by Dave Duncan
“So now you know how to open that warded door and most others like it, but do not let anyone hear or see how you do so. It’s a secret of the craft. Have you learned something?”
“Yes. Thank you, most gracious master. I will remember it with gratitude while I kick your guts out.”
I ignored that. “But here’s something you can do that I can’t. Pull over a stool, climb up, and take a very careful look at those shelves. Do not touch anything. They’re dusty, as you can see. The rest of this place seems sparkling clean, so I expect Sage Archibald had a maid dust everywhere once a week or so, but wouldn’t let her touch his potions. I want to know if the poison in the wine came from here. Check if there’s marks in the dust where something’s missing, or has recently been moved.”
Without a word, my reluctant assistant thumped the satchel and poisoned wine flask down on the table and did as he had been told—for once. I set my staff aside and clambered up the ladder to the loft. Air slots in the upper portions of the shutters admitted enough light to show a chamber both larger and more grandly furnished than the count’s withdrawing room. Besides the spacious bed stood a stool, a clothes chest, and a four-branched candelabra. A thickly woven rug covered much of the floor; the walls were hung with tapestries, and the bed itself was draped with brocade curtains, presently drawn back to reveal an untidy heap of pillows, bedclothes, and a thick fleece mattress. The bed’s rumpled state was in marked contrast to the persnickety tidiness of the rest of the cottage. Sage Archibald de la Mare had died at the noontime dinner; had he been a late riser, or had he been using the bed for morning entertainment with the person who had drunk from the second goblet? Or had he been sick that day and died of natural causes?
The chamber pot had been emptied, which might be significant.
Moving awkwardly around the room, I opened the shutters for better light and peered in the closet, where I learned that the sage had owned no less than three fine robes and a spare sage’s green cape—assuming he had been wearing another when he died. Most curious of all were some flimsy garments, loosely woven of so fine a thread that I thought it must be silk, which I had heard of but never seen. Below those lay a pair of man’s shoes and several pairs of fur-lined slippers, some man size, some dainty. I tucked all these back in the closet and went back down.
Still no books!
William was still standing on a stool beside the shelves, hunched over under the low beams.
I said, “You’re in luck, Squire. The bed’s wide enough for both of us.”
There was nothing improper about men sharing beds when necessary in those days, any more than there is now, but I doubted that Sage Rolf would have made the same offer. William said nothing, but his skeptical glance was meant to inform me that I was the lucky one.
I chuckled. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“With the knights.”
“Amid the rushes, spittle, and gravy in the hall?”
“No worse than that kennel you were in.”
“But you were lucky,” I said. “If the sage had let you board with him, you might have drunk of the poison before he did.”
William conceded the point with a grimace. “I thought of that. I don’t know where my baggage went, or his. I didn’t bring much, but the hauberk and sword are mine.” Legacies of his knighthood training days? Chain mail was enormously expensive, so who had outfitted the bedeviled squire? I still did not know why William had switched from knights’ training to apprentice sage. In his eyes that would have been a huge demotion.
“We’ll ask when we go to the keep for dinner, and if dinner doesn’t happen soon there will be a third sudden death.”
My attempt at humor was ignored. “I found something up here, Saxon. There’s a gap and the dust shows that a jar or bottle has been there until recently. If you would . . .”
I was already handing the poison flask up to him.
“Yes, it fits. Exactly. You said the tincture was made with wine? So the murderer just took the whole bottle of tincture and left it by the sage’s bedside!”
Why did that feel more horrible than adding poison to a genuine flask of wine? No wonder Rolf had swallowed a lethal dose before he realized, for the tincture would be highly concentrated. And who else knew how to open the sanctum door? As William was handing down the flask, I saw the underside.
“Wait! Hold it higher, don’t tip it. See what’s written on the bottom?”
“You read it. The light’s bad up here.”
If William’s reading ability was so poor that he couldn’t sound out a simple word like that, then he would be no help with the serious incantations I hoped to use to find the killer. True, the light was bad up there and the writing a mere squiggle, probably made with a piece of lead. I took it to the window.
The word was Aconit, but the gap it had come from was nowhere near the left end of the top row, where the alphabet should start.
“Put it back where it should be, now we can identify it. How are the ones next to it labeled?”
William took the jar from one side and held it so I could read the name on the base: Misteltan. Then the other side: Mustum.
“The sage was inconsistent. He labeled the monkshood Aconit in French, but filed it between mistletoe named in the old tongue, and mustard named in Latin. But now we know where the poison came from to kill Rolf.”
I was getting somewhere. Rolf had been poisoned in the count’s solar with monkshood. A sage did not jump to conclusions. Sage Archibald might or might not have been poisoned, but not necessarily with the same toxin. “What about the other gaps?”
To extend his search, William had to descend, move the stool, and then climb up again; he checked all the other spaces and reported that none showed incriminating clean areas. By then I had located a tinder box and lit a candle. He repeated his search with that and met with no more success.
“None of the others look as if they have been moved, Saxon!” Someone thundered on the door, hard enough to make it rattle on its hinges.
“Time to play squire again,” I said.
William glowered, but jumped down.
“Wait!” I said. “I expect you are about to meet the most disfigured man you have ever set eyes on, Sir Scur. Be gracious, because we need his help.”
William opened the door. Without a blink, he bowed.
“Sir Scur? Pray enter, sir. The adept is expecting you.”
“And so were you.” In came the ragged ogre—gray-bearded, one-eyed, and hideous as a nightmare. There was nothing wrong with his voice though; it boomed. “Half a man told me half a leg wants half a head.” Scur is a Saxon name, and he spoke in the old tongue.
“That is no less than the whole truth,” I said.
“What more can you ask for?”
“What more can you offer?”
“If you ask but half a question, you may lack all of an answer.” The jester stumped over to the nearest stool and balanced his bulk on it, overlapping all around. “Ask the wrong questions and you’ll get the right answers but fail to profit by them.”
A jester could probably keep this up all day.
“Then answer me this: who else, other than Sage Archibald, came into this sanctum?”
The old man leered toothlessly. “Why, half the world, Adept.”
“A ladies’ man, was he?”
“As most men are, given the chance.”
“But not all?” I said, thinking of Master of Horse Alwin.
“Some hunt in other forests. Those rarely have a game bag as fat as Archibald’s.”
That was a clue to something. “What was the secret of his success, do you know?”
“Aye. Any man can make mistakes, but he could unmake them too.”
William was standing behind Scur, owl-eyed as he tried to follow the patter.
I took pity on him and switched to French for a moment. “Squire, why don’t you go and locate your sword and baggage and Sage Rolf ’s, may he rest in peace? Ask for servants to
bring it here. Also find the bottler, Wacian. Tell him I want to speak with him, and we need a fire here and a couple of days’ fuel. They’ll pay more heed to you than they will to me.” That unsubtle flattery might not be true while I wore my adept cape, but William brightened and departed.
As soon as the door closed, I got back to foolery. “I know Rolf was given poison, so I suspect Archibald was too. Did you see him take sick in the hall?”
“My good eye did not, for it sees only the good in the world. My bad eye sees nothing.”
“I was told some pages carried him out. Do you know where they took him?”
“Far away, and now he is much farther away.”
“Where did he die?”
“Why, on his deathbed, young sir.”
Curiously, I felt that the fool did want to help, he just couldn’t make a direct statement. It was no surprise that a bang with a mace would scramble a man’s brains forevermore, and after half a lifetime as a fool, he had become addicted to speaking in circles.
A house sage would normally treat the sick, so who had tended the dying Archibald? “Did they bring him back here?”
“And who would have let them in?”
An evasive answer, but a hint that the password was not generally known. Whoever had stolen the monkshood tincture that killed Rolf must have known it.
I reached across the table and pulled the goblets closer. “Will you take a draft of wine with me, sir?”
Scur stared at me, his solitary eye seeming to wobble, as if looking for a way to escape. Finally he said, “Half-head will drink the second half if half-leg drinks the first half.” He was saying that he would trust no wine bottle in this place. Nor would I, but I knew that the Rolf poison had come from here. What was his reason to be cautious?
“I think your half-head works better than my whole one, because I haven’t found any wine here; not yet, anyway. Do you know where Archibald kept it?”
“For safekeeping, he stored it by choice in his belly.”
“Aye,” I said patiently. “Before that?”
“Before Archibald, Sage Charles kept it in yon chest.” But Scur also shrugged as he spoke, making the simplest answer he had given yet.
“You have not been in here since then?
“Would a seeker of beauty ask me in?”
“What happened to Charles?”
“He went the way we all go, so ’tis said.”
“Aye, but what was his reason?”
“He had no reason, for that he lost his reason.” The jester evidently liked that jest, for his eye glinted and his distorted mouth twisted in what might have been a smile.
“A reasonable reason. Who is Count Richard’s heir?”
“Why, his son, who else?”
“His son’s name?”
“Sir Stephen.”
Short questions seemed to be the answer. . . .
Perdition! Re-thinking that thought, I decided this smart-aleck way of speaking must be catching. But the son was either a grown man or at least adolescent, for his name certainly dated his birth to before the day his father changed sides in the Anarchy.
“And where is he?”
“After the king.”
“Aye, but where is he?”
“After the king.”
I laughed. “How many horses back?”
“More than he would like but fewer than you’d expect.”
“Sir Scur, I was told you’d lost your wits, but your wit greatly exceeds mine. So tell me true: if someone murdered Archibald, then that same person must have murdered Rolf the next day in the fear of being unmasked by his arts. Do you know anyone who might have wanted Archibald dead?”
Unexpectedly, the old warrior heaved himself to his feet. “Aye,” he said. “Too many for half a head to hold.” He tramped over to the door and was gone.
Still, he had been surprisingly helpful until then—more helpful than Sir Hugh had expected, perhaps? I had learned that Archibald had been a ladies’ man, which did not surprise me after I had seen his bedroom. Lechery and adultery might stir up much trouble in the tightly closed society of a small castle. The count had a son at court, who would obviously be his heir, so inheritance had not been the motive for killing his brother. The potion had come from the sanctum, to which few people had access. I was making progress.
But logic alone could never solve a crime. Not all the sages from Abélard, Anselm, and Aristotle to Zeno could help me with this problem. If the killer was a sage himself, then it would be only fitting to catch him by enchantment. I reached for my satchel and took out Guy’s spell book.
chapter 16
i saw at once that reading the grimoire would be more like boar hunting than berry picking. It was a scrapbook, pages of varying ages and sizes collected—purloined, possibly— and stitched together. The pages were all of calf parchment, densely covered with minute text, edge to edge, top to bottom, and many were palimpsests, sheets scrubbed clean and reused. Most incantations were in Latin, a few in Greek or tongues I did not know yet, possibly Arabic or Hebrew. Except when the writing changed from one scribe’s hand to another’s, or even from one century’s style to another, it was hard to tell where one spell ended and another began. Most required the standard two voices, but I found some singles and a few triples. They were in no predictable order and the pages were unnumbered, so there was no helpful index.
I hesitated for a moment over Super inimicos meos, which was a solo, a defense against enemies. The thought of William throwing a punch at me and hitting invisible magical armor was tempting, but if sages could render themselves invulnerable to attack, then why had two of them succumbed to poison in the past two days? I carried on, thumbing page after page, lips moving in silence.
When I came to something called Malefice venite, “Come, villain,” I thought this should be exactly what I needed, but it was complex and required three voices. Eventually I found the one that Sage Guy had suggested, Ubi malum. Although it was long, most of the chanting was done by First Voice. The responses were short and cued by the preceding versicle, on the lines of:
Versicle: “Come and aid me with your eyes, all-seeing Argus of the thousand eyes, I task you to seek out the evil that beset me.”
Response: “I am Argus of the thousand eyes and I see what you need to see.”
Versicle: “Come, hunt by my side, great Nimrod of Shinar . . .”
And so on: Orion, Saint Eustachius, Aello, Celaeno, Ocypete, Sir Galahad, Saint Hubertus, Michael the Archangel, and a dozen other hunters and seekers, each being summoned in turn and announcing his or her presence. This was powerful magic indeed, and just reading it made my hair stir like hay in a breeze.
The room brightened as the door swung open. William entered, bowed ironically to his superior, and then said, “Enter . . . Enter . . .” until the sanctum was filled with servants: six men, one housemaid. They brought bags, bundles, firewood, the missing swords and armor. They all glanced nervously at me, so I made myself inscrutable, although not invisible, keeping my finger on my place in the book.
“You wish the woman to put fresh clothes on the bed, master?”
I nodded, and the housemaid scrambled up the ladder, brightening my day with glimpses of shapely ankles. A man went up after her and other men began tossing bundles up to him, some of which I recognized as baggage from the previous day’s journey. One of the boys hastened to the hearth and knelt to set a fire.
William came over to the table. “Sagacious Adept, Wacian the bottler and other senior servants have accompanied the gentry to the village church for the funeral mass. The rites for Sage Archibald de la Mare, that is. The mass for Sage Rolf will be held tomorrow.”
“So dinner may be a little late?”
“More than a little, I fear.”
“Well, we have much work to do, and too much food spoils the concentration.”
“Yes, master. I thank you for this wisdom.” William’s expression was mocking, not grateful, but at least he was playi
ng to the audience behind him.
“Watch that none of them tries to make off with anything,” I whispered. I was thinking of poisons, mostly, for there was little else to steal. It was highly unlikely that any servant could read the names on the bottoms of the jars or bottles, or would know what the names implied, but the castle swarmed with so many servants that they tended to be effectively invisible, like fleas.
It had not occurred to me until then that some anonymous menial could have stolen the monkshood. Without effort, I could think up several motives for a servant wanting to murder a sage. The sanctum was well kept, with no cobwebs or mouse droppings in sight, unlike several cottages in Helmdon I could think of. A sage would certainly not do his own sweeping and dusting, but no one had mentioned Archibald’s employing an adept or other cantor to assist him.
The invasion did not last long. William shut the door on the last of them and promptly dropped his lackey mask. He headed for the ladder.
“I found the chain mail and swords, but I’m going to go through the bags and see what’s missing.”
“That can wait. If anything is missing, you’ll never get it back anyway. There must be writing materials around somewhere— Stop!”
On the point of opening one of the chests, William froze.
“I haven’t checked that one for warding yet.” I rose and lurched across the room. I felt for that eerie sense of cold, but failed to find any. Then I opened it myself, to keep William from telling me to. “Clear,” I said. “I tested the other one earlier.”
I was not surprised to find that an unwarded chest contained little of interest, although there were pens, smoothed wooden panels, and ink; also slates for quick notes or teaching. A couple of those bore Latin lessons in a shaky, immature hand, but might have been there for years. A thick roll of astrological charts might be worth examining some time.
The first chest, the one I had looked in earlier, held philosophical paraphernalia: mortars and pestles, crucibles, chopping boards, silver knives for cutting mistletoe, a small crystal ball, many varied dishes.
No wine, no more silver goblets—and no books!
“Bring something to write on.”
