A Head for Poisoning (12 page)

“You would not do that,” whispered Ingram aghast. “You would not spread lies about me!”

“Lies, no,” said Geoffrey. “But who is lying?”

“You never said anything to me about this,” said Helbye with a frown. “He was supposed to be your arms-bearer both times.”

As it happened, Geoffrey had not mentioned Ingram's timely absences to anyone. Both occasions had been brutal and terrifying, and Geoffrey had not blamed the young soldier for declining to follow him into the thick of it. Indeed, since the lad had been so clearly petrified, Geoffrey had much rather Ingram had run away and hidden, rather than force Geoffrey into a position where he would have been fighting to protect both of them.

“It seems that there are a number of things we have not told each other,” said Geoffrey, thinking about the gossip regarding Enide. Helbye looked away guilty.

“The track divides yet again,” said Barlow, keen to change the subject. His own role in the two battles had not been exactly glorious either—to keep his promise to the lad's father, Helbye had given him duties guarding the baggage train. “Left or right?”

“Right,” said Helbye, after a moment of consideration.

“Left it is, then,” said Geoffrey, throwing him a grin of devilment, before making his way down the dark path. It was almost pitch-black, and the thick clouds allowed no light from the moon to penetrate. Geoffrey's hand went to his sword when the wind blew in the trees, making the wood groan and creak, and Barlow and Ingram were growing nervous.

“The soldiers at Chepstow said that outlaws live around here,” said Barlow, casting a fearful glance behind him. “They come out at night and murder travellers.”

“Especially ones carrying treasure, like us,” said Ingram forcefully.

“Perhaps you might care to say that a little louder, Ingram,” said Geoffrey. “The robbers at the far end of the woods might not have caught everything you said.”

Barlow's laughter turned into a shriek of horror as something brushed past his face with a screech of its own. Geoffrey spun round, his sword already drawn, but then relaxed when he saw an owl flit away through the darkness.

“We are nearly there,” he said, sheathing his weapon. “I recognise this path. Over to the left is the woodsman's cottage, and that path there leads back to Penncreic. And there,” he announced with relief, seeing the familiar square shadow of the church looming in the darkness, “is Goodrich. Those lights seem to be coming from your house, Will.”

“So they are,” said Helbye apprehensively, peering through the gloom at the huddle of houses on the opposite hill. “It is late. I wonder what she can be thinking of.”

“She must be preparing you dinner,” said Barlow. “And speaking of food, I am starving! Come on, Ingram! I will race you! I wager I can get there faster on foot than you can ride.”

They were off, both weaving through the trees at a speed far from safe, leaving Geoffrey and Helbye behind them. Neither knight nor sergeant made a move.

“Nervous?” asked Geoffrey, smiling at the tense old warrior beside him.

“No,” said Helbye with a false laugh. “She will be pleased to see me. Are you?”

“A little,” admitted Geoffrey. “I have not even arrived, and I have already been told there are rumours that my favourite sister has been decapitated by Caerdig of Lann Martin; that my manor has been given away as part of Joan's dowry; and that one of my siblings is trying to poison my father, who is so alarmed that he wrote to the King about it.”

“Then maybe it is a good thing that you did not leave it any longer,” said Helbye practically. “But take no notice of Ingram. He is bitter for one so young, and he has a spiteful nature.”

“You think there is no truth in his story, then?”

Helbye shook his head. “When Ingram told me about the gossip he had heard, I paid a visit to the source of it myself. Ingram only had half the story. Lady Enide, it seems, was indeed slain near the church on a Sunday after mass. Needless to say, a hunt for her killer was mounted. Your brother Henry came across two poachers in the forest, they confessed, and he hanged them there and then for her murder. The claim that poor Caerdig killed her was only speculation, based on a notion put about by your brother Stephen that the poachers may have been hired by Caerdig because your father declined to have him as a son-in-law.”

“Did anyone other than Henry hear the confessions of these poachers?” asked Geoffrey.

Helbye shrugged. “I do not know. But apparently there were some questions about the business for several weeks after. Caerdig was clearly a suspect, but there were stories that others might have played a role.”

“Others such as whom?” asked Geoffrey, when Helbye paused.

“Someone at Goodrich Castle,” said Helbye reluctantly. “A member of the family, perhaps. Or a servant. But no one really knows, and the trail must be long since cold.”

“So, I am about to enter a household, one member of which may have decapitated my sister? God's teeth, Will, I would not have made this journey had I known all this!”

Thoughts tumbling, Geoffrey followed Helbye down the hill, across the small brook that bubbled along the valley bottom, and up the slope on the other side. The castle in which Geoffrey's family lived stood on the crest of the hill overlooking a great sweep of the River Wye, while the church and the small houses of the village were clustered around the outer ward to the north and west—not so close that they could be set alight and present a danger to the wooden palisade surrounding the castle, but close enough so that villagers and their livestock could flee for safety inside it should they come under attack.

Ingram and Barlow waited for them outside Helbye's house with a scruffy boy they had accosted when he had left to fetch more ale. Lights blazed from within, and the sounds of revelling could be heard from one end of the village to the other. Barlow shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and would not look at Helbye, while Ingram's thin face wore a vindictive smile.

“It is your wife's wedding day,” he said to Helbye with relish.

“She thought you were not going to return,” said the boy. He glanced fearfully at Geoffrey, an imposing figure in his chain-mail and Crusader's surcoat, before fixing his attention on the astonished Helbye. “We knew Ingram, Barlow, and Sir Geoffrey were coming, but no one mentioned you.”

“But I sent word,” protested Helbye, appalled. “I did not trust a letter—who knows who might have read it on the way—but I sent word with Eudo of Rosse.”

“Eudo never returned either,” said the boy. “He died of a fever on his way home.”

“One up for literacy,” murmured Geoffrey.

“He died in France, at a place called Venice,” continued the boy, eager to please. “I learned about Venice from our priest.” He looked up at Geoffrey for approbation, proud to display his painstakingly acquired knowledge of foreign geography.

“But then again, perhaps not,” said Geoffrey dryly.

Their voices had been heard by the revellers within. A screech of delight from Barlow's mother brought others running, and soon the entire village was out, clustering around the two young soldiers, and admiring their proudly displayed treasures. Barlow's mother impatiently shoved aside a proffered chalice, and hugged her son hard and long as tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Ingram's father, however, gave his son a perfunctory nod and immediately turned his attention to the contents of the travel bags.

Helbye's wife regarded her husband with disbelief that turned slowly to joy. She turned the sergeant this way and that, and fussed over him like an old hen. Geoffrey watched the reunions from the shadows, wondering what was in store for him in the black mass of the castle that crouched on the hill. He was certain it would not be the unrestrained delight that his men's kinsfolk expressed.

“She says she will now need to dissolve the marriage she has just made,” called Helbye to Geoffrey, gesturing to where his wife spoke urgently with a forlorn figure standing apart from the celebrations, his face masked by shadow. “Will you help us?”

Geoffrey was startled. “I cannot dissolve marriages, Will,” he said. “I am neither a lawyer nor a priest.”

“But you can read,” said Helbye, as though this would solve everything. “You can help us, and make sure we are not cheated.”

“I cannot see that you will have a problem,” said Geoffrey. “Especially if her second marriage has not been consummated.”

Helbye blushed a deep red. “I cannot ask her that!” he whispered, aghast, loud enough to cause some amusement when several villagers overheard. “She is a woman! You do not ask such questions of women!”

“She is also your wife,” said Geoffrey, laughing despite himself. “But we can do nothing about it tonight. Come to the castle tomorrow, and we will see what needs to be done.”

With his horse ambling behind him, and the black-and-white dog at his heels, Geoffrey left them, and walked the last few steps to the gloomy portals of the castle. The squat gate and the black waters of the stinking moat reminded him of the day he had left. It had been early on a winter morning, so early that it was not yet light. Only Enide had ventured out to see him leave, although Joan had waved to him from a window in the hall.

Of course, his home-coming would have been very different had Enide been there to welcome him. He tried to imagine what she had looked like as a woman, although he always pictured her as the child of eleven waving him a tearful farewell from the very gate at which he now stood. He pulled himself together, impatient with his sudden, uncharacteristic flight into fancy and reminiscence. He strode over the drawbridge—someone had forgotten to raise it for the night—and knocked on the gate. There was no reply. He rapped again, using the pommel of his dagger, hearing the sound echo around the silent courtyard.

“Go away!” came a belligerent voice from within. “We have already sent a tun of ale for Mistress Helbye's wedding, and you are not getting any more!”

“I am Geoffrey Mappestone,” Geoffrey called. “I have come to pay my respects to my father.”

“Who?” came the voice after a moment. “There is no Geoffrey Mappestone here.”

Geoffrey considered begging a bed with Helbye for the night, and returning the next day when his re-entry into his family home might not be so ignominious.

“Please inform Godric Mappestone that I wish to speak to him,” he said, leaning down to haul his dog away from where it was devouring something unspeakable discovered at the edge of the moat.

“He is asleep,” came the voice. “As are all honest men. Now go away, or you will find your chest decorated with the shaft of this arrow. And do not come back!”

G
eoffrey was tired, wet, cold, and hungry as he stood pondering the great barred gate of Goodrich Castle. He had travelled hundreds of miles for several weeks to do his filial duty to a man he had neither liked nor respected, and over the past two days he had been ambushed, subjected to an uncomfortable conversation with the King, had his most prized possessions scattered through the bushes, and forced to walk because his saddle had been slashed. Suddenly, his temper snapped.

“Enough of this!” he yelled. “Either let me in to speak to my father, or I will force an entry myself. And if you choose to direct an arrow my way, I can promise you that you will be sorry!”

A grille in the wicket door slid open, and Geoffrey was assessed by a glistening eye. After a hurried exchange of whispers and a series of grunts and bumps, the bar was removed and the gate was opened. Geoffrey was far from impressed: he had expected to be questioned, and he accepted the fact that the guards would not know him and would seek some verification as to his identity. But, despite his blustering threat, he certainly had not imagined that they would be so easily browbeaten into opening the gates in the dark to what amounted to a complete stranger.

“Come in if you are coming,” mumbled the guard irritably, holding a torch aloft so that Geoffrey would not step in the deep puddle that lay under the gate. “I have sent young Julian to tell Sir Olivier d'Alençon that he has visitors.”

“Sir Olivier?” asked Geoffrey, watching the guard secure the door again. “Who is he?”

“But you said you wanted to speak to him!” said the guard in an accusatory voice, almost dropping the torch in his agitation.

“I said no such thing,” said Geoffrey. “I do not know this Sir Olivier.”

“I supposed you to be one of his cronies, come to leech off us again,” said the guard. He took a step towards Geoffrey, fingering the hilt of his sword with one hand, and thrusting the torch towards him in the other. Geoffrey was a tall, strong man, and looked larger still in his heavy chain-mail and surcoat. He also carried a broadsword and at least two daggers that the guard could see. Prudently, the man stepped backwards again.