by J G Lewis
“God go with you, my lady,” he said, with a small bow. Unwritten words hung in the air…. Because you’ll need Him.
A swift investigation into the Abbot’s channels of transport led to the arrest of another tonsured procurer in Bruges, who in turn pointed to a Parisian order infected with the disease of abusing and selling children. In time the conspiracy and its chain of arrests led all the way to Venice and from there to Rome. A new abbot was appointed to command St. Michael and All Angels, and Ela prayed he would be just and kind with the children already there.
Ela heard of these events by letter, since she returned immediately to Gomeldon. Most of the children were returned to their homes, except for three who either didn’t know where their home was or didn’t want to go there for fear of being sold again.
Ela offered Elsie Brice a job in her household as a temporary assistant to Hilda, whose pregnancy sometimes caused her to be too ill to tend to Ela’s needs. Once she had an idea of Elsie’s aptitudes, she could find her a more permanent position. Elsie did not broach the question of Ela having any role in her parents’ deaths—perhaps she knew little of the whole disturbing affair—and Ela did not intend to bring it up. She did, however, send word to Elsie’s siblings that their sister was returned safe to Salisbury and that they could visit her when they were able.
Before leaving for Gomeldon, Ela arranged for her bankers to make full payment to the king. She had Spicewell review all the contracts to make sure the payment of her “fine” would obtain the fealty she required—full possession of the castle and the role of high sheriff of Wiltshire.
As expected she could not seize either immediately. De Hal had no doubt paid a sizable sum to obtain the castle and the position, and whoever had pocketed the money—de Burgh, perhaps—no doubt had to scramble to find him a new, suitable position without alerting the king to his dealings.
Ultimately it was agreed that she should be installed in the castle by Whitsuntide of following year. In the meantime, she vowed to review the management of her estates and pour herself into plans for the two monasteries she’d pledged to found, one in her husband’s name and one in her own.
Chapter 24
By a quirk of circumstance—or the will of Heaven—Ela took possession of Fernlees in trust for Hilda’s baby on the same day that Abbot de Rouen arrived in London in chains. The disgraced cleric was imprisoned in the White Tower to await his trial. A messenger galloped to Salisbury with the news.
Arriving at Gomeldon midmorning of the following day, the rider had to gallop onward to Fernlees to find Ela, who’d taken Hilda to visit the manor that would soon be home to her and her child. Ela received the news of the abbot’s imprisonment with gratitude and urged the messenger to head back to Gomeldon to take rest and food.
“Everyone is where they should be,” exclaimed Hilda, as she picked her way across the weedy courtyard at Fernlees. She walked halfway to the house, beaming, then turned back. “Elsie, would you bring my cloak? There’s a chill in the air.”
Ela, stunned, wasn’t sure whether to scold Hilda for acting like a little lady of the manor or to encourage it. She suspected Hilda was only mimicking her own imperious behavior. Except that she hadn’t realized how imperious she must sound until she heard her words issuing from her maid’s mouth.
Elsie brought the cloak without a word of complaint—the girl rarely spoke—and put it on Hilda’s shoulders. Hilda’s head-turning beauty, a dangerous liability in a poor servant girl, would serve her in good stead as a young lady of property in search of a husband.
Even her pregnancy could be somehow reinvented as a sworn engagement tragically broken by the cruel murder of her fiancé. It was hardly unknown in these fast-moving times for a girl to share her virtue with her lover before marriage. And her child’s natural father had once been a knight of the realm, even if he’d come to them in much reduced circumstances.
Hilda tested the handle on the door. “It’s locked.”
“I have the key,” said Ela. She produced it and let Hilda open the door of her new home.
The lock required a good deal of rattling and produced a rain of rust. Hilda’s smile fell from her face as the door creaked open to reveal a filthy clay tile floor, cobwebs hanging from the low-beamed ceiling and a large rat scurrying into the ash-filled hearth. “It needs cleaning,” said Ela, with what she hoped was a reassuring tone.
“Will I have to clean it?” asked Hilda, plaintive.
“Who better? Elsie can help. And I’ll send a lad to help with the hard scrubbing and the weeding.”
Hilda took a tentative step forward. The house had sat empty for months and had no doubt been neglected even while still in use. An unpleasant odor hung in the air. At least Drogo Blount couldn’t see the sad state of his old family home.
“It’s very large,” said Hilda as she peered around the corner into the hall. A scarred table with two benches sat at the far end. Ancient and weighty it was about the only thing that hadn’t been removed—likely sold—by the manor’s previous occupants. Even the fire irons were gone.
Ela sighed. Did she need to furnish this house for Hilda and her baby? Once you held out a helping hand to lift someone up it started a chain of responsibilities that never seemed to end. But no doubt she could find some sticks of furniture about her manors and have them brought here to give the young family a start.
Though Fernlees dwarfed the country cottage Hilda had grown up in, it would be a comfortable home once a fire burned in the grate and the rat was banished back to the woods.
“We must tour the fields and forest and assess the best way to wring an income from the property,” said Ela brightly. She wanted to get outside and away from the stale atmosphere of dead rat. “For you’ll need money to repair the thatch and replaster the wattle and buy clothes and food for yourself and your baby.”
God willing, Ela could find a husband to help Hilda manage the estate. The girl had proved herself kind and willing, but she did not have a head for business. Ela had tried to teach her to manage the kitchen accounts and found it tiring work.
Hilda had already run upstairs to see the bedrooms. “Oh, there’s a view over the meadow from this one. It shall be mine!” she exclaimed cheerfully. “And I shall put the cradle in this corner, away from the drafts.”
Ela followed Hilda upstairs, with Elsie trailing silently behind her. The spring had reappeared in Hilda’s step, and she dashed from room to room. “I shall have seven children in all, and they can share a room, two and two!”
Ela smiled. “May God bless you with all the children you desire. They are the greatest joy in life.”
Hilda bustled into the next room. “Don’t your children miss you when you’re so busy solving crimes and catching criminals?”
Ela stopped in her tracks. Was this censure? Or genuine curiosity?
And was it perhaps her own guilt that made her look to Hilda’s motive for asking it?
“No doubt your mother was often busy with her tasks—milking a cow or spinning wool or weaving a basket—but she was there for you all the same.”
“Oh, yes. I didn’t mean to criticize. And where would poor dear Elsie be if you didn’t put the needs of others ahead of your own?”
Ela glanced at Elsie. Who looked swiftly down at the floor. The poor girl had not yet recovered from her ordeal. Worse yet, her aunt and uncle had sold her into it and she had no true home to return to.
On instinct Ela took hold of the girl by her upper arms. “The Lord has big plans for you, Elsie. He brought you into my life when I need you most.” She laid a kiss on the girl’s smooth, pale forehead. “Sibel, my faithful lady’s maid of many years, abandoned me for a husband, and now Hilda, her niece, will soon be busy with her child. Who would take care of me if you weren’t here?”
Elsie did her best to manage a crooked smile, but Ela could tell that tears hovered behind it. “I thank you, my lady, for your kindness,” she stammered, in her country accent. “I’ll do my best t
o repay it.”
“You owe me no debt, Elsie.” Ela squeezed her arms. “Wait until we move to the castle. You’ll be rushed off your feet.”
“It’s almost half a mile from one side of the hall to the other,” said Hilda with a grin. “Sibel said she was up and down stairs all day there.”
“That’s hardly true,” protested Ela, surprised that Sibel would have said such a thing to her family. Then she realized she’d grown defensive about what was no doubt a well-meaning jest. “Well, perhaps there is a grain of truth to it. It was built to accommodate a large family and half of Wiltshire at the same time.”
She kept hoping to see a glimmer of something—anything—in Elsie’s big brown eyes, but it was not to be. Ela lifted her hands away and wrung them together for a moment. “Hilda, make a tally in your mind of the tasks to be done. As mistress of Fernlees it’s your duty to plan the work and make sure it gets done.”
“When will I move here?”
“Not until the floor is mopped, that’s for certain.” Ela didn’t want to answer that question. Should she wait until the girl was safely delivered of her baby and secure in her claim to the manor? Or should she move in early with—perhaps—a sister or another aunt to help care for her in her confinement?
So many questions. And Ela still didn’t know exactly when she could move back to the castle. Her comfortable feather bed at Gomeldon itched her like a hair shirt. She craved the bracing morning air of the windy castle mound and the flurry of public affairs in her great hall.
“What’s in this room?” Elsie tugged at the handle of the door at the end of the hall. It had a simple pull handle with no lock, but firmly resisted her efforts to open it.
“I’m sure it’s just another bedchamber,” said Ela, ready to be quit of this untidy place, which had a rank smell of disuse. “Likely the wood has expanded and it’s stuck. One of the lads can free it for you.”
“It’s not stuck, it’s nailed shut. Look!” She pointed to wooden blocks nailed into place at the top and bottom.
“How odd.” Ela’s walked over and peered at it. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Maybe this is where Morhees kept his treasure?” said Hilda in a rush of excitement. “You said he was like a pirate. They usually have a treasure chest hidden somewhere.”
“Only in tall tales, my dear.” Ela frowned. “But now I’m curious.” She drew the knife from her belt, slid the blade under the block and wiggled it slowly to lever the block up from the floor, pulling the nail with it. It sprang free, sending her backward, where she almost knocked Hilda off her feet.
She stood on an old chair to perform the same operation on the upper block, and as the long nail and its block fell to the floor, the door creaked open.
“Ew! What is that smell?” Hilda’s hands flew to her nose. There was indeed a fearful smell—like that which pervaded the rest of the house but a thousand times worse now that it was released by the open door.
The smell of death.
Ela’s breath caught in her throat. Elsie retched, the first sound she’d made in ages.
“I think we should go,” said Hilda tremulously.
But Ela pushed the door open to reveal a dark room, the sole window shuttered from the inside. Her hand pressed to her mouth, she hurried to the window and unlatched the shutter. Light poured in, revealing the room to be cluttered with battered pieces of old furniture and a rolled tapestry with visible moth damage on the exposed underside.
On the far side of the room she saw a familiar sight. The wood trunk belonging to the late Jacobus Pinchbeck. The one that contained his ledgers—coded and inscrutable—and his various accounts. He’d been found dead, crushed by his own cartwheels, and his son Osbert had taken over his business, only to be duped out of it by the vile Vicus Morhees.
Ela’s stomach shriveled. Something—someone—is inside that trunk. And she was almost certain who.
Still pressing one hand to her nose in a vain attempt to keep out the odor of death, she forced the blade of her knife into the lock. It took some doing, but eventually she was able to break the mechanism. The heavy lid seemed weighed down by all the cares of the world. “Help me, Hilda.” Ela struggled to lift it. Hilda, who had shrunk back into the doorway, came reluctantly forward and peeled a hand away from her face to help lift it.
Hilda screamed and sprang back when the contents came into view. Ela, still holding one hand to cover her nose and mouth, was forced to snatch her hand back to stop it being crushed as the lid fell.
She heard Hilda’s panicked feet on the stairs, and Elsie’s hurried after them. Deciding that their wisdom exceeded hers, she followed them down the stairs and out into the open air.
“Oh, my blessed saints,” squeaked Hilda. “There’s a dead body in there! Horrible and purple with great holes for eyes.”
Elsie bent double over a clump of wild St. John’s wort and emptied her stomach.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.” Ela laid a hand on Elsie’s back and offered her handkerchief for the girl to wipe her mouth. “But I know who it is. We must call the coroner.”
“Who is it?” Hilda gazed fiercely at the house. “Who’s dead in my child’s house?”
“I fear it’s Osbert Pinchbeck, a former inhabitant of the house. Vicus Morhees told us he’d gone abroad, but he was sealed up in that room the whole time.”
Hilda stared at her. “He’s the man that had Drogo arrested for poaching! Osbert Pinchbeck wanted to get my beloved hanged for trying to feed himself in his time of need.” She spat his name like a curse. “If it wasn’t for you he would have seen Drogo hang.”
“That is indeed true.” She wanted to scold Hilda for calling Drogo her beloved. “I also thought it was unfair.” In retrospect, inviting the lascivious Drogo—charming rogue though he was—into her home had unleashed a tidal wave of trouble.
“Pinchbeck deserves to rot in there.”
“The Lord is our final judge, Hilda.”
“He shall be judged harshly.” She pursed her pretty mouth.
“So shall we all.”
Ela took the girls home to Gomeldon, then returned to Fernlees to meet the coroner. Haughton’s bay palfrey stood tied up outside when she arrived back there with a single armed escort.
Ela found herself humming with anticipation as she entered the door. She’d missed her almost daily interactions with the gruff coroner. “Sir Giles?” She called up the stairs.
“My lady Ela!” He emerged from the unlocked room, his voice as filled with cheer as her heart. “It’s good to see you again, though perhaps not under these circumstances.”
“Poor dead Osbert Pinchbeck was here under our noses—quite literally—the whole time.”
“Indeed,” said Giles Haughton, from the top of the stairs. “Morhees must have encouraged him to spread the news of a sojourn abroad so that no one would question his disappearance. Then he strangled him.”
“You can tell?” Ela braced herself for a return upstairs. The smell had been largely kept out of the rest of the house by the tight-fitting locked door. Now the foul odor of death permeated the entire space. But as sheriff, she couldn’t be squeamish about a dead body. Even one that had been pickling in its own juices for many weeks.
“The ruined skin of his neck still bears ligature marks. He was strangled with something thin, like a leather whip end.”
Ela crossed herself as she entered the room. “May God rest his soul.”
“Unlikely, since he apparently killed his own father, with goading from the double-crossing Vicus Morhees.”
“Who is undoubtedly sweating in the sewers of hell himself.”
“Morhees is dead?” Haughton’s eyebrows rose.
Ela blinked. “It’s been some time since we spoke. He fell afoul of his evil bedfellows in the child abduction ring. He was the link back to Salisbury and the reason that Edyth Wheaton and Elsie Brice were taken. Though Elsie Brice was sold by her aunt and uncle, poor thing. Such a thing shouldn’t b
e legal, though my lawyer informs me that it’s not explicitly forbidden.”
“There would be little point in locking up Elsie’s uncle and aunt and turning the rest of the children out on the road to starve.”
“True, though you know I would never do that.”
The familiar teasing glow lit his eyes. “You would find them all a place in your household?”
She should be offended at his mockery, but she just smiled. “I shall have room for more helpers. Perhaps you haven’t heard? My household will soon be growing.”
The sparkle left his eyes. “You are to marry?”
“No!” Ela stared at him for a moment. Then laughed. “I am to take up residence at the castle again, as sheriff of Wiltshire.”
Haughton stared back at her, clearly astonished. He looked as if he didn’t believe her, or he thought her touched in the head.
“I’ve made an arrangement with the king,” she explained, somewhat affronted by his disbelief. “It’s all settled.”
“Congratulations,” He made a small bow. “My lady sheriff. I shall be pleased to see you return to the castle. I tire of de Hal’s antics. He seems more interested in gaining property for himself and his cronies than in maintaining the rule of law and order.”
“Fear not, he’ll be gone by next Whitsun.”
Haughton beamed. “It will be a tonic to all Salisbury to see you restored to your rightful family home.”
“And to myself as well. I look forward to having many more conversations with you in close proximity to a moldering corpse.” She cast a glance at the box. She noticed for the first time that the wood down near the floor was stained darker than the rest, no doubt from the liquid produced during the putrefaction process.
“Your strong stomach is a testament to you. De Hal would have excused himself some time since,” said Haughton with a grin.
“I’ve raised eight children, which will strengthen the stomach of almost anyone.”
