A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  They were off, both weaving through the trees at a speed far from safe, leaving Geoffrey and Helbye behind them. Neither knight nor sergeant made a move.

  “Nervous?” asked Geoffrey, smiling at the tense old warrior beside him.

  “No,” said Helbye with a false laugh. “She will be pleased to see me. Are you?”

  “A little,” admitted Geoffrey. “I have not even arrived, and I have already been told there are rumours that my favourite sister has been decapitated by Caerdig of Lann Martin; that my manor has been given away as part of Joan’s dowry; and that one of my siblings is trying to poison my father, who is so alarmed that he wrote to the King about it.”

  “Then maybe it is a good thing that you did not leave it any longer,” said Helbye practically. “But take no notice of Ingram. He is bitter for one so young, and he has a spiteful nature.”

  “You think there is no truth in his story, then?”

  Helbye shook his head. “When Ingram told me about the gossip he had heard, I paid a visit to the source of it myself. Ingram only had half the story. Lady Enide, it seems, was indeed slain near the church on a Sunday after mass. Needless to say, a hunt for her killer was mounted. Your brother Henry came across two poachers in the forest, they confessed, and he hanged them there and then for her murder. The claim that poor Caerdig killed her was only speculation, based on a notion put about by your brother Stephen that the poachers may have been hired by Caerdig because your father declined to have him as a son-in-law.”

  “Did anyone other than Henry hear the confessions of these poachers?” asked Geoffrey.

  Helbye shrugged. “I do not know. But apparently there were some questions about the business for several weeks after. Caerdig was clearly a suspect, but there were stories that others might have played a role.”

  “Others such as whom?” asked Geoffrey, when Helbye paused.

  “Someone at Goodrich Castle,” said Helbye reluctantly. “A member of the family, perhaps. Or a servant. But no one really knows, and the trail must be long since cold.”

  “So, I am about to enter a household, one member of which may have decapitated my sister? God’s teeth, Will, I would not have made this journey had I known all this!”

  Thoughts tumbling, Geoffrey followed Helbye down the hill, across the small brook that bubbled along the valley bottom, and up the slope on the other side. The castle in which Geoffrey’s family lived stood on the crest of the hill overlooking a great sweep of the River Wye, while the church and the small houses of the village were clustered around the outer ward to the north and west—not so close that they could be set alight and present a danger to the wooden palisade surrounding the castle, but close enough so that villagers and their livestock could flee for safety inside it should they come under attack.

  Ingram and Barlow waited for them outside Helbye’s house with a scruffy boy they had accosted when he had left to fetch more ale. Lights blazed from within, and the sounds of revelling could be heard from one end of the village to the other. Barlow shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and would not look at Helbye, while Ingram’s thin face wore a vindictive smile.

  “It is your wife’s wedding day,” he said to Helbye with relish.

  “She thought you were not going to return,” said the boy. He glanced fearfully at Geoffrey, an imposing figure in his chain-mail and Crusader’s surcoat, before fixing his attention on the astonished Helbye. “We knew Ingram, Barlow, and Sir Geoffrey were coming, but no one mentioned you.”

  “But I sent word,” protested Helbye, appalled. “I did not trust a letter—who knows who might have read it on the way—but I sent word with Eudo of Rosse.”

  “Eudo never returned either,” said the boy. “He died of a fever on his way home.”

  “One up for literacy,” murmured Geoffrey.

  “He died in France, at a place called Venice,” continued the boy, eager to please. “I learned about Venice from our priest.” He looked up at Geoffrey for approbation, proud to display his painstakingly acquired knowledge of foreign geography.

  “But then again, perhaps not,” said Geoffrey dryly.

  Their voices had been heard by the revellers within. A screech of delight from Barlow’s mother brought others running, and soon the entire village was out, clustering around the two young soldiers, and admiring their proudly displayed treasures. Barlow’s mother impatiently shoved aside a proffered chalice, and hugged her son hard and long as tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Ingram’s father, however, gave his son a perfunctory nod and immediately turned his attention to the contents of the travel bags.

  Helbye’s wife regarded her husband with disbelief that turned slowly to joy. She turned the sergeant this way and that, and fussed over him like an old hen. Geoffrey watched the reunions from the shadows, wondering what was in store for him in the black mass of the castle that crouched on the hill. He was certain it would not be the unrestrained delight that his men’s kinsfolk expressed.

  “She says she will now need to dissolve the marriage she has just made,” called Helbye to Geoffrey, gesturing to where his wife spoke urgently with a forlorn figure standing apart from the celebrations, his face masked by shadow. “Will you help us?”

  Geoffrey was startled. “I cannot dissolve marriages, Will,” he said. “I am neither a lawyer nor a priest.”

  “But you can read,” said Helbye, as though this would solve everything. “You can help us, and make sure we are not cheated.”

  “I cannot see that you will have a problem,” said Geoffrey. “Especially if her second marriage has not been consummated.”

  Helbye blushed a deep red. “I cannot ask her that!” he whispered, aghast, loud enough to cause some amusement when several villagers overheard. “She is a woman! You do not ask such questions of women!”

  “She is also your wife,” said Geoffrey, laughing despite himself. “But we can do nothing about it tonight. Come to the castle tomorrow, and we will see what needs to be done.”

  With his horse ambling behind him, and the black-and-white dog at his heels, Geoffrey left them, and walked the last few steps to the gloomy portals of the castle. The squat gate and the black waters of the stinking moat reminded him of the day he had left. It had been early on a winter morning, so early that it was not yet light. Only Enide had ventured out to see him leave, although Joan had waved to him from a window in the hall.

  Of course, his home-coming would have been very different had Enide been there to welcome him. He tried to imagine what she had looked like as a woman, although he always pictured her as the child of eleven waving him a tearful farewell from the very gate at which he now stood. He pulled himself together, impatient with his sudden, uncharacteristic flight into fancy and reminiscence. He strode over the drawbridge—someone had forgotten to raise it for the night—and knocked on the gate. There was no reply. He rapped again, using the pommel of his dagger, hearing the sound echo around the silent courtyard.

  “Go away!” came a belligerent voice from within. “We have already sent a tun of ale for Mistress Helbye’s wedding, and you are not getting any more!”

  “I am Geoffrey Mappestone,” Geoffrey called. “I have come to pay my respects to my father.”

  “Who?” came the voice after a moment. “There is no Geoffrey Mappestone here.”

  Geoffrey considered begging a bed with Helbye for the night, and returning the next day when his re-entry into his family home might not be so ignominious.

  “Please inform Godric Mappestone that I wish to speak to him,” he said, leaning down to haul his dog away from where it was devouring something unspeakable discovered at the edge of the moat.

  “He is asleep,” came the voice. “As are all honest men. Now go away, or you will find your chest decorated with the shaft of this arrow. And do not come back!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Geoffrey was tired, wet, cold, and hungry as he stood pondering the great barred gate of Goodrich Castle. He had travelled hundreds of miles f
or several weeks to do his filial duty to a man he had neither liked nor respected, and over the past two days he had been ambushed, subjected to an uncomfortable conversation with the King, had his most prized possessions scattered through the bushes, and forced to walk because his saddle had been slashed. Suddenly, his temper snapped.

  “Enough of this!” he yelled. “Either let me in to speak to my father, or I will force an entry myself. And if you choose to direct an arrow my way, I can promise you that you will be sorry!”

  A grille in the wicket door slid open, and Geoffrey was assessed by a glistening eye. After a hurried exchange of whispers and a series of grunts and bumps, the bar was removed and the gate was opened. Geoffrey was far from impressed: he had expected to be questioned, and he accepted the fact that the guards would not know him and would seek some verification as to his identity. But, despite his blustering threat, he certainly had not imagined that they would be so easily browbeaten into opening the gates in the dark to what amounted to a complete stranger.

  “Come in if you are coming,” mumbled the guard irritably, holding a torch aloft so that Geoffrey would not step in the deep puddle that lay under the gate. “I have sent young Julian to tell Sir Olivier d’Alençon that he has visitors.”

  “Sir Olivier?” asked Geoffrey, watching the guard secure the door again. “Who is he?”

  “But you said you wanted to speak to him!” said the guard in an accusatory voice, almost dropping the torch in his agitation.

  “I said no such thing,” said Geoffrey. “I do not know this Sir Olivier.”

  “I supposed you to be one of his cronies, come to leech off us again,” said the guard. He took a step towards Geoffrey, fingering the hilt of his sword with one hand, and thrusting the torch towards him in the other. Geoffrey was a tall, strong man, and looked larger still in his heavy chain-mail and surcoat. He also carried a broadsword and at least two daggers that the guard could see. Prudently, the man stepped backwards again.

  “It is good to know that Goodrich Castle is in such safe hands,” remarked Geoffrey. “I am Geoffrey Mappestone, and I have come to see my father. Not Sir Olivier, whoever he might be.”

  “He will be your brother-in-law, then,” said the guard, dropping his belligerent manner and becoming wary. “Assuming you are who you claim. Sir Olivier is Lady Joan’s husband. Joan is your sister,” he added for Geoffrey’s edification. He studied Geoffrey in the light of his flaring torch. “You have grown a lot bigger since you left.”

  “I would hope so,” said Geoffrey. “I was twelve years old then.”

  He grew restless under the guard’s brazen scrutiny, and looked around him. The gate at which he stood led to a barbican in the outer ward, a large area that was well defended by a stout palisade of sharpened tree trunks and a series of ditches and moats. A flight of shallow steps led to a wooden gatehouse and the inner bailey, also protected by a palisade. And inside the inner ward stood the great keep—a massive stone structure raised by Godric himself—and a jumble of other buildings that included stables, storerooms, and kitchens.

  “Sir Olivier says you are to come in to him,” called a slender boy from the top of the steps.

  “Oh, marvellous!” muttered Geoffrey, anticipating the scene that was about to ensue, where Sir Olivier would realise that he did not recognise Geoffrey and would accuse him of being an impostor. With a weary sigh, Geoffrey took his destrier’s bridle and led it towards the barbican. His dog darted ahead, no doubt sensing the presence of unsuspecting chickens nearby. Geoffrey hurried to catch up with it before it could do any harm, and thrust the reins into the hands of the waiting boy as he passed.

  While the dog’s attention was on a discarded chicken wing embedded in the mud, Geoffrey slipped the tether over its neck, earning himself an evil look in the process. But that was too bad: Geoffrey did not want his initial meeting with his family to be a confrontation over slaughtered livestock.

  “Your horse is enormous!” Julian exclaimed, looking up at it with obvious awe. “Much bigger than Sir Olivier’s mount. And finer, too.”

  “He is also tired and dirty,” said Geoffrey. “Are there reliable grooms here?”

  Julian spat. “There are grooms, but they will be drunk by now. I will look after him for you. I know horses. He needs to be rubbed down with dry straw, and then fed with oat mash.”

  “That would be excellent,” said Geoffrey, pleased that there was at least one person at Goodrich who seemed to know his business—unlike the guard. He leaned down to run his hand across the horse’s leg. “And he has a scratch here that I am concerned about.”

  “I see it,” said Julian, bending to inspect the destrier’s damaged fetlock. “It needs to be washed with clean water. I will draw it from the well myself.”

  There was something odd about Julian that Geoffrey could not place. He was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, and so they could never have met. But the peculiarity had nothing to do with recognition; it was something else. However, the lad clearly had a way with horses, and Geoffrey had no reason to dismiss him in favour of one of the allegedly drunken grooms. He smiled at the boy’s eager face.

  “It seems you know your business, Julian.”

  Julian grinned back at him. “And I see you know yours. Sir Olivier never trusts me with his pathetic nag, although I am by far the best carer of horses at the castle.”

  “Who are you?” came a voice from behind them, hostile and angry. “What do you mean by demanding entry under false pretences? I do not know you!”

  Geoffrey turned, and came face to face with a short man with jet black hair and a matching moustache. Noting the half-armour and handsome cloak of a knight at ease, Geoffrey assumed he was Sir Olivier. The small knight had drawn his sword, but let it fall quickly when the guard’s torch changed Geoffrey from an indistinguishable shadow to a fully armed warrior wearing a Crusader’s surcoat. Olivier looked him up and down, took stock of his size and array of weapons, and beat a hasty retreat by backing away across the courtyard. Geoffrey heard Julian giggling helplessly at the unedifying spectacle.

  “Guards!” yelled Olivier, unable to control the tremor in his voice. “Seize this man! He is an impostor!”

  It was not the welcome for which Geoffrey had been hoping, but it did not entirely surprise him. He strode towards Olivier, aiming to get close enough to state his name and business without having to bawl it for half the county to hear. Olivier, however, seemed to be in no mood for discussion—he promptly dropped his sword and fled up the stairs into the keep, slamming the door behind him. The guards regarded Geoffrey uncertainly, but made no attempt to do as Olivier had ordered. Clearly, neither of them wished to indulge in a sword fight with a Crusader knight whose skills would almost certainly be superior to their own.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Geoffrey in exasperation, gazing at the closed door. He turned to the boy. “Julian, please inform Sir Olivier that I am Geoffrey Mappestone, and that I have come simply to pay my respects to my father. I did not imagine it would prove to be so difficult.”

  “I guessed who you were,” said Julian, carefully passing the reins of the destrier back to Geoffrey. “They have been expecting you since your letter arrived two weeks ago, although Henry lives in hope that you might have perished on the journey.”

  “That is reassuring to hear,” said Geoffrey. “But you had better do as I ask, before Sir Olivier orders his archers to shoot us from the windows.”

  “They would miss,” said Julian disdainfully, but dutifully sped towards the keep where Geoffrey heard him yelling through the closed door. While he waited, Geoffrey surveyed the inner ward. Some parts were familiar, like the keep with its three floors, and the ramshackle stables. Other parts were new, like the kitchen and the housing on the well.

  He glanced to where Julian was still conversing through the door, and shivered. It was cold standing in the dark, and his clothes were still wet from his plunge in the river. After what seemed to be an age, t
he keep door opened and a woman whom Geoffrey did not know came down the stone steps towards him, bearing the traditional welcoming cup.

  “Geoffrey! At last! We were beginning to think you would never come!”

  As the woman approached him, bringing with her the goblet of warm wine that was usually offered to travellers as a symbol of welcome, Geoffrey wondered whether his misgivings about returning might have been unduly pessimistic. She was smiling and, in the dark, her friendly words of greeting seemed genuine enough.

  She waited while he passed the reins of his destrier back to Julian, and then thrust the cup into his hand before he was really ready. It was full to the brim, and so hot that he almost dropped it. He bit back an oath that would have been bad manners to utter at such a point, and smiled at her, wondering whether she was his sister Joan or one of his brothers” wives. However, all the Mappestones, except Stephen, had brown hair, but this woman’s luxurious mane was paler, almost beige. He decided that she must be his eldest brother’s wife, Bertrada, performing her duty as the lady of the manor.

  Others followed her out into the bailey, and within a few moments he was surrounded, all talking at once and asking him questions that they gave him no opportunity to answer. Bewildered, Geoffrey tried to fit the barely remembered faces of twenty years ago to the rabble of people who clustered around him.

  Geoffrey’s eldest brother, Walter, had been married to a wealthy local merchant’s daughter called Bertrada, and the guard had already told him that Joan was wed to the cowardly Sir Olivier. After Walter and Joan came Stephen, whom Geoffrey recalled as taciturn and crafty. But none of the people who shouted questions at him in the bailey seemed in the slightest bit quiet, so perhaps Stephen had changed. After Stephen was Henry, two years older than Geoffrey, and whose overriding passions had been fighting his younger brother and killing the rats he trapped in the stables. Geoffrey wondered whether it was Stephen’s or Henry’s wife who had died the previous year. Perhaps she had been murdered too—like Enide.