‘Do you know what ails him, my lady?' she asked as one physician of a better. ‘What can we do?'
The woman shuffled round on her knees and screamed horribly. ‘Take off the spell! Now—now, while he lives!'
‘There is no spell. Of his own folly he ate poison,' Durande replied gravely.
‘To that I bear witness,' Hélie interjected.
‘Lies! Lies! You have murdered him!' She scrambled up, her kerchief fallen about her neck and her face disfigured with grief and rage. ‘You bewitched him! My lord and now my son! Witch—poisoner—'
‘Woman, close your mouth!' roared Sir Ranulf.
She gabbled on too fast to be checked. ‘She poisoned Lord Robert because he swore to set me in her high chair and in her bed, and kennel her with his hounds to teach her who was master! Because he loved me and hated her! And she has killed my son!' She flung up her hands and leaped at Durande's throat.
Hélie sprang between them and thrust the crazed creature back into the marshal's hold. Sir Ranulf dragged her away, shrieking and struggling; Eustace de Collingford laid hands on her from the other side, exhorting her to submit to God's will, and she collapsed sobbing between them. Ranulf thankfully pushed her into his wife's competent hands and bade her muzzle the unhappy wretch until her wits returned. She sank down by the dying child, whimpering desolately. The marshal glared round at the appalled faces.
‘By God's Life,' he proclaimed fiercely, ‘this is foul slander of an innocent lady!'
Hermeline slid from the bed, tense and quivering. ‘Robert died of this same poison, and who else would have murdered him?' she cried shrilly.
For a moment all her hearers were smitten speechless. Durande never moved. Then Hélie, dumb with outrage, took an angry step towards the bed. Hermeline, entirely misinterpreting his movement, cried his name and cast herself upon his breast, weeping hysterically. His arms lifted automatically to support her. She hid her face in his tunic, and his flesh fired at the soft sweetness of hers, pressed shamelessly to his hard body. Durande de Vallaroy regarded them both with the same icy contempt, swung about and was gone.
Hélie growled wordlessly under his breath, gripped Hermeline unlovingly by the elbows and detached her, his anger exacerbated by self-contempt that he, who had better reason than most men to beware of pretty women's snares, should have responded to that contact like any rutting ram. He thrust her back into the waiting demoiselle's tender hands. Hermeline shrieked and held out her arms to him, and when he stood fast, cast herself down upon the bed sobbing his name. He swore softly and started for the door. The familiar tinkle of a bell halted him, and brought all to their knees. The village priest, preceded by a shock-headed acolyte with the bell, swept into the hut to administer the last rites. The mother threw herself over the child as if to cover him from Death himself, but the marshal's wife hauled her up and shook her into seemly attention for the sacramental office.
The priest concluded his prayers, uttered a few formal words of condolence to the mother, and departed. The child breathed yet more faintly. Hélie gazed down at the small purple face in futile compassion. The mother moaned. It was monstrous that none but she truly grieved for Robert's son; Hermeline's tears were but selfish display. He shrugged as though casting from him vain regrets for that life's brevity, and followed the tinkling bell. Hermeline reached out a hand as he passed, but he pretended not to see it, though in that narrow space it almost brushed his sleeve. Oliver de Collingford rushed to her as Hélie escaped.
Most of the household and servants were lingering in earshot and buzzing with chatter over the interesting outcries. He scanned the crowd for a glimpse of brown riding-dress or white wimple, but Durande had vanished. He started for her likeliest refuge, realized that the bailey was as full of goggling eyes as a frog-pond in spawning time, and recognized the folly of openly pursuing her. There was gossip enough clacking already without his rashly adding to it. He hesitated irresolutely.
His body-servant appeared soundlessly at his elbow, as was his disconcerting habit. 'Through the gate to the walled garden,' he murmured just loudly enough to reach Hélie's ear. 'Best left to cool awhile.'
'Watch her for me, Gino,' Hélie answered in the same low voice, and in the Langue d'oc of far Provence. 'And spare an eye for the wench Mabille.'
Gino cocked an eyebrow at the hut, from which the noisy weeping sounded again. 'All squawk and no spur, are hens.'
A wintry smile touched Hélie's grim face. 'The Devil's own coil. It is certain Robert de Warby was poisoned.'
‘And you would know whom to thank for the good work, my lord?'
'I would, ribald.'
'A pity the native jargon comes so hardly to civilized tongues,' mourned Gino, and vanished.
Hélie grinned wryly, and then was aware that his kinsman Thomas stood a couple of paces off, regarding him with a face fit to curdle milk, his arms folded across his chest in an attitude of impatience patiently borne. Hélie summoned his own patience to sustain him.
'I am sorry I was obliged to neglect you, Thomas.'
His apology did nothing to diminish Thomas’s disapproval, and he voiced it without preamble. ‘With a dozen lads of birth and breeding eager to serve you, my own sons among them, Lord Hélie, why must you demean your rank by bestowing all your confidence in that rascally outlander?’
Golden-green eyes narrowed slightly, but by no other change did Hélie’s brown face betray his anger. ‘It may be that he has earned it—or further proof I am unworthy to hold that rank, Thomas,’ he stated mildly.
Thomas flushed dull-red and glared at his second cousin. Since Hélie’s sire had been the late-born fruit of a second marriage he was by sixteen years Hélie’s senior, and during his boyhood had strenuously endeavoured to thrash the rudiments of discipline into his hide. His irascible elderly father was now heir-presumptive to Trevaine, which further strained a relationship never noted for cordiality. He demanded fiercely, ‘Is it now an offence for an elder kinsman to offer his lord good advice?’
‘No.’
His head reared back like that of Robert’s stallion, and his minatory scowl changed to an affronted one. Then he visibly gulped down fury and growled, ‘If you think, my lord, I meant aught amiss—’
‘I know what you meant.’ It must be a galling frustration to Thomas that he could never again lay his belt about his cousin as had been his right and custom so few years ago. ‘What brought you here, Thomas?’ Hélie inquired, as though no hard words had marred the amity proper between kinsmen.
Thomas answered with wooden formality. ‘The wine-merchant is at Trevaine, and my lady the dowager would know your wishes and requirements. Likewise my father, your marshal, desires your instructions as to recruiting men-at-arms before the winter.’
Hélie’s brows twitched. His mother had been dealing on her own untrammelled authority with every household requirement before he was born, and would scarcely require the benefit of his inexperience. As for the marshal, if any man presumed to instruct him in the functions he had admirably discharged for thirty years, he would doubtless expire of apoplexy.
'Do you think me vain enough to believe you? You were sent to see how my wooing progressed.'
Thomas grunted acknowledgement. 'My lady grew anxious, and rightly. What folly possessed you, that you are not now betrothed to Lady Hermeline?’ He nodded at Hélie’s left hand.
Hélie looked at the slim loop of gold clasping the purple gem in tiny falcon-claws. 'An odd prejudice against being used to minister to a woman’s vanity,’ he said gently.
Thomas flushed angrily. 'A quibble, my lord! She pushed the matter in her innocence, to show her deep regard for you!’
'Her deep regard for her own way, my poor Thomas,’ Hélie corrected him with pitying amusement. Thomas was rigidly faithful to a meek little wife who outwardly agreed with every word he uttered, and yet managed to delude himself that wedlock with a capricious beauty offered a lifetime of unalloyed bliss. 'My lord, the lascivious life of T
oulouse has corrupted you!
'You insulted Lady Hermeline—’
'Who insulted an innocent demoiselle and myself.’
'It will make fair hearing for your lady mother, that you have involved yourself with this witch and poisoner!’
'She is as guiltless of that as of wrong with me, Thomas,’ Hélie informed him with icy gentleness. 'And you will tell my mother nothing of betrothal gone awry, witchcraft or poison.’ Thomas was halted as though he had run upon a stone wall. This was not the headstrong lad of wild rages and fierce enthusiasms who had once ranted of undying devotion to Hermeline in defiance of every measure taken to restore his senses. 'What am I to tell her then, my lord?’ he demanded sourly.
'That my wooing progresses but slowly against weighty opposition,’ Hélie answered smiling, since amusement would serve better than wrath. 'Bespeak your horse, Thomas, or she will wonder why you linger.’
He herded him gently towards the stables. Thomas burst out, 'That wench must have bewitched you, that you treat a lovely unhappy lady so!’
'Kinsman, allow me to manage my own betrothal,’ he requested wearily. Thomas scowled resentment, but Hélie suddenly recognized the misery behind it. Thomas had been devoted to the dead Alain, Hélie's brother, reasonable and appreciative and moderately biddable; it must gall him bitterly to suffer so unworthy a successor. He opened his lips to speak conciliation, but the trumpet-shriek of Robert's stallion tore the words from his mouth. Again and again it pierced the afternoon with magnificent fury, setting stable-mates neighing, dogs barking and men cursing. The squire and grooms brought out the horses, and the chance was lost. Hélie wished them God-speed through the tumult, and they clattered out across the bridge.
Hélie turned back to Mabille's hut. The men, supplemented by the mercenary captain, were grouped outside the door, and the audience had been dispersed to a more discreet distance. The mother was sobbing hopelessly, and he could hear Lady Emma, the marshal's wife, trying to comfort her. Hélie lifted a questioning eyebrow at Sir Ranulf, who nodded heavily.
'All but over, my lord,' he said gloomily. 'This is a sorry coil. And Lord Robert too—'
'My ward is guiltless!' Eustace de Collingford declared unequivocably.
Ranulf sighed. 'I trust you judge rightly, my lord.'
'She is not capable of poisoning any man!' snapped the weasel.
'But most apt to slide a carving-knife between his ribs,' Fulbert of Falaise judicially added his amendment.
'Skilled as she is with simples?' Oliver de Collingford insinuated.
'I should be loath to suspect—' began Ranulf.
Hélie's wrath broke bounds. 'It pleasures you all to devise foul slander against an honest lady? Since her fair name depends on finding who did poison Robert, that would be a knight's true duty!'
His challenge brought red shame to their faces and forced their eyes from his. Oliver found tongue first. 'But who had better reason?' he insisted peevishly. 'Or even knew the poison?'
'You, for one!'
'What—how—what do you say?'
'The woman who taught her nursed you also.'
'Do you take me for a woman, to dabble in herbs and spells?' Shock had whitened his face, but now fury brought the blood back in a red tide.
'Gently, gently!' protested his sire. 'This is no time for dispute! Oliver, you are too ready to condemn your cousin!' He turned to Hélie with a concern that could not have been feigned. 'Lord Hélie, if you know aught that touches the girl's innocence— any proof—'
The significance of the horsehairs and droppings he had seen forced itself on Hélie, and with it a vision of a grey horse placidly browsing while a faceless shadow gathered death. 'For a start, a rider was at the ruin,' he began. 'And also the woman—'
He checked himself. They were gaping at him as though they expected him to conjure up the murderer with poison-phial in his hand at his next word. His golden-green eyes surveyed them; grizzled Ranulf, the weasels, the lithe brown mercenary with his mobile monkey's face and flashing grin, his square surly badger of a sergeant behind him, and beyond them knights, women, squires and pages with ears a-flap and eyes on stilts. 'By your leave, what I know I will keep to myself,' he declared grimly, and thrust through the throng before they could frame protest.
Swift feet overtook him, and a hand touched his arm. He swung round, his hand instinctively dropping to his dagger, his face deadly. Fulbert asked coolly, 'You were in earnest, my lord?'
'I was.'
'Then borrow mail and procure yourself a food-taster,' the mercenary recommended with his irreverent grin, waited for his sergeant to come to heel and made for the hall.
An unwilling grin tugged at Hélie's mouth as he watched him go and pondered that excellent advice. He himself was being watched by a half-hundred expectant and curious eyes, so he too strolled towards the hall, round its further end and out of sight, before he made diagonally behind the mews, where a dozen moulting hawks bated at his tread as they perched on their blocks, then on past the full forage-sheds to the walled garden.
The gate yielded to his hand, and again he trod the grass walks without sound. Herbs and flowers filled the air with pungent fragrance, sparrows chirped and scuffled in the dry earth of the beds, whirring up as he passed from the bowl-shaped hollows they had worn there, and bees boomed to and from the row of hives under the wall. Pigeons crooned and preened along its top, and the sinking sun cast his sharp shadow along the path before him. And Durande de Vallaroy sat bare-headed under the apple-tree as though she had never moved from it, her hair a fire and her hands clenched on the wimple in her lap.
She leaped up as he approached, setting her back to the tree like a wild creature at bay, and it came to Hélie that he had perhaps paid too great a heed to scandal's injury to her name. He should have gone to her earlier. The Saints only knew what fear and misery hid behind her bleak face of pale stone, and compunction stirred him.
"Lady Durande, forgive my tardiness—'
‘What need for you to come at all, my lord?' she asked flatly. ‘Surely my felicitations are superfluous?'
‘Felicitations?' he repeated, gaping like a zany in complete bewilderment.
‘Hermeline flouted you once, but you knew you had only to look with favour on any other woman to make her grovel! Did you mistake me for a fool? I know what men are! My lord, I felicitate you indeed! You are most perfectly matched!'
‘Demoiselle—'
‘My lord, you can have no further use for me. Go!'
‘Willingly, demoiselle,' he said levelly, gave her an ironical bow that required the last of his self-command and stalked to the gate, desiring only to shut it between him and this bitter girl's scalding injustice. Truly she had known too much of Robert de Warby, to judge him as such another. He leaned against the stout timber and drew a long breath to still the anger and outrage churning in his entrails. The manor of Warby was a stench in his nostrils, a cesspit of poison, women's scandal, witchcraft and feuding. He desired only to be outside its boundaries, in the clean-smelling evening, riding home to his own heavy responsibilities that were burden enough for him.
‘A fool I was ever to set foot within the gates!' he inwardly castigated himself. ‘Marry Hermeline? I will match soberly with some fourteen-years innocent from the Marches or the North Parts, and Warby may go to the Devil who governs it!'
There was no one in sight to dispatch about his errands, nor was he minded to tolerate the surprised curiosity of any servant he might have used. He stalked back beyond the hall to the stables to bespeak his horse, determined to depart as soon as his saddle could be thrown across Tancred's back, and let Warby resolve its problems without him.
His anger leaped unreasonably as he peered into the strongsmelling gloom along the double row of stalls and saw no groom on duty, though most of the horses were out at pasture and he should have expected nothing else. All snuffing horror and prying into scandals by Mabille's hut, he thought savagely, and they should smart for neglect. He
advanced a few steps, glancing into an empty stall or two for a stable-boy snatching sleep on the straw. ‘Ho there, Oswald! Rouse up!' he called impatiently.
Robert's stallion bugled a challenge that set the other beasts stamping and neighing. Hooves crashed on wood, and the great head thrust out over the half-door, eyes and teeth gleaming viciously in the thin light from the open doorway. It screamed hatred at him. No groom emerged to answer the summons or pacify the brute. Hélie cursed aloud and started for the stall where his own mount had put forth an inquiring nose at the sound of his voice. He would have to saddle up himself.
The dim light dimmed further, and furtive feet rustled the scattered straw behind him. Hélie whirled just as black darkness swung down upon him. He ducked a heart's beat too late, and heavy woollen cloth fell over his head and shoulders, grappling and blinding. Still turning, he flung up his left arm, and the blow aimed for his skull struck that shoulder and staggered him. Arms embraced his knees, and he went down over a solid body and thumped flat on his back. His breath jolted out of him in a grunt. The heavy cloth over his mouth and nose gagged and throttled him, and entangled his threshing arms. His knuckles met something that crunched like a nose, and a snarled oath repaid him. Then the cloth jerked tight, pinioning his arms. Hands gripped him under the shoulders and heaved. He was swung up, writhing and gasping, between the two, who lurched several paces. He knew instantly that they meant to throw him to the killer stallion.
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