He had already dispensed with his chain-mail—if his family attacked him as he slept, Geoffrey decided there was more advantage in being able to move quickly than encumbered with heavy armour, and anyway, it did not seem appropriate to be in a sickroom wearing full battle gear. He tugged off the boiled leather jerkin he wore for light protection, and prepared to sleep wearing shirt and leggings.
“Fetch me my scribe,” ordered Godric imperiously, as Geoffrey’s eyelids began to droop. “I wish to see him immediately.”
“What, now?” asked Geoffrey, startled awake. “It is very late. He is probably asleep.”
“Then go and wake him,” said Godric, punctuating each word as if he were talking to a child. “Do you think I pay him to doze all night? Anyway, he is probably off practising with that silly crossbow of his. He thinks I do not know how he spends his free time, but I have seen him.”
“Where will I find him?” asked Geoffrey, climbing to his feet to do his father’s bidding. “Does he sleep in the hall?”
“How should I know?” snapped Godric petulantly. “I have barely left this chamber since Christmas. How am I supposed to know who sleeps with whom in this place?”
Geoffrey suppressed an impatient response. “I will ask Walter,” he said, opening the door.
“You will do no such thing!” roared Godric with surprising force. “I do not want Walter asking questions about what I plan to do. My business is between me and Norbert, and none of my greedy whelps—including you.”
“Fine,” said Geoffrey, reminding himself that Godric was a sick man, and that grabbing him by the throat to shake some manners into him was not appropriate. “But if you do not know where Norbert might be found, and I am forbidden to ask, how am I supposed to bring him to you?”
“Insolent cur!” hissed Godric. “I leave you my manor and you repay me by acting with rank discourtesy! I have a good mind to disinherit you in favour of one of the others.”
“I will be back in a while,” said Geoffrey. Henry might have risen to Godric’s baiting, but Geoffrey would not.
He closed the door on Godric’s outrage and went down the stairs to the hall. It was late evening, and several lamps were lit, casting long shadows across the room. Walter sat near the fire with Stephen, arguing about the merit and flaws of some hunting dog or other, while Henry slouched in a corner, well away from them, honing a sword that already looked razor-sharp and refreshing himself from a large flagon of wine. Bertrada and Hedwise crouched together over a tapestry, straining their eyes in the poor light to add the stitches, while Olivier amused himself by watching them. At the far end of the room, a group of servants had gathered, and were listening to a travelling entertainer strumming softly on a rebec as he sang a sad ballad.
Geoffrey looked among them for Norbert, but the scribe was not there. Opening the door, he left the hall and stepped outside into the cracking cold of a January night. The sky was clear, and stars were blasted all over it. Geoffrey gazed up at them for a moment, recalling how different they had looked in the Holy Land. He took several deep breaths, and felt the residual queasiness that had been plaguing him most of the day begin to recede. Since he was out, he went to check on his destrier.
As he was walking, he saw a shadow flit from the stables to one of the outhouses. Curious, he followed, pushing open the door and peering inside. At first he thought the outhouse was in complete darkness, but there was a faint light coming from the far end. Clumsily tripping over discarded pieces of saddlery and a pile of broken tools, he made his way towards it.
Norbert sat at a crude table, his habitually pale face moonlike in the dim flame of the candle. But what caught Geoffrey’s attention, and what sent him starting backwards so that he almost fell, was the bow that the scribe had aimed at Geoffrey’s chest.
“Sir Geoffrey!” said Norbert, rising to his feet and lowering the weapon. “I am sorry if I alarmed you. Please come in.”
On closer inspection, Geoffrey saw that the bow was quite harmless because there was no string. Embarrassed by his dramatic response to a disabled weapon, he went to stand next to the table.
“This seems an odd item for a scribe to possess,” he said, studying the bow with the critical eye of the professional. It was a wretched thing—old and cracked—and he wondered whether the effort of re-stringing it would be worthwhile.
“I grew up around here,” said Norbert with a smile, gesturing to a box on which Geoffrey might sit. “I could shoot a bow before I could write, and was providing food for all my family by the time I was ten. That was many years ago, though, before hunting in the King’s forests was forbidden.”
“The people who live in the forest must deeply resent those laws,” said Geoffrey, thinking about Caerdig and his half-starved rabble of villagers. “Especially when food is scarce.”
“It is my main objection to the rule of King Henry,” said Norbert, nodding.
“This bow would not present much danger to his beasts,” remarked Geoffrey. He picked up an arrow that was lying on the table, noting that the wood was cheap and the balance was poor.
Norbert smiled again. “Not much danger to anyone attacking Godric’s castle, either,” he said wryly. “And this is one of the best that we have. I own a crossbow, but the winding mechanism is broken and the blacksmith says he does not know how to repair it. But even if we had the best bows England had to offer, it would do us no good, because there is no one at Goodrich who could hit a horse at twenty paces.”
“I had noticed that the guards were somewhat lacking in military skills,” admitted Geoffrey. “It surprised me, because I thought my father would be concerned that Goodrich might come under attack by all these hostile neighbours he seems to have accumulated.”
“None of those are likely to attack the castle,” said Norbert. “They might harass the odd traveller, and the likes of Caerdig of Lann Martin are always after our cattle, but our neighbours do not have the weapons, skill, courage, or stupidity to attack Goodrich directly.”
“So, I can sleep safe in my bed tonight, then?” asked Geoffrey, raising an eyebrow.
“Hardly!” said Norbert, with a shudder. “Someone has been poisoning your father since last spring, and someone tried to poison your sister Enide too. Goodrich is a place where you would be safer outside it than in.”
“My father is demanding that you attend him immediately,” said Geoffrey, reluctant to discuss poisoners and murderers with the servants. “Do you mind, or shall I say I could not find you? It is very late.”
Norbert’s pale blue eyes opened wide with astonishment. “I will go. But thank you for your consideration—it is more than I have been given in fifteen years from the rest of your family. They regard my learning more as a necessary evil than a hard-earned skill.”
“They seem to regard our father as an evil, too,” mused Geoffrey, more to himself than Norbert. “His life is a burden to them and his death will be a cause for rejoicing.”
Norbert laughed quietly. “And vice-versa. Have you noticed that you are the only one who calls him ‘Father”? A year or so ago, he demanded that the entire brood and their spouses call him Godric, because none of them were worthy of the right to claim him as a parent. You can imagine how they took that insult!”
Geoffrey could only shake his head over both sides in this futile feud. He stood and followed Norbert out, tripping over the same tools and discarded saddles as he had on the way in.
“Could you not find a more conducive place in which to mend your bows?” he grumbled, rubbing his chin, where a rake had sprung up and hit him.
“When it is very cold, I stay in the hall,” Norbert answered over his shoulder as he walked. “But no one ever uses this building in the evenings, and I like the solitude. It is often a relief to escape from the Mapp—from people.”
Geoffrey knew exactly what he had been going to say, and concurred wholeheartedly with him. He led the way across the yard and through the hall. The others looked up as he walked towards the s
tairs with Norbert in tow.
“Where are you going?” demanded Henry immediately, standing so abruptly that he spilled his wine. “What are you up to, fetching Norbert at this time of night?”
“Father sent for him,” said Geoffrey.
“You are going to change his will,” said Walter accusingly. “You are going to make him alter the name from Godfrey to Geoffrey.”
“How dare you try to cheat us!” hissed Bertrada furiously. “You have no right!”
“You are all ridiculous!” Geoffrey snapped. It had been a long day, and he felt he had already been more than patient with his relatives” accusations. “Use the few brains you were born with before you make such outrageously stupid comments! First, I can write as well as Norbert, and so do not require him to change the will—if I were so inclined. Second, who would witness this new document? Wills need two independent witnesses to be legal. Third, if I wanted Goodrich, I would take it and none of you would be able to stop me.”
He stalked out of the hall and up the stairs, Norbert scurrying behind him. He forced himself to take several deep breaths to control his anger before he opened the door to Godric’s room.
“Here is Norbert,” he said, ushering in the clerk.
“Thank you. Now get out,” said Godric viciously. “I do not want any of my brood listening to my private business with my clerk. Kindly remove yourself and shut the door.”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Geoffrey, slamming it as he left. He rubbed hard at the bridge of his nose, and then stamped up the narrow spiral staircase to the tiny door that led to the battlements, longing for some peace.
The door to the roof had not been used for some time, and Geoffrey was beginning to think he would have to rejoin his squabbling siblings in the hall, when it shot open, sending cobwebs billowing everywhere. Leaving the door swinging in the breeze behind him, he stepped out onto the parapet that ran around the top of the keep.
Battlements was too grand a term to describe the low wall that ran around the gently pitched roof. It reached Geoffrey’s waist in parts, but mostly it was little higher than knee level. Geoffrey supposed that archers might be able to operate from it if the keep ever came under attack, but they would be horribly exposed each time they stood to fire. He was a passable marksman himself, although he had not taken to the bow much as a weapon and did not like to hunt, but he would not have liked shooting from Godric’s crumbling parapet.
He found a stretch of wall that seemed more sound that the rest, and leaned his elbows on the top. A light wind ruffled his hair and bit through his shirt and leggings. Once alone, he felt mildly ashamed of his outburst in the hall, and of his brief flash of temper with his father. Enide’s letters had been full of the contest between his siblings for control over Goodrich, and it was clear that inheritance had become such an important issue to his family that they were unable to think of little else. He knew he should not allow them to irritate him.
But what was said was said, and he would know to hold his tongue the next time. He leaned over the parapet and looked down into the bailey, three floors below. It was dark, but he could just make out the outlines of the buildings in the outer ward, while in the village beyond he could hear distant laughter as the celebrations for the return of Ingram, Barlow, and Helbye continued.
He lost track of the time he stood leaning on the wall, enjoying the peace of the evening and the pleasure of being alone. Lights were doused in the hall, and Geoffrey could hear Godric yelling furiously for something. He suspected that the old man wanted him, but he was in no mood to deal with his father’s cantankerous nature that night. Bertrada had been right, he thought with a grim smile—Godric was lucky no one had poisoned him before.
“Why are you out here, all alone and in the cold?”
Geoffrey jumped in shock at the soft voice close behind him, and spun round. Hedwise stood there, laughing coquettishly at his alarm, covering her mouth with her hand and her eyes bright with laughter. Geoffrey was appalled at himself. No one could have slipped up so silently behind him in the Holy Land—and if they had, it would probably have meant a Saracen dagger between his ribs. As he had done at the ford the previous day, he wondered whether he was losing his touch. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes and told himself that he would need to take greater care if he did not want Henry or one of the others sneaking up behind him with lethal intent.
“It is peaceful here,” he said in answer to Hedwise’s enquiry. “Or at least it was.”
Hedwise’s face turned sulky. “Now, now, Geoffrey! You have no cause to be hostile to me. The door was open and a gale was blowing down the stairs. I was puzzled, so I came to investigate. No one ever comes up here—it is not safe.”
Geoffrey leaned his elbows back on the wall, and she came to stand next to him.
“It should be better maintained,” he said. “Supposing the castle were attacked? What does Father plan to do—kill the hostile forces with the bodies of his archers as they tumble off the walls?”
Hedwise laughed. “You are right, but we have no money for such repairs. Everyone was hoping you might provide that from your Holy Land loot. But let us not talk of such things. I am delighted you have come to visit us. I was beginning to think that I might never meet you, or that I would be an old woman by the time you returned.”
“I am surprised you gave it any thought whatsoever,” said Geoffrey. “It cannot be that you have gained a favourable impression of me from Henry.”
“Oh, Henry!” said Hedwise, waving a dismissive hand impatiently. “I was unlucky to have such a bore foisted upon me. I did not want to marry him, but my family thought it was a good match, so I had no choice. Henry is a lout—I would have done better wed to one of the farm hands.”
Geoffrey imagined she was probably right, but did not feel it appropriate to comment. Hedwise sidled a little closer to him, rubbing up against his side. When he edged away, she moved with him.
“I would have been better off with you,” she continued.
Geoffrey inched away a second time. “I would have made you a poor husband,” he said. “Unless you happen to like reading.”
“You could have taught me,” she said.
To his alarm, he felt an arm slip around his waist. Was this a genuine attempt at seduction, he thought, or was she simply trying to have him found in some dreadfully compromising position by the fiery Henry? He removed her arm firmly and turned to face her, but she was not so easily disengaged. He found one hand snaking around the back of his neck to pull him towards her, while the other one grabbed a handful of his shirt. Startled, he slithered out of her grip, and began to move towards the door.
“Come now, Geoffrey,” she said, pouting at him in mock censure. “We are alone here. What harm is there in us establishing a more intimate relationship?”
“A great deal of harm if Henry were to find out,” said Geoffrey. “I am in bad enough favour as it is, and I do not want to compound matters by seducing his wife.”
“Will you seduce me, then?” she asked with a smile that verged on being a leer.
“I will not,” said Geoffrey firmly. He had succeeded in edging round her so that he was closest to the door. “And it is cold up here. You should come inside, or you will take a chill. Women in your condition should not be fooling around on battlements in the depths of the night.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, leaning back against the wall and folding her arms. “I told you that I am carrying another of Henry’s brats, did I? Well, let us hope it is more pleasant than the last little monster he sired. I am hoping that dog of yours will dispatch that one for me. Things looked promising yesterday, but Stephen intervened.”
“Those do not seem to be especially maternal sentiments,” he said, appalled that his dog might be encouraged to harm a child. “Surely your baby cannot have earned your dislike already?”
“Spoken like a true bachelor,” said Hedwise in some disgust. “Believe me, Geoffrey, that brat is every inch his father. He
even bears his father’s name. But I did not come here to discuss Henry. I came to learn more of you.”
“It is late,” said Geoffrey quickly. “And I am tired. If you will excuse me, I would like to retire.”
“Are you running away from me?” asked Hedwise, following him towards the door. “Such timidity does not become you, Geoffrey. No wonder you returned lootless from the Holy Land, if you are driven away so easily.”
At that moment, Geoffrey would sooner have faced an army of Saracens than his brother’s lecherous wife, but he said nothing. He opened the door, ignoring her restraining hands on his shirt, and clattered down the spiral stairway to the hall. Breathing heavily, he looked around. Henry was banking the fire in the great hearth, and Geoffrey heaved a sigh of relief. At least Henry had not seen him and Hedwise emerging together from the battlements and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
He walked across to the fire and knelt next to it. Henry said nothing, and Geoffrey felt a sudden sympathy for his bad-tempered brother. Henry was trapped in a loveless marriage, and was probably deeply unhappy. A fleeting notion crossed his mind that Henry might be a more pleasant person away from Goodrich, and he wondered whether he should offer to take him to Jerusalem when he left. But Geoffrey dismissed that thought instantly: Palestine would provide Henry with unlimited opportunities for his aggression and greed, and whereas Henry would doubtless thoroughly enjoy the Holy Land, the Holy Land certainly did not need yet another man like Henry.
Hedwise glided across the floor towards them, her face slightly flushed. “Godric is calling for you,” she said to Geoffrey. “He said he will not sleep unless you are in the room with him.”
“How did he manage before?” asked Geoffrey, making no move to stand. “Did someone else stay with him?”
“No,” said Hedwise. “But he often wakes and calls out for us. We take it in turns—Bertrada, Joan, and I. He claims the poison makes his stomach crave food in the night, and so we usually have a pot of broth warming for him on the hearth. Of course, he almost always brings it back up again as soon as he has finished it.”
A Head for Poisoning Page 14