by Jason Vail
“But normally, you just walked in with the pitcher?”
“Yes, upon knocking, of course. After his lordship got his pitcher we knew not to disturb him.”
“Where did Martin sleep?”
The servant looked into a corner. “I’d prefer not to say. We do not speak of it.”
“But it was not unusual to find him in his lordship’s chamber in the morning?”
The servant stood up from his bench. “I’ll say no more about our lordship. He was a good man, he treated us decently. I’ll not be a party to the blackening of his name any further in death, nor give substance to any rumor about him.”
“This is not about blackening his name.”
“I said, I’ll say no more.” The servant turned away and marched toward the door to the pantry, giving Curthose a sharp look on the way out.
The interviewing interrupted the service of dinner, and about the time it should have come off, an elegant young woman dressed in a shimmering blue and yellow striped over gown with split sides and secured by a belt of silver links, her hair confined in a high round cap from which a silk overveil fell down her back, came out onto the top of the stairway overlooking the hall. She had remote eyes, high cheekbones and a small mouth pursed with impatience. This had to be Sir Rogier’s widow, the Lady Isabel. A lesser woman almost equally well-gowned, obviously a maid from a prosperous gentry family, came out with her. Lady Isabel spoke to the maid who hurried down the steps and approached Curthose.
“Sir Geoffrey,” the maid said, “her ladyship desires that those people not be admitted.” She was as beautiful and striking as the Lady Isabel in her own way: pale skin, slightly freckled on the cheeks and nose, curls of reddish hair visible at the edge of her wimple, bright green eyes made for laughing but now full of determination. She caught Stephen staring and looked away with a jerk of the head.
“What people, Lady Madeline?” Curthose asked, perplexed.
“The mother of that boy,” Madeline said, glancing toward the door. “They have just come into the yard. Her ladyship wishes that they be driven off at once.”
Curthose sighed. “I am sure they have come for Martin’s body. They have a right to that.”
Madeline looked back to the stairs, where her ladyship was watching. Her ladyship nodded curtly. “They shall not come into the house.”
“Very well, my lady,” Curthose said. He turned to Stephen. “Can we release the boy’s body?”
“I cannot see why not,” Stephen said.
While Curthose ordered two servants to fetch the boy’s body and another to halt the family in the yard, her ladyship called to Madeline, “Please see what has happened to dinner. Lady Aleusa and I cannot wait any longer.”
“Yes, my lady,” Madeline said and hurried through the doorway to the pantry. Her ladyship swung about, her skirts billowing, and stepped back through the doorway to the bedchambers.
“Things will be very different around here now,” Curthose sighed as Stephen turned to the next servant to interview.
But before Stephen resumed the questioning, he asked Curthose, “Who is Lady Aleusa?”
“His lordship’s mother.”
Shortly, the two servants dispatched to fetch the corpse appeared at the top of the stairway. The body was swaddled in a linen sheet. They struggled down the stairs with it, one at each end, and carried the burden outside. Where you might expect the corpse to be greeted with wailing and lamentation, there was only silence. Then a cart creaked. Stephen glimpsed several boys and girls pulling a hand cart through the gate and turning toward town. A pair of feet that had come free of the sheet stuck into the air.
That should have been the end of it, but a woman with a frog-like face weathered and lined from hard use appeared at one of the windows. Gray hair straggled from beneath her wimple, one eyelid drooped as if in a squint, and when she spoke, there were several gaps where teeth should be.
“I want his wages!” the woman demanded.
“Go away, Peg,” Curthose said. “This is not the time for it.”
“And his effects! All those pretty clothes he got!”
“Do not make a scene,” Curthose said. “Her ladyship will not stand for it.”
“Her ladyship can —”
“You will not disrespect Lady Isabel!” Curthose thundered. “If you don’t leave this moment, I will have you whipped out of the yard! We will square up tomorrow or the next day.”
“You better not short change me!” Peg wagged a finger at him, not impressed with the threat, even though Stephen reckoned it was a real one. She marched away with the aid of a knobby stick, muttering things Stephen could not hear.
A train of servants appeared from the pantry bearing trays of food, which they carried upstairs. Many of the servants looked longingly at the food, for the questioning delayed their own meal, until at last Stephen and Gilbert finished and there was a flurry of activity, the setting up of tables and benches, and other servants brought out trays and trenchers for the household.
“Would you care to stay for dinner?” Curthose asked.
Stephen was about to demure. But Gilbert was assessing with an envious eye the mussel soup, the baked haddock and eel, leavened with boiled carrots and leeks, and the fresh white bread at the high table exuding the mouthwatering aroma of yeast.
“I would be glad to,” Stephen said. “Thank you. Lady Isabel won’t be coming down, I suppose.”
“I doubt it,” Curthose said, leading Stephen to a chair at the high table that was being put out for him. “She often takes her meals in her chamber when she is in residence.”
“She and Sir Rogier did not get along?” Stephen asked as he settled into the chair and a servant pushed it forward for him, while Gilbert got a bench at the end, but at least it was at the high table where the fresh white bread was.
“He called her his brood mare,” Curthose said. “To her face.”
“I see,” Stephen said, although he did not see. He could speculate, but he had learned the dangers of that, so he let silence reign to encourage Curthose to fill it and relieve his ignorance.
Curthose sighed. “It was his mother’s idea, the marriage, I mean. Lady Aleusa is a formidable woman. Few people have the mettle to defy her, although Sir Rogier did a good job of it for years.”
“How so?”
“By putting off marriage for so long. But in the end, he had no choice, really, if the line was to go on.”
“Lady Isabel knew what he was?”
“From the start. Most people would never guess just to look at him. He hid it well, as one must do. But she was not fooled.” Curthose shrugged. “But she did her duty, the poor girl. She delivered a son not two months ago. All of us were relieved at that, her most of all, I’m sure.”
Stephen and Gilbert went out to the back garden after dinner to check on the roof tile doused with wine. Stephen placed the tile he had marked against the one on which he had poured the wine.
“Rather a match, I think,” Gilbert said.
“Yes,” Stephen said. He glanced up at the open window of FitzHerbert’s chamber. “Someone likely poured out the contents of that pitcher. But why?”
“Bad wine, perhaps?”
“Would you pour it out? Wine’s expensive. Most people just water it down.”
“Well, I’m not filthy rich, like FitzHerbert. Nor are you.”
“But some of my family is. And I know what they are likely to do. Or rather, I know what their stewards would do with a cask of bad wine: sell it or water it. And the wine we were given was from the same barrel. It was all right.”
Gilbert scuffed the dirt with a toe. “You know, if it was the pitcher someone poured out, there wasn’t much left in it.”
“What?” Stephen asked.
“Look about. There was hardly enough poured out to fill a cup.”
Curthose interrupted this conversation as he came around the corner of the house. His mouth opened to say something, but he in turn was interrupted by
a call from the window above their heads.
“My lord!” a servant cried, leaning out. “The box! It has been opened!”
“Opened?” Curthose cried in reply.
He ran into the house.
“A strange box,” Gilbert mused as he stretched to relieve an aching back unhappy with all the bending that had been required in examining the tiles. “How curious. I wonder what could be in it?”
“Money,” Stephen said, following Curthose but at a more sedate pace due to the fact that his bad foot did not like running unless its life depended on it. “What else could it be to cause such distress?”
When Stephen reached FitzHerbert’s bedchamber, Curthose was kneeing before the wardrobe peering into the box, an iron-bound chest chained to a leg of the wardrobe. Stephen had not noticed it before because it was out of sight within the wardrobe. The maid, Lady Madeline, and several servants were clustered about him, also transfixed.
“What was in the box?” Stephen asked Curthose, although his eyes were on Madeline.
“His lordship’s traveling money,” Curthose said. “Quite a lot of it. Fully five pounds of silver at the last counting. It’s missing. Almost every penny.”
“Reason enough for murder,” Gilbert murmured.
“Indeed, if that was the object,” Stephen said. “Did FitzHerbert always carry such a vast sum about?”
“He was planning a journey.”
“Where, may I ask?” Gilbert said.
“To Wales, as if it’s any business of yours,” Curthose said.
“Whatever for?” Stephen asked. Although the war that had erupted during the winter had sputtered out, a trip to Wales was still a dangerous business. The land was full of freebooters and minor lords who supplemented their income robbing travelers.
Curthose hesitated to answer for he seemed to feel he had made a mistake in mentioning the endpoint of the journey, and Madeline spoke instead.
“He was an adherent of the reform party, as I am sure you know,” Madeline said. “He was asked by none other than Lord Simon de Montfort to speak personally to Prince Llywellyn on his behalf.”
“Say no more, my lady,” Curthose said. “That is enough.”
“I am not under your command, sir, with all due respect,” Madeline said. But she said no more and went out.
“You were startled that the chest was open,” Stephen said. “Why?”
“His lordship always kept it locked. But as you can see, the lock has been opened.” Curthose pointed to a padlock beside the chest. He gazed toward the spot by the foot of the bed where FitzHerbert’s body had lain. “I can see no reason for him to have opened the box.”
“There was a key, then,” Gilbert said.
“What of it?” Curthose asked.
“Where is it?”
Curthose’s eyes wandered about the chamber. “I don’t know. I don’t recall seeing it.”
“Where was it normally kept?”
“On a chain about his lordship’s neck.”
“I don’t recall seeing any such chain when we examined him.”
Curthose breathed heavily. “Nor do I remember seeing it.”
“So where has it gone?” Gilbert mused. He wandered about the chamber, looking into all the corners, checked upon the table, and ruffled through the bedsheets. Then he got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed. “Ah, there it is. Stephen, could you lend a hand? I am afraid I cannot reach it.”
“Robert,” Curthose ordered one of the servants, “fetch the key.”
“No,” Stephen said, dropped to his belly beside Gilbert. “I’ll do it.”
He spotted the key on a delicate chain just over an arm’s length from the edge of the bed board. The problem for Gilbert was the board was too low for him to fit beneath it, owing to his ample belly, but Stephen, with his lean frame, could crawl under.
“That is beneath you!” Curthose gasped.
“When it comes to examining the evidence, nothing is beneath me, I am afraid,” Stephen said as he wormed under the bed. He grasped the chain and retreated. As he withdrew, he noticed something that escaped his attention before. By one of the bedposts, there was an indentation in the floorboard as if the post had originally lain there and a long scratch on the floor. The scratch was fresh. Jolted perhaps in a struggle? Stephen measured the scrape: it was as just short of the width of his hand, say, three or four inches. It put the bed out of alignment with the wall, a thing he had not registered earlier.
The chain and key in his palm, Stephen climbed to his feet. As he did so, he noticed something else. On the post nearest the window just above the mattress, one of the figures, that of an elephant, was damaged, missing its trunk and a tusk.
He ran a finger along the damaged part, but he had the key on his mind and he said, “It could not have got there by accident.”
“I agree,” Gilbert said, as they climbed to their feet. “So you think that his lordship might have taken it off and tossed it under the bed in a moment of passion?”
“I doubt you think so,” Stephen said. “That would have required him to open the chest for no reason that any of us can think of, then toss the chain away, which I doubt he was in the habit of doing.” He turned to Curthose. “What else might the chest have contained?”
“Leave us,” Curthose ordered the servants. He shut the door after them and turned to Stephen and Gilbert. “You must not repeat this to anyone. There was a letter,” he continued with some difficulty, the words halting. “His lordship was to deliver it to the prince.”
“Do you know what was in the letter?” Stephen asked.
“No. His lordship did not speak of its contents. I only know that it was a matter of the utmost importance.”
“And this letter . . . it’s no longer here?” Stephen bent over the box. There was no letter in evidence.
“No. It’s missing as well.”
“Was it well known that Sir Rogier was going to Wales on behalf of Montfort?”
“No, it was the greatest secret. I only know because his lordship wanted me to accompany him with his household troops. I sent out word for them to assemble here two days hence.”
“Yet others in the family seem to know.”
Curthose sighed. “I am afraid his lordship was not as attentive to the need for discretion as he might have been.”
“Whom might he have told?”
“Only his mother, as far as I know.”
“So you think.”
“Yes.”
“If Lady Aleusa knew and the maid, then I suspect the entire household was informed.”
“They knew only that he was going to Wales. I impressed upon her ladyship and Lady Madeline the importance of the need not to speak about the reason. When questions arose among the staff, I said his lordship intended a pilgrimage to Saint David’s.”
Stephen nodded. Everyone knew of Saint David’s, a great cathedral on the far west coast of Wales. People often made pilgrimages there. “A good enough excuse. Gilbert, is there anything more we can accomplish here?”
“I don’t think so, other than having an accounting of the contents of the chest.”
“I’ll have that done,” Curthose said.
Stephen paused in the hallway. He stepped to the door to Lady Isabel’s chamber and knocked. The voices speaking within the chamber stopped at the knock, but no one came to answer the door, nor was there any call to enter. Stephen knocked again. Lady Madeline cracked the door. She had changed out of her gown and wore the white linen shift that went under the over gown. One thing marred her perfection, he now noticed, small stains on the fabric of her shift at the chest.
“Yes?” she inquired.
“I’d like to speak to Lady Isabel,” Stephen said.
“She is not feeling well. Something she ate did not agree with her.”
“What about Lady Aleusa? Is she here also?”
“She is not feeling well either.”
“Then I’ll talk to you.”
; “I have nothing to say.”
“Did you hear anything or see anything out of the ordinary last evening?”
“Good day, sir.”
Madeline shut the door.
Chapter 5
“A secret missive to the Prince of Wales,” Gilbert said as they walked back to the city. “Is that worth killing for?”
“Could be, I suppose,” Stephen said, head down, hands clasped behind his back as they walked back toward the city. “I don’t know.”
“If this matter is about the letter, it could put us in great danger. Who else would be responsible but someone from the King’s faction? You have enemies enough already without making more of them.”
“But we don’t know that to be true yet. Are you saying we should give up?”
“Something to think about.”
“Maybe later, when we know more.”
“Having wasted our time to no profit. Nothing good is going to come from this, I’m sure of it.”
They crossed the wooden bridge spanning the town ditch at Wydemarsh Gate. It was late afternoon and a succession of one-horse carts, pack horses, and hand carts coming out of town forced them to keep to the side of the road.
A couple of bored gate wardens lounged against the stone walls beneath the gate.
“Did either of you have the first watch last night?” Stephen asked.
“Not me,” one said.
“Me neither,” said the other. “That would be Nick.”
“Nick?”
“Yeah, Nick.”
“Just Nick?” Stephen asked, hoping for a last name, although not everyone had one.
“That’s what we call him.”
“Is he upstairs?” Many gate wards lived in the towers they were assigned to.
“Nah.”
“Do know where he is?”
“Hey, you that fellow, Attebrook? The coroner from Ludlow?”
“I was the coroner from Ludlow. I’ve been replaced.”
“Sorry about that. You were out at the FitzHerbert place, weren’t you, sir?”
“I was.”
“Is it true that the old man, I mean Sir Rogier, killed the boy and then hanged himself?”