Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3)

by Denise Domning

  The sub-abbot had been walled into a cell built into the cellar of the abbot's house. Two small rectangular openings, screened to prevent a wayward touch, allowed the monk bare glimpses of the world he'd forsaken. Air and light came to him through the opening in the exterior wall, while the inner one permitted him to communicate with his brothers. Or his Crowner. Faucon sat upon a stool that brought his face to the level of that small, screened rectangle. At his feet was the hatch that allowed food and drink to be pushed into the cell and the monk's wastes to be removed. If a door existed in the cell, it was hidden, covered by a coat of plaster.

  It had taken Faucon the full length of his walk between the hogscotes and the abbey to tame his rage. Time well spent. Arriving in control of his emotions had prevented him from overstepping with the abbot, and that had resulted in the churchman's invitation to share lunch. The rich meal would have enraged Edmund, but it hadn't been food that Faucon craved. After entertaining the abbot with tales of his own more august relatives, he'd pleaded ignorance about local history. The abbot had offered up every bit of gossip he had in store. That left the man so sated and expansive that when Faucon asked to speak with his former sub-abbot, the churchman agreed without hesitation and despite the anchorite's earlier refusal.

  "I can tell you nothing in that regard. I have no knowledge of the child's death," Brother Henricus replied, his voice hoarse and weak as he sat upon his stool on the other side of the opening. Between the dimness of his chamber and his cowl, Faucon could see nothing of the ravages of his disease.

  "But you can tell me about the child's mother. Amelyn was your leman."

  The monk sighed, the sound fraught with regret. "I sinned. My confinement to this cell is part of my penance."

  "This is no penance, it is a kindness," Faucon retorted, now speaking with the authority that had had Oswald bowing to his wishes, "a greater kindness than was ever shown to Amelyn of Wike. You have much to answer for in regard to her, especially now that both she and her daughter are dead."

  As the monk heard these words, his shoulders bent and he buried his face in his hands. "May God forgive me," he muttered into his palms, rocking on his stool.

  "Pray as you will, but know that as you do, I shall be praying that our heavenly Father dooms you to the eternal fires. You're no monk," he spat out in disgust. "You only took your vows because your family willed it. You never had any intention of honoring your vow to our Lord."

  Like Faucon, Henry of Kinwarton was a second son, in this case the cousin of the abbey's founder. He had been given to the Church with the expectation that he would rise in rank until he could use the power of his position for the benefit of his family, just as William of Hereford did for his kin. Instead, the man had squandered the opportunity, concentrating instead on pleasing himself.

  "Pity poor Amelyn," Faucon continued harshly. "She came to Alcester an innocent in all ways. She knew nothing of whoring, nothing of this place and nothing of you. And weren't you and the procuress waiting for one just such as she? The bawd didn't want you using her girls, not when she knew you were diseased. So when she told you about a beautiful woman newly come to Alcester to whore, you lent the bawd funds to give to Amelyn, then used that loan to force Amelyn to serve you. You doomed Amelyn to death to feed your sinful appetites!"

  The man within the cell but rocked, his face yet buried in his palms.

  Faucon's eyes narrowed. "I know the bawd came to see you last month. Tell me what she asked you. Best you speak the truth, for I will know if you lie."

  The man on the other side of the grate at last lowered his hands. There was no seeing his face in the shadowed cell. "Lina asked what Amelyn had told me of Wike and its folk," he said, his voice thick with tears. "I told her the truth, the same thing I now tell you. Amelyn never spoke to me of Wike. The only thing she ever shared about her life before whoring was that her daughter was precious to her beyond all else and made in her image."

  It was a dragon's breath Faucon released. The monk had done worse than doom Amelyn to death. His words had convinced the procuress that it was worth her time to negotiate with Meg, who had no doubt set a steep price for the purchase of Jessimond.

  "You selfish coward," he spat out in disgust. Where was the justice in this unholy monk holding tight to the comforts of his house, when Edmund, who had more courage than a lion despite his peculiarities, had lost all he held dear?

  "I suspect your cousin pays a steep price to keep you walled in here rather than walking the byways in a leper's cloak, bringing shame upon your family name. After I leave, you'll request that your abbot draw from that sum to secure a place here for a new servant, Amelyn's mute and crippled half-brother. If you're asked why you wish to do this, say that our Lord has given it to you to see this youth gently cared for until his death, even if it means you go hungry to do it. If the brothers try to make him a beggar, you will refuse, telling them that you know the youth and he is capable of working in the kitchen. Betray me, and I will seek every avenue to have you accused of abetting the murder of the leper's daughter. Should I fail at that, I'll instead inform my uncle, Bishop William of Hereford, what you've done. Unlike you, my uncle is a man who honors his vows and expects the same integrity from those in his order. I guarantee you'll live out your last years begging for bread like the woman you used."

  With that, Faucon came to his feet, kicked his stool to the side and departed.

  He, Edmund, and Alf, who bore Jessimond in his arms, stopped before Meg's kitchen. Johnnie had remained in the glade after their attempts to remove him resulted in high-pitched squeals and thrashing limbs. Once released, the simpleton went back to gathering rocks for Amelyn's cairn. That's when Gawne insisted on staying behind to watch over him. Although Gawne freed no squeals and hadn't thrashed, it was clear the lad didn't trust his neighbors not to accuse him of Jessimond's murder.

  "Is this where you intend to hold the inquest, sir?" Edmund asked, his breathing once more steady after his second perilous journey over the plank bridge. This time he'd rearranged his basket on his back before stepping out over the gap. With the strap crossing his chest, both of his arms had been free to extend for balance, and he'd moved at a snail's pace.

  "Can you think of a better place than here, where that poor child was forced to live out her last miserable years?" Faucon asked bitterly.

  Edmund had no answer for that. Instead he said, "We'll need a table for the corpse."

  "There'll be one inside," Faucon replied, and started toward the kitchen door.

  It was a baking day, and the oven radiated warmth along with a sweet, yeasty scent. The door to Meg's realm was ajar. He pushed it wide, only to have it bounce back at him as it collided with something behind it.

  Stepping inside, he looked for the bakestress, but she wasn't within. The interior of the chamber looked much like the interior of any rural commoner's home except for the great maw of a fire pit to one side of the door, one big enough to have once provided meals for a knight's household. And one that hadn't been used at its full capacity since Wike Manor had been abandoned. Meg did her cooking on a much smaller hearth stone at the other side of the doorway. It was that stone that had stopped the door.

  At the forward center of the space was a narrow table, naught but four loose planks set atop a pair of braces and covered in flour. Bits of stolen dough were piled in one corner. Overhead, bunches of herbs and smoked meats hung from the beams that held the roof aloft. So did two small, well-made iron pots and an array of wooden cooking implements.

  Stacked high against the wall to his left were hempen bags filled with Meg's winter provisions, be that unshelled nuts, whole grain or dried fruits. The right wall was lined with barrels and casks of all sizes, set one atop the other. They would contain brines, vinegar and fermented drink. Filling the floor space under the table were an array of clay pots. That they held milled grain was proved by the powdery stuff that caked their exteriors.

  All that clutter left only a thread of a path
on either side of the table for access to the sleeping area at the rear of the chamber. A pair of straw-stuffed pallets was stacked against the back wall. Fastened to the wall above them were two shelves. One held bowls and spoons, the other a fine wooden coffer.

  The box was as long and high as Faucon's forearm, and of startling quality for a place as impoverished as Wike. Bossed in brass, it had been polished to a glossy sheen where it wasn't decorated with a colorful painted design. Although it had a hasp with a loop, the lock that should have held it shut lay on the shelf next to the chest, its pin yet inserted into it.

  Faucon gave vent to a harsh breath. Meg had taken his threat to heart this morn. She'd fled with her treasure.

  Easing his way along the narrow route, he took the box from the shelf. When he turned to place it on the end of the dusty table, he found Edmund standing at its opposite end. Alf, yet bearing Jessimond's wrapped corpse in his arms, remained just outside the shed, watching his employer through the doorway.

  Faucon opened the coffer and answered one of his remaining questions. He removed the carefully folded garments. Rich they were not, being nothing but a clumsily made and plain green gown and an undyed linen shift. But they were hardly worn and, despite their poor construction, still worth whatever coin Meg had originally paid for them.

  Holding them up, he displayed them to the soldier and the monk. "Brother, when you put pen to parchment, note that we found Jessimond's garments in the kitchen of Wike's bakestress."

  "It doesn't surprise me that such a woman might have killed a child," the monk said in disgust.

  In the doorway Alf shot a startled glance to the side. "'Ware Brother!" the soldier shouted as he darted out of the doorway and Faucon's view.

  Edmund started to look over his shoulder, only to scream and arch backward. His hips jammed into the edge of the table. The resting planks shot toward Faucon, bringing flour and dough with them and sending the coffer flying. Holding tight to Jessimond's gowns, he reared backward into the pallets. They slid and he careened to the side. Planks crashed into the wall, then clattered to the floor. The braces toppled. He fell onto the nearest pile of sacks. A cat screeched.

  "Get out of my home!" Meg shrieked at the same time.

  She stood inside the door, holding a shovel high, ready for the next blow. Then the shovel was torn from the old woman's hands. Roaring in rage, Meg whirled, fists closed and raised. Alf was the quicker. The woman's head snapped back as he struck. Stunned, she reeled, then dropped to sprawl into the cold fire pit.

  Stuffing the gowns beneath his arm, Faucon scrambled toward Edmund, who lay face-first on the earthen floor. Whatever semblance of order there had been in here before Meg's attack was gone. Bags lay helter-skelter, jars were tipped, their contents spilling out onto the floor. His feet slipped on balls of dough, the ooze from barrels, and the nuts that rolled out of toppled bags.

  As Alf stepped closer to the prone clerk, Faucon crouched alongside the monk. Edmund hadn't yet stirred. The clerk's precious writing implements were strewn about him in the grain dust. If his basket was no more, the piece of wood he used as a desk yet rested across his back, whole and solid. Faucon lifted it. And now marked by a new shovel-shaped dent on its surface. With a finger, he traced the shape. Only his clerk could have been saved by a desk.

  Setting aside the wood, he put his hand between the remains of the basket and Edmund's back. There was no obvious break. Still the monk lay still and silent.

  "Brother, are you awake?" he demanded.

  "I'm not certain," came Edmund's weak and shaken reply.

  Faucon grinned, so great was his relief. "Are you hurt? Did your head hit as you fell?"

  "Nay," the monk breathed, still not moving.

  Looking at Alf, Faucon said, "Together."

  They both took an arm and brought Edmund to his feet. The monk swayed for an instant then caught his balance. Drawing a deep breath, thus proving he had no broken ribs, he squeamishly tightened his shoulders and his arms.

  "You can release me," he told soldier and knight.

  When they didn't instantly comply, he raised his hands in protest. "I'm whole and unbloodied. Let go." This was a command.

  Alf did as he was bid, backing into the doorway to block the opening despite that Meg yet lay stunned in the pit. Faucon wasn't so quick to comply. "You're certain?"

  "Aye, it's only my pride that's damaged," Edmund admitted as he wrenched his arm from his Crowner's grasp.

  His movement sent bits of his ruined basket raining from his back. The monk gasped and reached behind him. When there was nothing for him to feel, his eyes flew wide.

  "My supplies!" he cried, dropping to his knees to scrabble through the wreckage, seeking his precious bits and pieces.

  Faucon crouched with him and found the monk's quill knife. "Best you take time to give thanks to our Lord for that piece of wood of yours. The old woman meant her blow to break bones," he said as he handed it to Edmund.

  His clerk paused in his search, his gaze yet fixed on the floor before him. He drew a shaken breath, then closed his hand about the stoppered horn in which he stored his powdered ink. As he lifted it, his hand trembled, the aftereffect of Meg's attack. He drew the horn to his chest as if he meant to disguise his reaction.

  "So I shall," Edmund said, yet refusing to meet Faucon's gaze, "but I think we're better praying that I have what I need to complete this inquest. Best you leave me to gather my things so I can get at assessing the damage."

  The monk had peculiar courage, indeed. Faucon dared to lay a final touch on his clerk's arm, a comrade's acknowledgment of bravery. As he expected, Edmund flinched away from him. That made him smile.

  "I'm glad you're unharmed, Edmund," he said, then retreated to stand with Alf so his clerk could collect himself under the pretense of gathering his supplies. "That's no measly monk I have scribing for me. That's a soldier, albeit one in Christ," he told the commoner, still smiling.

  "So he is," Alf agreed with a nod, then gave a jerk of his head toward Meg. She whimpered as she began to stir. "And that is a woman who needs more than her tongue torn from her mouth."

  "Such is the arrogance of one who finds value only in coins. To achieve her riches, such as they are, she has traded all that is good and right for unfettered control over her body and her piece of our world," Faucon replied.

  As if she heard him, Meg groaned and came upright with a start. Her lip bled where Alf had split it. Hidden behind the fall of her plait, the side of her face was bright red. Yet, despite the pain Alf's blow had surely caused, not a single tear moistened her eyes.

  An instant later, her senses steadied and her panicked gaze shot straight to the empty shelf at the back of the room. "Thief!" she trumpeted weakly as she looked to her Crowner. "You've taken my box."

  "Your box is on the floor, right where you sent it when you attacked my clerk," Faucon said flatly.

  Then, taking Jessimond's clothing out from beneath his arm, he displayed the garments to the woman. "It's not the box you seek, but what was in it. You removed these from Jessimond's corpse on the night she died."

  The old woman's face whitened at his charge. Then her eyes narrowed as she again raised that shield of hers, ready to once again engage him in battle. "She was dead when I found her. I wasn't going to let new garments rot on her, not when I'd just spent good coin for them."

  Faucon cocked a brow. "Ah, I see. But why would a miser and a thief like you ever open your purse to buy these garments in the first place, especially to clothe one you despised? Let me guess. Could it be because you didn't want Lina the Bawd to see the child she intended to buy dressed in rags? You didn't want the procuress to think you desperate. That might have encouraged the whore to short you on the price you two had finally agreed upon after almost a month of haggling."

  Shaking his head, he said, "I fear you overreached yourself this time, and it will cost you far more than just the loaves you lost when Jessimond finished your baking. Your downfall already b
egins. Until today, no one has dared raise a hand to you. Look at you now, sitting in this pit with a bleeding lip and bruised face."

  Meg wiped the blood from her mouth, still glaring at him.

  "What a shame you've just buried that fat purse of yours," Faucon continued, speaking as if he commiserated with her. "Now, who among your neighbors will you trust to retrieve it after you're charged with Jessimond's murder? Without that purse, how will you buy your freedom from whatever gaol holds you?"

  That sent panic again darting through her gaze. She began to strain and push, trying to lift herself out of the pit. All the while, she kept her gaze locked on her Crowner as if she feared he might attack her if she looked away.

  "It wasn't me," Meg cried as she at last levered herself onto the earthen floor. Using her heels, she shoved herself backward until, panting, she collided with a barrel. "It was Gawne who killed her. It had to have been him. He took her to that hidden spot and killed her, then put her body in our well so it seemed that she had drowned."

  "I fear not," Faucon replied. "Rauf and Dob will both swear Gawne spent the whole of that night sleeping inside their walls with their father in a drunken stupor and blocking their doorway."

  "Nay!" she cried, her tone filled with new concern. "We didn't kill Jessimond!"

  "We, is it?" he replied blandly. "And thus your late return on so many nights this last week, including the one on which Jessimond died. You weren't delayed in Alcester by a friend. You and Lina were waiting beyond the pale for the child to pass so you could snatch her as she escaped into the forest. That way, Lina could carry her off in secret while you tucked more coins into your purse and told your neighbors your ward had run away to whore like her mother." His words were as sharp-edged as his sword.

  Jessimond had wanted to meet with Gawne that night to tell him she'd divined Meg's intention, if not the whole of the bakestress's plan. Meg's final beating hadn't been about the bread or the girl's defiance. It had been meant to drive the lass into fleeing to the forest, just as she had eventually done to seek comfort from a friend.