A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  He hooked his fingers and splayed them out to show Geoffrey what he meant. He saw the knight’s consternation, and patted him on the shoulder.

  “It happened many years ago, and she said it gave her no pain. She probably did not mention it to you because she was sensitive about it, and she was fond of you. She would not have wanted you to consider of her maimed.”

  “I would never have thought such a thing,” said Geoffrey, stung. “I thought we were friends.”

  “Then perhaps she did not tell you at the time because she did not want to worry you, or because she thought it would heal. And then, by the time she came to accept that her arm would be crippled permanently, it was too late. And why should she confide in you, anyway? You were absent for twenty years.”

  “But we often talked of my coming back in our letters,” protested Geoffrey. “Especially early on, when we were still young.”

  “But you never came, did you?” said Adrian. He softened. “Look, I am sorry to have upset you. It is the second time I have spoken out of turn about her, it seems. I took you unawares about the nature of her death, too.”

  “I do not seem to know much about her life either,” said Geoffrey, not without rancour. “Is there anything else about her that I should know? Was her face green? Did she play with the fairies at night? She was a woman, I take it, and not a man in disguise?”

  “Sir Geoffrey!” admonished Adrian, shocked. “Not so bitter!” He smiled suddenly, almost wistfully. “Her face was pale and delicate, like a blossom. She did not dance with the fairies, although she danced with an elegance and energy I have never seen equalled. And I can assure you that she was most certainly a woman!”

  “You seem very sure of that,” said Geoffrey, his eyebrows raised.

  “Just because I have sworn a vow of celibacy does not mean that I can no longer tell the difference between a man and a woman,” said Adrian, his smile fading.

  “She wrote to me …” Geoffrey hesitated. “Her letters mentioned that she had a lover. At first, I thought it was Caerdig, who later asked to marry her. But now I think it was you.”

  “Please!” exclaimed Adrian, turning away. “Think about what you say! I am a priest!”

  “So?” asked Geoffrey. “Tell me the truth, Adrian!”

  The priest refused to meet his eyes, and Geoffrey understood exactly why Enide had not mentioned the name of her lover in her letters. She could hardly tell her brother that she had fallen in love with the parish priest, who had sworn a vow of chastity.

  “You loved her dearly, I see,” Geoffrey said softly, watching the priest’s inner struggle. “But someone killed her, Adrian! Tell me what you know and together, perhaps, we might catch her murderer.”

  “No!” said Adrian with sudden force. “That is not what she would have wanted—I have already told you that. You will only put yourself in danger if you persist with this, and it will do no good anyway, given the amount of time that has passed. One of the last things she said to me was that I should let her die peacefully and unavenged.”

  “So, she told you where she was to be buried, and she instructed you that no one was to avenge her death?” said Geoffrey, his stomach churning at the notion that his sister had so despaired of her hopeless situation that she had made ghoulish arrangements for her funeral and mourning. “She knew she was going to die, and you did nothing to save her?”

  Tears glittered in Adrian’s eyes, but he did not seem angered by Geoffrey’s accusation. “She knew she was in some danger,” he said in a low voice. “The morning of her death, as I have told you, she was anxious and restless, but she would not tell me why. If only she had confided in me, I might have been able to keep her safe.”

  “Probably not,” said Geoffrey, using a more gentle tone as the priest turned away to hide his grief. “If she were anxious enough to be talking about her death to you, then she was probably in a greater danger than you would have been able to protect her from.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Adrian uncertainly, still with his back to Geoffrey. “But what was it? What could she have done or said that had landed her in such dire peril?”

  “I hoped you might be able to tell me,” said Geoffrey, thinking about the letters tucked down the inside of his shirt. “Did she meet anyone unusual, or leave the castle for any period of time?”

  “She visited Monmouth last June,” said Adrian. He wiped his eyes on his wide sleeve, and faced Geoffrey. “She said she wanted to purchase new rugs for Godric’s chamber, but when she returned, she had forgotten to buy them.”

  “So, she went for some other reason, then,” said Geoffrey. “Did she know anyone in Monmouth?”

  “Possibly she did,” said Adrian. “She was an intelligent woman, and people sought her out for advice. She may have met someone—at the Rosse market, for example—who lived in Monmouth. She told me that King Henry was at Monmouth when she visited—although he was not King then, of course. His brother Rufus was.”

  “Do you think she went to meet King Henry?” asked Geoffrey, startled.

  “I would not imagine so,” said Adrian, with a short, nervous laugh. “She had never met him before, and women do not simply arrive at the court and introduce themselves.”

  Unless they had something specific to tell, thought Geoffrey, wondering anew about the pieces of parchment in his surcoat. But he was allowing his imagination to run away with him. How could Enide have anything to say that would interest a prince? And how could she possibly have come by such information anyway, tucked away in Goodrich Castle all her life?

  He looked at Adrian, who had slumped on the chest at the bottom of the bed, his hands dangling between his knees. Adrian had been kind to him when he was trying to overcome the unpleasant after-effects of his poisoning and, although Geoffrey knew better than to put too much faith in first impressions, the priest seemed to have been genuinely fond of Enide. Geoffrey decided to take a risk and show Adrian the scraps of parchment. The knight had little to lose, since his own investigations were taking him nowhere, but he might gain considerably if Adrian could throw some light on what the mysterious messages might mean. And if Adrian turned out to be not quite the simple priest that he claimed, then Geoffrey had only a few more days in Goodrich in which to be cautious. He, unlike Enide, was unlikely to allow himself to be caught unawares and have his head chopped off.

  “Have you seen these before?” he asked, taking the scraps from his shirt and handing them to Adrian.

  The priest rifled through them without much interest. “No. Why? Did they belong to Godric?”

  “I do not know,” said Geoffrey. “But I think Enide may have hidden them away for safe-keeping.”

  Adrian took the candle from Geoffrey, and inspected them again. “Times and dates,” he mused. “Wait!” Geoffrey sat next to him, and looked at the parchment that had caught the priest’s attention. “This one! ‘Midnight on the fifth day of June 1100. Expect five.’ That was the night before Enide left for Monmouth.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Geoffrey. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Because the sixth of June was the Feast of Corpus Christi. It is one of the most important religious festivals in our Christian calendar,” he added when Geoffrey looked a little blank. “Did the knights on God’s holy Crusade not mark such an important occasion?”

  “We may have done,” said Geoffrey vaguely. Despite the acclaimed sanctity of their mission, religious celebrations were a long way from the minds of most Crusaders. There were monks and other holy men in the company, but they tended to keep their distance from the rabble of knights and soldiers who formed the bulk of their number. Meanwhile, Geoffrey’s attention had been taken more by battles and fighting the more dangerous enemies of the desert—hunger, thirst, and disease—than with observing religious festivals.

  “But what does the Feast of Corpus Christi have to do with Enide?” he asked.

  “On the morning that our celebrations were to begin, Enide announced that she was
leaving for Monmouth immediately.”

  “Just like that?” asked Geoffrey.

  “Just like that,” said Adrian. “It takes a good deal of work to organise these festivities, and it would have been pleasant to have had Enide’s help and support. It is one of the most important days of the year for me, and I was hurt that she considered buying rugs for Godric more urgent.”

  “But she bought no rugs, you said,” said Geoffrey.

  “And that fact made her actions sufficiently odd to stick in my mind,” said Adrian. “I am certain I am correct in my memory about the date.”

  “So, we are to assume that Enide met five people at midnight on the fifth day of June and left the following morning to go to Monmouth, abandoning her obligations to the village celebrations,” said Geoffrey. “What could she have been doing?”

  “The sixth day of June was two months before King William Rufus was killed,” said Adrian.

  Geoffrey gazed at him in disbelief. “What are you suggesting? That Enide killed him? A fine, loyal lover you make for her! Accusing her of regicide!”

  Wordlessly Adrian held up another of the scraps of parchment. Geoffrey took it. “‘The first day of August 1100 at Brockenhurst. The evil is about to end,’ “ he read. “So?”

  “Brockenhurst was Rufus’s hunting lodge in the New Forest,” said Adrian. “He was killed near it on the second of August.”

  Geoffrey looked down at the scrap of parchment again, but then stood abruptly. “This is ludicrous,” he said impatiently. “I do not know why I am here listening to you. There are more important things I have to be doing. I need to find Rohese.”

  “Enide left Goodrich for a second time during the third week of July,” said Adrian. “He held up the third scrap. I cannot be as certain of the dates this time, but this one reads ‘Midnight on the twenty-fifth night of July 1100. Everything is almost in readiness. Only details regarding horses left to manage.’ I think she attended this meeting before leaving for another—at Brockenhurst in the New Forest on the first day of August.”

  “Enide never went to the New Forest,” cried Geoffrey, appalled by what the priest was implying. “What is wrong with you? I thought you cared for her!”

  “So I do,” said Adrian.

  He sighed heavily and inspected the backs of his hands. When Geoffrey took a step towards the door to leave in disgust, Adrian began to speak again.

  “She told me she was going to check your manor at Rwirdin when she left Goodrich in July, and that she would be there for a month or so. It so happened that I found myself in the area at about that time. No, that is not true. I deliberately sought out business nearby so that I could visit her there. A month seemed such a long time to be away from her.”

  “Well?” asked Geoffrey uneasily. “What happened?”

  “She was not there,” said Adrian. “And the steward said that he had not seen her that summer, and had been sent no word that she was coming. When Enide rode out of Goodrich Castle that morning in July, she never had any intention of visiting Rwirdin.”

  “This is all gross speculation,” said Geoffrey, pacing up and down. “Perhaps she had another lover—Caerdig, perhaps—with whom she wanted to spend time.”

  Adrian flinched. “That is what Godric said when I told him that Enide was not at Rwirdin,” he said. “I was worried about her, you see. I was afraid she had been attacked on the roads, and harmed. But, in the middle of August, she came home.”

  “Did you ask her where she had been?”

  “I did,” said Adrian. “And it proved to be something of an unpleasant confrontation, actually. I told her I had been to Rwirdin to see her, and had found she was not there. She informed me that I was mistaken. When I insisted I was not, she told me I had either visited the wrong manor or that I was drunk.”

  “Do you drink?” asked Geoffrey, recalling other priests he had met who were seldom sober.

  “I do not!” said Adrian indignantly. “I take only watered ale, and nothing stronger. Not only was I sober, but I have been to Rwirdin before, and know it well enough to be certain that I had visited the correct manor. I recognised the steward, anyway. But Enide would not admit that she had lied. She grew angry. She was not a woman normally given to rage, but, as I said, she was anxious and tense the few weeks before her death. She refused to admit that she had been anywhere but Rwirdin.”

  “But that is no reason to suppose it was Brockenhurst, where Rufus was killed,” said Geoffrey.

  Adrian played restlessly with the cord that was tied about his waist. “When someone you love lies to you and will not confide, you do not overlook it, you try to discover why.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Geoffrey dryly, thinking of Enide’s palsied hand.

  “It was so with Enide,” said Adrian. “I thought of little else. I tried to see a pattern in the dates that she was away, and I paid careful attention to whom she met and to whom she spoke.”

  “And?” asked Geoffrey. “What did your spying tell you?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Adrian, ignoring the jibe. “I thought she was just being careful not to let me see anything unusual. But these notes suggest that I should have been watching her at midnight, not during the daytime. I was a fool to think I could have bested her in such a matter.”

  “It would have been difficult to leave the castle at midnight,” said Geoffrey, still not certain that his sister would have been making mysterious assignations with people in the dark. “The guards would not have let her out—or if they had, news that she had gone for some secret assignation in the small hours would have been all over the village by morning.”

  But Mabel had entered and left the castle unobserved, he thought, by using the secret passageway that came out by the river. And Enide had insisted that Godric use her room for his romps with his whore—perhaps not, as everyone had assumed, because she was keen for him to use Rohese rather than Mabel, but because she had wanted Godric’s room so she could use the tunnel. Mabel had been Godric’s whore for many years, and it made no sense that Enide had suddenly developed scruples about the fact that her father had a mistress in the village, rather than one more discreetly lodged inside the castle.

  And the other business—Adrian’s wild assumptions regarding a link between Enide and the killing of William Rufus? Geoffrey did not believe a word of it.

  “Have you mentioned your suspicions to others?” he asked.

  Adrian regarded him steadily. “I discussed some of it with Francis the physician after Enide became ill from the poison. Francis believes that her poisoning and death were at the hands of one of your brothers, who wanted her dead for their own reasons.”

  “Then I suggest we keep your theory about Rufus to ourselves until we have more information,” said Geoffrey. “If we go round proclaiming that Enide shot Rufus with this withered hand you say she had, we will probably be incarcerated as madmen.”

  “I did not say she shot him!” said Adrian quietly. “Quite the reverse. I imagine she would try to prevent it.”

  “Well, whatever we think is irrelevant, because we have nothing to back it up,” said Geoffrey. He stuffed the parchments back inside his shirt. “And these tell us very little, despite your association of dates and times with the last months of Enide’s life. They might have had nothing to do with Enide. She might have hidden them away to protect the identity of someone else.”

  But why had she hidden them at all, he wondered, when it would have been so very much safer to have burned them?

  The next evening, while his family discussed their plans to reclaim Goodrich from the grasping fingers of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Geoffrey sat in Godric’s room alone.

  That day, Godric’s body had at last been moved to the chapel, and Geoffrey had asked that the bed be removed from the chamber on the grounds that it made him sneeze. No one seemed particularly surprised by the request, and no one had immediately offered to burn it to rid themselves of incriminating evidence. Indeed, Walter had even asked if he
might have it for his own room, and had only been dissuaded by Bertrada’s firm conviction that she would never rest easy in a bed on which a man had been murdered. The others showed scant interest, and did not so much as glance up as two servants hauled it across the hall to take it to a storeroom in the inner ward. Geoffrey saw it safely installed in a shed, and sent Julian to ask the physician to come and inspect it.

  Then he had spent a fruitless afternoon riding out to a few of the surrounding villages and hamlets that were scattered in glades through the dense green of the forest, looking for Rohese. No one admitted to seeing her, and all the hiding holes and haunts he remembered from his childhood—a cave near the river, the bole of a rotten oak, an outcrop of rocks near Coppet Hill—were abandoned, and no frightened runaway loitered there. Reluctantly, Geoffrey returned to the castle and headed for Godric’s chamber.

  Without the gigantic bed, the room felt empty. Geoffrey threw open the window shutters and sat on the chest for a few moments, looking around the dismal room that had been Godric’s whole world for the past few weeks. Unable to put off the grim business of the tunnel any longer, he went to the garderobe passage, his heart already beginning to thump. He pulled at the shelves until the door slid open, and reached inside for the torch and kindling Mabel had pointed out, careful not to look into the tunnel’s gaping maw. Recalling Mabel’s warning that he would not fit down it wearing his armour, he removed his surcoat, but decided that if he could not squeeze through wearing his mail tunic, then he would not be going at all. Holding the torch aloft, he turned to face the black tunnel.

  His nerve was already failing. The flame from the torch shook and wavered on the walls, and the slit of darkness looked about as appealing as a snake-pit. Perhaps Rohese had not escaped down it at all, he thought; and if she had, she would scarcely still be in it days later. He almost convinced himself that he did not have to go, but then there was the matter of Enide. This sinister corridor might hold the secret to her murder, and Geoffrey knew that if he did not explore it, he would spend, the rest of his life despising himself for his cowardice.