A joyless laugh escaped their host. ‘It is the way of enchantments, that the wish one is granted turns against him. I have known little happiness since our wedding night.’
Lascelles sank into a quiet study while the servant moved the fish pastry to one side and filled the table with venison and a pottage of early greens.
Owen toasted Geoffrey silently and turned his attention to the tantalising dishes before him.
Slowly Lascelles woke to his guests and tasted the venison. ‘From the Duke’s wood,’ he said. ‘I enjoy a hunt when my spirit is restless.’
‘It is a good way to exorcise demons,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘A boar hunt even better.’
They fell to talking of hunting. Owen had nothing to contribute. He had been born to a life in which a felled animal was a blessing, not a sport, and used wisely to get all God’s grace from it. He spent the time studying Lascelles, a haunted man, far more intriguing than he had thought at first.
It was almost a pleasant end to a troubling day. But the day had been marked from the start. As a servant brought forth the brandywine another in the livery rushed in, white faced, and fell to his knees beside Lascelles’s chair. Lascelles leaned toward him, listening with a deepening frown, whispered something, shook his head, and rose, while telling the servant to stay in the room and await his return — in silence. ‘Captain, Master Chaucer, I should be grateful if you would accompany me.’ Lascelles strode from the room.
Whatever the news, it had rapidly sobered him.
Eleven
As they moved into the corridor without, Lascelles lifted a torch from a sconce. ‘A few more torches would be of use,’ he called over his shoulder. Owen and Geoffrey availed themselves of others in the corridor.
‘What do you suppose happened?’ Geoffrey whispered.
‘Something he would keep from the other servants, which means trouble to someone,’ Owen said.
Geoffrey nodded as if satisfied and hurried after Lascelles, whose light was disappearing down the tower steps. Owen followed with less enthusiasm. He wanted to back away, march straight to the guesthouse, lie down and end this miserable day.
Geoffrey paused on the verge of disappearing round the curved stairway. ‘Owen? Are you coming?’
Of course, cursed as he was with the most damnable sense of responsibility.
They continued to descend until they reached the buttery, then immediately turned to a door beside the one they had just exited. It led into the undercroft of the chapel tower. The small room beneath the sacristy was the chaplain’s chamber, which he presently shared with Edern. The door stood ajar. Lascelles held the torch before him, illuminating the room. It was so small as to be crowded with two pallets, a table, two chairs and a chest. And someone lying in a heap beneath the high window, one hand stretched towards the wall.
Owen recognised the squirrel lining on the wool cloak. ‘Father Edern.’
Lascelles glanced back at Owen. ‘How do you know?’
‘The cloak.’
‘God is merciful,’ Lascelles whispered.
‘I see nothing for which to be grateful,’ Owen muttered.
Lascelles stepped to one side of the doorway and nodded at Owen. ‘You have spoken of working with the Duke’s surgeons in the field, Captain. Perhaps you should examine the body.’
‘You are certain he is dead?’
‘That is what the servant reported.’
‘Young fools often fright at a person in a faint.’ Reluctantly, Owen knelt beside the body. The cloak had fallen over Edern’s head. He might have fainted, passed out after a long day of drinking — all was yet possible. But the lack of a snore, a moan, a movement of any kind since they shined the torch on him, and the stench of blood — Owen hesitated. Once the hood was drawn back, the worst would be known. He might be accustomed to death, but one death did not make the next encounter easier. Death dragged one’s soul towards despair. Owen said a prayer for Edern, a man he had come to like, then drew back the hood.
‘What is this?’
Lascelles came closer. ‘What?’
‘Perhaps you will not think God so merciful after all. This is Father Francis, not Edern.’
‘In Edern’s cloak?’
Which was one of those seeming coincidences that Owen ever distrusted. He handed his torch to Lascelles, who dropped it into the sconce by the door, then returned to hold his own over the body. Owen bent to Francis, felt his neck, the wrist of the hand flung out towards the wall, found no pulse.
‘He is dead?’ Lascelles asked.
‘Aye.’
‘How long?’
‘He is cold, but his fingers have not yet stiffened. Not long. A matter of a few hours. Help me turn him over.’
Geoffrey took Lascelles’s torch. The steward crouched on the side of the body opposite Owen, and at the signal began to tilt the body in Owen’s direction. Owen caught Francis and lay him on the floor, face up. There was so much blood on the man’s face and neck it masked the source.
On the table beside the body were the remnants of a meal soaked in wine from an overturned cup. A candle had followed the cup — it was fortunate for the castle that the flame had been extinguished in the sodden mess. Owen pulled a blanket off the bed, dipped the corner in the wine. ‘Bring the torch closer.’
Geoffrey stepped closer.
Owen gently cleaned some of the blood from the priest’s face.
‘Jesu,’ said Geoffrey.
‘Aye. Not a pretty sight.’ The priest’s nose had been broken, one eye had swelled almost shut, and there was a deep gash in his forehead.
‘Might he have fallen?’ suggested Geoffrey. ‘And hit his head on the table or the chest as he fell?’
‘A fall would not do so much damage.’ Lascelles’s voice sounded almost timorous.
Owen glanced at Lascelles, wondering at his swiftly changing moods. ‘No.’ He examined the priest’s hands. One palm was grazed, probably in the fall, but neither showed the bruising or the abrasions of someone who had fought to protect himself from such an attack as this must have been. ‘Father Francis was beaten. And then he fell, or was thrown down. What passion provoked such a violent attack?’
Geoffrey stared down at the dead priest. ‘Why was he wearing Edern’s cloak?’
‘Why indeed,’ Owen said. ‘Who was the intended victim?’
‘We must search the castle for Edern,’ Lascelles said.
Owen had bent to the table. There was a pool of sealing-wax — crimson, not the pale wax of the overturned candle. A pen and ink-well had been pushed to one side.
‘Could Father Francis write?’ he asked.
‘Of course he could,’ Lascelles said with impatience. ‘I would not have tolerated an ignorant priest.’
Owen pushed past his hovering companions and knelt beside the corpse, examined his clerical gown. The priest must have fallen shortly after his nose had begun to bleed, for there was little blood on the gown below the chest. Farther down Owen spied a dried bit of the crimson wax. ‘He had sealed a document at this table,’ Owen said. ‘He spilled a bit of the wax on himself and on the table.’ He eased himself up, suddenly aware of his exhaustion. Such a long, joyless day. How fitting for it to close with a death. ‘I trust you do not need me to search the castle. I am to bed.’
A banging shutter woke Dafydd from a sweet dream of spring. Shutters were a luxury when properly latched; when left to bang they were cursed nuisances. He lay there, holding his breath so he might guess which shutter to attack. And then the hounds began to bark.
Rising slowly so he might not be heard, Dafydd felt for the stool at the foot of his bed. It was the only item close at hand that he might use as a weapon. A footstep in the corridor located the intruders — his servants went barefoot indoors. A thud made him jump. It also made his intruders pause. Thud thud. The shutter. Not so cursed after all. A shout. Ah. They had encountered the giant in the corridor — Cadwal slept across Dafydd’s door at night. Hence the lack of weapons in his room.