Faucon gaped at his clerk. A jest, a laugh, and an apology all on the same day! It was too much to be believed.
That ringing sheep's bell was almost upon them now. A woman shrieked from the back of the crowd. "Aaiye! Don't touch me! Look out, stand back! She's making her way to the well!"
Of a sudden, men and women scattered, crying out as they leapt this way and that. The dogs barked and snarled at the unexpected activity. Squealing, the sow and her brood fled, adding to the chaos.
Faucon came to his feet. It was no animal that came. Instead, a cloaked woman drove through the crowd, racing straight toward him, ringing the bell in her left hand while she whipped the staff in her right from side to side to clear the way.
There was no need. No one, Faucon included, wanted to make contact with a leper.
"Mary save me! Jessimond! My baby," the leper cried as she neared the well and saw the girl's corpse.
Faucon staggered back, stumbling into the three men who'd brought no orphan, but Jessimond the Leper's Daughter out of the watery darkness. The three were also on the move, retreating from potential contagion.
With a womanish shriek, Edmund started to rise only to slip on the wet turf. He fell back to sitting as the leper dropped to her knees next to him. As the panting monk scooted crab-like away from her, the smith's older sons shifted swiftly around the well until they stood opposite the diseased woman, releasing their ropes as they went.
Those same ropes hung loosely from Ivo's fingers as he stood frozen, his gaze locked on the leper's hooded face while a dripping Gawne hung over the stone surround, half-in, half-out of the well. That was too close to drowning for Faucon's comfort. The linked metal rings of his mail tunic jingling, he darted around the leper and grabbed the lad by the back of his apron sling. Hauling Gawne with him, he retreated until he felt they were beyond any chance contact.
The leper paid no heed to the desperate sidling going on around her. She dropped her staff and bell, then gathered her daughter's earthly remains into her arms. With the girl's wet body staining her swathing robes, she bowed her cloaked head to rest her brow against Jessimond's cold cheek. There the leper stayed, sobbing as she rocked her rigid child in her arms.
For that brief instant her grief was the only sound in this grassy vale. Then the startled serfs forgot their fear of contagion and closed ranks. Every one of them began to shout for her to be gone, shaking fist or finger. Within the space of a breath their cries became the steady chant of "Leave us!"
Clutching her rigid child close, her face yet concealed by her oversized hood, the woman swiveled on her knees in their direction. "You dare order me away!?" she shrieked. "You have no right, not after you betrayed me. I gave her into your care. Every one of you swore an oath to treat her as if she were one of your own. How did you repay my trust? With her death!" she shouted in accusation.
"Enough all of you, but especially you, Amelyn," bellowed the bailiff of Wike from the back of the crowd. As tall as Faucon, broad-shouldered, with powerful arms, his scalp showing through wisps of dark hair, this was the villein who ruled his peers at their lady's command.
An instant and uneasy quiet fell over the folk he ruled, one fraught with a strange tension. Men and women alike turned to watch as their headman moved toward the well. When he passed them, his neighbors shifted as far back from him as they had from the leper.
The bailiff stopped a fair distance from the well and Jessimond's grieving mother. Dressed in sober brown almost the same shade as his graying beard, his face was thin and long.
"Amelyn, by coming here this day you have broken the vow you gave us and our lady when she sent you to live at the hospital two years ago. Leave now and I will forgive your intrusion. Stay, and I'll see that you pay the full price for your disobedience," he called in warning, his voice raised so all could hear him.
Amelyn the Leper turned her hooded gaze on the bailiff. "This is my child and only I will bury her. If you want me gone, Odger, you'll have to carry me out of Wike," she retorted in warning, her voice yet thick with tears.
"Jessimond is your child no longer," Odger shot back, his tone harsh. "You gave her into our care, ceding all claim to her after our lady bought your pension. On that day you promised to never again bring your contagion here to threaten us and our children. Leave us now," he again commanded her. "We will wash and bury Jessimond in your stead, as you agreed then, and as is right and proper."
Rather than argue with him, Amelyn gently set her daughter's body on the ground. Her former neighbors watched in anxious silence as she combed her gloved fingers through Jessimond's dark hair, straightening the wet tresses around her child's still face. When the leper was satisfied with the results, she came to her feet, proving she was taller than most of those around her. Her water-stained gray cloak fell in graceful folds around her as she scanned the crowd, or so said the movement of her hooded head. The quiet stretched. When she owned the complete attention of all in the bailey, the leper made a show of lifting her staff until she held it like a cudgel.
"Never," she snarled, "not even if the lady retracts my pension and I die bereft of comfort on some distant verge. There's not one among you I would allow to touch my babe, not after this. I was a fool to give up the child I loved to folk who failed to protect me when I needed it. I, of all people, should have realized your vows to care for her would be empty. Well, I'm a fool no longer. Only I will tend my daughter, and I'll do it despite any of you!"
With that, she dashed into the crowd, her staff swinging. Folk within reach of her and her makeshift club fell back, crying out. They tumbled over each other as they sought to escape. She whirled, her cloak opening. Beneath it she wore faded gray gowns a little too short for her, revealing bare ankles above worn cloth shoes. Hidden beneath her swathing cloak, her long hair was unbound and the same deep brown color as her daughter's.
Staff held high, she menaced those in the other direction. Again, folk screamed and retreated in panic, knocking into others. All, save for the ragged rustic. The ancient in his patched attire held his place and watched the chaos around him. Beneath his wild snowy brows, his pale eyes were alight with perverse amusement.
Content that her point was made, Amelyn the Leper retreated to where Jessimond lay. She straddled her child's body and spread her arms wide. "I curse you, each and every one, for betraying your oath to care for my daughter, and for my Jessimond's death! May the Devil take you all!" she shouted.
Shrieking in fear, mothers caught their children by the hands and fled, singing out prayers and making signs with their fingers as they went. Their menfolk did the same, racing for the safety of their own homes as if woven withe walls were enough to protect them from the denizens of Hell. As they went, a few among the men dared return Amelyn's curse with their own. Empty words, so proved by how swiftly they overtook their wives along Wike's twisting pathways.
At the well, the three villeins who'd brought Jessimond back into the light abandoned their ropes, departing as swiftly as their fellows. So too, had the smith's elder sons started to flee, only to pause when they noticed their sire hadn't followed. Instead, Ivo stood as if he were rooted, his gaze locked upon Amelyn.
Now shivering in both cold and fear, Gawne threw off his Crowner's embrace to leap to his sire's side. The boy buried his head against his father's chest as if that might protect him from the leper's hex. Edmund speedily touched forehead, heart, and shoulders, then unwound his beads from his waist and began to pray.
Faucon considered both their reactions unwarranted. If Gawne had been Jessimond's friend, then he was someone Amelyn wouldn't wish to harm. As for Edmund, the leper knew neither her new Crowner nor his clerk. Faucon didn't think she meant to include them in her curse.
"Cowards! Idiots! Nothing this lewd wretch says can have any power over you," Odger threw angrily after his frightened folk. "Come back, all of you!"
His tone said he expected their immediate compliance. If so, he was disappointed. No man or woman turned. Th
e sounds of doors closing and bars dropping began to fill the air.
That brought Odger around, his angry glare focused on the leper. His arms were tense and his fists held tight. "Spew your foul nonsense as you will, Amelyn. You can't frighten me, not when I know you for who you are. Nor does any word you speak change matters. Jessimond is no less dead and you no longer have any right to be here. Be gone with you. Return to Saltisford from whence you came."
Almost as tall as he, Amelyn drew her shoulders to a proud angle. "When you banished me from Wike, Odger, you freed me from all the bonds that once imprisoned me here. I no longer bow my head to you, and you no longer have the right to command me," she retorted, then threw her challenge a second time. "You want me gone? Come lift me in your arms. Carry me to the cross and the Warwick Path. If you can do that, I'll return to Saltisford as you wish."
Faucon waited until she fell silent before speaking. "Bailiff, the leper may not yet depart," he said, using the commoner's tongue, one he'd learned at his nurse's knee and liked as well as his own, even if his command of it was less than perfect. "She must remain here until I am ready to ask my questions of her."
Aye, and there was one question Faucon needed answered more than any other. If Amelyn now resided in Saltisford, how was it she came to be in Wike at exactly the right moment to say farewell to her murdered daughter?
The rustic and the smiths gawked at him as they heard the tongue of England's commoners issue from the lips of a man whose black hair and dark eyes proclaimed that his ancestors had come with the Conqueror so long ago. Then their gazes shifted to Odger. Once again Faucon sensed that odd tension. It suggested that the bailiff wasn't well liked by those he ruled.
As for Odger, gone was any trace of the congenial, deferential servant who had humbly begged his Crowner to witness the retrieval of a drowned girl and declare her death an accident. In his place stood a haughty, defiant man who jealously guarded the power he claimed in his lady's name, and the control that gave him over his peers.
"You may not countermand me, Sir Crowner," the headman snapped. "This is not my will but my lady's. As her agent, I am sworn to do my duty by her, and so I shall despite you."
Then Odger sneered at Amelyn. "Moreover, I cannot imagine what questions you could have for this degraded creature. She knows nothing of her daughter's life since we sent her from Wike, much less anything about Jessimond's death. How could she, when she's lived far from us for the past years?"
Faucon raised his brows at the man's proud rebuke. "Refuse me on pain of royal fine, one that can be levied against you as well as every family in this place. Your lady will pay as well," he warned.
As always, Edmund couldn't resist intruding where he had no right to tread. Finger wagging, he chided Odger in his own accented English. "Fie on you, commoner. You cannot defy Sir Faucon in this. You and your lady are law- and oath-bound to assist your king's servant in this matter, doing so in whatever manner he requests. Any man or woman to whom he poses questions must reply with answers that are honest and true, else face the wrath of the royal court."
Odger glanced from clerk to knight. "My lady will have no leper here," he spat out, "especially not this one. If you wish to ask questions of this wretch, you'll do it away from Wike and the decent folk who reside here. Retreat with her to Coctune, or even as far as Studley. Or better yet," he paused to aim another narrow-eyed glance at the becloaked woman, the corner of his mouth curling. "Let her lead you to Alcester. She knows that place well enough, having whored there until she took ill. I say it was in punishment for her lewdness that our Lord afflicted her with her contagion."
Amelyn didn't respond to the bailiff's jab. Instead, she shifted toward Faucon, her hooded head bowed and her gloved hands hidden by the hems of her long sleeves. "Ask what questions you will, sir knight, and I will tell you the truth, the only truth worth knowing," she replied, her voice rising with every word even as it quavered with tears. "I will tell you that the folk who live here are murderous liars and abusers who have caused my precious child to kill herself."
Then she shifted until she faced the kitchen shed with its domed oven. "Do you hear that, Meg?" she shouted. "It's you I accuse above all others. Your cruelty toward my child killed her as surely as if you pushed her into this well."
Faucon shot a startled glance at the old woman in the cheery red garments, who yet stood outside the kitchen, in front of the oven. He'd forgotten her. Spurred to it by Amelyn's charge, this Meg started toward the well at a clipped and angry pace, her white braids snapping from side to side as she came. Behind her, the kitchen door opened and a youth of no more than a score of years eased through the portal to step into the yard. He looked like a beggar, what with large ears jutting through his knotted mop of dark hair and a patchy, untrimmed beard covering half of his overly-long face. There was something wrong, something womanish and weak-jointed, about the way he held himself.
"You dare to chide me, leper!" Meg snarled as she came to a halt beside Odger, her arms akimbo. Her narrow face was tight in rage, her dark eyes bare slits. In that instant bailiff and cook looked like kin, not in their features but in their angry stances and harsh attitudes.
"Have a care with what you say, or I'll make you pay a price for your slander," Meg spat at the leper. "Odger has taken his lash to you once for fornication. If you persist, I'll see that he does it again despite your disease, to punish you for lying."
"Now Meg, have pity," Ivo said, at last bestirring himself out of his surprise over the leper's arrival. "Amelyn is distraught, as any parent would be upon losing a child."
Then Ivo looked at the leper. "As for you, Amelyn, calm yourself and think about the words you use." Unlike Odger, whose tone boldly proclaimed his dislike for the diseased woman, the smith's voice was tempered with gentle affection. "If you persist with your accusations, you may well doom Jes to be wrongly buried in unhallowed ground. We all know she didn't kill herself. Gawne told us."
Having shed his web of ropes and leather apron in the last moments, Gawne now clung to his father's side, shivering in his wet clothing. His sire pried him off, then gave his youngest a light push until the boy stood out in front of him.
"Tell Amelyn, son. Ease her heart. Tell her how you saw Jes fall into the well. Tell her how her daughter's drowning is nothing more than a terrible accident."
That brought Faucon's sharp attention onto the smith, as he wondered how any man could see an accident when he looked upon the dead girl's unclothed and bruised body.
Emotions flashed across Gawne's face as he glanced from Jessimond's bare corpse to her mother, then he shot a swift glance at his Crowner. Although their gazes met for only the space of a breath, that was long enough. The boy's cheeks flared with the color of uncomfortably held secrets, the spots vivid against his cold-whitened skin.
As Gawne looked away, he protested, "Da, I never said I saw Jes fall into the well." Again his voice slid up into the painful squeak that marked a boy's transition into manhood.
Ivo frowned at his son. "But did you not call out to us all that Jessimond was in the well?"
"And Gawne was right, she was in the well," Faucon interrupted. More than anything, he didn't want the lad spewing just now whatever it was he withheld, not here where the wrong person might overhear. But preventing that meant revealing some of what Faucon had learned thus far, doing so much earlier than he liked.
"Bailiff, Jessimond did not enter your well of her own volition nor did she drown. She was already with our Lord when someone placed her corpse into this shaft," he said, carefully parsing his words as he watched those around him.
There was no reading Amelyn's face, not when it was concealed beneath her oversized hood. Ivo and his older sons appeared surprised by their Crowner's revelation. Gawne and the wild-looking oldster glanced at each other, their shared look suggesting much. Odger and Meg both stared flatly back at their better.
Then something flared in the woman's dark gaze. Dropping her hands from her hips,
she pointed a finger at Gawne. "If that is so, Sir Crowner, then I say it was Gawne who killed her," the old woman charged, her voice raised and harsh. "Jessimond was missing for two full days before Gawne came crying that she was in the well. Who else would have known she was in there save the one who put her there? And who else would have put her there save for the one who killed her?"
There they were, the simple questions Faucon had expected to ask, the ones that should have easily led him to the girl's murderer. But the answers were no longer obvious, and the trail the woman's accusation indicated would prove naught but a dead end. Gawne's hands were too small to have throttled the girl, and his form too slight for him to have lifted the corpse high enough to have put her into the well by himself. And despite what strength the lad claimed for himself, he couldn't have brought the girl from where she had died to Wike by himself, not without someone witnessing.
But Gawne knew naught of what his Crowner did. His eyes flew wide at the old woman's accusation. With a choked cry, he pivoted and raced away from the well.
"Nay!" Ivo howled after his youngest son, the word filled with heartbreak.
"Neighbors, come to me!" Odger's voice drowned out the smith's cry. "Stop Gawne, son of Ivo! He has done murder!" the bailiff bellowed, raising the hue and cry.
So certain was Odger that those he ruled would follow that he turned instantly to chase the boy. He should have waited. Not a single cottage door opened. Neither did the ragged oldster nor Ivo do as the law required. Instead, both stayed where they stood.
The smith's elder boys weren't so sanguine. Shooting sidelong glances at their new Crowner, they started after their brother and their bailiff, albeit moving at a half-hearted shuffle. Near the kitchen the odd-looking youth also joined the race, but his awkward gait was as strange as his appearance. Lifting his heels and raising his chin high, he tiptoed precariously after the others. As he went, he flapped his hands and matched each step he took with a clicking sound made with his tongue. All in all, it was a pathetic chase and Faucon couldn't have been more pleased.
Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) Page 3
