“As a mark of respect, you might consider waiting a little while before you plunder his body,” said Geoffrey, unable to stop himself. Although he had seen many acts of greed during the Crusades, most men-even knights-were not usually so ruthless with their kinsmen.
“You would think that.” Henry sneered. “You who could not even loot a city properly! Where is that dagger of Godric’s, Stephen-the one he claims the Conqueror gave him?”
“If I knew, I would not tell you,” said Stephen. “He always said that I should have that.”
“Rubbish!” said Walter, abandoning his pretence of laying out the body, and beginning to haul at the ring again. “The dagger should be mine because I am his eldest son. Look in that chest, Bertrada. It will be in there.”
“It is not,” said Stephen. “Believe me, I have checked. The old goat has hidden it somewhere, so that none of us will be able to find it.”
“Do you mean that thin, worn thing he used at the dining table?” asked Olivier disdainfully. “Why would any of you want that?”
“The hilt is silver,” explained Henry. “It can be melted down and made into something else.”
Geoffrey looked around the room, surprised at the changes in it since he had last been there. Gone were the practical whitewashed walls, and in their place were dark-coloured paintings depicting gruesome hunting scenes and improbably gory battles. There were soft rugs on the floor where there had once been plain wood, and the pile of smelly furs had been exchanged for a large bed heaped with multi-hued covers. He imagined that his military-minded father must have softened indeed to substitute his functional quarters for a room that reminded Geoffrey of the Holy Land brothels.
“There are a great many things to do now,” said Olivier, edging towards the door. “I must inform the Earl of Shrewsbury that Sir Godric Mappestone is dead.”
“You are going nowhere,” said Walter, abandoning his father’s hand, and leaping across the room to slam the door closed as Olivier reached it. Henry bounced over the bed, uncaring for the corpse that lay on it, and took up pulling at the ring where Walter had left off.
Walter glared at Olivier. “You will stay here until I have secured my hold on the manor. I do not want you running off to the Earl of Shrewsbury until I am ready.”
“I only want to inform him about this sad death,” protested Olivier in hurt tones. “And he must be told quickly, because the will is contested and he is your overlord. You might think that you are due to inherit, Walter, but remember what we discovered only last summer-that there is some question regarding your legitimacy. If that is true, then my wife Joan is the next in line, and although it is unusual to inherit through the female line, it is not unknown.”
“But if Walter is illegitimate, the manor will pass to me,” snapped Stephen. “I am the oldest legitimate son.”
“But none of you will succeed!” cried Henry in wild delight, triumphantly waving aloft the ring he had wrested from the old man’s finger. “I have the best claim: I am legitimate and I was born in England. And better yet, I have a Saxon wife-just like the King. My marriage will unite the Normans with the Saxons, and all these border skirmishes will be at an end!”
“I thought your border skirmishes were with the Welsh,” said Geoffrey, puzzled, “not the Saxons.”
No one took any notice of him as they argued with each other, so he walked to the bed and looked down at the body of his father.
“God’s teeth!” he swore, the shock in his voice instantly silencing his squabbling kin. “He is not dead!”
He punched Henry off the bed and cradled his father gently in his arm. Henry staggered to his feet and advanced, eyes blazing with fury. Geoffrey looked up at him steadily, daring him to attack, and Henry, realising he would not win a physical confrontation with his taller, stronger brother, kicked the bed in frustration and thwarted anger. Geoffrey ignored his tantrum and pulled the covers up around his father’s chin, realising that the chamber was fireless and chilly.
Sir Godric Mappestone, hero of Hastings and honoured warrior of the Conqueror, opened his eyes, and Geoffrey saw that he was not as near death as his family had led him to believe. He was pale and gaunt certainly, and perhaps even mortally ill, but his breathing was deep and regular and his sharp green eyes were alert and as calculating as ever.
Geoffrey studied him curiously, remembering the fiery, aggressive man who had ruled his childhood home with a rod of iron. His thick hair was solid grey, and the strong-featured face was lined with age and a life spent out of doors. His eyes held a trace of amusement, and Geoffrey wondered if his father had not feigned his “death” so that Geoffrey might witness exactly the scene that he had, with his brothers fighting over the ring and searching his body for valuables. It would certainly be an act in keeping with his crafty character.
“Godfrey, my son!” said Godric in a weak voice. “You have come back from the Crusade to see me before I die!”
“Geoffrey,” corrected Geoffrey. He smiled at Godric, saddened to see the great warrior so incapacitated. He shuddered at the sickness that had reduced the mighty, blustering Godric to the skeletal figure that lay in his arm, and decided that falling in battle was infinitely preferable.
“One of my treacherous brood has poisoned me, Godfrey,” muttered Godric. “With arsenic, my physician thinks. Or perhaps the fungus galerinus.”
“He is rambling again,” said Bertrada, from the other side of the room. “He often claims that one of us is killing him. He will be accusing you in a moment.”
“She is trying to make you believe that I have lost my wits, Godfrey,” said Godric with a faint smile. “But I am as sharp as I ever was. Someone has been poisoning me slowly and deliberately for months now, and I have grown more feeble each day. Did you see how they searched me for items of value, hoping I was dead? It is not even safe for me to sleep!”
“They will not do so again,” said Geoffrey. “I will see that they do not.”
Godric regarded him uncertainly. “You are a good boy, Godfrey,” he said eventually. “Even if you did harbour odd notions about wanting to be a scholar. Perhaps I should have sent Henry away instead of you-then I would not be lying here dying now.”
“You think Henry is poisoning you?” asked Geoffrey, fixing his long-haired brother with a disconcerting stare. Henry was the first to look away.
“I do not know which of them it is,” said Godric. “Walter and his wife, Bertrada, Joan and her husband Olivier, Stephen, or Henry and his angelic Hedwise-they all have their own reasons for wanting me out of this world. If you had come a few weeks earlier, you might have saved me.”
“You may recover,” said Geoffrey, hoping the doubt he felt did not reflect itself in his voice. Whether Godric was in control of his mental faculties, Geoffrey was not qualified to say, but the knight had seen enough dying men to know when a body was beyond repair.
Godric gave a rustling laugh and closed his eyes. “I will not get better now, Godfrey. The poison has damaged my vital organs. Ask my physician about it. He will tell you.”
“If you are so certain that someone wishes your death, why did you not hire a servant to prepare your food, so that no more poisons would reach you?” asked Geoffrey, certain that he would not have lain down and let the likes of Henry and his kin sentence him to a lingering death while he still had strength to prevent it.
“I did. But servants can be bribed, or if not bribed, then dispatched with no questions asked.”
“Torva’s death was an accident,” protested Walter wearily. “He was drunk, and he fell in the moat. There was nothing remotely suspicious about his demise.”
Godric fixed watery eyes on Geoffrey. “And what do you think, Godfrey? Do you consider such a timely death to be mere coincidence?”
Geoffrey’s thoughts whirled. “The man you hired to prepare your food was drowned?”