“Our lady did mention seeing Sir Geoffrey in the chapel. His wife may have been in her chambers, although I fear she might not have heard much. It seems she has been spending much time with a pitcher of good wine for company.”
“A strange way to grieve over a man who had raped her.”
“Unless it is no grief at all but the violent act of murder which has so unsettled her humors.”
“We’d be wise to leave the questioning of that lady to our prioress for she knows her better than we.” Thomas frowned. “I do find the accident strange, however. The stairwell is a narrow one.” He looked up at Anne. “Has anyone found the reason for his fall? Was there something on the stairs to cause him to slip or trip?”
“No one has said so, nor, do I believe, has anyone yet looked. What are you thinking, brother?”
“If he slipped, he might well have hit his head, but he would not have fallen far. The stairwell is too narrow and the twists too sharp. If the accident happened just at the first curve, he might have fallen to the stairwell entrance but not into the open ward. If he fell further up toward the living quarters, he would have been found still in the stairwell or quite dead from the fall to the stones below. Either way, it would have been impossible for him to have fallen into the ward.”
“Nor could he have crawled with the wound I saw.”
“Has he been conscious? Did he speak at all of this accident?”
“Despite my best efforts, he has been unconscious from the moment of his discovery. As to details, there are few. Considering the amount and freshness of the blood flowing from his head, I would say that our prioress must have stumbled upon him not long after he fell. Those are the details.”
“You say you fear for his life? What is the nature of his head wound?”
“I fear that his skull has been fractured. We have treated the external injuries as best we can, but a binding of yarrow with a wine cleansing has its limitations. I am not skilled at surgery, brother, but I know how difficult it is to determine the extent of such a wound. I looked for fragments of broken skull but found none. At least the cold did help keep the swelling down, but I cannot judge whether there is pressure on his brain from the injury. I fear this could be fatal, but we must leave it to God’s mercy. Father Anselm requires our prayers.”
Thomas nodded and turned his head away from Sister Anne. As close as he had become to the sub-infirmarian of Tyndal, there were some things he could not speak to her about. One of those things was his inability to pray. “Was the head wound in front or in back?” he finally asked.
“In front. As if he had fallen forward.”
“Surely, he would have put out his hands to break his fall even before he hit his head on the stairs. Has anyone found where he injured his head? There must be blood.”
“It was dark when he was found and carried back up the stairs. As I said, I doubt anyone has looked.”
“Then perhaps we should, sister,” Thomas said as he grabbed a torch from the wall and hurried to the flight of stairs.
The stairwell was too narrow for more than one person to walk through at a time with any ease. Thomas handed Anne the torch, and she followed the monk as he slowly descended, studying the stones of the stairs and wall as he went. It did not take them long.
“Here it was. See?” Thomas had just reached the fullness of the first curve below the living quarters and pointed to the wall.
Anne turned and looked behind her. “He must have slipped at the top then, but I noted no impediment, nothing that should have caused him to fall.”
“A mouse running across his path? A rat might have startled him.” Thomas knelt, looked at the bloodstain on the wall, then studied the stairs just above and below it. “You say he lost much blood?”
“Indeed he had,” she said, kneeling to look as he moved down a step to give her room. “I believe I see where your thoughts are leading. With such a blood loss, there should be more blood here, or perhaps stains all the way down the stairs if he slipped further on after the injury.”
Thomas stood and gestured for Anne to bring the torch closer. “Look here. What do you think this is on the stones of the window?”
“Blood.”
The monk leaned over the stones and looked down into the open ward. “God must surely love this priest. Had the winds not driven the snow into a good drift against this tower, Father Anselm would have suffered more than a cracked skull.”
“You think…”
“I suspect he was pushed out of this window, sister. After he was shoved down the stairs.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The baron closed his eyes.
Eleanor watched him and frowned with concern. “Richard is getting the best care possible, father,” she said.
He looked at her in silence, eyes dark with fatigue and anxiety. The lines in his face had deepened.
“Sister Anne tells me that he has no fever and that he did take some watered wine this morning.”
“Lass, I question neither your judgment nor Sister Anne’s ability as a healer, but tell me, if you can, why God has chosen to curse me so? I have failed to protect my family, my retainers, and my guests. This castle has become not a fortress against unnatural death but rather a place to embrace it. The first was Hywel, a man I shall sorely miss, killed by misadventure. Then Henry is foully murdered under my very roof and my son stands accused of the deed. Father Anselm meets with calamity, and now my dear grandson lies in a sick bed once again. What horrendous sin have I committed? As a woman closer to God than this old warrior could ever be, can you answer that?”
“Job committed no sin.”
“Job was a saint. I am not.” Adam rubbed his hands across his eyes. There were circles the color of bruises under them.
“I have faith that Richard will recover and my brother found innocent. Hywel’s death was accidental. That could have happened to anyone and at any time. No one could predict that Henry would be stabbed to death, especially you, and we do not know exactly what happened to Father Anselm. It may have been an accident as well.” The latter she did not believe at all.
Adam slammed his fist on the table. “You may have your faith, Prioress Eleanor, but my charge remains a more earthly one: to protect all within the walls of Wynethorpe. In that, I have failed. As to the nature of my priest’s accident, do not insult me so. I have spoken to Brother Thomas, who seemed quite sure that the poor man’s head was pushed with force into a wall and his body tossed from a window to finish the deed.” He smiled grimly. “Surely, you do not now doubt the judgment of a man whose praises you sang to me so recently?”
Eleanor said nothing until the fires of her father’s exhausted anger had sputtered and dimmed. Silence was a woman’s wisest response until a man’s choler cooled and reason regained a seat in his soul, her aunt once said. It was man’s nature to swing at flies with an ax at such times, however much he might later rue the consequences. “Nay, I trust him implicitly,” she said at last, her tone gentle.
Adam snorted. “Good! While Sister Anne has been tending to Richard and Brother Thomas has been piecing together evidence with perceptive logic, I assume you have contributed to the search for justice by offering sufficient prayers so the murderer will be found before my son is taken away to be hanged?”
“Dare you suggest that prayer is not effective, my lord? Such would be heresy,” Eleanor snapped, but her pride was wounded. “Perhaps you might tell me what you have discovered from your questioning of those within the castle?”
For just an instant, she saw the fury she felt reflected back at her from her father’s eyes, then the fires were banked and he replied in a calm voice. “Every man in this fortress has been questioned about where he was the night of the murder by one of three under my command I trust the most. So far, all have either been where they should have been, passed out with drink, or with some woman, wife or no. Nor was there any indication that anyone did more than wish Henry’s soul a hotter fire in Hell for the accident
he caused.”
As Eleanor began a question, he raised one hand and continued. “At your suggestion, I did approach Sir Geoffrey about his thoughts on the murder when he came to the dining hall this morning to break his fast. As I suspected, he is a most generous friend. He said he could not believe that my son could have done the deed and thinks someone else must have killed Henry. Robert simply came upon the body at the wrong time, he said. He would be most willing to present other possibilities at any trial. As the most likely event, he suggested that Henry ran into a drunken soldier in the halls of Wynethorpe and was murdered for no better reason than the discordance caused by too much wine or a gaming debt. Henry was known to play at dice and rarely won the rolling of them.”
A noble gesture but an indefensible supposition, she thought, considering the results of the questioning. “You told me none of this until I asked. May I know why?”
“Because I am lord of Wynethorpe!” he thundered. “The accused murderer is my son and the murder occurred in my castle. I have been far too tolerant of your involvement. None of this is woman’s business.”
“First you accuse me of doing little to help Robert and then you dismiss me as a weak woman who could do little if I tried. You may not have it both ways, my lord. As to what is woman’s business and what is not, may I remind you that I have full responsibility at Tyndal and there is no question there about what is and is not my authority. In addition, need I remind you that Robert is also my brother, whom I love as well as any sister can, and that Isabelle, Juliana, Henry and George are almost kin to me in my heart. Although you are, without question, lord of this place, I am your daughter. As such, I have the right to be involved and know what is happening by the love I bear for all concerned.”
The baron turned pale, then sat down on the bench with a heavy thud. After a moment, he continued, his voice hoarse but calmer. “Let us make peace, daughter. I do not wish to argue with you.”
From the pinched look around his eyes, Eleanor realized that her father was in as much physical pain from his old wound as he was emotional pain from the accusations against his son. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nor do I wish to argue with you, father. Please tell me all that Sir Geoffrey had to say.”
Adam stretched out his leg and began to massage it. “Little of help. He said he had never seen Robert strike in anger and he has known him from a time he was younger than my grandson. Of course, my son and his have never been close, but they were of different ages and temperaments. On the other hand, he said he had never known Henry to raise a sword or fist to anyone either, although he had seen a change in the lad recently.”
“His father mocked him cruelly in front of all at dinner the other night. Did he taunt Henry for his lack of manhood often?”
Adam snorted. “Geoffrey was sick of the boy’s whining. Henry had taken it into his head that he would wed the Lady Isabelle. When Geoffrey announced he would have her instead, the boy acted like a baby whose wet nurse had taken away the tit.”
“Surely Henry had reason to believe Isabelle would be his wife after all these years. Perhaps he had even grown to love her.”
“I would have agreed with you once, but, if I may be so blunt, a man does not rape the woman he loves. And he did rape Lady Isabelle, did he not, if we are to believe her and I understand that you do?”
It was Eleanor’s turn to be surprised at her father’s words. “Indeed, my lord, I do believe her tale if for no other reason than she did herself no favor in the telling.”
“Well reasoned. I would agree.”
“I must wonder, however, why Henry never told his father about his bedding of Isabelle. He might not have confessed to a rape as such, but the act would have prevented his father’s marriage with the lady and guaranteed the success of his own wishes.”
“According to Sir Geoffrey, Henry did swear that he had bedded the woman.”
“Yet…”
“There was blood on the sheets when Geoffrey awoke next to her. In her grief at losing her virginity, she pointed that out to him and he believed her.”
“Smearing a little chicken blood on the sheets to prove virginity when the gate had already been breached is an old trick. I wonder that a man of Sir Geoffrey’s experience could be duped with such ease.”
“By God’s right hand, whatever are they teaching girls in convents these days?” Adam laughed. “That you should know such a thing is…but never mind. If you have enlightened me about how much nuns know about worldly tricks, let me perhaps enlighten you about the nature of good men.”
“Do,” Eleanor said. The earlier tension between them had dissipated and she began to relax.
“My dear friend is a true innocent with women. Although he may have dallied as boys do before marriage, I know that he was never once unfaithful to his first wife after they took their vows at the church door, even when her pregnancies would have given him cause to seek relief elsewhere for his own health.”
“Yet surely he knew that women do such things…”
“He chose to believe Isabelle’s story and disbelieve that of his son. As I have said before, he is besotted with his ward or, since we are speaking unadorned truth here, besotted with the idea that he had regained his virility and that it was he who had gotten her with child.”
“Thus he also chose to believe that his son had lied. Men cannot be such fools, surely.”
“My child, we are all mortal, men and women alike. Fools we have always been and fools will we always be, especially when our greatest frailties breach the walls of our better sense.”
“I have learned from you, my lord. But please continue. I did not wish to interrupt.”
Adam smiled with gentleness at his daughter and continued. “Indeed, once Geoffrey married his whore, she was no longer available to Henry whether he loved or lusted for her. As my old friend said, a man, after being unhorsed, picks himself up and finds another horse to ride, but Henry whined and whined like a whipped pup. His father tried to make him see what a fool he was becoming and he mocked to press the point on him. That is all, but Henry continued to force his attentions on the lady and that angered his father even more. It is unnatural for a son to pursue his father’s wife like a lovesick pigeon.”
Eleanor shook her head. “If I may be so candid, father, Sir Geoffrey’s public ridicule of Henry was as excessive as beating an unweaned pup. Would you have so mocked either of your sons?”
“My sons have always known their duty. As a consequence, I have never been driven to treat either as Geoffrey did Henry. Still, I think I may say with some reason that both Hugh and Robert have gained respect amongst their peers. Henry had few friends and even fewer admirers. Have you forgotten that Henry so angered someone that he was killed? Someone, perhaps, who was less tolerant of his peevish manner than Geoffrey? He would have done well to take his father’s advice and behave in all ways as a man should. No matter how blind Geoffrey was about the woman he took to wife, he takes responsibility for his actions, something his son had yet to learn.”
Eleanor held her breath for a moment before saying what was on her mind. However angry it might make her father, she had to speak the thought. “You do not think that Sir Geoffrey might have done the deed himself?” she said at last, not daring to look her father in the eye. “You do not think that he might have been so outraged at his son’s rape, real or purported, that he killed his own son in revenge or even to silence him from forcing an annulment of the marriage by claiming prior sexual knowledge of his father’s wife?”
Adam snorted. “Nay, I do not, daughter. For all his blindness about his wife, he is a man of mature years who has suffered and overcome trials severe enough to test the limits of any mortal man. Henry, on the other hand, had no iron in his backbone. It is more likely, therefore, that Henry would have killed his father for taking away the sugar teat.”
“Then I must ask this, father: Although both you and I believe in Robert’s innocence, do you think he might have been
bedding the Lady Isabelle? Could Henry have come upon them that night and attacked my brother out of a jealous rage…”
The baron smiled. “Ah, Eleanor, do you remember how shocked we were when Hugh brought that babe to us and confessed it was his?”
The prioress nodded.
“Know then that Robert confessed to me, as I proposed the marriage with Juliana to him, that he has had no knowledge of women except in his dreams when Satan sends his whores to tempt us all. Although he would swear otherwise, I think he would have found a monkish vocation quite suitable if you had not already taken vows.” He stopped and studied his daughter’s face for a long moment before continuing, “Now, however, although he might have made a fine abbot, he will be, as he always has been, a loyal son and will do as I ask, even to marriage.”
“You are truly blessed in your sons, my lord, if not in your daughter.”
“One of my children had to take after me,” replied the baron as he rose, leaving Eleanor to wonder which he meant.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The woman had been standing immobile near the stones of the parapet for so long that miniature drifts had formed against her feet. Oblivious to the chill, the Lady Juliana continued to stare into the gray void filled with swirling flecks of snow.
Thomas shook with the cold. Even the thick cloak and decent leather boots, loaned to him by his prioress from clothes left behind by Lord Hugh, were barely sufficient to keep the wind’s ice from his bones. How the woman in front of him could endure the bitter cold in lighter attire was beyond his imagination. Was she in a trance, he wondered, possessed perhaps, or simply mad?
“My lady,” he shouted into the wind. “Should you not seek shelter?”
When she finally turned to him, her face was without expression and her eyes blank of recognition.
“Fear not! I am Brother Thomas of Tyndal. I came with Prioress Eleanor and Sister Anne. Will you come inside for some spiced wine to chase away this cruel chill?”
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