The King's Riddle

by Maureen Ash

  “And that is the argument that was heard between them by the villagers,” Estrid interjected, “and wrongly attributed to a rivalry between them for Alfreda’s hand in marriage.”

  Humbert nodded and went on. “After that, matters escalated. Evrecy wanted revenge and persuaded Abetot to help him extract it by promising him as a reward, apparently with the consent of his sire, the hand of the sister whom fitzRanulf had refused.

  “Such a prize would be a powerful incentive for a landless knight,” Humbert added on his own behalf, “for fitzHaimo says she has the inheritance of a small property in Normandy that will come to her husband on the day they are wed.”

  “A lure he deemed worth killing for,” Estrid remarked.

  “Just so,” Humbert replied.

  “And that is why Abetot must have encouraged fitzRanulf to believe that the fining of the villagers would be the only way to discover who killed her,” Leofwine added, remembering the day he was at Ashford and fitzHaimo had taken the bereaved bridegroom to task for demanding the murdrum penalty be imposed, and Abetot’s tacit support that it should be done. “Once the fine was levied, it would have been the end of your investigation, Estrid, which was what he and Evrecy wanted.”

  “But why did this Norman want to kill Alfreda, and not fitzRanulf?” Judith asked in puzzlement. “Surely he was the one who was believed to be guilty of betrayal, not her.”

  “Most likely because it would have been a much more perilous undertaking to kill one of the king’s knights,” Humbert opined, and Estrid echoed her agreement.

  “Rufus would have left no stone unturned to find the culprit and, since Evrecy had already made known his enmity towards fitzRanulf, would have been immediately suspected. Far safer for Evrecy to take vengeance on fitzRanulf by killing his wife, who was merely an Englishwoman of little importance,” she added, “but would have the malicious effect of leaving him bereft of the woman he loved so well.”

  Judith shivered and said no more as Humbert went on with recapitulating the message. “At the end fitzHaimo has added a note that the spy heard it said by one of the guilty pair that ‘the deed was clumsily done’ for which he can offer no explanation, and has also written that he has not told fitzRanulf of Abetot’s betrayal lest he attack him before his, and Evrecy’s, guilt can be proved. FitzHaimo then relates that Evrecy’s prospects have recently become brighter. It would seem that his older brother died a short time ago and so he will now be designated his father’s inheritor, and that is why, as the informant overheard, it is his and Abetot’s intention to go back to Normandy in four days’ time. They spoke of a fishing boat that has been hired for the journey and, after they arrive in Normandy, Evrecy will join his father in his elevated status, and Abetot will marry the sister.”

  “And, since the king cannot bring a charge of murder against either of them without conclusive evidence,” Estrid said, “we have only that small amount of time to determine the name of the village woman who poisoned Alfreda and make an attempt to force her into admitting that Abetot was her paymaster. If we do not, both men will leave England’s shores without suffering any penalty for their heinous crime.”

  “A daunting responsibility,” Humbert declared and the rest of the company solemnly voiced their agreement.

  CHAPTER 29

  Now the need for haste had arisen, it was imperative they quickly discover which of the people on Redwald’s list did not have the bottle they purchased. In the light of the additional information they had just been given, most of the customers could be discounted, for it had to be someone who had possessed, in the weeks before Alfreda was killed, an opportunity to collude with Abetot. There were not many who fulfilled that requirement. First of all they considered the three mothers who had bought one of the vessels and whose offspring were under a degree of suspicion.

  “Sweyn can exempted. It is unlikely he ever met Abetot, let alone colluded with him to arrange the poisoning,” Estrid declared.

  “It might have been Rowena,” Judith offered, “or even Nelda, for she must have been often at the house where her friend lived, and could have stolen the bottle Rowena’s mother had bought.”

  “Or Maud,” Estrid suggested with some reluctance, for she knew her young apprentice was slightly prejudiced in favour of the innocence of Kendra’s daughter.

  “But she was very fond of Alfreda,” Judith objected. “Surely she would not have wanted her dead.”

  Estrid shook her head. “We cannot be certain she is not feigning the deep friendship she claimed to have with her,” she said, “and so cannot be deemed innocent until we have proof she was not involved.”

  She rose and paced, speaking as she did so. “The usual reward for a hired killer is money, but none of these young women have need of it. Rowena, Nelda and Maud are all the only children of prosperous parents, who do not stint their daughters in any way.”

  “Perhaps it was due to jealousy,” Humbert suggested.

  “It might be so,” Estrid agreed, “of her beauty possibly, or her good fortune in securing a man of high status for a husband.”

  She paused in her pacing, but only for a moment, and then spoke again. “All of these three would have met Abetot often,” she said. “We were told by Valerie that he was usually with fitzRanulf when he came to the village to see Alfreda and each one of them would most likely have been in her company on some of those occasions, so he would have had ample chance to speak privily to any of them.”

  With an exasperated sigh, she went on. “But to prove which is the guilty one—and we must remember that it might not be any of them—will take time even if we discover that one of their mothers no longer has the bottle they purchased from Redwald. To do it in four days may prove impossible.”

  “If it is God’s will that it be so,” Humbert said, “then, maitresse, you must accept it.”

  “Estrid finds the acceptance of anyone’s restriction, even God’s, difficult, brother,” Leofwine said with a rueful grin. “Perhaps a prayer from you might find favour with heaven in granting her either help, or meekness.”

  But no such prayer would be necessary for, at that moment, the wheels of a wain were heard outside and, within a few seconds, a knock was heard at the door.

  It was Merwenna.

  *************

  The cunning woman apologised to Tilde and Godser for intruding on their household just as the evening meal was about to be served, but due to her being unable to walk the distance to Bearsted with her crippled leg, she had been forced to ask the help of a neighbour with a cart and it so happened that the only time he was able to accommodate her was at this hour.

  “He is a hurdle-maker and is delivering some of his wares to a farmer who lives not far from here,” she explained, “and has offered to pick me up and take me home on his way back, otherwise I would not have come so early.”

  “There is no need to apologise, Merwenna,” Tilde told her. “Is it Frea Estrid you have come to see?”

  “It is,” she said and turned to Estrid. “I wish to tell you about a death that happened many years ago which may, or may not, be connected to your enquiry. If it is not, then I will have wasted your time and ask your pardon.”

  At Tilde’s offer of a seat and a cup of ale, Merwenna took a place at the table and, laying her walking stick alongside her, began her tale of the long ago incident.

  “It was fifteen years ago that it took place—you remember Tilde, the year that because of the summer storms and downpour of heavy rains, the grain had become mouldy even before we harvested it?”

  “I will never forget that time,” Tilde replied. “All of us were hungry for lack of bread, especially the poorer folk in the village. And there were many other villages in Kent that suffered in just the same way.”

  “And, due to the lack of grain, many of the villagers were collecting anything they could find, including plants that were harmful, to make wod bread. I tried to warn them all not to eat such things, and so did Father Gerald, the prie
st at St. Mary’s at that time, but when you are hungry, you become desperate, and they paid no attention.

  “As you will know, Estrid Thunorsdohter,” she added, “wod bread makes the wits of any who eat it very muddled; some vomit, others see visions, some tremble violently and others are unsteady on their legs. As a consequence, there were many that needed my tending. I had nothing to alleviate the sickness they had brought on themselves, but many had injuries—cuts and grazes from falling down while under the influence of the plants in the bread, and even a broken bone or two—and these I could help with.”

  She paused for a moment. All of those present, except Judith, who was too young to remember, had lived through that time and recalled it well. “But, even though there were many that were afflicted, there were only three deaths. Two were a couple of very young children whose mothers, through lack of food, failed to produce enough milk for their babbies to suckle and died from lack of nourishment, but there was also one other. And it is about that one I would tell you.”

  She took a sip of ale before she went on and her face was full of sadness. “I hope that my doing so will not point the finger of accusation at a person who is not involved in this murder, but my conscience will weigh on me if I do not speak out and such should not be the case.”

  Estrid and the others listened with all their attention as the cunning woman went on. “The death of which I am speaking came just before the season of Christ’s Mass at a time when the dearth of food had been with us for some months. The victim was an older man, a widower, who went to his pallet one night and was found by his daughter to be dead in the morning. I was called to see if I could give him any assistance, but it was too late. There were no marks of any injuries on him nor, except for a blueness about his lips, any other sign of an ailment that might have killed him. I asked his daughter if he had eaten any wod bread, and she told me that she had not made any as she still had enough old dried peas in their store to pound into a paste to make griddle cakes, but that her father had been out of the home all of the day before, and she could not be certain he had not eaten some elsewhere.

  “Lacking any other obvious reason for his death than being due to eating the tainted bread,” she continued, “I did nothing further, except to speak to the neighbour who had come, on behalf of the dead man’s daughter, to ask for my help. He told me he had called on the victim in his home the evening before—to ask for the borrow of a hammer—and he had seemed as healthy as usual and, as was his habit, drinking ale. The neighbour didn’t stay long, he said, for his visit was cut short when the basket maker’s breathing suddenly became raspy as though he could not draw any breath into his chest, and his daughter said he was overblown with ale and she had best put him to bed. And so the neighbour left, thinking afterwards that it must have been while he was there that the dead man had started to be overcome by the sickness that killed him. And, at the time, so did I, even though I thought the death rather sudden from such a cause, but I was so busy with other people that needed my help that I gave it no more thought, and did not again until many years later when I saw a child die from yew poisoning.”

  “This child’s death is the one you mentioned after you had witnessed Alfreda’s, is it not?” Estrid asked. “The one you said had similar symptoms to her just before she collapsed?”

  “Yes, it is,” Merwenna confirmed. “And the manner of the man’s death fifteen years ago was also the same as both of them—the difficulty breathing of which the neighbour told me and the blue lips which I saw on the man’s corpse myself, along with the suddenness of his passing—all of these afflictions are so alike to those of both the child and Alfreda, that I am almost certain he was also poisoned by yew.”

  “So you are claiming you now believe he could have been murdered?” Estrid asked.

  “It seems likely,” Merwenna replied. “And since yew is well known by all to be poisonous and would never have been collected to make wod bread, the only manner in which this man could have eaten—or drunk a mixture containing it—is for it to have been given to him on purpose.”

  Her pronouncement was startling, and it took a moment for all of those listening to the tale to take it in, unwilling to believe that, so many years ago, a man from the village had been murdered in just the same fashion as Alfreda.

  “Who was this man, Merwenna?” Estrid finally asked.

  With reluctance, the cunning woman told them. “He was the basket-maker who was the father of Edith, the woman who is now married to Harold Siwardson.”

  CHAPTER 30

  “Are you saying you believe it was Edith who poisoned her father?” Estrid asked in shocked tones.

  “I have no proof,” Merwenna admitted, “but I think she did it all the same. She could easily have put the poison in the ale he was so fond of drinking and hoped his death would be thought to have been caused by wod bread, which it was.”

  “But she must have been just a young girl at that time,” Estrid exclaimed. “Surely too young to commit such an evil act. Are you certain you are not mistaken, and that it was not someone in the village who wished him dead that fed him the poison while he was away from home that day?”

  “I do not think so,” the cunning woman replied. “The basket-maker might have been feckless, but he was well-liked.”

  She looked up at them sadly. “It was no secret that, after her mother died, Edith and her father were always arguing about his spending the few pennies he earned from selling his baskets on ale, leaving her to find food for herself and her baby brother in any way she could. She was often seen down on the river bank, her brother tied to a tree so he would not wander, trying to catch a few little fish in one of the wicker baskets her father had made so there would be something for them to eat.

  “The week before he died, Edith and her father had another argument over there not being enough silver to buy food, but this time it was louder than usual and when Edith’s little brother started crying in alarm because of their yelling, his father shook him to make him quiet. All of the neighbours heard Edith’s scream of rage when he did so and right afterwards she was seen, young as she was, chasing her father out of the house brandishing one of the knives he used to cut osiers. Later that day he told one of his cronies that his daughter had turned into a vixen, and he might find it necessary to take a switch to her back to teach her how to behave. All was quiet between them for a time after that until…until the night he died.”

  Merwenna then said quietly. “As I said, she could easily have slipped the poison into the ale the neighbour saw him drinking earlier that evening. That would explain her father’s difficulty in breathing, the blueness around his lips, and the speed with which he died. All are signs of yew poisoning.” She crossed herself and then said. “I hope I am wrong—and that God will forgive me if I am—but with Alfreda dying in exactly the same way, I felt I could not hold my tongue any longer.”

  *************

  The company fell silent, and Estrid looked at the faces around her, the dismay at what they had heard evident on every one. Humbert crossed himself and murmured a prayer, young Judith went white and Tilde sat down heavily on the bench beside Merwenna. Leofwine clenched his fist in helpless frustration and even Ugg, usually not much interested in the investigation except for being assiduous in his duty of guarding the two women he had been sent to protect, shook his head in revulsion.

  Finally Estrid rose from her seat and began to pace. “I think we all agree with you, Merwenna, that Edith must be the one responsible for Alfreda’s death, but her reason for doing so is unclear. Even if ….

  “But she still has the bottle she bought from Redwald,” Judith cried. “How can she have it if she used it for the poison?”

  “We did not inspect it for the flaw to ensure it is from the batch the potter made this year,” Estrid reminded her. “If the one Harold has is another one she bought previously, then that must be the answer.”

  Her reasoning made sense to all of them and she continued with
what she had been saying concerning motive. “Even if Estrid hated her husband’s sister, or was envious of her, to kill her is a drastic act to take for such a reason. So why did she do it? She has no need for money—she is married to a prosperous man who provides her with an ample roof over her head and plenty of food for herself and her two sons. What else could she require?”

  “There is still one piece of information I have not given you,” Merwenna said in response. “She may not need money for herself, but she does for another.”

  “Who?” Estrid demanded and, almost at the same time, Tilde whispered in a low tone, “Her brother, Beorn.”

  Estrid remembered Tilde’s mention, on the day of Alfreda’s funeral, of the much younger brother whom Edith had reared all by herself after her father died but, beyond that, she did not understand his significance in the matter of her poisoning her sister-by-marriage.

  Seeing her confusion, Merwenna and Tilde between them explained his relevance. “Beorn is a man grown now, and wanting to marry one of the girls in the village, the youngest daughter of a farmer,” the cunning woman said, “but her father is demanding that he pay a handgeld of forty shillings, which Beorn does not have.”

  “And not likely to save it up any time soon,” Tilde added, “for although he is not an ale-sot like his father, he is just as shiftless.”

  “That is true,” Merwenna confirmed. “He is mulish and lazy, but Edith loves him dearly and dotes on him just as much, I think, as she does her two sons, treating him in the same fashion as them, almost as though were her first-born child and not her brother. She would, I am certain, do anything to help him gain whatever he desires.”