A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  “But what will you do now?” he asked Rohese, dragging his thoughts away from his kinsmen. “Do you want to return to the castle? Or shall I escort you somewhere else?”

  “Will you be at the castle?”

  “No,” said Geoffrey. “Not for a while, at least. I want to talk to Helbye.”

  “I do not want to be there if you are not,” said Rohese, fearful again. She jumped as an animal rustled among the leaves at the side of the path and Geoffrey raised his sword.

  “Then you can stay with Sergeant Helbye tonight,” said Geoffrey. “He will not let anything happen to you.”

  “Can I not stay with you?” she said. “I would feel safer. You have rescued me twice now—once from the Earl and once from Malger and Drogo.” She hesitated. “Now that Sir Godric has gone, I could come to you. …”

  “Thank you, but I will not be here long,” said Geoffrey quickly.

  He was certain he was old enough to be her father, and wondered what Enide could have been thinking of, to thrust a child into the clutches of a man like Godric. But at least Joan had shown some sense over Julian, or Geoffrey realised that he might have been leading two whores to safety, not one.

  “But what shall I do?” whispered Rohese. “Sir Godric is dead. Enide is dead. Joan will not have me back after I defied her over the Earl. And I have no trade, other than as a chambermaid. I will not serve that stingy Walter, nor that crafty Stephen.”

  “We will see tomorrow. Perhaps there is something you could do at Rwirdin,” said Geoffrey wearily. They had reached the village, and the church was a dark mass at the side of the road. “Do you mind waiting for me for a moment? There is something I need to do.”

  She glanced around nervously. “Will you be long?”

  “I hope not,” said Geoffrey. “I want Father Adrian to take … I need him to bury it properly, where it belongs.”

  Wordlessly, she handed him the bundle containing the head and the chalice, and followed him through the churchyard to Father Adrian’s house. A candle burned within, and Geoffrey thought he could hear voices. It was late, but Geoffrey supposed priests might be called upon at any time of the day or night for spiritual guidance or various other parish emergencies. He knocked softly, hearing the voices suddenly stilled.

  “Yes?” called Adrian after a moment. “Who is there?”

  “Geoffrey Mappestone from the castle. Will you come out? I need to see you about something.”

  There was a short pause, and Adrian opened the door. He looked strained and tired, but stood aside for Geoffrey to enter his house. Rohese closed the door behind them and watched.

  Geoffrey put his bundle on the table and stood back. “I have found it,” he said, gesturing for Adrian to unwrap the blanket.

  Curiously, Adrian peeled back the covers to reveal the sad object within. He caught his breath in a strangled cry and backed away.

  “I am sorry,” said Geoffrey softly. “I did not know how else to tell you. Will you bury it with her body?”

  “With whose body?” asked Adrian shakily.

  “With Enide’s body, of course,” said Geoffrey, regarding him askance.

  “Hardly!” said Adrian, raising a shaking hand to rub his chin. “Unless you do not care with whom she shares a grave. That is not Enide’s head.”

  “What?” exclaimed Geoffrey, startled. “But this must be her!”

  “It is not Enide!” said Rohese, as startled as was the priest. “You never told me you thought that, Sir Geoffrey, or I would have told you that you were wrong.”

  “Well, how many corpses are there at Goodrich missing their heads?” cried Geoffrey, looking from one to the other in confusion.

  “I am beginning to wonder the same thing,” said Adrian sombrely, regarding Geoffrey with troubled eyes. “But I can assure you that this not Enide’s.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Geoffrey. “Look again. You must be mistaken.”

  “I am not mistaken,” said Adrian. He indicated a figure standing in the shadows holding something carefully in both hands. “Because this man has just brought me Enide’s head.”

  Mark Ingram stepped forward importantly and set his bundle on the table next to the one that Geoffrey had brought. With a flourish like something a juggler might have employed, he plucked away the cloth that covered it, and revealed the severed head that lay beneath, setting it upright on the stump that had been its neck when it tipped to one side. Geoffrey sank down onto a bench, and regarded the face about which he had wondered for so long.

  Enide had possessed thick brown hair, darker than Geoffrey’s, and the teeth that were bared in a disconcerting grimace were white and strong. But the skin was discoloured and rotten, and Geoffrey could not tell whether she had been beautiful in life or not.

  “She looks like you,” said Ingram to Geoffrey, glancing from one to the other.

  Adrian silenced him with a glare, while Rohese ran from the house with her hands over her eyes.

  “Is it really her?” asked Geoffrey, tearing his eyes from his sister’s face to look at the priest. “Is this really Enide?”

  “It is Enide,” said Adrian unsteadily. He came to sit next to Geoffrey on the bench, and they stared at the head together. “I would know her anywhere.”

  “But Enide died at the end of last summer,” objected Geoffrey. “It seems to me that this poor woman has not been dead three weeks!”

  “You are wrong, Geoffrey,” said Adrian. “This is Enide without question. And she did die last summer. I saw her body, remember?”

  “Ask the physician,” said Geoffrey, his thoughts spinning. He had encountered many dead during his life as a soldier and, although no expert, was certainly able to tell whether a person had been dead three weeks or four months. “This is not the head of a person dead since September.”

  Adrian looked away. “Please cover her,” he whispered.

  When Ingram did not move, Geoffrey snatched the cloth from him, and draped it over the head. Geoffrey saw that the priest was deathly white, and his eyes were hollow with shock. It had been a shock for Geoffrey too—for he had not imagined that he would set eyes on the face of a sister so long in her grave—but he had not known her as Adrian had, and his grief was not so ragged and raw.

  “And how do you happen to possess my sister’s head so suddenly, Master Ingram?” Geoffrey asked, thinking that a few days ago, he could never have imagined uttering such a sentence.

  Ingram’s eyes glittered. “That is information which will not come free. That silver chalice you seem to have found again will make an acceptable payment.”

  Geoffrey was across the room and had the young soldier by the throat almost before he had finished speaking.

  “I think I misheard you, Ingram,” he whispered menacingly, holding the soldier up against the wall by his neck so that his feet barely touched the ground.

  “Geoffrey, please!” said Adrian, coming to pull at his arm. “I want no violence in my house. It stands on hallowed ground.”

  “Not far to go for a burial, then,” said Geoffrey, not relinquishing his vice-like grip on Ingram. “Now, where did you get it?”

  “I found it!” squeaked Ingram, the malicious glint in his eyes replaced by fear. “Please! I cannot breathe! Let me go!”

  “Let him down, Geoffrey,” said Adrian, tugging harder. “I do not want more filthy murders committed, and I will not stand by and watch one happening under my very nose.”

  “Where did you find it?” demanded Geoffrey, ignoring him and giving Ingram a shake.

  “In the churchyard,” gasped Ingram. He lashed out in a feeble attempt to escape, but Geoffrey leaned his weight against the struggling soldier to pin down the flailing arms. Ingram shrieked.

  Geoffrey felt his dagger hauled from his belt and shoved at his side. He turned to the priest in surprise.

  “Enough!” said Adrian, firmly. “There will be no more violence! Let him go, Geoffrey.”

  The priest held the knife awkwardly, demons
trating that he had little experience with weapons. Geoffrey turned his attention back to Ingram. “Where in the churchyard did you find it?”

  He gasped suddenly as the dagger dug into him, and Ingram went sliding to the floor. Geoffrey gaped at the priest in astonishment.

  “I said enough!” shouted Adrian angrily. “I want no more violence!”

  “Not so much as to prevent you from stabbing me,” said Geoffrey, holding his side. “God’s teeth, man! That hurt!”

  “You were going to strangle him,” raged Adrian. “In my house—on consecrated ground!”

  “Whereas you have just knifed me,” retorted Geoffrey. “On consecrated ground! You do not know me very well, priest! I would not have strangled that snivelling little dog, although God knows he deserves it.”

  “Your eyes are red with the blood lust of killing!” snapped Adrian, defensively.

  “They are red because there is sand in them,” shouted Geoffrey.

  “Tell me, Mark,” said Adrian, pushing Geoffrey away and kneeling next to Ingram, who half sat, half lay against the wall, gasping and clutching his throat. “Where did you find it?”

  “Go to hell!” Ingram croaked hoarsely. “I will never tell you now! Even if you were to give me that chalice.”

  “Please, Mark,” said Adrian. “Look, here is the chalice. Take it. But tell Sir Geoffrey what he would like to know.”

  Ingram scrambled to his feet, and snatched the silver cup from Adrian’s hand. Then he spat, straight into the priest’s face, and darted through the door, taking the chalice with him.

  “Oh,” said Adrian, looking at the dagger he still held, and wiping his face with his sleeve.

  “‘Oh,’ indeed,” said Geoffrey, sinking down on the bench, his hand still to his side. “Now what do you suggest? Shall we chase after him and offer him the church silver if he will answer our so-politely-put questions?”

  “I was doing what I thought was right,” said Adrian defensively. He flung Geoffrey’s dagger away from him in sudden disgust, while the knight twisted awkwardly to see if Adrian’s nasty jab had damaged his chain-mail. “I thought he might tell us where he had found her if we treated him with kindness, rather than roughness.”

  “Then clearly you do not know him very well, either,” said Geoffrey. “Ingram is absolutely capable of digging up a grave in order to make a profit. He has been ferreting around in the village and asking questions of all sorts of people about Enide, my father’s poisoning, and the death of that drunken servant—Torva. I wondered why. Now it is clear he was bent on extortion.”

  “No!” protested Adrian. “His father is my verger, and Mark Ingram himself has been on God’s holy Crusade. He would not do something so despicable.”

  “Really?” said Geoffrey. “So you think his demand for my chalice in return for information was so that he could make a donation to the poor, do you?”

  “It is possible,” said Adrian. “You are too quick to see the evil in people.”

  “And you are too quick to see good that is not there,” snapped Geoffrey. He rubbed his sore side and sighed. “Arguing will get us nowhere. Are you sure that second head belonged to Enide?”

  “For God’s sake, yes!” cried Adrian. “How many more times must I tell you? It is my Enide!”

  “All right,” said Geoffrey, unnerved by the priest’s sudden display of emotion. He stood. “I must take Rohese to Helbye. Then I need to talk to the physician to ask what he discovered about the bed. And then we will bury Enide and whoever that other poor woman was.”

  The priest nodded, fighting to bring himself under control. Geoffrey left him and collected Rohese from where she sat crying softly under a tree. Miserably, she trailed after him along the muddy lane to where Helbye’s house stood. Geoffrey knocked at the door and waited.

  Suddenly, the door was wrenched open and Helbye shot out, wielding his sword. Geoffrey, not anticipating that he would be attacked by someone he considered a friend, was completely unprepared to parry the hacking sword as it swept toward him. He saw the glittering blade begin to descend, and knew that he would not be able to move quickly enough to avoid it.

  Rohese’s shrill scream ripped through the air, making Helbye falter just long enough to allow Geoffrey to dodge out of the way of the wickedly slicing blade, although it passed so close that he felt the breeze of it on his cheek. He had hauled his own sword from his belt to meet the next blow before his brain had even started to question why his sergeant should be trying to chop him in half.

  “Will!” he yelled. “What are you doing, man?”

  “Sir Geoffrey!” gasped Helbye in startled horror. He gazed from the knight to the sword in his own hand. “My God! I almost killed you!”

  “So I noticed,” said Geoffrey, putting his weapon away. “What has happened to lead you to give friendly visitors this sort of welcome?”

  Helbye looked both ways along the lane, and then hauled Geoffrey and Rohese inside, slamming the door behind them.

  “Something dreadful is going on in this place,” he said in a whisper.

  Geoffrey did not need to be told that the village and its castle were not all a pleasantly prosperous settlement should be. He looked around the house’s single room. Helbye’s wife sat on the floor near the hearth, while in front of her lay the prostrate form of Francis the physician. Despite her most valiant efforts, Francis was bleeding to death from a wound in his side. Geoffrey looked from the dying man to Helbye in confusion.

  “Ingram did it,” said Helbye tiredly. “God knows why. I heard a scuffle outside, and went to see what was going on. I found Master Francis clutching his side, and saw Ingram racing away up the lane as though the very hounds of hell were on his heels.”

  “They may well be, soon,” said Geoffrey, doubting that the spiteful young soldier would be able to lie and bluff his way out of this mess: even the heroes of the Crusades could not be permitted to swagger around the countryside and kill whosoever they pleased.

  Geoffrey knelt next to Francis and addressed Helbye. “Has he said anything?”

  At the sound of his voice, Francis opened his eyes and gave a ghastly smile.

  “You brought a devil home from the Holy Land, Geoffrey Mappestone. What changed the lad? He was never so vile when he was a boy.”

  “Was he not?” asked Geoffrey, unconvinced. “He has been pretty unpleasant ever since I have known him. But why has he done this to you? What could you have said to lead him to murder?”

  “Nothing,” breathed Francis, closing his eyes. “He came towards me smiling and then, without the slightest provocation, he plunged his dagger into me. And do not try to tell me that I will live. I am a physician—I know a fatal wound when I see one.”

  “He just stabbed you? With no explanation?” Geoffrey was nonplussed. The physician’s shabby robe and dirty clothes clearly indicated that he was not wealthy, and therefore would not be worth robbing. And Geoffrey found it difficult to believe that someone would kill an old man for no reason at all, even the aggressive and cowardly Ingram.

  “I was looking for you anyway,” whispered Francis. “I did as you asked—I went to the castle and inspected the mattress. But there was nothing amiss with it. You were wrong: there are no poisons hidden in any part of the bed that I could find.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Geoffrey, disappointed. He had been convinced that his deduction had been correct.

  “One can never be sure with poisons,” said Francis, a touch of his characteristic smugness back in his voice. “But I am reasonably certain that the mattress is innocent of Godric’s death. It must be something else. The rugs, perhaps.”

  “Well, it does not matter,” said Geoffrey, “so you should not tax yourself about it now. Rest.”

  “Rest for what?” asked Francis. “So that I can spend longer dying?”

  “Will you fetch Father Adrian?” said Geoffrey to Helbye.

  “Later,” said Francis as the sergeant rose. I have a while left to me yet.”
/>   “You need to make your confession,” said Helbye. “You do not want to die unshriven.”

  “Claptrap!” said the physician. “If I die sorry for my sins, then God will not care whether I have been absolved or not. You must have seen hundreds die unshriven on the field of battle, Will Helbye. Do you think God will not care for them because they did not confess?”

  Helbye, very much a man who believed anything the Church told him, pursed his lips and did not deign to reply to such heresy.

  “I will ride to Walecford for a physician,” he said stiffly.

  “No! That man is a leech and a charlatan,” said Francis. “I want no physicians near me as I die.”

  “Now you know how the rest of us feel,” muttered Helbye.

  “Can we give you anything?” asked Geoffrey. “What about that potion you were making the day I first met you—the one that binds wounds? Can I fetch that?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Francis with a shudder. “I have learned that the shock of having that applied tends to kill a patient in moments.”

  His fingers fluttered over one of his pouches and Geoffrey helped him to open it.

  “It is poppy powder for the pain,” the physician said weakly, drawing out a small packet. “Enide told me that you can read. Follow the instructions on the outside and make it up for me.”

  Geoffrey unwrapped the package, and set about measuring the correct amount of liquid for the powder. He was on the verge of scattering it into a bowl of water when his attention was caught by the handwriting—a firm roundhand with a curiously archaic T. He had seen that writing before—on the parchments he had found hidden in Enide’s room. He stared at it, his thoughts whirling, until a sharp poke from Helbye’s wife brought him to his senses.