The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  Driven by both of them, Margery cried out, “It’s for opening the bowels!”

  A great quiet deepened in the room. Margery looked anxiously from face to face. Frevisse and Dame Claire looked carefully at the floor. Red darkened and mounted over Master Montfort’s countenance again. Master Naylor seemed to struggle against choking. The clerk ducked his head low over his parchment. Nervously Margery tried to explain. “I make a decoction with gill-go-on-the-ground, and say the spell over it while it’s brewing, to make it stronger. It provokes urine, too, and . . . and . . .” She stopped, not understanding their reactions, then finished apologetically, “They were the first words that came into my head, that’s all. I just wanted to fright Jack off me, and those were the first words that came. I didn’t mean for them to kill him.”

  Master Montfort, trying to recover lost ground, strangled out, “But they did kill him, didn’t they? That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it?”

  Margery started to nod, but Frevisse put a stilling hand on her arm; and Dame Claire said, “It’s a better judgement that her husband died not from her words but from his own choler, like many another man before him. It wasn’t Margery but his temper that did for him at the last.”

  Master Montfort glared at her. “That’s women’s logic!” he snapped. “His wife warns him she has bits of him to use against him, and cries a spell in his face, and he drops down dead, and it’s his fault? Where’s the sense of that? No! She’s admitted her guilt. She was seen doing it. There’s no more questioning needed. Naylor, keep her until morning. Then I’ll take her in charge.”

  The twilight had darkened to deep dusk but the rain had stopped as they came out of the guest hall. Master Naylor steadied Margery by her elbow as they went down the steps to the yard. No matter how much she had expected her fate, she seemed dazed by the crowner’s pronouncement, and walked numbly where she was taken. Frevisse and Dame Claire followed with nothing to say, though Frevisse at least seethed with frustration at their helplessness and Montfort’s stupidity. Even the acknowledgement of the possibility of doubt from him would have been something.

  Margery’s two guards were waiting at the foot of the steps in the spread of light from the lantern hung by the guest hall door. They stood aside, then followed as the silent group made their way around the rain-puddles among the cobbles to the gateway to the outer yard. Beyond it was the mud and deeper darkness of the outer yard where the lamplight showing around the ill-fitted door of Margery’s prison shed was the only brightness. Busy with her feet and anger, Frevisse did not see the knot of people there until one of them swung the shed door open to give them more light, and Master Naylor said in surprise, “Tom, what brings you out? And the rest of you?”

  Frevisse could see now that there were seven of them, four women and three men, all from the village. The women curtseyed quickly to her, Dame Claire, and Master Naylor as they came forward to Margery. Crooning to her like mothers over a hurt child, they enveloped her with their kindness; and one of them, with an arm around her waist, soothed, “There now, Margery-girl, we can see it didn’t go well. You come in-by. We’ve something warm for you to eat.” Together they drew her into the shed, leaving the men to front the priory-folk.

  Tom, the village reeve and apparently their leader in this, ducked his head to her and Dame Claire, and again to Master Naylor before he said, “She’s to go then? No help for it?”

  “No help for it,” Master Naylor agreed. “The crowner means to take her with him when he goes in the morning.”

  The men nodded as if they had expected no less. But Tom said, “It makes no difference that there’s not a body in the village but’s glad to have Jack gone? He was a terror and no mistake and she didn’t do more than many of us have wanted to.”

  “I can’t argue that, but it changes nothing,” Master Naylor said. “Margery goes with the crowner in the morning, and be taken before the bishop for what she’s done.”

  “She didn’t do anything!” Dame Claire said with the impatience she had had to curb in Master Montfort’s presence.

  Frevisse agreed. “This Jack died from his own temper, not from Margery’s silly words!”

  “It was apoplexy,” said Dame Claire. “People who indulge in ill temper the way Jack Wilkins did are like to die the way Jack Wilkins did.”

  “If you say so, m’lady,” Tom said in a respectful voice. “But Margery cried something out at him, and Jack went down better than a poled ox. God keep his soul,” he added as an after-thought, and everyone crossed themselves. Jack Wilkins was unburied yet; best to say the right things for he would make a wicked ghost.

  “It wasn’t even a spell to kill a man. Margery says so herself.”

  “Well, that’s all right then,” Tom said agreeably. “And a comfort to Margery to know it wasn’t her doing that killed Jack, no matter what the crowner says. But what we’ve come for is to ask if some of us can stand Margery’s guard tonight, for friendship’s sake, like, before she goes.”

  Dim with distance and the mist-heavy dusk, the bell began to call to Compline, the nuns’ last prayers before bed. Frevisse laid a hand on Dame Claire’s arm, drawing her away. Master Naylor could handle this matter. There was nothing more for the two of them to do here. Better they go to pray for Margery’s soul. And Jack Wilkins’, she thought belatedly.

  Watery sunshine was laying thin shadows across the cloister walk next morning as Frevisse went from chapter meeting toward her duties. She expected Master Montfort and his men and Margery would be gone by now, ridden away at first light; and she regretted there had been nothing that could be done to convince anyone but herself and Dame Claire that Margery had not killed her lout of a husband with her poor little spell and desperation. But even Margery had believed it, and would do penance for it as if her guilt were real, and go to her death for it.

  Frevisse was distracted from her anger as she neared the door into the courtyard by the noise of Master Montfort’s raised voice, the words unclear but his passion plain. She glanced again at the morning shadows. He was supposed to be miles on his way by this time. She opened the door from the cloister to the courtyard.

  Usually empty except for a passing servant and the doves around the well, the yard was half full of villagers crowded to the foot of the guest hall steps. Master Montfort stood above them there, dressed for riding and in a rage.

  “You’re still saying there’s no trace of her?” he ranted. Frevisse stopped where she was with a sudden hopeful lift of her spirits. “You’ve been searching the wretched place since dawn! My men have scoured the fields for miles! Someone has to know where she is! Or if she’s truly bolted, we have to set the hounds to her trail!”

  Even from where she was, Frevisse could see the sullen set of every villein’s shoulders. But it was clear that the main thrust of his words was at Master Naylor, standing straight-backed at the head of the villeins, deliberately between them and the crowner’s rage. With a hard-edged patience that told Frevisse he had been over this already more than once, he answered in his strong, carrying voice, “We have no hounds to set to her trail. This is a priory of nuns. They’re not monks; they don’t ride to hunt here.”

  Standing close behind the steward, Tom the reeve growled so everyone could hear, “And where she went, you wouldn’t care to follow!”

  Master Montfort pointed at him, furious. “You! You’re one of the fools who slept when you were supposed to be guarding her! Dreaming your way to perdition while she walks off free as you please! What do you mean, ‘where she went’? Hai, man, what do you mean?”

  “I mean it wasn’t a natural sleep we had last night!” Tom answered loudly enough to send his words to the outer yard, to Master Montfort’s entourage and a number of priory servants clustered just beyond the gateway. Frevisse saw them stir as he spoke. “Aye, it wasn’t a natural sleep and there’s not one of us will say it was. We fell to sleep all at once and together, between one word and another. That’s not natural! No more than Jack Wi
lkins falling down dead was natural. We’re lucky it was only sleep she did to us! That’s what I say! And anybody who tried to follow her is asking for what happens to him!”

  Behind and around him the other villeins glanced at each other and nodded. One of the bolder men even spoke up, “Tom has the right of it!”

  A woman – Frevisse thought she was one of four who had come to Margery last night – said shrilly, “You can’t ask any decent man to follow where she’s gone!”

  Master Montfort pointed at her. “You know where she’s gone? You admit you know?”

  “I can make a fair guess!” the woman flung back. “Flown off to her master the devil, very like, and you’ll find no hound to go that trail!”

  “Flown off?” Master Montfort raged. “Flown off? I’m supposed to believe that? Naylor, most of these folk are the priory’s villeins! Warn them there’s penalties for lying to the king’s crowner and hiding murderers. She’s around here somewhere!”

  “If she is, we haven’t found her yet for all our searching,” Master Naylor said back. “Twice through the village is enough for one day, and there’s no sign where she might have gone across country. As you say, these are our villeins and I can say I’ve never known them given to such lying as this. Maybe they’ve the right of it. You said yourself last night she was a witch, and now she seems to have proved it!”

  Master Montfort stared at him, speechless with rage.

  “What we say,” shouted another of the men, “is you’re welcome to come search us house to house yourself, you being so much smarter than the rest of us. But if you find her, you’d better hope she doesn’t treat you like she did her husband!”

  There was general angry laughter among all the villeins at that; and some from beyond the gateway. For just a moment Master Montfort lost the stride of his anger, paused by the man’s words. Then he gathered himself together and rounded on Master Naylor. With a scorn that he meant to be withering, he said, “I’ve greater matters to see to than hunting down some petty village witch. She was in your charge, Naylor, and the loss is to you, not to me. There’ll be an amercement to pay for losing the king’s prisoner, and be assured I’ll see the priory is charged it to the full!”

  “I’m assured you will,” Master Naylor returned tersely, his scorn stronger than Master Montfort’s.

  For a balanced moment he and the crowner held each other’s eyes. Then Master Naylor gestured sharply for the villeins to move back from the foot of the steps. Crowding among themselves, they gave ground. Master Montfort’s mouth opened, then closed, and with great, stiff dignity he descended, passed in front of them to his horse being held for him beyond the gateway, and mounted. He glared around at them one final time and, for good measure, across the courtyard at Frevisse still standing in the doorway, then jerked his horse around and went.

  No one moved or spoke until the splash and clatter of his going, and his entourage after him, were well away. And even then the response among them all seemed no more than a long in-drawn breath and a slow release of tension. Heads turned to one another, and Frevisse saw smiles, but no one spoke. There were a few chuckles but no more as they all drifted out of the gateway, some of them nodding to Master Naylor as they passed him. He nodded back, and did not speak either; and when they were gone, he stayed where he was, waiting for Frevisse to come to him.

  She did, because there in the open courtyard they could most easily talk without chance of being overheard so long as they kept their voices low. “Master Naylor,” she said as she approached him.

  He inclined his head to her. “Dame Frevisse.”

  “I take it from what I heard that Margery Wilkins escaped in the night?”

  “It seems her guards and the friends who came to keep her company slept. When they awoke this dawn, she was gone.”

  “And cannot be found?”

  “We’ve searched the village twice this morning, and Master Montfort’s men have hunted the near countryside.”

  “They think she used her witch-powers to escape?”

  “So it would seem. What other explanation is there?”

  “I can think of several,” Frevisse said dryly.

  Master Naylor’s expression did not change. “Just as you and Dame Claire could think of some other reason for Jack Wilkins’ death besides his wife’s words striking him down.”

  “And the fine to the priory for your carelessness in losing your witch?”

  “It was villeins who had the watch of her and lost her. I mean to make an amercement on the village to help meet the fine our crowner will surely bring against the priory.”

  “Won’t there be protest over that?”

  “Villeins always protest over paying anything. But in this I think there’ll be less arguing than in most. She’s their witch. Let them pay for her. Dear-bought is held more dear.”

  “They still truly believe she killed her husband?” Frevisse asked. “Despite what we told them last night, they still believe she’s a witch with that much power?”

  “What else can they believe?” the steward asked quietly in return. “They saw her do it.”

  “What do you believe?” Frevisse asked, unable to tell from his neutral expression and voice.

  Instead of an answer to that, Master Naylor said, “I think a straw-filled loft is not an uncomfortable place to be for a week and more this time of year. And that by the time summer comes there’ll be a new herb-wife in the village, maybe even with the same first name but someone’s widowed sister from somewhere else, freeborn like Margery was and no questions asked.”

  “And after all, witchcraft in itself is no crime or sin,” Frevisse said. “The wrong lies in the use it’s put to.”

  “And all the village knows Margery has ever used her skills for good, except this one time, if you judge what she did was ill. All her neighbors judge it wasn’t,” Master Naylor said solemnly.

  “They mean to keep her even if it costs them?” Frevisse asked.

  “They know she’s a good woman. And now that they’re certain she has power, she’s not someone they want to lose.”

  “Or to cross,” Frevisse said.

  Master Naylor came as near to a smile as he ever came, but only said, “There’ll likely be no trouble with anyone beating her ever again.”

  FATHER HUGH AND THE DEADLY SCYTHE

  Mary Monica Pulver

  When not writing with Gail Bacon as Margaret Frazer, Mary Pulver Kuhfeld has written a number of crime novels and stories under her maiden name. She is perhaps best known for her series about police sergeant Peter Brichter, a dashing detective with a Porsche to match. She has written five novels featuring his adventures, starting with Knight Fall.

  The following is her first story about Father Hugh of Paddington, a rather individualistic fifteenth-century priest who is determined to root sin out from his parishioners, no matter how he does it.

  The man’s death was no accident. That was clear from the first report, given by an ashen-faced Austin, our steward’s assistant. Austin had been on his way to Deerfield Village to remind our reeve that tomorrow the women were required in the meadow to rake the hay the men cut today, when he saw the body.

  “Still warm he was,” gasped Austin, wiping his broad face with his hand, “but with all the blood drained out of him, his arm off at the elbow and his throat open to heaven like a mouth screaming for vengeance.”

  Austin, for all his low birth, had a taste for a fancy turn of speech, acquired from our steward, the indispensable John Freemantle.

  “Where is John?” I asked.

  “Gone to Banbury, to buy that ambling mare Will Frazee has for sale,” said Sister Harley.

  “Oh, that’s right.” In my excitement I had forgotten. “Where does the body lie?”

  “In the ditch along the fallow field.”

  “Has the hue and cry been raised?”

  “Yes, Madame. There’s blood all along the edge of the fallow field where I found him, great smears, like he was a b
east of the forest, chased down – ” Austin stopped, goggling at the memory, wiped again at his sweating face, then staggered and would have fallen if Sister Harley had not pushed a stool under him as he went down. We were in my quarters in the cloister, where Austin had come with the horrible news.

  “You’re sure it’s Frick Cotter lying dead?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, madam,” muttered Austin, wiping his wet hand on his heavy mat of auburn hair. “There’s no mistaking that nose.”

  Frick was a familiar figure in the village. He owned no strips in the three big fields around it, and his cottage was one of the humblest. He kept body and soul together by means honest and less so, hiring himself out for odd jobs, growing peas and beans in the tiny garden behind his cottage, collecting and selling wood from the forest, poaching the occasional rabbit or stealing an egg.

  But his main occupation was gossip. For all they talk about women’s tongues going on wheels, there was none so quick to sniff out a tale or spread it to every ear as Frick. And as if to advertise his failing, he was the owner of the biggest nose in Oxfordshire.

  “Still, poor old Frick,” sighed Sister Harley, handing Austin a drink of wine – in my good silver chalice, I noticed, but I said nothing. Harley had seen Austin’s need and taken the first cup at hand, which was fine; Austin was a good man.

  Sister Harley touched a long, slender finger to her long, slender nose. “I wonder what story he told to bring this on himself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Murder, of course.”

  “Surely it was a robbery,” I objected. “After all, he was out of the village and on the high road.”

  “Rob old Frick?” said Harley. “Of what? He’s one of the poorest men for miles around!”

  “But a highway robber, a stranger to these parts, might not know that,” I said.

  “You had only to look at Frick to know he was very poor,” said Harley. “No, it was someone driven to fury by Frick’s tongue.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Austin, “it wasn’t a knife did this, but something bigger. A sword, maybe.”