“Very well,” Eleanor muttered, as the headache forced her to deal more efficiently with this problem of murder. “Perhaps I should retain confidence in the wisdom of those whom I respect. Despite my aunt’s disclosure about Brother Thomas’ falseness, she has carefully reminded me that I may still have reason to trust him and win his complete and true loyalty. This knowledge of his treachery has unbalanced my better judgement and let Satan whisper ill counsel. I must trust as I have before and not dismiss either Gytha’s or Tostig’s opinion about Signy’s character, for they both have known her for many years. But if she did not kill Ivetta and Martin, who else had cause?”
The prioress slipped gingerly into her chair and held her head as the pain began to pound with more insistence. “Who knew poisons well enough? Ivetta did, and may have been skilled enough about yew to know dosages. I do not believe she was the killer,” she whispered. “Signy went to old Tibia when she quickened. That suggests she is ignorant of such matters. Who, then, knew herbs and potions and understood them well enough that she could kill with efficiency and stealth? Who had no one to seek revenge for some hurt on her behalf…?”
Suddenly a possible answer came to her, and she begged God to forgive her for caring more about her petty jealousies and pride than putting facts together to catch a killer.
Headache now forgotten, the prioress called to Gytha and, when the maid arrived, told her to summon both Crowner Ralf and Brother Thomas to her chambers as quickly as possible. The sharing of everything each had learned and what the sum of those facts might mean was long overdue.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“She was in her hut, I swear it!” The young thatcher trembled under Ralf’s fierce look.
Hands on hips, Signy’s eyes glittered with equal fury. “Why should you not believe him?” she retorted, tossing her head at the youth. “Tibia was in great pain, and I asked him to carry her home until Brother Thomas could come. He did so as a mercy. Has kindness now become a crime, Crowner?”
Ralf opened his mouth to reply, then opted for the wiser choice and shut it.
“There is no cause to disbelieve him,” Thomas suggested gently.
“I did not say he had lied,” the crowner growled, attempting to retain a semblance of control in this discussion.
Gaining courage from so much support, the young man bravely turned indignant. “When I laid old Tibia on her pallet, she sent me away, telling me her son would come to care for her.”
“Her son is dead,” Ralf countered.
“When her mind wanders with pain or age, she often thinks I am he,” Thomas explained.
“In any case, she is gone.” Ralf gestured at the miserable hovel. “Where did she go? Did someone come for her? Where are witnesses?”
Signy’s expression shifted to one of concern. “What could have happened to her? I have rarely seen anyone in such pain. How could she have walked anywhere?”
“Her agony ebbed and flowed. When it did ease, she moved well enough for an aged woman with such a bent back,” the monk said.
“That has been true enough, but the severity and frequency did increase of late.” Signy shook her head. “And with so much evil about, I cannot be the only one to fear the worst!”
Thomas glanced at the king’s man. “How I wish you and I had thought to speak together sooner. Now we don’t know where she has gone or why…”
“Perhaps you should find her, Crowner,” Signy snapped. “Or are you the only person in the village to have forgotten we have a murderer amongst us? We tremble while you do nothing.”
Ralf winced. “My men and I are not ignoring the danger,” he replied, and then turned to Thomas. “Your prioress did not say what we should do if we did not find the herb woman. If her theory is correct, we had best seek Hob or…”
“What new crime now rattles the wits of our valiant crowner?” Hob sauntered toward the group clustered around the old woman’s hut, his dog trotting close behind.
“At least that is one less person we have to worry about,” Thomas whispered to his companion.
“Depends on whether we find another corpse and whose it is,” Ralf replied softly, then moved apart from the group and gestured for the blacksmith to follow him. “I would speak to you at some distance away, Hob.”
“So you can shackle me and take me off for hanging?” Hob stepped back. “I think not!”
“I give you my word that he wishes only to ask you a question,” Thomas said.
Hob did not move. His dog began to bark.
“”S Blood! A man of God has sworn an oath to my intentions, and you dare to doubt it?” Ralf stepped forward. “I am no boy that spends the day playing games. Come with me as ordered or I shall…”
Hob clenched his fist.
“I share your misgivings about the king’s man,” Signy called out, casting a dark look in the crowner’s direction, “but Brother Thomas has earned the trust of the village. I’d take his word on this.”
The monk put a restraining hand on his friend’s arm. “If it will save time, let me ask the question. We have little enough to spare if another life may be lost.”
Ralf retreated a short distance.
Thomas walked slowly toward the blacksmith, avoiding the now growling cur’s eyes. “Tell your dog that I mean you no harm,” he said softly.
Hob turned to pet the creature. “He’ll not bite, Brother. Let him sniff and he’ll stay, unless I tell him otherwise.”
The dog calmed, Thomas put a hand on the man’s shoulder and directed him some few steps away. “We must find old Tibia,” he said after a moment.
“Since you ask, I assume she’s not in that hut. Why should I know where she’s wandered off? I’ve been working hard at the forge like any honest man to earn my bread, Brother. Now that my brother is gone, I labor for two.”
“Where is Will?”
Hob tensed. “Why do you ask?”
“He may be in danger.”
The blacksmith shook off the monk’s hand. “From the crowner, aye!”
“I swear not on my hope of heaven. Whatever your reason to dislike the king’s man, in this matter he is on your side.”
The man hesitated, then bent his head. “Brother, may God strike me if I lie to you. I do not know where Will has gone. I told the Crowner this. When my brother left, he said he’d return when the killer was found. Nothing more.”
“Would he have gone far from here?”
“I doubt it. He believed dragons lived outside Tyndal village and only the priory kept them away.”
“If you do not know his hiding place, tell me who might? Surely someone must. How else could he learn when it was safe to come home?”
Now sweating with panic, Hob gestured helplessly.
“Do you have any suspicion, no matter how vague? If not you, might he tell the innkeeper, the thatcher, some woman, a…” Thomas was counting off guesses on his fingers.
“I do not know and didn’t think to ask! It just wasn’t me.”
“Where did you hide as boys?” Thomas asked, desperation evident in his voice. “I am not from here. I would not know these things.”
“We had many places, Brother. I don’t know which are still here or if he would have chosen any of them.”
“When the stream near the village swells with rain, it carves out hollows and caves in the banks. Might he be in one of those?”
“And the stream just as often destroys those things the next year. I swear to you that I don’t know where he might have hidden!”
“Help us find all the places, then,” Thomas said, gesturing for Ralf to join them. “Cuthbert will search as well. With four of us, we can each look in a different spot.”
“If Will’s life is in danger, why not call the whole village out to find him? Someone may even know where he hides.” Suspicion warred with panic in Hob’s eyes. “Or do you want to keep secret what blows you will rain down on my brother if you catch him?”
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Ralf shook his head. “The person who knows your brother’s hiding spot will not be here, Hob. As for calling out more men, that would take time to organize efficiently. I think the four of us will find your brother faster if we start now.” The crowner pointed to the path leading to the stream. “You go in that direction, and I will send Cuthbert over there.”
“Why not send out others?” Thomas asked in a low voice. “It would not take that long…”
“I want justice, monk,” Ralf replied. “As Signy has suggested, the village is frightened. Frightened men hang first, then ask if they did the right thing. As for Will’s safety, we may have naught to worry about.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Cuthbert’s mind was not on murder. The air was hot, and he slashed away at the lush underbrush with minimal enthusiasm. A soft spray of dampness misted his face from the cut greens. With unconscious pleasure at the unexpected coolness on such a warm day, he stopped and listened for a moment to the rushing of the nearby stream and hum of lazy insects. Nay, he no longer fancied rousting out thieves and murderers, although he knew he would continue to do whatever the crowner wanted.
Ralf was a good fellow. Unlike his one arrogant brother, Sir Sheriff, and the other, lordling of the Church, the crowner cursed those who protected their own while condemning the evil of others with sanctimonious ardor. He also told good tales of the soldiering life, while drinking at the inn like any other man, and never arrested someone just because he was the popular choice for hanging. Querulous the crowner might be, but Cuthbert would take an honest, bad-tempered fellow any day over a sweet-smiling hypocrite.
And hadn’t Ralf just told Cuthbert that he needed a bailiff, then asked if he would take the job even though the sergeant could barely read and could not write? “I need someone who knows how to run a farm, and your father tells me you’re as good as your elder brothers at that,” Ralf had said to him and slapped him on the back. As a landless man, Cuthbert would have been a fool to refuse—and foolish he most certainly was not!
Due to bad stewardship in the past, the land, now owned by the crowner, had brought little enough good to the village. If he ran it well, the farm would be more fruitful, and Ralf would be pleased to hire more poor men at harvest time. Given time and hard work, Cuthbert would also gain much status in the village for his success.
His mind more on his new position than where he was walking, the sergeant stumbled and his foot dropped through the forest floor into an invisible hole. Cursing from the pain, he fell awkwardly to the ground, then lay still, praying that the sharp stabbing in his ankle meant the injury was only a sprain.
“Aie!” he groaned, and then let his thoughts go back to happier things. Might he not even seek a wife, he wondered, swatting at gnats as they swarmed in a beam of light. He would have position enough now, and there was one lass he had always fancied, even as a boy, taking her nosegays of forest flowers until her father had chased him away.
Smiling at the thought of her, Cuthbert stared through the leaves above him to the pale blue sky of an East Anglian summer afternoon. She was a pretty one too, that girl, and not married yet, although rumors had circulated that her father wanted to marry her to the tanner’s son.
The pain eased and the sergeant pulled himself upright with care. Testing his ankle, he decided it was not broken. “But no reason to chance a break,” he muttered. “I’ll quit the forest and find the clearing where I won’t injure myself again.”
Tanner’s son? A good match if one discounted the stench, Cuthbert thought as he found a clear path without things to trip him up. But wouldn’t marriage to a bailiff be a finer one? The crowner might even sell him a bit of land in time. With some work, that would suit a wife and a few babes. If she was even half the woman he knew her to be, she would work alongside him with as much eagerness as he to build a home and some standing in Tyndal village. And he had always thought she liked him well enough even when he was just a peasant’s younger son with no land and few prospects.
The pain in his ankle eased with the balm of sweet imaginings, and Cuthbert now thrashed more eagerly through the lesser brush, keen to finish searching his assigned area so he could return to the village and seek out that father who had once scorned his blushing attentions to the daughter.
At least his heart was filled with joy until he burst into that clearing and found a corpse swelling in the summer heat.
Chapter Forty
Hob wept.
With practiced gentleness, Thomas pulled the eyelids down over dead eyes. “His soul fled not all that long ago,” he said, touching the back of the dead man’s neck where the sun had not kept the skin warm. Although he spoke with calmness, anger honed an edge to his words.
“What killed him, Brother? Can you tell?” Ralf stood slightly apart as if understanding that his presence might not be appreciated by the blacksmith as he grieved over his dead brother.
“I would guess it was the same poison that killed both Martin and Ivetta.” The monk stretched out and picked up a small jar on the ground close by, then sniffed at it. He poured a few remaining drops into his hand. “See the seeds from the berries? Yew, or at least it looks enough like what Sister Anne showed us.” Carefully, he wiped his hand on the grass. “There he vomited.” He pointed. “From the stains on his clothes and the rank stench, I’d say his bowels loosened with great violence.”
Ralf scowled. “Who all knew he was here? Was it more than one?”
“Our prioress had the right of it, I think. It was but one person, and that over there should prove it, Crowner.” Thomas stood up and walked to pick up a forked root topped with dried, apple-like fruit from the ground nearby. “Mandrake. A remedy for impotence,” he said. “See where it’s cut? Methinks he was given a small bit and told to wash it down with the poisoned drink. If we looked, we might find more of it growing around, but that matters not. His killer could have brought it or even left the mandrake for Will to find. Arranging a meeting point within easy walking distance of the village would have been important. He must have been told to come here.”
Hob wailed in anguish. “While you baited him and harassed me, the murderer remained free!” He jumped up and shook his fist at Ralf. “Now my brother is dead, and you have still done nothing.”
“Nothing?” Ralf roared. “Take blame enough on yourselves for acting like dishonest men!”
Hob lunged at the crowner.
Thomas grabbed the blacksmith around the waist and tried to hold the struggling man from attacking. “You cannot bring Will’s soul back by striking a king’s man!”
“Will and I were honest enough with you,” Hob shouted. “Tell me where we lied.”
“Your brother fled. Men who do that are usually guilty. You claimed you did not know where he went, and, when I asked who might know, you named no one. Yet Tibia must have learned.” Ralf glowered.
Hob calmed, a shocked expression replacing his fury.
Thomas stepped back.
“Why did you not tell me they had spoken again just before he disappeared? I should have been told earlier by you that he promised he would find whatever she needed to cure his impotency. Mandrake is the plant. She must have told him where to find it and that she would meet him here. She knew. I did not.”
“In truth, I did not think his conversations with the old witch meant anything.” His anger now dampened by sorrow more profound than any insult, Hob turned around and fell back on his knees beside his brother’s body. “Now you must know that Will was innocent of any crime. For all his faults, he was my brother, and I loved him.”
“He was obsessed with shame at his failure with the whore as you well knew…”
Thomas raised a cautioning hand to the crowner.
Ralf nodded and fell silent, then glanced down at the scarred dog snuffling and whining at Hob’s feet. “Very well. He was innocent enough of killing Martin and Ivetta, at least,” he finally said.
“What man did
this then? You said my brother was in danger. Now he’s dead. Who?”
Thomas looked up at Ralf, warning him with a small shake of the head to remain silent.
“She cannot have gone far, monk,” the crowner said.
“Be silent, Ralf!” Thomas hissed.
“She?” Hob’s eyes grew wide with horror as the truth finally broke through the walls of his grief. “That’s why you were looking for the herb woman, wasn’t it? Tibia is the killer!”
Ralf chose not to reply. Thomas could not.
To Hob, the cause of their silence was irrelevant. The fact of it was answer enough. With a cry of brute anguish, he jumped to his feet and tore off into the forest, his dog racing behind him.
Thomas turned to Ralf. “We must follow,” he urged. “You should not have spoken so plainly.”
“Let him go,” the crowner replied, not moving except to rest one hand on his sword. “I do not want him, and his grief has driven him wild for the moment. He will calm…”
“I did not mean to catch Hob, Crowner. I fear for Tibia,” Thomas cried out. “What if he comes across the old woman before we find her? She should be close to hand and we must get to her first!”
Ralf bent his head in the direction the blacksmith had disappeared. “There is no path through the forest where he went. Why would an old woman with a twisted back choose to walk home through vines and dense brush? Methinks she is hobbling down the path to the village.”
“We came that way and did not see her…” The monk stopped in mid-sentence. Perplexed, he studied his friend for a moment. “If Hob catches old Tibia, he may kill her. Surely you know that.”
Ralf shook his head.
“Come with me!” Thomas urged, his voice edged with frustration
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