Bone of Contention

by Roberta Gellis

  “Then why did St. Cyr go crying to Sir Ferrau about his loss?” Niall asked indignantly.

  “I do not think that much of a problem,” Magdalene replied. “It is barely possible that he was so muddled, given Niall’s beating, drunkenness, and William’s throttling him, not to mention what Florete’s men may have done before they dumped him, that he honestly forgot he had paid for the document with it. A far more likely reason is that he thought he could pressure Niall into paying something to silence him.”

  Bell nodded. “And Count Alain, having heard St. Cyr demanding Ferrau’s help in getting the purse back from Niall and fearing the betrothal was in it, bade Ferrau to retrieve it.” He stood up. “I must leave for Wytham now, but I would like you to wait for me to return to Oxford with you. I do not know whether Ferrau will have gone to the count, but he may well tell him that Niall will be bringing the purse tomorrow. Count Alain will understand at once that Niall is more likely to take it to Lord William than give it to Ferrau.”

  “Do you think it likely he will set an ambush to take it from me?” Niall asked.

  Bell pursed and pulled back his lips. “Not likely, but why take a chance? If there are two of us…”

  A brief conflict showed in Niall’s face. Pride bade him say he could take care of himself, but his service with Lord William had taught him caution. Any man could be taken down by an arrow that struck just right, such a hit on two men would be near a miracle. Instead of refusing Bell’s offer, he said, “What of the women? Is it best we leave them here in Noke?”

  “No!” Magdalene exclaimed. “I must go back to Oxford to warn William that it is entirely possible Lord Waleran knew nothing of this.”

  “And I must go to present my petition to the king,” Loveday insisted. “It is my best chance to reach King Stephen himself. If Lord William is going to bring Niall to him to prove his innocence, he might as well also present the cause of the quarrel—me.”

  Bell looked from one to the other and shook his head, but he said nothing until he had risen to his feet and belted on his sword. Then he looked at Niall.

  “I leave to you the dubious pleasure of convincing them that you can give the warning to Lord William and present Loveday’s petition. I will see you between Prime and Tierce tomorrow, and depending on the dean’s instruction may also see you at Court.”

  Magdalene, lips thinned with determination, rose to accompany him to the door, but they both stopped to listen to a mild disturbance in the bailey. A moment later, Loveday’s steward hurried in, an anxious frown on his face.

  “There is an armed man at the gate, Mistress Loveday. He says his name is Manville d’Arras and that he is heir to Aimery St. Cyr. He said he wishes to speak to you about your betrothal.”

  Chapter 15

  23 June,

  Noke Manor

  Niall leapt to his feet. “Just keep him at the gate until I pull on my armor,” he said to the steward, who hurried out. To Loveday, his face red with rage, he said, “I will see him away from the gate and off these lands in a way that will convince him the only thing being St. Cyr’s heir will get him is a sound beating.”

  Loveday also got to her feet, biting her lip, but Magdalene hurried back to Niall and laid a hand on his arm. “Yes, go and arm,” she said, “but don’t drive him away before I can speak to him. I have heard from several sources that the man is a halfwit. Still, he was much in St. Cyr’s company and it may be that he can tell us who St. Cyr’s high-born friends are. Since that is the man most likely to have killed St. Cyr—”

  “Who? Why?” Loveday and Niall asked in chorus.

  “Go and arm,” Bell said to Niall. “Magdalene will tell you the whole tale of what we have discovered after we have questioned Arras. She is right. It is important to find out what he knows.”

  “Then I will go to the gate and invite him in—” Loveday said.

  “No! Wait until I am armed,” Niall exclaimed, hurrying toward the back of the Hall, where a rough framework had been built to support his armor.

  Since speed was necessary, Niall did not bother to remove his good tunic and don his gambeson. Bell followed to help him slide into the heavy metal shirt, and as soon as it was seated on his shoulders, Loveday went out. Magdalene watched from the doorway, holding up a hand to discourage the men from showing themselves.

  “The servants are all around her,” she said softly, “and he is threatening no violence.” Then she added urgently, “Back! Into the privy chamber. Loveday is bringing him into the Hall.”

  The three of them hurriedly passed up the length of the Hall to a partitioned-off chamber where Loveday’s bed stood next to a table holding heaps of tally sticks and a box of rolled parchments. There they all huddled in the doorway, hoping Arras would not notice them.

  Loveday brought Arras to the benches near the hearth and gestured for him to sit—with his back to the partitioned-off room. “You cannot inherit people,” she was saying, “except, of course, slaves, and you know I am no slave.”

  “But the will says everything.”

  The tone was puzzled, not aggressive or argumentative, the voice was thick, the words oddly slurred. Magdalene remembered that the whore Hertha had said he spoke as if his tongue was too large for his mouth. It was a good description. Behind her, Magdalene could feel the tension ooze out of the watching men, although they pressed closer to hear.

  “I have it written,” Manville d’Arras said plaintively, fumbling in his purse and bringing out a parchment, which he offered to Loveday. “I have his horse and his armor and his clothing…” His lower lip trembled. “I do not want them. I want… I want Carl—no, I mean Aimery—I want Aimery back. He—the man swallowed hard “—he talked to me all the time. Sometimes I didn’t understand him, but he never yelled at me for that. He only laughed and said it was good to talk to me. No one else ever said that.”

  There were tears in Loveday’s eyes, and she leaned forward and patted Arras comfortingly on the arm. “It is hard to lose a friend. I know too well what it is to lose those I loved, but your friend Aimery was deceived. The betrothal document offered to him was false and worthless. You see, I had been previously betrothed, and you know the Church does not permit the marriage of a betrothed person.”

  Arras nodded. “Yes, I know that. But—but the betrothal was not offered to Aimery. He thought of that himself and had to find someone to write it for him.”

  “But then how did Aimery find out about me?”

  A big grin split Arras’ face. “Oh, he was clever, that Aimery. He found—” He stopped speaking suddenly and frowned. “No. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “And you didn’t,” Loveday said, smiling at him and patting his arm again. “That was right while Aimery was alive, of course, but now that he’s dead, you want to explain how clever he was so that he will be well remembered. The promise you made must have ended with his life so you can be free to praise your friend.”

  Behind her, Magdalene heard Niall draw in a hissing breath, and she jabbed backward with an elbow to keep him silent.

  “That’s true.” Arras was frowning. “But Aimery said if I told, it would be his death. I never did tell, never…but he’s dead anyway.”

  “Yes, but it was not your fault, and nothing can hurt Aimery now. Nothing can hurt him ever again, so you can tell me how clever he was.”

  “He found a place—” the grin was back “—up in the attic over Lord Waleran’s solar. I’m not sure where it was, maybe near the chimney hole—where he could hear all the lord’s privy conversations. It was there that he heard the king’s clerk tell Lord Waleran about an orphan with a good property who was not rich enough for a king’s man but might be suitable for one of Lord Waleran’s men. Well, Aimery was one of Lord Waleran’s men, so why shouldn’t he have the orphan?”

  Magdalene had clapped both hands over her mouth to hold back a gasp, and her eyes were as wide as they could get. If Raoul could find that place, William would soon know most of Waler
an’s secrets. Arras was still extolling his friend’s cleverness, making it quite clear that he had no idea that what Aimery had done was wrong, and Magdalene took the chance of glancing back at Niall and Bell. Both wore almost identical expressions of mingled horror and speculation.

  Meanwhile Arras had wandered from his adulation of Aimery to anger at the man who had robbed him of his friend.

  “But it was not Niall Arvagh who did that,” Loveday said. “He was here, at Noke, when your friend was killed. Indeed he was. I am telling you the truth.”

  “But who else could it have been?” Arras said pitifully. “No one else wanted Aimery dead. Everyone liked him. He told me so.”

  “I do not know,” Loveday said, choking a little over the idea of St. Cyr as a general favorite. “Perhaps it was the person who wrote the false betrothal document for him. It was false, you know, I did not sign it. I can write my name and would not use an X, and besides that, I knew I was already betrothed—although I did make a mistake and not tell the king’s clerk of my arranged marriage. But it is wrong to write a document you know is false, so that person may not be a good person. He might have feared Aimery would tell someone about the false document and killed him to ensure his silence. Do you know who that person was?”

  “No!” Arras cried, looking shocked. “Aimery talked about his friend who had found a high place, but he never named him and I never saw them together. And I do not believe that someone would kill over a silly piece of parchment. I heard Niall Arvagh say he would kill Aimery.”

  “Only if he ever came here and troubled me again, and he never did, so Niall had no cause to kill him. And Niall was here, at Noke, when Aimery was killed in Oxford. You need not believe me. Indeed, I was not at Noke that night, but the priest was here. Why do you not go down to the village and seek out Father Herveus? You know a priest would not lie. He will tell you that Niall was here, playing chess with him that night, and could not have killed your friend.”

  “Will he?” Instead of looking stubborn or doubtful, Arras looked relieved. “I will be glad if it is true. I would have had to fight Sir Niall if he killed Aimery. I am a strong fighter.” He shook his head. “But I do not think I could have won that fight.” He uttered a long sigh. “I will go to the village and speak to the priest. If he tells me Sir Niall is innocent, I will look for the man who gave Aimery the false document and ask him where he was the night Aimery died.”

  “Be careful,” Loveday said, rising as Arras did to see him to the door. “Such a man is dangerous. Be on your guard. If he killed Aimery, he might wish to harm you also.”

  Arras smiled at her. “Oh, I am not afraid of anyone who writes. I was a much better fighter than Aimery. I taught him to use a sword and he was big and strong, but he never wanted to practice enough. He was cleverer than me, but I was the better man-at-arms.”

  His voice faded as he went out of the Hall. Loveday, who had gone with him to the door, stood watching as he mounted his horse and rode out. The steward closed the gate after him. Meanwhile, Bell helped Niall shed his mail shirt and then followed Magdalene into the Hall. Sure the house was secure again, Loveday had returned and stood near the benches, wringing her hands.

  “The poor thing,” she said, and tears stood in her eyes. “Should I have tried to stop him from searching further into St. Cyr’s death? He may be a good fighter, as he said, but that will not save him from someone who will creep up and stab him in the back.”

  Niall put an arm around her and kissed her forehead. “You cannot order everyone’s life to protect them, Loveday, You might have convinced him not to ask one kind of question, but he would not have understood the general idea and would have asked another.”

  “True enough,” Magdalene said, “and I am very much afraid that poor Arras was not long for this world in any case. Did you have enough time to look at that parchment, Loveday? Was it really a will signed by St. Cyr? Who witnessed it?”

  “What do you mean he was not long for this world in any case? And yes, I had time to read the will,” Loveday replied. “It was very simple, it just said that everything in St. Cyr’s possession was willed to Manville d’Arras. It was written by Peter, priest of Sutton, and witnessed by a mercer and a butcher of the village.”

  Magdalene nodded in a satisfied way. “What will any of you wager that Arras has something—some small property or an income from his family—and that there is an identical will leaving everything Arras owned to St. Cyr?”

  Bell laughed. “I do not wager on sure things.” Then his lips turned down. “And I fear that what Magdalene did not say was true also—that when it suited St. Cyr, Arras would have had a fatal accident or died in some action that Lord Waleran’s troops fought.” He shrugged. “I really must go or I will not reach Wytham until after dark.”

  Magdalene walked with him to the door and across the bailey to the stable. “Can there actually be any danger for Loveday and me in riding to Oxford?” she asked. “I really must go. Raoul de Samur must hear about this listening place at once. If he can discover what Waleran and Alain are planning we could—” She stopped, aware of her mistake.

  “Could what?” Bell made a sound of disgust. “Doubtless if one ploy fails, another will be tried.” He shrugged, then said, “Arrows can go anywhere and either you or Loveday might be seized as a hostage and threatened so that Niall will give up the purse. Why take the chance? I can seek out Raoul—” He laughed harshly as he saw the expression on her face. “Very well. I suspect you will ride alone if I deny you. All you can think about is your precious William’s benefit once his spy has this news.”

  Magdalene shook her head, although Bell had sensed the truth. The thought of how much Raoul’s information could benefit William if he could find St. Cyr’s hiding place made her want to ride to Oxford at once, but she dared not say that and incite more jealousy in Bell. Beside that, she was afraid to foul William’s plans by bringing Niall into the city too early. So she only squeezed Bell’s arm and said that if the danger were not acute, it would be better for Loveday to come too because she would be more likely to receive a sympathetic hearing from the king.

  Bell sighed, caught her to him for a hard kiss that expressed mingled frustration and amusement, and went into the stable. Magdalene, returning to the house, heard an echo of her own statement coming from Loveday’s lips.

  “But my love,” she was saying, “it will have an entirely different effect if I, weeping and trembling, present my letter and my petition to be pardoned for forgetting to mention my betrothal, than if you simply give them to Lord William, who will give them to a clerk. Why, the king, in the great press of business that falls upon him, might never get to see them. Whereas if I am there, complaining of the forged betrothal and then I beg him to honor my true betrothal—”

  “I have just spoken to Bell,” Magdalene interrupted, fearing that she would have to listen to Loveday repeat the same message, although in different words, until they actually left the next day, “and he admits he does not think an ambush very likely, just wishes to be sure. Let the matter rest for now, because I think Niall should know what Bell discovered about St. Cyr’s death.”

  Niall was only too happy to fall in with this proposal and Loveday was also well satisfied. She had had the last word on the matter and felt her reasoning might have more effect if she did not nag. Both listened eagerly to Magdalene’s explanation of why Bell was almost certain St. Cyr had been killed by a knight.

  “But who?” Niall protested. “What knight would so soil himself when he could have easily found cause in the man’s drunken insolence to cut him down?”

  Magdalene frowned suddenly, thinking of a knight who had worn mail but was unlikely to be capable of cutting down St. Cyr. “Sir Jules of Osney?” she suggested.

  Loveday giggled. “Not Jules,” she said. “I do not think he has donned his mail for a year.”

  “But he was wearing it that night. Lord Ormerod told Bell that Sir Jules had been ranting about how he would m
ake St. Cyr leave you in peace. His sister, knowing him to be pot-valiant, took fright and begged him into his mail shirt.”

  “Marguerite is sweet and clever,” Loveday said, with a rather fond smile. “Her fault is that she loves her idiot brother too much to deny him what he desires—and thereby does him great harm. Oh well, she is young yet. I hope she learns better before he destroys Osney completely.”

  Magdalene cocked her head. “If Niall did not exist and this stupid business with St. Cyr had not catapulted you into the need for an immediate marriage, would you eventually have accepted Sir Jules?”

  Loveday’s lips turned down with distaste. “I might have if nothing better appeared or I was threatened with a worse marriage. I know I could manage him—one way or another—and Osney is, or was, a good estate. Perhaps it could be brought back to a decent yield. My children would have been gentlefolk…” She shrugged, then turned to look at Niall and smiled. “Thank God and all His saints I have that and more—a real man to take to my bed and father my children and teach my sons to be men.”

  Niall, who had been looking distressed while Loveday answered Magdalene’s question, now grinned at her. “You may rest assured I will see to fathering the children and raising my sons as men. And your children will be gentlefolk.” He took her hand. “I am sorry I will bring almost nothing else to our marriage.”

  “Do not be so silly,” Loveday said. “You will bring William of Ypres’s favor, which will be worth more in the long run than a ruined estate that might drain Noke and Otmoor in my attempts to save it. Your father will help us set up to breed horses— I know just where they can be grazed.” She squeezed his hand. “And you bring yourself, a man willing to let me do what I love to do, see to my lands and my flocks. Which is why I was never willing to marry Tirell Hardel, even though he is a good man, I owe his father much, and I knew Master Reinhart desired our marriage.”

  Reminded by the name, Magdalene then recounted her talk with Mayde, the server in The Wheat Sheaf, and repeated her description of the merchant-looking man.