I nodded. “And that he was running from his past.”
“At least he wanted to hide it well away. Would a man like him run away?”
“Maybe,” I said, raising the cask. It was half-full. After I took a drink, I continued: “But probably not.”
“So it wasn’t fear that made him hole up in the monastery,” Winston said, and took the cask.
“Shame seems more likely,” I said. “Given the second word on the pewter plate. Hard to think of a worse insult for a man. A nithing is someone who’s broken a code of honor. A coward, a villain, someone who would be publicly scolded, stigmatized. It would not make you afraid. It would make you ashamed.”
“A nobleman like yourself would know more about that than me,” Winston said.
Let him tease. I remembered what my brother Harding had said: The nithing is the most wretched of men.
“How would someone become a nithing?” Winston asked.
I shrugged and said, “Killing someone dishonestly, surrendering your master in the face of the enemy, fleeing from battle…”
Winston added to my list, his eyes half-closed as he brainstormed. “Letting down a friend, abusing women or children, breaking his word…”
“Yup,” I agreed, taking another drink. “Well, that certainly narrows it down.”
Winston heard the sarcasm in my voice and smiled. “Well, we know one thing about what he did.”
“It cost him his life.”
“Yes, presumably,” Winston said. “But that’s not what I was thinking of.”
I thought it over.
“His hand,” I said.
“That too,” Winston said, sitting up. “His right hand, his sword hand.”
“He deserted in battle,” I said with a nod and then continued: “Which cost someone his life. He did run, and his flight from the battlefield meant that someone—his chieftain?—fell. How many chieftains have fallen in recent years? And of them, how many were let down when the enemy grew too strong by men who broke their oaths?”
“Hundreds of hundreds,” Winston said. “But that’s not what I was thinking of. His name!”
“Erik? The Eternal Ruler? Well, he certainly was full of himself, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“No,” Winston said, shaking his head. “The name he chose.”
“Godfrid? God’s Peace? You mean he was seeking peace with God.” Now I was following.
“Yes, many men who seek out a monastic life do that. But this Godfrid was already calling himself that before he arrived. Edgar confirmed that.”
“So a villain atones with God and seeks peace in the monastery, but he gets killed anyway? And why would he hide the pewter plate and the belt buckle?”
“The buckle I understand,” Winston said. “Even a man who wants to bury his past often feels a need to hold on to one thing, something that can tie him to his history like a thread, for when he misses his past more than he wants to forget it. But why the pewter plate?” Winston paused.
“Maybe,” he continued after a bit. “Maybe he knew himself and knew he would have days when he felt he had already atoned not just with God, but with mankind. And on those days, he would take out his plate to remind himself of his crime.”
“Which was so bad that he didn’t think he could find peace, at least not with mankind.” I said. “And maybe not with God either. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe he chose the name Godfrid not because he’d already atoned with Our Lord, but because he was seeking that atonement.”
Winston nodded and picked up where I’d left off. “And then his past caught up with him last night. Someone didn’t want to make up with him.”
“Yes,” I said and flung my arms up. “So all we have to do now is find out who this was. Could it have been Simon?”
“I doubt it,” Winston said. “He doesn’t seem like a killer. But if he did do it, I think our original idea might have been right: that it was because of the way Godfrid made the sign of the cross.”
“What about Edmund?” I suggested.
“The nobleman who became a prior?” Winston stuck out his lower lip. “More likely. For the same reason, but maybe he also thought that Godfrid would put up the most opposition to him and his own abbot and their designs on the Brixworth monastery.”
“And he can tell a lie,” I pointed out.
“That he can. He was there when the body was found. The best explanation he could give would be that he had just found the man dead. The question is, then, whether he or Simon would break their monastic vows and commit murder.”
“Maybe they got someone else to do it?” I suggested.
“Wulfgar, yes, their spearman,” Winston said, narrowing his eyes at me and then nodding. “Would he kill for them?”
I thought it over. I remembered what he’d said that first night.
“Definitely not,” I said. “He doesn’t care much about the comings and goings of the nobility or prominent monks. Besides, he would hardly use another man’s sword.”
“Unless he knew how to hide his tracks. Actually, though, I agree with you, but for a different reason. Edmund and Simon are both too haughty to entrust such an act to a common soldier.”
“How did the murderer manage to avoid making a mess in all that blood?” I asked. This question had been bothering me.
“Godfrid was unconscious. Of course his arm jerked around in spasms of pain, but if the murderer just stepped well back after chopping off his hand, it shouldn’t have been much of a problem.”
Maybe. I would keep an eye out for any bloodstained clothes we might find tucked away… although everyone we’d talked to this morning was wearing the same clothes I’d seen them in last night.
“And then there’s Ælfgar,” I said.
“Hmm,” Winston said. “The jarl’s thane, who may be aware that we have an ulterior assignment. He’s a nobleman from Mercia, who could easily have recognized Godfrid as the man who had failed some mutual friend or chieftain. Ælfgar is a man who would kill without hesitation and who has evaded our questions. But he will have to come back and answer them soon.”
Chapter 20
We strolled back through the village to the fat woman’s farm and returned the empty cask to Gudrun, who still didn’t say a word to us. Then we loafed along, because—as Winston had put it as he put the birch stopper back in the empty cask—it wasn’t like we were in a hurry. We had to wait for Ælfgar to come back.
That the village was prosperous was evident in part from the well-maintained farmhouses and outbuildings, with their fully thatched roofs and freshly tarred post-and-plank walls. The grain stacks in the crofts were taller than a man, each individual sheaf carefully positioned and the stack top-dressed against the rains, which would come sooner or later.
As we passed in front of Elvina’s farm, I scanned the area around the buildings and saw the lass standing by a tabletop placed atop a couple of sawhorses. Her mother stood next to her. They both wore coarse aprons and were busily plucking a couple of chickens, so that feathers billowed around them like fog. Other birds lay on the table in front of them, still unplucked, so apparently Elvina was paying for taking the whole morning off.
Their backs were to me, so I pointed the lass out to Winston with my index finger. I stopped in surprise when rather than simply accept the information, he turned and started walking toward them.
Neither of the women noticed him, preoccupied as they were. So he walked around the makeshift table, with me following him. The mother didn’t look up until we were right in front of her.
“May God lighten your work,” Winston said politely.
Elvina looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and I grinned at her, but it was her mother who responded to Winston’s greeting with a brief thank-you.
“You’re slaughtering chickens at this time of year?” Winston asked, blowing on an errant feather.
At first I didn’t think the woman was going to answer him. Then she explained that these were last year�
��s laying hens, who were now past their prime, having served as brood hens and hatched this year’s chicks.
“And now they have to die so they won’t take feed away from the chicks,” Winston stated. He seemed quite knowledgeable about raising poultry. “My name’s Winston. I’m a manuscript illuminator.”
I could tell that the woman didn’t have the slightest idea what that was.
“I’m currently staying up at the monastery,” Winston went on.
The woman raised her shoulders ever so slightly, obviously too polite to say that she didn’t give an autumn herring about where he lived.
“My man here spoke with your daughter this morning.”
Finally he got a reaction. The woman raised her head from her work and glared at me. I tried to adopt my most appeasing look, flashing her my best smile.
“A grown man, keeping a young girl from her work!” she chided, her voice not exactly pleasant, but at least not angry.
I was about to defend myself and point out that when I met the girl, she was already well along with shirking her responsibilities, but Winston brushed me aside.
“I’m afraid the good Halfdan takes kindly to others who are fond of idleness,” he said, stifling any objection I might have made with a stern look. “But I would really appreciate it if I could ask your daughter a question.”
The woman turned the now-plucked bird over and flopped it down on the table before thrusting her right hand into its rump and pulling its innards out. I turned my head away from the stench of dead chicken, but Winston was apparently unaffected.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
The mother responded with a shrug.
“Elvina,” Winston began. “It is Elvina, isn’t it?”
The girl pouted at me and then nodded at Winston.
“You told Halfdan about the nobleman you saw meet some men on horseback. Had you ever seen him before?”
The mother stiffened and raised her bloody right hand toward her daughter.
“Nobleman?” she squawked. “What is this about you and noblemen?”
“Nothing,” Elvina mumbled, sounding annoyed. “It’s not like I could do anything about him riding out in the open where I could see him.”
“And that was all?” The mother’s voice was sharp as a newly sharpened sickle.
“Yes,” came the girl’s sulky response.
“Well, then answer the man.”
“I didn’t recognize him,” Elvina said.
“And you’re sure of that?” Winston asked.
Elvina nodded irritably.
“We don’t rub shoulders with the nobility,” the mother added.
“Of course not,” Winston said placatingly, and then continued: “I never caught your name.”
“Huh?” the mother grunted, her lips opened in surprise. “I gave you my name, and my husband’s.”
“No,” Winston pointed out.
The woman pulled herself together, perhaps realizing how impolite she’d been.
“I’m Estrid. My husband’s name is Ribald.”
“He’s obviously a talented farmer,” Winston said, admiring the many buildings belonging to the well-maintained farm.
“The best,” Estrid said arrogantly and straightened her back. “Abbot Turold always wants to talk to him.”
“Yes, Turold mentioned that to me,” Winston said. He can be a very convincing liar.
“Ah, but I’m forgetting my manners,” Estrid said, drying her bloody hand on her apron. “Elvina, go fetch a cask of mead and two cups for our guests.”
I stifled a snort. Winston is always accusing me of using my wiles on women when it suits me, as though he would never do anything like that.
The mead was strong and sweet, and we each drank two cups before we said good-bye and walked on, leaving the farmer’s wife in a somewhat better mood than when we’d arrived.
At the section of the village square where our retinue’s followers had settled, a haze of smoke lingered over the grass, from the cooking fires of the ones who could afford to buy food requiring cooking. Laundry hung everywhere from poles and the strings stretched between them. The riffraff were making full use of the good weather and the time they had to spend waiting to pound the worst of the filth from their clothes.
We saw the smithy across the square, its smoke rising straight up. A couple of men chatted in front of the stone building. This village was so rich that the blacksmith’s shop could be built of fireproof material. We heard hammer strikes from inside and shouts as the blacksmith gave his apprentices instructions about how to tend the bellows.
I tilted my head back and thought again that I could have had a life like this. I could have been walking through the square of my own village, listening to my own blacksmith working with iron and celebrating the harvest my own farmers had reaped.
Winston walked along at my side whistling, something I’d noticed him doing when he was very relaxed. When he abruptly stopped whistling and inhaled deeply, I stopped.
He responded to my surprised “Hmm?” by pointing with his chin. I looked in that direction and saw a redheaded woman come riding into the square. I scanned the area behind and around her. “She’s riding alone!” I said, shocked.
Winston was already at a run. He accidentally toppled a toddler, who fell on his bottom howling. Then he jumped over a cooking fire and reached the woman on horseback before I’d even gotten the child back up onto his feet.
By the time I reached them, they were in a tight embrace. The horse calmly tossed its head, not having budged a step from the moment Alfilda slid off into Winston’s arms. Someone had trained that animal well.
“What in the world are you doing here?” Winston asked, after he had relaxed his arms around the alewife. He held her out away from himself to look at her.
“Looking for you,” Alfilda replied.
“Well, yes, but—”
“I’m hungry and thirsty,” she interrupted him.
For once my master was at a loss for what to do. He looked around, dazed.
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we could coax a little ale and bread from Estrid.”
“Estrid?” he repeated, staring at me blankly.
“The farmer’s wife,” I reminded him. “Elvina’s mother.”
“Oh, right. Yes, of course.”
I led the way, leading Alfilda’s horse by the reins, followed by those two, who walked hand in hand.
There was only one chicken left on the table. When Estrid heard our plea for food and drink for Alfilda, she nodded obligingly and left the plucking to Elvina, who stuck out her pointy tongue at me. I responded in kind and then tied the horse to a solid iron ring built into the wall of the farmhouse.
Alfilda sat down on the bench next to the farmhouse door, which was wide enough so Winston could sit next to her. I rolled a firewood log over in front of them and sat down on it.
Estrid soon brought ale and bread. While Alfilda chewed, the rest of us drank the sweet, malty ale, since the farmwife had been shrewd enough to bring a pitcher and three birchbark cups out with her.
Winston looked as if he were sitting on needles, and as soon as Alfilda swallowed her last mouthful of bread, he asked her again what she was doing in Brixworth.
“Well,” she replied, “I sold the inn and came looking for you.”
“Sold the inn?” Winston’s eyes grew wide and he looked at me, dumbfounded. For my part, I noted that when she said you, she meant him.
“Why?” he asked her.
Winston was a smart man. He certainly noticed a lot of things before I did. But this was a man who did not understand women, despite his having quite a way with them. I gave Alfilda a look of approval.
“Why?” Winston repeated, wondering what the look I just gave Alfilda was supposed to mean.
And then the cat suddenly seemed to get her tongue. She raised her cup and hid behind it but eventually had to lower it. Coy woman that she was, she still didn’t answer his question but instead asked w
here he was heading once he was done with his job for the king?
“Where I’m… how in the world would I know that?” Winston said, flinging up his hands in a gesture of utter cluelessness.
“You don’t know because there will be a new job, which will send you somewhere else. And that place…” Alfilda gave me a pleading look.
I got the message. She wanted me to make up some excuse and leave them alone, but I’d be darned if I was going to do that. This was way too much fun.
“That place…?” Winston shook his head, not understanding. “What do you mean ‘that place’?”
“That place won’t be Oxford,” Alfilda said. Then she stood up abruptly and walked away from us. Obviously her courage had failed her at the last moment.
Winston stared from me to her and back again. I looked right back at him, raising my eyebrows and smiling widely. And my master, who always liked to point out that if you could make out the details, you could envision the bigger picture, sat there opening and closing his mouth like a fish on land, staring again from her to me.
“Do you understand any of this?” he finally asked.
For a moment I toyed with the idea of saying no to see if Alfilda would find the courage to just tell him point-blank how she felt about him. But ultimately I took pity on them.
“If you went somewhere other than Oxford,” I explained, speaking slowly as if to a simpleton, “that would leave her waiting for you in Oxford in vain, Winston.”
“Waiting in vain… for what?”
Yet again I raised my eyebrows, but I remained silent, as I enjoyed watching the wheels turn in his mind. When he finally figured it out, all the color drained out of his face. Every muscle in his face went slack. His eyes seemed to stop working and his lower lip quivered.
I smiled at him encouragingly but might as well have been sitting on the moon for all the notice he took of me. He had eyes only for Alfilda. She stood a little ways away with her back to us, her shoulders drooping.
People say that young love is beautiful and innocent. Well, these two weren’t innocent, and beautiful wasn’t the first word that came to mind when I thought of Winston, but they were cute, standing there lost in their embrace, the rest of the world long forgotten.
Oathbreaker (The King's Hounds series) Page 15
