Janna Mysteries 1 & 2 Bindup (12 page)

‘Did my mother take any food or drink before she saw Dame Alice? Could she and the apothecary perhaps have taken some refreshment together?’

‘I doubt it!’ Cecily gave a brief snort of laughter at the idea. ‘There was no love lost between them right from the very beginning. He never wanted your mother to come, it was only that ma dame insisted on it.’ She looked up at Janna, suspicion in her eyes. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’

Janna bit her lip. She was being too blunt. ‘Forgive me. I believe my mother’s death was an accident, and I’m trying to find out how it happened. Did she swallow any of the decoctions she prepared for Dame Alice?’

‘No.’

‘So they could not have caused her death?’

‘No.’

‘Yet Dame Alice took them – and they helped to stop the bleeding and gave her strength?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Utterly serious now, Cecily faced Janna. ‘We’d heard of your mother’s knowledge and skill in the matter of carrying and birthing babes from one of the kitchen maids. That was why …’ She stopped abruptly, pink washing over her pale face.

‘That was why …?’ Janna prompted, curious to understand why Cecily looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable.

‘Why … why Dame Alice sent Master Fulk to fetch your mother.’ Cecily had hold of her girdle and, with restless fingers, was busily shredding the delicate fibres. Janna wondered at her apparent distress. Before she could question her, Cecily hurried on. ‘It was my lord Robert who asked Master Fulk to attend ma dame. She soon saw that he had even less knowledge than the midwife when it came to … to … and the kitchen maid had said that … that …’

‘I’m glad my mother was able to help Dame Alice,’ Janna intervened, taking pity on Cecily’s reluctance to speak of womanly matters. ‘Did she say anything else before she died? Did she give any clue as to what ailed her?’

Cecily hesitated. ‘I wondered if her wits had gone wandering. She said there were ants in the bedchamber, but there never were!’ Indignation sharpened Cecily’s tone. It seemed she took the accusation personally. ‘“Ants,” she said. “Ants.” Her words were quite clear.’

Eadgyth’s intention was clear to Janna too. Her mother had told her that symptoms of monkshood poisoning included feeling cold, and also the unpleasant sensation that ants were crawling over your skin. To be sure, she questioned Cecily again.

‘You said my mother called for a monk?’

Cecily nodded vigorously. ‘That is true. I offered to send for the priest but she shook her head most violently. “Monk,” she said. Even though she could hardly talk by then, she was most insistent about it.’

‘Are you sure she said monk, not monkshood?’

‘You mean the plant with the pretty blue flowers?’ Cecily frowned, puzzled. As understanding came, she clasped her fist to her breast in shock. ‘But … but it’s very poisonous!’ she stammered.

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ Janna was torn between wanting to clear Eadgyth’s reputation and keeping her suspicions a secret until she could prove them. ‘It was just a silly thought I had. Don’t worry about it,’ she said quickly.

‘Your name was on your mother’s lips as she died.’ Cecily seemed anxious to switch to a safer topic. ‘Johanna.’ Her voice softened in sympathy. ‘I am sorry you came too late to speak to her.’

‘She called me Johanna?’ She was only ‘Johanna’ when she was in trouble. It seemed Eadgyth had taken the anger of their argument to her death. The thought pierced Janna’s heart.

‘Actually, I thought Eadgyth was calling for “John”, but when I questioned who he was, one of the tiring women told me your name. Your real name.’

‘Johanna.’ Janna felt sick with misery, sick that her mother had died without forgiving her their quarrel.

‘I thank you for your time, for answering my questions.’ Janna turned away, too dispirited to ask any more. A couple of small, grubby children were scooping mud from a puddle in the lane and carefully fashioning it into a castle. They reminded Janna of one last question. ‘Dame Alice’s new babe. How does he?’

Cecily’s face knotted into a frown. ‘He does very poor. When she first arrived at the manor, your mother bade us wash him and rub him with salt, and then wrap him tight. The babe had been cut from his mother, but the cord was not tied and there was a great deal of blood. She took care of that, and took care also to cleanse his mouth and rub his gums with honey. As soon as she was done, the priest came in to Dame Alice to baptise the child in front of his parents. The baby is now in the care of a wet nurse, but he does not thrive. Your mother brought back with her a mixture to stimulate the child and help him suckle, but she fell ill before she could do much other than instruct the nurse as to its use.’

Cecily’s voice echoed with misery. Janna felt a flash of warmth towards the tiring woman. She seemed so kind, and so compassionate. Janna wished she could get to know her better, but although Cecily was near her own age, she was so far above her in station that friendship between them could never be possible. Sadly, Janna acknowledged how desperately she wanted, and needed, a friend right now.

‘Cecily!’ The voice captured Janna’s attention. She tried to still a sudden kick of excitement as they both turned in the direction of the sound. It was Hugh.

H
UGH WAS LOOKING
for Cecily, Janna reminded herself as she watched him lead the huge black destrier towards them, along with a brown horse on a leading rein. The gleam of appreciation in his eyes was for Cecily, not her. She bobbed a curtsy as his gaze swivelled to encompass her. ‘Johanna.’

‘Sire.’ She would have spoken her thanks for his presence at her mother’s burial, but he forestalled her.

‘I understand that grief may have unbridled your tongue, but it was rash of you to speak as you did beside your mother’s grave. I fear you have made an enemy of the priest.’

Janna flushed, shamed by his reproof, yet she was determined that he should understand her. ‘The priest is already my enemy,’ she said. ‘He made himself so when he refused to bury my mother in consecrated ground.’

‘Nevertheless, you should not jeopardise your position in the village by public displays of this sort. I understand there has been a lot of hostility directed towards your mother, which might now spill onto you.’

Janna’s face darkened in angry resentment. She had thought Hugh an ally, but it seemed she’d been wrong.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ he said quickly. ‘I agree with you that the priest acted outside his duty of care towards your mother, and I have just told him so. I’ve also warned him that I’ll be speaking to the abbess about it. She holds the barony from the king and has the bishop’s ear. You must let them deal with the priest together. You should more properly show concern for your own position in the village now that you no longer have your mother to protect you.’

‘I am of an age to protect myself!’

‘For certes you have the temper for it,’ Hugh retorted, but he smiled as he said the words. Janna blushed anew. Mercifully, he turned his attention then to Cecily, who stood silent by Janna’s side.

‘I asked you to wait for me until my business with the priest was done so that I might escort you back to the manor,’ he said courteously.

‘I … I thought a walk in the fresh air might revive my spirits, sire.’

‘What ails you? Why do you not rest?’ There was sympathy in Hugh’s eyes as he surveyed the tiring woman.

‘I had long enough to rest yesterday morning.’ Cecily looked down at her muddy shoes rather than meet his eye.

‘Yet you did not rest,’ Hugh observed drily. ‘Dame Alice said you were gone from the manor all morning. She’s worried about you, particularly as you looked so ill on your return. When she realised you had come out again today, she sent this palfrey to me with a messenger. She has asked me to ride home with you.’

‘Dame Alice is kind to think of me.’ Cecily looked stricken. Her face was so white, Janna thought she might faint.

Hugh led the palfrey to a post nearby. Janna tried to suppress a flash of jealousy as she noticed the care he took while helping Cecily to mount. Did his hand linger unnecessarily on the lady’s waist? He kept the leading rein in his hand all the while, gentling the palfrey so that it would not startle and upset Cecily. Their journey back to the manor would be slow and decorous, utterly unlike the wild ride Janna had shared with the groom. She felt a flash of resentment over the lack of respect shown to her, but she had to acknowledge that had she been given a mount of her own, she would not have been able to ride it. She and the groom had been racing against time. When death awaited there were far more urgent considerations than the chance exposure of a lady’s ankle or leg.

A lady! Janna made a disgusted noise in her throat. Truly she was reaching far above herself with these thoughts. All the same, she found it hard to smother a pang of envy as she watched how solicitously Hugh settled the tiring woman into the saddle and noticed Cecily’s shy smile of thanks in return.

‘God be with you, Johanna,’ Hugh said then, and mounted his own horse. Slowly, they clip-clopped away.

Janna stayed still, pondering Hugh’s words as she watched them depart. So Cecily had lied to her employer. Why? She began to think over all the tiring woman had told her – or not told her – and came to the conclusion that Cecily had perhaps revealed more than she realised. It seemed that Eadgyth’s skill with herbs was common knowledge, even at Babestoche Manor, and Fulk had been sent like a common errand boy to fetch her. Not only had Eadgyth refused to salvage Fulk’s reputation by going along with his play-acting but, worse, she’d thrown away his preparation and sent him from Dame Alice’s bedchamber. She’d publicly exposed Fulk as a charlatan. Small wonder then if he hated her enough to want her out of the way. Monkshood was common enough. It was perfectly possible that Fulk would have access to it.

Janna’s head felt crammed with questions. Certainly Cecily’s description of her mother’s symptoms had dispelled any doubts as to the poison her mother had ingested. Aconite was fast-acting. Janna knew that much from what her mother had told her when warning her about the properties of various poisonous plants. So whatever Cecily believed, her mother must have had some refreshment on her arrival at the manor as well as the water.

A thought stopped Janna. If her mother had taken only a little of the aconite in something well flavoured, there would not have been enough in the taste to warn her, while a tiny amount of poison might take several hours to wreak its damage. If that was so, Eadgyth could have taken the poison even before she arrived at the manor house. Who then might have given it to her?

Janna frowned as she thought about the possibility. She would have to cast her net more widely to encompass everyone her mother might have met on that last fateful morning of her life. She would start with her mother’s mysterious visitor. Who was she? Certainly not one of the villagers. Someone highborn. Up until yesterday they’d known no-one like that. Now, they did!

Janna stood stock-still, thinking it through. As the answer came to her, she wondered why it had taken her so long to work it out. The woman visiting her mother had insisted on secrecy. Cecily had tried to fool the household into thinking she was resting at the manor when, in fact, she’d gone out without telling anyone. Cecily knew that Eadgyth had had a long walk to Babestoche. And she looked ill, as she would after Eadgyth’s ministrations. If Cecily had visited the
wortwyf
yesterday morning in a desperate attempt to get her out of trouble, it could explain why, in return, she’d tried to look after Eadgyth in the last moments of her suffering, and why she’d come out to see her buried today. More than anything, Janna wished Cecily was still there so that she could offer her comfort, and also ask more questions.

She needed to sit quietly and put her thoughts in order, Janna decided. She must question Cecily to find out if she or anyone else had shared food or a drink with her mother. Someone must know something, and she would not rest until she had found it out.

She set off to climb the downs towards the forest and home, but a hoarse shout stopped her before she’d taken more than a few steps. Turning, she found herself confronted by the miller’s wife. Hilde’s face was flushed dark red; her eyes were bright with anger as she waddled up to Janna.

‘Whore!’ she spat. ‘Slut! Taking a man to your bed even while your mother was breathing her last!’

‘What? What?’ Janna could hardly take in the meaning of Hilde’s words.

‘I suppose you thought you were safe to do as you pleased, with your mother out of the way dispensing her potions and poisons up at the manor?’

‘I … I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Janna was at a loss as to how to defend herself against Hilde’s wrath. But she couldn’t let the last part of her speech go unchallenged. ‘My mother was working no poison up at the manor. She was helping to save the life of Dame Alice and her newborn son.’

‘Then how did she come to poison herself at the same time?’ Hilde’s eyes twinkled bright with malicious glee.

‘She did not poison herself. She did not!’

But Hilde was no longer listening. She began to scratch at the rash of sores on her arm, unaware that she was drawing blood. ‘You leave my husband alone!’ she spat. ‘He told me he was going out to check his eel traps last night and he didn’t come home. I know he was with you and I’m warning you, you will join your mother in her grave if he visits you again.’

‘But … but I haven’t seen your husband!’ Janna remembered the scene at the mill, the scene the miller’s wife had witnessed. ‘Well, I saw him when I went to fetch the bag of flour, but his actions were none of my doing.’

‘I don’t believe a word of it! I saw you talking to him, leading him on. You invited him to come to you in the night, did you not?’

‘No!’ Janna found herself blushing at the very thought of it. ‘If he was gone from your bed, mistress, I assure you he was not in mine! You must look elsewhere for someone to blame for his roving ways. Perhaps, indeed, you should ask your husband for an explanation!’

Hilde’s hand, bloodied from scratching at her arm, moved down to her bulging stomach. She touched its rounded contours with soft fingers. Janna felt a twinge of pity, until she caught Hilde’s expression. Stony and unforgiving, her glance raked over Janna. ‘I saw you in his arms. I saw you kiss him!’

‘He kissed
me –
and I kicked him where it really hurt!’ Janna felt sick, poisoned by the woman’s suspicion.

Hilde looked momentarily nonplussed. Then she gave a snort of disbelief. ‘I am warning you, miss. Do not entice my husband to your bed again.’ Shocking in its suddenness, she pulled a small knife from the purse at her girdle, and brandished it in Janna’s face. The blade glinted bright in the sunlight. ‘Tempt him again and it’ll be your turn to feel how sharp this is!’

Janna blinked, hardly able to believe what she was seeing and hearing. Before she had time to respond, Hilde had shouldered her aside and lumbered back down the lane. Janna looked after her, shocked and upset by the unexpected confrontation. That the woman was unbalanced was obvious, yet it was not unknown for pregnant women to become unsettled and take odd fancies. It was certainly true that the miller gave Hilde good cause to worry and fret.

The best plan was to keep out of Hilde’s way in future, Janna told herself, as she hurried on. In an effort to banish her disquiet, she turned her mind back to the conversations she’d had with Aldith and Cecily and the handsome Hugh.

Aldith had told her much about her father, but nothing that had shed any light on who had killed her mother. True, she had warned Janna about Fulk, but Janna already had her own suspicions about him. Posturing turnip head that he was, even Fulk would know about the poisonous properties of aconite. Everyone knew, although they might call the plant by another name. What else had Aldith told her?

Or not told her? Janna frowned as she considered the midwife’s position. Aldith had a grudge against her mother, that much had become clear. She also had much to gain from Eadgyth’s death. Could the midwife be as blameless as she appeared? Janna had been so intent on learning what Aldith knew about her father that she’d neglected to question her about her movements on the day of Eadgyth’s death. At the very least, she should find out when Aldith had last seen her mother.

As Janna began to climb the grassy downs, she stared up at the great blue canopy over her head. God’s realm, where truth and justice must surely prevail. It was comforting to think that someone watched over her, that someone cared what happened to her. She had a Father in heaven. She might also have a father right here on earth!

It was like an itch that wouldn’t go away, this mystery of her father. To know so little was frustrating beyond belief. Yet already she knew far more than she’d ever known before. Why had her mother been so secretive? Because she felt shame? Because she could not bear to talk about the man she loved? Would her mother have honoured her promise to tell Janna the truth, or had she learned more from Aldith than her mother might ever have confessed? The questions kept coming, questions without answer. She could not set her thoughts free.

Feeling sorry that she’d never been given the chance to know her father, or even to understand her mother, Janna continued the climb towards her home.

There were still vegetables left from the night before, the dinner her mother never came home to eat. Although tempted to throw them out, Janna put them in the pot, then hung it over the fire to heat for her dinner later. They were far too good to give to the goats. Instead, she cut some nettles and brambles from the edge of the forest, and grabbed up a handful of grain for the hens. ‘Nellie! Gruff!’ she called, and the goats bleated and ambled towards her, ready to be milked and fed. The hens came running too. Janna waited until they were all busy feeding before she produced an extra morsel for Laet, who always came last in the race for food. ‘It’s a hard life,’ she told the small, scrawny hen. ‘You’ve got to fight if you want to survive.’ It was advice she herself should heed, she realised, as she slowly walked back towards the cottage.

The row of bee skeps under their woven covers brought a pang of remorse as Janna recollected how she’d stomped past them before, and had even tried to smack down a passing bee. Now she stopped beside them to make amends. ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened,’ she said, and suddenly found herself pouring out the story of the past couple of days.