A Head for Poisoning

by Simon Beaufort

  “Sir Godric’s health is important to everyone here,” said Caerdig, seeing that Geoffrey was sceptical about his claim. “He is a harsh and uncompromising man, but his rule was lax compared to the havoc your brothers are wreaking. They attack us in order to harm each other.”

  “They still fight, do they?” asked Geoffrey distantly, still considering a quick getaway to the coast. “It seems that little has changed since I left.”

  “There you are wrong,” said Caerdig vehemently. “Many things have changed—especially in the last few months. For example, travellers must now pay a shilling to your brother Walter to use the ferry over the River Wye.”

  “A shilling?” echoed Geoffrey, astonished. “That seems excessive! How can farmers pay that when they take their produce to the market at Rosse?”

  Caerdig stabbed a finger at Geoffrey’s chest. “Precisely! There are two courses of action open to them: they can slip across at night—at considerable risk, because the penalty for doing so, if caught, is either payment of a cow or loss of an eye. Walter prefers a cow, but he will happily accept either. Or, they can make a detour to Kernebrigges—the toll for which is only sixpence, payable to your brother Henry who has appropriated control of that bridge, along with the manor on which it stands.”

  Enide’s letters had told Geoffrey enough of the greed of Walter and Henry to make him certain that Caerdig spoke the truth on that score. But he had no wish to take sides in a dispute over tolls, just or otherwise, so he changed the subject.

  “I had better retrieve Sir Aumary before he breaks our truce.”

  Entrusting his destrier to Helbye, he walked briskly back along the grassy path in search of the older knight, the dog trailing behind him. Caerdig went too, leaving the black-capped man in charge of the villagers, while Barlow and Ingram still fingered their weapons uneasily. Geoffrey and Caerdig walked in silence, Geoffrey considering what he had been told about his father’s poisoning, and Caerdig concentrating on keeping his ankles away from the dog’s bared fangs. They reached the place where Aumary had been when the ambush had begun.

  “Where is he?” said Geoffrey in exasperation, seeing nothing but trees and undergrowth.

  “Perhaps he ran away,” suggested Caerdig, amused at the notion of a fully armed Norman knight fleeing from his rag-tag village bandits.

  Perhaps he had, thought Geoffrey, although even Aumary should have been able to defend himself against a badly organised attack by farmers armed with a miserable assortment of weapons.

  “Aumary!” he yelled. The woods were silent, and not even a bird sang. “Damn the man! If he has gone off alone in the forest, he is an even greater fool than I thought.”

  Caerdig tapped Geoffrey’s arm and pointed. “There is his war-horse. What a splendid animal!”

  “Splendid, but skittish,” said Geoffrey, leaving the path and wading through the knee-high undergrowth to where it grazed some distance away. “A destrier is of little use if it bolts at the first sign of trouble.”

  As he drew closer, it tried to run, but one of its stirrups had caught on a branch, and it found itself tethered. It bucked and pranced, rolling its eyes in terror as Geoffrey approached. He grabbed the reins and began to calm it, speaking softly and rubbing its velvet nose.

  “Sir Geoffrey!” cried Caerdig suddenly, so loudly that the horse tore the reins from Geoffrey’s hands and began cavorting again. Geoffrey shot the Welshman an irritated glance. “Here is your Sir Aumary. Here, in the grass.”

  Leaving the destrier to its own devices, Geoffrey went to where Caerdig knelt, and looked into the long wet nettles.

  “God’s teeth!” Geoffrey swore as he saw the sprawled figure of Sir Aumary lying there, face down. From between the older knight’s shoulders protruded the slender shaft of an arrow. Geoffrey hauled him onto his back, but the sightless eyes and the tip of the arrow just visible through the front of his chain-mail showed that Aumary was long past any earthly help. Geoffrey swore again. Caerdig’s failed ambush was one thing, but the killing of one of the King’s messengers put a totally different complexion on matters.

  “It was not us!” protested Caerdig, his face bloodless. “Look at that arrow. It is not ours!”

  Geoffrey recalled the arrow hissing past his face at the beginning of the attack, and the one that his shield had deflected moments later.

  “So someone else shot Aumary, just as you happened to be attacking us?” he said, raising his eyebrows at the Welshman. “I doubt the King will fall for that one.”

  “The King?” asked Caerdig fearfully. He swallowed hard. “What has the King to do with this?”

  “Aumary was the King’s agent, delivering dispatches from Normandy,” said Geoffrey. “He met us on the ship sailing from Harfleur to Portsmouth, and informed me that he would be travelling with us because the Court is currently in Chepstow—no great distance from Goodrich, as you know.”

  Caerdig gazed down at the dead man in horror. “This has not gone quite the way I intended,” he breathed. “I saw a band of heavily armed men riding uninvited on my lands, put it with the rumour that you were soon expected to return from the Crusade, and thought no more than that—that a Mappestone was brazenly trespassing on Welsh soil, bringing other Holy Land louts with him. Now it seems that the King’s messenger lies slain on my manor.”

  “Seems?” queried Geoffrey, putting a foot on Aumary’s back and hauling out the arrow with both hands. “It is more than just seems. What will you do?”

  “What will you do?” countered Caerdig, watching Geoffrey inspect the bloody quarrel.

  Geoffrey shrugged, rolling it between his fingers. “There is only one thing I can do, and that is to deliver Aumary and his dispatches to the King at Chepstow Castle. Sweet Jesus, man! How could you be so foolish! The death of a knight is unlikely to go unpunished, here or anywhere else. Even if it had been only me you had killed, do you think nothing would ever have been said, no reprisals?”

  Caerdig shook his head slowly. “You are right: I was stupid. I did not stop to think of the consequences as I should have done. But looking at the situation with the benefit of hindsight does not help me now. I am about to be accused and punished for a murder in which I had no part.”

  Geoffrey declined to answer.

  “But it is the truth!” insisted Caerdig. “Look at the arrow! If you can find another like it anywhere on my land, I will give you everything I own! And you know the forest laws—villagers around here are forbidden to own bows, in case they are tempted to shoot the King’s deer.”

  “But you told me earlier that you had archers hidden in the trees,” said Geoffrey. “What are they using, if not bows?”

  Caerdig looked sheepish. “I was bluffing. What did you expect? You had a sword at my throat—I would have told you I had the Archangel Gabriel ready to shoot, if I had thought it would have intimidated you into not killing me. But, I repeat, none of my men own arrows like that one, or the good quality bows that would be needed to fire them.”

  Not wanting to debate matters further, Geoffrey shoved the arrow in his belt and began to heave Aumary’s body upright to sling it across the horse. Caerdig helped, and together, after much struggling, they succeeded in securing the corpse to the saddle. Geoffrey removed the pouch of dispatches from where it dangled at the dead knight’s neck, and tucked it down the front of his own surcoat.

  “I am coming with you,” said Caerdig abruptly, as Geoffrey led the horse back towards the path. “I will go to the King and put our case to him myself. He will listen to me, and I will persuade him to accept my reasoning as to why we cannot be held responsible for this knight’s death.” He glanced at Geoffrey with narrowed eyes, suddenly thoughtful. “But perhaps you put an arrow in him yourself before we ambushed you.”

  “With what?” asked Geoffrey, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “A mallet? None of my men carries a bow, and Aumary was very much alive before you attacked us.”

  “But I cannot let a Mappestone go to the King w
ith this tale,” said Caerdig angrily. “You would have us all hanged for certain.”

  Geoffrey tugged the arrow from his belt and inspected it again. “This is well made,” he mused, turning the pale shaft this way and that. “It is finely balanced and strong. I imagine it would be expensive.”

  “Quite,” said Caerdig, snatching it from him to see more clearly. “And my villagers are poor—none could afford to buy such good arrows. And, of course, fine arrows are of no use without a fine bow, and I can assure you that none of my people has a bow of any kind, fine or otherwise. We are innocent of this crime, I tell you!”

  “Let us assume you are right,” said Geoffrey. “Then who loosed it? Why would anyone want to kill Sir Aumary of Breteuil? Despite his arrogance and self-importance, I doubt he was a man vital to the smooth running of the kingdom, or that the dispatches he carried are of great significance.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Caerdig doubtfully. He gestured to Aumary’s expensive chain-mail and handsome cloak. “He looks pretty eminent to me.”

  “Because if the messages had been as important as Aumary claimed, I am certain that the King would not have left him to his own devices in securing travelling companions from Portsmouth. He would have supplied an escort to ensure their safe arrival in Chepstow.”

  “And whoever killed Sir Aumary did not steal these dispatches anyway,” said Caerdig, indicating the bulge in Geoffrey’s surcoat. “Perhaps his death was a mistake, and the intended target was you.”

  “Me?” asked Geoffrey in surprise. “Why? I have been away for twenty years, and I am sure the enemies I made from stealing apples and pulling faces at old ladies have long since been forgotten. No one can wish me any harm.”

  “Your brothers do,” said Caerdig. “So, do not expect a warm welcome from them, Geoffrey Mappestone. None of them is beyond making an attempt on your life to ensure that you never make your appearance at the castle. Word is that they think you are returning because your father will die soon, and you have come to see what is in it for you.”

  “I thought they might, given the way my sister has described them in her letters. But I want nothing from them. I wish only to pay my respects to my father, visit my sister’s grave, and leave.”

  They had arrived at the clearing where Helbye chatted to the villagers of Lann Martin. The sergeant’s jaw dropped when he saw Aumary’s destrier and its grisly burden.

  “What happened?” he cried.

  “A mishap with an arrow,” said Geoffrey ambiguously, tying the reins of Aumary’s horse to his own saddle.

  “An arrow?” echoed Helbye. He gestured to the black-capped man who stood next to him. “But I have just been listening to how the new King has been enforcing the law here in the Forest of Dene, and that no one carries a bow any more, even for shooting hares and foxes.”

  Caerdig gave Geoffrey a triumphant look.

  “Well, Aumary did not shoot himself,” said Geoffrey tiredly. “Someone killed him. And the King is going to want to know who.”

  Sir Aumary was not the only victim of the mysterious archer. Geoffrey saw that it had been a slender, pale-shafted arrow that had killed Barlow’s horse. Like most Normans, Geoffrey had a healthy respect for horses, and he was disturbed to see one so summarily dispatched—perhaps even more than he was about Aumary. But Caerdig persisted in his claim that neither animal nor knight could have been slain by his men, and Geoffrey’s own observations of the impoverished, hollow-eyed people who clustered around them suggested that if the villagers of Lann Martin had money to spare, they would not have used it to buy arrows.

  The black-capped man was sent to the village to fetch a replacement mount for Barlow, and to bring two fat ponies for him and Caerdig. Aware that the sun was already beginning to turn from the pale yellow of mid-afternoon to the amber of evening, Geoffrey immediately set a course for Chepstow, forcing a rapid pace with Aumary’s destrier and its sombre burden bouncing along behind.

  Helbye was perfectly happy to have the company of Caerdig and the black-capped man, who was named Daffydd, and chatted cheerfully with them about mutual acquaintances from the days when Goodrich and Lann Martin had been on more friendly terms. Ingram and Barlow, who were young enough to be Helbye’s grandsons, could not recall a time when relations between the two manors were less tumultuous, and complained bitterly that the two Welshmen were to travel with them to Chepstow.

  “They will slit our throats in the night,” grumbled Ingram.

  “We will not be sleeping,” said Geoffrey. “At least one of us will be keeping watch.”

  “I saw no one else in the forest, other than them,” said Barlow doubtfully. “I do not think they are innocent of the murder of Sir Aumary. Do you, Sir Geoffrey?”

  Geoffrey shrugged. “It is not for me to say. We will deliver Sir Aumary’s dispatches to Chepstow, and that will be the end of it. What the King believes or does not believe about Caerdig and his men is no concern of ours.”

  “I have never been to Chepstow,” said Ingram. “How far is it? I was hoping we would be home in Goodrich tonight. I have been away for four years now, and I am tired of travelling.”

  “Sir Geoffrey has been away for more than twenty,” said Barlow. “So stop your whining.”

  “Chepstow lies perhaps eighteen miles from here,” said Geoffrey. “We should reach the Great Dyke around nightfall, and from there the road to Chepstow will be good.”

  “I think the King will hang Caerdig,” said Ingram, returning again to the subject of Sir Aumary’s murder. “I cannot see that he is innocent. And it will serve him right for stealing Lann Martin from Goodrich manor. Caerdig claims he won it legally in the courts, but I wager he bribed the judges to get the result he wanted.”

  “I always thought, from the information in Enide’s letters to me, that Goodrich’s claim on Lann Martin was dubious,” said Geoffrey, half to himself. “It seems just that Caerdig won his case.”

  Ingram and Barlow exchanged a glance of appalled disbelief at the notion that justice should enter the discussion, and Ingram tapped a finger to his temple, to indicate to Barlow that he considered his leader short of a few wits even to consider uttering such a ridiculous notion.

  “Perhaps the King will reward us for bringing him Sir Aumary’s killer,” said Ingram after a moment, his eyes brightening. “Perhaps he will give us Lann Martin in exchange for Caerdig, and we will be able to loot it.”

  Both young men looked at Geoffrey hopefully. The knight sighed, and wondered, not for the first time on their long journey, whether bringing them home with him had been a prudent decision. Since Pope Urban’s call for a Crusade four years before, Christian soldiers had cut a bloody swath from France to Jerusalem, killing and looting every inch of the way. Barlow and Ingram were no longer the simple Herefordshire farmers who had set out to reclaim the Holy City from the Infidel, but were ruthless, avaricious mercenaries whose bulging saddlebags were crammed with treasure stolen and cheated from the hapless people they had met along the way. Geoffrey seriously doubted their willingness or ability to return peacefully to a life of agriculture, which was what they claimed they intended to do.

  He nodded at them noncommittally, and coaxed a little more speed from his horse, so that he could ride with Helbye instead. The old warrior gave him a grin, and began to chat about the old days, before the Conqueror had come to England and Goodrich had been under the control of a Saxon thegn. Caerdig and his man rode ahead of them, following a little-used trackway through the forest that Caerdig assured them led to the Chepstow road. Geoffrey’s dog slunk behind them, looking this way and that for signs of woodland wildlife that might be barked at, chased, or butchered.

  “Our villagers are not happy with this arrangement,” muttered the black-capped Daffydd to Caerdig in Welsh, unaware of Geoffrey’s knowledge of the language. “They think you are a fool to risk riding with a Mappestone and his henchmen.”

  “What choice do I have?” snapped Caerdig. “It is either ride with
him, or have him tell the King that we slaughtered the messenger. And then Lann Martin would be given to the Mappestones for certain.”

  “He cannot be trusted,” said Daffydd, scowling at Geoffrey.

  “Who said anything about trusting him? But my uncle, Ynys, always said that Godric’s youngest son was the only one of the entire brood with any honour.”

  “He may have been honourable in those days,” argued Daffydd, “but look at him now. He has been on the Crusade, and we all know that only the strongest and most ruthless warriors survived that ordeal. Any honour they might have had when they started was battered from them long before they reached the Holy Land, so I am told.”

  Suddenly, Caerdig leapt into the air, and gasped in disbelief. “Hey! That dog just bit me!”

  “Sorry,” said Geoffrey, embarrassed. “It is a habit of his that I cannot seem to break.”

  It was not the first time the dog had jeopardised truces with a belated show of aggression, and with a sigh, Geoffrey dismounted and hunted around for the piece of rope he used to tether the beast when its behaviour degenerated to the point where it needed to be kept away from anything that moved. It had made Geoffrey many an enemy at the Citadel in Jerusalem with its penchant for nipping unprotected ankles. Seeing the hated tether, the dog bared its teeth at Geoffrey, and slid away into a dense patch of undergrowth. Helbye prepared to help ferret it out.

  “Oh, leave him, Will,” said Geoffrey, exasperated. “He will follow us in his own time.”

  “Well, just so long as the thing does not decide to take up residence here,” said Caerdig, rubbing his heel. “I would not want it near my sheep.”