The Final Toll

by Denise Domning

  "Hie, Brother," Faucon said, already sprinting toward Eustace's cottage. Rounding the structure, he followed the line of woven toft fence, eyes on the smoke.

  "Stop, Eustace! Stop, I say!" a woman shouted from inside the toft. "Have you gone mad? You cannot kill them all! We have to keep some for next year."

  Reaching the gate, Faucon threw himself at it, expecting it to be barred. Instead, it flew wide, the leather hinges tearing through the weave of the panel on which they hung. He stumbled inside the long expanse of the toft.

  A single straight path cut this space in twain, with half the land given over to the household garden while the other half was cluttered with sheds, folds for livestock, and a small pasture area in which stood a tall gray horse. Although no courser like Legate, this animal was too fine to belong to a village bailiff. Sir Luc had not left Offord as he suggested.

  His back to the gate, Eustace trotted ever farther down the dividing path. Trailing him by an expanding distance was a heavyset woman wearing a white head-cloth and a dark woolen shawl over her bright blue gown. Her hems flew and her brown braids swung as she strove to catch the bailiff.

  Faucon made his way to where those struggling columns of smoke rose from a wide hole in the earth. The closer he came to them, the stronger the stench of burning feathers. He caught back a cough as he reached the edge of the hole, then grimaced. Twelve small carcasses lay upon a pile of smoldering twigs and branches. Hissing and spitting, the flames battled the rain, the fire steadily gaining as it burned away feathers to char the flesh below them. The birds were too far gone for him to make use of them.

  As Colin came to a panting stop beside him, Faucon again scanned the toft, squinting into the rain. Eustace had stopped in front of what looked like a sheepfold, but the fence was shorter than that used to enclose a flock. That allowed Faucon to see the curved roofs of the structures it guarded. These were the same sort of small houses the villagers at Blacklea used for their fowl.

  The moment Offord's bailiff stepped into the pen, at least a dozen chickens and ducks exited around his legs, as if they'd been plotting their escape on the other side of the door. The birds headed at top speed for the garden. That had the woman following Eustace shrieking again. She tore off her shawl and flapped it at the birds.

  "Hie, hie, hie," she cried, trying to frighten them back into their own yard. Instead, the escapees scattered in all directions. Giving up on her chase, the woman hurried to follow Eustace, her shawl once more around her. Standing in the opening, she spread her arms wide as if to block it. "Please, husband. Don't do this," she cried.

  Eustace pushed past his wife with enough force that she dropped to sit on the ground. He carried with him four more small mottled-brown birds, two in each hand. All were dead, or so said the way their wings fell loosely from their sides.

  He'd walked halfway back to the toft fence before he lifted his head. As he saw the knight and monk standing next to his fire pit, Eustace froze, his mouth agape. The bailiff's body tensed. Faucon rose to the balls of his feet, ready to give chase.

  Instead, in the next instant the bailiff's shoulders drooped. His fingers opened. The dead quail dropped to the mucky ground. Eustace fell to his knees. "It was me," he keened. "I killed Robert." Sitting back on his heels, he buried his face in his hands.

  "Nay! That's not true. You did nothing wrong!" his wife screamed in terror from where she still sat. As she fought to rise, she began to weep noisily.

  Faucon strode to where Eustace knelt and snatched up the dead birds. Holding them up in display, he turned to Colin. "What say you, brother? I intend to skin and skewer these birds, then roast them over those flames for my midday meal. Will you join me?"

  Confusion blossomed on the monk's face. Reluctance followed. Faucon laughed out loud. Then, still holding tight to his little birds, he went to help both the bailiff and his wife to their feet.

  "You mustn't eat them, sir," Eustace said yet one more time, speaking in his native tongue. He now sat on a bench at his table across from Faucon and Brother Colin. The bailiff didn't look at either of them as he spoke. Instead he aimed his words and his gaze at the scarred wooden boards of his tabletop.

  "Enough, husband," chided his wife. Seated on a stool at the end of the table, knife in hand, Nell took up the fourth quail. Cutting a slit in its skin, she caught one edge and stripped off its feathery hide as if it were a tunic. "Our Crowner believes these birds didn't kill Sir Robert, else he wouldn't be wanting to eat them. He knows there's nothing amiss with our birds," she asserted firmly.

  Save for her tongue, there was nothing hard about Eustace's wife. Her face and body were round and soft. Her nose was a button, her lips plump. Even her clear blue eyes were more round than ovals.

  Once Nell had understood that her new Crowner didn't believe her husband's confession of murder, she set about making her guests comfortable. That included draping their cloaks over stools near the hearth so they might dry, and serving them warm cider before she set about cleaning the four freshly-killed quail.

  "But he cannot know that, Nell. The day before yesterday, six of our quail killed Sir Robert," Eustace insisted, his voice breaking.

  "Our quail could never kill anyone," Nell replied sharply.

  As he listened to them quibble Faucon raised the household's only wooden cup and savored another sip of the housewife's best cider. It was barely fermented and tasted of sweet summer apple. Eustace's wife had insisted on warming it for them, stating that warm cider was better for their health on such a cold, wet day. Colin hadn't disagreed with her. Rather he was enjoying his own cider, although his had been served in a small wooden bowl.

  Nobby had said the bailiff's house was the biggest dwelling in the village, and so it was. But Faucon guessed it was also the most quiet. Eustace and Nell had no children. With the four of them sitting in silence at the table, the only sounds were the snap and crackle of the fire on the central hearthstone and the occasional moan of the wind.

  And the movements of the man hiding in the loft over Faucon's head.

  That platform stretched about halfway across the width of the cottage, with two posts holding up its leading edge. Had there been children, Nell and Eustace might have used that raised space as a private sleeping area. Instead, a length of raw linen fabric stretched like a curtain beneath the overhang, suggesting that was where husband and wife spent their nights.

  Having skinned the birds, Nell rose and went to the wall behind her. Although the usual barrels and bags of supplies cluttered the beaten earth floor at the wall, above those supplies were lines of wooden shelving spaced at regular intervals. This was where she kept her cookware, including a large metal spoon amid a pile of wooden ones, a stack of wooden bowls in various sizes, a sieve, and several small iron pots. Displayed upright on a wooden stand at the very center of the wall was a large, green, glazed platter, surely one of Nell's prized possessions.

  The rest of the couple's furnishings circled around the hearthstone. There was this table, about as big as his table at Blacklea, and a half-barrel chair, its tall back turned to the door to protect the occupant from the draft. A single long chest was pushed against one wall. Although it had no lock, this would be where they stored their clothing as well anything else that needed protection from vermin, such as the seeds they saved for next year's garden.

  Returning to the table with a slender iron rod and a wooden handle, Nell stripped the breast meat from the carcasses and threaded the small pieces of flesh onto her spit. After fitting the handle onto one end, she rested the spit into the Y-shaped braces that stood at either side of her hearth and began to turn it.

  Yet again, the man hidden in the loft moved. As the straw rustled, Nell freed an impatient sound and sent a narrow-eyed glance above her.

  "Will you come down and join us, Sir Luc?" Faucon called in the commoner's tongue.

  Colin glanced at Faucon in surprise. Nell gasped, then shot a worried look at her husband. Eustace only grew all the more ashe
n.

  "You really should come down," Faucon called again. There was still no answer from above.

  This time, he spoke in French. "You should join us, Sir Luc. The goodwife's cider is truly excellent, although you may already know this, having stayed here these past two nights."

  That got the reaction Faucon intended. Dressed only in his shirt and chausses, Sir Luc climbed down the ladder. Without a word of greeting or explanation to his fellow knight, he sat next to Eustace on his bench, his jaw tight and his mouth held in a narrow line.

  "You didn't leave last night as Lady Bagot requested," Faucon said by way of greeting.

  The knight gave a lift of his shoulders but said nothing. There was nothing for him to say, not after his lie and dishonorable behavior had been exposed.

  Faucon smiled. "Sir Luc of Bagot, this is Brother Colin, herbalist and healer for the abbey of Saint Peter in Stanrudde," he offered politely, looking from knight to monk. To Colin he said, "Sir Luc is Sir Adam's half-brother, and steward for Bagot Manor."

  Taking another sip of cider, Faucon once again addressed Luc. "I, for one, am glad you stayed. It turns out that I have more questions for you. And for Eustace as well," he said, glancing at the bailiff. Eustace only blinked.

  "Milla was your nurse," Faucon said to Luc, "but she remained at Bagot long after you were weaned, did she not?"

  Caution and confusion filled Luc's face. Guarding both his expression and his tongue for once, he studied Faucon for a long moment. At last, he said, "That is true."

  As that was no answer at all, Faucon tried again. "How many years was it after your weaning before your brother no longer wanted her?"

  Again, the red-headed knight's jaw tightened, but he didn't defend his beloved nurse. Eustace again studied the tabletop. Nell steadily turned her spit, the fire crackling as the meat wept and charred. Faucon sipped more cider, content to wait. To his surprise, it was Nell who finally broke the silence, doing so in the Norman tongue.

  "Milla served Sir Adam as his cook," she said, her words heavily accented. Nell kept her gaze focused on her task as she spoke. "She took the position even before he," the jerk of her head indicated Sir Luc, "could walk. As Sir Adam had offered to wed Lady Joia on the day of her birth, he knew he'd have no wife to run his household until she came of age. It seemed only natural that Milla, who was already managing his household's food, might step into the role of chatelaine." It was a stilted explanation, as if Nell couldn't bear to admit that her sister-by-marriage had taken on all the duties of wife to the knight.

  "Did she remain Bagot's housekeeper even after Sir Adam wed Lady Joia?" Faucon asked.

  That stirred Sir Luc to speech. "Lady Joia was only twelve when she and my brother wed," he said, his words clipped and harsh. Again his expression was strictly schooled. "She wasn't ready to shoulder the duties of both wife and housekeeper. By then I was gone from Bagot for my fostering, not to return for more than the occasional visit until my twenty-first year. Joia was glad for Milla's presence, and Milla was pleased to serve as her teacher. And just as she had done for me, orphan that I am, Milla opened her heart to Lady Bagot."

  "How long ago did Milla come to Offord?" Faucon wanted to know.

  "Six years past now," Eustace said with a weary sigh.

  "And haven't we rued every day since that one?" his wife said sharply, speaking in English again. She pulled the spit from its braces to check the meat. "They're cooked through," she announced.

  "Good enough," Faucon said, answering in French for Sir Luc's benefit. "No need for a bowl or trencher, goodwife. They are but bites. Just pull them off for me if you will."

  "Are you certain you wish to do this, Sir Faucon?" Colin asked, his voice low.

  "What is he doing?" Sir Luc glanced from the monk to his Crowner, sounding more like the man Faucon had met in Milla's kitchen. "What is that meat?" he asked Faucon.

  "Sir Robert's quail," Faucon replied. "I'm curious as to how it tastes."

  "I can tell you that it tastes like nothing special when cooked like that," Luc said.

  Faucon took the first little breast from Nell. It really was no more than a bite. He chewed and swallowed, then gave an approving nod. "I say it tastes almost like duck. The next?" he said to Nell, who slipped off another piece and gave it to him.

  "Sir," Colin warned quietly.

  Faucon ignored him. "Do any of you know how long Milla has been making her special quail dish for Sir Robert?" he asked as he held out his hand for the next piece of breast.

  "Long before she ever came to Offord," Sir Luc said, his voice warmer, although he looked confused. "These birds nest in our wasteland and our folk have always netted them during the summer months. Milla usually made them into pies for the household until one day, while Sir Robert was visiting, she decided to use whole birds. That's when she created that sauce of hers. Adam didn't care for it, but Sir Robert found it very much to his liking. I say it was that dish that caused Sir Robert to offer her a place at Offord."

  "As cook?" Faucon asked, taking the next piece of meat from Nell.

  "As housekeeper," her husband replied quietly. "Sir Robert's second wife had just died. It seemed a profitable situation for them both." As Eustace said this, he glanced at Faucon. It was a reminder of Milla's stolen coins.

  That startled Faucon. The position of chatelaine, when occupied by a woman who wasn't the master's wife, was equal in prestige to the position Eustace held. Yet Milla had chosen instead to live in the kitchen as a cook. "Milla did not wish to keep Offord's hall?" he asked.

  Luc gave a half-hearted shrug. Eustace again studied the table top. Nell concentrated on removing the remaining bits of breast from the spit.

  Faucon's brows rose. Thus did Milla hate her brother. Had Eustace known when he brought his sister to Sir Robert that the position the knight offered included the same bedding arrangement Sir Adam had enjoyed?

  As Faucon took up the next piece of breast, Colin caught his hand. "Sir, I cannot allow this. What if Eustace is right and the meat is poison?" he asked quietly in English.

  Faucon only shook his hand free of Colin's grasp and put the breast in his mouth.

  "Poison?" Nell cried in response to the monk. She sounded truly shocked. "Why would anyone think there's poison in these birds?"

  "What did she say?" Sir Luc asked, glancing from Nell to Eustace.

  "Brother Colin recognized that Sir Robert met his end two nights ago by way of poison hemlock," Eustace told him quietly, his voice quivering. His hands rested on the table. They began to tremble. He curled his fingers into his palms.

  "That's not possible," Luc protested strongly. "How could he have been poisoned?"

  "It was the quail," Faucon replied.

  "What?!" Sir Luc protested. "No one can be poisoned by eating a bird."

  "Oh, but they can be," Nell replied evenly, winning startled looks from all the men at her table. Offering a knowing nod, she glanced across the faces of her guests. "Didn't my own uncle and his family die from eating poison birds?"

  "How so?" Colin demanded in sharp interest.

  "These birds can eat hemlock seed with no ill effect," Nell told him, pointing her spit at the carcasses littering the end of the table. "Although none of us in my family knew that on the late summer's day when my uncle brought his family a net full of them. How he loved these birds in a pie! We all did." She sighed, the expression on her face saying she revisited a distant memory.

  "My aunt used only half the birds that night to make her meal. The next day we found them and their little ones all dead. Cleaned and plucked, the remaining birds were yet on the table. Being filled with grief for our kin and knowing the birds were now rigid in death and would need brining to be edible, we left them where they were. While we were washing our kinsmen, a village stray crept in and stole a few of the birds. We were winding the bodies when he began to slaver and howl. Recognizing hemlock, my father finished the poor creature, then burned the remaining birds."

  She lo
oked boldly at the men listening to her tale. "That dog saved our lives. We wouldn't have known the birds were poison, and would have taken them home for our own pie."

  "Poison birds?!" Colin cried in astonishment. "I cannot fathom it. What animal chooses to eat hemlock?"

  Nell considered him for a moment. "You must be town born, Brother," she said with just a hint of condescension in her voice. "There's no herdsman or shepherd who doesn't know to keep their animals away from that poison weed."

  "You've found me out, goodwife," Colin laughed. "I have indeed lived all of my life enclosed by stone walls of one kind or another. However, I did know that cows and sheep will mistakenly nibble on the plant, just as folk will die from time to time after eating the hemlock root in error. What I didn't know was that any animal could eat the seed and survive to poison whatever then ate them."

  The monk bent his neck to her. "I bow to your wisdom, Nell. As old as I am, you've just taught me something new this day."

  Nell's laugh was a cheerful sound as round as she. The spread of her lips revealed both dimples and that she'd been a pretty thing in her day. Then she looked at her husband.

  "But shame on you, Eustace," she chided with a pointed finger, shifting back into English to address her husband, "for thinking there could ever be poison in any of our birds! What was the first thing I did when I came here after we wed?"

  Color crept slowly back into Eustace's face. "You checked every rod of our land, looking for hemlock," he said weakly, replying in that same tongue.

  "Indeed I did," she said firmly. "After what happened to my family, I won't have so much as a stray seed of that foul plant near me. For the same reason I won't allow our birds to wander freely outside the toft. I cut their wing feathers so they can't fly, just as my father taught me."

  "I thought as much," Faucon replied with a smile.

  Colin frowned at him. "Then why did we come here?"

  "I wanted to repeat Milla's test," Faucon told him, then looked at Nell. "Goodwife, I'm curious. Did you ever tell this tale to Milla?"