The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “I thought you’d best know before you went in to Vespers,” he said, with a respectful bow of his head. Master Naylor was ever particular in his manners. “There’s a man come in to say Master Montfort and six of his men will be here by supper time.”

  Frevisse felt her mouth open in protest, then snapped it closed. Among her least favorite people in the realm was Master Morys Montfort, crowner for northern Oxfordshire. It was his duty to find out what lay behind unexpected deaths within his jurisdiction, then to bring the malefactor – if any – to the sheriff’s attention, and to see to it that whatever fines or confiscations were due King Henry VI were duly collected.

  Frevisse had no quarrel with any of that, but Master Montfort had the regrettable tendency to prefer the least complicated solution to any problem and find his facts accordingly. He and Frevisse had long since struck a level of mutual hostility neither was inclined to abate. She was not happy to hear of his coming, and she said, “I trust he’s just passing on his way to somewhere else? There’s no one dead hereabouts that I’ve heard of.”

  Master Naylor shrugged. “It’s Jack Wilkins in the village, the day before yesterday. They tolled the village bell for him but you were likely in church for Sext then.”

  “But why is Montfort coming? Is there doubt about the way this Wilkins died?”

  “No doubt. His wife shook a charm at him and cast a spell, and he fell down dead. At least three of their neighbors saw it. I’d not have thought it of Margery,” he added. “She’s never been known to put her herbs to aught but good, that I’ve heard.”

  “Margery? Dame Claire’s Margery?”

  “That’s her, the herbwife who visits here sometimes.”

  “Does Dame Claire know?”

  “No more than you, I doubt. It was witchcraft and murder certain enough. Montfort will have it done a half hour after he’s seen her and talked to her neighbors. He’ll probably be on the road to Banbury with her before noon tomorrow and she’ll be in the bishop’s hands not long after that. I’d have reported it all to Domina Edith come week’s end with the other village business.” He seemed to think that was all the dealing there needed to be with the matter; Jack and Margery were not among the priory’s villeins, and so not his responsibility. The lethal use of witchcraft wasn’t usual; on the other hand, all herbwives used spells in their medicines, and it was but a small step to misuse them. He would not have mentioned it except he knew of Margery’s link with Dame Claire.

  The bell for Vespers began to ring. Frevisse said impatiently, “Where is she being kept?”

  Master Naylor pointed through the gateway toward the outer yard. “She’s in one of the sheds there. I’ve two of our men guarding her. She’s gagged so it’s all right; they’re safe. There’s nothing to be done.”

  “Dame Claire will want to see her after Vespers,” Frevisse said. “Please you, tell the guesthall servants for me that Montfort is coming. I have to go.”

  The Vespers she had expected to enjoy was instead a prolonged discomfort of impatience; and afterwards she had to wait until supper was finished and the nuns went out into the garden for recreation time – the one hour of the day their Benedictine rule allowed for idle talk – before she could tell Dame Claire what was to hand.

  “Margery?” Dame Claire exclaimed in her deep voice. Disbelief arched her eyebrows high toward her veil. “Killed her husband with witchcraft? I very much doubt it. In fact I don’t believe it at all! I want to see her.”

  That was easily done. Frevisse waited at the foot of the stairs to the prioress’ parlor while Dame Claire went up to ask permission. Then they went together, out of the cloister and across the inner yard – Frevisse noting there were lights in the guesthall window so Montfort and his entourage must have arrived – through the gateway to the outer yard where a stable hand, surprised to see them outside the cloister, pointed to the shed at the end of the stables where the prisoner was being kept.

  “I should have thought to bring a cloak for her, and something warm to eat,” Dame Claire regretted as they went. “These spring nights are cold, and she must be desperate, poor thing.”

  As Master Naylor had said, two stolid stable men were keeping guard inside the shed door, and Margery was gagged and her hands bound at her waist. But a clay lamp set in the corner on the bare earth floor gave a comforting yellow glow to the rough boards of her prison, and by its light as they stood in the doorway – Dame Claire explaining to the guards that they were come with permission to talk with Margery – Frevisse saw that Margery had several blankets, a cloak, and a straw-stuffed pillow to make her a bed along the farther wall, and that beside it were a pot of ale and various plates with three different kinds of bread and parts of two cheeses. Frevisse knew that in such cases as Margery the nunnery provided a blanket and an occasional piece of bread. So who had done this much for Margery?

  Margery herself had risen to her feet as the nuns entered. Despite her crime, she was much as Frevisse had remembered her, a middling sort of woman – of middling build, middling young, middling tall, with nothing particular about her, except – to judge by her eyes above the gag – that she was frightened. As well she should be.

  Dame Claire finished with the men, and crossed the shed to her, Frevisse following. As Margery curtseyed, Dame Claire said, “Let me loose your hands so you can take off the gag. I’ve told them you won’t do anything. We want to talk to you.”

  Dame Claire freed Margery’s hands, and gratefully she unknotted the cloth behind her head. “Thank you, my lady,” she said hoarsely.

  “Have something to drink.” Dame Claire indicated the ale kindly. “Have they let you eat?”

  Margery nodded over the rim of the clay pot as she drank thirstily. When she had finished, she said, “They’ve been as kind as might be. And village folk have brought me things.” She gestured at her bed and food and lamp. She was clearly tired as well as frightened, worn out by too many strange things happening to her. “But I hoped you’d come, so I could tell you why I didn’t come t’other day when I said I would.”

  “I wondered what happened to you,” Dame Claire answered. “But I never thought this.”

  Margery hung her head. “Nor did I.”

  “They say you killed your husband.”

  Margery nodded. “I did that.”

  “Margery, no!” Dame Claire protested.

  “Jack came at me, the way he’s done ever since we married whenever I’ve not done right. But this time we were in my garden and he was trampling my plants.” It plainly mattered very much to her that Dame Claire understand. “I told him to stop but he didn’t care, and I – lost my temper.”

  “You truly did kill him?” Dame Claire asked, still disbelieving it.

  “Oh, yes. Sure as sure. I didn’t know the spell would work that way but it did. Took him off afore he could hit me again, just like that.”

  “What – exactly – did you do?” Frevisse asked carefully. Murder, serious enough in itself, was worse for the murderer when done by witchcraft. Charms and spells were simply part of healing; every herbwife knew some. But if they were turned to evil, they became part of the Devil’s work and a matter for the Church as well as lay law.

  Margery looked at Frevisse with mingled shyness and guilt, and did not answer.

  “Tell us, please,” Dame Claire urged. “Dame Frevisse and I want to help you.”

  “There’s no help for me!” Margery said in surprise. “I killed him.”

  “How?” Frevisse persisted.

  Margery hung her head. She twisted her hands in her apron and, low-voiced with embarrassment, said, “I’d been saving bits of him this while. Hair, you know, and his nail cuttings.”

  “Margery! That’s wicked!” Dame Claire exclaimed.

  “I know it!” Margery said piteously. “But I was only going to make a small charm. When I’d money for the wax to make the figure. Not kill him, like, but weaken his arm so he couldn’t hit me so hard. That’s all I wanted to do. Jus
t weaken him.”

  “But you hadn’t made the figure yet?” Frevisse asked. Margery shook her head dumbly. Frevisse pressed, “What did you do then, that you think you killed him?”

  “I had the – things in a little packet. I held it up and told him what it was and that he’d better stop what he was doing. That I’d made a charm and I’d kill him if he didn’t stop.”

  “But you hadn’t made a charm yet. You said so,” said Dame Claire.

  “That I hadn’t. But I meant to. I really did.” She looked anxiously from one nun to the other. “If I make confession and do penance before they hang me, I won’t have to burn in hell, will I? Not if I’m truly penitent?”

  “Surely not,” Dame Claire reassured her.

  “But if you didn’t have the charm, what happened?” Frevisse asked.

  Margery shuddered. “Jack kept hitting and shoving. I knew he’d near to kill me, once he had his hands on me, and I’d never have another chance to make a charm against him, not now he knew. I was that frighted, I grabbed the first words that came to me, thinking to scare him off with them. I didn’t even think what they were. I just said them at him and shook the packet like I was ill-wishing him. I just wanted to keep him back from me, I swear that’s all. Just hold him off as long as might be.”

  She broke off, closing her eyes at the memory.

  “And then?” Dame Claire prompted.

  Faintly, tears on her cheeks, Margery said, “He stopped. All rigid like I’d hit him with a board. He stared at me with his mouth open and then grabbed his chest, right in the center, and bent over double. He was gasping like he hurt, or couldn’t catch his breath. Then he fell over. In the path, away from my herbs. He curled up and went on gasping and then – he stopped. He just stopped and was dead.”

  A little silence held them all. Frevisse was aware of the two men at her back, and knew that everything they were hearing would be told later all around the nunnery and village.

  “Margery,” Dame Claire said, “you can’t wish a man dead. Or rather, you can wish it, but it won’t happen, not that simply.”

  “But it did,” Margery said.

  And there would probably be no convincing anyone otherwise. But for Dame Claire’s sake, Frevisse asked, “What was it you said to him? A spell?”

  Margery nodded. “The one for – ”

  Master Naylor interrupted her with a firm rap on the door frame. He inclined his head respectfully to Frevisse and Dame Claire, and said, “The crowner wants to see her now.”

  “So late?” Dame Claire protested.

  “He hopes to finish the matter tonight so he can be on his way at earliest tomorrow. He has other matters to see to,” Master Naylor explained.

  Matters more important than a village woman who was surely guilty, Frevisse thought. A woman who was the more inconvenient because she would have to be sent for examination before a bishop before she could be duly hanged.

  “We’ll come with her,” said Dame Claire.

  Master Montfort had been given the guesthall’s best chamber, with its large bed and plain but sufficient furnishings. The shutters had been closed against the rainy dusk, the lamps lighted, and at a table against the farther wall his clerk was hunched over a parchment, quill in hand and inkwell ready.

  The crowner himself stood by the brazier in the corner, his hands over its low warmth. He was short in the leg for the length of his body, and had begun to go fat in his middle, but to his own mind any shortcomings he might have – and he was not convinced that he had any – were amply compensated for by the dignity of his office; he no more than glanced over his shoulder as Master Naylor brought Margery in, then sharpened his look on Frevisse and Dame Claire following her. A flush spread up his florid face and over the curve of his balding head.

  “You can stay, Naylor,” he said. “But the rest of you may go.” Belatedly, ungraciously, he added, “My ladies.”

  With eyes modestly downcast and her hands tucked up either sleeve of her habit, Frevisse said, “Thank you, but we’ll stay. It would not be seemly that Margery be here unattended.”

  She had used that excuse in another matter with Master Montfort. He had lost the argument then, and apparently chose not to renew it now. His flush merely darkened to a deeper red as he said tersely, “Then stand to one side and don’t interfere while I question her.”

  They did so. Master Montfort squared up in front of Margery and announced in his never subtle way, “I’ve questioned some several of your neighbors already and mean to see more of them before I’m to bed tonight so you may as well tell what you have to tell straight out and no avoiding it. Can you understand that?”

  Margery did not lift her humbly bowed head. “Yes, m’lord.”

  “You killed your husband? Now, mind you, you were heard and seen so there’s no avoiding it.”

  Margery clearly had no thought of avoiding anything. While the clerk’s pen scratched busily at his parchment, recording her words, she repeated what she had already told Frevisse and Dame Claire. When she had finished, Master Montfort rocked back on his heels, smiling grimly with great satisfaction. “Very well said, and all agreeing with your neighbors’ tales. I think there’s no need for more.”

  “Except,” Dame Claire said briskly, knowing Master Montfort would order her to silence if she gave him a chance, “I doubt her husband died of anything more than apoplexy.”

  The crowner turned on her. In a tone intended to quell, he said, “I beg your pardon, my lady?”

  Dame Claire hesitated. Frevisse, more used to the crowner’s bullying, said helpfully, “Apoplexy. It’s a congestion of the blood – ”

  Master Montfort’s tongue caught up with his indignation. “I know what it is!”

  Frevisse turned to Master Naylor. As steward of the priory’s properties he had far better knowledge of the villeins than she did. “What sort of humor was this Jack Wilkins? Hot-tempered or not?”

  “Hot enough it’s a wonder he was in so little trouble as he was,” Master Naylor said. “He knocked a tooth out of one of his neighbors last week because he thought the man was laughing at him. The man wasn’t, being no fool, but Jack Wilkins in a temper didn’t care about particulars. It wasn’t the first time he’s made trouble with his temper. And he was known to beat his wife.”

  “Choleric,” said Dame Claire. “Easily given to temper. People of that sort are very likely to be struck as Jack Wilkins was, especially in the midst of one of their furies. He was beating his wife – ”

  “As he had every right to do!” Master Montfort declared.

  As if musing on his own, Master Naylor said, “There’s a feeling in the village that he did it more often and worse than need be.”

  But Dame Claire, refusing to leave her point, went on over his words, “– and that’s heavy work, no matter how you go about it. Then she defied him, maybe even frightened him when she said her spell – ”

  “And down he fell dead!” the crowner said, triumphant. “That’s what I’m saying. It was her doing and that’s the end of it.”

  “What was the spell she said?” Frevisse interjected. “Has anyone asked her that?”

  Master Montfort shot her an angry look; determined to assert himself, he swung back on Margery. “That was my next question, woman. What did you actually say to him? No, don’t look at anyone while you say it! And say it slow so my clerk can write it down.”

  Eyes turned to the floor, voice trembling a little, Margery began to recite, “Come you forth and get you gone . . .”

  If Master Montfort was expecting a roaring spell that named devils and summoned demons, he was disappointed. The clerk scratched away busily as Margery went through a short verse that was nevertheless quite apparently meant to call the spirit out of the body and cast it away. Part way through, Dame Claire looked startled.

  In the pause after Margery finished speaking, the clerk’s pen scritched on. Master Montfort, ever impatient, went to hover at his shoulder and, as soon as he had done,
snatched the parchment away. While he read it over, Frevisse leaned toward Dame Claire, who whispered briefly but urgently in her ear. Before Frevisse could respond, Master Montfort demanded at Margery, “That’s it? Just that?” Margery nodded. Master Montfort glared at his clerk and recited loudly, “Come you forth . . .”

  The man’s head jerked up to stare with near-sighted alarm at his master. The crowner went on through the spell unheeding either his clerk’s dismay or Master Naylor’s movement of protest. Margery opened her mouth to say something, but Frevisse silenced her with a shake of her head, while Dame Claire pressed a hand over her own mouth to keep quiet.

  When Master Montfort had finished, a tense waiting held them all still, most especially the clerk. When nothing happened after an impatient minute, Master Montfort rounded on Margery. “How long is this supposed to take?”

  Margery fumbled under his glare. “My husband – he – almost on the instant, sir. But – ”

  “Spare me your excuses. If it worked for you, why didn’t it work for me? Because I didn’t have clippings of his hair or what?”

  Keeping her voice very neutral, Frevisse suggested, “According to Robert Mannying in his Handling Sin, a spell has no power if said by someone who doesn’t believe in it. Margery uses herbs and spells to help the villagers. She believes in what she does. You don’t. Do you believe in your charm, Margery? This one that you said at your husband?”

  “Yes, but – ”

  “She’s a witch,” Master Montfort interrupted. “And whatever good you claim she’s done, she’s used a spell to kill a man this time, and her husband at that. Who knows what else she’s tried.” He rounded on Margery again and said in her face, “There’s a question for you, woman. Have you ever used this spell before?”

  Margery shrank away from him but answered, “Surely. Often and often. But – ”

  “God’s blood!” Master Montfort exclaimed. “You admit you’ve murdered other men?”

  “Margery!” Frevisse interposed, “What is the spell for?”