Nothing had changed within the single room, and yet everything. The deathbed was now a place of recovery. Aldith had one of Corbin’s hands in hers and was gazing at him as if she might never look away. Father Dunstan was on his knees still, but hands upraised and chanting a psalm. Corbin lay very pale, but his eyes were open.
‘See, my lord, our prayers are answered. It is a miracle, so it is!’
‘Glad to see you alive, lad,’ Catchpoll sounded once more the kindly uncle. ‘You just tell us what happened.’
‘When?’ The voice was threadlike. Everyone stared at him. Father Dunstan stopped mid sentence. Corbin looked back at them, a small frown between his brows. ‘When?’ The question was more insistent.
‘Corbin, you know me?’ Aldith whispered, with fear in her voice.
‘Yes … Aldith … Grew up together.’ He looked muddled, and vaguely annoyed at the silly question.
‘And today?’ She squeezed his hand. ‘On the drying ground?’ He looked more puzzled, and her face fell. ‘Do you not remember?’
He still looked confused, and she leant and whispered very softly in his ear. His eyes widened.
‘No!’ he cried. She pulled back, affronted, shamed. ‘Would ’member that. Would ’member, please say would ’member?’ There was an edge of panic to his voice, and it actually eased her.
‘You will, Corbin. I will help you remember,’ she soothed.
‘All of which means you do not know who hit you.’ Catchpoll heaved a heavy sigh.
‘Head hurts.’ He closed his eyes.
‘Do people get their memory back, after such things?’ Bradecote whispered to Catchpoll.
‘Bits, I think, but it seems more luck, what returns, my lord.’
‘How far back will he have forgotten?’
‘I am no physician. If he has forgot something as important in his young life as …’ Catchpoll raised an eyebrow and looked at Aldith’s back as she murmured to the lover who could not recall the act of love, ‘then perhaps not since this morning, or yesterday, or weeks, for all that I know. There was a mason, fell from the scaffolding on the priory once, far enough to break bones, but not yet die, and he forgot even how to speak. The only thing he knew was stone. If you placed a mallet and a chisel in his hand, and sat him before stone, he would work it.’
Hugh Bradecote pondered, and came to a decision. He addressed the injured youth.
‘Corbin, I am Hugh Bradecote, Undersheriff of this shire. I know your head hurts, but I must ask you one question.’ He waited, and then continued. ‘Do you know why the Welshman Hywel ap Rhodri was killed by his servant?’
The gloomy chamber was heavy with the absence of words. After what seemed an age, Corbin’s voice, weary now, gave a word.
‘Milburga.’
‘Thank you.’ He looked at Brictmer, and Catchpoll. ‘If he recalls that, then he will know who sent him to kill the man also.’ Brictmer opened his mouth, but Bradecote raised a hand. ‘Whoever tried to get him to kill Hywel, and we will find that the reason given would have seemed good, that person tried to kill your son today. Walkelin, you do not let anyone in other than the people you see now, not until we have the answer.’ Bradecote kept his eyes on the steward.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘God be praised your son will recover. We will not press him now, for his mind is as sore as his skull, and cannot think much, but tomorrow, we will ask more questions, the important questions, because answers must come before long. You understand?’
‘I do, my lord. Will he have to answer for …’
‘For not doing something? If every man who has dreamt of ending the life of another, if every man who has considered it, were arraigned, the Justices would never sleep, nor eat.’
‘Then the man who set him upon the Welshman cannot be taken up for it either.’
‘No. But you see, today they really did commit a crime for which we will take them. Keep Aldith here tonight, for her safety as well as Corbin’s comfort of mind.’
‘I will, my lord.’
Bradecote nodded, at him, and at Walkelin, then he, Catchpoll, and Rhys ap Iorwerth went out into the sunshine.
‘Do you wish me to leave now, my lord, now I can tell my prince who killed Hywel ap Rhodri, and why?’
‘I suppose you could reach Leominster before sunset, but I am reasonably sure that if you wait until the morrow, you will be able to give him the fuller story.’
‘Why did you not ask him now who set him to kill Hywel ap Rhodri, my lord?’
‘I wondered that also,’ added Catchpoll.
‘Because … I do not understand minds, but his answers were childlike in simplicity.’
‘Then surely the simple, but most vital, question was the one to ask. The answer would have been but a name.’ Rhys frowned.
‘Perhaps, but if his answers were a child’s answers, I feared his reaction to the question which put him in trouble would be like a child’s. If you confront a small child with a misdeed, how often do they deny it, even if it is undeniable? If he is left, and his head aches the less by dawn, his father and his strong-willed young woman will be telling him how important it is for him to reveal that name, and he will not have to lie there and say “Yesterday I told you false”.’
‘I mislike the wait, but see there is sense, my lord,’ Catchpoll gave a grudging approval.
‘And when he gives the name, the name of his lord Thorold, will it be enough, the word of a steward’s son, against a lord? You said this Thorold was clever, and he looked it. Nasty but clever.’
‘Well, I have not thought the Justices fools often, thus far, and I agree with the lord Sheriff, who said that Thorold FitzRoger was clever, but not as clever as he thinks he is. The planning of the death he can deny as reason for the assault upon Corbin, but I think the attack ought to stand.’
‘And after? There will be a price to pay in coin for breaking the lad’s head, true enough, but what of steward and son after that? Will not the lord dismiss both and send them from the manor? Will he not then have won, and they lost?’
It was a good question, and Bradecote had no good answer. It was in a very sober mood that the three of them went back under the arch of the gatehouse.
‘Do we confront FitzRoger now, my lord, as if we had the sworn word of Corbin?’ Catchpoll wanted an end, and this lingering rankled.
‘I am tempted, Catchpoll, sorely. I think … yes, first we will ask to see his sword, and I think he will smile, because he knows it bears no mark upon it. But you will study that scabbard, and study it closely for the smallest trace of blood or hair. If that gives us what we want, then we definitely press with what we are likely to have as if it were ours already.’
‘Where is my brother?’ Thorold FitzRoger did not ask with any trace of affection in his voice. He stood in the solar, looking at the two women in his life, and realising he wished neither were part of it, and tossed his gauntlets onto the table.
‘He has, against my advice, gone to look at his horse, and the brown that Brictmer’s boy will ride.’ The lady Matilda regarded her son, stonily.
‘Corbin will not now be accompanying him.’
‘Why?’
‘He has suffered an … accident. His head is broken. He will likely be dead before morning.’ He sounded unconcerned.
The lady Avelina, who had been working upon her stitchery for real under the baleful glare of the older woman, let her knife slip as she cut a thread, and exclaimed as it made a tiny cut in her finger. She dropped the knife onto the table, and sucked the injured digit as the red blood welled up.
‘Did he fall? Was he up a tree?’ The lady Matilda was understandably surprised.
‘The sheriff’s unwelcome brood say he was hit about the head, but they only want to make trouble.’ He expected her agreement.
‘Who hit him?’
‘Does it matter?’ Thorold sounded irritated.
‘If someone hit him, then why? Is not everyone in danger?’ The lady Avelina ceased sucking her finger.
‘No. It will be some peasant’s squabble.’
‘Why are you so sure of that?’ The lady Matilda did not let go of a subject easily. ‘And what says the undersheriff?’
‘I do not know and nor do I care. I thought you believed the undersheriff a fool, anyway.’ Thorold paused. ‘My hawk brought down a duck, so …’
‘Thorold! This is important. Corbin is the son of our steward, and to follow him.’
‘I never thought he would make much of the position. I will select another.’
‘But his family have been stewards of Doddenham for generations.’
‘Then the line breaks now. It is not important, not to me. The boy is no loss. All he has done is trot about the solar like an ever-faithful hound, with great eyes only for “my lady” and doing whatever she may snap her fingers at.’
‘He was of good use when Durand was very ill.’ The lady Matilda could be fair when she chose.
‘More, then, the pity.’
‘You speak as if you wished Durand had died.’ The lady Avelina looked reproachfully at her husband.
‘We wish each other dead. That seems fair to me.’
‘But he is your brother, my lord.’ She was shocked. ‘You may dislike him, but you cannot wish him dead. He is your blood.’
‘Is he? Or is he but half my blood, Mother?’ Thorold turned suddenly upon his mother. ‘Was it true what that Welsh weasel told me? Am I Thorold FitzRoger or Thorold, bastard of some Welshman? Because Durand would oust me if he could, doubt it not. Will you help him, since he has always been favoured?’
‘You must have been drinking. This is the madness of wine talking.’ The lady Matilda glowered at her firstborn. ‘Do you think, if I indeed prefer Durand, that I would have had you take his father’s estate, if you were indeed the son of Rhodri ap Arwel? Do you? No. It makes no sense, as you make no sense. Just because I despise you does not mean I would supplant you with an usurper.’
‘You “despise” me?’
‘Of course I do. You are too like unto your father, that is the irony. I despised him too. Roger FitzGilbert was indecisive, weak of will, though at least strong enough in body when younger. You arrived small, and small you have remained, in body, in courage, in mind. You have pretended, worn the mantle of a lord, but your shoulders are not even broad enough to wear that of Roger FitzGilbert.’ The woman was angry, angry not for the moment, but for a lifetime of disappointment, and her words spilt out in a bitter torrent. ‘You have replaced strength with guile, and puffed yourself up in the delusion that a little cleverness among the ignorant is as good as being a strong man, a real man. At every turn you have been weak, mistaking the taking of any decision for taking a good decision. When you said you would wed, I warned you about her.’ She pointed at the lady Avelina, who was staring at her, open-mouthed. ‘What did you think, if you thought at all? That her beauty would fire you out of disinterest, out of impotence? What that Welsh serpent did, molesting our servants, was disgusting, but do you know, just for one small moment when I had heard that the girl Aldith had slapped his face for his temerity, I wished it had been you. Never, even in the first flush of manhood, did your father have to berate you for stealing a kiss from some peasant girl, or appease an angry father whose daughter you had seduced with sweet words. You were simply not interested, as though women were trees. Yet you pick a woman that has men slavering after her just by drooping her lashes at them. She is little better than a common whore, but you have made her so, by ignoring your duty. You did not have to enjoy it. Heaven knows we women rarely do so, but we do our duty, aye, and the greater duty since we have to carry and bear. Did you try? Did you consult a wise woman, or a physician to help your ardour? No. You just pretend to be a man when everyone knows you are without desire.’ Her voice slowed, and became resigned. ‘There are men who cannot sire heirs, but they can still be lords, puissant in their shire. You sit here, without ambition, without an aim but to sit here, and you watch, watch life and the world pass Doddenham by. It may suffice the peasants who seek only stability, but you are not a peasant, and it ought not to suffice you. “FitzRoger the Watcher” is how you will be remembered for a time, and then forgotten as if you had never been. My sire said once that he had been told that in the old, old days when our ancestors were heathen in Normandy, they said immortality was being remembered in the halls, as a warrior, as a “giver of treasure”. While men spoke of you, you lived on. You, Thorold, will be “dead” within a hand of years after your body lies in the earth.’
‘How little you know me. You say I watch, and do nothing, but it is just that you do not see all I do, all I achieve. Hywel ap Rhodri, your sister’s son, came here and made trouble, trouble by his words and by his deeds. What would your strong lord have done? Shouted at him, thrown him out? That is nothing. I achieved far more, for I achieved his death,’ Thorold said it proudly, ‘and without even getting as much blood upon my hands as that finger of yours, wife.’
The lady Avelina put her hands to her cheeks, and gave a low moan.
‘You killed him? Why?’
‘For several good reasons. The first was that I did not want him telling all that I was a Welshman’s bastard. The second was that I disliked him taking liberties with my servants in my manor. And the third was that I really objected to him tupping my wife among my own hazels.’
‘You saw? No, someone else must have—’
‘I saw. I “watched”, and some watching gives no pleasure. However I use you, or not, you are my wife, mine. He had no right. So you see, Mother, I can act, and far better my way than ranting and roaring and flashing my sword at him. I had him killed, and it was easy, and very satisfying.’
‘If you did that, then … Has Durand fallen back into illness because of poison?’ The lady Avelina was white-faced, excepting a smear of blood upon her left cheek.
‘Now there is an idea.’ Thorold laughed.
‘Fool. I have seen such fevers as Durand’s, and his is natural, not the effect of poison.’ The lady Matilda was watching her son, and, having despised him for years, was aware of a blossoming flower of fear within her.
‘Agreed. But it is still a nice idea. I had hoped, of course, that he might just die. It seemed such a likely thing for a while, but he disappointed me. If you want to know why I have not dealt with him as with the Welshman, it is simple. I could do nothing to pay back Hywel ap Rhodri except take his life. With Durand I take hope. As long as I live, he is a landless sword in the pay of Gilbert de Clare. He has no power, no woman, no “heirs of his body”. He has a living death of failure. Why end the pleasure of seeing that?’
‘And if I bore his child?’ The lady Avelina spat the question.
‘Alas, it would not survive … And maternity is such a risk, isn’t it? I would grieve, of course, but …’ Her eyes widened in horror.
The lady Matilda was horrified too, by the lack of emotion. She could understand a man killing a deceiving wife in anger, but the idea of him watching and waiting, pretending to be pleased at her swelling form, and all the while planning her death, two deaths, was more than she could take. And then it hit her, with a cold certainty.
‘You said you had Hywel ap Rhodri killed.’
‘Yes, I did, Mother.’
‘Was it by Corbin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesu, it was you who hit him, then.’
‘He would make things awkward with the sheriff’s men, now the horse is found.’
‘You sent a boy to do a man’s job.’ It was her first thought, that even in this her son had not been ‘the man’, and the disgust made Thorold snap. He strode the two steps towards her and hit her across the face, hard, with the back of his hand. It took her completely by surprise, and she fell. Her head caught the table edge and then, as she hit the floor, there was a peculiar, distinct sound. It was the sound of a snap. Matilda FitzGilbert stared up at her son, and her gaze did not reproach, because it was sightless.
Thorold looked down at her, caught between horror, disbelief, and a strange sense of release.
His wife gave a strangled cry that broke the silence, and he heard heavy footsteps in the hall. Not clever, was he? He grabbed the knife that lay discarded upon the table and plunged it into the dead woman’s chest. The lady Avelina stood, frozen, and he rose, grabbed her by the arm, and flung her round that he might pinion her before him. Then he yelled.
‘Murderess! She has killed her, killed my mother!’
The door burst open, and undersheriff and serjeant almost fell into the chamber. They saw the woman on the floor, the knife protruding, the wild-eyed man with the equally wild-eyed woman in his firm grasp.
‘She killed her,’ he cried again, and caught his breath on a sob.
Avelina FitzRoger just stared.
‘Why?’ Catchpoll barked the question.
‘They were arguing, not shouting, the usual clawing with words. My mother called her a whore, and then … My mother!’ The word became a wail.
‘No,’ whispered his prisoner. ‘He did it.’
‘But it is her knife, and look, she is not used to wielding it to such a purpose, for she cut herself where finger grasped blade. He prised open her hand, where the cut still showed a red line.’
‘The knife slipped as I cut a thread.’ Her voice was small.
‘She got blood on her face when she put her hands to it, seeing what she had done. It was a moment of madness, but she killed my mother.’ Thorold pushed his wife towards Bradecote and fell upon his knees by the body.
Bradecote looked at Catchpoll, and Catchpoll looked back. It sounded simple at first glance, but nothing was right. Bradecote took the woman’s left hand and looked at the cut. It was tiny, and upon the tip. If the knife was held to stab, and grasped too low, the finger would be cut in the closest part to the hand. He wondered also at the fact the injured finger was upon the left hand. Some people preferred the left, but it was not as common as using the right. Catchpoll came to the other side of the corpse, and reached, gently, to close the sightless eyes. FitzRoger did not expect his hand to move next to the neck. The other hand helped lift the head, even as Thorold sat back upon his heels.
‘Now there is a thing,’ remarked Catchpoll, without haste. ‘Why should the lady stab a woman whose neck is broke?’
‘She fell when the blade went in,’ sniffed FitzRoger.
Catchpoll looked at the knife hilt, sticking from the chest. The angle of the blade was slightly upwards.
‘Done a lot of killing, have you, my lady?’ Catchpoll enquired.
‘No, I —’
‘You see, I have seen many knife wounds, and many who have wounded with a knife. A woman can kill with one, yes, but they are actually very bad at it. You see, a woman does not learn to use a knife, and she will stab down,’ Catchpoll made a fist about an imagined blade and matched action to words, ‘but a man, he knows the best way, the sure way, is to stab upwards, like so.’ He performed the action. ‘This knife went in on an upward stroke.’
‘What are you saying?’ FitzRoger scrambled to his feet.
‘I think what Serjeant Catchpoll is saying is fairly clear, FitzRoger. It was not your wife who killed your mother.’ Bradecote had set the lady Avelina to one side, and she stood, trembling.
‘She killed her, I tell you, stabbed her and she fell and—’
‘Pick up your sewing, my lady.’ Bradecote had to repeat the command. She blinked at him, but did so.
‘The lady is right-handed, yet you say she stabbed with the left because the blade cut her. Most … unusual. And Catchpoll here has seen more corpses than you have eaten roasted heron, I would think. You killed her.’
‘He hit her, and she fell.’ The lady Avelina found her voice. ‘Her neck broke then. He took my knife from the table and stabbed her after … when he heard you coming.’
‘Now that,’ said Catchpoll, with satisfaction, ‘is a much better explanation of what we see here.’
‘No!’ The exclamation came not from Thorold FitzRoger, but his brother, steadying himself against the door frame. His recent pallor was increased. He stared at the scene before him, and then launched himself towards his brother, though unsteadily. Thorold was on his feet before Durand reached him, and began to draw blade from scabbard. He had forgotten Catchpoll, and forgetting Catchpoll was always a mistake. The serjeant simply linked his hands and struck a blow, as if a two-handed sword swipe without the sword, catching FitzRoger behind the knees and sending him to the floor. Bradecote grabbed Durand, as he half fell and half threw himself upon his brother.
‘No, let the law have him, Durand. He has even more than this to answer for, and he will answer.’
The man struggled for a moment, and then gave up. Catchpoll had pinioned Thorold FitzRoger, and Bradecote, leaving the crumpled Durand, stepped to unbuckle the man’s sword.
‘You will need good light to inspect this, Serjeant,’ he said. ‘Leave the prisoner with me. Oh, and best you fetch the priest and tell Walkelin his watch is stood down.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Catchpoll took the sword belt and the sword in its scabbard. Bradecote looked at the people in the chamber. Catchpoll said you should not get involved, with victim or culprit, but sometimes that was hard, even impossible. Yet here he felt he was standing back, observing from a distance. He had felt more concern over the youth Corbin, hoping he would live, and not just to provide the answers to questions. These four, three living and one dead, were the people of this hall, this solar, and none cared deeply for any of the others. The wife might have cuckolded husband with brother, but there was no love between them, just need. She offered no comfort to him now, but sat upon the floor as if dazed. Both sons had been in awe of the mother, and held her in feared respect mixed at times with dislike, though Durand wept for her now. The two brothers hated each other, and the two women likewise. It bore no more relation to his own hall than starlight to mud. There was silence but for the sound of Durand’s emotion.
‘My mother was right, she was always right, though I hated her for it. I ought to have done things myself.’ Thorold spoke almost dreamily.
Walkelin arrived, for the second time in a few hours followed by a breathless priest. Father Durand shook his head, crossed himself, and went to the side of the body of the lady Matilda. He began prayers for the dead. Walkelin had a length of rope with him.
‘I thought this might be useful, my lord.’
Bradecote just nodded.