Season of the Fox (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 2)

by Denise Domning

  “Pardon, Sir Faucon,” Edmund said from behind him. “I need my desk and the stool.”

  Faucon stepped aside, allowing his clerk to enter. As Edmund began to gather up his scribing implements, he asked, “Did you receive the widow’s oath?”

  “I did,” Faucon replied.

  “Then I can add her name,” Edmund said, his back to his master. “I believe we’re almost ready for the inquest. The house servants have brought a worktable into the courtyard and placed their master’s body upon it. I’ve asked them to find a second table for Elsa of Stanrudde’s body, but they’ve paid me no heed. I think you’ll have to command them to do that, as well as send them to fetch her remains. Lastly, I’ve found the witnesses we need to testify to the fact of Master Bernart’s birth. Perhaps they will also stand as guarantors for the widow.”

  Here, the monk paused, craning his neck to look at his employer. “Imagine my surprise at discovering we both know one of the men among them.”

  “We do?” Faucon asked in his own surprise. Neither he nor Edmund hailed from this shire nor had they known one another until two weeks ago. The possibility of coming across any man with whom they were both acquainted was far-fetched indeed.

  “Aye. It’s that lay brother who assisted us at the miller’s death. He was at one of the merchant’s homes, treating the children of the house for some ailment or the other,” he returned with a brusque and not-at-all approving nod, then went back to packing his basket. Like many Benedictines, Edmund prized his learning the way Bernart had prized his fine house and treasure chests. It wasn’t in the clerk to approve of an uneducated man being allowed to join his order.

  What irritated Edmund made Faucon grin. Offering no word to his clerk, he turned and exited into Bernart’s courtyard. As Edmund said, the merchant’s bloody body now lay on a short wooden worktable, the one that had held Rob’s delicate fabric. The table had been placed to one side of the yard where men might file past him with ease, circling around the table to return to the gateway so they could exit. A half-dozen men were gathered behind the corpse. Two of the men wore clothing expensive enough to pronounce them the owners of the nearby homes. Crossing one man’s breast was a thick gold chain. The medallion hanging from it bore the town’s emblem stamped upon its face, naming him one of the city’s aldermen.

  Standing next to the worktable, examining the dead merchant, was Brother Colin in his black habit. This day found the former apothecary hatless, exposing his shorn ring of white hair to this afternoon’s bright light. Once again, the monk carried his leather pack upon his back, but this time there was no spray of freshly-collected herbs dandling from its top.

  “Brother Colin!” Faucon called in greeting, still grinning.

  The monk looked up. His dried apple of a face creased even more as he smiled. “Sir Crowner,” he called in return.

  Colin’s pleasure as he once more encountered the shire’s Coronarius wasn’t reflected on the faces of the men gathered near Bernart. Instead, they watched Faucon with their arms crossed, shoulders squared and expressions wary. As Faucon stopped next to the monk, he offered the man his hand in greeting, as if Colin were a comrade-in-arms rather than a former merchant who now walked a religious path. In truth, Faucon thought of them as equals. Both of them were committed to revealing the hidden tales told by the bodies of dead men. When Brother Colin accepted his hand, the watching townsmen stirred in surprise. Then again, it wasn’t often that a Englishman didn’t bow to a Norman or that a well-born knight offered a hand to a commoner.

  “So how goes your hunt thus far, sir?” the monk asked.

  “Very well,” Faucon replied with a smile. “This is becoming an interesting chase, when I didn’t imagine it could be at first. Yet here I am, only an hour after beginning my task, and already my trail begins to twist and shift in unexpected ways.”

  Beneath his snowy brows Colin’s dark eyes took fire in interest. “Is that so? Then I pray our Lord grants you the time and opportunity to follow it to its rightful end. Should you need a ready ear, I am here.”

  Faucon choked back his laugh. It was good to know that Colin wasn’t beneath begging. Two weeks ago, the monk had served as tutor, schooling his new Crowner in the means and manners of a miller’s death. Now he wanted to discover how well his student did in his new vocation, as well as prying out every detail Faucon had gathered thus far about Bernart’s passing.

  “My thanks, indeed, but I fear you’ll need to wait a bit before I have time for conversation. I intend to call the jury in a few moments, hoping to complete the inquest before the moon rises.”

  Again, the monk’s snowy brows lifted. “So soon?”

  “What else can I do?” Faucon returned in the pretense of helplessness. “I can hardly wait forty days to conclude this matter if Master Bernart must be buried before that.” This seeming fact wasn’t precisely true and by Colin’s slow smile Faucon saw that the monk knew as much.

  Enjoying that Colin stewed, Faucon shifted to face the waiting merchants, ready to introduce himself as he had done so often this day. To his surprise, the men who only moments before had eyed him in something less than welcome now watched him as if he were someone they recognized but couldn’t quite remember. Their arms were open and their expressions relaxed.

  “Master Manfred, Master Gerard,” Colin said, lifting his hand to indicate the better dressed among the men, “this is Sir Faucon de Ramis, or Sir Crowner as he prefers to be called. As of two sennights ago, it is now Sir Crowner’s responsibility to hold our inquests. It is also his right to assess and confiscate the king’s portion from the estates of those who do murder in our shire.”

  Faucon shot the monk a startled sidelong look at this last piece. Although Colin’s explanation of his duty as assessor was accurate, that part of his position wasn’t something Faucon expected to be emphasized, especially not to men who had wealth worthy of royal notice. Apparently Stanrudde’s former apothecary knew the folk of his city well indeed. Both merchants smiled and nodded at this. It said that the assessment of estates was another place where Sir Alain had trod too heavily over the years.

  “Sir Faucon, Master Manfred is our mercer, bringing us the finest of silks, while Master Gerard deals in fleece like many of the better households in our town. As Brother Edmund requires, both these two masters and their journeymen, here,” Colin indicated the four younger men who stood with the merchants, “have lived their whole lives in Stanrudde and have known Master Bernart for all that while. They can swear to the fact of his birth. As can I,” he added, “having known Bernart from his earliest days.”

  “Don’t have them speak their words yet,” Edmund sang out as he trotted back into the courtyard. He had his desk beneath one arm, the stool hanging from the other and his basket slung by its strap over his shoulder. “I wish to record their names before I hear their vows.”

  Faucon sighed. It was he, not Edmund, who needed to hear their vows.

  The witnesses and Faucon alike watched as Edmund set his stool at the end of Bernart’s bier, then carefully laid out the tools he needed at hand: inkpot, quill, whetstone and knife. Edmund placed each implement a precise finger’s distance from the next. Then, taking his partially-filled roll of parchment from his basket, he sat on the stool, placed his desk in his lap, and spread the skin atop it.

  Once he’d dipped the trimmed end of his quill into the inkpot, he looked expectantly at Faucon. “I’m ready to record the oath of the new widow as first finder.”

  Faucon nodded and repeated Mistress Alina’s words out in the open air where God and the men around him could both bear witness. “Alina of Stanrudde, wife of Bernart le Linsman, swears that she was the first finder, and that she rightfully raised the hue and cry as the law requires.”

  Then Faucon looked at the two merchants and their men. “Will you who are Bernart’s neighbors, and those men of your household who stand with you today, guarantee on pain of fine that Mistress Alina makes her appearance before the justices
when she is called?”

  “We will,” said Master Gerard, speaking first, the sweep of his hand including the two men who wore the red and green colors of his house.

  “Your names?” Edmund asked without lifting his pen or his head.

  The wool merchant looked askance at so brusque a command and rude a manner aimed at him by a mere monk. Although the alderman’s bearing and the arrangement of his features suggested he was by nature a congenial man, being portly and bald to a fringe of hair around the back of his head, Faucon doubted the merchant was accustomed to such rough treatment.

  He smiled at Master Gerard, seeking to soothe the feathers that Edmund had just ruffled. “If you please, master. My clerk and I are ordered by king and court to note all the details of every oath on pain of accruing our own fines. This attention to detail occasionally causes my clerk to be overly rigorous in his routine and his manner.”

  At Faucon’s pretty speech, Edmund lifted his head. The clerk blinked rapidly. “Aye, so it does. My pardon, masters, if I insult. If you will proceed, Sir Faucon? Oh, and don’t forget we must yet send men to fetch Elsa of Stanrudde’s body.”

  Faucon swallowed his surprise. Earlier it had been a smile and an attempt to spare his master a fine. Now, a backhanded apology, albeit followed by a command. It was a day for miracles, indeed.

  With November upon them, the sun’s journey across the sky had shortened as winter loomed. Although there was yet another hour before darkness fell and the city gates were closed, around the hour for Vespers, light was already slanting across the courtyard. By the time Edmund had recorded the names and oaths of their witnesses, as well as the facts of Bernart’s ancestry, shadows were piling gently around the corners of the merchant’s house. At Faucon’s command, Bernart’s servants found torches, in case the sun set before the jurors had completed their viewing.

  One of Master Gerard’s journeymen agreed to warn Garret the Weaver, who arrived at Bernart’s home soon after, he and his stocky neighbor bringing his mother’s body. Elsa was yet wrapped in her tattered blanket. Bernart’s servants proved as unwilling to risk fleas as Edmund had been, and claimed no suitable table could be found. At last, Garret laid his mother’s body beneath Bernart’s bier, then pulled back her blanket to expose her body to God’s light against the possibility any juror wished to examine her remains. The two masters sent their other journeymen to carry the call to the parish, alerting the men and all boys over the age of twelve to come.

  Unlike peasants in rural villages, who tended to make more solitary treks to the place of a hearing, coming as they did from toft or croft, barn or work shed, these city men arrived as households, some groups as many as thirty strong. Masters strode alongside ancient manservants, apprentices trotted beside those scullery lads who might be of age. Each household pronounced its identity by the color of their garments. There were homes where only blue tunics and red chausses were worn, some where it was green chausses beneath yellow tunics. Faucon eyed one household, garish in its parti-colored tunics of orange and brown, the chausses worn in the opposite arrangement of colors, one leg brown, the other orange.

  Households they were and men as well, but that didn’t stop them from gossiping like old women. The lurid manner of Bernart’s death was shared, man to man and group to group, with everyone along the lane positing his own ideas as to why the merchant might have been killed. As the crowd grew, so did the volume of these suppositions until some men resorted to shouting.

  Nor did what should have been a somber gathering prevent the boys from being boys. From one end of the lane a ball, no doubt a sack of dried beans or peas sewn shut, arced its way into the sky. It disappeared into the crowd only to retrace its path a moment later.

  Faucon had closed Bernart’s gate prior to the jury’s arrival, to prevent the men from viewing Bernart’s body until they’d given their oaths. Colin now stood on the low exterior wall that lined the lane in front of Bernart’s home to monitor the arrivals. At his signal that all the expected households had come, Faucon hoisted himself up next to the monk.

  Men and boys packed the rutted earthen path in both directions. To the left–toward the city center, the direction Peter had run when seeking sanctuary–he caught a glimpse of a latecomer appearing out of the jumble of poorer homes, trotting up the lane toward the back of the jury. But when he looked to the right, he breathed out in frustration.

  Here, men packed the lane for a dozen or so perches until the pathway bent to the right and disappeared behind a home. How many more waited there, out of sight and, more importantly, out of sound of Bernart’s gateway? How could he ever know who among them might not be speaking the words of the vow that bound them to speak the truth, leaving them free to say whatever they may? Although Faucon was certain it was a sin on his part, he didn’t wish to leave it up to God to punish those who lied or were foresworn. That task should belong to him.

  “I am Sir Crowner, the king’s servant in your shire, and I have called this inquest,” he shouted.

  His words startled a sudden silence from those nearest to him. That abrupt quiet flowed like a steady wave in either direction down the lane. Within the space of a few breaths, all the chatter and hissing ceased, leaving only the distant sound of commerce being transacted at the city’s center, punctuated by the ever-present rhythmic clang of smiths working at their anvils. Nearby, a rooster crowed, calling his hens home for the night. Singing their harsh rasping song, the swallows nesting in the eaves of the linsman’s warehouse darted and circled over Faucon’s head, seeking that last fly before retiring.

  “You are here this day in the matter of two deaths, that of Bernart le Linsman and Elsa of Stanrudde, a weaver,” he shouted, scanning as many among the crowd as he could see. “As you give your oath, know that it binds you before God to speak the truth, should you be asked to give any information about either death. Your oath also binds you to speak truthfully if you are asked for information regarding the property of the one who killed Master Bernart. Swear now that you will deny the verdict of murder in the matter of Elsa of Stanrudde, who passed instead because our Lord called her to Him, and confirm the verdict of murder for Bernart le Linsman.”

  “Wait!” someone bellowed. “This new Crowner is not speaking the words as he must.”

  Every last man and boy in the crowd looked in the direction of the call, the rustle of their movement echoing loudly around the lane. It was Hodge the Pleykster. The big man was pushing his way through the back of the crowd, working his way forward as if he meant to claim a spot at Bernart’s gate. Against the better-dressed among this crowd, he looked out of place in his splotched tunic and apron. “He must ask you to confirm that Peter the Webber is the man who killed Bernart,” the man who bleached the linen for Bernart shouted as he came.

  Faucon grimaced at the challenge, one he should have expected, given the hue and cry, but hadn’t considered he might face. He raised his hand, ready to call for the watching jurors to part so Hodge could reach the gateway. If God was good, he might be able to woo the man into compliance with private conversation.

  Before he could speak, a dark and dangerous sound rose from a household on the opposite end of the lane. These men wore parti-colored tunics of dark green and a blue pale enough to remind Faucon of Bernart’s colors.

  “He doesn’t belong here. Robert, you and yours hold him! Do not let him pass!” shouted a long, lanky man from the middle of that household.

  At his hoarse command, the group of men all dressed in red and yellow linked arms and shifted, forming a barricade across the lane, trapping the pleykster behind them.

  “You cannot stop me, Roger, not even if you call every household who owes you favors to do your bidding,” Hodge returned at the same angry volume, now trapped behind that wall of men. “Your son murdered my friend, and everyone within our city walls knows it. This inquest jury must confirm it.”

  Roger and his household all howled at that, every man among them crying that their master’s s
on was innocent. Fists clenched, they surged forward, carving their own path through those between them and the man they meant to attack. Up and down the lane, jurors began to choose sides, either for or against Peter, each side shouting out their accusations and proofs to the other.

  Faucon groaned. Not only had he lost his opportunity to soothe Hodge, his inquest was about to become a battlefield. “In the king’s name I command you to cease!” he bellowed, drawing his sword and holding it out before him.

  “Peace, all of you!” Brother Colin added from beside him, to no avail.

  “The guard comes!” those jurors standing behind Hodge began to shout.

  As the cry was carried from mouth to mouth and man to man, everywhere along the lane jurors opened their fists and dropped into a disappointed silence. Two dozen city soldiers in their green tunics made their way out of the city center and toward the jury at a fast pace. At their head was a dark-haired man, this soldier dressed in brown rather than green with a leather hauberk–the sort of armor worn by the common soldiers who earned their bread with their swords–atop his tunic. To further confound the issue, this leader who dressed like a common soldier wore a knight’s long sword.

  Those in the lane behind Hodge shifted this way and that, allowing the troop to pass. As the guardsmen reached the pleykster, they formed a circle around him, whether to restrain or protect him, there was no saying. Once Hodge was secure, their leader left them, continuing forward through the crowd toward Bernart’s gate. Grateful for this unexpected intervention, Faucon made a show of sheathing his sword as he again scanned the crowd.

  “Aye, this may not be how inquests have been prosecuted in the past,” he shouted, only hoping all could hear. “But change is the purpose for my election and my new position as your Crowner. You all know that Peter the Webber has claimed sanctuary. Thus, you also know that the time for accusation and arrest remains forty days hence, when by law he must exit the church. Now, on this day and at this time, I ask only that the men of this jury view Master Bernart’s body and declare him murdered.”