Old Saxon Blood

by Leonard Tourney

  Since Joans arrival, Moll had been observing the interloper from afar. Joans illness her first week at the castle had been profoundly gratifying to the old woman but had fallen short of complete satisfaction in not having been terminal. More recently she had been disappointed in finding Joan a competent housekeeper, for Moll had intended to ask for restoration of rank on the grounds of Joan s failure to control the Irish bitches, as Moll was wont to term ungraciously the castles maids. But no failure was evident, nor could it be easily falsified. The house and castle were efficiently and properly being made ready as ordered. The Irish girls seemed to work more willingly for the Stock woman than for Moll. In sum, there simply were no chinks in the armor of Joan Stocks adequacy.

  Obviously another course of action had to be taken. And Moll was in the middle of contemplating what that course might be when she heard her husbands voice outside the lodge, bawling out her name.

  Moll hardly had time to rise from her stool to see what the matter was before Cuth burst in the door all pale and breathless. He looked at her strangely and said, “By God, Moll, you killed the Irish bastard after all!”

  She was too bewildered by this proclamation to be angry. “Why, what is it you say, husband? An Irish bastard? What! Is one of the maids with child, say you?”

  Cuth was clutching his chest, trying to get his breath. He started to speak again and then fell helpless in a fit of coughing and gagging so that Moll had to press a cup of water on him to clear his throat.

  “Conroy, the Irishman.” He sat down on a bench in front of her and put his elbows on his knees and stuck out his face. He looked at Moll with eyes full of wonder, as though he had never truly understood this woman to whom he had been married for over forty years. “Cold, stone dead. Like Aileen Mogaill! His throat was

  cut. From ear to ear. Old girl, you know how to wield a kitchen knife, you do, you really do.”

  "Tool!” Moll said. “What makes you think I killed him?” The question took Cuth aback. He had no immediate response. Then he said, “I thought you hated him for his insolence.”

  “And so I did,” she said. “And so I might have brained him with my cudgel at hand, or taken a kitchen knife to his privates, if it had struck my fancy. Marry, he would have richly deserved neutering. But the bald fact of the matter is that I didn't do it.” She wanted to know where her husband had discovered the body.

  “I went even as you said, down by the lake where the willow arches over the bank. I saw something afloat there and wondered what it was. Thought it was a huge fish, I did. No, it wasn't a fish. 1 thought then it might be a log or a dead sheep.”

  “Out with it, man!” Moll cried impatiently in an effort to stanch the flow of useless words.

  “He was floating face down.”

  With mordant relish, Cuth gave another gruesome description of the dead man's wounds. She stopped him in midsentence. “He was plainly murdered then, and like Aileen?” “Nothing but murder makes such wounds,” Cuth said, nodding as though his knowledge of these bloody matters were extensive.

  “No chance of it being self-slaughter?”

  Her husband laughed grimly and shook his head. “Selfslaughter! Him? Why, he was too mean. He would never have given the world so much pleasure.”

  She had to admit he was right on that score.

  “Well then,” he demanded, looking at her curiously. “If it wasn't you that did it, who did?”

  It was the very thing she was wondering herself. And the first person she thought of was Joan Stock. Not because she reasoned that whoever would murder feline innocence would not stint at murdering an obnoxious Irishman, but because she knew full well that whoever would murder a harmless cat deserved to be blamed for killing an Irishman, guilty or not.

  “The Stock woman murdered him, that’s who,” she said decisively. “Murdered him in cold blood. With ill intent and motive malicious. It was because of some quarrel the two of them had.”

  “Did she?” gasped Cuth. His jaw fell slack. For a moment he was speechless. As an alternative to his wife, the hostler had struck him as a likely candidate. He had not even thought of Joan Stock— or her husband either.

  Moll warmed to her theme. “Did you not hear the quarrel the two of them had—what threats were exchanged and bloody oaths uttered? What weapons were brandished on both sides!”

  “No, I didn't. You told me—”

  “Foolish old man,” Moll interrupted, glaring at him threateningly. “You did hear such a quarrel and were a privy witness to the threats she made to him and he to her.”

  “But I don't remember—”

  “You do remember,” Moll repeated.

  And then Cuth understood what he was to say if he was asked. He envisioned the quarrel she spoke of—and to which he was supposed to have been an eavesdropper—with startling clarity and conviction. He nodded in agreement. He approved of his wife's plan. Besides, he was eager to see her have her revenge. It would put the matter of the dead cat to rest, once and for all.

  “Where's Conroy’s body now?” she asked.

  “Where I left it. Beached, fly-blown, and rotting in the sun.”

  “Go hide it so that no one tampers with the remains. At least until our constable's had an eyeful. Then go find Edward. Tell him there's been another murder done and the Stock woman did it. Tell him there's a world of proof. Say her husband was her accomplice. It will be the salt to a narrative already well seasoned with plausibility. If he inquires as to the cause, say it was because the Irishman spoke uncivilly to them and would not willingly forsake the house.”

  Cuth rushed back to where he had found Conroy's body. He was greatly relieved, now that he thought of it, that his wife had not murdered the man. For one thing, he would have been tolerably sorrv to see his wife hanged. For another, her murder of Conroy would have set a worrisome precedent. For certainly she would murder him next if she ever found out it was he that had dispatched Nebuchadnezzar. Cuth trusted the hostler would keep his little recret as he had promised, since Cuth had promised in turn to keep

  mum about Edward’s Irish whore. Tit for tat it was to be between the two men.

  But when he came to where he had left the corpse he found it gone. He looked about him in a panic. There was the same willow. The same overhanging branches, the same clump of sedge. The same slimy bank.

  And Conroy was gone!

  For a moment a supernatural dread seized him. Into his confused imagination came a parade of horrors—bloated corpses that walked, skeletons that danced. Or perhaps Conroy had not been dead after all. But then he remembered the half-severed head. No, not even the Irishman could have survived such a wound.

  He backed away from the spot, afraid to take his eyes from the water. His old heart beat so violently against his chest he couldn’t catch his breath. When he had walked backward a good dozen paces and had come near breaking his neck stumbling over stones and roots, he turned and broke into a frenzied dash for the lodge again, bellowing out his wife’s name as though he were a child come running home to Mother with a skinned knee.

  "Now don’t piss yourself, but tell me what it is,” she said.

  “He’s gone.”

  "Who?”

  “Conroy.”

  "You said he was dead.”

  "I swear he was dead. Bloody enough for a dozen Irishmen.”

  "Then he only seemed to be dead,” she said. Moll’s heart sank as her plot began to crumble before her mind’s eye.

  "Nay, he was dead. If not by his wounds, then by the water.”

  "Well, then, Master Know-It-All,” Moll asked scornfully, "pray tell me where he has gone. To find a grave digger?”

  Her husband had no answer.

  Moll snorted with disgust and stood elbows akimbo as she often did when she was thinking. Here indeed was a puzzling turn of events. A disappearing body! She believed her husband’s description of the wounds. She knew her husband was an ass, but surely too poor a liar to fabricate a story in such a wealth of detai
l. Yet she held it as a matter of principle that no man with his throat cut walks away. So someone must have discovered the body and borne it off. She knew they must act quickly now or all might be lost.

  “Go to Edward. Tell him what you saw and what we suspect. Then let him go to the house and confront the housekeeper and the steward. If she claims ignorance of any bodies or murders, then well accuse her of murder all the same and say she did away with the body herself so as not to be caught red-handed; just as she and her husband did with Aileen Mogaill—and contrary to our better judgment, too, for we urged them to fetch the constable when the wretched girl was found, but they would rely on their own wisdoms.”

  “Why, thats true, Moll,” Cuth said enthusiastically. “If she murdered Conroy, she might with equal logic conceal his corpse. And 'twas her husband and Edward that buried Aileen huggermug-ger and without a priest to bless her bones.”

  “Let her deny it, let her deny it!” Moll cried. “I'll say I saw Conroy floating in his gore—that we went down to the shore together and dropped the mushrooms we’d collected in sheer terror of the body. We’ll match stories. That’s two 'gainst one.”

  “But what if her husband stands by her?” Cuth said. “There’s two against two.”

  “And so it is, husband. An even match. Yet we’ll come out on top because Conroy won’t be around and where else could he be but dead? Besides, we’re natives to the place, the Stocks strangers. If it’s to be them against us, then we’ll prevail.”

  Cuth felt bolstered by his wife’s confidence. Pleased to have such a clever wife, he hurried toward the stable to find the hostler, rehearsing, as he ran, everything his wife had instructed him to say.

  Edward was in the paddock, grooming one of the horses. Cuth rushed up and told his story, but the hostler seemed unimpressed. “Floating in his gore?” he replied incredulously. “Nonsense, surely. The man was hale and hearty this morning when he left the castle.”

  “Left?” Cuth exclaimed in amazement, thinking of the bloated corpse he had seen.

  “He and his horse and his gear. He didn’t say where he went or when he’d be back, but he took everything with him and I judge thereby he’s gone for good.”

  “But the Stocks murdered him, slit his throat and gutted him too, because he would not quit the house,” Cuth protested, his panic rising again.

  “But the man has quit the house—and probably the country as well. By all signs, he’s gone back to Ireland. The Stocks would have no cause to murder, and I saw the man alive just this morning.”

  Cuth walked out of the paddock in total and devastating confusion. He was sure what he had seen—or at least he thought he was sure. But the worst was that he now had to return to tell Moll, who would hardly be pleased to learn that her stratagem of revenge had foundered.

  He walked back to the lodge in fear and trembling, and with a vague, distant expression on his face. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he told his wife what the hostler had said.

  “Left this morning—quit the country?”

  She sat there looking at him, trying to piece things together herself. Then in her eyes came the gleam of recognition. “Why, you dolt! Left this morning! You fell asleep by the lake instead of bringing me my mushrooms and then made up a story of a corpse to cover your own sloth! Napping, were you? And dreaming too, I warrant. Bloody corpses! IT1 make you a bloody corpse, I will.”

  Moll seized her broom and gave Cuth a few good whacks before he managed to dodge out of her way. She drove him out-of-doors, where he remained the rest of the day, while in her solitude the enraged old woman studied other means to avenge the worthy Nebuchadnezzar.

  The two men walked quickly toward the stable, each in a hurry for a different reason and their common interest yet to establish itself. Staffords hostler went to bring out his master’s favorite mount; Stafford remained at the paling to think about his wife and his future riches. When Wylkin returned, Stafford made mention of the Challoner treasure. He said he wanted a report of Wylkin’s progress, a report of his espionage at the castle.

  Stafford’s request gave Wylkin a chance to announce offhandedly that he had discovered where the same treasure was hidden.

  The effect of his nonchalance was a thing of beauty, according to Wylkin’s view of things. For a moment Stafford just stood there by his horse, his mouth agape, his face wrinkled up in puzzlement, as though he had lost his hearing—or kept it and Wylkin had lost his mind.

  “What did you say, Jack?”

  “I said, sir, I've found out where old Challoner hid the booty.”

  “Why, speak, man; my God, if this be true, its wonderful news.”

  Hardly surprised by his master’s joyful response, Wylkin told of his most recent meeting with Una, of Joan Stocks spying, of his own increased suspicions of Matthew Stock. He told how he searched the castle grounds looking for the new steward and how he found instead Conroy (although the Irishman did not see him), drawing a boat from its hiding place in a thicket and rowing out onto the lake with only a bold-faced moon for a lantern. Wylkin had watched from shore until his suspicions were confirmed. Conroys destination was clearly the island.

  “The island!” Stafford exclaimed. “Why, I should have thought of it before this. Beshrew me, I should have known—and yes, you, too, Jack. What better hiding place? Tricky devil, that Challoner. God knows when he started planning this. Why, he must have built that cursed lake to protect the treasure, which even then he must have been hoarding.”

  Stafford was beside himself with happiness. He said he would not go riding after all. He wanted to go back to the house to inform his wife. The news would be as welcome to her as it was to him, he said. But then Stafford looked very seriously at Wylkin and said, “My God, you don’t think Conroy found the treasure and then made off with it, do you?”

  “Believe me, the booty is still on the island,” Wylkin said. “I feel it in my bones. I waited for his return to shore, a lonely vigil, but he brought nothing home that he had not taken abroad on the lake.”

  “But why hasn’t Conroy found it?” Stafford said.

  “He hasn’t found it yet, sir.”

  “By which you mean we must find it first.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I can’t swim—shall we walk on water?”

  “We shall go dry-shod,” said Wylkin, supremely confident.

  “Dry-shod?”

  “Mark my words.”

  Wylkin had saved the best for last—a plan to obtain the treasure and destroy the Challoner pride in one fell stroke.

  Matthew and Joan lay long abed the next morning, both drifting in and out between sleep and wakefulness, while the timid November sunlight filtered through the curtains and in the lower regions of the house footsteps and distant voices could be heard, signaling that the Irish maids were already at their appointed tasks.

  Joans first words when she was fully awake and saw that Matthew was likewise was a request that he tell her again of his night’s adventure. She said she had been too overwhelmed with weariness when he returned to hear him all out, and what she remembered she could not now be sure was fact or dream.

  Matthew told it all again, while a strange torpor seized him.

  “Digging by lamplight. A sinister work indeed,” she observed when he told her that part.

  “And not burying,” he said.

  “Nor finding?” she inquired.

  “No. I saw him leave the tower. He had nothing but what he had brought with him.”

  She said, “We could put it to him that you saw him. That we know. ”

  “Poor bait for the larger truth,” Matthew said. “He’d deny everything, or concoct some fantastical fiction.”

  Joan thought of the lake, so dismal and treacherous with its

  submerged stumps, its murky water, and God knew what creatures in its depths. She shuddered and looked at her husband, wondering at his hardihood—indeed, at his incredible bullheadedness, for she had reminded him before he le
ft of her glimmering. Had it not betokened grave peril?

  But now that she looked at his face, she realized he did not look well at all. Against the pillow his face was drawn and flushed, his eyes lusterless.

  He sneezed violently.

  “Well, now/’ she said. “See, you have caught your death.”

  A second sneeze, more violent than the first, prevented his reply. He groaned and shut his eyes. “I don’t feel well. Not since waking.”

  She ordered him to remain in his bed. He protested and tried to rise, but fell back down again. He felt a fever coursing through his blood. His muscles ached, especially those in the calves and thighs, which had borne the brunt of his labors.

  “Conroy must be watched,” he said weakly. “If his digging hasn’t something to do with these strange murders, then I’m no Englishman.”

  “You are as true an Englishman as ever walked the earth,” she said, very sorry to see him so unstrung. She felt his forehead and listened to his chest. He was burning up. She heard a definite wheezing about his heart and lungs. She smelled his breath. It was sour. And in addition to all these untoward symptoms she could detect about his body the rank odor of the lake. Alarmed, she said, “I’ll be your nurse, as you were mine. You have made your last voyage to the island.”

  She was very definite about that.

  She dressed, went downstairs, and prepared a concoction of herbs and spices she had learned from her mother for the curing of colds and other distempers. It was a remedy of proven virtue, and yet Joan knew the best remedy was rest. Then she went back upstairs, gave him several spoonfuls, and sat by the bedside until he fell asleep again.

  She watched him for some time, and while she watched she thought of Conroy and Una and Edward, of Jack Wylkin and his master, of poor Aileen Mogaill, and of the chest she had found by

  the lake and about Matthews excursion to the island. All swirled in her head with their competing claims for significance.

  Matthew seemed better. She felt his forehead. It was cooler, his breathing more regular. She decided the investigation must continue.