Caught Red-Handed

by Denise Domning

  However, neither Dickie's hair nor the flickering torch light could disguise the matting on the left side of the boy's head or his misshapen skull. Dickie may have been terrified before he died, but fear hadn't killed him. As Father Godin had said, Dickie's skull had been broken.

  "Mama!" Jilly gasped from ahead of him, then lifted her skirt to trot toward the altar.

  Only then did Faucon notice the spot of blue on the floor at the front edge of the altar dais. Juliana had tucked herself under Dickie's extended legs. She lay on the hard tile floor, her head curled tightly against her folded knees, thighs pressed to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. She looked as if she'd sought to pull herself into herself, like a turtle into its shell.

  "There you are, sir!" Edmund called at the same time. The monk yet stood beneath the bracket that held his torch. His basket of scribbling tools leaned against the wall not far from where he stood. "Have a care as you near the altar. The boy's mother grieves next to her child."

  "Brother Edmund, she's finished her grieving for the now," Will said to the monk as he walked toward the altar. He stopped at the left end of the holy table, keeping his distance from a corpse that might rise at any moment while looking at the boy's mother.

  As Jilly stopped next to Juliana, Faucon shot a confused glance at his brother, then eased around mother and child on his way to join Edmund. He would have gone farther if he could have, to grant dam and daughter their privacy.

  Untoward excitement filled the monk's face as he looked at his employer. "Shall we begin the examination of the boy's body, sir?"

  "We shall indeed, but I think we must wait until his mother has left with her kin," Faucon told his clerk.

  Edmund freed an impatient breath at that. His arms crossed, he watched as Jilly dropped to her knees beside her mother.

  "Rouse, Mama," the girl said gently as she shook Juliana by the shoulder. When there was no response the child again shook her mother. "Mama, come now. You must awaken. The little ones need you." This time Jilly's tone had more of a command to it than a plea. Again there was no reaction from the sleeping woman.

  "She's not waking," Edmund muttered irritably. He shot a look at his employer, then glanced at the torch behind and above him. "These won't last all night, sir."

  "Give me a moment," Faucon replied quietly to his clerk, then went to crouch beside Jilly.

  Even with the altar between him and the nearest torch there was enough light to let him see Juliana's face, or rather the upward half of her face. Tears had left muddy tracks through the reddish dust that coated her cheek. Faucon shook the woman by the shoulder. The eyelid he could see didn't so much as flicker.

  "Why doesn't she awaken?" Jilly cried, looking at her Crowner. Then the child dragged in a horrified breath. Her eyes widened in fear as she pressed her hands to her mouth.

  Faucon needed no words to guess where her thoughts had gone. He pressed his fingers to Juliana's throat. The woman's pulse was strong and steady.

  "I already checked," Will said from his corner of the altar at the same instant. "She only sleeps, although it's a deep sleep for certain."

  Startled that Will had cared enough to check on a distressed commoner, and even more startled that his brother might offer commentary on Juliana's state, Faucon stared at his elder sibling.

  "Sleep overtook her as swiftly as if she'd taken that potion of mine," Will was saying, his gaze on Juliana. His brother yet stood within reach of the torchlight. That was illumination enough to show Faucon that once again the Will he'd adored was here with him.

  "One moment she was weeping next to her son," his brother continued. "The next she'd fallen to the floor and curled into that knot. Fearing the worst, I went to her but her heart yet beat and she breathed easily."

  "My thanks for that," Faucon told Will, then looked at Jilly. "There is no need to worry. Your mother only sleeps."

  "But if that's so, why won't she rouse?" the child cried in worried protest.

  "Perhaps it is her grief," he said to her. "Loss can make folk do strange things, especially when the death is unexpected and fresh."

  Jilly shook her head at that. "Her grief is hardly fresh nor was Dickie's death unexpected," she again protested. "Mama has grieved and grieved for Dickie this last year, her tears never ceasing to fall. Now, at last, it's done. The thing she most feared has come to pass. She told me—"

  Jilly choked back a sob, then turned her gaze to her sleeping mother. "You promised me, Mama," she said, her voice low. "You promised that if Dickie died, you'd only feel relief, that you'd be happy to know your son was at last safe from all hurt and in our Lord's house. You said that if our Lord chose to take Dickie, you'd at last have more time for the rest of us.

  "You promised," Jilly whispered to her sleeping mother, her voice laden with pain. "You must now care for us the same way you have always cared for him."

  It wasn't the ache of losing a brother that Faucon heard in the child's voice. Instead, it was the price that Dickie had extracted from his family while he still lived that weighed so heavily on her. That was something Faucon understood well enough. From the moment not-Will had emerged from Will's unnatural sleep, Faucon's damaged brother had extracted his own dear and painful price from his family.

  On the heels of that thought came the urge to promise this innocent child that all would be well now that her half-brother was gone. He just as quickly recognized that it wasn't Jilly he wanted to assure. It was himself, or rather the boy he'd once been, the child who continued to hunker deep within him, the lad who persisted in loving his elder brother, despite how Will had sought to hurt him.

  "If you wish, you may leave her here with me for the night. I'll watch over both her and your brother. I'm certain she'll awaken come the dawn. When she does, I'll see her safely returned to you. Perhaps for just this night, you and your sister can care for the younger ones and your father?"

  The child looked up at him. Her expression had aged with his offer. "So we already do," she whispered, as her slower-moving father finally reached the altar dais.

  "She sleeps?" Waddard asked his daughter, sounding both unsurprised and as if he might fall to the floor to join his wife in deep and mindless slumber.

  "So deeply that she cannot awaken," Faucon told the man.

  "They're trying to decide what to do with their kinswoman, aren't they?" Will again interrupted. "Tell them that if they wish, I'll bear her to their home."

  His brother's unexpected show of kindness drove through Faucon like a sword. He cleared the pain from his heart as he cleared his throat. "I'll tell them."

  To Waddard he said, "Sir William offers to carry your wife to your house if you wish."

  The potter scrubbed his free hand across his brow, then shook his head. "She'd never forgive me if I moved her before she was ready to leave him. That boy was her life," he muttered.

  Then Waddard looked at Will. "Thank you for your offer, sir, but nay. She'll stay and grieve beside her child until she's ready to return to us."

  Will looked from the potter to his brother, waiting for a translation.

  "He thanks you, but says that she should stay here with her son until she awakens," Faucon said.

  Jilly dragged in another ragged breath, then came to her feet. She offered Will an awkward bob, then looked at Faucon. "Tell the knight that we thank him, but it's better for us if our mother stays here. If she were unable to awaken at home, it might frighten the little ones."

  Faucon nodded, then looked at Will. "The child also thanks you for your offer."

  Will started to nod but flinched instead. He brought his hand to his temple, pressing his fingers to the side of his head for a moment. When he let his hand fall back to his side and again looked at Faucon, not-Will had returned.

  "Then it seems you've no more need of me here. I think I'll return to the priest's house and see if I can hurry our meal," he said flatly, then pivoted toward the sacristy door. He shot through it so fast that the door bounced in i
ts frame as it fell shut behind him.

  Faucon looked back at Jilly. The child had blinked her tears from her eyes. "You vow to keep her safe tonight?" she begged her Crowner softly.

  "I so vow," he promised.

  "Then it's right that she stays here with Dickie," she replied, her voice still trembling.

  Coming to her feet, she went to join her father. "You see, Papa? I told you to let me come here by myself," she said, the tearful child replaced by a sad and sober woman. "Now you've come all this way only to turn and walk all the way home with no rest between. The morrow will see you aching all the worse for it."

  Without a glance at her dead half-brother, Jilly started back down the shadowy aisle toward the door, leaving her father to hobble along behind her.

  Faucon came to his feet and watched as father and daughter departed. Jilly's odd behavior nipped at him. Here was yet another unfathomable oddity in a day that had been beyond strange, a girl child who moved through the world with less fear than her father. Then again, having a crippled, fearful sire and a dam obsessed with her only son had likely forced the girl to mature beyond her years.

  As for Jilly's bold manner and hard words, that was something Faucon understood all too well. They were the iron from which Jilly had forged her shield, the one she used to protect herself from the many hurts her kin dealt her. Had not he done the same after not-Will appeared out of Will's body and their father had chosen to make him into a knight rather than a monk? However, he'd used the pretense of patience and calm to protect himself from a jealous, half-crazed sibling determined to abuse him. Faucon sent a quick prayer after the girl as Jilly left the church, that their Lord might one day grant her some profit from her pain, just as He had done for Faucon. It had been Faucon's years of pretending patience over Will that had won him the attention of his great-uncle Bishop William, and his new position as Coronarius.

  "Sir, the boy's body?" Brother Edmund prodded from behind him.

  That brought Faucon around to face the altar and Dickie's corpse. Edmund had moved the candle to the dais floor not far from Dickie's presently frozen hip. Faucon stared at the tall, thick candle in surprise. The series of red lines scored precisely along its length said that this was a timekeeper, a candle for which wick and wax had been carefully weighed so that it would burn for a specific number of hours. Such candles were most common in large convents, where the brothers or sisters needed to know when during the night to sing masses for Matins, Lauds, and Prime. However, such holy houses were also places where there were generally more than a few treasure chests that overflowed with silver. Who in Mancetter could afford to purchase such a candle for their priest, and why, when the folk refused to visit their church at night?

  "It won't be easy to see his body around his clothing, not with how he is at the moment," Edmund was saying from where he knelt next to the boy. "I suppose it's a good thing, then, that he isn't wearing much."

  The monk's comment yanked Faucon's attention away from the candle and onto the dead boy in front of him. For the first time he looked at the corpse as he would have any other, as a Crowner should. Dickie was dressed only in his chausses, braies, and shirt.

  Where was the boy's tunic? Where was his cloak, or whatever he used as an outer garment? God help Dickie, but there were no shoes on his feet! Indecent soul that boy may have been, but he wasn't the poorest of the poor. Only they went out on a cold night during Advent without shoes, and then only because they had no other choice.

  Edmund lifted the candle and brushed Dickie's hair aside to better examine the boy's neck. Faucon dropped to one knee next to Juliana, intending to examine the damage done to Dickie's head. But then the monk ran his fingers around the neckline of Dickie's shirt, prying it away from the boy's cold skin. Dried blood flaked from flesh and fabric, spattering onto the altar dais, the floor, and the yet-sleeping Juliana.

  "Wait," Faucon said to Edmund. "This is only going to worsen as we continue to examine him. Let me move him away from his mother."

  Rising, he took the boy by his bare ankles and pulled the rigid body down the dais. Then shifting Dickie so his damaged temple faced outward, Faucon held the corpse steady and nodded to Edmund. "Now pull his shirt free."

  Once the monk finished loosening the blood-crusted linen from the boy's back, Edmund set the candle on the altar above the body. Pulling the neck of the shirt open as far as he could, Faucon's clerk came to his knees and sought to peer down the boy's spine. Edmund shifted this way then that, and even sidled a little. But no matter which way he moved, his shadow followed, standing between him and what he wanted to see.

  With an irritated sound, Faucon's clerk sat back on his heels and looked at his employer. "His rigidity makes this so much more difficult. The best I can do is free his shirt from his back. The position of his arms will continue to hold the fabric pinned to his sides. It matters not how I move, I will never be able to see anything well enough to note what might be significant and what is merely a mole or blood. I think we have no choice but to cut away his garments."

  The monk's words stirred a strange thought, one Faucon would never have imagined he might entertain until today. "Brother, do those tales of yours explain how a corpse in Dickie's present state can stand and move on its own?"

  Edmund's mouth opened. He stared wide-eyed at Faucon for a breath, then pinched his lips shut. Turning his gaze back onto the dead boy, he studied Dickie for a long moment. When he again looked at his employer, dismay twisted his expression.

  "What an arrogant fool I am. Mea culpa, sir. I have led you astray. This boy won't walk tonight. Look at him! How can he walk? Why did I not realize that before I assured you that such a thing was possible?"

  Faucon swallowed his urge to laugh out loud. It was beyond belief that he and a man educated in the world's premier university, a monk who was a master of his art, could be discussing the probability— or improbability— of a corpse walking. That had him wishing he'd known to present this same question to the monk who'd introduced him to the process of sic et non while he'd still been at his monastery school. Such a question employed in that otherwise rote back and forth might have captured his interest enough to have made the idea of studying logic appealing.

  "Brother Edmund, you know far more than I about this subject, but I have to wonder," Faucon said. "If the Evil One has the power to make any corpse walk, then perhaps he can also animate the yet-stiffened dead by way of the same foul magic that he uses on the long dead."

  The dismay softened out of Edmund's expression. His lips shifted into the tight curve that served as his smile. "As always, you see where I forget to look. I learn so much from you," he said quietly.

  Faucon blinked in abject surprise. An unbelievable day for certain. "I learn far more from you, Brother. I am always grateful to have you at my side."

  The monk's lips quirked upward. "Not so much a penance, I think," he whispered with a nod, then rose to his feet. "Well then, unless you have a knife at hand smaller than your sword, I'd best fetch my basket and find my pen knife."

  "Use your pen knife, Brother," Faucon replied with a smile. "I'm not willing to give you my eating knife for this task."

  Within moments Faucon and his clerk had moved Dickie to the back wall of the church, directly beneath the image of their Savior in His extremis, where the light from both torches pooled. Fabric whirred as Edmund's keen-edged blade cut through the boy's blood-fouled garments. Once Dickie was bare, Edmund began his examination anew.

  As the monk studied the flesh on Dickie's back, Faucon crouched next to the boy's legs and pulled Dickie's hair back from his blood-smeared face. No wonder the lad had caught the eye of a pretty lass like Tibby. Dickie had been handsome, with a broad brow, a long, straight nose, and full lips. His chin was dimpled and his jaw was square, or rather it had been square until one side had been broken.

  Faucon then shifted from side to side in his crouch, his mail tunic rattling lightly against the tiles as he moved. It made no difference
from which angle he considered the dead boy's face. There was nothing of terror or horror in Dickie's expression. All Faucon saw was the flattened emptiness common to the newly dead, albeit half-hidden under the smeared gore of a violent attack. That had Faucon wondering if— as often as he now confronted death— he no longer saw the dead the same way others did.

  Easing back to sit on his heel, Faucon turned his attention to the left side of the boy's head and the wound that had released Dickie's soul from his body. He pried away the boy's blood-matted hair until he could see Dickie's temple, where the skull had been shattered. Using a finger, Faucon traced the unnatural and broken hollow. There were at least three overlapping, circular ridges. Whatever tool or weapon had been used to kill the boy had either a circular face or base.

  He stored that thought with the rest of his pieces, then closed his eyes and again traced the topmost of the circles. As his finger mapped out the shape, his mind's eye offered him the image of a wooden staff, the sort a commoner might use to defend himself. Then again, it might be the head of a small hammer, the sort every smith kept in his smithy.

  Eyes still closed, he again explored the shape. This time his finger found something that he didn't immediately recognize. He ran his fingertip over it again. Something soft rolled free of the broken bone and dried blood. Catching it between his finger and thumb, he brought it out to where the light was stronger and peered at the wisp. It was a bit of thread, whether wool or flax he couldn't tell. Uncertain what that meant, Faucon let the bit of thread fall from his fingers as he continued exploring the area of shattered bone. This time, he thought he felt the crisscross pattern of woven cloth.