'To appreciate sense,' supplied the grinning mercenary. 'Despair not, my lords. My offer still holds.'
'Your offer!’ snorted Eustace.
'For a high-born heiress I will cheerfully overlook a little matter like poison,' he assured them, and chuckled at their outraged ingratitude.
Hélie opened his mouth, and then closed it. Ranting impassioned challenges into vacancy was as ridiculous as it was futile. Fulbert grinned at him. A hard suspicion hammered at his mind; even a mercenary desperate for money would scarcely overlook a little matter like poison unless he had excellent reason for believing himself safe. He closed his lips tightly, looked deliberately round the company with scorching contempt, and stalked forth.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs, harassed and anxious. He had no idea of what to do or how to set about the task he had set himself. If Hermeline fulfilled her threat, Durande was ruined. The case against her was so simply, perfectly obvious that no more than its presentation would be necessary. It was hardly likely that a tenant-in-chief's heiress would be brought to public trial, or that she would be forced to undergo trial by ordeal,✸now held in such discredit by Church and Law. The King would intervene to stifle a heinous scandal, and she would vanish into some strict convent for the lifetime of penance Hermeline desired for her. Only firm proof against another could save her, and that lie had rashly set himself to produce. He ran his hand through his hair, bringing it from its normal disorder to wildest entanglement. Inspiration of some sort visited him; the obvious point to begin with was Robert's death.
The only place in Warby that could do the office of a prison was the porter's lodge in the fortified gatehouse, and there he directed his steps. Edmund the porter had been dispossessed, and was hovering agitatedly outside, his bald pate shining in the evening sunlight. Two of the escort stood at the inner side of the gateway, leaning on their spears. As Hélie approached one of them put his head into the passage and called. The sergeant emerged immediately and gazed at Hélie in something like appeal, harassed by a duty he had never bargained for when first he put on Warby livery. He challenged Hélie half-heartedly.
‘Do you deny me entrance?' Hélie inquired gently.
The fellow thrust back his helmet and scratched his brow.
' Dunno what I ought to do, my lord,' he admitted candidly. ‘Not right, us shutting up a noble lady like a thief.'
‘True. She should have some discreet and sober matron to bear her company,' Hélie pronounced judicially. The other guards, on whom their unwelcome responsibility plainly bore heavily, murmured agreement. Durande, it seemed, was well-liked by underlings, a helpful circumstance. They looked hope-billy from him to each other as though expecting a discreet and .sober matron to appear on his word. He recommended, ‘Send to Dame Emma.'
The sergeant heaved a thankful sigh. ‘Aye, m'lord, and thanks. See to it, Henry.'
‘And as the lady's champion, I claim speech with her.’
‘Got no orders agin that, m'lord,' answered the sergeant without a quiver in his wooden face, and passed him in.
Durande sat on a bench under an arrow-slit that looked out over the ditch. As he had already learned was her habit, she had pulled off her wimple. She rose as he entered, grave and composed, and since the cell was no more than six feet square they stood perforce breast to breast. She looked straight into his eyes and came directly to the point.
‘If you persist in championing me, Lord Hélie, Hermeline will never wed you.’
He grinned. ‘A doubled incentive,’ he declared. ‘Be seated, demoiselle, and help me to find a murderer.’
She stared. ‘But—do you not wish to marry Hermeline?'
‘The very thought affrights me.' He motioned her to the bench and sat down beside her. She looked at him doubtfully, clearly wondering whether he could be in his sane senses, and he came briskly to his purpose. ‘This poison is rare and little known, you said?'
‘There are others much easier to find and use,' she agreed, interest quickening in her face. ‘And there was the rider at the ruin, though a man might well halt for curiosity.'
‘Does anyone in the village deal in poisons?'
‘There is a woman they call witch, and greatly fear, who sells spells and charms and potions. How did you know?'
‘A word Mabille let fall. She dealt with her?'
Durande nodded. ‘Servants' gossip. She used philtres to bring Robert back to her bed, whenever he wandered after fresher fancies.' Her voice held a wry humour, and the bleak loneliness was gone from her face.
‘But she at least did not desire his death. Who did?'
‘You knew Robert. Everyone. He threatened to dismiss Sir Ranulf for protesting at his threats to me. He disputed furiously over my dower with Lord Eustace and Oliver. He tried to quarrel with Sir Fulbert, and was mocked.'
‘What is that scoundrel doing in Warby?'
‘Robert wished to hire his company. I think he expected troubles like those of his great-grandsire's day, and hoped to profit by them like him. But Fulbert sought money and not promises, and declared that hiring did not entail wearing another man's collar and leash. Also he was wooing Hermeline, and Robert misliked it.’
‘Admirably perfect impudence. But poison?’
‘Had you reckoned, my lord, that if Robert had sired a child in wedlock Hermeline would not be his heiress?'
He frowned. ‘For Hermeline's husband, or betrothed, that might be a reason. But when she has made no choice among so many wooers, what sense in such perilous forethought?'
‘My lord,' she said slowly, ‘very few had the chance to do it. Not half a dozen.'
He sat up sharply. ‘Expound, demoiselle.'
She spoke carefully, marshalling her arguments. ‘Poison is not like a dagger in the back, any man's weapon. It must go in food or drink. Dwale acts fast enough; the boy was seized within the hour. Maybe in a grown man it would take longer. Robert was smitten soon after he reached his bed. That means supper or the wine after it. Agreed? But I do not see how anyone could have poisoned his food, when we are all served from the one dish, or choose our own meat from the spit. It would be easier to add the squeezed juice to wine.'
‘And during the meal the same pitchers serve all,' Hélie respectfully added his own mite to the exposition.
‘But later, when the women have retired and the men sit over the wine with their eyes blurred and their wits fuddled, it becomes more likely. And those who drank with Robert that night were Lord Eustace and Oliver, Sir Fulbert, Sir Ranulf, Sir Gerard the seneschal, and two stranger knights halted for lodging on their road. There is the serving squire to consider also.'
‘I suppose he too had reason to wish him dead?' Hélie asked resignedly.
‘Like everyone who served him. But a feckless lad of fifteen is not a likely poisoner.'
Hélie nodded; the method had required knowledge and preparation of an uncommon poison, and the cunning to snatch opportunity. ‘He might yet be worth questioning. But what feat of juggling drops venom into a man's cup in open hall?'
‘You should cry witchcraft,' she told him ironically.
‘Instead I cry admiration of your wits. In all Warby I had not known where to begin. Lord Eustace, Oliver, Fulbert of Falaise, Ranulf, Gerard. Though—’ he checked himself. Instinct and affection exonerated Sir Ranulf, but reason held back. Ranulf had gone on Crusade, he had seen and done and learned stranger things than most men, and his father had served Reginald de Warby in the ill-famed castle on the ridge. He would have laid heavy odds on his own choice, but he had been surprised too often by humanity’s vagaries to concentrate entirely on Fulbert. He was inclined to exclude the seneschal, an elderly knight of sheep-like demeanour who, though nominally the marshal’s superior in office, had allowed Sir Ranulf’s more forceful personality to usurp most of his authority. ‘We will have the squire here,’ he decided.
‘His name is Philip.’
Gino was chatting with the guard. Obtaining a discreet and sober matron was
taking the first messenger some time; probably Hermeline’s hysterics exclusively occupied all the bower. Hélie had never before given thanks for tantrums. The sergeant, remaining well-disposed, dispatched another man for the squire.
He came back to the girl, and regarded her in concern. This must be a terrifying ordeal for a maid of sixteen, accused of vilest murder and already judged and condemned, shut up in this wretched cell without a friend to aid or comfort her. Only her sour-natured uncle by marriage protested her innocence. Only he, the stranger, seemed to care what befell her, and was prepared to work and fight to save her.
Her face, strained and grim in repose, warmed into a smile as she looked up, a real smile if a wry one. The tiny dimple at one corner of her mouth gave it an odd one-sided fascination. This girl would never afflict all around her with screeching hysterics. ‘You are a brave lass,’ he bluntly commended her. ‘Will you trust me to have you somehow out of this?’
‘I do. It is that makes me brave.’
He flushed. ‘That is foolish!’
She gripped her hands tightly together on the maltreated wimple. ‘No. You broke my nightmare, my lord. I—I had decided to kill Robert. If I could not escape, I would have goaded him to strike me at table and—and put a carving-knife under his ribs. This—I thought it God’s Judgement.’
‘It is man’s ill-judgement instead,’ he answered rather roughly, uncomfortably moved by her honesty and her faith in him. God willing, he would justify her. A knight could set himself no worthier task.
The squire was bowing and hesitating in the doorway; he had taken less finding than a guardian matron. He was a gawky, long-legged lad with a surplus of hands and feet, a bony face spattered with freckles and loose brown hair flopping untidily about it. A graceless clumsy lad who would drive a humourless master to irascibility, he reminded Hélie ridiculously of a half-fledged heron, and he was surely no poisoner.
'Save you, lad. We would ask you of Lord Robert's dying.'
He gaped aghast. ‘My—my lord, in—indeed I d-did not—I do not know—'
‘Indeed, boy, we are not accusing you! But you served him on his last night, and I hoped you might help us prove my lady has been falsely accused.'
He blushed crimson, and shuffled his feet on the flagstones. ‘I—I would gladly—I would be proud—but I know nothing!' He gazed respectfully at the grave girl. ‘I poured for everyone from the same pitcher, so there could not be poison in it, could there, my lady?'
‘In the pitcher, no,' said Hélie. ‘Did anything happen to take all men's eyes, so that the poison could be dropped into a cup?'
Comprehension illumined the eager freckled face. ‘My lord, a dog-fight! Lord Robert jumped up and forbade the servants to check it, and they were shouting and laying wagers!'
Hélie and the girl nodded to each other. ‘I wonder he did not taste it, however fuddled he was,' she mused. ‘Were they still drinking red Gascony?'
‘No, my lady. Hippocras.'
‘Hippocras!' Hélie repeated. That concoction of strong wine mulled with honey and spices would have disguised any alien flavour, especially to a half-drunken man. ‘Who suggested that?'
‘Lord Robert called for it. He had done every night since the wedding-wine was bought. He—he liked it—hot and very sweet, with cloves and nutmeg and ginger.'
Hélie grimaced. ‘Might as well have poured gold dust down his gullet!' he commented.
‘He—he said his wife's dowry—'
‘Would supply hippocras for him to swim in,’ the lady finished, as he halted tongue-fast and reddening. ‘He noticed nothing?'
‘He said only that it made him thirstier. He was nearly drunk.’
‘Had that become his habit?' Hélie inquired.
The squire nodded. ‘Yes, my lord. Every night. Not helpless —and not merry either. Just—just—well, he had a very hard head, my lord.'
Just brutally, viciously drunk, Hélie reflected in disgust. He himself had been strictly reared in the old austere tradition that intemperance in a gentleman of birth and breeding debased his honour, but the present King's example of self-indulgence encouraged grosser habits in high places.
‘Even hippocras would not sweeten Robert,' Durande grimly commented. ‘How did the talk go, Philip?'
‘He—he was very well pleased with himself, my lady. He spoke of you and marriage, but—but I—'
‘Decency forbids your repeating it,' she helped him.
He gave up the attempt to reconcile honesty with discretion. ‘My lady, he boasted vilely. He baited everyone. Sir Fulbert gave better than he got, and Sir Ranulf knows his duty and kept his mouth shut, but he mocked your kinsmen until even the stranger knights were ashamed to sit at his table!'
‘He very surely invited his taking-off,' the girl commented dryly.
‘But for you, demoiselle, we should thankfully say “Laus Deo" and let be,' Hélie agreed. ‘Lad, you have been helpful in speech; now be equally helpful in silence, if you bear Lady Durande any good-will.'
The squire blushed and shuffled his awkward feet. ‘Any help— if I may serve—owe so much—God protect you, my lady!' The last words came with passionate fervour. He clumsily caught her hand to his lips and blundered out.
‘Robert was very hard on him,' Durande said soberly.
‘Too hard on someone, and that was his death. If I could but see reason—'
‘Lord Hélie, you should not be here!' snapped another voice from the doorway. Dame Emma was scowling at them, her brown face a mask of angry disapproval.
'I am Lady Durande's champion,' he reminded her.
‘And none the less foolishly imprudent, here alone with her! Must you make ill worse?' She spoke as to an undisciplined urchin whose ears she would clout at another word, and his lips twitched. She turned from him in exasperation. ‘You are to return to the bower in my charge. I have prevailed on Lady Hermeline to permit that, my lady.'
‘I should prefer to remain here.'
‘Here?’ She glanced round the narrow cell and snorted in scorn. ‘This is no place for a maiden, and you cannot remain! Lord Hélie, it is no place for you either!'
‘That I know,' he agreed meekly. ‘Permit me to escort you both from it.'
Twilight was already deepening to dusk, and the bailey was a bowl of shadows. Hélie and Durande could exchange no further speech, but their eyes met over Dame Emma's ample wimple, and he smiled at her, trying to comfort and reassure her. The girl's gaze was gravely considering, her face sombre.
In the hall the tables were set up and being laid for a belated supper, and most of the servants and garrison were only awaiting the signal to fall on it. Durande was hurried to the bower, from which lamentable sounds reached them. The three guests stood at one end of the table, and at the other Sir Ranulf, the seneschal, and an agitated demoiselle who broke off her earnest discourse and scuttled incontinently for the bower doorway at sight of Hélie's lion-tawny head. The marshal came to the edge of the dais to meet him.
‘A merry day!' he growled in greeting. ‘To end it, here is lady Hermeline screaming herself into the vapours all over again, because some dolt told her you were all but murdered! for jealousy of the favour she has shown you, of course!'
Hélie's eyes widened a little; he had not considered that motive, and he rejected it now. ‘Not it,' he denied bluntly, and forbore to add that her other suitors were welcome to slit each other's gullets for the lady. ‘I pricked Robert's murderer.'
‘Not so much of Robert's murder to my lady,' Ranulf muttered in his ear. ‘She cannot admit that he was at fault in any way. If she did she must know that—'
‘He was Reginald of Warby over again,' Hélie finished as loyalty warred with truth.
Ranulf nodded bitterly. 'After his sire died and there was none to curb him, he took his road to Hell.’
'And short and steep it proved for him.’
The demoiselle emerged from the bower looking harried, and signalled urgently.
'In God's Name let us
try if the sight of you will pacify her!' Ranulf exclaimed, and propelled Hélie to the doorway before he could object. Since there was no way out, he suffered himself to be ushered into the candlelight, a light perspiration breaking out over his flesh. The demoiselle held aside one of the curtains that partitioned the great room at night, and he set his teeth and stalked grimly past her into the flapping and squawking hen-run.
Hermeline lay half-undressed on the great bed she occupied alone, slight and fragile in her linen smock against the embroidered blue coverlid. Her hair, uncovered and unbound, spread in silken disorder all about her, and her pale cheeks gleamed with the tears that flowed gently from under her closed eyelids. Women fluttered about her, chafing her limp hands, offering restoratives, murmuring tenderly, and Dame Emma stood at her head, leaning close with an arm under her shoulders.
'He is here, my lady.’
'Hélie?' She opened tear-drowned blue eyes to gaze at him. She was very lovely in her forlorn helplessness, but he halted beyond the bed's foot, unmoved. She was very lovely, and she knew it better than any other. She jerked her hands from the over-tenacious ministrations of her women and feebly extended them towards him. 'Hélie!' She managed this very well, but Osanne de Périval had been less obvious. The ungirt smock clung tenderly to her budded breasts and the soft curve of her belly, and the scattered strands of her shining hair were a net to enmesh him.
'Do not distress yourself, my lady!' he said briskly.
She let her hands fall and stared. 'Hélie! You might have been slain—and in my hold! Hélie!' He stood still, dispassionately appreciating the beauty she offered. She turned onto her side and flung an arm over her eyes. 'Broken and dead—oh cruel, cruel— to break my heart with you!'
'My lady, it did not happen,' he pointed out flatly. Over her head Dame Emma signalled fiercely to him to take and comfort her, but he pretended to be too dense of wit to understand her gestures and grimaces and stood fast.
'Cruel—ah, and you were cruel too! To champion her against me!' she sobbed. 'I am alone! It needs a man to do justice! Cruel—’
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