“You were the one who found her body?” asked Geoffrey, climbing to his feet. Helbye and his wife came to stand nearby. “My brothers told me that she had just attended mass. What happened?”
Adrian sighed, and gazed up to where the bare branches of the trees patterned the sky. “She attended mass, and then left with the other parishioners. I stayed longer in the church than I would usually have done-there was to be a funeral that day, you see, for a woman who had died in childbirth. I lingered to say prayers for her soul, and when I came out, there was Enide, dead in the grass. Or her body, anyway.”
“What do you mean by ‘her body anyway”?” asked Geoffrey suspiciously.
“Not her head,” explained the priest. “It was missing, and we never found it.”
Geoffrey stared at the priest in horror before turning on Helbye. “What is this? No one mentioned a missing head before! You said you had told me all there was to know!”
“I thought I had,” said Helbye, as surprised as was Geoffrey. “A missing head is news to me.”
He glanced at his wife, but she looked away and would not meet his eyes. Geoffrey grabbed a handful of the priest’s habit, suddenly angry. It had been a shock to read about Enide’s death in the brief note he had been sent in the Holy Land, and it had not been pleasant to hear rumours that his sister had been murdered by decapitation. But he had assumed he had already learned the worst there was to know, and had not anticipated that there would be yet more details regarding Enide’s murder that would shock him.
“What happened?” he demanded of the priest.
“Easy,” said Adrian, unnerved by the knight’s unexpected reaction. “I did not mean to distress you, Sir Geoffrey. I thought your family would have told you about the circumstances surrounding Enide’s death.”
“Let him go, lad,” said Helbye, prising Geoffrey’s hands from Adrian’s gown. “This is a man of God you are mauling here, not some grubby Saracen.”
Geoffrey released the priest reluctantly. “They did not tell me about this,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady. “Where is it?”
“Her head?” asked Adrian, smoothing down his habit. “As I said, that was never found, but some of her hair lay around the corpse, cut as her head was severed.”
“Then perhaps the body you found was not hers,” said Geoffrey, in sudden hope, looking from the priest to Helbye. “Perhaps she is safe somewhere-a convent, maybe. She wrote to tell me that she was considering taking such a path.”
“Do not vex yourself with futile wishes,” said Adrian gently. “The body was Enide’s, I am sorry to say. It wore her clothes and her locket-the one she told me you had given her before you left.”
“Did the men who Henry hanged not tell him where to find her head?” asked Geoffrey.
“Her head was never found,” said Adrian yet again. “Perhaps it was tossed into the river or buried somewhere. But either way, I am sure she rests in peace. I say a mass for her every week.”
“Masses be damned!” snapped Geoffrey. “How can she rest in peace when you do not even know where part of her lies? And I am not even sure the right people died for this foul crime!”
“Then you would not be alone,” said Adrian, unperturbed by Geoffrey’s blasphemy. “I am certain the poachers were innocent, although I have not a shred of evidence to support such a claim. Unfortunately, by the time I learned Henry was scouring the countryside looking for murderers, it was too late to stop him and urge him to caution.”
Some of the anger went out of Geoffrey. “You believe Henry hanged the wrong men?”
Adrian hesitated, as though considering exactly how much he should reveal. He glanced at Geoffrey and seemed to reach a decision.
“For several weeks before she died, Enide was not well,” he began. “She told me she thought someone was poisoning her, just as someone was also poisoning Godric. And at mass that morning, she seemed not herself, somehow. I do not mean I mistook her for another person,” he added quickly, seeing the hope in Geoffrey’s eyes. “It was more her mood. She was restless, and she did not concentrate on the mass as she usually did. It was almost as if she were expecting something to happen.”
“Something did happen,” said Geoffrey sombrely. “Someone decapitated her. Can you be more specific about this mood?”
Adrian shook his head. “I am afraid not. And believe me, I have given it a great deal of thought-far more than I should, when I have a busy parish to run. But I have been breaking her own wishes by speculating about this. She would not want you investigating her death.”
“Why not?” asked Geoffrey. “I would want someone investigating mine, if I were murdered and two men hanged for it who should not have been.”
“Would you?” queried Adrian. “Would you really want someone you loved putting themselves in peril for a deed that was done, and the consequences of which were irreversible anyway?”
Geoffrey considered. “I would not want Enide doing so, perhaps. But I am not Enide, I am a knight, and will not be so easily dispatched.”
But Sir Aumary was, he thought grimly. Even wearing his chain-mail, Geoffrey would be defenceless against an attack by a good archer hidden among the trees. One clear shot, and that would be that.
“Well, Enide cared for you, and she certainly would not have wanted you to put yourself in danger by making enquiries that will lead you into danger.”
“How do you know my enquiries would lead me into danger?” asked Geoffrey curiously. “Who do you think killed Enide?”
Adrian would not meet his eyes. “I do not know. Nor do I wish to. She was desperately afraid for her life, and her father is being poisoned even as he lies in his sick-bed. Do you not consider that sufficient warning to stay away?”
“Are you suggesting that I should stand back and allow my father to be killed under my very nose, and let my sister’s murder to go unremarked?” asked Geoffrey. “I thought the Church believed in justice.”
“Justice, yes,” said Adrian. “But not vengeance. That is for the Lord to take, not us. Henry tried vengeance, and it is almost certain he killed two innocent men.”
“I am not so hot-headed as Henry,” said Geoffrey. “I will be certain.”
Adrian sighed. “Then you go against my advice, and your sister’s wishes. It was at her request that she was buried in this quiet corner of the churchyard. She did not want constant reminders of her to be the cause of unhappiness in her family.”
“She chose this spot herself?” asked Geoffrey, aghast. “She was so certain she was going to be killed that she chose her own grave site?”
Adrian appeared flustered. “Put like that it sounds as if she knew she was going to die and we did nothing about it. But yes, she chose this spot. And she charged me to ensure that her death would not result in a bloodbath-something in which I failed her.”
“It all sounds so premeditated,” said Geoffrey, unsettled. “I wish I had returned before. I might have been able to do something. Why did she not ask me to come home?”
“Probably for the same reason that she would not want you trying to discover her killer now,” said Adrian. “She cared for you, and she did not want to put you in danger. Look, there is nothing you can gain from investigating now. You should leave Goodrich-today. Go back to the Holy Land and forget all this. You seem more decent than the rest of your kin. Do not let them drag you down into their pit of lies and murder.”
Geoffrey would have liked nothing better, but how could he leave his father in the hands of a murderer? And anyway, he had the King’s orders to follow. He was silent, thinking about Enide’s last few weeks of life, so certain that someone was going to kill her that she had even selected the place where she wanted to be buried. After a while, Helbye cleared his throat nervously, and Geoffrey remembered his promise to help him.
“My sergeant has something of a problem,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” said the priest, smiling at the burly soldier. “But it is nothing that cannot be resolved. I will draw up the papers authorising the annulment of her second marriage today.”