Season of the Raven (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 1)

by Denise Domning

  "A shame that, certainly for Halbert's sake," Faucon said. "Although we now know your master was already beyond rescue when that wheel began again to turn last night, if you had come out, you might have seen or apprehended the murderer. Perhaps you can tell me this, then. When I arrived this morning, the brake on the wheel was set. Since it's a sure thing Halbert didn't rise out of the race to set it, there's only one man who could have done it: the man who put Halbert into the water after he was dead."

  Alf still stood easily, no tension affecting the line of his shoulders. His hands, including his right in which he held the awl, were loose at his sides. He continued to meet his better's gaze without flinching. It was uncommon boldness for one so humble.

  "But why set the brake at all?" Faucon continued, using his words the way beaters used sticks, to drive their prey out into the open so the hunters could make a kill. "After all, the wheel had already stopped turning once Halbert was lodged beneath it. That had me pondering for a bit until I realized it was set because of long habit, because setting the brake is what this man always did.

  "This morning," Faucon went on, "the sheriff's man couldn't move those screws with his dagger as he tried to open them. After the sheriff left, I watched how much effort it took for you to release the brake even using the proper tool. No easy feat, it seemed. Tell me, are you the only one strong enough to open and close that brake?"

  It was an accusation framed as a question and aimed at one who had no right to refuse to answer. Nonetheless, Faucon expected Alf to say nothing. The workman surprised him.

  "Nay, not at all," Alf replied with a shake of his head, his voice quiet and as flat as his expression. "Opening the brake is no one man's chore here, and you're wrong to think it difficult. It's just a matter of setting the wrench rightly on the screw. That is the purpose of the wrench, to make the screws turn with ease. Not only does Master Stephen do it, as did Master Halbert, but even the young mistress wields the wrench when we need a hand. It was only difficult this morning because of how my master was trapped beneath the wheel. That put pressure on the axle and thus on the screws. If you doubt me, I'm sure Master Stephen would be happy to let you try opening and closing the brake for yourself."

  Although Alf continued to meet his gaze, the expression in his eyes was as impenetrable as the stones that enclosed the courtyard. With every breath, Faucon grew ever more convinced the man was hiding something.

  "Perhaps I shall try it," he replied. "There is one more thing that puzzles me. Why did Stephen not release the wheel for the sheriff? It wasn't until Sir Alain departed that your master called you to come from the mill with your wrench and release that brake."

  "It is not my wrench and I but do as I'm told," Alf replied, countering another oblique accusation with ease. "As the sheriff was arriving this morning, Master Stephen commanded me to wait in the mill with the wrench until he called for me. As that was his command, that is what I did. If you wish to know why he might command that of me, you'll have to ask him."

  Faucon nodded, the movement of his head acknowledging that they were at an impasse. Alf chose to interpret the gesture as dismissal. As the servant carried the awl to the bier, Faucon surveyed the courtyard, seeking Stephen.

  Enclosed by the low stone wall, the yard was a pretty place, or it would have been if not for the many men packed within it. The big square was neatly kept with clumps of late-blooming wildflowers lending their oranges and purples to the gray of the wall. Stephen had retreated to the same shed from which Alf had retrieved the awl. Housed within its three walls were a few barrels, a pile of the hempen sacks that Alf had mentioned, planks of wood stored upright, and the miller's larger tools—both those belonging to any farmstead and some that must be particular to a mill, since Faucon didn't recognize them.

  Stephen sat upon the forwardmost of the barrels in the shed. His shoulders were slumped and his head bowed over his folded hands. A group of men and boys, those who had already completed their tour past Halbert to confirm Faucon's verdict and were thus free to do as they pleased, were gathering around the new miller. Simon Fuller stood at Stephen's side. The promise of a fulling mill had transformed this morning's irritable neighbor into the new miller's greatest ally.

  As Faucon joined them, Stephen released a shuddering sigh and rubbed his hands over his face before looking up. The grief that had been so noticeably absent this morning now left wet streaks on his cheeks.

  "Ah, I'm sorry that you must grieve," Faucon said, his tone neutral, "but I am glad to see that you do at last. This morn when you first addressed me to protest the deodand, I suspected you had yet to grasp your father's passing, for it seemed you did not mourn him at all."

  "Did it?" Stephen replied, bracing his forearms on his thighs. His gaze drifted back to his clasped hands. "I'm not surprised that it might have seemed that way. God knows I was furious at my father when I arrived home this morning. I hated him for shaming us and our name yet one more time."

  He glanced sidelong at Faucon. "To fall into his own race and die because of drink! You don't know what it's like living with someone like him. Clear-headed one minute, with great plans for the future. A few hours later, he's besotted and raging, saying things to folk or about folk that make them hate him, me and our trade."

  That made Faucon's lips twist into a tight smile. If only he didn't know a man of that sort. "Do you think your sire is the only one in the world who behaves this way?"

  Stephen offered him a wry and ragged grin, then released another slow breath. "I suppose not. Now that I know my father's death came at the hands of another and not because of his love for ale, a hole has opened in my heart just as was done to him. I am missing him already."

  "Can you think of anyone who might want to kill your sire?" Faucon asked.

  "Better to ask me who didn't wish to kill him," the new miller retorted with a scornful snort. "I doubt there's a man here today who would say he liked my father." That teased nods and mutters of agreement out of some of the men standing near him.

  "My father was not a pleasant man. He was quick to anger and brutal with his fists. And as fast as he was to strike out, he was just as slow to forgive."

  Stephen shot Faucon another look, this one sharp and swift. "Because of that, there'll be those who'll say Halbert Miller was a thief. Don't believe them. I vow to you, my father never took so much as a single corn that belonged to another. He didn't need to cheat to make a profit here, not as hard as he worked. Although it's true he wasn't born to milling, instead came to it through marriage to my mother, he loved this mill, every bit of it, from the constant rumble of the turning stone to sweeping up the last of the grain dust at the end of a day."

  With that, Stephen straightened on the barrel and raised his gaze to meet Faucon's. "But none of that answers your question. If I can imagine many men who might have wished my father dead, I can think of no man who would have been moved to actually end his life."

  "What of a woman? What of Agnes, his wife? You have accused her of his death once today," Faucon reminded gently.

  Stephen's eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. "All I can say about her is that she'd best be gone from my home before I have to go within doors. I don't care what it takes to be rid of her, she had just better be gone." As hard as his expression was, his voice lacked any of the bluster Faucon had heard when he first arrived at the mill.

  "Do you rescind your charge of murder against your stepmother, then?" Faucon persisted. "If so, why did you accuse her at all?"

  "Because I would have killed him if he treated me the way he treated her," Stephen said simply. "As hard as my father was on me, he was harder still on Alf, and hardest yet on that woman. I don't understand why she married him in the first place. Mary save me, but I don't even know why he took another wife. After my mother died, my father was content to let 'Wina, my wife," Stephen offered in explanation, "care for us and our home. Then, of a sudden two months ago, he travels to Stanrudde and comes back with that woman, returnin
g already wedded and bedded without me knowing a thing of it beforehand. He didn't even tell me he intended to marry." The pain of his father's betrayal filled Stephen's voice and gaze.

  Faucon shrugged. "Perhaps he missed having a woman in his bed?"

  "Him?" Stephen said in scorn. "There hasn't been a time when he didn't have access to a woman when he wanted one, even when my mother was alive. He's always had Greta. Keeps her well enough, he does. Did. Well, he and half these men here today keep her." The sweep of Stephen's hand indicated the inquest jury, while his words set a good number of the listening men to laughing under their breaths.

  As their amusement died away, Stephen shook his head. "Nay, I cannot accept that sating his desires is why he married Agnes," he said, using his stepmother's name for the first time in Faucon's hearing. "I don't think he even liked her, not from the very first. If I were to count nights after her first week here, I think she spent more of them sleeping at Susanna's than in my father's bed."

  Stephen's gaze shifted to the mill door. "Now he's gone, and he's left me with no idea what sort of dower he promised her."

  That took Faucon aback. "There was no contract between them?"

  Only two sorts of marital unions didn't have witnessed contracts stating dowry and dower: those handfasts made between paupers with no wealth to their names, and the secret unions sealed under the stars with only the Lord God to witness. If Halbert was too wealthy for the first sort of union, the second sort was always a bond of the heart, hardly a fitting description for the miller's marriage to Agnes.

  Stephen shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. My father never showed me a contract. Or rather he refused to show it to me," he continued, correcting himself with considerable bitterness.

  "When I asked to see it, wanting to know what piece of my inheritance he'd promised her, my father accused me of prying into what was none of my business. Then he told me that the mill was his to do with as he pleased, and he'd disown me if I ever spoke to him of it again. Until that moment, I thought he considered me his partner and equal in running the mill, not some greedy heir, waiting to gobble up another man's lifetime of hard work. I cannot bear that he might have given someone else, a strange woman no less, a piece of what is mine without even speaking to me of his plans."

  "An odd marriage, indeed," Faucon agreed. "Was your father given to impetuous acts such as marrying Agnes?"

  Stephen gave a sharp shake of his head. "Never. Until he married her, I'd never seen my father do anything that cost him more than he gained from it. And their marriage cost him dearly, stripping him of his peace of mind. The moment Agnes walked through our door was the moment my father lost all patience with the world, or what little patience he'd ever had. From then on, nothing Alf and I did, even if we did exactly what he asked, could please him. I vow he woke in the morning screaming and went to bed at night still shouting at me.

  "At least Alf didn't have to listen to him after our workday was done. Every evening, there I was, trapped in the house," he pointed to what Faucon could see of the large and well-kept cottage that stood outside the mill wall, "unable to stop my father as he drained cup after cup of ale, watching him grow ever more resentful as each drop slid down his throat, his rage and voice rising steadily as he recounted my many faults.

  "Meanwhile, here Alf was," this time the lift of Stephen's hand indicated the mill, "enjoying the peace of his quiet bed."

  Faucon nodded at that. "The fuller mentioned earlier that you weren't home last night."

  "I was not," Stephen agreed. "My wife's mother passed three nights ago. Yestermorn, my wife, my daughter and I left Priors Holston to bide for a sennight at her family's farmstead. I didn't want to be away for a full week. But 'Wina insisted, even though I cannot see why she needs me at her side to settle matters with her sisters. Theirs is a close and agreeable family."

  "You know that isn't her real reason for wanting you with her for the whole while," Simon Fuller interjected, his voice gentle.

  Stephen shifted on the barrel to send a frowning look at his neighbor. "What other reason could there be? When her father passed, we stayed only for the wake and the funeral before returning home."

  Simon put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "'Wina saw her father just before he passed. Not so her mother, and now she's grieving mightily. Last she spoke to me, the day before her mother died, she was saying that the illness was nothing, and all would soon be right again. I think she blames herself for not visiting her mother before death came to take her."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Stephen said, his voice trailing off into another sigh.

  Try as he might, Faucon could see nothing contrived about Stephen's grief. "Tell me something, for I'm curious. This morning when I arrived, the sheriff's man was trying to release the wheel with no success. Why did you not help him open the brake?"

  "Why do you ask me that?" Stephen frowned up at him. "Was it not at your command that I did so?"

  "My command?" Faucon repeated in surprise. "How could it be? I hadn't yet arrived."

  "You weren't here but your clerk most definitely was. He arrived before our lord sheriff and spoke most forcefully in your name."

  Faucon blinked at that, not surprised by Stephen's description of Edmund's manner, but by the fact that the monk had been in Priors Holston to spew commands at all. "How did Brother Edmund even know to come here?" The question was out before Faucon realized he should be asking this of Edmund, not the son of the murdered man.

  Stephen only shrugged. "Through our bailiff I expect," he said. "It's on our bailiff to report to the sheriff any felony that occurs within our boundaries. Simon, you called for the bailiff after you raised the hue and cry, didn't you?"

  "I did," Simon agreed. "He came, saw your father in the race then left for the priory to send his message."

  Faucon glanced between the men, still confused. "Then your village name tells the truth? The Priory of St. Radegund holds Priors Holston?" It wasn't uncommon for whole villages and hundreds to be bound to monasteries, the same way that serfs and bondsmen owed the bounty of their strength and their fields to a nobleman.

  "Not for much longer. There are but a few of us yet bound in servitude to the priory," Stephen replied. "A good number of my neighbors have bought their freedom from the Benedictines the way my father did a few years past, when he purchased the right to operate the mill and take its profits from the prior. As freeholders, we now owe the monks only a token rent. But that's not why our bailiff went to the priory. The monks always have messengers going hither and yon. They don't mind adding our words to a pouch that's on its way to the sheriff's clerks, whether at he's at Kineton or Killingworth. I've no doubt it was through our bailiff that your clerk knew to come to the mill. I'm sure all the brothers were aflutter at the news of my father's death."

  Simon nodded at that, then glanced around the courtyard. "I haven't seen Gilbert since he left this morning."

  "That's because he had to continue on to Stanrudde to catch the man carrying the pouch," one of the other men said.

  "A fool's errand," another man laughed, "since the sheriff's already been and gone this morn."

  Faucon frowned at that. "How far is the sheriff's seat from here?"

  "Across the shire," a man replied.

  "Then how did Sir Alain arrive before me?"

  "Now, that's a different tale and much of it depends on our Bertie, here," Stephen said.

  As he spoke, he reached out to pat the arm of a beardless youth of no more than ten-and-four. At the same time, Simon put his arm around the boy's shoulders. That was all Faucon needed to confirm the lad's parentage. If the son was taller and more slender than the father, he had the fuller's round face and fair hair, and his brown tunic exactly matched the color of Simon's attire.

  "Simon sent Bertie running to my wife's family home to bring me the news of my father's death. Once I heard the tale I sent Bertie running once again, this time going another mile farther to the west to fetch the sh
eriff." Stephen offered a weak smile. "You see, Gilbert is traveling in the wrong direction although he doesn't know it. The sheriff is staying at Aldersby, a manor that belongs to his wife. That's where I sent Bertie. Aldersby is closer to us than Blacklea by a mile or so.

  "I only knew to send Bertie there because three weeks ago my father and I milled the first of the grain from Aldersby. When Sir Alain's steward came to collect his flour, the man mentioned the sheriff would be stopping at the manor for a time upon his return from the royal court. The only reason I remembered any of that this morning was because it had surprised me so. I can't recall when Sir Alain last stayed at Aldersby, if he ever has. As I said, it belongs to his wife.

  "So you see, even though your clerk flew to Priors Holston to tell me that you were this new servant of the crown and that only you had the right to view my father, he was already too late. Bertie was already on his way to fetch Sir Alain. That's what I told your clerk, saying it was a sure thing Sir Alain would arrive before you could. I also told the brother that I doubted our sheriff would wait for you before calling the inquest, royal edict or no. Well, your clerk grew frantic at that."

  "I can imagine," Faucon murmured.

  "He kept insisting I would be a law-breaker if I let anyone but you examine my father's body. At last, knowing you were coming from only as far as Blacklea, I told him I'd do what I could to stall. I sent Alf to hide in the mill with the wrench, then told Sir Alain that the wrench had gone missing from in here," Stephen pointed to where the wrench hung on the wall beside a spot that showed the dark outline of what looked to be the shadow of the awl, "and Alf was searching along the race for it."

  "So it was the sheriff who called the hundred to the inquest," Faucon muttered to himself in relief. Edmund hadn't overstepped his authority, at least not as far as the inquest jury was concerned.

  "Of course it was the sheriff," Stephen replied harshly. "I'm certain Sir Alain sent his men to raise the jury from town and hundred even before he exited Aldersby's gates. Our sheriff isn't one to spend any attention on matters that annoy him, and my father's death could have been no more than an annoyance. He wouldn't have cared about foamy mouths or cloudy eyes. He would simply have said my father drowned and told us to shout our 'ayes.'"