Season of the Raven (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 1) (13 page)

"Did Alf return last night?" Faucon asked, hoping he didn't sound as if he were pleading.

"I don't know," Simon replied, then shrugged, "but I assume not. If he had, Alf would have either found Halbert under the wheel or moved him into the house and saved his life. I wouldn't have heard Alf if he had returned, not unless he came to my door. I was tired from my day and angry at Halbert. After Alf left, I went to claim my own bed, glad for what calm I could find there.

"Although I'm surprised Susanna managed to keep Alf from returning. He doesn't much care to keep company with others. Even at our village ales and festivals, he maintains his solitude, much to the dismay of more than a few of the lasses."

The fuller's smile at his own jest dimmed into new shock. "Nay! You're thinking it was Alf who did this to Halbert!"

He shook his head, rejecting the notion with all his will. "Nay, you're wrong. I won't—I don't believe it. Everything about Alf, his manners and habits, suggests he's a year-and-a-day man. Such a man doesn't risk the freedom he's striven so hard to win by doing murder to his employer, especially when I can count a dozen men in Priors Holston who would have happily hired Alf away from Halbert. And this Alf knew."

Faucon drew an astonished breath. Alf was a runaway serf?! He immediately rejected the idea. The workman was far too bold in manner to be some backward rural bondsman.

Simon growled in frustration as he realized what he'd revealed to his better. He shook a finger at Faucon. "Now, don't you go thinking you heard me offer any certain truth about Alf, Sir Crowner. I know nothing of his history. I'm just spinning out the yarns tangled in my head. All that's in here," he tapped his temple with his forefinger, "is how Alf has acted since he arrived in Priors Holston—like a man who at any moment expects to find hounds nipping at his heels.

"And even if it's true that he ran from his rightful lord and master, you're too late to return him. Last month, he was a full year in Priors Holston. That makes him a free man. May God bless him and grant good fortune to every soul who helped him make his escape I say, and I don't care if you hear me." As he finished, Simon drew himself up, squaring his shoulders and thrusting out his chest as if in challenge.

"Nor do I care what I heard you say," Faucon replied, offering the man a crooked smile and a conciliatory lift of his hands. "As far as I can tell, having held my position for but one day, my purview seems to be limited to dead men, assessments of estates and royal revenue."

Simon relaxed in relief. "Good. If you can forget that much, then you should also forget any ideas I might have wrongly given you about Alf killing Halbert. He didn't do it. I know it, aye."

"If not him, then who?" Faucon asked.

Simon blew out a long breath at the question and again stared at the millwheel. The quiet between them stretched.

"I don't know," he said at last, "and I'm not even certain that I care. Good riddance. All I am certain of is that Halbert wasn't wearing that tunic when last I saw him alive and sitting right here."

Simon again pointed to that spot on the edge of the race, the same spot he'd indicated for the tunic. Then he looked at Faucon. "So, who put that tunic on Halbert? That's what I want to know, sir. Because after listening to the vehemence of Halbert's curses over that garment, I don't believe he would ever have donned it on his own accord, sober or besotted."

Faucon nodded, deep in thought. Putting Halbert into that expensive tunic before the dead man went into the race seemed almost an act of vengeance. But vengeance for what? Mistreating Agnes? The only one who seemed to care about Halbert's wife was Simon, and as open as Simon was, Faucon doubted even the fuller would offer up the very bit of information that damned him.

"A strange marriage, theirs, Agnes and Halbert," Faucon said, still chewing on what he'd learned.

"For sure," Simon agreed. "None of us could understand why Halbert wed her. After Cissy, Stephen's mother, died, Halbert made it clear to all the village that he had no desire to marry again."

"And yet, wed again he did," Faucon said. "Tell me, if you can. Do you have any idea what the hour was when you heard the wheel begin to turn once more?"

That made Simon think. "Perhaps after Matins?" he offered with no confidence, then took back his words. "Nay, I cannot be certain of the hour, save that it was still full dark, and that's the best I can tell you."

"Papa! You must come!"

The call came from a lad of no more than eight, wearing a too-large brown tunic. The child came dashing toward them through the tenting frames, something much easier to do now that all the men of the inquest had passed onto the miller's property. The boy's hair was yet sleep-knotted, its wayward spikes framing a face that named him another of Simon's progeny.

"Come where, son?" Simon asked as the lad came to a dancing stop across the race from them.

"Into the croft, Papa! You must come and you must bring that knight, too!" He pointed at Faucon. "Master Drue says he thinks he may have found the place the knight seeks, the place with hidden blood. It's where we do our slaughtering. Emmie says if there's something hiding there, it isn't from that pig we killed yesterday!" The lad whirled and started back through the frames as fast as he had come.

Simon drew a sharp breath. "Nay, Drue's wrong," he said, his voice so low that Faucon wondered if he'd meant to speak the words aloud.

The fuller looked at Faucon. His expression was flat, his skin had lost its color. "It's mad to think anyone would carry Halbert all the way into my croft to do his evil." Strong words, but Simon's voice broke as he spoke, and he crossed his fingers to ward off that evil and the devil who created it.

"You're likely right," Faucon replied as he stepped over the race, following the boy. His movement stirred Simon into following.

"You slaughtered a pig yesterday? Is that the way here? Where I'm from, we don't usually cull our swine until well into November, after they've eaten their fill of fallen nuts." Faucon asked, intending more to steady the man than to inquire after Priors Holston's slaughtering practices. Although, he was curious. To slaughter before the pigs had added the flavor of acorns and hazelnuts to their flesh was a waste of ham, at least in Faucon's estimation.

"Nay, it's no different here," Simon replied, still working to shake off his reaction to his son's announcement. "This was a little gilt that had broken her leg, poor thing. I bought and slaughtered her—" He yelped, then hopped on one foot away from the corner of a frame.

Cursing beneath his breath, Simon stumbled a bit before catching his balance, then sent Faucon a rueful grin. "Bless me if, after living here for all of my life, I still don't run into one of these things at least every other week."

"Hurry, Papa!" The lad had reached the gate in the enclosure that surrounded the fuller's croft. Simon had made his fence from wooden frames into which whip-thin branches had been woven until it looked as much like a basket as a wall. Each panel was pegged in place and fastened to the next with leather bindings. Pausing in the opening, the child sent an impatient wave in the direction of his elders—the motion suggesting they were moving far too slow to suit him—then disappeared.

They followed him into the croft. The space that provided Simon's family with their vegetables measured at least a furlong by four rods, which made it about the same size as any other croft Faucon had ever seen, around seven hundred feet in length and forty in width. The fuller's family had divided the space into a series of small rectangular plots separated by a grid of well-worn paths. Each plot included a fruit tree beneath which grew neat rows of cabbages, parsnips, herbs or beans drying with the season. Just now, two of these plots were piled high with recently-harvested garlic. The heads had been left upon the earth to cure in the warmth of autumn's waning days.

At the far end was the fuller's cottage, a dwelling that appeared to be about half the size of the miller's home. Just behind the house stood the wide vats in which the fuller and his family walked newly-woven woolen cloth into fabric worthy of a garment. At this end of the croft, as far from the house as possible within the enclosure, grew a massive chestnut tree, its low-hanging branches heavy with sweet nuts dressed in their spiny coats.

The tailor stood with his back to the chestnut's burly trunk, one hand on the end of the fuller's pole axe. The tool, nothing more than a great knob of wood with a handle almost as long as Simon was tall, had but one purpose—to deal a stunning blow to an animal prior to slaughter.

Dashing and darting in noisy play was a veritable mob of children. Save for Drue's apprentice and the lad who had come to fetch Simon, the rest were girls. To a one, these lasses wore garments dyed the same shade of brown as the fuller's tunic. Only two of the girls didn't participate in the play: the eldest, a sad and sober lass of no more than ten-and-six with a housewife's apron atop her gown, and the youngest, the toddler she balanced on her hip.

"These are all your children?" Faucon asked Simon.

The fuller sighed as if beleaguered, but there was pride in his voice when he spoke. "They are indeed, every last one. I have two more lads. You met Bertie, but didn't see Willie, who was yet waiting to view Halbert."

"Your wife is young to mother such a brood," Faucon said, indicating the girl as they crossed the garden to join the tailor. If she was without doubt too young to be the mother of any save the child she held, that didn't mean she was too young to be married to the fuller.

"Nay, that's my eldest daughter. My wife is gone. We lost her last year," Simon said softly. "She just wanted one more babe. She always liked the little ones best of all."

Before Faucon had a chance to offer his condolences, the fuller lifted his voice and called, "You're mad if you think Halbert died here, Drue. If there's anything to find in my croft, it can only be a bit of offal that my sons missed yesterday after we'd finished that gilt."

"You are most likely right," Drue called in return. "That's why I wanted the knight to come and see this for himself, him being wise in the ways of death." As he spoke, Drue pointed to a stump not far from him.

Although now only knee-high, the width of the former tree suggested it had originally rivaled the chestnut that had replaced it. The stump's face was scarred and long since stained to a rusty brown. That said it was being used for slaughtering fowl and smaller animals.

Uneven drifts of wood ash blanketed the ground between the stump and the chestnut. The spilled lines of charred wood led back to a fire pit. Faucon was certain yesterday had seen that pit filled with burning coals as the fuller heated a great pot of water. A pig's carcass was always dipped after slaughter; the hot water made scraping off the animal's bristly hair so much easier.

Both Faucon and the fuller coughed as they joined Drue in the shade of the chestnut, doing so in instinctive reaction to a smell that would soon be the stench of rotting blood. Flies buzzed and circled around the base of the stump.

"Have you been slaughtering chickens?" Faucon asked the fuller.

Simon shook his head. "Not this time of year," he said. "Emmie, I swear we didn't spill anything yesterday. Did you and I accidentally leave something out here to rot?" The sweep of his hand indicated the ashy expanse. "And if we did, how did the boys miss it when they cleaned up? They know better."

The fuller's eldest daughter must have resembled her mother, for she was a sweet-faced girl with dark hair and pale eyes. She shot her father an amused look, then set down the child she held. The fuller's littlest lass trundled off after the other children, crying for them to wait for her.

"You know better than that, Papa. How could we have spilled blood when we put the gilt's head in the pot before we cut her throat? Come now, you're too fond of blood sausage to let me waste so much as a drop." There was both irritation and affection in her tone. Her manner suggested she had stepped comfortably into the hole her mother's death had left in their family.

"Nor did the boys miss anything," she continued. "I'm certain that what Master Drue believes he has discovered wasn't here yesterday when the ash was spread. Neither Bertie nor Willie would have spread ash the way this has been done."

Here, the fuller's girl shifted to look at Faucon. "See how it's piled so it crawls up our stump? My brothers wouldn't do that. If they left warm ash like that, it might set the stump on fire. And we only ever use a thin layer to cover the ground after we've finished slaughtering. It's really all that's needed to keep down both the smell and the flies. Anything more means trouble. It's too tempting for the little ones, isn't it, sweetling?" she asked of the toddler.

The littlest girl had been unable to keep up in the game of tag presently being played and had returned to cling to her sister's skirts. Lifting the child to once more balance her on a hip, Emmie caught the wee one's chin in her hand and turned her face toward Faucon. Although it had been only a moment, grimy streaks already crisscrossed the child's rosy cheeks and darkened her wispy brows.

"See? I'll be scrubbing faces all evening, won't I just?" the elder girl said.

The child chortled at that, then buried her head into the curve of her sister's shoulder. Faucon laughed with her and Emmie shot him another glance. Their gazes met. The girl gasped, her fair skin taking fire until her blush burned almost scarlet. She dropped her gaze to the ground and bobbed a quick curtsy.

"Pardon, sir," she offered at a whisper, mortified by her forward behavior.

"Emmie said the same to me about the ashes when I first asked," Drue said, speaking over her. "That's when we started searching and I found this. I didn't look any further, sir," he said to Faucon, "wanting to wait until you were here to see."

The tailor dropped to one knee on the ashy ground, while Faucon knelt at the other. Waving off the flies, the tailor pointed to an area on the front of the stump.

Faucon had to lean close before he saw what Drue indicated. Small dark splotches looked as if they'd been sprayed up and down the side of the stump. He brushed his fingers over the spots. As he found and read the spaces in those lines of gore, he closed his eyes and followed the trail they made. It led him to an image of Halbert, stripped of all clothing so his shirt and braies wouldn't be marked with blood and ashes, slumped against the slaughtering stump. The awl was driven into him. Too drunk to react to the lethal blow, the miller had slipped to the side as his life's blood spurted from him. As he came to a rest on the ground, the final beats of his heart spattered blood against the stump.