The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1)

by Martin Jensen

  “To which perhaps you would be so kind as to take us,” Winston said, flashing an encouraging smile at the homunculus, who turned on his heels without a word and walked to the corner, where he turned left from the alley onto a larger street. We hurriedly followed. He stopped in front of a canvas awning beneath which was a wooden table, which served as a counter.

  Behind it stood a fat, bald man with bushy eyebrows and hair sprouting from his ears. The man was meticulously dressed in immaculate clothes. Behind him, a door led into a house.

  “Is this Alfred?” Winston asked.

  The gnome nodded and got the merchant’s attention with a loud cough.

  “How may I help you?” the merchant asked in a syrupy, fawning voice, assuming we were customers.

  “You can tell us who the last person to enter your stable was, and when that was,” Winston said.

  Alfred looked in surprise from me to Winston. “What the …?” he began.

  Winston repeated his question.

  “I … I heard you the first time … Wigstan?” Alfred said.

  The gnome shrugged. “I was in there this morning to feed the animals and muck it out.”

  “And I haven’t been in there since … the day before yesterday,” Fat Alfred squeaked.

  “So you don’t routinely keep an eye on the stable?” Winston asked.

  Alfred shook his head. “Why should I?”

  “People do steal animals,” Winston said.

  “In the middle of town? With the king here and his housecarls teeming everywhere like ants?” Alfred scoffed, his fat face breaking into a grin. “Though law and order do usually prevail here in Oxford, even without royal visits.”

  “So neither of you was in there during the day today?” Winston asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  Winston eyed the little one. “And yet you were just on your way in there,” Winston pointed out.

  “I was on an errand, and then I saw you two standing in the doorway to the stable when I returned,” Wigstan said.

  “I see,” Winston said. “And Osfrid?”

  “Osfrid?” Alfred asked with a glare.

  “The South Saxon thane. When did he shop here?”

  The merchant’s eyes widened. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “A nobleman who talked the way they do down in Sussex didn’t buy anything here today?” Winston asked.

  “Not for many days,” Alfred said.

  “And you didn’t hear any sounds coming from the stable?” Winston asked.

  The two men shook their heads again.

  “Thank you,” Winston said. He turned and walked away, and I followed him. I hadn’t even opened my mouth.

  “Hey! What is this all about?” the merchant asked, his voice even higher pitched than before, if that were possible.

  He received no answer, as Winston had already turned the corner. I didn’t know if it was part of Winston’s plan to tell Alfred that the murdered man had been killed in his stables—though I was surprised that Alfred hadn’t wondered about that himself.

  “Tonild wishes to pray in peace beside her departed husband’s body,” the priest said gently but firmly. I saw several gruff-looking soldiers eyeing us from behind him.

  It had taken us a while to find the right tent.

  The camp where the king had ordered all visiting noblemen to stay occupied most of the meadow, stretching from the edge of the forest to the shacks at the outskirts of town—a distance of two arrowshots by more than three arrowshots.

  There was no organization to the camp aside from the king’s specification that the various ethnic groups should be intermixed, and it was debatable whether you could call that “organization,” since it meant that no one knew where anyone else was.

  Whenever I inquired about the South Saxon’s tent, the Danes stared at me blankly, the West Saxons shrugged, the East Anglians said they had never heard of Osfrid, and the Viking chieftains stared down their noses at me and claimed that all the various English tribes looked the same to them. A thane from Mercia thought he had heard about a South Saxon whose tent was six sites down from his, but when we got there, it turned out to belong to a Northumbrian nobleman, who was insulted at having been mistaken for a Saxon.

  Along the way, we bumped into soldiers, bodyguards, slaves, precariously laden peddlers, ale sellers, bread hawkers, messengers, town criers, street performers, jugglers, and pompous thanes—who were endlessly having their men clear paths through the crowds for them.

  In addition, there were a fair number of young women openly displaying both their fores and their afts. A couple of them batted their eyes at me … but unfortunately I had to rush along after Winston, who was walking from tent to tent asking for Osfrid, and didn’t have time to pay attention to the surrounding crowds. Besides, I didn’t have so much as a penny, and these were not the sorts of girls who frolicked with men for free.

  Our efforts eventually paid off. A friendly-looking thane, who spoke the guttural version of Saxon mastered only by residents of the area along the Welsh border, directed us to a tent with a pointed top ahead of us. When we reached it, the guard confirmed we had found the right place.

  But he also refused point-blank to admit us. It wasn’t until Winston threatened to call in a platoon of housecarls that he agreed to convey a message into the tent, which almost immediately resulted in the aforementioned priest sticking his head out to report that Tonild did not want to talk to us.

  Winston, however, refused to budge, and I remained at his side. With a sigh, the clergyman emerged fully to talk to us. Meanwhile, the guard stepped over to chat with a few of his buddies, continuing to give us the evil eye all the while.

  “I understand that Tonild wants to honor her husband. But I’m sure she’d also like his murderer found and punished,” Winston said loudly, possibly hoping that his words would be heard through the tent canvas.

  “I believe Lady Tonild already knows who did it,” the priest replied harshly.

  “So I gathered,” Winston said, nodding, “but the king is willing to swear to his innocence and has asked us to investigate the matter.”

  The priest shot us a look that suggested he didn’t put much stock in us.

  “Would you kindly ask Tonild to meet with us? Just very briefly,” Winston asked.

  “No,” the priest said. “I have been expressly instructed not to admit anyone into the tent today.” He spoke with the soft accent of the South Saxons.

  “Would you ask her to meet with us tomorrow, then?” Winston inquired.

  “I will ask her, yes, after you’ve left,” the priest said.

  Winston pursed his lips, then took a deep breath and said, “I would also very much like to inspect the body.”

  The priest shook his head. “That’s out of the question!”

  Winston’s face flared with anger again, then relaxed. “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, tell me this,” Winston said. “Did the stab wound go all the way through?”

  The clergyman stared at him, not understanding the question.

  “Was there blood or a wound on his back?”

  The priest responded with a nod.

  “Thank you. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Winston turned on his heel, and we started walking back through the encampment.

  A short while later, I grabbed Winston’s sleeve. “I’m starving.”

  The afternoon was more than half over and we hadn’t eaten anything since our porridge that morning.

  Winston stopped and nodded. “You’re right. I could stand to eat, too.”

  We were soon seated back in the tavern at the inn, which was empty apart from two less-than-rich-looking Saxons, who I guessed had been spitting in their ales for a long time, judging by the disgruntled looks Alfilda was giving them.

  We each got a roll with salted ham and a tankard of ale. Our hostess hadn’t finished getting ready for dinner yet, so that was the best she could
offer.

  Chewing the bread satisfied the worst of my hunger, and by my second ale I was starting to feel like a person again. I watched Winston, who was picking his teeth with a splinter of wood he’d pulled from the edge of the tabletop.

  “Do you think we’re going to be able to solve this murder?” I asked.

  Winston looked up. “What do I know? It beats sitting around with nothing to do.”

  “Well, the best thing would have been if Ælfgifu had met with you as she’d promised.”

  “Of course, but the king wanted something else. At least this way we’ll be paid.”

  “If we succeed,” I reminded him.

  Winston smiled to himself. “Which is certainly reasonable,” he said. “Who wants to pay for a job not done?”

  He was quiet and sat leaning over the table for a moment.

  “You know,” he said reluctantly, searching for the best way to phrase his thought. “This is a little like being a painter, all this.”

  I had no idea what he meant, and I said so.

  “Ah, no. You can’t read, can you?”

  I’d already answered that one.

  “You see,” he continued slowly. “I draw or paint a single thing. Maybe the first letter in a long text, maybe a picture in the middle of the text. You know what I mean?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I focus on a single detail taken out of the bigger picture,” Winston began. “Like when you read, you see. Or perhaps you don’t. Try to imagine how someone actually reads. First you see the letters, then you string them together into words, and then you string the words into lines, the lines into a text—and suddenly you see the whole. Which is then made richer by the illustrations. The details of the pictures illuminate the bigger picture.

  “This investigation works the same way,” he continued. “We find a detail: horse manure on a cape, no lock on the door, a merchant unaware of a murder in his stable, a widow initially ravenous for revenge but who later prefers prayer over helping the people trying to find her husband’s killer.

  “At some point,” he said, “we’ll have filled in enough details that we’ll be able to see the bigger picture. And then we’ll have our killer.”

  It sounded strange to my ears—but what did I know about reading and other scholarly things? I nodded all the same because I had noticed something about Winston as he spoke: He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Chapter 9

  Winston turned to look through the window in the tavern wall behind him. The springtime sun had not yet set, and it was still light out.

  “So what do we do now?”

  I shrugged. I figured we had to wait until the next morning and hope the widow would talk to us then.

  But Winston had other ideas. He rose from his chair and caught our hostess’s eye. “Would you mind joining us for a moment?”

  Alfilda nodded and walked over to us, casting the Saxons—who were still bent over their presumably empty mugs—a disgruntled look. I admired her graceful movements. The rocking of her skirted hips did not escape my notice any less than the swaying of her breasts beneath her linen top.

  She was smiling to herself as she sat down, which meant she had noticed my attention. When I batted my eyelashes at her, she responded with a look of distaste—somewhat to my surprise.

  So be it. If she thought I was so skirt-crazed that I would waste any more time on her when the town was teeming with young maidens … well, it was her loss.

  Winston leaned across the table. “Did you hear about the murder this morning?”

  Alfilda nodded. “That’s all people have been talking about, in fact. This is a tavern,” she explained, “so things like that are good for business—even those two over there were all worked up about it when they came in.” She lit up in a grin. “Of course you’d never know it to look at them now that they’ve had a tankard or two. I suppose it makes sense that they’re the last ones here—everyone else came in for ale and some gossip and then left because they had something to do.”

  The three of us looked over at them. Sitting there clutching their tankards in their hands, they looked asleep. Maybe they were each waiting for the other to buy the next round.

  “But did the day’s gossip also include the fact that Halfdan and I have been hired to find the killer?” Winston asked.

  Alfilda shook her head. “Who asked you to do that?”

  “King Cnut himself,” Winston said, raising his mug in triumph as Alfilda looked at him in surprise.

  “Wasn’t Ælfgifu the one you were asking about?” she asked.

  “Yes, but she isn’t in Oxford apparently. I had an audience with the king instead,” Winston said, and briefly related our conversation with Cnut, Tonild’s accusations, and the outcome of the whole episode while I fished a fly out of my ale.

  Alfilda listened in silence. Winston finished by describing how I’d gotten my sword back, and then nodded at me to pick up the story where he’d left off. Which I did not do.

  But then something else seemed to occur to Winston, because suddenly he asked Alfilda, “Did any of your customers say anything about who found the body?”

  “Oh, sure,” Alfilda said, suspecting she hadn’t heard the whole story yet.

  Winston smiled almost imperceptibly. “And do you think you might be willing to share that information with us?”

  “Why not?” she said, adjusting her linen top so her breasts heaved. “You’ll find him at Alfred the Merchant’s place. He’s a tiny little guy, works for Alfred.”

  I saw my own astonishment reflected in Winston’s eyes as we both exclaimed, “Wigstan?”

  “You know him?” she asked.

  Winston nodded. “We spoke to him, yes. And I suppose we’ll be speaking to him again.” He pushed his tankard away. “What else are people saying?”

  “About the murder?” Alfilda asked. “Oh, everyone knows there was bad blood between the victim and the king, of course.”

  “So people think Cnut had Osfrid assassinated?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the king is willing to swear that he is innocent,” I said, thinking it only right that I should contribute something to the conversation.

  Alfilda snorted and said, “Kings and noblemen, yes, yes. They never seem to have any trouble finding compurgators to swear they’re telling the truth, do they?”

  Winston nodded. “And we know the king isn’t shy about having his enemies taken out. Either openly, as with Eadric the Grasper, or secretly, as with many of his opponents last year.”

  “Not to mention old king Ethelred’s sons,” Alfilda said.

  Winston shook his head at Alfilda, who looked back at him, puzzled.

  “No, they’re still alive,” Winston said.

  Alfilda snorted again. “Thanks to their mother, Queen Emma, who had the foresight to ship them off to her brother, the Duke of Normandy, before she married Cnut. She knows all too well what happens to fatherless athelings.”

  “You think Cnut would have his stepsons assassinated?” Winston asked skeptically.

  “Doesn’t a young cuckoo push all the other eggs and hatchlings out of the nest?” Alfilda said.

  I looked at Winston, who nodded to himself. “They say Emma has now borne Cnut a son.”

  “Lady Ælfgifu has borne him one as well. The king is young and eager to prove his manhood,” Alfilda said, turning to smirk at me. As if my manhood needed proving!

  “Or to make sure he has heirs,” I replied annoyed.

  Winston scowled at us both. “We were talking about whether or not Cnut could have been behind Osfrid’s murder,” he said.

  “He wouldn’t have asked us to solve the murder if he did it,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Oh, sure he would,” Winston said, leaning back against the wall. “Maybe he thinks we won’t be able to prove that he ordered the killing. And how better to convince everyone that he genuinely wants the crime solved than to make it known that he’s paying for the inves
tigation?”

  I thought about it. “Do you believe that’s what happened?”

  “Well,” Winston said, standing up. “Let’s just say we shall consider every possible option.”

  I stood as well. “Where to?”

  “I wonder if we shouldn’t go have another chat with Wigstan,” Winston said, nodding at Alfilda. “Thank you for your help.”

  Alfred shot us a grumpy look. He and a Viking were standing behind the counter of his market stall, talking. The Viking had a deep voice and hardly deigned to glance at us when we stepped politely up to the counter across from them. I looked over his merchandise.

  There was some fabric at the far end of the counter and a few covered wooden crates stacked on the ground underneath. A selection of silver hammers and crosses, along with a number of silver chains, was laid out on the counter in front of Alfred. He had little to sell, but it was possible that he had several stalls around town—otherwise it was hard to see how he could own such a large house.

  I couldn’t hear what he and the Viking were discussing, but given that Alfred seemed to keep trying to get the Viking to shake hands—and that the Viking kept pulling his hand back to avoid the handshake—they seemed to be concluding a deal. This impression was confirmed when the merchant finally succeeded in grasping the Viking’s palm and shaking it vigorously.

  “It’ll be delivered by tonight,” Alfred said. The Viking emerged from behind the counter and walked away down the street without another word or so much as a glance at us.

  “Did you get a good deal?” Winston asked, smiling politely over the crosses and hammers.

  “Maybe,” the merchant said, obviously disinclined to be chummy. “I don’t suppose you’re here to buy something.”

  Winston shook his still-smiling head. “We’re here to talk to Wigstan.”

  “I pay him to get things done, not to talk to you.” Alfred rehoisted his paunch up over the belt that held his breeches up.

  “I appreciate that,” Winston said. “All the same, he will have to set his work aside for a moment.” Winston no longer had a smile on his lips.

  “Oh, he will, huh?” the merchant scoffed. “He will do no such thing. I’m actually the one who decides that.”