Murder Most Medieval

by Martin Greenburg

  Geoffrey plodded through the west gate in Canterbury’s encircling walls and across the bridge over the river Stour. Another spattering of rain pocked the dull pewter surface of the water. The roofs of Estursete were colorless lumps bunched between the willow-choked bank of the river and the gates of the archbishop’s manor house. A cow lowed mournfully. Geoffrey thought of the palace hall, a fire leaping in the fireplace and the table lined with trenchers, and his stomach rumbled.

  A sudden rhythmic clanging sent blackbirds whirling into the sky. Ah, Wulfstan Smith himself. Geoffrey ducked beneath the thatched eave of the smithy.

  Wulfstan’s fire was a sullen lump of red, barely warm. The man himself was short but broad, hair and beard bristling like a boar’s. He dipped an iron rod hissing and steaming into a bucket of water, then placed it in the fire. “What do you want?” he asked, his massive right hand tapping his hammer against his vast left palm.

  “My name is Geoffrey of Norwich. I’m here on the archbishop’s business. The murder of Johanna Frelonde.”

  “She was murdered all right. By that prig of a priest. I saw.”

  “What did you see?”

  Wulfstan eyed Geoffrey’s clothes, then peered beyond his shoulder, as though checking to see if he’d brought reinforcements. “Baldwin was shouting at Johanna, wasn’t he? Calling her a witch and telling her to hold her tongue. She told him where to get off, she did. And not an hour later, I looked in her window and there she was, flat on the floor, him bending over her with his hands on her face.”

  “Her face? Not her throat?”

  “He’d already done his worst, hadn’t he? When he saw me looking at him, he rolled his eyes like a horse about to bolt and started babbling. In Latin, I warrant, but none of his fine words could take away what he did. And him always going on at us about sin and damnation.”

  “Baldwin called her a witch?” Geoffrey asked.

  Wulfstan stirred the fire with the iron rod. Sparks flew upward and vanished into the cold air. “Johanna was simple, if you ask me. For all that, she was good with herbs. If you had a running sore or a pain in your belly she’d bring you a tonic or a poultice and you’d soon be right as rain. But she’d go on about things she oughtn’t to know, things that were said and done in private, and things that were going to happen—I think she listened at windows, myself, although there’re those here in Estursete who said she could see beyond this world. But then, some folk will believe anything.”

  The smith hadn’t cared for Johanna, Geoffrey told himself. “Did she get on well with everyone? Except Baldwin, I suppose.”

  “No one gets on with Father Baldwin. He sees to that. As for Johanna, there’re those who’d ask her help when they were in trouble and laugh at her when they healed. Godeswell, for one, he flattered her and Alice and got what he wanted, didn’t he? Or Grene, he plowed for her and always praised her cooking to get himself a second helping. Neither of them had much use for her, though. Maybe old Edith treated Johanna like her own daughter, thought she could do no wrong. But I say Johanna stirred up trouble. I’ll give that to Baldwin, he was right telling her to hold her tongue.”

  “Maybe you should try holding yours,” said a smooth voice behind Geoffrey’s back. He spun around.

  A man and a woman stood watching him. Her face within the soft folds of her coverchief was pinched and pale, her shoulders rounded as though she carried a heavy weight. The man was of a good height, his chest beneath its fine linen tunic thrust as far forward as his chin. His eyes were the same color and temperature as the river.

  Wulfstan jerked his head toward Geoffrey. “Archbishop’s Jerk. Asking after your mother. This here’s Theoric Frelonde and his wife Alice,” he added, his voice acid.

  Geoffrey bowed. “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Master and Mistress Frelonde, but with Father Baldwin confined by the sheriff…”

  “The archbishop’s looking for an example, is that it?” Theoric took a step forward. “All he’d do is strip Baldwin of his holy orders, maybe shut him up in a monastery. Is that punishment for taking Mother away from us? For murdering her, and her with years yet to live, God willing?”

  “My brother drowned before we were married and now Mother’s gone, too,” Alice said with a sniffle. “There’s no one left but us. I don’t understand why…”

  “… my lord the archbishop thinks there should be one law for the clergy and another for us,” Theoric finished. “Aren’t the priests supposed to be caring for us, not lording it over us like Norman nobles?”

  “Baldwin’s proud as any nobleman,” Wulfstan muttered, “always making up to his betters.”

  “The ancient customs of England must be subject to God’s will,” Geoffrey pointed out.

  “God’s will?” asked Theoric. “Or Thomas Becket’s will?”

  “But the archbishop’s a holy man,” Alice murmured. “He won’t stand for the buying and selling of offices. There’s never been a hint of scandal with women or boys either, and he washes the feet of the poor every morning, just as Our Lord washed the feet of His apostles on Maundy Thursday.”

  Ostentatious humility, Geoffrey said to himself.

  Theoric snorted skepticism. “That’s as may be. What matters is whether Mother’s murderer escapes justice. We have our pride, don’t we?”

  “But is Baldwin guilty of her murder?” Geoffrey asked.

  “Who else?” demanded Theoric. “He was kneeling beside her body!”

  Alice added, her voice barely above a whisper, “Mother may have been a bit simple, but she was a good woman. She meant to help folk with her warnings.”

  “Did she warn herself about her own death?” muttered Wulfstan. He picked up his hammer and the rod from the fire. Its tip was red hot. Geoffrey could feel its heat from where he stood.

  “And you, master clerk,” Theoric concluded, “can tell the archbishop he has no right to shelter a murderer from what he deserves, no matter how badly he wants to get up the king’s nose!”

  That was one message Geoffrey wasn’t going to deliver. He contented himself by observing, “It’s for God to say what we deserve, don’t you think?”

  “And when He does, some folk will find this little fire of mine as cool as spring water.” Wulfstan began hammering, the muscles bulging beneath his sleeve.

  Geoffrey’s ears rang. He turned away from the shed to see Theoric and Alice also retreating, the man’s hand resting comfortingly in the small of her back but his shoulders still square. Proud, yes, Geoffrey thought. As were most prosperous folk. Johanna had done well with her inheritance.

  The day was failing, the already fragile light thinning further and further as the shadows streamed out from wall and tree. Rain began pattering down in earnest. Exhaling a long vaporous breath, Geoffrey set his face toward the town.

  So the day ended in darkness and confusion. All he’d accomplished was to put Baldwin’s head further into the noose. And to bring the sheriff and the justiciar and maybe even the sergeant closer to excommunication. Which was worse, to be stripped of one’s life or one’s immortal soul?

  He dodged from eave to overhanging story to merchant’s booth, but still he was cold and wet by the time he returned to the palace. And hungry. He had just enough time to pay a quick visit to Ivo in the kitchen.

  Ivo waved him toward the fire blazing merrily on the great hearth. “Well, now—you’re a sight, aren’t you? Bread? Beef? Mutton?”

  “Beef, thank you.” Geoffrey took the strip of meat, bit, and chewed. Again he heard the cow lowing in the field at Estursete. Johanna’s cow, probably, which now belonged to her son and his wife. “It’s a cow when it’s alive, isn’t it, but beouf when it comes to the nobleman’s table.”

  “And a sheep becomes mouton. The Normans brought England more than arms and armor. New names for old.” Ivo dumped a bowlful of bread dough onto the table and began pummeling it.

  Geoffrey remembered Johanna’s doughy face and set the meat down. Outside the bells rang for Compline. In t
he heavy air, the notes sounded like the clang of Wulfstan’s hammer.

  Wulfstan had enormous hands and arms. He could have strangled Johanna. Accidentally, perhaps, intending only to quiet what he saw as her gossiping tongue. But why would the smith turn murderous—had Johanna “seen” something about him?

  And what of Baldwin? Had he witnessed the murder? Then why not say so? And that scratch on his face needed an explanation.

  Wiping his hands and mouth, Geoffrey thanked Ivo again. He hurried into the cathedral and took his place beside Edward. The monks were still filing into their seats in the choir. Thomas of London stood before them all, in pride of place, gazing at the high altar. The plain dark robes he wore made his fair skin look like alabaster. His hair was dark, too, if streaked lightly with silver. But his eyes weren’t dark at all. In the light of the altar lamp they glowed like embers.

  Just which truth, Geoffrey wondered, did Thomas want him to find? Not an easy one, he knew that much.

  “How are you getting on?” whispered Edward.

  “I’m not getting on,” Geoffrey returned.

  “The justiciar will be here soon, and the king behind him, breathing fire like a dragon.” Edward nodded toward Thomas, his face sculpted like one of the effigies hidden in the side aisles. “And him cold as ice. Who’ll give way first, do you think?”

  “I’m not thinking, either,” repeated Geoffrey. But he was, turning over images of Johanna’s broken fingernail, Baldwin’s scarred face, Wulfstan’s big hands. Of well-dressed Theoric and Alice—there’s no one left but us, she’d said. And who were Godeswell and Grene? Men who’d courted Johanna for their own purposes, it seemed, as Baldwin courted the prelates at the archbishop’s table, as Thomas himself had once courted the king.

  The voices of the monks soared into the far reaches of the cathedral. Harmony layered upon harmony until the great stone pillars and the rounded arches above trembled. It was in the fullness of word and sound that mortals praised the king of kings, Geoffrey thought, so that they might be heirs of His everlasting kingdom.

  He looked curiously at the archbishop, who looked up to heaven, his face intense with a deep blistering hunger not of the flesh.

  A CHILL MORNING FOG hung over Canterbury. The upper stories of the houses leaned like watching ghosts over the street. Even the voices of the merchants crying their goods were muffled. People materialized suddenly out of the street before him, and Geoffrey had to dodge again and again as he walked resolutely toward the castle.

  There was the gateway, a dark-toothed rectangle in the expanse of the wall. It took Geoffrey only a moment to state his business and another to find himself in Baldwin’s cell. At least the priest hadn’t been imprisoned in the dungeon. And compared to the morning outside, the tiny chamber was warm, if redolent of a nearby latrine.

  Baldwin huddled on a filthy pallet, a pitiful broken man. Hard to believe he’d ever sat proudly at the archbishop’s right hand. He looked up at Geoffrey but said nothing.

  His silence was reassuring. The scratch, a coarse red furrow on his unshaven cheek, was not. Geoffrey hunkered down beside him and asked, “How did you come by that scratch on your face? A willow branch, as you walked by the river?”

  Baldwin’s red-rimmed eyes turned toward the runnels of moisture on the opposite wall. “Guilt and sin will out,” he said.

  “Yes,” Geoffrey prodded.

  “I went to talk to Johanna about the fees due the archbishop. She was in one of her fey moods, chattering on about the son who drowned and her husband’s death long years ago and Alice’s pregnancy.”

  “Alice is expecting a child?”

  “So Johanna said,” Baldwin shrugged. “And then, and then— she started spouting nonsense about the archbishop himself.”

  “Did she?”

  “I told her to watch her tongue before she strayed into heresy. But she went on like one possessed. Possessed of the demon who holds her soul now, I expect. She was a witch. How else could she foresee the future, unless she sold herself to an evil spirit?”

  “But could she foresee accurately? If not, then she was only speaking idle gossip. If so—well, we won’t know until the future comes, will we?”

  “Maybe so,” Baldwin conceded. “Maybe she was only a gossip making trouble for men, as Eve brought us all to the Fall. What is a woman, after all? Glittering mud, a stinking rose, sweet venom…”

  “Virgin mother?” Geoffrey asked dryly. “What did Johanna say about the archbishop?”

  The priest shook his head so quickly his jowls flapped. “I told you. Lunacies. Heresies. She holds her land from him, she mustn’t say such things about him, she owes him respect and veneration and—and…”

  Geoffrey almost asked, “Flattery?” but said instead, “Warnings?

  “Warnings, yes. Warnings of evil to come.”

  “There’s not a soul in England who doesn’t question the archbishop’s present path.”

  “You don’t understand!” Baldwin insisted, his eyes bulging. “I had no choice. I had to stop her. I had to shut her up. What if a demon heard her words and carried them out? I wrapped my hands around her throat and squeezed—be it on my head come the day of reckoning—but when she scratched my face it burned like a brand of shame, and I let her go. She was doubled over, choking, no longer speaking, but she was alive when I left her.”

  “You actually…” Geoffrey’s heart sank into his stomach and he grasped at a straw. “You’re sure she was still alive when you left her?”

  “Yes, as God is my witness, yes. It was when I came back to my senses and went back to her house that I found her dead. I touched her, hoping I could rouse her enough to make her last confession and save her soul, but she was already growing cold.” Baldwin leaned back against the wall, shrinking like a deflated bladder. “She mustn’t say such things about the archbishop. He’s our lord and master. I had no choice but to shut her mouth.”

  No, thought Geoffrey, Thomas of London wasn’t their lord and master, merely his representative. And he could imagine what Johanna’s warnings were—Henry was quite capable of bringing Thomas to trial on some charge dating back to his days as Chancellor, simply to break his power as archbishop.

  Groaning like an old man, Geoffrey stood, called for the jailer, and wended his way through the castle’s corridors back to the street. Today he couldn’t see the towers of the cathedral, only a few uncertain rooftops in the smoke-tinged fog. Although whether the fog was inside or outside his own mind he couldn’t say.

  No wonder Baldwin didn’t want to take an oath that he hadn’t harmed Johanna. He had. And Geoffrey had only the priest’s word he hadn’t killed her. He had to find someone else in the village—a human being, not a demon—who might want to see her dead. Who’d chanced upon Johanna weakened by Baldwin and who’d seized his opportunity, adding new bruises to those already on her throat.

  What if Theoric, for example, wanted to hasten his inheritance? But as Johanna’s son he already had use of the land and its income—why commit matricide? And with a child on the way who would in turn inherit…

  The thud of hooves and the jangling of armor shattered Geoffrey’s deliberations. Four horses and their riders loomed over him. He skipped sideways. Ah, Hugh de Morville and his retainers. The nobleman was on his way to the bishop’s palace, no doubt, there to contest his rank against Thomas’s. At least the king and the archbishop—and Theoric Frelonde—agreed on one thing, that the arrogance of the nobles needed to be curbed. If the meek would inherit the earth, what would the proud inherit?

  And Geoffrey answered cynically, large estates, entire counties, countries, and their crowns. “Sir Hugh,” he called.

  De Morville’s craggy face peered down at him. “Gervase,” he returned, his slight nod bracketing Geoffrey’s rank between a bow and a push into the gutter.

  “I’m Geoffrey. Geoffrey of Norwich…” The knight and his men disappeared creaking and clanking into the fog.

  Rolling his eyes, Geoffrey stro
de on toward Estursete. Ger-vase, Geoffrey, it was all the same to de Morville. But then, what was a name? Some called the archbishop “Thomas Becket” after his father. And Wulfstan’s children might well be “Smith” whether they were smiths or not. New names for old, as Ivo had said.

  There was Saint Peter’s church. This afternoon Johanna would be laid to rest beside its walls. What a shame that the entire family was gone, with Alice’s brother drowned in the river before she and Theoric were married…

  Geoffrey stopped dead beside the church gate. Wait a minute. What would it matter to the Frelonde family if Alice’s brother had drowned? A sad occurrence, yes, but—but… Edith said Johanna had a son and a daughter. Baldwin said Johanna was chattering about her son who drowned. Wulfstan said, Godeswell, for one, he flattered her and Alice and got what he wanted, didn’t he?

  Geoffrey bolted through the gate and wrenched open the heavy oaken door. Edith stood just inside, her hand extended as though she were about to push it open herself. “Well then, young man, you’ve come to see Johanna again. No hurry, she’s not going anywhere.”