Hangman Blind

by Cassandra Clark

  Hildegard interrupted. ‘If you’re really bent on this course of action, Roger, the services of a couple of trusted yeomen might better expedite the matter. And if I may suggest a dray covered in black velvet? A catafalque,’ she explained, ‘though impressive, would properly have to be open. I think we are best to avoid the catafalque.’

  ‘Dray, catafalque, whatever, this is no time for pedantry, Hildegard.’ Even sapped by poison, Roger was tetchy.

  She gave him a long look. ‘I do see a further difficulty, my lord.’

  ‘Only one?’ Ulf ran both hands through his hair.

  ‘Speak!’

  ‘The matter of Melisen, your wife.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She will wish to view your—’

  ‘Some contagion can be the supposed cause of death,’ Roger told her. ‘Hence the need to keep the body first in a sealed room then in its sealed coffin. Nobody will want to touch and breathe the pestilential air of a dead man, least of all her.’ Suffused with a strange energy, he was clearly ahead of them both in terms of plotting.

  ‘She may wish to kiss you in farewell,’ Ulf suggested.

  ‘Then you prevent it. What do I pay you for?’

  Ulf said, ‘And about this empty coffin.’

  ‘Fill it with stones, man, what else?’

  ‘A moment!’ Hildegard stepped back. Roger, suddenly whiter than wax, threw up all over his own hose. ‘That improves things,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘Better to expel these matters. But there will be more. I think the idea of riding alone to Meaux a bad idea. I suggest another way be found of conveying you there.’

  Roger wiped his beard with both hands then wiped his hands on his capuchon.

  ‘I’ll get my two trusties to take him out in a logging cart,’ said Ulf. ‘Have him ready as soon as you can.’ Eyes alight, he was already at the door. ‘There’s a host of things to do! And,’ he added, ‘lies to be told and later untold. By St George,’ he continued, ‘this is the sort of action I thrive on! Come on, Hildegard, pinch that candle out so nobody can see him. My lord, hold your retching for a trice and lie dead. I shall fling wide the door to announce your demise. Now we’ll see who your real friends are!’

  So saying, and waiting only for Hildegard to snuff out all but one long tallow, Ulf unlocked the door. Then he stepped through into the Great Hall and a deep silence fell as he began to speak. Lord Roger lay as still as the corpse he had so nearly been.

  ‘Only the poisoner will know we’re lying about my having the pestilence,’ said Roger in between spasms of retching and violent shuddering when the door was safely closed again. ‘Who can guess what the terror of imminent discovery will make him do?’

  ‘He’ll lie low for a while, I should think,’ replied Hildegard. She had mopped up most of the contents of Roger’s stomach with a cloth and a pail of water that was thrust into the room by one of the lowest-ranking serfs, for even they had a hierarchy which they fiercely maintained. The ruse of putting it about that the Black Death had invaded the castle ensured that no one would enter the chamber.

  When Ulf returned two menservants were carrying a coffin, which must have had a prospective occupant standing by or one rudely thrust out. It was decided to smuggle Roger inside it into the chapel. Once there he could escape unobserved through the vestry door to a waiting cart in the lane outside. The timber trade between Hutton Ambo and Meaux was thriving; nobody would look twice as the cart rolled by.

  Protesting somewhat, due to a fear of suffocation, Roger was coaxed into the coffin and had the lid closed over him. The two brawny servants Ulf had chosen for the job hoisted it with some difficulty on to their shoulders and staggered towards the door. Let into the secret that their lord was still alive, they kept their smiles off their faces and carried their burden out into the hall towards the bailey, with a show of solemnity that had everybody fooled. The guests fell to their knees and crossed themselves as they passed. With Ulf leading the way and Hildegard taking up the rear, they made slow but steady progress towards the chapel. Once inside, with the doors firmly shut, the two bearers lowered the coffin and Ulf lifted the lid.

  Lying in fresh vomit, Roger emerged with as much alacrity as he could muster. Half crawling, dry retches shuddering through him, he made his way towards the vestry door. As soon as they had him safely hidden in a nest between the timbers on the logging cart, the men climbed up behind the horses, gave Ulf the thumb to show they were ready and began to roll away on the track to Meaux. It was almost morning now, and mist, behind which anything might be concealed, lay in gleaming folds across the dale and the moonlight threw shadows between the trees as if phantoms walked abroad. But no mere phantom was as frightening as a poisoner on the loose.

  Seeing his liege lord safely into the dawn, Ulf returned with Hildegard to where the guests still lingered in little groups. ‘One of these,’ he muttered to her through clenched teeth as he cast his glance over them, ‘one of these. But which one?’

  ‘It’s mad, Ulf. How long does he expect to keep it up?’

  The steward shrugged. ‘I don’t ask questions. I do as I’m ordered. That’s how I keep my job. And my neck,’ he added as an afterthought.

  Hildegard accompanied him when he went to rouse Roger’s chaplain from his bed and inform him of the night’s events. He ordered him to say a requiem mass straight away. As the dazed cleric scurried to make the announcement, Ulf said, ‘The advantage of herding them briskly together gives us the chance to get a look at the face of the devil who did this. He’ll be discomposed even yet. There’ll surely be some telltale sign of guilt to mark him out if he’s human.’

  Hildegard nodded in agreement but was secretly doubtful. Anyone tricky enough to poison Roger could surely dissemble in other ways. She did not expect to see signs of guilt on the face of the man who had attacked her either, although a black eye might be proof of his identity.

  Standing beside Ulf in the arched doorway of the chapel, she watched carefully as the mourners filed inside.

  What Melisen might call the poraille came first, crossing themselves and weeping copiously out of innate dread of the hereafter. Then came the personal servants, sobbing quietly; next, the guests, elegantly grief stricken, and finally, with the composure befitting their status, came the family.

  Roger’s wife was the only one missing.

  ‘She’s lying down but will be along shortly,’ whispered Ulf when Hildegard remarked on Melisen’s absence.

  The place filled up until there was standing room only. The coffin, loaded with pieces of limestone and two chunks of damaged Purbeck marble Ulf had somehow got hold of from the new building works at Beverley, was placed on a trestle in front of the altar where it received many sad-eyed glances. It was covered by a black silk stole embroidered with the de Hutton arms in gold thread. No pile of stones had ever been more grandly returned to its maker. An avenue of tall candles cast a flickering light over church treasures: jewel-encrusted rood, censer, chalice, urceole, pyx, pax and monstrance. Adding lustre to the shimmering splendour was a melange of gold, gilt, ebony and bronze ornament. Roger de Hutton was being buried in style. Hildegard was amazed at the extravagance after her years of austerity in the hermitage.

  The only thing lacking, she judged, was a choir. The family had not been so pious as to run to such display, but the whispering from the highest to the lowest gathered there speculating on the reasons for the sudden demise of their lord almost amounted to a chorus. His death had plainly thrown the inhabitants of Castle Hutton into confusion. Some knelt, stunned into prayer, others whispered fearfully to their neighbours and looked for signs of the plague. The communal grief was expressed by the one Beverley chorister still standing after a night of drinking and singing with Roger’s minstrels. Heroically ignoring any suggestion of hangover, the purity of his voice was enough to set tears in the eyes of everyone who listened.

  ‘I feel close to tears myself,’ Hildegard whispered to Ulf.

  ‘Roger sh
ould have stayed half an hour to see all this. He’d have been mighty pleased.’

  ‘Except for the fact that his murderer is one of these doleful mourners,’ she reminded him. The back of the nave was filled by men-at-arms. Their weapons lay in a heap in the porch. There was no sign of anyone with a freshly blacked eye.

  The priest, a quiet fellow who usually kept himself to himself, was unable to resist the lure of power when he had his church bursting at its seams, and no doubt he considered a little penitential praying would do the assembled some good.

  After an hour, when he still showed no signs of desisting, Hildegard whispered to Ulf that she had an idea she wanted to follow up. Before she could leave, however, Melisen made an appearance. Accompanied by half a dozen maids and her squire in a smart tunic of black velvet, she was attired from top to toe in a mourning veil so fine that the paleness of her skin and the beauty of her haunted glance seemed to be artlessly accentuated. To most of those here, thought Hildegard, she must be a figure to soften a heart hewn from the same Purbeck marble that now fills the coffin. In one hand she clutched a beribboned kerchief with which she dabbed her cheeks beneath the veil and in the other she gripped a cross studded with pearls.

  Hildegard watched as the young widow made her way down the nave towards the bier. The congregation fell back respectfully, making an avenue through which, eventually, sobbing and halting, she reached the rail in front of the altar. Pulling two maids down with her, she crumpled to the floor in a cloud of black silk.

  She certainly knows we’re all watching, thought Hildegard. The widow crossed herself, then, with a few sobs, allowed her maids to help her to her feet. But then she turned, and with a loud cry staggered over to the coffin and flung herself across it with a sob that must have wrung every heart in the place.

  Well, well, said Hildegard under her breath as she slipped outside. In the porch she hesitated, trying to remind herself that compassion was a virtue. But another voice told her that stupidity was not.

  She set off towards the Great Hall. It would be empty now, she was thinking. Most people were still inside the chapel. Could Roger have as many enemies as he suggested? Their grief seemed genuine. A look at the scene where he was poisoned might help narrow down the search for the culprit. There might be clues to be found.

  Before she could get halfway across the yard, a rabble of five or six men-at-arms, wearing Sir Ralph’s silver-and-green blazon, came roaring round the corner from the direction of the stables. They were in high spirits, massacring some song from the previous night. At the same moment, one of the congregation chanced to come out of the church. She had noticed him a few moments ago, standing in the side chapel with a companion, both men cowled like friars, muttering prayers.

  Now, she saw him stop in his tracks. With his face still covered as if the air was too much for him, he uttered a sharp comment about showing respect for the dead. The gang, drunk as a sack of frogs, decided that an unarmed friar was easy prey so they surrounded him, loudly demanding by what right a thieving mendicant could lecture them on how to behave. They were free men one and all, they said. There were cheers.

  Undismayed, the friar replied in a direct manner. He said, ‘By what right?’ He seemed astonished. ‘Why, by the right of my right fist of course!’ He jabbed the ringleader so soundly in the face that he fell back, scattering his companions like skittles. The friar folded his fist back into his sleeve and sauntered away across the yard.

  His companion had just come out of church in time to see this rout and he gave a chuckle of satisfaction. Ignoring the men, who were picking themselves up from the ground and grumbling about their muddied cottes, he came over to Hildegard and said, ‘Sister, I have a puzzle. Can you tell me who my host is now Lord Roger is dead?’

  ‘The lord steward, I imagine.’

  ‘But after that?’

  ‘Some think Sir Edwin is the rightful heir.’

  ‘But he is banished?’

  ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘And how might his claim be viewed by the generality?’

  ‘As just, I would imagine.’

  Thanking her, he walked off with a noticeable military swagger.

  At a slower pace and deep in thought, Hildegard followed.

  The doors to the Great Hall groaned as she pushed them open. Inside, a scene of devastation greeted her: straw soaked with the night’s beer and piss, tankards upended, half-chewed bones thrown down, lost garments draped at random, dogs jumping up on the tables to finish what their masters had started, and a few blear-eyed drunks still lying about in various states of consciousness.

  The kitchen staff, however, looked daisy fresh and were sitting around the table in front of the fire-screen, working their way through the leftovers, and speculating about their future employment. When they noticed Hildegard, they sprang to their feet and pretended to be busy.

  ‘Be at rest after last night’s labours,’ she said. ‘I’m not here to chivvy you.’

  ‘Can I get you anything, Sister?’ asked one who took it upon himself to take charge.

  ‘A small beer would be pleasant,’ she replied. She sat down close to where Roger and the family had been sitting earlier. Nothing had been cleared away and trenchers and earthen platters lay scattered where they’d been dropped in the confusion of Roger’s fall. His two-handled mazer, intricately wrought, and for that reason unmistakable, lay on its side, the contents drained. Her glance sharpened.

  A greenish stain surrounded the vessel. Over the intervening hours it had dried into the cloth covering the table. She looked at it more closely. Surely the wine they had been drinking would have stained the cloth red?

  Further down the board the two friars, their features in shadow beneath their hoods, were sedulously tearing strips off a jugged hare and murmuring secretively to each other. Some of the servants were beginning to clear up around them but they took no notice. For the moment no one was looking in her direction. With nostrils dilating, she bent her head to the cloth and sniffed it. There was a faint and lingering scent, barely discernible. Not quite trusting her senses, she sniffed again. Was she imagining it?

  Her beer was brought. For a moment she eyed it with misgivings before telling herself she was a fool. She drank thoughtfully. Her instinct to give Roger an antidote, made up of poor man’s weather glass and various other cures she always carried in her scrip, had been fortunate. His symptoms clearly suggested poison: the abruptness of the attack, his frightful colour, the vomit. It was lucky he had expelled it before it was able to do its work. But how could anyone have poisoned him with so many people watching?

  Belladonna, she surmised. Something like that could have been mixed with his wine, She thought of Melisen and recalled her dilated pupils. Certainly she was close enough to Roger’s mazer to be able to slip something into it. And yet everyone had their eyes on her all night.

  She recalled how meticulously Melisen had insisted on having the wastel bread assayed during the feast. Why would she make such a fuss about that? Was it to deflect suspicion from the wine? All the dishes brought to the board were tested by the clerk in the kitchens. It was true that traditionally the wastel was tested with a certain amount of ceremony and Melisen was a stickler for having things done properly, so Roger claimed, and it would have been nigh on impossible to poison the food without bringing down the whole household. Ergo: it had to be the wine. But how? Surely that would have been just as difficult? It had been poured from a common pitcher. She remembered how Melisen had even raised the two-handled mazer to Roger’s lips herself. Then she drank from the same place.

  ‘Drink to me,’ she had said, ‘and I will drink to thee.’

  Roger’s thirst had seemed insatiable. Was the sharing of the goblet deliberately intended to deceive? But how could she possibly have poisoned the goblet with all eyes upon her? Perhaps more puzzling still, what on earth could Melisen gain from Roger’s death?

  Chapter Five

  HILDEGARD COULDN’T SLEEP. Her bruise
s ached whichever way she arranged herself on the horsehair mattress. It wasn’t only discomfort which kept her awake. It was the thump of drumming from outside the castle walls. In theory this was the big autumn festival in honour of St Martin, but in reality the villagers were paying homage to their own St Willibrod, the Saxon saint, a celebration in defiance of their Norman masters. The feast also coincided with Samhain, a far more ancient cult, and, truth to say, poor St Martin scarcely got a look in.

  Now the tenants were preparing to slaughter all the surplus animals so that, instead of teetering on the brink of starvation through the winter, they would have salted meat to see them through the cold, dark months. The shriek of pigs having their throats slit was audible above the raucous sound of horns and whistles, and along with the noise came the non-stop chanting of the men in their drinking bouts. It was hardly safe to walk abroad at this time of year. To make it worse the Lammas lands, she knew from experience, would be covered in smoke from a multitude of open fires. There would be races involving dangerous-looking tar barrels spouting flames, which had to be carried unlikely distances by the reeling contestants, and all in all, it would be mayhem. Now was just the beginning.

  By contrast, inside the castle, silence lay like a pall. With everybody up most of the night and with the further excuse that it was supposed to be a time of rest from daily labour, those who could had taken the opportunity to stay in their beds. Unable to sleep, however, Hildegard eventually got up, threw on a cloak and made her way along the empty corridors with the idea that Ulf might still be about. She badly wanted to ask him more about the enemies Roger thought he had. She couldn’t believe they had both gone along with his ruse to make everybody think he was dead. As a plan for drawing out the poisoner it had failed miserably. They were no nearer finding out who had tried to poison him than at the moment he fell. In the meantime, the poisoner was free to try again, maybe with someone else for all they knew.