Murder Most Medieval

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  The court could well afford to linger to enjoy victory, while Henry trimmed into neatness the last loose edges still to be made secure. But his fleet was already preparing at Barfleur for the voyage back to England, and he would be home before the month ended. Meantime, many of his barons and knights who had fought his battles were withdrawing their contingents and making for home, among them one Roger Mauduit, who had a young and handsome wife waiting for him, certain legal business on his mind, and twenty-five men to ship back to England, most of them to be paid off on landing.

  There were one or two among the miscellaneous riffraff he had recruited here in Normandy on his lord’s behalf whom it might be worth keeping on in his own service, along with the few men of his household, at least until he was safely home. The vagabond clerk turned soldier, let him be unfrocked priest or what he might, was an excellent copyist and a sound Latin scholar, and could put legal documents in their best and most presentable form, in good time for the King’s court at Woodstock. And the Welsh man-at-arms, blunt and insubordinate as he was, was also experienced and accomplished in arms, a man of his word, once given, and utterly reliable in whatever situation on land or sea, for in both elements he had long practice behind him. Roger was well aware that he was not greatly loved, and he had little faith in either the valor or the loyalty of his own men. But this Welshman from Gwynedd, by way of Antioch and Jerusalem and only God knows where else, had imbibed the code of arms and wore it as a second nature. With or without love, such service as he pledged, that he would provide.

  Roger put it to them both as his men were embarking at Barfleur, in the middle of a deceptively placid November, and upon a calm sea.

  “I would have you two accompany me to my manor of Sutton Mauduit by Northampton, when we disembark, and stay in my pay until a certain lawsuit I have against the abbey of Shrewsbury is resolved. The King intends to come to Woodstock when he arrives in England and will be there to preside over my case on the twenty-third day of this month. Will you remain in my service until that day?”

  The Welshman said that he would, until that day or until the case was resolved. He said it indifferently, as one who has no business of any importance anywhere else in the world to pull him in another direction. As well Northampton as anywhere else. As well Woodstock. And after Woodstock? Why anywhere in particular? There was no identifiable light beckoning him anywhere, along any road. The world was wide, fair, and full of savor, but without signposts.

  Alard, the tatterdemalion clerk, hesitated, scratched his thick thatch of grizzled red hair, and finally also said yes, but as if some vague regret drew him in another direction. It meant pay for some days more, he could not afford to say no.

  “I would have gone with him with better heart,” he said later, when they were leaning on the rail together, watching the low blue line of the English shore rise out of a placid sea, “if he had been taking a more westerly road.”

  “Why that?” asked Cadfael ap Meilyr ap Dafydd. “Have you kin in the west?”

  “I had once. I have not now.”

  “Dead?”

  “I am the one who died.” Alard heaved lean shoulders in a helpless shrug, and grinned. “Fifty-seven brothers I had, and now I’m brotherless. I begin to miss my kin, now I’m past forty. I never valued them when I was young.” He slanted a rueful glance at his companion and shook his head. “I was a monk of Evesham, an oblatus, given to God by my father when I was five years old. When I was fifteen, I could no longer abide to live my life in one place, and I ran. Stability is one of the vows we take—to be content in one stay, and go abroad only when ordered. That was not for me, not then. My sort they call vagus—frivolous minds that must wander. Well, I’ve wandered far enough, God knows, in my time. I begin to fear I can never stand still again.”

  The Welshman drew his cloak about him against the chill of the wind. “Are you hankering for a return?”

  “Even you seamen must drop anchor somewhere at last,” Alard said. “They’d have my hide if I went back, that I know. But there’s this about penance, it pays all debts, and leaves the record clear. They’d find a place for me, once I’d paid. But I don’t know… I don’t know… The vagus is still in me. I’m torn two ways.”

  “After twenty-five years,” said Cadfael, “a month or two more for quiet thinking can do no harm. Copy his papers for him and take your ease until his business is settled.”

  They were much of an age, though the renegade monk looked the elder by ten years, and much knocked about by the world he had coveted from within the cloister. It had never paid him well in goods or gear, for he went threadbare and thin, but in wisdom he might have got his fair wages. A little soldiering, little clerking, some horse-tending, any labor that came to hand, until he could turn his hand to almost anything a hale man can do. He had seen, he said, Italy as far south as Rome, served once for a time under the Count of Flanders, crossed the mountains into Spain,, never abiding anywhere for long. His feet still served him, but his mind grew weary of the road.

  “And you?” he said, eyeing his companion, whom he had known now for a year in this last campaign. “You’re something of a vagus yourself, by your own account. All those years crusading and battling corsairs in the midland sea, and still you have not enough of it but must cross the sea again to get buffeted about Normandy. Had you no better business of your own, once you got back to England but you must enlist again in this muddled melee of a war? No woman to take your mind off fighting?”

  “What of yourself? Free of the cloister, free of the vows!”

  “Somehow,” said Alard, himself puzzled, “I never saw it so. A woman here and there, yes, when the heat was on me, and there was a woman by and willing, but marriage and wiving… it never seemed to me I had the right.”

  The Welshman braced his feet on the gently swaying deck and watched the distant shore draw nearer. A broad-set, sturdy, muscular man in his healthy prime, brown-haired and brown-skinned from eastern suns and outdoor living, well provided in leather coat and good cloth, and well armed with sword and dagger. A comely enough face, strongly featured, with the bold bones of his race—there had been women, in his time, who had found him handsome.

  “I had a girl,” he said meditatively, “years back, before ever I went crusading. But I left her when I took the Cross,- left her for three years and stayed away seventeen. The truth is, in the east I forgot her, and in the west she, thanks be to God, had forgotten me. I did inquire, when I got back. She’d made a better bargain and married a decent, solid man who had nothing of the vagus in him. A guildsman and counselor of the town of Shrewsbury, no less. So I shed the load from my conscience and went back to what I knew, soldiering. With no regrets,” he said simply. “It was all over and done, years since. I doubt if I should have known her again, or she me.” There had been other women’s faces in the years between, still vivid in his memory, while hers had faded into mist.

  “And what will you do,” Alard asked, “now the King’s got everything he wanted, married his son to Anjou and Maine, and made an end of fighting? Go back to the east? There’s never any want of squabbles there to keep a man busy.”

  “No,” said Cadfael, eyes fixed on the shore that began to show the solidity of land and the undulations of cliff and down. For that, too, was over and done, years since, and not as well done as once he had hoped. This desultory campaigning in Normandy was little more than a postscriptum, an afterthought, a means of filling in the interim between what was past and what was to come, and as yet unrevealed. All he knew of it was that it must be something new and momentous, a door opening into another room. “It seems we have both a few days’ grace, you and I, to find out where we are going. We’d best make good use of the time.”

  There was stir enough before night to keep them from wondering beyond the next moment or troubling their minds about what was past or what was to come. Their ship put into the roads with a steady and favorable wind, and made course into Southampton before the light faded, and t
here was work for Alard checking the gear as it was unloaded, and for Cadfael disembarking the horses. A night’s sleep in lodgings and stables in the town, and they would be on their way with the dawn.

  “So the King’s due in Woodstock,” Alard said, rustling sleepily in his straw in a warm loft over the horses, “in time to sit in judgment on the twenty-third of the month. He makes his forest lodges the hub of his kingdom, there’s more statecraft talked at Woodstock, so they say, than ever at Westminster. And he keeps his beasts there—lions and leopards—even camels. Did you ever see camels, Cadfael? There in the east?”

  “Saw them and rode them. Common as horses there, hardworking and serviceable, but uncomfortable riding and foul-tempered. Thank God it’s horses we’ll be mounting in the morning.” And after a long silence, on the edge of sleep, he asked curiously into the straw-scented darkness, “If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?”

  “Do I know?” Alard responded drowsily, and followed that with a sudden sharpening sigh, again fully awake. “The silence, it might be… or the stillness. To have no more running to do… to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”

  THE MANOR THAT WAS the head of Roger Mauduit’s scattered and substantial honor lay somewhat southeast of Northampton, comfortably under the lee of the long ridge of wooded hills where the King had a chase, and spreading its extensive fields over the rich lowland between. The house was of stone, and ample, over a deep undercroft, and with a low tower providing two small chambers at the eastern end, and the array of sturdy byres, barns, and stables that lined the containing walls was impressive. Someone had proved a good steward while the lord was away about King Henry’s business.

  The furnishings of the hall were no less eloquent of good management, and the men and maids of the household went about their work with a brisk wariness that showed they went in some awe of whomever presided over their labors. It needed only a single day of watching the Lady Eadwina in action to show who ruled the roost here. Roger Mauduit had married a wife not only handsome but also efficient and masterful. She had had her own way here for three years, and by all the signs had enjoyed her dominance. She might, even, be none too glad to resign her charge now, however glad she might be to have her lord home again.

  She was a tall, graceful woman, ten years younger than Roger, with an abundance of fair hair and large blue eyes that went discreetly half-veiled by absurdly long lashes most of the time, but flashed a bright and steely challenge when she opened them fully. Her smile was likewise discreet and almost constant, concealing rather than revealing whatever went on in her mind,-and though her welcome to her returning lord left nothing to be desired, but lavished on him every possible tribute of ceremony and affection from the moment his horse entered at the gate, Cadfael could not but wonder whether she was not, at the same time, taking stock of every man he brought in with him, and every article of gear or harness or weaponry in their equipment, as one taking jealous inventory of his goods and resolved to make sure nothing was lacking.

  She had her little son by the hand, a boy of about seven years old, and the child had the same fair coloring, the same contained and almost supercilious smile, and was as spruce and fine as his mother.

  The lady received Alard with a sweeping glance that deprecated his tatterdemalion appearance and doubted his morality, but nevertheless she was willing to accept and make use of his abilities. The clerk who kept the manor roll and the accounts was efficient enough, but had no Latin, and could not write a good court hand. Alard was whisked away to a small table set in the angle of the great hearth, and kept hard at work copying certain charters and letters, and preparing them for presentation.

  “This suit of his is against the abbey of Shrewsbury,” said Alard, freed of his labors after supper in hall. “I recall you said that girl of yours had married a merchant in that town. Shrewsbury is a Benedictine house, like mine of Evesham.” His, he called it still, after so many years of abandoning it,- or his again, after time had brushed away whatever division there had ever been. “You must know it, if you come from there.”

  “I was born in Trefriw, in Gwynedd,” Cadfael said, “but I took service early with an English wool merchant and came to Shrewsbury with his household. Fourteen, I was then—in Wales fourteen is manhood—and as I was a good lad with the short bow, and took kindly to the sword, I suppose I was worth my keep. The best of my following years were spent in Shrewsbury. I know it like my own palm, abbey and all. My master sent me there a year and more, to get my letters. But I quit that service when he died. I’d pledged nothing to the son, and he was a poor shadow of his father. That was when I took the Cross. So did many like me, all afire. I won’t say what followed was all ash, but it burned very low at times.”

  “It’s Mauduit who holds this disputed land,” Alard said, “and the abbey that sues to recover it, and the thing’s been going on four years without a settlement, ever since the old man here died. From what I know of the Benedictines, I’d rate their honesty above our Roger’s, I tell you straight. And yet his charters seem to be genuine, as far as I can tell.”

  “Where is this land they’re fighting over?” Cadfael asked.

  “It’s a manor by the name of Rotesley, near Stretton, demesne, village, advowson of the Church and all. It seems when the great earl was just dead and his abbey still building, Roger’s father gave Rotesley to the abbey. No dispute about that, the charter’s there to show it. But the abbey granted it back to him as tenant for life, to live out his latter years there undisturbed, Roger being then married and installed here at Sutton. That’s where the dispute starts. The abbey claims it was clearly agreed the tenancy ended with the old man’s death, that he himself understood it so, and intended it should be restored to the abbey as soon as he was out of it. While Roger says there was no such agreement to restore it unconditionally, but the tenancy was granted to the Mauduits, and ought to be hereditary. And so far he’s hung on to it tooth and claw. After several hearings they remitted it to the King himself. And that’s why you and I, my friend, will be off with his lordship to Woodstock the day after tomorrow.”

  “And how do you rate his chances of success? He seems none too sure himself,” said Cadfael, “to judge by his short temper and nail-biting this last day or so.”

  “Why, the charter could have been worded better. It says simply that the village is granted back in tenancy during the old man’s lifetime, but fails to say anything about what shall happen afterward, whatever may have been intended. From what I hear, they were on very good terms, Abbot Fulchered and the old lord, agreements between them on other matters in the manor book are worded as between men who trusted each other. The witnesses are all of them dead, as Abbot Fulchered is dead. It’s one Godefrid now. But for all I know the abbey may hold letters that have passed between the two, and a letter is witness of intent, no less than a formal charter. All in good time we shall see.”

  The nobility still sat at the high table, in no haste to retire, Roger brooding over his wine, of which he had already drunk his fair share and more. Cadfael eyed them with interest, seen thus in a family setting. The boy had gone to his bed, hauled away by an elderly nurse, but the Lady Eadwina sat in close attendance at her lord’s left hand and kept his cup well filled, smiling her faint, demure smile. On her left sat a very fine young squire of about twenty-five years, deferential and discreet, with a smile somehow the male reflection of her own. The source of both was secret, the spring of their pleasure or amusement, or whatever caused them so to smile, remained private and slightly unnerving, like the carved stone smiles of certain very old statues Cadfael had seen in Greece, long ago. For all his mild, amiable, and ornamental appearance, combed and curled and courtly, he was a big, well-set-up young fellow, with a set to his smooth jaw. Cadfael studied him with interest, for he was plainly privileged here.

  “Goscelin,” Alard said by way of explanation, following his
friends glance. “Her right-hand man while Roger was away.”

  Her left-hand man now, by the look of it, thought Cadfael. For her left hand and Goscelin’s right were private under the table, while she spoke winningly into her husband’s ear,- and if those two hands were not paddling palms at this moment Cadfael was very much deceived. Above and below the drapings of the board were two different worlds. “I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “what she’s breathing into Roger’s ear now.”

  What the lady was breathing into her husband’s ear was, in fact: “You fret over nothing, my lord. What does it matter how strong his proofs, if he never reaches Woodstock in time to present them? You know the law: If one party fails to appear, judgment is given for the other. The assize judges may allow more than one default if they please, but do you think King Henry will? Whoever fails of keeping tryst with him will be felled on the spot. And you know the road by which Prior Heribert must come.” Her voice was a silken purr in his ear. “And have you not a hunting lodge in the forest north of Woodstock, through which that road passes?”