Murder Most Medieval

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  THOMAS, DESPERATE WITH ANGER and humiliation, saw Bluemantle fall and the bay standing with the stolid puzzlement of a horse that has unexpectedly lost its rider. Then, as his mind tried to catch up with what was happening, he heard a whinny that didn’t come from the bay and looked up to see what Blue-mantle had seen in the last moment of his life: a bright chestnut horse gleaming against the mist. Fillette. He’d been looking for her for hours, since he woke in the dark to find her gone and faced the disgrace of being the only gentleman in the morning who’d have to go into battle on foot. Without even rousing his men, he’d rushed out to look for her all round the camp and, as day broke, into the fields round the camp. Now there she was, half a mile away from where she should have been, but with a rider on her back and—unbelievably—Bluemantle on the ground. Thomas shouted something, not knowing what. The rider turned his face toward him then yanked the reins and spurred Fillette at a canter down to the causeway. She almost trampled the body of Bluemantle and tried to rear up, but the rider dragged her head down and pointed her between the oak trees at the enemy lines. Thomas gave chase, but before he could even shout again or form any idea of what was happening, there was a twanging sound, the rider was falling, and Fillette was galloping on alone. Thomas tried to grab for her rein but missed and fell sprawling over the obstacle in the path that was cousin Ralph’s body.

  FlLLETTE CAME BACK. The fact that she came back with Flut holding the end of the reins surprised nobody and wasn’t even commented on, because that was where anybody would expect him to be. After a few panicking yards she’d stopped, seen him sliding down from the tree, and come to him questioning and trembling. Though he couldn’t answer her questions, he could soothe her at least. Thomas couldn’t help because he was facing angrier and more urgent questions from Sir William Herbert. Every eye in Edward’s camp had been on Bluemantle as he rode out, everybody had seen his fall, and the army was buzzing with speculation and anger. Sir William had gone galloping down and found not only Bluemantle dead but his own kinsman Ralph dead, too, a few paces away, his head half off like a clumsily slaughtered hen in a poultry yard, and a more remote kinsman, Thomas, looking like a man who’d seen the devil.

  “B… bowstring,” Thomas stuttered. “There.” He pointed to where the thin line was stretched across the causeway between two oak trees. “He rode into it. Ralph rode into it.”

  “Who put it there?”

  “I… I think, sir, Ralph himself did. To kill Bluemantle in case he missed with the arrow.”

  “You are saying my kinsman killed the herald?”

  “He was afraid, sir. Afraid Bluemantle was going to offer peace.”

  Sir William blinked then looked at Thomas for a long time. “Should I believe you?”

  “On my soul’s peril, sir. He stole my horse. She’s well known in the camp. He wanted it to be thought it was my crime.”

  From Pembroke’s camp a bugle sounded, then another. They were mocking sounds. The herald should have arrived by now and his lateness suggested Edward’s side had no stomach for fighting. Sir William made up his mind.

  “If you’re innocent of these crimes, then prove it by giving every drop of blood in your body for Edward today. If not, you’ll go to your God a perjured man.”

  “I’m innocent, sir.”

  Sir William nodded, more to indicate an end to discussion than belief and beckoned a servant to help him back on his horse. He looked down at Thomas.

  “Say nothing of this. Bluemantle was treacherously butchered by enemy scouts who have no respect for heralds. Ralph was killed trying to save him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir, I understand.”

  Flut held the rein as Thomas was helped into Fillette’s saddle, then padded after them as they cantered back to their own lines. He’d have liked to get his bowstring back from the oak trees, since he’d stolen it from the pouch of one of the archers, but one of Sir William’s men had taken it already.

  THE NEWS THAT THEIR herald had been treacherously killed by the enemy infuriated Edward’s men. They fought that day as if every man had a kingdom to win and by the time the mists curled back in the evening, the mud in the flat fields was even more red than nature had made it, the river was full of the bodies of Pembroke’s soldiers, and every clump of bushes or dead bracken for miles around hid shivering, half-naked men hunted like rabbits at the end of harvest. There were men to bury on the winning side, too, but seven of Thomas’s nine followers survived, and although Thomas himself couldn’t have said with honesty whether he’d acquitted himself well or badly, he seemed to have done enough to be included in the general rejoicing. He’d shed some blood for Edward from a gash in his arm, although far from every drop as instructed, and when, as evening fell, Sir William came up to his fireside with a tall young man beside him, Thomas’s heart dropped. It took him a few moments to recognize the tall young man with his plain cloak and muddied face, but when he did his heart seemed to slip further down, right to his stomach. He bowed and stammered “sir”, then “sire”.

  Sir William said, “I have been telling the king.” His voice caressed the last word like a man buffing a helmet. He turned to Edward. “If Thomas is telling the truth, then my kinsman Ralph was a horse thief as well as a murderer.”

  “If the penalty for stealing a horse is hanging, then he’s paid that already.”

  Edward’s voice was light, almost joking, but Thomas wasn’t deceived by that and he knew that standing here by his fire he was nearer death than at any time in the battle. Edward had respected Bluemantle. If he believed Thomas had killed him there’d be just one more corpse to bury. Softly, desperately, he said, “Sire, it is the truth.”

  Fillette, still excited from the battle, whinnied from her shelter. Edward looked toward the noise.

  “That’s the horse, is it?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  Edward strolled toward her, as if looking at her would decide the case.

  A fine mare.

  At that point Thomas made his great decision, the one which not only saved his life but changed the fortunes of his family for generations to come. He stood at Fillette’s head and looked straight into the face of Edward who, king or not, was much his own age.

  “Yes, sire. Fine enough for a king to ride, if you’d accept her.”

  A little later, Edward sent his servant to lead Fillette over to his own pavilion. As usual Flut went too and stayed with her, as little noticed in the new king’s stables as he was missed from his old yard, but aware that the quality of the hay was better.

  The Simple Logic of It

  Margaret Frazer

  The April rain fell in a straight, soft veil from low clouds, sheening the lead-dull slate-dark roofs of Westminster Palace and setting a cleansing gleam to the cobbles of the narrow back alleyway between the south gate and the blank rear wall of the Exchequer. It beaded finely on the dead man’s face, turned open-eyed and unheeding upward, where he lay in a loose sprawl on his back, though the blood smeared on the stones near the foot of the wall and runneled between the cobbles showed where he had lain before someone turned him over. Probably the guard standing apart from his fellows, York guessed.

  He guessed, too, from the guard’s clay-colored, queasy face, that he must never have been to the wars in Normandy where dead men were a too-familiar sight for this one to have unsettled him, killed by what looked to have been simply a straight thrust through the body from behind and probably dead before he hit the stones.

  “He’s one of yours, isn’t he?” Master Babthorpe demanded across the body.

  “Yes.” There was enough dawnlight now that York did not need the paling light from the guard-held torch hissing quietly to extinction in the rain to answer. “He’s one of mine.”

  “He’s not part of your London household, is he? What’s he doing here?”

  Being dead, York almost said but didn’t, said instead, level-voiced, “He’s one of my couriers between here and Normandy. Why he’s here in particul
ar, I don’t know.”

  “Probably looking for you, though?” Master Babthorpe pressed and only belatedly added, without any particular courtesy, “your grace.”

  York brought his gaze up from Davydd’s dead face to meet Master Babthorpe’s hard stare, with several equally uncourteous answers coming to mind,- but Babthorpe, as an officer of the royal household, had authority if not for his rudeness, then at least for his questions and, for that reason only, York answered his curt-ness with simply, “Yes. Very probably.” Even though admitting it felt like walking by his own will into a trap.

  But then he had had that sense of a trap waiting ever since he’d been asked from his breakfast to come here, because it was hardly necessary for the Duke of York to stand in a back alleyway in a drizzling rain identifying a dead man any number of other men could have named as well and apparently had, since someone had known to come for him with word he was wanted to view the body. It was when he’d seen that, besides the expected guards, there were a half dozen of the Earl of Suffolk’s men to watch him acknowledge the man as his, that his unease had deepened to something more, because Suffolk had been main among those who had lately tried to bring him down with slanders he had misused his power as the king’s governor of Normandy.

  York wasn’t supposed to know where the slanders had come from but he did, even if they had been so subtle—no open accusations against him, only a quiet, determined undermining of his reputation—that he’d not been able to name names with any proof, but been able only to demand he be vindicated publicly, in Parliament. The slanders had faded away then and Parliament been dismissed without the matter becoming officially open. He had thought—hoped—the thing was finished. But now…

  “There was a letter found on him,” Master Babthorpe said. “To you. From Normandy.”

  Already more chilled than the early hour and the rain justified, York chilled more deeply but only said, making it seem it hardly mattered to him, “May I have it?”

  “After my lord of Suffolk has.” An effort not to smirk marred Master Babthorpe’s dignity. “This whole matter—and the letter, too—must needs be put into his hands. You know that.” Because while York was abroad, trying to keep England’s hold on Normandy from disaster and going into debt while doing it, because somehow the garrisons had to be paid whether or not money for it came from England, and mostly the money had not, Suffolk had kept close to King Henry, gathering a great deal of power and a number of offices to himself, including Steward of the Royal Household, so that he had not only control over nearly everything that happened around the king but ready access to King Henry for himself and a strong say in who did or didn’t come near the royal person.

  York, despite—or because—he was the king’s cousin and near enough in royal blood to be possibly King Henry’s heir if King Henry died without issue of his own, was among those Suffolk preferred King Henry not to see often, and now Suffolk was who would have this letter and determine what to do about it, and York said, “Later then,” as if it did not matter, while the questions ran behind his carefully blank face, beginning with why Davydd had been here in this back alleyway at all. As York’s man, he had every right to come the main way into the palace, and if he’d come in the middle of the night, as he must have, a guard would have escorted him from the gate. So why had he been here in the black hour before dawn? Because it looked to be no longer ago than that that he was killed,- his blood on the cobbles had started to dry before he had been rolled off of it, opening it to the rain, but had so far darkened only around the edges, enough to tell he had not lain here long. “Secret” and “urgent” were among the words coming to mind, seeing him here like this, but York, in the same, seeming-uncaring tone as before, asked, “Was he robbed?”

  “His belt-pouch was empty except for the letter,” Master Babthorpe answered.

  York looked down at the pouch that hung from Davydd’s belt. “Odd. You’d think a cutpurse, having killed him, would simply cut that loose and go.”

  Master Babthorpe shrugged. “Who knows how those kind of men’s minds work?”

  Usually more cleverly than that, York thought but did not say.

  “My lord of York? Master Babthorpe?” asked a black-robed priest, come almost unnoticed to the fore of Suffolk’s men behind Master Babthorpe. “I understand there’s a man dead here and in need of prayers.”

  Belatedly, York realized that the man was no mere priest, despite his plain black gown and the bent shoulders of someone who spent more of his time over books than at anything else. He was the Bishop of Saint Asaph’s, unlikely though that seemed, because even bishops of so slight a bishopric as Saint Asaph’s were rarely as diffident as this man appeared to be.

  But Master Babthorpe was making him a deep bow from the waist, saying hurriedly, “My lord bishop, there’s no need of you here. A plain priest will suffice…”

  Past him Bishop Pecock met York’s slight bow of the head with one of his own, they being close enough to each other in rank as royal duke and God’s bishop to exchange equal courtesies, and said, ignoring Master Babthorpe, “My lord of York.”

  “My lord bishop,” York returned.

  Raynold Pecock had been an Oxford scholar and then warden of Whittington College in London, nothing more, before he was made Bishop of Saint Asaph’s for reasons unknown to York, abroad in Normandy at the time. Nor, since his return, had he ever had occasion to more than barely speak to this least of the bishops and never enough to build any thought of what sort of man he might be. Now, as he started toward Davydd’s body, Master Babthorpe made to step into his way, saying with somewhat more impatience than respect, “My lord, I was shortly going to send for a priest. There’s no need for you…

  Bishop Pecock did not pause, merely made a backward beckon of one hand to move Master Babthorpe out of his way, saying as he went past him, “Man dead by murder, gone without proper rites to judgment, is a man with his soul imperiled. A priest should have been sent for before anyone else.”

  Quietly, York revised his opinion of the Bishop of Saint Asaph’s upward: he was not diffident at all, simply so confident of himself that he had no need to assert his place to anyone—unless they were in his way like Master Babthorpe, now out of it and standing in tight-lipped, disapproving silence while Bishop Pecock stood looking down into Davydd’s dead face before finally shaking his head and saying, “This was evilly done.” With another sad shake of his head, he made the sign of the cross over the body and raised his gaze to York. “I heard he was a Welshman, and being perhaps his bishop, I thought it well to come myself. His name?”

  Keeping to himself the thought that there seemed to be a surprising amount known about Davydd to a surprising number of people so soon after his death, York said, “He was Davydd ap Rhys.” Giving the name its Welsh form and sound. “Of Neath.”

  “Not of my diocese then, but Welsh nonetheless and in need of prayers.” And, even though the cobbles were both rain-wet and back-alley dirty, Bishop Pecock knelt down and began a low murmuring of the Office of the Dead.

  Over his bent head York said at Master Bapthorpe, “I hope you’ve at least had sense enough to send for the crowner,” and left without waiting for an answer, his own three men who had come with him parting from his way, then falling in behind him, their presence at his back more of a comfort than it should need have been, here in the palace where even to draw a weapon made a man liable to arrest.

  But here in the palace were his worst enemies, Suffolk and the other lords of the royal privy council. What they wanted for him was nothing so simple as his death, though he suspected they’d not have minded if it came, so long as they could escape any blame for it. Short of that convenience, what they most intended was to cut off any chance of him having influence with the king. Young King Henry VI reigned, but his royal privy council ruled, telling him what his decisions should be in most matters, and King Henry—being more given to piety than kingship—mostly followed their bidding. York, too powerful in his own r
oyal right and too openly opposed to their ways, knew himself to be a risk of which they wanted to be rid. They had tried to cripple his governorship of Normandy when his success in governing both the war and the uneasy peace had roused too many discontented men’s claims that he should have more hand in England’s government, presently troubled as it was under the royal privy council’s rule with increasing disorders and ceaselessly rising debt.

  And as surely as he knew all that, York knew that in some way Davydd’s death and the letter he had carried was going to be used against him. But how? Who was it from and what was in it?

  And how could he find out before too late?

  TOO LATE, AS IT happened, came too soon, within two hours, before any of the men he had sent out with questions had returned with any answers. In the outer chamber of the rooms given to him in the palace, trying to pay heed to a bundle of account papers one of his clerks was showing him, he heard Bishop Pecock’s Welsh-softened voice at the outer door asking a servant to ask if he might see the Duke of York. More than willingly giving over the accounts he had not been following anyway, York bade him enter and the clerk and other men to withdraw to the room’s far end, then led Bishop Pecock to the room’s other end, to the narrow window deep-set in the thickness of the stone wall with its sight over rooftops to Westminster Abbey, reared pale and huge against the washed blue of the clearing April sky and wind-drifting clouds. Even now, distracted as he was, the changeful play of sun and cloud shadows over its stonework and flaring buttresses gave him pleasure, but Bishop Pecock gave it not even a glance, and noting the red, curved marks on his cheek and over the bridge of his nose where the heavy wooden rims of glasses must have been setting until lately, York wondered if maybe that was simply because the bishop could not see it. But if Bishop Pecock’s sight was poorly, it was quickly clear his wits were not as he began, directly to the point, “My lord of York, I’ve seen the letter that was found with your man.”