Fortune Like the Moon

by Alys Clare

  Hard on that thought came another: that it was scarcely appropriate to be pleased about such a thing when a man lay dead, brutally murdered. Her shame at her own musings adding haste to her progress, Helewise gathered up her skirts and sprinted down the track to the Abbey gates.

  * * *

  Sheriff Harry Pelham of Tonbridge was an odious man.

  Helewise, sitting listening to his pronouncements on the murder, had to bite down her irritation. At having to listen to his opinions—grandly stated, as if he alone could be right, as if she, a mere woman, could not possibly have any valid contribution—and at having to tolerate his very presence in her room.

  He was a big fellow. Solid, squat, a chest like a barrel, and short legs which seemed barely up to the job of supporting the rest of him. He was dressed in a well-worn leather overtunic, and, when he performed his frequently repeated mannerism of flinging out his chest, it was as if his intention were to draw attention to the battle scars which criss-crossed the tough leather. As if he were saying, look! See what perils my duties take me into! See what cudgel blows and broadsword thrusts I have fended off!

  It had apparently been quite a job to make him leave his own sword and knife at the gates. Sister Ursel, so Helewise had been informed, had stood her ground like an aggravated hen with her feathers ruffled out, and told Harry Pelham that, sheriff or not, nobody bore arms into God’s holy place.

  The same observant nun—it was Sister Beata, who, as a nurse, was always observant—also reported to the Abbess that Harry Pelham’s sword was stained, and his knife looked as if he’d recently used it to carve his meat.

  And it is this careless man, Helewise now thought, listening to his booming voice, who is our sole protector of law and order. Efficient he might be—he must be, she corrected herself, for he was appointed by the Clares of Tonbridge, and they surely did not tolerate slackness in their officers—but, oh, what an oaf he is!

  ‘Of course,’ Harry was saying, leaning back on the little wooden stool so that its rear legs squeaked a protest, ‘of course, Hamm Robinson was a well-known felon. Me, I’m not in the least surprised someone’s done him in, no, no, not at all, ha, ha, ha!’

  Unable, for the life of her, to see why that was funny, Helewise said in a cool tone, ‘Felon, Sheriff? What was the nature of his crime?’

  Harry Pelham leaned towards her, as if about to confide a secret. His fleshy nose had semicircles of little blackheads in the creases where the nostrils met the cheeks, and there were oily-looking creamy flakes in his eyebrows and at his hairline. ‘Why, Sister, he was a poacher!’

  ‘A poacher,’ she repeated. ‘My word, Sheriff, a dangerous man.’

  Entirely missing the mild irony, Harry Pelham nodded. ‘Aye, Sister, dangerous, desperate, all of that.’ He hesitated, and she had the strong conviction he was wondering how far he dare exaggerate the details of what he was about to say. Leaning close again—she wished he wouldn’t, he didn’t smell any too fresh—he said, ‘Come near to apprehending him, I have, on several occasions. Tracked him, see, through those old woods.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of the forest. ‘Ah, but he was a sly one! Wormed his way through that undergrowth like some wild animal, he did, all silent and swift, like. Reckon he knew the lie of the land like the back of his hand.’ Harry Pelham shook his head. ‘Never could quite lay my fists on him.’

  ‘Perhaps he heard you coming,’ Helewise remarked neutrally.

  The sheriff shot her a quick glance. ‘Aye, that’s as maybe. And it’s also maybe my good fortune that I never did catch him, desperate man like him! Why, maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here now talking to you, Sister, if I had of!’

  ‘Yes,’ Helewise murmured, ‘he’d have put up a rare fight, of that I’m quite sure.’ Deliberately she stared at Harry Pelham’s broad shoulders. ‘Was he a big man, would you say, Sheriff?’ she asked, raising innocent eyes to his. ‘I only saw him dead, and it was hard to tell.’

  The sheriff went, ‘Humph,’ and ‘Ha!’ a few times, then grunted something barely audible.

  ‘What did you say, Sheriff? I didn’t quite catch it.’

  ‘I said, he was big enough,’ Harry Pelham growled.

  ‘Ah.’ Helewise bent her head to hide her smile. Then, straightening her face, she said, ‘He was killed by the spear thrust, and, when hit, he was running from the forest. Yes?’

  Another grunt. Then, grudgingly, as if he resented her awareness of even such bare facts, ‘Yes. That’s how it was.’

  ‘And from that, you hazard the guess that he was killed by—what did you call them, Sheriff? The Forest People?’

  ‘Aye. Forest People, Wild People, folks refer to them by both names.’

  ‘And you know for sure that these Wild People were in the forest the night before last?’

  ‘Aye. It’s June, see. They come here in June.’ He frowned. ‘Leastways, they sometimes do. They have done in the past, anyhow.’

  ‘I see.’ It seemed, Helewise thought, slim evidence on which to convict this unknown, hitherto unsuspected group of people who, apparently, were wont to camp at certain times of the year, almost on the Abbey’s doorstep. ‘And—forgive me, Sheriff, if I seem to be questioning your actions, only what with the murder being so close, and—’

  ‘And what with you finding him, Sister,’ the sheriff interrupted her. ‘Aye, I understand.’ A patronising smile stretched the moist lips. ‘You go on and ask me,’ he said earnestly, ‘anything I can tell you, to set your mind at rest so you and the good sisters can lie easy in your beds at night, I will!’

  ‘How kind,’ Helewise murmured. ‘As I was saying, Sheriff, you’ve been up into the forest, I take it? You’ve found evidence that these Wild People have been there recently?’

  ‘Well, I…’ Again, the frown. More like a scowl, really, Helewise thought, deciding that, frown or scowl, it probably meant that Harry Pelham was about to tell her a lie. Or, at least, try to get away with a fudging of the truth. ‘There’s not much point in looking for signs of the Wild People, see, Sister. They’re cunning and canny, and they don’t go about cutting down trees or hacking off branches to make shelters. They’re more, like, open-air folk. They live under the trees, under the sky. They’ve been there forever, they have, carrying on in their strange ways. Old even when the Romans came, some say.’ Remembering the point he was making, he repeated. ‘No use looking for evidence. None at all. Although, of course, I sent some of my men up there anyway.’

  ‘Of course.’ A likely story! ‘And they found nothing.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  Harry Pelham grinned. ‘No. Like I said.’

  Helewise carefully put her hands together, resting her chin on the tips of her fingers. ‘What we have, then, Sheriff, is a dead poacher, whom, despite any evidence, you are quite sure was killed by these Wild People. Who, since you have not managed to locate them, cannot be questioned.’ She shot him a direct look, and felt a totally unworthy pleasure in seeing him flinch slightly. ‘Therefore you have no proof of their guilt, other than your own conviction.’

  Harry Pelham rallied quickly. Giving her his most threatening scowl, he said, ‘My conviction’s quite enough for me!’ As if even he realised the flimsiness of that, he added, ‘Anyway, you tell me who else could have done it! Go on, tell me!’

  ‘Not knowing anything of the man or his background, naturally, I can’t,’ Helewise said mildly. ‘But, surely, that is your job, Sheriff? To discover how and where the man lived, if he had any enemies, if anyone would be likely to gain from his death?’

  ‘Ha!’ the sheriff cried, punching the air as if to say, got you there! ‘I know who he was. He was Hamm Robinson, like I said. He has a wife—poor meagre little woman she is, Hamm bullied and beat her within an inch of her life, the good Lord alone knows why she didn’t make off in the night—and, as for what he did, he was a poacher.’ He pointed a grubby finger at the Abbess. ‘Told you that, too.’ He exhaled a big sigh, and said, ‘If you ask
me, the world’s well rid of him.’

  ‘Perhaps so!’ Helewise cried. ‘But he was a man, Sheriff! A living, breathing man, until someone threw a spear at him and killed him. Is he not as entitled to justice as any other man?’

  Harry Pelham, she was certain, almost said, ‘No.’ That, she thought, would have been the truth. Instead, the fleshy, greasy face took on its patronising look once more. ‘Like I keep telling you, Sister,’ he said, ‘I’d do what you want and go and accuse the Wild People if I could. Arrest them, bring them to trial, hang a few, if it was in my power! But how can I if they’ve gone?’ He chuckled. ‘Even I can’t arrest a man if he’s not there, now can I, Sister?’

  There was, Helewise thought, little point in pursuing it any more. She couldn’t make the sheriff do anything he didn’t want to; clearly, he was far beyond being shamed into action by anything she said.

  She let the tense silence continue a little longer. Then, rising to her feet, said, ‘Very well, Sheriff. But, please, do let me know if your enquiries arrive at any sort of satisfactory conclusion.’

  Realising he was being dismissed—which, judging from his expression, he didn’t much like—Sheriff Pelham stood up. The Abbess opened the door, and he trudged out.

  ‘You may reclaim your weapons at the gate,’ Helewise told him. ‘Sister Ursel will have taken good care of them. I wish you good day, Sheriff.’

  He muttered something in reply. It could have been ‘Good day,’ but it could equally well have been something far less polite.

  * * *

  When she was quite certain he had gone, Helewise left her room and crossed the courtyard to the infirmary, where she begged Sister Euphemia to part with some of her precious lavender-scented incense. Despite her efforts to think charitably of the sheriff, still Helewise felt a very strong desire to fumigate her room of his presence.

  * * *

  Later that day, she went back up the track to the forest.

  It was, she had discovered, very difficult to leave the matter there. A man had been brutally murdered right by the Abbey, and she had all but stepped on his body. It appeared there was no chance of his killer ever being brought to justice, and Helewise could see no way to alter that.

  I must, she thought, striding up towards the trees, have one more try myself. Take one more look. See if I can find some clue that the sheriff and his men overlooked, and, the dear Lord knows, surely that wouldn’t be hard.

  She found the place where the body had lain. There were still bloodstains on the grass. She walked a few paces on into the forest, and thought she could detect trodden-down undergrowth where the dead man’s running feet had passed. But what of the killer? Had he run in the dead man’s tracks? He must have stood still to throw the spear … She wandered on under the deep shade of the trees, not really knowing what she was looking for.

  Some time later, she gave up the search. It was, she realised, quite hopeless.

  She went back to the place where the man had fallen. There was some flattened grass a few paces off; she went to look.

  There, amid the brilliant green, lay the spear.

  Someone—Sheriff Pelham?—must have wrested it out of the dead man’s back and thrown it away. Its head and the first few inches of its shaft were still sticky with blood.

  Helewise bent down and picked it up.

  Carefully she wiped it on the fresh young grass, feeling, as she did so, an illogical but very strong urge to apologise for this act of desecration.

  Then, when it was as clean as she could make it, she had a good look. The tip of the spear was made of flint.

  Flint?

  Helewise had lived for most of her life close to the South Downs, and she knew all about flint. One of her brothers had amused himself on a wet afternoon by making a flint knife, and had discovered that knapping wasn’t as easy as one might think.

  But whoever had made this spearhead was a master in the craft. The point was exactly symmetrical, and shaped most beautifully. Like an elegant leaf. The knapped edges were perfect.

  And the point was as sharp as any knife.

  Helewise—who had learned her lesson over testing the sharpness of worked edges—tried the spearpoint on a patch of dandelions. It seared through the leaves and stems as if they hadn’t been there.

  A flint spearhead, she mused. Why flint, in this age of fine metalwork? Did it mean that wretched sheriff was right, and this murder was the work of some band of primitive forest-dwelling people, who lived not in the present day but in the manner of their distant stone-working ancestors?

  The idea sent an atavistic shiver of dread down Helewise’s spine. And here I am, she thought, not ten paces from the forest.

  She turned and hurried back towards the Abbey.

  But, disconcerted or not, still she took the spear with her. Even if this did appear to be the end of the matter, it seemed a good idea not to throw away evidence.

  PRAISE FOR ALYS CLARE’S

  FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON

  “Fortune Like the Moon is proof that a writer of medieval crime fiction can deliver something fresh.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Cunningly shifting sympathies among virtually all the players, Clare spotlights first Helewise, then Josse, in a detecting competition that lifts the partners above their predictable gender roles … immersing them in a suddenly engrossing tale.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[Readers] raved about the Abbess Helewise of Hawkenlye and her unlikely sleuthing partner, the canny knight Josse d’Acquin.… The Abbess and the soldier of fortune form an unlikely bond against a vividly realized medieval setting where conflicts rising from family loyalties, and from greed and avarice, are no different from today.”

  —BOOKNEWS from The Poisoned Pen

  “Clare tells a chilling tale of inheritance and love while highlighting the analytic skills of both widowed Helewise and former warrior Josse, whose charming relationship will leave readers [longing] for more.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  OTHER TITLES FROM

  ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR MYSTERIES

  THE BLACK BOOK by Ian Rankin

  GUMBO LIMBO by Tom Corcoran

  MURDER IN GEORGETOWN by Elliott Roosevelt

  THIRTEENTH NIGHT by Alan Gordon

  THE CORNBREAD KILLER by Lou Jane Temple

  THE DOCTOR MAKES A DOLLHOUSE CALL by Robin Hathaway

  HUNTING THE WITCH by Ellen Hart

  THE LAKE EFFECT by Les Roberts

  STONE QUARRY by S. J. Rozan

  BY BLOOD POSSESSED by Elena Santangelo

  A PLACE OF SAFETY by Caroline Graham

  WINTER OF THE WOLF MOON by Steve Hamilton

  SCREAM IN SILENCE by Eleanor Taylor Bland

  SNIPE HUNT by Sarah H. Shaber

  ARMS OF NEMESIS by Steven Saylor

  SKELETON KEY by Jane Haddam

  A HEALTHY PLACE TO DIE by Peter King

  THE WEDDING GAME by Susan Holtzer

  THE SKULL MANTRA by Eliot Pattison

  FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON by Alys Clare

  AGATHA RAISIN AND THE FAIRIES OF FRYFAM by M. C. Beaton

  QUAKER WITNESS by Irene Allen

  ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS IS ALSO PROUD TO PRESENT THESE MYSTERY CLASSICS BY NGAIO MARSH

  FINAL CURTAIN

  GRAVE MISTAKE

  HAND IN GLOVE

  KILLER DOLPHIN

  ALYS CLARE lives in Tonbridge, England, in the area where Fortune Like the Moon is set. This is the first in a series of medieval mysteries set in the Weald of Kent.

  To learn more about Alys Clare and other Minotaur authors, log onto: www.minotaurbooks.com

  First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline PLC

  FORTUNE LIKE THE MOON

  Copyright © 1999 by Alys Clare.

  Excerpt from Ashes of the Elements copyright © 2000 by Alys Clare.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manne
r whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  ISBN: 0-312-97632-1

  St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition /May 2000

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / April 2001

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  eISBN 9781466845725

  First eBook edition: April 2013