“It does not matter.” Simon stroked her back. “It is good we will have friends in attendance. Now we had best go.”
Elinore nodded, but her troubled gaze mirrored Linnet’s own fears. “Warm and I will be along in a moment.”
Linnet tried to take comfort in that and in Simon’s murmured reassurances, but her heart was heavy. It had begun to drizzle again, and a bank of fog had crept up from the river to eddy about the cathedral grounds. The bishop’s palace seemed to rise out of the mist like an ancient dragon, staring down at her from dark, malevolent eyes. A shiver raced down her spine.
“We can still leave,” Simon said softly.
It was tempting, so tempting. Linnet shook her head. “Nay, running away would solve nothing, and it would seem like an admission of guilt.” She squared her shoulders.
“You are a brave woman.” He kissed her brow.
“It comes of having a knight such as you by my side.”
“I am sworn to protect you, my lady.”
Linnet supposed it was as close to a declaration of love as Simon could come. “Let us go within, then.”
Brother Gerard answered the door. “This way.” Without relieving them of their wet cloaks, he bustled ahead to the great hall and threw the doors open so forcefully they banged against the wall. The sound echoed through the cavernous room like a clap of thunder, drawing every eye to the door.
Linnet stopped on the threshold, surprised to find rows of benches filling the hall. She had expected to face a sea of hostile priests, but found many townspeople, including Drusa and Aiken. Mayor Edric Woolmonger had a seat near the front row, while Nelda and Olf stood at the back, apart as always.
“I do not understand,” Linnet whispered to Simon. “Why are they all here? Did you ask them to come and support me?”
Simon shook his head. “Morelike they were called from the bishop’s wake to stand witness.”
“Some of them look too drunk to stand,” she murmured.
“Aye.” Simon did not even smile at her small jest. “I am right glad to see a few friendly faces amongst them.”
Linnet followed his gaze to the far end of the hall where the archdeacon sat behind a carved table, eyeing them as a scrawny cat might two fat mice. Stern-faced Prior Walter sat to his right and Brother Anselme hovered anxiously in the background. Seated in the front row, Odeline and Jevan wore matching hostile expressions. Hamel and Bardolf lounged against the wall to the left of the door like spiders waiting to pounce.
“Oh, dear,” Linnet murmured, shaken.
“Easy,” Simon murmured. “Do not let them see your fear. Remember you have friends here. We will not fail you.”
Linnet nodded, his support giving her strength to survive what was to come. She was innocent. Everyone would see that. Lifting her head, she walked slowly down the aisle between the benches, grateful for Simon’s hand on her elbow.
“Stand here,” Gerard commanded, pointing to a spot directly before the archdeacon.
Simon glared at him. He released her long enough to seize a chair from against the wall and place it at the end of the table, so she might see both her accuser and the witnesses.
“Thank you.” Linnet sat with as much dignity as her wobbly legs would allow and looked at Anselme and Walter. Both prelates regarded her with deep concern, which did not ease her fears.
“We are come here to investigate the matter of Bishop Thurstan’s murder,” Crispin said, loud and firm. “To the bishop’s soul.” He raised a heavy silver chalice toward the heavens. Prior Walter, the only other person who had been provided with a cup, lifted it in silent salute, then drank.
Crispin sipped, fastidiously wiped the wine from his lips with a linen cloth and placed it over the cup. As he turned to the assembly, his eyes passed over Linnet.
The vicious triumph glittering there hit her like a slap. Only Simon’s hand, warm and firm on her shoulder, kept her from bolting. What was Crispin going to do?
“Brother Anselme has determined our beloved bishop was being poisoned. Is that not so?” Crispin demanded.
Anselme stepped from the shadows to the other end of the table, his gaze on Crispin. “Aye, someone was feeding him monkshood these past several months. The amounts were small. He did not die at once, but grew ill and weak and suffered much—”
“There is no need to subject us to the sordid details,” Crispin snapped, growing paler himself. “Have a care for the tender feelings of Lady Odeline and young Jevan.”
And for your own guilty conscience, Linnet thought. Nor did Odeline or Jevan look exactly grief-stricken.
“Suffice to say, he was dying by slow, painful degrees,” said Brother Anselme.
A muscle ticked in Crispin’s cheek. His head whipped toward Linnet, eyes hot with hatred. “I accuse you, Linnet Especer, of this heinous crime.”
A shocked gasp moved through the crowd, accompanied by more than a few murmurs of denial.
Linnet stiffened. “I did no such thing. He was my friend.”
“You were his lover, you mean,” Crispin said.
“Lover?” The word caused a stir in the crowd.
“She was not!” exclaimed Drusa and Elinore together.
Linnet’s gaze skimmed the sea of faces, some taut with ugly speculation. “Nay, I most certainly was not.”
“What proof do you have to offer?” Simon demanded.
Crispin shot him a deadly glare and snapped his fingers. Gerard scurried forward to place a ledger before the archdeacon.
Her shop ledger.
Linnet’s blood ran a little colder.
“It is noted here, in her own hand, that she did give Bishop Thurstan a crock of monkshood in February,” said Crispin.
Simon snorted. “She would hardly have written that down for anyone to read if she had, in fact, been poisoning him. Indeed, the bishop purchased the monkshood to free his rose garden from vermin. As Olf the gardener will attest.”
“Aye, he will,” Nelda called out.
“Bah!” Crispin waved a dismissive hand in their direction. “Who would take the word of a witless—”
“Simple he may be,” Nelda exclaimed. “But my Olf knows right from wrong. The bishop gave him the monkshood.”
“I was present at the time,” said Brother Anselme. “I instructed the boy in how to handle the poison.”
“And did it eliminate these rodents?” Crispin asked.
“Unfortunately it did not,” Anselme replied. “Because someone stole the monkshood from Olf’s potting shed.”
“She did it so she could kill Thurstan,” Crispin snapped, his fingers white where they gripped the edge of the table.
“What need had Linnet to take it when she had a ready supply in her shop?” Simon countered.
Crispin scowled at him.
“Nay, I found the monkshood. It was not among Mistress Linnet’s things,” Simon said. “Was it, Prior Walter?”
This was the point Simon, Walter and Anselme had been angling for, Linnet thought, heart soaring on a bubble of hope.
The prior lurched to his feet. His face was unnaturally pale and running with sweat. He opened his mouth, but the only sound that came out was an agonized gurgle.
“Walter!” Anselme leaped to the prior, catching him just as he fell back into the chair and began to twitch.
Pandemonium erupted. Men shouting, women screaming, Anselme issuing orders that sent his assistants scrambling.
“Poison! The prior has been poisoned!” someone cried over the din. It sounded like Crispin.
“Sit still,” Simon hissed in Linnet’s ear. “Let Anselme and his monks deal with this.” He tried to keep the panic from his voice, but it hammered violently through his body. In numbed horror he waited while Anselme rid the prior’s body of all he’d ingested. A tonic was brought, forced down Walter’s throat and he was carried, still thrashing and moaning softly, from the great hall. With him went Simon’s best hope of saving Linnet. As Anselme made to follow the procession, Simon c
aught hold of his sleeve. “What did Walter find in the garden?”
“Nothing.” Anselme’s face was gray. “The earth had been disturbed, but there was nothing there.”
Simon’s heart stumbled. “Was Walter poisoned?”
“Monkshood, I’d guess,” Anselme whispered.
“Will he live?” Linnet asked in an agonized whisper.
Anselme sighed. “I do not know.”
“Brother Anselme, see to Brother Prior, then return to us when you can with news of him,” Crispin ordered.
The monk nodded and hurried off.
Crispin had poisoned the prior. Simon knew it, but he could not understand why. Unless he hoped to pin it on Linnet.
If Crispin had been smug before, now he positively glowed with triumph. “Much as it pains me to continue in the face of our brother’s collapse, we must settle this.” He looked at Linnet. “I accuse you of Brother Prior’s murder.”
The remaining folk gasped and shouted, some repeating the archdeacon’s accusation, others denying it could be true.
“She is not guilty,” Simon roared. He thought about the chest with its telltale grains of poison, likely gone. Had Crispin seen Walter digging in the garden? “The person who stole the monkshood from Olf’s shed left behind threads from his clothing…a robe such as yours, Archdeacon.”
Crispin started. “You accuse me?”
“We could see if the fibers match,” Simon said silkily.
“How does that prove I killed Prior Walter?”
“The prior is not dead…yet. Whoever wished him eliminated feared he had evidence to give.”
Crispin snorted. “You would say anything to free her because she is your mistress.”
“First you accuse her of being Thurstan’s mistress, now mine,” Simon said in a low, tight voice. “I think your mind runs in impure channels, Reverend Father.”
Crispin leaped from his chair, nostrils flaring. “My mind has seized upon the truth.” An ugly smile twisted his lips. “There is a witness to the fact that you two lay together years ago, on the night before the Crusaders left Durleigh.” He stared at Linnet, his face a mask of hatred. “When she learned you were returning, she sought to break off her illicit affair with the bishop. When he refused to let her go, she killed him.”
“That is a lie,” Linnet cried, surging to her feet.
“No one knew I had survived,” Simon said.
“So you say, but events prove otherwise.” Crispin looked to the assembly. “Drusa, on the night our bishop died, did your mistress enter the shop late and in the company of this knight?”
“Aye,” Drusa said grudgingly. “But—”
“Describe her state to us,” said Crispin.
“Well, she were a mite bedraggled because she’d fallen in the garden on her way from the inn,” Drusa said defensively.
“Or mayhap she’d tumbled in the garden with Sir Simon.”
Linnet’s gasp of outrage and Simon’s growl were cut short by Crispin’s next questions.
One by one he called upon those who had seen her that night: Warin, Elinore and Aiken, twisting innocent events into seemingly suspicious ones. How could Crispin possibly know what had happened at the inn? Linnet wondered.
“She left the inn in a right hurry when she heard Sheriff Hamel was in the common room,” Tilly reported from her place along the wall near Hamel.
“The sheriff had been bothering me with unwelcome advances,” Linnet said primly.
“Had he?” Crispin steepled his hands. “It seems that every male in Durleigh wanted to get under your skirts.”
A hushed silence fell over the hall. Her friends wore stunned, fearful expressions. Others sat on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next scandalous development.
“It seems my brother and Sir Simon were the only ones who succeeded,” Lady Odeline said tartly.
One look at the lady’s knowing eyes and smug mouth and dread crept down Linnet’s spine. Here was the author of Crispin’s accusations. But why should the lady wish her ill?
“Is it not a sin for father and son to share the same woman?” Odeline asked waspishly.
Behind Linnet, Simon groaned softly. She ached with the need to offer him comfort, but things were so precarious, she dared not make a move that might worsen their situation.
“Father and son?” Crispin blinked, then his eyes widened and he speared Simon with a look of shocked loathing. “You…you are the bishop’s son?”
For a long moment, Simon said nothing, but a tremor shook the hand that clasped her arm. “He never acknowledged me.”
“Alas, it is the truth,” Odeline said. “A blot on our family name that haunted our father to his grave.”
“Blasphemy,” someone cried, and others took up the cry until the hall rang with curses heaped on Thurstan’s head.
Linnet risked a glance back at Simon and found her outrage mirrored in his dark, furious expression. “She did that apurpose to turn things away from the archdeacon,” she whispered.
“Aye,” he replied in kind. “But why? To bare the secret casts shame on her and Jevan.”
“The charter,” she said under her breath. “What if Thurstan deeded property to Jevan after you were reported dead?”
“Aye.” A ray of hope kindled in Simon’s eyes. “I wonder when Jevan learned I had returned?” he murmured.
Linnet clutched at his hand. “If it was that first night you were back…”
“Then we may have found our murderer,” he said softly. “Rob FitzHugh knew I was alive. He recognized me on the road, and he came to Durleigh. But why would he tell Jevan unless—?”
“They murdered the bishop to hide their incestuous crime!” Crispin shouted, stilling the babble of voices
Simon lifted his head and his voice. “If you seek one with a grudge against the bishop, you need look no further than the archdeacon. It was in his clothes chest that I found traces of monkshood, and himself I did watch while he buried it in—”
“Liar! Devil’s spawn!” Crispin launched himself around the end of the table, fingers curved like talons. “Seize them!”
Hamel and Bardolf came away from the wall, swords sliding from their scabbards. But Simon was quicker. In one lithe movement, he drew his sword and pointed it at the archdeacon’s bony chest. “No one move, or he will pay,” Simon cautioned.
“Do as he says,” Crispin shrieked.
Hamel and Bardolf stopped in their tracks, but their swords still glittered menacingly in the light.
Warin scuttled through the crowd to stand at Simon’s side, his long dagger out.
“Put up your weapons,” Brother Gerard pleaded.
Oliver wrung his hands. “My son, this is not the way.”
“It’s the only way we will get a fair hearing,” Simon said.
“Fair hearing?” Crispin snorted. “You have shown us all that violence is in your blood.”
“As stealth and treachery are in yours,” Simon replied in a low voice. “We are none of us leaving till we have the truth.”
Crispin’s eyes widened. “You cannot prove your—”
“And neither can you. There seems only one solution.”
“Simon,” Linnet said hesitantly, alarmed by his fierce expression. “What do you intend?”
“Trial by combat,” Simon replied. His words set off a wave of shouts and comments. “It is our right to be judged by God,” he added, quieting the crowd.
“That is so,” said Brother Oliver.
“Combat?” Crispin shrieked. “I’m no warrior.”
“I will serve as your champion.” Hamel stepped forward, his face flushed with blood lust.
“Agreed,” Simon said at once.
“You must not risk your life to save me,” Linnet whispered.
“Aye, I must,” he said quietly but firmly, his eyes shining with tenderness before he turned them on Crispin. “And when I am triumphant, you will surrender yourself for punishment.”
“Me? But she�
��she did it,” Crispin sputtered.
“God knows where the blame lies.” Simon kept his hard, searing gaze locked on Crispin’s pallid features for an instant before letting it slide to the first row.
Odeline and Jevan stood side by side, their beautiful faces suffused with identical expressions of sly triumph.
“They wanted this to happen,” Linnet whispered.
“Aye, but so did I,” Simon said, low and tight.
“Simon, I am afraid. You’ve not seen Hamel fight. He is big and strong and…and he does not fight fairly.”
Simon grinned. “Hamel may outweigh me, but I did learn a few tricks from the Saracens.” Raising his voice, he said, “It is agreed, then. We will let God decide the matter.”
“God’s will be done,” Crispin said primly.
“Aye.” Simon’s gaze and his thoughts were on Odeline and Jevan. Dear God, how was he going to find proof against them?
“‘Tis settled, then,” Hamel growled into the appalled silence. “We will meet on the training fields at noon on the morrow. Meanwhile, I will lock her in the cells beneath my house.” He grabbed hold of Linnet’s arm.
Linnet cried out and struggled to free herself.
“Nay!” Simon cried, starting toward her.
Crispin barred his path. “You are right to be cautious, Sheriff, lest they run off in the night.”
“If you let the sheriff take her, she will be tortured or worse!” Simon cried.
“I am sure Hamel would treat her with the respect she deserves,” Crispin said cuttingly.
“Wretch!” Simon hefted his sword.
“We can settle it here and now,” Hamel taunted.
“Aye.” Simon braced himself.
“What passes here?” cried a high, imperious voice.
Linnet knew that dear voice well. She turned toward the door, and beheld the most welcome of sights.
Reverend Mother Catherine de Lyndhurst, Abbess of Blackstone, stood on the threshold, regal as a queen in her white robes and flowing headdress.
“Reverend Mother!” Linnet lifted a hand to her mentor. “Thank God you’ve come.”
“Linnet? What is going on here?” The abbess started down the aisle between the benches and then stopped. Her mouth fell open and her eyes rounded. “Simon? Simon of Blackstone?”
The Champion (Knights of the Black Rose Series : Harlequin Historicals, No 491) Page 24