The boy put his hand over his eyes and wiped the remaining tears away, but this time he was smiling. He shook his head.
“Well, he will soon. We know him to be a good man with a horse. He’d never let his steed go without care, would he now?”
“No,” Richard mumbled into his arm.
“I think this horse is fine. There is nothing to worry about, but I’d also say he needs a good rubdown, some fresh hay and a good rest. Perhaps he has returned from an arduous journey and is weary. Methinks his master is too.” Thomas put his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.
Richard turned pale.
“Let me tell you a story, lad,” Thomas continued, dropping the accent. “Would you like that?”
Richard nodded.
“Once upon a time, there was a brave knight who had a noble steed. Together they roamed the countryside, slaying many dragons, saving maidens (a few) in distress, and taming nameless other monsters (many more of those) that threatened the king’s peace. Their exploits were legendary throughout many lands, and no enemy dared attack such a well-protected realm while the knight and his horse stood guard over it. Then one day, a villainous creature in the service of an evil king, who hated the noble king of this happy land, slipped across the river and into the good king’s very castle.” Thomas hesitated for a moment, looking down at the boy. Richard was watching him, eyes wide and unblinking with concentration.
The monk continued: “This villainous creature could blend into the color of night and hid in the castle corridors, causing great fear during the midnight hours amongst those who lived there. Even the king himself did not know what to do. So he called the brave knight and his noble steed to court and begged them to save the castle. The knight swore he would, but he had never faced such a creature before and knew that courage alone would not be enough. So he took his confessor with him for extra protection from evil. Each night he rode the corridors on his horse with his priest in attendance, hoping to force an honorable confrontation, but the creature evaded him. Then, one night, the creature slipped up behind the knight…”
Richard cried out. “He did!”
“Aye, lad, he did, didn’t he? But the man the creature attacked was not the knight. He was the good confessor, was he not?”
Richard nodded vigorously.
“And the creature lifted up the priest to throw him down from the top of steep stairs...”
“Yes.”
“Although the brave knight wanted to save his confessor, he found he could not, for he was suddenly frozen in place. The creature, it seemed, had put him under a spell. He had rendered the knight speechless and without the ability to move. The knight was powerless to save his confessor from the creature’s attack...”
“Yes!”
“As we all know, good always overcomes evil, and the knight’s courage and true heart were stronger than the evil of the creature. So do you know how the knight overcame the creature and saved his confessor?”
Still clutching his hobbyhorse, Richard wiggled back to a sitting position. “Tell me how he did, Uncle.”
“The brave knight lay where he had been put under a spell until a wandering priest came upon him. The priest looked down at him and saw that the knight was under an evil spell but knew that the knight’s heart was pure because he was the knight’s uncle. So the priest said to him: ‘Knight, your heart is pure. Rise and speak to me of what you saw and your courage and goodness will conquer the evil creature.’”
“That was all he had to do?” Richard asked in a whisper.
“Aye, lad. All he had to do was tell his uncle, the priest, what he saw and his courage in so doing would slay the villainous creature and save the confessor.” Thomas reached out his arms and said in a gentle voice, “So tell me, lad, who pushed Father Anselm down the stairs?”
Richard threw himself into Thomas arms and began to sob. The monk hugged the quivering boy, tucking his small head under his chin, and rocked him gently until the tears began to slow. As they sat together in silence, Thomas closed his own eyes tight, willing the boy to speak.
Finally, in a barely audible voice muffled by the monk’s woolen robe, Thomas heard Richard say: “It was Sir Geoffrey, Uncle. It was Sir Geoffrey.”
Chapter Thirty
“Who will believe a child?” Adam was pacing. Thomas, Sister Anne and Eleanor sat watching.
“Do you, my lord father?”
“Do I believe that a man at whose side I fought from Poitou to Evesham, a man who covered himself in honor at tournament after tournament, a man who was the exemplar of knightly virtues to those he faced in battle, that such as he would try to kill a priest? For what reason? Tell me that! Whatever for?”
“The last thing Brother Anselm remembers saying might suggest to a hidden listener that he had seen Henry’s murder,” Eleanor said.
“Forgive me, my lady prioress, but no one could possibly conclude that a priest chasing after a child on a hobbyhorse and shouting about knightly deeds was referring to a murder.” Adam glared at his daughter.
“Unless Sir Geoffrey, or whoever else it might have been, heard Father Anselm saying that he ‘had seen your deeds and would hear more of them’? Perhaps he thought the priest had seen him and was coming to confront him?”
“A conclusion that stretches the bounds of credulity, my child.”
Eleanor had hidden her hands in her sleeves and was gripping her arms until they hurt to keep her calm with her father. “Not if Sir Geoffrey was coming down the passage from the tower and only heard Anselm’s words. If he did not see Richard and saw only Anselm standing outside the chambers he shared with his wife, he might have concluded that our priest had come to confront him about the murder of his own son.”
“Still a far-fetched conclusion when weighed against what I know of Sir Geoffrey’s character.”
“I ask again, father. Do you believe Richard?”
Adam slid into his chair with a wince. He said nothing, only reaching out a hand to touch the design on his mazer of wine.
Eleanor waited with great patience and in silence.
“He is a good lad,” Adam at last said in a low voice.
Eleanor nodded.
“An honest one as well.”
She nodded again, gripping her arms more tightly.
“Not given to telling wild tales as if they were true.” Adam hesitated, then turned the mazer cup in a half circle. “When asked, he says he only fights play dragons.” He turned the cup the rest of the way around. “He told me that one day he might find real ones to fight but the dragons here were just for practice, like the stuffed figures dressed in chain mail at practice tilts.” Adam smiled in spite of himself.
Eleanor relaxed her hands. Her nails no longer cut into her arms. She still said nothing, waiting for her father to say what she hoped he would.
“Oh, very well, lass! Yes, I believe the boy thinks he saw Sir Geoffrey. Maybe it was someone who looked enough like him to confuse the lad. I just cannot believe the man would have tried to kill Father Anselm! And it was Geoffrey who was most adamant about Robert’s innocence. Why would he want my son freed if he were the murderer? Does not a guilty man seek to cast his culpability onto another? How could he kill his own son, his heir and his own blood? Are these not enough contradictions to raise reasonable doubt that he is the murderer?”
Eleanor bowed her head. “Surely you know better than I that mortals are full of contradictions, father, but let us then say that he did not kill Henry but knows who did. Perhaps he wants to save Robert, because he is the honorable man you know him to be, and does not wish your son, an innocent man, to take the blame when he knows who did the deed. Perchance the person who did kill Henry is someone whom he also loves? Thus he may be the one who tried to kill Father Anselm but may not be the one who killed his son.”
Adam frowned. “Killing a priest is not the same as killing another man. Yet,” he hesitated, “I might believe that love or lo
yalty could drive him to it. Whom do you think he might be protecting?”
“Who is closest to him? George is not here. Henry could not have stabbed himself in the back and thus committed the sin of self-murder. That leaves his wife and his daughter.” Eleanor hesitated. “Unless you know of someone else in his company…”
“Nay, lass, you’ve named them all.” Adam took a sip of the previously untouched wine. “You have not yet explained his own wound. Could it be that Robert killed Henry and someone else attacked Sir Geoffrey?” He held up his hand to silence the expected protest. “Do not misunderstand me. I believe Robert is completely innocent and this latest attack makes such a conclusion credible, but we must consider all possibilities if we are to prove my son’s innocence. He was, after all, still found with dagger in hand, blood staining his hands while he bent over Henry’s corpse.”
Eleanor looked over at Thomas and Anne. Their wine was untouched, and they were watching her with quiet concentration. “I find the conclusion that there are two murderers loose in the small confines of Wynethorpe Castle as illogical as the idea that Robert is the head of a band of masterless men with some purpose in killing off the Lavenham family, one after the other. If the same person did not attack both father and son, then the motive for attacking Sir Geoffrey separately remains unknown and the likelihood of two separate attacks for two separate reasons is doubtful. We may live in troubled times, father, but Wynethorpe Castle is well disciplined and, as I have already said, not a breeding place of lawlessness.”
“Well argued, Prioress of Tyndal,” Adam replied with a smile that bespoke some pride in his child.
“Thus,” Eleanor continued, “we have three prime suspects in Henry’s murder: Sir Geoffrey, his wife and his daughter.”
“And in the attack on Sir Geoffrey?”
“The same three.”
Adam slammed his hand down. The cup bounced and wine splashed on the table. “I find it impossible to believe that a woman could kill two adult men, including one who was well-versed in fighting. I find it equally impossible to believe that my friend could have so grievously wounded himself.”
“Why not his wife and daughter, my lord? Certainly Juliana and Henry were of much the same build. Henry was more muscular, for cert, but he was small compared to most men and not inclined to sport, which suggests he had less strength than many, despite his quickness. Might not both Isabelle and Juliana have been the guilty ones?”
Adam shook his head. “Nay, women are weak creatures, my child.” He raised his hand as Eleanor began to speak. “Let me finish. Although you may argue that two women might have overpowered Henry, Sir Geoffrey is a trained warrior.” Suddenly, Adam looked down and frowned. “Still, you may have a point. Few men were equal to Geoffrey in a fair fight, yet no man can be prepared when someone he trusts and loves attacks him. Either his wife or daughter might have done this. They are both dear to him and could have gotten close enough to stab him before he knew what was happening.”
“You have discounted revenge for the death of the Welshman then?” Thomas asked with some hesitancy.
“I have, brother.” Adam sipped at his wine. “Although someone might have killed Henry for that, none would have had reason to attack Geoffrey. Indeed it was he that gave the widow a fat purse filled with coin for the orphaned babes. It was accepted as a fair blood price so I do not believe anyone killed Henry for revenge either.”
“Blood price?” Thomas asked.
“A Welsh custom. Perhaps I should say ‘law’, although we do not accept such and find the practice barbaric. The Welsh take money in payment for the death of a loved one.”
Thomas shook his head in amazement.
“That aside, we did question the Welsh just as we did the English and all were elsewhere, with witnesses enough to prove it, at the time of Henry’s death. Nay, I have no reason to think it was a killing for revenge. We may find the customs of the Welsh strange, brother, but they follow them as honorably as do other men. Once the blood price was accepted, the widow and orphans most certainly continue to grieve, but they would demand nothing further.”
“Then we are back to considering why wife or daughter might have killed Henry and if Sir Geoffrey would be willing to kill a man of God to protect either or both. The murder of a priest is not the act of a man who would later turn against either woman, telling what he knew to the king’s justicular. Thus I ask why these women would kill a man who was protecting them, a man who is husband to one and father to the other. In this you are more knowledgeable than I, Father, for I am long away from the days when Isabelle, Juliana, and I frolicked amongst the summer flowers.”
“Not so far, Eleanor. To begin, you know the reason why his daughter might as well as I. She wishes to enter a convent and her father wants her to marry.”
“A woman who is called to become a nun usually does not commit violence to obtain her way.”
“Then I ask this: what would you have done if I had not granted your request to leave the world and, instead, ordered you to marry George?”
Eleanor bent across the table and touched the back of her father’s hand. “Your wisdom, my lord, is known by all in this land, and you are wise as well in your kindness. For this I have always loved and honored you. Had you rejected my plea to become a nun, I would have grieved, but I would have respected your choice. I might have thrown a wine cup against the wall in anger, but I would not have tried to kill you.”
Adam turned his head away, but not before Eleanor saw the flush of pleasure on his cheeks at her words. “I am most pleased to hear that.”
“What say you about his wife then?” Eleanor continued, her hand still resting on her father’s.
“As I promised you, I will be blunt. Sir Geoffrey has had problems with potency in this marriage. I had heard rumors that his wife has been less than understanding. Her youth may be blamed, perhaps, but there is tension between them.”
“Has he told you as much?”
This time, Adam did not bother to hide the flush of embarrassment. “He did confirm those rumors. In his cups one night at court, he told me that he has been unable to sustain his manhood with her. She has continued to share his bed but does nothing to help him as some wives…”
“I understand, father, but has she mocked him?”
“That she does not. As he has told me, she waits until it is clear he is impotent, then turns away from him and falls quickly to sleep, leaving him to suffer his humiliation alone.”
“Has she taken other men to her bed?”
“Sir Geoffrey feared such. He saw her tantalize other men in front of him as if he were not her husband. He confronted her. She claimed she meant nothing by it but youthful good spirits and gaiety, but he remained troubled. When he first arrived here for the marriage negotiations between our children, he suggested to me that he feared she had finally taken a lover, but he would not name him even when I pressed him to do so in confidence.”
Eleanor thought back to her own discussion with Isabelle. “Might he have thought Henry was the one? They were of an age and once believed they would marry.”
“That I doubt,” Adam replied instantly. “Even before you told me of the rape, it was obvious to all that she wished to avoid Henry. It was Henry who was pushing his attentions on her. I saw it, as did Robert. She had taken a dislike to her old playmate after her marriage.”
Eleanor said nothing but wondered once more if the rape might be good reason for Isabelle to have killed Henry. Had he tried to force her again? Might he have told her of some plan he had to void her marriage to his father? Had Sir Geoffrey found out and tried to protect her, overprotection perhaps for a woman he could not pleasure but whom he did seem to love for his own reasons. After all, he did believe that he had been potent with her once.
“We seem to be wandering in circles, child. You have presented good reasons for reducing the number of suspects to three. Now I wonder where you would have us go from here?” A
dam asked, looking over at his daughter.
Eleanor sat back, then turned to Sister Anne. “Before I answer, I must first ask: how does my lord of Lavenham?”
“Weak but gaining strength, my lady. He is a strong man and I rather think he will recover from his wound unless gangrene appears.”
“In that case,” Eleanor said, turning to her father, “hear my plan.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Bright dots of red splotched Sir Geoffrey’s cheeks, a macabre contrast to the almost luminous pallor of the rest of his face. Sitting next to his bed on a stool was Isabelle. Juliana stood just behind her stepmother, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Behind the baron was Anne. Eleanor stood to one side of her father. They all faced the knight.
“I know how you love your grandson, Adam, but the boy lies.” Geoffrey’s eyes narrowed in anger as he looked at his old friend.
Adam now flushed an angry color. “After all these years, you must surely know that indulgence in blind emotion has never been one of my flaws. Nor have I become such an old fool that I cannot see the flaws in those I love. It was I who assumed Robert’s guilt in your attack.”
“It was I who said he could not have done it. I have always believed in your son’s innocence, but your grandson is a child with a child’s imagination. Perhaps he did not mean to lie. Perhaps he believes he saw something he only made up. Or perhaps he saw someone he did not know and thought he had seen me.”
“I will not argue with you, my friend. Let us go on to what is most important here. Who did this deed to you?”
“I do not know.”
“You were stabbed in the chest, not from behind. You must have seen who did it.”
“It happened so quickly, Adam! I was walking behind the stables where I could find some solitude, deep in thought about the plight of your good son, when I heard a sound. I looked up. I saw something move toward me from the shadows. There was little light, as surely you noted yourself. Before I could react, I felt the pain and remember nothing more. If my son had enemies, they were not mine. Why should I fear an attack on me at Wynethorpe Castle? I was surprised, ambushed as we would have said in the old days when we were comrades-in-arms.” Sir Geoffrey smiled weakly but with fondness at Adam. “I never saw the face or even the figure of the man who did it.”
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