A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  There was a silence, broken only by the sound of Walter’s teeth cracking the bones on his piece of meat, followed by some furious slurping as he sucked the grease from his fingers.

  “We need to consider what we should do about it,” said Stephen. “I, for one, do not believe that the battle is completely lost yet.”

  He reached inside a pouch at his belt, and drew out a crumpled piece of parchment. It was the will that the Earl of Shrewsbury had presented to the startled Mappestones, claiming that he, and none of them, was Godric’s heir. Stephen smoothed out the parchment, and then handed it to Geoffrey. Everyone—Walter, Bertrada, Stephen, Henry, Hedwise, Joan, and Olivier—watched intently.

  Geoffrey took the parchment and read what was written there. It stated that Godric, as lord of various manors, was of sound mind and named the Earl of Shrewsbury as the sole successor to his estates, because his sons were the offspring of an annulled marriage. At the bottom of the writ was Godric’s unmistakable sign—a Latin cross, representing a sword, surrounded by a circle—and the seals of the witnesses, who were the Earl himself and his knight Sir Malger of Caen.

  Geoffrey finished reading and looked up.

  “Well?” asked Walter. “What does it say?”

  “Exactly what Shrewsbury said it did,” said Geoffrey. “It names him as the sole beneficiary of all Goodrich’s estates and bears Godric Mappestone’s mark. Surely you must have asked Norbert to read it to you?”

  “Norbert has left us,” said Stephen. “Since he clearly knew of this will, yet did not see fit to warn any of us about it, it seems he has decided to flee. He has not been seen since the Earl departed.”

  Geoffrey did not blame Norbert. It would not be pleasant to be faced with the scheming Shrewsbury on the one hand, and the thwarted greed of the Mappestones on the other. He wished he had joined the clerk and was even now riding through the countryside on his destrier, miles away from Goodrich and its murderers and squabblers.

  “But is the will a forgery?” demanded Henry.

  Geoffrey shrugged. “I could not possibly say. What do you think? You must have seen Father make his mark many times. Does it look genuine to you?”

  Stephen snatched the parchment back and all three brothers pored over it before giving their considered opinions: Henry thought it was forged; Walter believed it to be genuine; and Stephen was not prepared to say.

  “You should think about the timing of all this, though,” said Geoffrey, musing as he speared another piece of meat with his dagger.

  He lifted his goblet to his lips, but then set it down again, untouched. While he could be reasonably certain that the meat was probably untainted—everyone without exception had taken a piece and eaten it before Geoffrey had touched his—he was not so sure about the wine.

  He leaned back, thinking. “Our father sent a message to the Earl of Shrewsbury a few weeks ago to say that he was being poisoned, and that he thought the culprit was one of you.”

  “Vicious, evil lies!” spat Bertrada.

  “The Earl duly arrived,” Geoffrey went on, ignoring her, “and Father seems to have regaled him with information about the question of Walter’s legitimacy and Stephen’s paternity.”

  Walter rose to his feet. “I will hear none of this at my table—”

  Henry sneered. “It is not your table and it never will be. I have the better claim—”

  “If we do not put aside our differences and listen to Geoffrey, none of us will have a claim,” snapped Stephen, his voice uncharacteristically loud. “Sit down, Walter, and pay attention. Geoffrey, forgive us. Please continue.”

  “Father seems to have informed the Earl that neither Walter nor Stephen had a legitimate claim to Goodrich for various reasons. We know this because the Earl mentioned it himself. Father stated that he wanted to make a new will citing his heir as Godfrey in the service of the Duke of Normandy.”

  “You will never have Goodrich!” yelled Henry, leaping up with his dagger in his hand. “How can you listen to this, Stephen? He is thinking that he can secure our help to get Goodrich for himself!”

  He made a threatening move towards Geoffrey, but stopped uncertainly when Geoffrey also rose to his feet, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Stephen imposed himself between them.

  “If you cannot listen without interrupting, then leave us,” he said sharply to Henry. “Time is running out. We have six days before the Earl comes to claim Goodrich, and I do not want to spend that time listening to you ranting and raving. You have nothing new to say!”

  Henry’s face flushed a deep red and he looked murderous. Joan intervened.

  “Do sit down, Henry.” She sighed, exasperated. “How can I eat with you glowering and squawking like a fiend from Hell? Carry on, Geoffrey. I am interested in what you have to say, even if Henry is not.”

  “Father said he made a will citing Godfrey as his heir,” reiterated Geoffrey, sitting again and casting Henry a contemptuous look. “He said there were two copies. One he kept in the chest at the end of his bed—that was the one that Henry found and that Norbert read aloud to you all the day that Father pretended to be dead—and the other was placed in the safe-keeping of the Earl himself.”

  “But we know all this,” said Stephen, when Geoffrey paused. “What is it that you have concluded from it?”

  Geoffrey held up the parchment that proclaimed the Earl as heir. “Father could not read. Therefore, he would not know what he was signing, and only had it on trust that the will contained what he had dictated.”

  “Are you saying that the Earl simply substituted his own name for Godfrey’s and Godric just signed it anyway?” asked Walter in disbelief.

  “It is certainly a possibility,” said Geoffrey. “How would Father know he was being misled? He could not read the thing himself.”

  “But Norbert was there,” said Stephen promptly. “Norbert would have told him if the will had said that the Earl was to inherit, and not one of us.”

  “Would he?” asked Geoffrey. “Why?”

  There was a silence as they tried to think of an answer. Geoffrey continued.

  “Father did not trust Norbert, and has certainly not given him cause to be loyal. And you did not treat him kindly, either. I saw you push and yell at him when you called him to read the will Henry found. Norbert is a clerk, an educated man, and yet you deal with him like you would a scullion.”

  “So?” demanded Henry, uncomprehending. “He earned no better from us. All he ever did was hang around Will Helbye’s wife and make a nuisance of himself.”

  “But my point is why should he risk the wrath of a man like Shrewsbury to tell people who have despised his talents for years that they are about to be disinherited? Why should he?”

  “Norbert!” shouted Henry, rising yet again. “I will kill him! He has betrayed us!”

  “And,” Geoffrey went on, “you have just told me yourselves that Norbert has not been seen since the Earl left. Something of a coincidence, would you not agree? I did not read the will that Henry found in Godric’s chest the day he pretended to die, because you did not let me see it. Who knows what it really said—or whether Norbert even read what was really there?”

  “He took a risk, then!” said Stephen. “Supposing we had given it to you—he would have been uncovered as a liar. You would have seen the name of the Earl and not Godfrey.”

  “But who would you have believed had I contradicted him?” asked Geoffrey, shrugging. “Your father’s clerk of many years” standing, or me, who none of you trust?”

  “You have a point,” said Bertrada. “We would not have believed you over Norbert. I would have assumed that you were lying to get possession of the will—to run off to a court to state your claim before we could contest it.”

  “And if you recall, Norbert was very quick to come to Father’s chamber after you called him,” Geoffrey continued. “I thought it was because he was interested in eavesdropping on your quarrel for amusement, but I suspect it was because he was anxious a
bout the will, and he wanted to hear what was happening regarding it. I assume none of you have the will? The last time I saw it, it was in Norbert’s hands in Father’s bedchamber.”

  There were several shaken heads.

  “So, the will the Earl handed us is legal and not forged after all?” said Stephen, disappointment writ large on his face as he gazed at the parchment on the table.

  Geoffrey shrugged. “The situation I have just outlined is only one of several possibilities. Another is that Norbert is innocent in all this, and that Father really did make a will naming Godfrey as his heir. And Father told me that Norbert did not write the will, but that the Earl’s priest was the scribe. Watch.”

  He drew a quill and ink from the pouch at his side, and began to draw on the wooden table. The others crowded in on him, jostling to see what he was doing. Carefully, he copied Godric’s mark, making it identical to the one on the will.

  “What is this?” cried Walter, aghast. “Are you a forger now?”

  “I wish we had known this before,” said Joan, inspecting the two marks closely. “Such a talent in the family might have come in useful.”

  “What is your point, Geoff?” asked Stephen. “What do these marks prove?”

  “That the Earl’s scribe might have written two wills stating that Father’s heir was to be Godfrey. Then father would have added his mark to the bottom of each of them after Norbert had read them through to ensure all was correct—the Earl kept one and Father kept the other. At a later stage, the Earl’s scribe might have made yet another will, stating that the heir was the Earl himself, and simply copied Father’s mark onto it, just as I have done. While handwriting is distinctive and can be difficult to copy, a simple sign like this one is easy enough, as I have just shown.”

  “This is dreadful,” cried Walter. “You are saying that either the Earl has made out an entirely new will and has had his clerk forge Godric’s mark at the end of it, or he deceived a man on his deathbed to sign something he did not intend.”

  “Does that sound so out of keeping with Shrewsbury’s character?” asked Geoffrey. “From what I hear of the great Earl, this shows him acting with great chivalry. He could have ridden in, slaughtered the lot of you, and had Goodrich anyway.”

  “Not the Earl!” cried Olivier, taking part in the conversation for the first time. “He is a man of honour and integrity!”

  Everyone gazed at him in astonishment, and then turned their attention back to the will without bothering to comment. Geoffrey wondered whether they were being entirely prudent in discussing how the Earl could have committed forgery or deception in front of one of his kinsmen. Once again, Geoffrey vowed to complete his business at Goodrich as quickly as possible, and leave. He certainly intended to be on the road long before the Earl rode in to claim his ill-gotten gains—and that would leave him less than six days to uncover the identity of the killer of his father and sister.

  “There is another possibility, too,” said Stephen, picking up the parchment and tapping it against the table. “And that is that the Earl had both wills with him when he came visiting two nights ago. He said one of the reasons that he allowed Joan to persuade him to come was that he wanted to see Geoffrey, and I wonder whether he was undecided which of the wills he was planning to reveal.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Henry. “None of what you have just said makes sense.”

  “I mean that the Earl would be taking a grave risk by openly forging a will, and the King watches him like a hawk for any such moves. It would have been safer for the Earl if he could have used Godric’s real will—the one citing Godfrey as heir. The Earl wanted to know what kind of man Godric’s youngest son was, and how long he would be staying before leaving again for the Holy Land. We all know that the Holy Land is a dangerous place, and I am sure Geoffrey would not have been allowed to leave Goodrich without making a will himself. And guess who the beneficiary would have been in the event of his death?”

  “But even that would not have been necessary,” said Joan thoughtfully. “The property of a man who dies without legal issue reverts to his liege lord—in our case, the Earl of Shrewsbury.”

  “But Geoffrey, although expressing a wish to return to the Holy Land, was not the malleable man for whom the Earl had hoped,” said Stephen, nodding agreement.

  “What?” snapped Henry. “Speak in words a man can understand, for God’s sake.”

  “It was Geoffrey’s insolence to the Earl that decided him on which will he was going to reveal,” explained Stephen. “If Geoffrey had not been belligerent to the Earl, Goodrich would still be in the family—the Earl was forced to use the forged will, because he knew he would not be able to make Geoffrey do anything that he did not want to do—like make a will and leave Goodrich to him.”

  “Oh, well done, Geoffrey,” said Walter wearily. “You have lost us our inheritance!”

  “Just a minute,” said Geoffrey, startled. “Goodrich still would not have been mine. All of you denied that I could be this Godfrey of Father’s will.”

  “That was before,” said Bertrada. “Circumstances have changed. It is better that Goodrich should fall to you than that greedy Earl. At least we can negotiate with you.”

  “Negotiate be damned!” spat Henry. “I will not parley over Goodrich with him!”

  “You stand a far better chance of getting something from Geoffrey than you do from the Earl,” said Hedwise. “So shut up and listen.”

  “All this is beginning to make sense,” said Joan. “Except for one thing. You keep saying that I invited the Earl here. I can assure you that I did not. He paid me a visit while I was seeing to affairs at Rwirdin, and questioned me vigorously about our father’s health and the time Geoffrey was expected back. Then he told me we would travel here together. His visit was no chance drop-in, but part of a planned itinerary.”

  Geoffrey escaped from the dinner table as soon as he could, and went to check on his horse in the stables. The castle buzzed with activity: the Mappestones, in a rare display of cooperation, had agreed upon a plan to try to see what might be done to prevent the Earl from seizing their inheritance. It had been decided that Henry and Stephen were to take a message to the King, informing him that the Earl had seized Goodrich, and Hedwise was to ask a relative in the service of the Abbot of Glowecestre, whether the Earl really had lodged a claim to annul Godric’s marriage on the grounds of consanguinity.

  Meanwhile, Bertrada and Joan were to continue packing to be ready to leave should the King fail to come up with a solution, and the Earl arrived to take possession of Goodrich. Walter was to arrange Godric’s funeral and then hunt for Norbert—to determine from the clerk whether the will was forged. And although nothing was said, Olivier, being a relative of the Earl, was not to do anything. He was even prevented from visiting the stables with Geoffrey, lest he sneak out and inform the Earl that plans were afoot to thwart him.

  Geoffrey was free to do as he pleased, although, as only Joan had been bold enough to say, it would not be taken kindly if he were to leave, because without Geoffrey how could the Mappestone claim to Goodrich stand? Geoffrey agreed to stay for another six days, although he determined that he would not be there to greet the Earl. He smiled to himself, grimly amused that whereas only a few hours before, each and every one of his family had been desperate for him to leave, now they could not afford to let him go.

  In the stables, Julian assured him that she had taken good care of the destrier, and he asked her to walk the animal around the outer ward a few times—partly to exercise the horse, but mostly to prevent her from spending the afternoon weeping over the missing Rohese. Julian sniffed and snuffled, grateful to be entrusted with such a task, but clearly fretting over her sister.

  “But if you are going out, you will need your horse,” called Julian, as he strode away to visit the physician.

  “I am only going to the village,” Geoffrey replied. “There is no need for a horse.”

  “You are a funny kind of knight,”
said Julian, eyeing him doubtfully. “Sir Olivier would never leave the inner ward on foot. He says walking is undignified.”

  “All knights do not think the same way as Sir Olivier,” said Geoffrey, although he suspected that a good number of them did.

  He did not want a horse with him as he explored the woods. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the great destrier might do himself an injury on the uneven surfaces. And secondly, it would be impossible to take a horse into the kind of places Rohese might hide.

  He left Julian and strode out of the barbican. It was early afternoon, and a pleasant day for January. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, and the ground underfoot was hard with a light sprinkling of frost. His leather-soled boots skidded on the icy wood of the drawbridge that spanned the moat, and his sword accidentally bumped against the dog, which was trotting at his heels. With a yelp, it shot off down a path that cut parallel to the moat. Geoffrey sighed with exasperation, knowing that unless he found it, there would be livestock slaughtered and hell to pay. Reluctantly, he followed it.

  The moat was a great, wide crevasse, which was hewn from the living rock to present a formidable barrier before any would-be attacker ever reached the palisade. In parts, refuse thrown from the castle and periods of rain had turned it into a morass of thick, evil-smelling muck. Geoffrey grimaced in distaste and hurried on, glancing up at the sturdy stone walls of the keep as he did so.

  He stopped. In a great dark red triangle below Godric’s window was the stain of the wine that someone had thrown out—so that it would appear that Geoffrey had drunk it. The mark was so large that it could only have come from the contents of Godric’s huge jug. Glancing around to ensure that he was not being watched, Geoffrey scrambled down the steep side of the moat near the path, and picked his way across the marshy bottom to the other side.

  He began to poke about among the weeds with his sword, searching for he knew not what. He found several items of discarded clothing that were brown and hard with age, and one or two of the paint pots that Godric had been using to despoil his room. Hidden deep in a patch of nettles was something metallic. Geoffrey bent to pick it up. It was a knife with a long thin blade, and a hilt that was worn smooth with use—and it was one that Geoffrey recognised instantly. It had belonged to Godric, who had claimed that he had been given it by the Conqueror himself, and it had been one of his most prized possessions. Geoffrey’s brothers had squabbled over it when they mistakenly thought that Godric was dead. He wondered what had possessed the old man to toss it from his window, until he inspected it more closely and the answer became horribly clear.