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

by Martin Jensen

  “Halfdan, would you go call a couple of housecarls?”

  I turned and started walking toward the street but was stopped by Alfred’s squeaky voice. “Housecarls? You have housecarls?”

  Winston smiled again, but this time in a cold way. “We’re asking questions on behalf of the king. His housecarls handle anyone who doesn’t want to answer our questions and anyone who stands in our way.”

  The merchant turned his plump body toward the door behind him. “Wigstan!” he called.

  A moment later, the little man stuck his head out.

  “These … men would like to speak to you again.”

  The little stump scuttled out from under the awning, spit on the ground, and then looked from me to Winston. “Yeah?”

  “There’s one thing that’s puzzling me,” Winston said, gazing up at the canvas awning over Wigstan. “A man finds a dead body, but he doesn’t consider it worth mentioning when two strangers later question his master and him about it.” Winston returned his gaze to Wigstan. “Don’t you find that odd?”

  The gnome spit again. “No. I don’t even see how those two things are connected.”

  “Maybe they’re not,” Winston said. “Do you find murdered men often?” Winston watched expectantly as Wigstan shrugged.

  “Happily, no.”

  “You found him in the shed that belongs to Alfred?”

  The little man nodded.

  “And what business did you have in there?”

  “Business? It’s Alfred’s shed. I work for him.”

  Winston nodded. “We know. But what business did you have in there?”

  Wigstan looked around. He seemed to be trying to make eye contact with Alfred. “I had something to attend to.”

  “And what was that?” Winston asked, smug as a cat.

  “Uh, I don’t remember.”

  Winston’s face suddenly went blank. He gave his nose a tug and stared down at his feet, his right hand opening and closing as if of its own accord. He suddenly turned to me. “Halfdan,” he said.

  I stepped forward.

  “Ask the merchant to take off his shoes and hand them to you.”

  I stared at Winston in bewilderment for a moment but then walked behind the counter to Alfred, who backed away a couple of steps. “You heard the man,” I said to him.

  “I … you have no … I don’t want to,” he stammered.

  Without a word, I held out my left hand. My right was resting firmly on my sword grip. Even so, the merchant made no move to obey.

  “Do I need to take them off for you?” I asked. I thought I knew why Winston wanted to see the shoes.

  Alfred tried to take another step back from me, but he bumped into the wall of his house behind him.

  “Well?” Continuing to hold out my left hand, I drew my sword out halfway before allowing it to slide back into the sheath with a chilling clang. Finally accepting defeat, Alfred sat down on the stone step in front of his door and removed each of his leather shoes in turn. After he handed them to me, I walked back around the counter to show the soles to Winston.

  He nodded. “Just as I thought,” Winston said. “You said you hadn’t been in the stable since the day before yesterday. And yet there’s horseshit on the bottoms of your shoes.”

  “I forgot to clean them,” the merchant said in a high-pitched voice.

  Winston shook his head with a smile. “A man like you? Who parades around town in fancy clothes like a maiden on her way to a dance? You’re lying.”

  He turned to Wigstan. “As are you. The truth is that you found the body in the stable, and you both dragged it to the shed together. Isn’t that so?”

  The homunculus was practically blown backwards when Winston roared once more, “Isn’t that so?”

  “Well then,” Winston said, turning back to Alfred. “Maybe I should summon the housecarls after all?”

  The merchant shook his head, his fleshy jowls wobbling like jelly.

  “All right,” Winston said, nodding at me. “But if you want to avoid getting them involved, then you’re going to need to tell us the truth.”

  Chapter 10

  Alfred admitted everything. Perched on his doorstep, he conceded that he and Wigstan had moved the body from the stable.

  Wigstan leaned against the wall next to his master, his arms crossed. Though he was trying to act tough—the corner of his mouth twitched every time I glanced at him—he looked even more cowed than Alfred, if that was possible. Winston stood before them, firm but relaxed while I sat on the counter, my belt stretched taut and my sword sheath resting over my thighs.

  Their story was that Wigstan had gone into the stable to muck it out and had practically tripped over the body. Terrified about what might happen if word got out that a strange nobleman had been murdered in his stable, Alfred had devised a plan to get rid of the body. They had been lucky that no one was in the alley when they dragged the dead man up to the shed, and no curious onlookers had walked by as they were washing the blood off the stable floor.

  Winston studied little Wigstan, who held his head up, trying to look defiant. “Where was the body lying?” Winston asked.

  “Lying? Uh, on the ground,” Wigstan said.

  “Yes, I realize that,” Winston said. “In what position? Face down, or on his back, or on his side?”

  “Um, well kind of curled up, on his side.”

  “Was there a lot of blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “In a pool?”

  The little guy thought about it. “No, sort of more all over the floor.”

  “Hmm.” Winston thought for a moment. “Did it look as though someone had rummaged through his clothes and pockets?”

  “How would I know?” Wigstan said with a shrug.

  Winston glanced at me and said, “If a man is stuck through with a sword, he falls toward the blow, does he not?”

  “Unless the killer puts his foot up and pushes back on the body to pull his sword back out,” I said. “How do we know we’re dealing with a sword?”

  “Was there a wound on the man’s back?” Winston asked, looking over at Alfred.

  Alfred looked uncertain and glanced at Wigstan, who hiccuped a “yes.”

  Winston looked back at me knowingly. I nodded. Osfrid must have been stabbed in the stomach.

  If the murderer had aimed for Osfrid’s chest, he would have had a tougher time. It takes luck to stab a man right between the ribs—and more strength than most people possess to force a sword through the rib cage.

  An experienced swordsman will go for the soft belly but aim diagonally up from beneath the ribs to try to pierce the heart. If the victim isn’t wearing ring mail, which Osfrid wasn’t, there’s nothing to stop the tip of the sword from penetrating all the way through the body as long as you stay clear of the spine, which isn’t hard to do.

  And because swords are so long, they often slice cleanly through the victim’s body, leaving an exit wound on the back.

  “Why move the body to your own shed if you were afraid of what might happen to you if he were found in your stables?” I asked, looking at Alfred.

  “There weren’t … there weren’t any other options,” Alfred said, his feet fidgeting nervously.

  “And you knew the shed was empty,” Winston said, scratching his beard.

  Alfred nodded.

  I had a thought and said, “And with a little luck, the body might have stayed there for quite a while before anyone discovered it.”

  Another nod. But then Alfred stared in terror at Winston, who suddenly all but shouted, “Then why in the devil’s name did Wigstan go and ‘find’ the body?”

  The two men looked at each other uncertainly. The gnome frowned, while the merchant bit his lower lip.

  “We forgot to lock the door to the shed,” Alfred said, shrugging in resignation.

  “Because you don’t keep a lock on it, because the shed is usually empty?” Winston asked them, nodding approvingly at me since I had correctly figur
ed that one out.

  They nodded.

  Alfred held up his arms in a gesture of helplessness and explained, “When we’d finished cleaning the stable floor and came back out, we looked up the alleyway and saw that the shed door was swinging open on its hinges. A gust of wind must have blown it open. Wigstan hurried up there, but …” Alfred said but stopped to look at his assistant, who petulantly reported that by the time he reached the shed, some people were walking down the alley. Winston’s face lit up in understanding.

  “So you realized that your only option was to ‘discover’ the body?” Winston asked.

  Wigstan nodded, still petulant. He evidently hadn’t noticed the change in Winston’s facial expression.

  “But …” I said, scanning the merchant’s sparse selection of merchandise. “You’re not exactly drowning in goods here. Why did you have the shed converted into such a secure storeroom in the first place?”

  “My business prospects looked very different a couple of weeks ago, but this new … Danish king … is going to be the ruin of me,” Alfred said, his lips pulled back in an embittered sneer.

  Winston whistled quietly. “The heregeld?” he asked.

  Alfred nodded. “Oxford’s share of the army tax is far too great. And when the high reeve came to collect, he didn’t even stop once my coffers were drained of coin.”

  “He took your goods as well?” Winston asked.

  Alfred flung up his hands in frustration. “What you see here is all I have left after paying the heregeld and the town’s new fire tax.”

  “What made you suddenly realize how it all fit together?” I asked Winston.

  After having spent a good deal of time at the merchant’s stall, we were once again seated in the tavern.

  Winston smiled slightly. “I should have seen it ages ago,” he said. “What got me thinking was Wigstan’s reluctance to divulge his business in the shed. That fool should have realized that someone would eventually be asking that question and he should have been ready with some made-up story. If he’d visited the shed a week ago, that would’ve been one thing. But did he really think I would fall for his claim that he couldn’t remember why he’d gone to the shed a few hours earlier?”

  “Yes, but …” I began. Ever since Winston’s shoe inspection and the merchant’s subsequent admission, it had been bugging me that I hadn’t been able to see through Alfred and Wigstan’s lies the way Winston had. “You seemed so sure when you accused them of lying.”

  “Yes, because I remembered what we’d seen in the stable,” Winston said.

  “You mean the blood we noticed in the horse shit?” I asked.

  “No, that just showed us where the murder took place,” Winston said with a mischievous glint in his eye. “The damp patches on the floor. We should both have noticed those and guessed what they meant.”

  “Of course,” I said, suddenly feeling really dumb. “They must have washed the blood off the dirt floor!”

  Winston nodded. “But they overlooked that small pile of blood-spattered manure.”

  So it was as simple as that: All you had to do was remember the details and put them together to see the bigger picture.

  Several of the tables in the tavern were occupied now.

  Some of the noblemen preferred to eat at the tavern rather than bring their own cooks and kitchen staff to the camp. There were also three clergymen silently gulping down Alfilda’s wonderful stew, four men who might have been anything from peddlers to merchant soldiers looking for a new master, and a drooping, thin-haired man who, judging from his clothes, was on a pilgrimage, perhaps to the shrine of Saint Frideswide, Oxford’s own saint.

  I was hungry. The bread that afternoon had only taken the edge off my hunger, and I dug with relish into the rabbit stew, which was seasoned with onion and thyme.

  Winston was also devouring his portion. He seemed very satisfied following our chat at Alfred’s stall, as though the confirmation of his hunch had given him renewed faith that we could get this job done for the king.

  Finally he wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand, belched behind that same hand, and stretched his legs out under the table.

  “Not a bad day’s work,” Winston said.

  Something had been puzzling me. “Why did you think to ask whether someone had rummaged through Osfrid’s pockets?” I asked. He gave me a nod of approval, as though he were pleased with my question.

  “Well, first of all, it’s not such a surprising question, is it?” Winston said. “Osfrid must have been murdered for some reason. Maybe he was in possession of something that someone wanted. But there was also another reason. As you pointed out earlier, left to his own devices, a man who’s been stabbed in the stomach will grab for the sword and thus fall forward. A killer, however, will do everything he can to pull his sword free and, as you said, will push the victim backward in order to do so.

  “So, the body should either end up on its back or its stomach. But according to Wigstan, Osfrid’s body was lying on its side,” Winston continued. “There wasn’t a pool of blood. It was—how did he put it?—‘sort of more all over the floor.’”

  Winston looked at me expectantly, waiting to see if I could explain that.

  “Because Osfrid tried to get away?” I suggested.

  “Exactly,” Winston said. “He lived long enough to drag himself across the floor.”

  “That means …” I hesitated, still uncertain. Winston nodded encouragingly. “That means that he didn’t die right away,” I said.

  “Unless someone was searching the body and dragged it across the floor while they were doing so,” Winston said, nodding.

  “But …” I said, hesitating again. “What does that tell us?”

  “How should I know?” Winston shrugged. “But it is a detail.”

  I grinned. “And at some point we’ll see the big picture. Oh, and one more thing,” I said. Winston cocked his head, eager to hear what I had to say.

  “I noticed that Osfrid’s hands were all cut up, as though he’d grabbed at the sword to keep it from going in,” I said.

  “So he tried to defend himself, you mean?” Winston said, tugging on his nose.

  But I had realized there was another possibility. “Or because he still had the strength to grab the sword after he’d been stabbed.”

  “Which wouldn’t be all that unusual,” Winston said. “A man in a great deal of pain will try to remove the source of it. So you’re right: Maybe he actually helped his murderer pull the weapon back out.”

  “That doesn’t really help us though,” I said and sighed. “Now what?”

  Winston stood. “I’m going to go look after Atheling,” he said.

  But before we reached the door, the king’s housecarl Godskalk entered the tavern. When he spotted us, he said, “The king summons you two to an audience with him.”

  This time the king’s guards didn’t ask me to hand over my sword before allowing me to enter the Hall.

  Cnut sat at a table that was positioned in the center of the room to the left of the fire. Thorkell and Wulfstan sat with him, with silver chalices and empty food platters before them. Cnut’s platter was covered with bones—pork ribs, it looked like—that had been picked clean. The silver chalice in front of him was quite a bit larger than the others.

  At a gesture from the king, servants rushed over with chairs. He nodded at us to sit down at the table. Wooden drinking bowls were placed before us, and before Cnut opened his mouth, he raised his own chalice and drank to us.

  The wine was sweeter than the one my father used to drink.

  “Do you have any news?” Cnut asked.

  Winston eyed the king. “I’m afraid not much, my lord, though we have figured out where Osfrid was killed.”

  “Let’s hear it.” Cnut reached forward and took a bone from his platter. Two large dogs immediately rose. The king tossed the bone to one and then threw one to the second dog.

  Winston brought the king up to date on our in
vestigation.

  “Excellent,” Cnut said.

  I cast a sidelong glance at the king. Why did he seem so pleased? It wasn’t as though we were any closer to figuring out who had killed the thane.

  “Do you think this Alfred fellow can afford to pay the wergeld for Osfrid’s life?” the king asked.

  My surprise turned to bewilderment.

  Winston shook his head and clarified, “I don’t think he’s the murderer.”

  Cnut was incredulous. “You don’t think he is? He admits to moving the body. He’s the only one we know who had any contact with the body, he and his assistant that is. Obviously he is the killer.”

  Winston looked at the king for a long moment. When Winston finally spoke, his tone was tinged with anger. “My lord, if all you want is a murderer who will satisfy everyone, then you’re right: You should simply lock Alfred up until he can pay the wergeld or until Osfrid’s family exacts its revenge and be done with the matter. But if you want to catch the actual killer, you should let me finish the job you have asked me to do.”

  “How can you be so sure this man isn’t the murderer?” the king asked, his voice skeptical.

  “I’m afraid I can’t be sure—not yet. No more than I can say for a fact that he is the murderer. You gave me a job to do, my lord. Was that not because you wanted me to actually do it?”

  The king looked angrily from Winston to me. “I am convening the Witenagemot in three days. Can you have the actual murderer in irons before then?”

  “Perhaps,” Winston replied.

  “Perhaps isn’t good enough,” Cnut said. “Three days, Saxon. Otherwise, this merchant will be accused of the murder before the entire assembled nobility of England.” The king turned away from us. We took the hint and made our exit.

  As we reached the door, I glanced back into the Hall. Jarl Thorkell was holding his chalice, and the archbishop was leaning over the table speaking to the king, who seemed distracted.

  Once we were back outside, I turned to Winston. “‘A murderer who will satisfy everyone’?” I asked.

  “Ideally a Saxon, but not a nobleman,” Winston explained. “That would make the murder just a one-time event—not the result of a feud or any sort of treachery. The crime would be resolved, and no one would be obligated to take further action. Beyond that, it would be quite convenient if the murderer were from Oxford, a town Cnut hates. What could be better? I don’t think Alfred is as poor as he pretends to be—so he has the added advantage of being a man who can actually pay the wergeld on Osfrid’s life.” Winston paused. “But one thing’s bothering me.”