01 - Murder in the Holy City

by Simon Beaufort

  Geoffrey froze as Roger lifted his head from the pillow.

  “I feel awful,” the burly knight slurred. He raised himself a little higher. “What is happening? What is all that noise?”

  “A fight,” said Geoffrey tersely. “I am leaving.”

  “Wait for me. God’s blood!”

  Geoffrey watched as Roger came face to face with the body of Eveline. The Englishman started violently, and his big brown eyes widened in horror. Slowly, he reached out a hand and touched her on the shoulder, as though she might waken if he shook her. Then he snatched his hand away, lurched from the bed, and was violently sick. Geoffrey was impressed. It was quite a performance from a hardened killer.

  Eventually, Roger turned to look at Geoffrey, his face ashen.

  “What happened?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Who did this to her?”

  “It looks very much as though you did,” responded Geoffrey coolly.

  “Me?” said Roger. “I barely remember coming here.” He gestured helplessly. “I do not even have my dagger—I left it downstairs as instructed by her. By Eveline.” He looked at the dead woman again, his face a mask of pity.

  “Are you saying someone waited until you fell asleep, and then murdered your whore?” asked Geoffrey incredulously.

  Roger nodded. “I hope you believe me.” He grinned weakly, but the smile faded as his eyes fell again on Eveline. “Oh God, Geoffrey! Who would do this?” He looked up at Geoffrey, still standing in the door. “You do not believe me, do you?”

  He looked so hurt that Geoffrey was cut to the quick. He remembered Abdul, struck by someone coming up the back stairs as he was returning from showing Roger to his room. Was Roger innocent? Could the scenario Geoffrey had outlined with such sarcasm actually have occurred? Eveline had demanded that Roger leave his dagger behind. Was that because she was already nervous about him? Or had she been so instructed by whoever wanted Roger found in these compromising circumstances?

  There was shouting in the corridor now. Any moment, someone would burst in and find them. Roger might not have a dagger to implicate him in Eveline’s murder, but Geoffrey certainly did, and he was not going to wait around to be caught in the net that was tightening around Roger.

  He went to the window and saw that it overlooked a narrow alleyway. He dashed over to the bed and grabbed Eveline’s arm, gesturing for Roger to take the other one. He did not relish what he was about to do, but the shouts and crashes from outside were coming closer by the moment, and he was running low on ideas.

  “Drop her out of the window.”

  “What?” Roger was aghast. “Are you insane? Whatever for? That is desecration! You can go to hell for that!”

  “Just do it,” grunted Geoffrey, as he struggled to manhandle the limp body to the window alone.

  Roger stood in front of him. “I will not let you do this,” he said quietly. “It is not right.”

  “Listen,” snapped Geoffrey, pausing in his battle with the whore’s body. “Did you kill her?” Roger shook his head. “Well, you will hang for it unless you take steps to prevent it. We have very little time. I propose we get Eveline out of this room and abandon her on the street somewhere. Then it will be assumed that she died during the fighting. If we leave her here, then Abdul will say, quite truthfully, that you were her last client, and you will be blamed, innocent or otherwise. Eveline is quite dead. Whatever we do now cannot hurt her. Help me drop her out of the window.”

  Ashen-faced, Roger complied, turning quickly and covering his face with his meaty hands as a soggy thump came from below. He moved toward a jug of wine that stood on the table, and poured himself a goblet with shaking hands. Geoffrey knocked it away and shoved him toward the window.

  “Roger! There is no time for that. Quick! Jump!”

  As Roger walked morosely to the window, Geoffrey gathered the bloodstained sheets into a bundle. He noticed wine on his sleeve where it had spilled as he had knocked it from Roger’s hand, and saw that the stain was surrounded by a fine white residue. But there was no time for speculation, and Geoffrey pushed past Roger to throw the covers into the street below. The big knight clambered inelegantly out of the window and let himself fall, and Geoffrey glanced quickly around the room. There was nothing to indicate that a violent death had occurred. Roger had no knife with him, and there was not one in the room. Unless he had had the foresight to hurl it out of the window, there was a possibility that he was telling the truth, and the whole episode was some bizarre plot to land him in a horribly compromising position. But why? Was it Melisende, realising that Roger was a dangerous ally and that she would be safer without him?

  There was a heavy thump on the door, and Geoffrey saw the thin wood bow inward. Any moment now, the men outside would enter, and if Roger truly were innocent, then they would know exactly what they would find, and they would pretend to be aghast at the sight that confronted them. Geoffrey considered remaining, so that he could see who burst through the door. But he had visions of Roger being discovered under the window clutching the body of Eveline, and decided against it.

  He scrambled onto the windowsill and let himself fall, landing lightly on his feet and rolling to one side. Roger stood immobile, and Geoffrey had to punch him hard on the arm to get him to pick up the body and walk with it, while Geoffrey carried the covers rolled into a ball. They kept to the shadows. He was aware that the door to Roger’s room had been smashed open, and that someone was looking out of the window into the alley below. They did not have much time.

  “I will create a diversion,” he whispered. “You must use it to dump Eveline’s body in the road and escape. You must not be seen. Can you do it?”

  Roger was grey with shock. He stared dumbly at Geoffrey, who began to wonder if he was capable of doing anything at all.

  “Roger! Can you do it?”

  “I did not kill her, Geoffrey!”

  “I know,” Geoffrey lied. “But we can discuss it later. Now we must act. For Heaven’s sake, man! Pull yourself together! This is not the first time you have encountered violent death.”

  “It is the first time I have encountered it in my bed!” muttered Roger. “I feel sick.”

  Geoffrey was heartily wishing he had left while he had had the chance. Now, here he was helping a man—of whose innocence he was by no means certain—to escape justice. He looked down the alleyway and wondered if he should run and leave Roger to sort out his own muddle.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Roger seemed to have pulled himself together somewhat. Geoffrey peered into his face and saw a resolution there that had been missing before. Perhaps Roger would manage after all.

  “I am going to set fire to that stable over there …”

  “What about the horses?” interrupted Roger in horror. A knight was of no use without his mount, and like all Normans, Roger had a healthy respect for horses.

  “They will be fine. When you hear the alarm, dump the body in the road, and go straight to the citadel. You must not wait for me, or you might be caught. Your best chance to escape all this is to be as far away as possible.”

  Roger nodded understanding, his usual bumptious bonhomie gone. Geoffrey had never seen him so morose, and he wondered if that was how all murderers acted within moments of their crime.

  While Roger watched from the shadows, a pathetic, hulking figure in a shabby surcoat and an incongruous pale blue brothel shirt, Geoffrey made his way across the street toward the stables. The main road outside Abdul’s Palace was now a seething mass of fighting men, some armoured, others not; some using swords, others daggers. Geoffrey watched curiously for a moment, wondering how the noisy but amicable evening could have erupted so quickly into violence. There were more knights than the thirty he had seen earlier, and he imagined a rowdy group of Lorrainers must have entered and picked a fight with the Normans already there.

  He reached the stable unnoticed and slipped inside to the warm smell of damp hay and manure. A horse snickered at him,
shifting uneasily in the straw, and Geoffrey patted its nose to soothe it. Like Roger, he was fond of horses, and he would certainly avoid roasting the beasts alive. A quick survey told him that there were only three of them—two destriers that probably belonged to knights intending to spend the night at Abdul’s, and an ancient nag with sad eyes.

  The destriers were restless, made nervous by the commotion outside. Geoffrey slipped the bolts on their stalls and began to kindle a fire in some lose straw. As the fire caught and white smoke poured out, he pushed the bundle of bloodstained covers on top and watched them smoulder. As the acrid stench of burning filled the stable, the horses began to panic, kicking back against the stall doors. Finding themselves unexpectedly free, the destriers bolted out, crashing among the fighting men and adding to the havoc. Nonchalantly, and with admirable panache, the nag followed, backing sedately out of its stall, and even finding time to snatch a mouthful of hay before ambling at a leisurely pace into the road, and heading not for the fighting, but for the freedom of the city streets.

  By now, Geoffrey’s fire was well under way, and the stable was filling with a choking smoke. Geoffrey’s eyes smarted as he kicked the burning hay to make it burn faster. He turned to leave just as the stable door slammed firmly shut. He was not overly concerned, imagining the wind had caught it—until he heard the sound of a bar being dropped into place on the other side. He gazed at it in disbelief, before beginning to yell at the top of his lungs and hurling himself against it with all his might. It held fast. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and he dropped to his knees to inhale the clearer air near the floor. As he knelt, he glimpsed a flutter of material caught against the door at waist level. It looked like material from a knight’s surcoat, torn when someone had leaned his weight against the heavy doors to close them. Behind him, a timber post, well and truly alight, crashed down in a shower of sparks, and he had to hurl himself backward to avoid being hit. It fell sideways, blocking the door. Geoffrey regarded it in dismay. He would certainly not be leaving the burning stable that way!

  The burning post set more hay alight, and the flames began to roar and crackle. Geoffrey could not have put it out now, even had he tried. The release of the horses must have alerted someone that mischief was afoot, and the door had been closed on the arsonist as a kind of instant revenge. Or was it more sinister than that? Was the person who trapped him in the burning building Melisende, or one of the Greeks she had ordered to follow him?

  He coughed hard, his lungs rebelling against the choking fumes he was inhaling. A distant part of his mind told him that the identity of the person responsible for locking him in the stable really did not matter much, and that he would be better served seeking another way out. The stable was a small building, low and single-storied. He tried to focus his smarting eyes on the roof, but it was dense with smoke, and the stillness of the fumes indicated that there were no gaps to the outside that he could exploit. He tried to stand to grope his way round to the back of the stalls, but he became dizzy through lack of air and dropped back onto his hands and knees.

  Slowly, becoming weaker by the moment, he crawled along the floor until he reached the back wall. He hammered half-heartedly, but the wood was solid. He moved on further, hoping to find a gap, or even some kind of door. Just as he was beginning to despair and to feel it might be easier to give up, his fumbling fingers detected an irregularity in the wood. It felt as though one of the planks had rotted, and rather than go to the expense of replacing it, someone had simply nailed another over the top. If he could prise the new plank away, he might be able to break through the rotten wood and escape.

  But whoever had nailed the plank in place had done a thorough job, and after several abortive attempts, Geoffrey knew he would not be able to get it off. Above him, the roof began to burn, flames running in ribbons up the timbers to the dried mud roof. Another supporting pole crashed to the floor, showering Geoffrey with sparks, and he saw his surcoat began to smoulder. Now he could barely breathe at all, and his head swam. As another pillar began to collapse with a tearing groan, darkness descended over him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Through a hazy blackness, Geoffrey heard the screech of tearing wood, and then felt himself seized by the shoulders, and manhandled through a hole in the wall, the ragged edges of which ripped at his hands and face. He was dragged away from the searing heat and found himself breathing cool, clean air. As he gasped for breath and fought to open his eyes, which still burned and stung, he was heaved like a sack along a dark alley and over a wall.

  Gradually, he regained his senses. His breathing ceased to rasp, his eyes cleared, and the acid, sick feeling in his stomach caused by the smoke receded. He opened his eyes and saw the explosion of glittering stars in the night sky, blocked immediately by a large, anxious face.

  “Roger!” he croaked. “You should be in the citadel.”

  “I know how you like a fire of an evening, and I thought you might get carried away,” said Roger. But although he smiled, the humour did not reach his eyes. Roger looked like a man who had been on a battlefield.

  “What happened?” asked Geoffrey, struggling to sit up. Roger helped him.

  “I did as you asked, and poor Eveline now lies in the street. I even took the knife of the knight who lay next to her, and plunged it into her wound. So people will now assume that Sir Henri d’Aumale killed her.”

  “D’Aumale is dead?” asked Geoffrey, his mind whirling.

  “I could not tell,” said Roger, “but he was unconscious at any rate. I am not surprised that those Lorrainers are involved in all this. And I would not be surprised if it were them who killed Eveline in the first place.”

  Was that it? Was Geoffrey making a mistake in assuming all these incidents were connected? Perhaps this was merely the latest step in the war of attrition the Norman knights had waged with the Lorrainers since the Crusaders had taken the citadel a year before. Geoffrey took a deep breath and coughed violently.

  “Shh,” said Roger, looking over his shoulder. “We are in someone’s garden, and we do not want them raising the alarm.”

  “Sorry,” said Geoffrey. “What happened then? Did anyone see you?”

  Roger shook his head. “Two destriers came thundering down the road, and since they were loose and unmarked, they were considered fair game. Most of the knights went tearing after them, and those who did not were watching the fire. Then there was some kind of hubbub at Abdul’s, and everyone who was left went racing back inside. I thought I would wait for you, since the streets had emptied and there was no hue and cry raised for us. But then I saw an odd thing.”

  He paused. Geoffrey waited until he thought Roger had forgotten what he was going to say. “What did you see?” he prompted.

  Roger gazed at him sombrely. “When all those knights ran into Abdul’s, one went instead to the stables. Smoke was pouring out of the door, and I wondered whether you might emerge and bump into him. But you did not come out, and I saw him heave the doors closed. At first, I assumed he was trying to contain the fire, but then I saw him bar them.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  Roger continued to gaze. “It was smoky and dark. But he looked very familiar.”

  “Who?” demanded Geoffrey impatiently.

  Roger shook his head uncertainly. “I cannot swear to it, lad, but I thought it was Courrances.”

  Geoffrey said nothing, but looked at the piece of material he still clutched in his hand: the scrap of cloth that had ripped from a surcoat when someone had leaned against the rough wood of the heavy doors to force them closed. It was an expensive black linen and still clean, even after what it had been through. Geoffrey knew of only one person whose surcoat was black and spotless, and that was Courrances.

  He told Roger, and the big knight blew out his cheeks unhappily. “Looks like he does not want you to investigate after all,” he said. “Despite having gloated at the position you were in a few days ago.”

  “Perhaps he did not know th
ere was anyone still in the stables,” said Geoffrey uncertainly.

  Roger raised his eyebrows. “Maybe. But it was pretty damned obvious the fire was started deliberately, especially since someone had taken the trouble to let the horses out first. He may not have known it was you, of course. Maybe he just does not like arsonists.”

  Geoffrey rubbed his eyes, feeling them gritty and sore under his fingers. He wondered when he had last felt so physically and emotionally battered, and slowly climbed to his feet. He wished he could awaken in the morning and find all his suspicions were just dreams, and he could go back to his position of trust with Roger. But even as the wish flitted through his mind, he knew it could never be fulfilled; from now on, he must regard Roger with as much caution as he did Courrances.

  “When Courrances had gone, I went to undo the gates, but they had jammed from the inside,” continued Roger, solicitously slipping a burly arm under Geoffrey’s elbow. “I assumed you would be looking for another exit, and came across that weak spot at the back. It was getting unpleasant, with smoke pouring off the roof, and sparks everywhere, but then I thought I heard a scratching sound above all that cracking and roaring. I battered the wall in, and you were just inside.”

  “I was lucky you thought to look round the back,” said Geoffrey, trying to clean his begrimed face on his sleeve.

  “I know how you think,” said Roger with a sudden grin. “Friends do after a while.”

  Geoffrey felt an uncomfortable twinge of guilt.

  “We cannot return to the citadel looking like this,” he said brusquely, sniffing cautiously at the acrid burning smell that pervaded his clothes. “It might give us away.”

  “I know a bathhouse round here that is reasonably clean,” volunteered Roger.