Aye, and Judgment Day was coming sooner than Odger expected. Those the bailiff ruled already resented him at least as much as they feared him. Faucon suspected that once their lady's purse had been lightened because her chosen headman had made so costly a misstep, she'd find it inconvenient to keep Odger as her bailiff. Just as Amelyn had fallen, so would her persecutor.
"Well done, Brother Edmund," he said to his clerk, grinning, "and know that I am grateful to have you at my side as an advisor."
Astonishment darted through the monk's dark eyes. His mouth opened as if he meant to speak, but words apparently failed him. In the next instant, he managed a nod then returned abruptly to his feet to once more step back as if promising to interrupt no more.
Amelyn lifted Jessimond's corpse from her lap and laid her daughter onto the damp and yet green sod in front of her. "Sir, if as you say, it's yours to discover who stole the life from my precious child, then I beg you to do so. Do it not only for our king, but for me. I can bear no more grief in my life. I need to not only know who killed my Jessimond, but why. Aye, and I pray you find a way to see that the one who took her life will face earthly justice for his crime as well as whatever punishment our Lord may choose to mete out."
"It shall be done," Faucon promised easily. Her goal was his. "But if I am to succeed at the task you set me, you must answer my questions honestly."
Reaching out, he traced a fist-shaped mark that discolored the area near the girl's shoulder. The color of these bruises suggested Jessimond had taken the beating a day or so before she disappeared. Odger wasn't the only one here in Wike who deserved heavenly justice for earthly wrongdoing. Meg had no right to use fists in her punishments, not when Church law stated that beatings were only to be administered with a stick no thicker than a man's thumb.
Looking up at Amelyn, he asked gently, "Who warned you to come to the well so you might say a final farewell to your daughter? Who told you that your child had thrown herself into its depths to end her life?"
The leper straightened as if startled. Her head began to move toward Hew, but she caught herself. Bringing her gaze back to center, she aimed her attention at her lap.
Too little, too late. Faucon eyed the rustic as Hew moved back a step or two to once more lean against the well's surround. The old man met his Crowner's gaze, but the only thing to be read in his wrinkled face was the flat blankness that those who served adopted when confronted by their masters.
"No one, I but assumed," Amelyn began, then her words faltered into silence.
She drew herself up. Her shoulders squared. Her hands closed.
Faucon fought a smile. Here was a woman unaccustomed to dealing in falsehoods. With every line of her body Amelyn proclaimed her intention to lie. And in doing so, she would repeat what had happened at the manor door all those years ago. Once again, she courted her own pain to protect another.
"No one told me," she began again. "What else could I think when I saw Jessimond on the ground here at the well? I knew Meg, knew that she was never shy to lift a hand. I believed that her beatings had finally driven my sweet child to seek her own death." Every word rang hollowly.
Faucon cocked his head as he considered how best to drive a grieving mother into revealing the truth. "Tell me this, then. By my estimate, it's a two-day walk from Warwick to the bounds of Feckenham Forest. Two days was your child missing, or so said your bailiff when he met me in Studley and so your bakestress repeated not long ago. Yet it was only on this day, the morning of the third day, that Gawne roused all and sundry with the call that Jessimond was in the well. Who told you to return to Wike at this precise hour?"
Then he added the most important question of all. "And how is it that you know the recent doings of your former home as if you'd never left this place?"
She gasped. Her mouth opened and closed as if she tried to speak, but no words fell from her lips. Still and silent, Faucon kept his eyes aimed at her. Shifting uncomfortably under his unflinching gaze, she turned her head away from him.
"No one sent for me," she said loudly, as if a stronger voice might convince him, or perhaps herself. Then she did what every liar does. She added a new lie to support the first. "I was traveling to Alcester and decided to pass through Wike this time, it being more or less along my way."
If her falsehood didn't move Faucon, it stirred Edmund. "What? Are the monks who care for you so casual? What reason would they have for sending you so far from them, and why to Alcester?" he demanded, sounding more like his usual judgmental self.
Still basking in his appreciation of the profit his clerk had wrung from a mere serving girl's death, Faucon didn't chide the monk for interrupting this time. Moreover, Edmund's questions were his own. Far better that they be asked by one who understood the doings of the brethren at a leper's house like Saltisford.
Amelyn pinched her shoulders as she fought to maintain her pretense of innocence. "The only benefit of my disease is that I can travel where I will, doing so in complete safety. All of us who are yet able to walk are sent out to plead for alms to help support our house. If I choose to beg in Alcester, why would the brothers care or stop me?" With every word her pretense slipped and her voice weakened.
"The house in Saltisford has no right to speak for the brethren who dwell in Alcester," Edmund retorted. "Nor can I imagine that your keepers might allow you to travel so far from them on your whim alone. They would want a guarantee that you could actually claim a place near the abbey's gate. This, when I'm certain there are already beggars aplenty who own the right to ply their trade in front of the abbey. I've dealt with such rabble. I know well enough that not a one of them would willingly move aside to make space for such as you, not without being commanded to do so by someone within the abbey walls."
Faced with his knowledgeable rebuttal, the leper's pretense collapsed. Amelyn again buried her face in her hands. When she finally lowered them, her hood had shifted back on her head, once more revealing her disfigured face. Her blue eyes glistened as she blinked back tears and met Faucon's gaze.
"I could not bear it," she cried. "When I was forced from this place, I left behind the only thing I loved and I could not let her go. It didn't matter to me that Odger would eagerly strip my pension from me were I discovered in Wike. It was better to die on the side of the road than to be denied my child."
Then she looked up at Edmund. "You are right, Brother. It was no easy matter getting my tenders at Saltisford to agree that I should be allowed to travel as far as Alcester. Aye, they wanted assurances, but those I gave readily and easily. I was well known to one from the abbey, one who could, and did guarantee me a place before the gate twice a month," she added quietly.
The monk drew a sharp breath at this. Whether it was because her words attested to a sin committed by one of his own or the fact that Edmund caught sight of her disfigured face, there was no telling. Either way, only in that instant did Amelyn realize her hood had slipped. Echoing the monk's sound, she wrenched it back into place, once more concealing her disease.
"Nor are my keepers at the hospital casual about my comings and goings. I only won their agreement when I reminded them that while I'm away they don't need to feed me. Each journey to and from Alcester keeps me out of their house for almost a sennight. That's two sennights each month that they have one less mouth to worry over."
She made a harsh sound. "Would that I weren't such a coward, that I could find the strength to let myself starve. I think it would be a kinder death than the one I face."
"How did your daughter know when to expect you?" Faucon asked, drawing her back to the details he craved.
"That was easily done. Remember that in the first year of my banishment, Meg was yet making a trip to Alcester to sell those loaves of hers, her trips as regular as the moon. I sent one I trusted to Martha with an explanation of my plan. Then, on the appointed day, I waited at the set meeting spot.
"Once again, bless Martha. She and Johnnie came with Jessimond that first time, bot
h of them creeping and cautious, to be certain it was no trap to steal an unwary child. After that, Jessimond and I settled into a happy habit, with Martha and Johnnie joining us as often as they could. For those precious hours I was again a mother to my daughter, and a daughter to one I thought of as a mother. Only after they crept back to our home did I make my way out of the forest, following the deer paths and hog trails to the Street and Alcester."
She touched her hood. Quiet amusement filled her voice as she added, "Then, with me hidden from prying eyes by my cloak, I made my way to my appointed place at the abbey gate. I often passed Meg between Coctune and Alcester. She never once realized it was me." With that Amelyn fell silent, as if lost to her memories.
"Then Martha died," Faucon prodded.
"Aye, Martha died almost a year ago now, two years after Amelyn's banishment," Hew replied on the leper's behalf.
Nodding, the leper glanced from the oldster to her Crowner. "And with that, everything changed. Having to feed Johnnie as well as Jessimond meant Meg no longer had as many stolen loaves to sell and her trips to Alcester became erratic. That left Jessimond and me no option but to begin meeting during the depths of the night while Meg slept. How it broke my heart not to be able to look upon her face any longer," she added quietly.
"Someone aided you," Faucon said, looking at Hew even as he asked the question of Amelyn.
The leper made no reply, only sat with her head bowed and shoulders bent.
"If I'm to discover who killed your daughter, then you must answer all my questions honestly," Faucon reminded her. "Who helped you arrange your meetings?"
With a sigh, Amelyn looked toward the well and the rustic. "Hew?" she asked of the old man. "Will you have me speak further?"
"You may speak as you will and say what you must, Amelyn," the old man replied without a hint of hesitation.
"As you will and as you say," the woman replied, nodding to him before addressing her Crowner.
"While out collecting mushrooms, Hew came upon me as I waited for Jessimond in our chosen spot. That was the first time after Martha's death that my daughter and I were to have met. Not knowing that my stepmother was gone or that Jessimond was no longer free to leave Meg's kitchen, I was nearly out of my mind with worry by the time Hew found me. After he told me what was what, he carried my message to Jes, then returned with her reply."
"It wasn't only Hew who helped Jessimond reach her mother, was it?" Faucon said, looking at the idiot, trusting the strange man to understand him. "You helped, too. After your mother died and you joined Jessimond in the kitchen, you were the one who guarded the door after your niece departed and the one who let her in when she returned."
Johnnie met his Crowner's gaze. Save for his dark hair, he lacked any resemblance to his fair-faced kinswomen. Just as his ears were too big for his head, his brown eyes were too small. His nose and chin were overly long, also out of proportion.
Keeping his gaze locked on Faucon's, the idiot nodded, then grasped Jessimond's cold hand as if claiming ownership. At the same time, he made that clicking sound with his tongue, its cadence almost that of speech.
"Aye," Amelyn said quietly, "it was Johnnie who lifted the bar so Jes could leave, then listened for her return to open the door again."
"I think he was less than perfect at his task," Faucon offered, returning to his feet. Thus Meg's complaints about housing a sly girl. Without speech, the idiot couldn't defend Jessimond or lie about her whereabouts when Meg noticed the girl was missing.
"And I say Johnnie was too good at the task Jessimond set him," Hew said. "I think he couldn't refuse his niece, and Jes used his fondness for her to her advantage."
The rustic looked at the leper, his voice gentling as he continued. "It's my turn to speak the truth as the good knight has asked of us, Amelyn. Once each month has Jessimond met with you since Martha's death. Do you know how many times during that period she's fled the kitchen to be with Gawne? Touch all your fingers twice and it won't be enough!
"Amelyn, I cannot help but think that you should never have returned here after you were banished, slinking and skulking about like some hunting fox. By your actions you taught your child to do the same when you weren't here to control her. Worse, you gave Jes a freedom that should never have been hers, given her sex. But once she'd tasted what you offered, she craved more still, until she'd have nothing else for her meat. No matter how Meg beat her, your daughter grew ever more daring. At the last, she was striding out of yon kitchen—" the lift of Hew's chin indicated Meg's realm "—as bold as the Queen of May."
"I never meant..." Amelyn started to protest.
"Of course you didn't," Hew interrupted not unkindly, then looked at his Crowner. "Today was the day set for mother and daughter to meet, and why Amelyn sits here now. There is no other reason and no one called for her to come. As to why Amelyn thought Jessimond had fallen in the well, it's because that's what Gawne insisted I tell her."
Once again, the bits Faucon had collected thus far shifted in his mind. He added to them his certainty that Jessimond had died in the same place in which she and her mother had met. So too did he now suspect where Gawne would be found. That was, if Odger didn't already know the location of that meeting place.
He again glanced toward the line of trees where Gawne had entered the woods. There was no sign of bailiff or boy. It didn't sit well on him that he had to leave this place without knowing what became of the lad, but leave he and Edmund must and soon. The shadows beginning to cloak the eastern reaches of the forest promised nightfall.
"Although I did as Gawne asked," Hew was saying, "speaking his lie yet eats at me. Hear the truth now, Amelyn. Two nights ago, your daughter once more crept out of that kitchen, doing just as you had asked of her so many times before, and what she'd chosen to do when she wished to be with Gawne. But this time she didn't leave to meet either of you. Instead, Jessimond braved all, going into the dark with no witness or protector at her side, to meet God alone knows who."
Here, the oldster pointed to the girl's unclothed corpse. "This is what became of her, for this is how Gawne found her."
Amelyn shrieked at that. She crumpled atop her daughter, her fists clenched. "Nay! I killed her. Mary save me, I killed my own child," she sobbed, then began to grieve in earnest.
"She killed her own child?" Edmund cried quietly from beside Faucon, his voice held to a horrified whisper. There was something in the monk's expression that begged for assurances on the leper's behalf. It was definitely a day for surprises when it came to Edmund.
"Nay, she did not," Faucon replied even though he had no right to claim innocence for Amelyn. Although he believed she'd done no wrong, he hadn't yet proved that to himself.
At his answer his clerk released a relieved breath, but confusion yet marked the man's brow. "If so, then what purpose does she have in calling out now that she did the deed?" Edmund wanted to know.
Faucon started to laugh, only to catch back his amusement as he realized his clerk was serious. However impossible, Edmund didn't see the woman's grief-stricken protest for what it was. Again, he offered as much explanation as he had in store.
"I can only speculate," he began in preface, then paused to look at Amelyn. The idiot now knelt next to his grieving half-sister as she lay across her daughter's cold form, alternating between cooing and flapping his hands in agitation.
Faucon looked back at Edmund. "I can only speculate but I believe the leper has just realized how she is complicit in her daughter's death. By refusing to surrender to the fate our Lord set upon her, as severe and unfair as that fate might seem to her or to us, she unknowingly planted an evil seed in her child. It's a different sort of wrongdoing that this mother claims for herself."
"Ah, I see," Edmund breathed again, the color and calm returning to his face. "The leper is in need of a priest so she might unburden her heart."
"That would likely serve her well," Faucon agreed. "Now gather your gear, Brother. There's no time left for scr
ibbling. We need to be off to Alcester for the night."
Edmund glanced at the sky. "Aye, it's time to leave if we wish to arrive at the abbey before the porter closes the gates," he said, once again speaking as if he had the right to comment on his employer's decision.
Faucon only smiled. After today, he thought he could forgive Edmund any insult. Moreover, there was no point in chiding. Nothing he said affected the monk's behavior.
As his clerk slung his basket over his shoulder, Faucon looked at Hew. The old man watched him in return. With a jerk of his chin, Faucon indicated the oldster should join him. Resistance and not a little caution filled the rustic's expression. Nonetheless, Hew started for his Crowner, his gait hitched by his unbalanced hips. He stopped abreast of his better.
"Sir?" he asked, as he bowed his head. In that instant Hew looked like the one thing Faucon was certain he wasn't, a pitiful and helpless old man.
"My clerk and I leave Wike for the night," Faucon told him. "When your bailiff comes from the forest, let him know to expect our return on the morrow. Also tell him that before the morrow is done, I'll want to call the jury to view the girl's body, even if I may not yet be able to name the one who did the deed. Against that, Odger shouldn't send your menfolk too far afield."
As Hew nodded his agreement to these requests, Faucon added, "And lastly, I ask that you bear me company as my clerk and I make our way to our mounts. I have questions."
That brought the old man out of his humble posture with a start. Hew shot a glance at Amelyn before looking at his king's servant, a man with the right by birth and royal fiat to demand his compliance. The oldster's wild white brows inched up on his forehead. Nothing but caution remained in his pale eyes.
That promised little, even though the rustic answered the only way allowed for a man of his station. "As you will, sir."
They started away from the well together, Faucon moderating his stride to match the old man's slower gait. Edmund was already well ahead of them, moving at his usual clipped pace. "Is it safe to leave the child's body in the open overnight?" Faucon asked as they walked.
Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) Page 7