by Anne O'Brien
‘Who found him?’
‘I did, my lord,’ the guard replied. ‘It’s my watch. There’s rats here—so I came down to see…and when I saw, I roused Commander Beggard.’
Richard touched the body, already cold. There was no question but that he was dead. The lantern, flickering in the fitful wind, was sufficient to show the spread of the dark stain between the shoulder blades. One of the guests, velvet and damask, now bloody and soiled. Wedding clothes.
‘Hold the lantern up. Now, Master Kilpin, help me turn him over.’
They moved the body so that the light might fall on his face. Richard hissed out a breath at the confirmation of his worst fears. He had known the dark hair, the slight build, the damask finery, as soon as he had seen it.
‘Bad, my lord,’ Simon Beggard stated.
‘Couldn’t be worse.’ Richard rose to his feet, his face un read able. Recognising the remains of the man at their feet, the little audience knew why.
‘What do we do, my lord?’
‘What, indeed!’ Richard continued to stare with mounting dismay. He would do what needed to be done and worry about repercussions later. ‘Let’s move him into the chapel. It’s nearest and suitable for the purpose, I suppose. God’s presence in the face of violent and useless death.’ His terse instructions could not hide the anger that flooded his body at this worthless—and possibly disastrous—spilling of blood.
Between them they carried the body in and laid it on the wooden bench along the back wall. Richard took off his cloak and spread it over the still figure. The lantern shone down on a face empty in death, eyes wide perhaps with surprise, lips lax, skin grey with a waxen tinge. A sudden draught fluttered the edge of the material and the ends of the dark hair.
‘Robbery, my lord?’ Simon Beggard whispered, but his voice echoed unnervingly in the roof space that arched into blackness over their heads.
‘It’s possible. His jewels are gone.’ Richard remembered them. His fingers had been stripped of costly rings. Perhaps a chain. And his sword was taken. ‘God help us. This is a bad night’s work.’
Then he began to issue orders. ‘Master Kilpin, you had better find Sir John. Try not to wake the whole castle. The fewer people here, the better. Tomorrow will be enough and more for that. Simon, fetch Sir Robert, if you will. And then ask the guards if they saw anyone out and about after midnight. Anything at all, no matter how trivial.’
They exited smartly, leaving the guard to stand sentry beside the body.
‘Keep this door locked until my return.’ Richard stood for a moment at the top of the shallow steps where his vows had been taken earlier in the day. ‘I need to go and tell my wife.’
Elizabeth awoke fully from a light doze, her mind still suffused with contentment as Richard entered the room. He came over to the bed with a lantern. ‘What’s happened?’
He sat on the edge of the bed. Set down the lantern and curled his hand around hers. ‘It’s bad, Elizabeth.’
She pushed up onto one elbow. ‘Did someone indeed fall into the well?’ Then the amusement drained away as she saw, despite the shadows, the brutal lines of his face.
‘I need you to get up.’
‘Tell me.’
There was no point in pro longing it with soft words. ‘Your brother. Lewis. He’s dead.’
There was a moment of intense silence. Elizabeth felt the words freeze into a solid mass in her chest, so that she could not breathe. Could not speak. Could not think beyond that brutal announcement. Then a low strangled sound deep in her throat. Her hand tightened on his, nails digging in as blood drained from her face in the lantern’s yellow glow. Her eyes were hot and dry, beyond tears, but dark with anguish. Then she was pushing him away as she struggled to leave the bed.
‘Will you take me to him?’
‘Yes.’
He helped her pull on her chemise, put on her shoes. Wrapped her new, festive cloak around her and pulled up the hood to hide her from any encroachment on her privacy. If only he could obliterate her pain quite so simply. Then he took her cold hand in his and led her to her brother.
Elizabeth knelt beside Lewis’s body and turned back the cloak. Someone had closed his eyes, folded his hands on his chest so that he looked at peace. Disbelieving, she touched her fingertips gently to Lewis’s face, his lips. Then to his hands.
‘Lewis. Ah, Lewis.’ Her voice broke on the name he could no longer hear. She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, his chest, as if searching for the fatal injury. ‘How did he die?’
‘A knife,’ Richard answered. ‘In the back.’ He stood protectively, one hand on her shoulder. She could feel his presence and was grateful for it even as her whole world was caught up in the lifeless body of her brother.
‘I can’t believe that he will never wake again. Never speak to me again. He brought me here from Llanwardine.’ She ran her fingers through his matted hair, smoothing it along his temples. ‘I loved him. And he was one of the few people who loved me. But now he is dead.’
Richard lifted her, enfolded her so that she could press her face against his shoulder. And she clung to him. Through her grief she felt the strength of his arms giving her comfort. As did his words, even though her heart was rent in two.
‘Whoever is guilty, Elizabeth, he shall pay for this.’
‘Indeed he will.’
A harsh voice from the open doorway. Elizabeth found herself released and pushed gently behind him as Richard took up a position between herself and her uncle, almost she thought as if to shield her from what might be said.
Sir John de Lacy was cold sober. As was the commander of his garrison at Talgarth, Sir Gilbert de Burcher, a thickset soldier who stood at his shoulder. Elizabeth felt the fierce tension in her uncle as his eyes snapped from Lewis to herself, to Robert, who had followed Sir John into the room. And then to Richard, who stood in the centre of the chapel, in Sir John’s direct line of sight, beside the dead body of his heir.
‘Who has the blood of my nephew on his hands?’
‘We have no evidence. We have the knife.’ Richard raised his hand to show the poignard on his out stretched palm, the blade rank with dried blood to the hilt. ‘It was left beside the body. But as for its owner…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s plain and serviceable, such as might belong to any man.’
‘An arrogant gesture, some might say, to leave it there.’ A new voice. Softly, dangerously said, full of implication. Elizabeth was aware of the tall presence of Nicholas Capel, who had emerged out of the darkness. She felt the slide of his eyes over her and shivered involuntarily.
Sir John marched forwards to stand at his nephew’s side. ‘I demand retribution.’ His lips were bone-white, his face uncompromisingly judgemental.
‘Against whom?’ Richard asked. ‘No one was seen in the court yard after the celebrations ended. My commander is still questioning the guards, but we have no evidence against any man.’
‘Whom do you suggest, Malinder? I wager that it would not be a de Lacy to commit such a crime against my heir.’
Elizabeth stiffened at the blatant accusation. What was this? Would her uncle accuse a Malinder of the foul crime?
‘So you imply it was a Malinder.’ Richard’s eyes blazed as he echoed her thoughts.
‘Sir John is over wrought. He makes no such implication,’ Capel intervened smoothly.
‘Enough!’ Sir John snapped at his adviser. ‘I think everyone will come to the obvious conclusion. We came as guests into your home, in search of a lasting alliance with our erstwhile enemies in the March.’ Sir John’s words were viciously direct. ‘We came in good faith and I en trusted my own niece into your hands. And now my heir is dead. Even you, Malinder, must accept where the burden of evidence would seem to weigh most heavily.’
Beside her, Richard’s stillness became a threat in itself. Beneath the superbly controlled surface Elizabeth could almost feel the temper roil and bubble. Through her grief at Lewis’s death, she found herself praying that his contr
ol would hold. When Elizabeth saw Richard’s hand close in overt warning on the hilt of his sword, she was driven to step close and grasp his sleeve. Anything to prevent a conflagration that might ignite to turn the marriage celebration into a gory massacre. Briefly his eyes flickered to hers, and through the heat of temper, read the message there. To her relief he kept his voice light.
‘There’s no evidence as yet to smear anyone with guilt. I would suggest that you take care whom you accuse, Sir John. Without a shred of evidence, it would be unwise to whip up enmity against me and mine.’
‘I’ll take care as long as I am under your roof, without protection.’ Sir John’s lips twisted in a sneer. ‘So much for our promising marriage alliance, for the hopes of friend ship.’ He ad dressed Elizabeth, still at Richard’s side, her hand warningly on his arm. ‘You are joined to this man now by the bounds of law and by the vows you made before God, but be sure you know whom you can trust in this house hold, Elizabeth. My advice is to trust no one.’
‘I hear your advice, sir.’
It was all she could say. Horror, sharp-edged and lethal, engulfed her. Richard accused of killing her brother in cold blood. She could not think of that yet. Instead, divorcing herself from the naked aggression in the room, Elizabeth walked forwards, pulled the cloak softly, neatly over Lewis’s body to the chin and bent to kiss his brow, touching his lips with her fingers for one final time. Then, before emotion could completely over whelm her, she walked out of the chapel without another word or a backward glance.
Later, left alone in the chapel in the after math, Robert looked at his cousin, his red brows raised towards his hairline.
‘I can’t believe this has just happened. It almost persuades a man never to marry.’
‘I’m almost tempted to agree, Rob.’ Richard stood and looked down at the body of the young man who had been willing to offer friend ship. Who not a handful of hours ago had seemed troubled, but unable to share his concerns. He was one of the few people who loved me. Which heart breaking little statement from Elizabeth had made Richard long to sweep her up and take her away from this tragic loss, to stroke and comfort her. Instead all he could do was stand beside her and let her grieve as she wished. And as he recalled Elizabeth’s anguish, he felt a wave of compassion for her wash over him, to be quickly overlaid by a cold dread.
‘What are you thinking?’ Robert asked.
‘That before this day is out, my name will be linked with a particularly brutal and un war ranted crime. My home, my marriage ceremony, my motive—all dragged in the mud of bloody murder.’ He turned his head to fix his cousin with a cold, flat regard, the blazing anger when he had faced Sir John now turned to ice. ‘Sir John will not leave Ledenshall without making public the ultimate connection between myself and this crime. And one that I am in no position to refute since, even though I am innocent, his words will contain enough truth of the long-standing rift between Malinder and de Lacy to attract interest and speculation.’ He paused, his mind running over the events of the past hour, returning, lingering on one.
‘You think he will accuse you openly? But what motive could you have?’
‘Think about it, Rob. Think about my position within the de Lacy family dynamics because of my marriage.’ Richard shook his head and strode out of the chapel without further reply to face his wife. To try to salvage some hope, some measure of under standing with Elizabeth, from the cold ashes of his marriage.
She had resurrected the fire and now sat in its warmth, waiting, as she had waited for him earlier that night before death had struck to tear and divide. To shatter her heart in grief. Dead. Murdered. My brother is dead. Her mind simply could not accept what her eyes had seen. Her cloak was still round her shoulders. She had not lit the candles so the room was dark and intimately shadowed, but there was no rest or comfort in the air. The warmth of the fire did not touch her blood.
‘Well?’ She turned her head sharply at his entrance. All her earlier bright hope for the future, her astonished pleasure in her husband’s arms, obliterated to be replaced by raw desolation. And a degree of hurt that her mind could not yet grasp. Sir John’s accusation clawed at her mind, but had not yet fully struck home.
‘I have left Lewis in the care of the priest. Arrangements have been made to take him to Talgarth tomorrow. It is Sir John’s decision to make, I think.’ Richard un buck led his sword belt and laid it aside before pouring water from the ewer and washing his hands.
‘Do you know any more?’ She thought he looked weary to the bone.
‘Nothing. No one heard or saw anything.’ He walked to where she sat as he dried his hands on the coarse linen. She felt he was watching her, tuned to her reaction to the night’s events. ‘No one re members Lewis leaving the Hall at any time. We know his jewels are missing and his sword. I have set Simon Beggard to go through the servants’ quarters, but I doubt we’ll find anything. Whoever took them must have known that I would order such a search. Then, short of searching every guest…’ He stifled a groan at the prospect. It could not be done.
He had brought a flask of Bordeaux with him, so poured it and drank, tossing back the contents. And, as control momentarily snapped, flung the pewter at the wall, watching in disgust as the dregs of wine stained the tapestries and the dented cup bounced to lie on the floor. Elizabeth did not even flinch. She was beyond feeling.
‘Forgive me. That was unpardonable.’ She watched as he reined in his rage, came to sit opposite her and forced his voice to become dispassionate. ‘You heard Sir John’s words. The culprit has to be a Malinder because for it to be a de Lacy is un thinkable. What do you think, Elizabeth?’ It seemed to matter to him what she was thinking, when she did not know herself. ‘We promised mutual respect and trust—so few hours ago—but this death… It has placed a vast obstacle in our path and we have no prior knowledge of each other to negotiate it.’
‘We promised to let no one come between us,’ she recalled, the vow echoing in her mind as if from another life.
‘So we did. And now Lewis, in his death, has done just that. And Sir John’s accusations would rend us apart.’
Elizabeth sensed the over whelming bitterness beneath the anger. There was a decision here for her to make. An impossible decision. ‘You did not do it.’ Her eyes were steady and un flinching on his as her voice made of it a question.
‘No. I had an excellent alibi, did I not, in your bed? But one of mine could have wielded the dagger at my instigation—even if it was not my own hand. You do not know me. How can I blame you if you lay the guilt on my shoulders?’
The harshness in his tone, the self-mockery, hammered its way through the grief that dulled every reaction in her body. It forced her to remember his tenderness, his ultimate consideration. He was no enemy of hers, of that she was almost certain. Elizabeth weighed what her head told her, and also her heart. No, she did not know him, but she wanted, more than life itself, to trust him. And yet her uncle’s words could not be dislodged.
You are joined to this man now by the bounds of law and by the vows you made before God, but be sure you know whom you can trust in this house hold, Elizabeth. My advice is to trust no one.
‘You would not have stabbed Lewis in the back,’ she stated.
‘No. I would not,’ he conceded, rising to pace the room. ‘But if I had paid a willing assassin, he might not have been so concerned with the niceties.’ And she knew he was painting the worst scenario for her before Sir John did. Richard stopped, mid-pace, his back firmly towards her, head thrown back. ‘Do you believe me capable of arranging the killing of my wife’s brother on our wedding night? At the same time as I was holding her in my arms and kissing her?’
‘Richard.’ Suppressed tears roughened her voice, but she swallowed and pressed on. Knew what she must ask. And instinct told her that he would not lie. ‘We promised we would be honest with each other. To listen and trust our own instincts. Not allowing others to manipulate us. I know you enough to know that you will keep your wo
rd. So you will tell me the truth.’
‘Yes, I will.’ The agonised plea in her voice halted his restless pacing. Richard came to kneel before her, stormy eyes searching her face. Offered his hands, palm to palm, so that she might enclose her cold hands around his as if he would make a binding oath of allegiance and fealty to a sovereign lord. Stern and reverent, he bowed his head. ‘Before God, I would not bring about the death of one of yours in cold blood. I did not kill Lewis. I did not authorise anyone to do so. I am not responsible for his death. You are my wife. I will protect and honour you until the day of my death.’
Elizabeth focused on his dark head, the disordered waves of hair. She longed to reach out and touch, in gratitude and acceptance of his oath. I did not kill Lewis. But not yet, even though she wanted to hear those words. Even though she wanted to believe him. Then Richard looked up, their eyes caught, held despite the tension between them. Whatever she read there—uncertainty, banked fury—caused her to turn her hands within his, to clasp his.
‘Yes. That is what I wanted you to say.’ She had not realised the depth of her fears. Or her need to accept the sworn word of Richard Malinder and trust him. But between them were vast stretches of blood and violence between their families. And now in the lifeless body of Lewis. Tears began to slide down her cheeks as she saw the enormity of the rift between them.
‘Can you trust me, accept my word?’
‘I want to. I will try to.’
‘I know it is difficult for you. Your brother is dead under my roof and your relationship with me is—well, it’s like a fortification without foundations. How can I expect you to give your heart and soul into my hands after so brief a knowledge?’
His brutally frank words hit home. As did the shocking reality of Lewis’s death. Elizabeth’s breathing shuddered with sobs that quickly became beyond her ability to control. Her whole frame shook as she covered her face with her hands and allowed the grief, held at bay for so long, to over whelm her.