Heaven's Fire (34 page)

“He killed Pyt’s brother!” someone cried out. “He deserves to die!”

“Bloodthirsty, murderin’ bastard!” another voice screamed. “Shit-eating spawn of a whoring priest!”

“I’ve never eaten shit,” Victor informed this man, who blinked at this news.

Pyt yanked on the rope, almost jerking Victor out of the grip of the men holding him. “Last night this whoreson jumped my brother and slit his throat in cold blood.”

Corliss stepped forward. “Nay!” Rainulf seized her arm and yanked her back, hard. She looked at him. He met her gaze for only the briefest moment, his eyes flashing a sharp warning. She understood the warning perfectly: This crowd was primed for a hanging; it could be hers as easily as Victor’s. She didn’t want to hang, but nor did she want to see Victor take the blame for something he didn’t do. If anyone was responsible for Burnell’s death, it was she, although she doubted these men would care that it was in self-defense.

Rainulf folded his arms and addressed Burnell’s brother in calm, authoritative tones. “What makes you think Victor was responsible for this?”

Before Pyt could answer, Victor made a raspy, pained sound that Corliss realized was laughter of sorts. “Now, honestly, Magister. Can you think of a more likely candidate?”

The red-faced brute punched Victor in the stomach, then brought forth a dagger, which he handed to Rainulf. Corliss moved closer to inspect it as the magister turned it over in his hands. Carved into the bone hilt was the initial
V
.

“We found this on St. John Street, at the end of a trail of blood,” said Pyt. “Everyone knows it’s Victor’s. He’s waved it around often enough—usually at Burnell.”

“Did anyone bother to question Victor?” Rainulf inquired. “What does
he
say?”

That was smart, thought Corliss. Get the accused’s story before he starts speculating—offering alternatives.

The brute grunted dismissively. “He didn’t have much to say. Claims he didn’t do it, but wouldn’t say who did. Don’t take one of you” —he sneered— “
fine gentlemen of learning
to figure out he’s lying.”

“Oh, God,” Corliss moaned. Victor was protecting her! He could have named her, but instead he’d taken this savage beating and let them drape a noose around his neck. She couldn’t let him do this! She had to stop this! Victor must have sensed her panicky determination; he caught her eye and shook his head fractionally.

“Hang the bastard!” someone yelled, and others quickly took up the chant: “Hang him! Hang him! Hang him!”

As they started dragging Victor away, the audience of scholars began gathering rocks and sticks, and closing in; some had daggers, and one even produced a sword from beneath his cappa. “Wait!” Rainulf ordered them, and they paused. He grabbed Pyt by the arm and swung him around. “You’ve no right to hang him without a trial.”

Pyt drew himself up and seized Rainulf by the front of his tunic, screaming, “He had no right to do what he done to my brother!” He pointed to the corpse. “Look at him!”

Corliss did look at him. Burnell’s filmy eyes were half-open; his flesh, drained of life, was a sickly non-color. His coarse tunic was stiff with dried blood; the braies that encased his legs were spattered with it.

Blinking, she focused harder. The braies... She gasped. The braies!

She plucked at Rainulf’s sleeve.

“Not now, Corliss,” he ground out, pulling away.

“Rainulf, look at him!” she whispered, pointing to the lifeless body. “Don’t you see?”

“What are you—”

Grabbing his arm, she whispered into his ear, “His braies! Somebody pulled them up.”

Rainulf absorbed this for a moment; she saw enlightenment dawn in his eyes. “Who found the body?” he demanded.

The men looked at each other. “Marley found him... Where’s Marley?”

A rotund fellow stepped forward. “It was me,” he said with an odd mixture of sheepishness and defiance. “I was driving my cart past here at dawn, and I seen him lyin’ there, dead.”

“What did you do?” Rainulf asked. “Tell me everything you did, as you did it.”

Marley gaped. “I went and got Pyt and brung him back, so’s he could see what they done to his brother.”

“You didn’t touch the body first?” Rainulf asked.

The fat carter crossed himself as he regarded the corpse with an expression of distaste. “Nay. I kept clear of it.”

Rainulf turned toward Pyt. “Did you touch the body? Did you change anything about it?”

Corliss understood Rainulf’s strategy: If he were to announce outright that Burnell had had his braies down last night, everyone would wonder how he’d known. It might come out that he—and she—had been there when Burnell took his dagger in the throat. Rainulf had to tease the information forth as if he were just fishing for facts in general, not one fact in particular.

“I don’t see what you’re gettin’ at,” Pyt said, “and I don’t know as it’s any of your business if I did touch him.”

“Perhaps not,” Rainulf conceded, “but the sheriff might consider it his business. He wouldn’t like it if the body was disturbed before he had a chance to look it over. Now, think again.” He spoke to Pyt, but looked significantly toward Victor, who frowned in puzzlement. “Did you move anything on the body, adjust anything...?”

“His braies!” Victor exclaimed.

Rainulf expelled an audible sigh of relief; Corliss closed her eyes briefly, breathing a prayer of thanks.

“They were down around his ankles last night!” Victor said. “That’s how I saw him last, stumbling away with his pants down.”

A murmur bubbled through the crowd.

“Did you pull up his braies?” Rainulf asked Pyt.

“N-nay! I done nothin’!”

Pyt was lying, of course. Corliss could tell from Rainulf’s skeptical expression that he knew this, but rather than confronting him, he focused his stern gaze on the carter. “It must have been you, then. The sheriff won’t be pleased about this. You’ll be lucky if you get off with a flogging.”

“It wasn’t me!” the fat man wailed. “I didn’t do it! ‘Twas Pyt!”

“You squealing pig,” Pyt snarled, making a fist. “You lying son of a—”

“It’s the truth!” Marley claimed, backing away from the enraged brute. “I swear it on my mother’s soul. I saw him pull Burnell’s braies up. I saw it with my own eyes!”

“What if I did?” said Pyt, wheeling on Rainulf. “I was just trying to set him straight, trying to give the man some dignity. Where’s the harm in that?”

“The harm,” Rainulf explained, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “lies in the fact that evidence has been altered. Burnell’s having his pants down might indicate that last night’s altercation was of an entirely different nature than what you’re all assuming.”

There were mumbles of bewilderment.

“I would recommend shorter words,” Victor suggested dryly. He earned another fist in the stomach for this bit of insolence, but it looked to Corliss like a rather half-hearted punch compared to the others.

“In other words,” Rainulf continued, “if it’s true that Victor jumped Burnell and cut his throat, why did Burnell have his braies down? Is it possible that Burnell was in the middle of doing something he shouldn’t have been, and Victor just happened on the scene?”

Pyt made a show of looking affronted. “If you’re trying to say my brother was in the habit of peein’ in the street—”

“That wasn’t what I was implying,” Rainulf said.

Pyt considered this for a moment, then managed a look of almost believable outrage. “Burnell was a married man!”

Snickering broke out in the crowd; men cleared their throats. The scholars were less discreet, hooting and offering loud and ribald observations on the character of the deceased. So much for Burnell having been “a married man.”

“Your brother,” Rainulf told Pyt, “had a reputation for viciousness. My guess is that he was trying to force himself on some unwilling woman—and that it wouldn’t have been the first time.”

Several of the men exchanged glances—glances that spoke volumes. Rainulf saw this and nodded slowly. “Nay... ‘twouldn’t have been the first time. Probably some of your own wives and sisters and daughters have fallen prey to Burnell, and not even told you.”

Pyt looked furious. “Now, wait a minute—”

“Shut up, Pyt!” someone said. “Let the man talk.”

“Here’s a hypothesis,” Rainulf said. The crowd muttered in confusion. “An idea,” he said, “a possible explanation of what happened last night. Burnell attacked a woman. She defended herself. He ended up with his own dagger in his throat.” A current of murmurs swept through the crowd. “Victor came upon the scene as Burnell was running away. He let the attacker go in order to aid the victim, who begged him not to speak of what had happened.”

Victor chuckled. He looked impressed. “Excellent hypothesis, Magister.”

One of the men holding Victor asked him, “Is that what happened? Take us to this woman. Prove it!”

“The idea,” Victor explained slowly, “is that I can’t take you to her without violating her confidence. Which I’m far too much of a gentleman to do.” He grinned. “Have I got it right, Master Fairfax?”

Rainulf, clearly unamused, said, “That’s one possible scenario. And it seems a much more likely one—given the braies around Burnell’s ankles—than Victor’s having committed coldblooded murder. The truth is, you don’t know what happened. I say let Victor go, and let the sheriff do his job.”

He reached for the rope, but Pyt held it out of his reach. “Nay! You talk real smooth, Magister, and maybe you can dupe some of these sorry curs, but you can’t dupe me. I’m on to you. You’ll say anything to protect one of your little pets.”

Victor laughed. “Is that what I am now, Magister? How touching.”

Pyt backhanded Victor across the face and began dragging him by the rope. “No more talk! It’s time for a hanging.”

Rainulf stepped forward as several men closed in on Pyt, knocking him aside and whipping the noose from around Victor’s neck.

“Give it up, Pyt,” one of them said.

“Fairfax is right,” said another as he shoved Victor toward Rainulf, who grabbed him and held him up. “We don’t know what happened. We could be hanging an innocent man.”

“
Innocent?
” Pyt screamed as his friends led him away to the raucous cheering of the scholars. “Victor of Aeskirche was
born
guilty!”

“Good point,” muttered Victor as he fainted dead away.

“I thought about you all through tonight’s
disputatio
,” Rainulf said, tossing a coin to a scholar with his cap out at the corner of Grope and St. John. Lowering his voice, he added, “About what I want to do to you when we get home.”

Heat suffused Corliss. She smiled. “I thought you seemed a little distracted.”

“Distracted?” He chuckled. “I was hard as a rock beneath my cappa the whole time. We definitely aren’t having enough sex.”

Corliss laughed, knowing this for the jest it was. Since the night before last, when they’d first shared a bed, they’d tupped like a pair of rabbits. Not a private moment went by that they didn’t seize the opportunity, coupling with the fatalistic intensity of lovers who know they have but a limited time together.

When they weren’t making love, they were doing what they could to ease the rapidly growing friction between the scholars and the townspeople. Victor’s beating and near hanging had incensed his fellow students, even those moderates who had formerly eschewed his militant ways. They were up in arms now, vowing revenge. Several shops on High Street and Brewers Lane had been vandalized, and a handful of locals—including Burnell’s brother, Pyt—had been beaten, though not severely.

Ironically, the man who had been instrumental in stoking these tensions—Victor of Aeskirche—seemed to be the only scholar in Oxford not espousing retribution. Although he hadn’t left his rooms since his own beating, he’d issued two open letters to the academic community, pleading for tolerance and conciliation. He argued that the matter had gone too far, endangering innocent people—Corliss knew he meant her, not him—and publicly apologized for his part in bringing these troubles about.

Corliss used her influence with Victor’s followers to try to persuade them to back off, but with limited success. Meanwhile, Rainulf played the role of mediator, meeting with groups on both sides to argue the points of the opposing faction, since no one would agree to convene face-to-face.

Throughout all of this, Corliss was never without an escort, usually Rainulf. As he reminded her regularly, Pigot was still presumably looking for her; she mustn’t be alone for a moment. In truth, she didn’t mind the protection, since it meant she had Rainulf’s company on a nearly constant basis. Every moment she was with him, she felt an intoxicating buzz of sensual awareness. The way he looked at her, all hunger and heat... his whispered words of love and yearning... his stolen caresses in dark corners... These things conspired to keep her ever in a state of breathless wanting. God, how she wanted him.

“It’s late,” Rainulf said. Then he added suggestively, “Luella will be gone when we get home.”