“Did you hear anything?”
“Hear anything?” He frowned and shook his head. “I was intent on cutting some stone at the time. I do not even know what made me glance out the window. It was the sight, shortly afterward, of people running through the garden that caught my attention rather than the noise. It caused me to go to the door, and that was when I was told that Una had been killed,- that Tanai had tried to steal the reliquary and had killed her.”
“Who told you that?”
“Brother Liag.”
Fidelma looked thoughtfully at him for a while.
“Did it ever occur to you that if Tanai was going to steal the reliquary, he would hardly have waited for Una to pass by on her way to the chapel and then attempt to steal it while she was actually there?”
Duarcan stared at her as if he had difficulty following her logic.
“But, Brother Liag said…”
Fidelma raised an eyebrow.
“Yes? What did he say?”
“Well, it became common knowledge that is what happened.”
“Was it at your instigation that the statuette was placed in the chapel?”
Duarcan frowned.
“Not exactly. In those long, lonely days and nights that followed, I felt compelled to recreate her likeness in marble from fear that it would be lost in the mists of receding memories. One day, Brother Ogan, as he then was, came to my studio and saw the finished statuette. It was he who persuaded the old abbot that it should be placed in the chapel where it has stood ever since. After that, I did no more work as a stonemason nor sculptor. I now merely work in the kitchens.”
Sister Fidelma drew a deep sigh.
“I think I am beginning to understand now,” she said.
Duarcan looked at her suspiciously.
“Understand? What?”
“The cause of Una’s death and the person responsible. Where can I find Brother Liag?”
Duarcan’s face filled with surprise.
“I saw him pass on his way to the chapel a moment or so ago… Are you saying… ?”
But Fidelma was gone, hurrying toward the chapel. Inside, she saw Brother Liag talking with the abbot.
“Sister Fidelma,” Brother Liag seemed surprised to see her. “I thought that you had already started your journey back to Cashel.”
“There was some unfinished business. Just one question. Cast your mind back twenty years to the events surrounding Una and Tanafs death. There was tumult in the abbey gardens, shouting and so forth. You passed by the door of Duarcan’s studio, and he came out to see what was amiss. You told him what had happened. That Una had been killed,- that Tanai had committed the deed, and you also told him the reason—that Tanai had attempted to steal the reliquary and was prevented by Una.”
Brother Liag frowned, trying to recall, and then he slowly and reluctantly nodded.
“I seem to recollect that I did so.”
“This was before Tanai had been caught. It was a short time after the community had heard Una’s last scream, and Tanai was even then being chased across the gardens. How did you know so soon, all these details?”
Brother Liag stared at her, his face going suddenly pale.
Abbot Ogan exhaled loudly.
“Liag, did you… ?”
He left the question unfinished, for Liag was returning the abbot’s look in horror as a further recollection came to him.
Fidelma’s lips compressed for a moment in satisfaction as she turned to the abbot.
“You told Liag your version in the garden. You were heard to cry that Tanai was the murderer. Your and Liag’s versions differ so much that one of you was lying.
“The truth, Ogan, was that you were in love with Una, not Liag. When you found that Una was going away with Duarcan, that love turned to hatred. Sometimes what is thought as love is merely the desire to possess, and thus it and hate become two sides of the same coin. Was it here, in this chapel, that Una told you of her love and her decision to leave the abbey? Did you then strike her down in your jealous rage? Her scream of terror as you struck was heard by Tanaf, who came rushing into the chapel… too late. He was not running to the abbot for sanctuary, but to tell the abbot what he had seen. You raised the alarm, denouncing Tanaf as the murderer, and the first person you told was Liag. The death of both Una and Tanaf are your responsibility, Ogan.”
The abbot stood, head bowed.
When he spoke it was in a dull, expressionless tone.
“Do you not think that I haven’t wished for this moment over the years? I loved Una. Truly loved her. I was overcome with a mad rage that I instantly regretted. Once Duarcan’s statuette had been placed here, I returned each night to seek her forgiveness…”
“Your contrition could have been more readily believed had you made this confession twenty years ago. I would place yourself in the hands of Brother Liag,- prepare to answer for your crimes.”
Brother Liag was regarding the abbot in disgust.
“Some of us knew that you were secretly flagellating yourself before her statuette. Little did we realize you were merely as a dog, as the Book of Proverbs says,- a dog returning to its own vomit. There is no pity for you.”
The Country of the Blind
Doug Allyn
I’ve never much cared for my own singing. Oh, I carry a tune well enough, and my tenor won’t scare hogs from a trough, but as a minstrel, I would rate my talent as slightly above adequate. Which is a pity, since I sing for my living nowadays.
As a young soldier I sang for fun, bellowing ballads with my mates on battlements or around war fires, amusing each other and showing our bravery, though I usually sang loudest when I was most afraid.
The minstrel who taught me the finer points of the singer’s art had a truly fine voice, dark and rich as brown ale. Arnim O’Beck was no barracks room balladeer,- he was a Meistersinger, honored with a medallion by the Minstrel Guild at York.
An amiable charmer, Arnim could easily have won a permanent position in a noble house, but he preferred the itinerant life of the road, trading doggerel tunes in taverns for wine and the favors of women.
My friend ended dead in a cage of iron, dangling above the village gate of Grahmsby-on-Tweed with ravens picking his poor bones. I hadn’t bawled since my old ma died, but I shed tears for Arnim, though I knew damned well he would have laughed to see it. In truth, he ended as we’d both known he would.
But it wasn’t only for my friend that I cried. I was a soldier long years before I became a singer. Death has brushed past me many times to hack down my friends or brothers-in-arms.
I mourned them, but I never felt their passing had dimmed the light of the world. A soldier’s life counts for little, even in battle. His place in the line will be filled.
But when a minstrel like Arnim dies, we lose his voice and all the songs in his memory. And in these dark times, with the Lion-heart abroad, Prince John on his throne, and the Five Kings contending in Scotland, this sorry world needs songs to remind us of ancient honor all the more.
My friend the Meistersinger knew more ballads of love and sagas of heroes than any minstrel I’ve ever known.
But even he was not the best singer I ever heard…
I’D BEEN WAITING OUT a gray week of Scottish drizzle, singing for sausages in a God-cursed log hovel of an alehouse at the rim of the Bewcastle wastes. If the muddy little village had a name, I never heard it nor did I inquire. I was more concerned with getting out of it alive.
The tumbledown tavern had too many customers. Clearly there was no work to be found in the few seedy wattle and daub huts of the town, yet a half dozen hard-bitten road wolves were drinking ale in the corner away from the fire. They claimed to be a crew of thatchers, but their battle scars and poorly hidden dirks revealed them for what they were: soldiers who’d lost their positions. Or deserted them. Men whose only skill was killing.
Bandits.
Ordinarily, outlaws pose no problem for me. Everyone knows singers seldom have a
penny, and brigands enjoy a good song as readily as honest folk. If I culled the gallows-bait from my audiences, I’d sing to damned skimpy crowds indeed. But along the Scottish borderlands, thieves are more desperate. And as ill luck would have it, I had some money. And they knew it.
I’d earned a small purse of silver performing at a fest in the previous town. One of the border rats jostled me, purposely I think. Hearing the clink of coins, he hastily turned away. But not before I glimpsed my death in his eyes.
And so we played a game of patience, whiling away the hours, waiting for the rain to end. And with it, my life and possibly the innkeeper’s. Cutthroats like this lot would leave no witness to sing them to a gallows tree.
My best hope was sleep. Theirs. And so I strummed my lute softly, murmuring every soothing lullaby I could remember. And praying they would nod off long enough to give me a running start.
And then I heard it. I was humming a wordless tune when an angel’s voice joined my own in perfect harmony, singing high and clear as any Gregorian gelding.
Startled, I stopped playing, but the melody continued. For a moment I thought it was a voice from heaven calling me to my final journey. Then the innkeeper, a burly oaf with a black bush of a beard, cursed sharply and ended the song.
“Who was that singing?” I asked.
“My evil luck,” he groused. “A nun.”
“A nun? In this place?”
“Well, an apprentice nun anyway, a novice or whatever they’re called. There were a fire at the abbey at Lachlan Cul, twenty mile north. Most died, but one aud bitch nun stumbled here with her charge before death took her, saddling me with yon useless girl.”
“She has a wonderful voice.”
“It’s nought to me. I’ve no ear for song, and my customers don’t care much for hymns. She’s heaven’s curse on me, I swear. She’s blind, no good for work, nor much inclined to it neither.”
“Bring her out, I would like to hear her sing more.”
“Nay,” he muttered, glancing sidelong at the louts in the corner. “That’s a bad lot there. I’ll not risk harm coming to a nun under my roof. My luck’s foul enough as ‘tis.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong about those fellows,” I said a bit louder. “I have plenty of money, and they’ve not troubled me. Buy them an ale, and bring the girl out to sing for us. I’ll pay.” I tossed a coin on the counter, snapping the thieves to full alert.
The innkeeper eyed me as though I’d grown a second head, but he snatched up the coin readily enough. Brushing aside the ratty blanket that separated his quarters from the tavern, he thrust a scrawny sparrow of a girl into the room. Sixteen or so, she was clad in a grimy peasant’s shift, slender as a riding crop with a narrow face, her eyes wrapped in a gauze bandage.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Noelle,” she said, turning her face to the sound of my voice. The landlord was right to worry. She was no beauty, but she’d pass for fair with the grime wiped away.
“Noelle? You’re French?”
“No, the sisters told me I was born at Yuletide.”
“Ah, and so you were named Noelle for Christmas, and your holiday gift was your lovely voice.”
“You’re the singer, aren’t you?” she asked with surprising directness. She hadn’t the mousy manner of a nun. “What are you called?”
“Tallifer, miss. Of Shrewsbury and York,- minstrel, poet, and storyteller.”
“I’ve been listening to you. You seem to know a great many songs.”
“I’ve picked up a tune or two in my travels. Most aren’t fit for the ears of a nun, I’m afraid. Nor is it proper for you to stay at an alehouse. There is an abbey a few days to the west. I’ll escort you there if you like.”
“Hold on,” the innkeeper began, “I shan’t let—”
“Come now, friend, the girl can’t remain here, and I need a good deed to redeem my misspent life. I’ll pay for the privilege.” Pulling the purse from beneath my jerkin, I spilled the coins in a heap on the table. “Consider this as heaven’s reward for your kindness to this poor waif. Have we a bargain?”
Stunned, the innkeeper stared at me, than hastily glanced at the crew in the corner. Their eyes were locked on the silver like hounds pointing a hare.
“There’s no point in haggling,” I continued. “Search me if you like, but I haven’t one penny more. Come girl, we’d best be going.”
“But it’s still raining,” the innkeeper protested, eyeing the outlaws, afraid of being left alone with them. “Surely you’ll wait for better weather?”
“Nay, I’ve no money to pay for your hospitality now, and I wouldn’t dream of imposing further. Has she any belongings?”
“Belongings? Nay, she—”
“This will do for a cloak then,” I said, ripping the blanket from the doorway, draping it about her. Snatching up my lute, I paused at the door long enough for a ‘God bless all here,“ then I dragged the girl out into the drizzle. But after a few paces she pulled free of my grasp, whirling to face me, her narrow jaw thrust forward.
“Kill me here. Please.”
“What?”
“If you mean to dishonor me, then kill me now where I can be buried decently. Sister Adela warned me about men like you.”
“And rightly so, but I’m no one to fear. I’m old enough to be your father, girl. I was a soldier once, and I swear my oath to God I mean you no harm. Unfortunately, I can’t swear the same for that lot back there. We’ve got to get away from here and quickly, or we’ll both be dead.”
“Then stop pulling me along like a puppy. I can walk. Fetch me a slender stick.”
Cursing, I hastily cut an alder limb, and she used it as a cane to feel for obstructions in her path. Though she stumbled occasionally, she had no trouble maintaining my pace. Coltish legs, young and supple.
We marched steadily through the afternoon, moving north on a rutted cart track through the forest. Tiring as dusk approached, I began casting about for shelter.
“Why are we slowing?” Noelle asked.
“It’ll be dark soon.”
“Darkness is nothing to me. Continue on if you like.”
“No need. The rain will wash out our tracks, and they may not follow us at all. If I can find a copse of cedar—”
“That way.” She pointed off to our left. “There’s a cedar grove over there.”
She was right. Peering through the misty drizzle, I spied a stand of cedars some twenty yards off the path.
“How could you know that?”
“Scent. We’ve passed cedars several times in the last hour, though the wood around us is mostly alder, yew, and ash. Each has their own savor. Gathering osier wands for baskets was my task at the abbey. I often did it alone.”
Taking her hand, I threaded my way through the brush to a cedar copse with a soft bed of leaves beneath and heavy boughs above that kept it relatively dry. I cut a few fronds to make our beds, then used flint and steel to kindle a small fire.
Leaving Noelle to warm herself, I scouted about and found a dead ash tree with a straight limb as thick as my wrist. Twenty minutes whittling with my dirk produced a usable quarterstaff, a peasant’s pike.
Returning to the fire, I was greeted by the heavenly scent of roasting meat. Noelle was holding two thick blood sausages over the fire on the end of a stick, sizzling fat dripping into the flames.
“You came well prepared,” I observed, sliding a sausage off the spit, blowing on it til it cooled enough to chew.
“In the country of the blind, one learns to cope.”
“But surely you were well treated at the convent?”
“They were kind, but their lives were so… stifling. I was always pestering new novitiates for songs they knew and news of the outside world. Have you traveled far?”
“Too far. From London to Skye and back again many times, first as a soldier, now a singer.”
“Would you sing something for me? A song of some faraway place?”
“I
s France distant enough?” Sliding my lute from its sheepskin bag, I tuned it and began the “Song of Roland,” a war ballad from the days of mighty Charlemagne. In the streets or a stronghold, I sing it lustily, but huddled near the fire as dusk settled on the wood, I sang softly. For Noelle only.
A dozen verses into the ballad, she raised her hand.
“Stop a moment, please.” And then she sang it back to me, echoing my every word, every inflection in her crystalline angel’s voice, ending the refrain at the same place I had.
Murder Most Medieval Page 3