort would have taken the horses to the stable, and would have stayed there to give them their rubdowns if the hands had already taken off to dinner. Horses were close to sacred to those who fought. Randolf had met Archibald and taken him in to the meal, but Kendryck had not made it in time.