“May I suggest that you search through the contents of this man’s purse?” she said, trying not to betray her fear.
“You’ll find the coins I won through a lucky wager at the cockfighting,” Odo insisted. “There’s nothing else to find.”
Janna ignored him. She was staking a man’s life on a guess. If she was wrong, Peter might well hang instead of Odo. She wiped her sweating palms down her habit, and turned to Emma. “Before the purse is emptied, will you tell the steward about your brother’s lucky pebble?”
“It’s small, round and dark brown, with gold threads running through it.”
Odo stiffened. He backed away until he fetched up tight against the wall and could go no further. He struggled to speak, moistened his lips with his tongue, but seemingly could utter no sound. His hands clamped tight around his purse. Janna watched, hardly daring to breathe.
The steward held out his hand. “Give it to me or I’ll cut it off your belt. And your hand too, if it gets in the way.”
Reluctantly, Odo did as he was bid. The steward opened the purse and spilled its contents onto a small table.
“There!” Emma swooped down and picked up the pebble, holding it aloft for all to see. The steward nodded thoughtfully.
“You don’t understand. I only took what was rightfully mine, what I was owed,” Odo blustered.
“What?”
Hugh’s roar of disbelief was answered by a sullen mutter. “That’s my money.”
“You expect us to believe you won all this money at the cockfights?” The steward took up the interrogation with somewhat more enthusiasm. Odo was silent. “Speak up, man, and tell me the truth, for you can be sure that if you won such a large amount, people will have seen and noted it. And I shall certainly be asking around to find witnesses to your good fortune.”
“I didn’t win the money, Master Anselm did,” Odo admitted sullenly. A note of aggrieved bravado crept into his voice. “But it was my money to start off with. Mine!”
“Explain yourself!”
Odo hesitated. But there was too much evidence against him now to pretend innocence. Nevertheless, he did his best to portray his actions in the best possible light. “I was with Master Anselm at the cockfighting,” he said, addressing his remarks to Emma. “I was only watching, but Master Anselm was making wagers on the fights. He told me he was determined to increase the amount of your dowry.” Odo’s glance flicked to Hugh, then returned to Emma. “He wagered his last coin, and lost. He lost everything he owned.”
“Yet you say that Anselm owed you money,” Hugh cut in quickly. “How did that happen? Did he borrow from you?”
“He took all I had. As a loan, he said.” Odo sounded resentful now. “It was my coin, but he wagered it on a fight, and won. And from there on, he kept on winning. But it was my money he wagered, and therefore I should have had his winnings. But he would not give them to me, he would not even share a half, but offered me only the coin I had given him and no thanks for anything.”
“Which is fair enough,” Emma said quickly. “He was the one with the skill to increase the original stake, not you.”
Odo’s eyes narrowed; his face mirrored his rejection of her words. “I, too, have a lass I would wed,” he said bitterly. “I, too, wanted something to offer her, an incentive to share my life and my bed, for she has shown as unwilling as your own suitor, mistress.” His glance flicked once more to Hugh, then away again.
Janna watched him. She felt uneasy. Something was not quite right; something had been said, or not said, something important. She was sure the rogue had given away more than he knew, perhaps more than they all realized, if only she could work out what it was. What had she missed during this exchange?
While the steward began to interrogate Odo more carefully, Janna closed her eyes, allowing her mind to go back to the start of the interview. What Odo had said. How he’d reacted. His unexpected change in demeanor after Hugh cornered him. He’d recognized Hugh, and obviously knew Anselm’s plans for his sister to wed Hugh, yet Hugh did not seem to know him. Was that why Odo had begun to relax his guard? Was there some connection between him and Hugh, and if so, what was it? And why did Odo expect Anselm’s gratitude? Was it only for the loan, or was it for something else as well? Her thoughts spun faster than a child’s toy as she began to put the pieces of the puzzle together in the hope of understanding the whole.
“You know the lord Hugh, don’t you?” she interrupted at last, realizing that she must proceed cautiously if she wished to trap Odo into admitting something that might damage him.
Sudden alarm twisted Odo’s face. “Master Anselm pointed him out to me as the man he wished his sister to wed,” he said, after a long pause.
“Why? For what purpose?”
Odo moistened his lips with his tongue, as if hoping to coax a convincing explanation from his mouth.
“It was you who knifed my lord Hugh, wasn’t it, Odo?” Janna accused. She took a breath, and crossed her fingers behind her back. “I remember you now. You were hiding in the group surrounding the musicians, but you were conspicuous because you were one man among many women and children.” She stared at Odo, daring him to deny it.
Speechless, Odo looked down at his boots.
“Show me your knife!” Hugh demanded, while Janna eased a small sigh of relief that her bluff seemed to have paid off. When Odo made no effort to unsheathe the weapon, Hugh stepped forward and stood over him. “Show me!” he demanded.
Reluctantly, Odo drew out the knife. Perhaps fearing a sudden attack, the steward grabbed it out of his hand and held it out of range. Janna moved to his side, followed by Hugh. They examined it carefully. The blade was unnaturally clean. Although it had obviously been washed recently, dark stains in cracks in the hilt revealed the telltale traces of blood. Janna knew there was no way of telling whether the blood was animal or human, but thought it worth trying a further bluff if it resulted in the truth.
“There is blood on this knife, my lord,” she said, pointing out the stains to the steward. “I’ll make a wager of my own: that you’ll find it’s the lord Hugh’s blood staining the hilt, as well as Master Anselm’s. I know you have ways of ensuring that truth will prevail—very painful ways so I am told.”
Odo gave a whimper of fright. Janna turned to him. “If you were to speak up, to freely confess the full extent of your misdeeds…” Janna left the suggestion hanging in the air.
The steward looked somewhat bemused. He gave a grunt that could have meant just about anything at all. Hugh jumped in quickly. “There is no doubt you will hang for the murder of Anselm,” he told the cowering man. “As you cannot die twice, you may as well save yourself from being tortured until you confess the rest of your crimes. For my part, I am sure that you are also responsible for the attack on me. Now that I look at you more carefully, I realize that your face is indeed familiar.”
Looking thoroughly frightened and miserable now, Odo nodded. “I was only following orders,” he said sullenly.
“But…but why?” Emma cried. “Why would you attack Hugh? And on whose orders? What nonsense is this?”
“I acted for your brother,” Odo said bitterly. “All along, I did what I was told, and see what harm has come to me!”
“You weren’t told to slit Anselm’s throat.” Emma’s eyes flashed with indignation. “And Anselm would never have told you to try to kill Hugh either!”
“Not kill. Wound.”
“Wound? But why?”
Odo didn’t answer Emma’s question, but his confession confirmed what Janna had guessed. She marveled that a brother’s love could have unraveled so badly, and with such devastating consequences. And yet it must have seemed a simple scheme at its inception. Emma still waited for Odo to explain himself, but he remained silent, fully aware at last of the awful fate that awaited him.
“I think I know how it might all have come about.” Janna paused, for her words would upset Hugh and destroy Emma’s faith in her brother. But for her own peace of mind re
garding her safety, she needed to know the truth.
“I believe Master Anselm’s prime mission here at the fair was to speak to you about his sister, my lord, and beg you to marry her. That didn’t work, and so he made another plan: to win money at the cockfights, in the hope that increasing Mistress Emma’s dowry might change your mind. But he didn’t win, he lost instead. So says Odo, and I have no reason to doubt his word, for I saw Master Anselm at the cockfights myself, and so did his sister. It was apparent that, at the time, things were going badly for him.” Janna paused as she tried to work out how best to word her argument so as to cause the least possible pain to both Emma and Hugh.
“I believe that, at this point, Anselm formed yet another plan to bring his mission to a successful conclusion. I believe he pointed you out to Odo, my lord, and told him to take cover within the crowd around the musicians, and wound you if he could.”
“No! Anselm would never ask a thing like that of anyone. Never!” Emma cried.
“He couldn’t do it himself, for the lord Hugh would have recognized him,” Janna pointed out.
“But why should Anselm want Odo to wound Hugh? The whole idea is preposterous!”
“I don’t think he meant Odo to wound my lord quite as badly as he did. I think his idea was that, with my lord in pain, he would need care and attention and that you might provide it, mistress.” Now Janna looked at Emma. “I think your brother hoped that being in such close proximity with the lord would kindle your affection for each other and become something much more lasting. But that plan also went awry for, instead of you taking him home to recuperate, he was brought here to the abbey and thus put out of your reach.”
“Is this true?” Hugh’s incredulous glance went from Janna to Odo. “Is that how it came about?”
Odo shrugged his shoulders, seemingly resigned to the fact that he could do nothing now to prevent his fate.
“Oh!” Emma’s hand went to her throat. Her face had lost all color; she looked about to swoon. Janna took a quick step to her side, and put her arm around the young woman to steady her.
“Borrowing money from Odo to gamble on the cockfights was your brother’s last chance to buy your happiness,” she said, hoping to comfort Emma. “It was you he thought of, mistress, not himself.”
“If he thought of me, he would have given me his blessing to marry Peter!”
“Are you sure about all this?” Hugh asked Janna. His eyes were troubled, but the fact that he’d lied about recognizing Odo told Janna that he already knew the answer to his question. Before she could say anything, he reached out and grabbed the front of Odo’s tunic. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Is this true?” “True enough,” the villein muttered sullenly. “I did as Master Anselm ordered. I’d intended to give you only a small flesh wound but you, Sister, you stumbled against my lord and pushed him onto my knife.” He glared at Janna as if it was all her fault that his knife was open and ready to slice into Hugh.
But his grievances were not yet at an end. “Master Anselm owed me a reward, after all I’d done for him. But when I asked him for my share of his winnings, he refused. When I demanded it as my right, he told me that if I continued to threaten him, he would inform the steward of my part in wounding you, my lord. He said the steward wouldn’t believe me if I told him I was acting under his orders, for you were all friends from childhood and Master Anselm had no reason to want you harmed.”
“Oh!” Faced with this final evidence of her brother’s dishonor, Emma began to weep. She slumped down beside Peter, who tried in vain to loosen his shackles enough to comfort her. Seeing his struggles, the steward gestured at the guard to free him, and to put the fetters on Odo instead.
The purse was refilled and given to Emma. “No compensation for the loss of your brother, but the money was his and now it is yours,” the steward said awkwardly.
“No matter how misguided his reasons, he did what he thought was best for you, Emma,” Hugh said, when she made no move to take the purse. “He would have wanted you to have it.”
“It’s tainted with his blood!”
“Take it. If you don’t wish to use it for yourself, put it to a good cause.”
Emma stretched out a reluctant hand for the purse then turned to Peter. He wrapped his arms around her to comfort her. She clung to him, her desolation evident for all to see.
Janna looked at Odo. She could understand the rage and the feeling of helplessness that must have possessed him when faced with Anselm’s double-dealing. She, too, knew the rage and frustration of being powerless when faced with an injustice, although she hoped it would never lead her to murder. But Anselm’s behavior had been worse than Janna had realized. While she didn’t regret bringing the truth to light, and setting her own fears to rest, she was sorry to have blighted his memory in the eyes of his sister and his best friend.
Feeling suddenly alone and unsure of herself, she looked about for Godric. He was standing beside the door, and she beckoned him over. He nodded at her. His smile brought her some comfort as they each hooked an arm to support Hugh back to the infirmary, for Hugh looked stricken and sick at heart.
If Peter’s life hadn’t been at stake, Janna knew that all of them would have preferred to remain ignorant of the truth of Anselm’s last day on earth. She only wished there could have been a better outcome, for all their sakes.
Chapter 13
The attack on Hugh, the death of Anselm, and the arrest of first Peter and then Odo, had sent ripples of shocked speculation throughout the close abbey community. While Janna remained silent over her part in what had happened, tongues continued to wag long after it was all over and the principals had departed. Hugh, now healed, had accompanied Emma and Peter back to their own manor for Anselm’s burial, leaving Godric to keep watch over Hugh’s manor. Odo was still shut away, awaiting such time as his lord could come to the abbey, bringing witnesses for his trial. To all intents and purposes, life at the abbey had returned to normal, but Janna missed the flurry and excitement of the fair, and the presence of merchants and pilgrims in the abbey’s guesthouse. Most of all, she missed Hugh and Godric.
The days grew shorter. Leaves of red and gold floated downward, forming mushy piles underfoot in a mean, drizzling rain that seemed as if it might last forever. Janna was glad she had shelter, for the nights were long, and bitter with cold. Frost sparkled in the garden in the mornings, and her breath puffed out in misty clouds when she went outside. She was grateful that Sister Anne had insisted that she stay on to help in the infirmary, and she took comfort from the fact that while she was at the abbey she continued to learn for, true to her promise, Sister Anne had initiated her into the mysteries of bodily humors and the remedies to keep them in balance. Janna now knew how to feel a pulse and what to look for when checking urine, as well as acquiring such techniques as cupping, purging and bloodletting. She was also learning the prayers and chants that accompanied some of the cures, and the healing properties of precious stones. Sister Anne had also mentioned astrological charts, but she hadn’t shown Janna how to calculate and draw them. Janna was under the impression that the nun didn’t entirely approve of such things. But she had allowed Janna to splint a broken arm after one of the young oblates was surprised climbing a tree and fell out of it in her haste to obey Sister Grace’s command to “come down at once!” She had even stitched an open wound together, after draining it of pus. And with the cold weather came such an outbreak of ague and aches, colics and colds, she and Sister Anne were kept ever busier ministering to the sick and the elderly.
With her growing skills and experience came confidence, but underneath it all, Janna was seized with a wild impatience. Her quest to learn to read and write was still beyond her reach, while her search for information about her mother had come to a dead end. The company of women, the sense of being continually watched, and judged, further chafed her spirits.
She had done her best to put a convincing argument both to Sister Grace, and to the chantress, but had been refuse
d. Sister Grace had tried to soften their rejection. “As a lay sister, you have no need for this sort of knowledge,” she said. “Unfortunately you have no dowry, but you do have special skills that could benefit the abbey. Perhaps if I spoke to our abbess about you? Perhaps if you took your vows?”
Janna knew that she couldn’t. She’d spent long enough in the abbey to respect the belief that had prompted the nuns to give up their temporal lives in the service of God, but she did not share that unquestioning belief, and could not make such a sacred vow without it. She looked to Agnes to cheer her low spirits, but the lay sister’s ready wit and sense of humor seemed also to have deserted her. Janna thought she knew the cause, but when she ventured to put in a good word for the bailiff, Agnes snapped at her and walked away. Thereafter she seemed even more morose, lacking even the will to continue her education in the healing properties of plants. Try as she might, Janna had been unable to lift her friend’s depression. She was sorry for it, and felt sorry too, for Master Will.
Mindful that she’d never gone back to the fair to give him Agnes’s answer, she manufactured a reason to visit the apothecary in the hope that she might encounter the bailiff on her journey. Sister Anne was dubious at first, but Janna insisted that she needed some special oils that only an apothecary could provide to mix with the herbs she’d cut and dried, for the two of them were laying in a store of medicaments to last through the cold, dead months of winter.
“And we also need a new supply of galangal,” she said persuasively. “It’s so good for Sister Angelica’s heart. She says it’s hot enough to waken the dead!”
Sister Anne nodded in grudging agreement. “But you cannot go alone, I will come with you,” she said, adding, “and we shall see if Master Fulk can also provide us with a cooling jasper stone. That, too, is helpful for alleviating heart pain.”
Fulk. Janna and her mother had fallen foul of the posturing apothecary when he’d attempted, and failed, to care for Dame Alice and her newborn babe. Janna knew he would not welcome her into his shop, but her circumstances, now, were different. Fulk would not dare to be uncivil to her while Sister Anne was present. And so, accompanied by the infirmarian, Janna marched into the apothecary’s shop, made confident by the knowledge that there were coins to spend and that her habit would protect her good name and reputation.
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