A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  “Really, Hedwise,” said Henry in disgust. “I am sure Geoffrey does not want to hear those kind of details, and I certainly do not.”

  “That is because you do not have to deal with it, night after night,” said Hedwise, not without bitterness. “You simply turn over and go back to sleep.” She turned to Geoffrey. “Godric claims the poison is making him sick, but we are sure it is the wasting sickness he has.”

  From the stairwell came a tremulous cry, simultaneously pitiful and demanding. Geoffrey snapped his fingers to his dog, and stood. He sensed that if he did not go to Godric, no one would get any sleep that night.

  “Thank you, Geoffrey,” said Hedwise, smiling seductively. “We all appreciate your kindness.”

  Geoffrey gave her an ambiguous nod and made for the stairs, aware that Henry was watching him with some suspicion. Was Hedwise determined to have Henry believe that she and Geoffrey were embarking on a relationship that was more than fraternal? And if so, why? Was it to make Henry divorce her on grounds of infidelity? On reflection, Geoffrey decided that ridding herself of Henry and Goodrich was probably was a perfectly adequate reason for Hedwise to initiate an affair with her brother-in-law. He pushed open the door to Godric’s room and went to the bed.

  “There you are,” grumbled Godric. “Where have you been? Flirting with your brother’s wife out on the battlements?”

  Geoffrey stared at him. Was the old man really bed-ridden, or was he fooling them all, and secretly was as hale and hearty as the next man? But a covert glance at the gaunt skeletal figure told him that even Godric would not be able to mimic such symptoms of serious illness. A shadow glided out the room and closed the door behind him. Norbert. Was he a spy as well as a scribe? Geoffrey rubbed his eyes, and went to pour Godric some of the strong red wine he liked.

  “You want to watch that Hedwise, son,” said Godric, as he sipped the wine. “She has her eye on you. And believe me, to have Hedwise’s eye on you is not something that will lead to pleasant consequences—for anyone, but least of all for you.”

  Geoffrey did not need to be told.

  The following morning was grey and dull. At first, Geoffrey thought he had overslept, and that the dimness resulted from the sun already beginning to set. But after a few moments, the door of Godric’s bedchamber was flung open, and Hedwise entered with the old man’s breakfast. Geoffrey climbed stiffly to his feet, and went to scrub his face with the cold water that stood in a jug in the garderobe passage. He stretched, feeling his muscles aching and sore. He felt sick too, a sensation that was heightened by the nauseating smell of Godric’s fish broth.

  While Godric ate his soup and regaled the sceptical Hedwise with tales of his sexual prowess during his youth, Geoffrey rolled up the blanket on which he had been sleeping and stuffed it under the bed. Then he pulled on tough, boiled-leather leggings and his light chain-mail hauberk.

  “Are you going out?” asked Hedwise, watching him. “Or do you always dress for the battlefield?”

  “He is staying here with me,” said Godric confidently. “He is merely being cautious by wearing all that armour because he is in a house of poisoners.”

  “I want to visit Enide’s grave,” said Geoffrey. “I would have gone yesterday, but I stayed with you instead.”

  “And you will come back afterwards?” whined Godric feebly. “You will not take the opportunity to go haring back to the Holy Land?”

  It was a tempting thought. “No,” said Geoffrey. “I will come back later.”

  “Very well, then,” said Godric, waving a papery hand. “You may go.”

  Geoffrey buckled his sword round his waist and left, aware that Hedwise was behind him on the stairs. He did not want to resume their conversation of the night before, so he walked more quickly. So did she, and by the time they reached the hall, they entered it virtually at a run.

  Walter was standing next to a roaring fire eating something from a bowl, while Stephen was feeding Geoffrey’s dog. The dog, seeing it could leave with Geoffrey or continue to be fed titbits from Stephen, opted for the latter, and Geoffrey left the castle alone. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned in exasperation, expecting Hedwise to be following him. It was Julian, the stable-boy.

  “Here,” the lad said, shoving a wrinkled apple and a remarkably fresh lump of bread into Geoffrey’s hands. “Someone is poisoning Sir Godric, and so you are right not to take breakfast in the castle. But these are safe enough—I baked the bread myself.”

  “Baking is a curious talent for a stable-boy,” said Geoffrey, eating the bread. It was quite salty and rather heavy, but he had tasted a good deal worse in the Holy Land.

  “That is because they force me to work in the kitchens,” said Julian bitterly. “I hate it there. I would rather be in the stables with the horses.”

  “It might not always be like this,” said Geoffrey. “When you are older you might be transferred to work for the grooms if you show an aptitude for it.”

  Julian sighed before speeding back towards the kitchens and Geoffrey watched him go. The more he saw Julian, the more he was convinced that there was something peculiar about him. But, Geoffrey reasoned, the entire castle was peculiar, so why should he be considering a single inmate?

  He strode out of the barbican, through gates where the guards were nowhere to be seen, and made for the little wooden church of St. Giles at the far end of the village. People acknowledged him as he walked—some did so fearfully, some curiously, but most were resentful, and the more people he encountered, the more Geoffrey realised that the Mappestones were far from popular landlords, and that the villagers regarded him as an extension of a family who ruled by oppression and fear.

  The village was not large, and comprised parallel rows of timber-framed and wattle-and-daub houses with the church at the far end. In Geoffrey’s youth, the houses had been pleasant—some had their outsides painted with washes of cream and white, others had their roofs thatched with well-tended golden straw. Twenty years on, the paint had faded to a uniform stained grey, and the thatches were shabby with weeds and nettles. The road that had been even and well drained was now rutted and thick with the human and animal waste that had been allowed to accumulate. The stench was over-whelming—even worse than in parts of Jerusalem. Geoffrey, not a squeamish man, found himself wondering what it would be like at the height of summer, when the sun would roast the fetid sludge and armies of flies would gather to feast on it.

  One of the houses was better tended than the rest—its thatch was intact, and most of the black slime, which dripped down the fronts of the others, had been scrubbed away. As Geoffrey walked past it, Sergeant Helbye emerged.

  “Will you help us today?” he asked, without preamble. “I came to the castle yesterday, but they would not let me in.”

  Geoffrey gazed at him blankly, not certain what he wanted, until Helbye’s wife appeared in the doorway behind her husband.

  “Your wife’s second marriage,” he said in sudden understanding. He had quite forgotten his sergeant’s predicament. “You would probably be better seeing the priest than me, Will.”

  “Then will you come with us?” said Helbye nervously. “I want no misunderstandings over this. It is important.”

  “Yes, it is important,” said Geoffrey kindly. “I am on my way to visit Enide’s grave. We can go to see the priest afterwards, if you like.”

  Helbye gave a sigh of relief and nodded gratefully.

  “I will show you Enide’s spot in the churchyard,” offered Helbye’s wife, ducking back inside her house for her cloak. “It is difficult to find, unless you know exactly where to look.”

  “She is a good wife,” said Helbye in a low whisper, following her with his eyes. “I would not like to lose her and have to go through all the inconvenience of finding another.”

  “I am sure you would not,” said Geoffrey.

  Helbye had talked a great deal about his wife, but Geoffrey realised that he had never once mentioned her by name. It had always been �
�she.”

  They walked the short distance to the church, and Geoffrey followed Helbye’s wife through the long wet grass to a mound in the corner of the graveyard under the gnarled arms of an oak tree. While Helbye and his wife tactfully busied themselves by pulling dandelion weeds from the dry-stone wall some distance away, Geoffrey stared down at the slight bump that represented his sister’s final resting place.

  Geoffrey stood a long time at the foot of the grassy mound under the churchyard elm, thinking about Enide and her many letters to him. He tried again, unsuccessfully, to imagine what she might have looked like as a woman of thirty years of age. If he were honest with himself, even remembering what she had been like when he had left was difficult and, over the years, his perception of Enide had faded to a faceless figure with a plait of thick brown hair. The plait had stuck fast in his mind, because Enide had resisted the attempts of mother and sister to adopt any other style. What had initially been simple preference had soon become a matter of principle, and he knew from her letters that the plait had remained all her life.

  Already weeds were beginning to creep across the grave. Geoffrey dropped onto one knee and picked at them absently, wondering what Enide would have liked him to do or say on such an occasion. A rustle in the grass made him turn, and he saw a young priest walking towards him, his black habit swirling around his legs and soaking up a good deal of early morning dew.

  “Sir Geoffrey?” the priest asked, looking at the kneeling knight as he tucked his hands in his wide sleeves against the chill. “I am Father Adrian, Goodrich’s vicar. I have heard much about you from Joan and Enide. Welcome home.”

  “Thank you,” said Geoffrey. “But I wish Enide were here to say that.”

  “So do I,” said Adrian softly. “Finding her body was one of the worst moments of my life.”

  “You were the one who found her body?” asked Geoffrey, climbing to his feet. Helbye and his wife came to stand nearby. “My brothers told me that she had just attended mass. What happened?”

  Adrian sighed, and gazed up to where the bare branches of the trees patterned the sky. “She attended mass, and then left with the other parishioners. I stayed longer in the church than I would usually have done—there was to be a funeral that day, you see, for a woman who had died in childbirth. I lingered to say prayers for her soul, and when I came out, there was Enide, dead in the grass. Or her body, anyway.”

  “What do you mean by ‘her body anyway”?” asked Geoffrey suspiciously.

  “Not her head,” explained the priest. “It was missing, and we never found it.”

  Geoffrey stared at the priest in horror before turning on Helbye. “What is this? No one mentioned a missing head before! You said you had told me all there was to know!”

  “I thought I had,” said Helbye, as surprised as was Geoffrey. “A missing head is news to me.”

  He glanced at his wife, but she looked away and would not meet his eyes. Geoffrey grabbed a handful of the priest’s habit, suddenly angry. It had been a shock to read about Enide’s death in the brief note he had been sent in the Holy Land, and it had not been pleasant to hear rumours that his sister had been murdered by decapitation. But he had assumed he had already learned the worst there was to know, and had not anticipated that there would be yet more details regarding Enide’s murder that would shock him.

  “What happened?” he demanded of the priest.

  “Easy,” said Adrian, unnerved by the knight’s unexpected reaction. “I did not mean to distress you, Sir Geoffrey. I thought your family would have told you about the circumstances surrounding Enide’s death.”

  “Let him go, lad,” said Helbye, prising Geoffrey’s hands from Adrian’s gown. “This is a man of God you are mauling here, not some grubby Saracen.”

  Geoffrey released the priest reluctantly. “They did not tell me about this,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady. “Where is it?”

  “Her head?” asked Adrian, smoothing down his habit. “As I said, that was never found, but some of her hair lay around the corpse, cut as her head was severed.”

  “Then perhaps the body you found was not hers,” said Geoffrey, in sudden hope, looking from the priest to Helbye. “Perhaps she is safe somewhere—a convent, maybe. She wrote to tell me that she was considering taking such a path.”

  “Do not vex yourself with futile wishes,” said Adrian gently. “The body was Enide’s, I am sorry to say. It wore her clothes and her locket—the one she told me you had given her before you left.”

  “Did the men who Henry hanged not tell him where to find her head?” asked Geoffrey.

  “Her head was never found,” said Adrian yet again. “Perhaps it was tossed into the river or buried somewhere. But either way, I am sure she rests in peace. I say a mass for her every week.”

  “Masses be damned!” snapped Geoffrey. “How can she rest in peace when you do not even know where part of her lies? And I am not even sure the right people died for this foul crime!”

  “Then you would not be alone,” said Adrian, unperturbed by Geoffrey’s blasphemy. “I am certain the poachers were innocent, although I have not a shred of evidence to support such a claim. Unfortunately, by the time I learned Henry was scouring the countryside looking for murderers, it was too late to stop him and urge him to caution.”

  Some of the anger went out of Geoffrey. “You believe Henry hanged the wrong men?”

  Adrian hesitated, as though considering exactly how much he should reveal. He glanced at Geoffrey and seemed to reach a decision.

  “For several weeks before she died, Enide was not well,” he began. “She told me she thought someone was poisoning her, just as someone was also poisoning Godric. And at mass that morning, she seemed not herself, somehow. I do not mean I mistook her for another person,” he added quickly, seeing the hope in Geoffrey’s eyes. “It was more her mood. She was restless, and she did not concentrate on the mass as she usually did. It was almost as if she were expecting something to happen.”

  “Something did happen,” said Geoffrey sombrely. “Someone decapitated her. Can you be more specific about this mood?”

  Adrian shook his head. “I am afraid not. And believe me, I have given it a great deal of thought—far more than I should, when I have a busy parish to run. But I have been breaking her own wishes by speculating about this. She would not want you investigating her death.”

  “Why not?” asked Geoffrey. “I would want someone investigating mine, if I were murdered and two men hanged for it who should not have been.”

  “Would you?” queried Adrian. “Would you really want someone you loved putting themselves in peril for a deed that was done, and the consequences of which were irreversible anyway?”

  Geoffrey considered. “I would not want Enide doing so, perhaps. But I am not Enide, I am a knight, and will not be so easily dispatched.”

  But Sir Aumary was, he thought grimly. Even wearing his chain-mail, Geoffrey would be defenceless against an attack by a good archer hidden among the trees. One clear shot, and that would be that.

  “Well, Enide cared for you, and she certainly would not have wanted you to put yourself in danger by making enquiries that will lead you into danger.”

  “How do you know my enquiries would lead me into danger?” asked Geoffrey curiously. “Who do you think killed Enide?”

  Adrian would not meet his eyes. “I do not know. Nor do I wish to. She was desperately afraid for her life, and her father is being poisoned even as he lies in his sick-bed. Do you not consider that sufficient warning to stay away?”

  “Are you suggesting that I should stand back and allow my father to be killed under my very nose, and let my sister’s murder to go unremarked?” asked Geoffrey. “I thought the Church believed in justice.”

  “Justice, yes,” said Adrian. “But not vengeance. That is for the Lord to take, not us. Henry tried vengeance, and it is almost certain he killed two innocent men.”

  “I am not so hot-headed as Henry,” sai
d Geoffrey. “I will be certain.”

  Adrian sighed. “Then you go against my advice, and your sister’s wishes. It was at her request that she was buried in this quiet corner of the churchyard. She did not want constant reminders of her to be the cause of unhappiness in her family.”

  “She chose this spot herself?” asked Geoffrey, aghast. “She was so certain she was going to be killed that she chose her own grave site?”

  Adrian appeared flustered. “Put like that it sounds as if she knew she was going to die and we did nothing about it. But yes, she chose this spot. And she charged me to ensure that her death would not result in a bloodbath—something in which I failed her.”

  “It all sounds so premeditated,” said Geoffrey, unsettled. “I wish I had returned before. I might have been able to do something. Why did she not ask me to come home?”

  “Probably for the same reason that she would not want you trying to discover her killer now,” said Adrian. “She cared for you, and she did not want to put you in danger. Look, there is nothing you can gain from investigating now. You should leave Goodrich—today. Go back to the Holy Land and forget all this. You seem more decent than the rest of your kin. Do not let them drag you down into their pit of lies and murder.”

  Geoffrey would have liked nothing better, but how could he leave his father in the hands of a murderer? And anyway, he had the King’s orders to follow. He was silent, thinking about Enide’s last few weeks of life, so certain that someone was going to kill her that she had even selected the place where she wanted to be buried. After a while, Helbye cleared his throat nervously, and Geoffrey remembered his promise to help him.

  “My sergeant has something of a problem,” he said.

  “Yes, I know,” said the priest, smiling at the burly soldier. “But it is nothing that cannot be resolved. I will draw up the papers authorising the annulment of her second marriage today.”