The resolution of that matter remained to be seen.
‘I wish,’ Brice was saying, ‘to give to the Abbey a donation to compensate, in some part, for what they would have received from my late wife’s father, had he lived a day or so longer. I make the gift of my own free will, although I confess that the good brothers of Canterbury did drop one or two hints.’
‘I’m sure they did,’ Josse murmured.
Brice was reaching for a small leather bag that hung from his belt. ‘Will you give this to the Abbess, please, Sir Josse? With the compliments of Brice of Rotherbridge, in the name of Sister Gunnora?’
‘Aye, gladly.’ Josse held out his hand, and Brice dropped the bag into it. The bag was very heavy.
‘What news of progress in the hunt for her killer?’ Brice asked as, seated once more, he raised his mug. ‘You, I am told, have the new King’s authority to investigate the murder?’
‘Aye.’
‘I wondered at Richard Plantagenet concerning himself with a rural killing until I made the connection,’ Brice went on. ‘Your task, I imagine, is simply to persuade us all that Gunnora was not killed by one of these released criminals he’s been busy turfing out of the country’s jails.’
‘She wasn’t,’ Josse said. ‘I’ve known that from the first.’
‘Quite so. I can’t imagine that anyone with any sense would have believed otherwise. Prisoners hereabouts may be mean, stinking and hopeless, but few of them are murderers.’
Josse grinned. ‘Aye. Trouble is, Sir Brice, your average man drinking his hard-earned wages in the local hostelry doesn’t have very much sense.’
Brice laughed. ‘So, you remain here to satisfy your own curiosity?’
‘Aye.’ And, Josse thought wearily, I’m still a long way from doing so.
* * *
He was draining his ale, thinking it was about time he got up and headed back for Hawkenlye — it wouldn’t do to be out after dark with a purseful of gold tucked in his tunic — when something occurred to him. He might not have felt he should ask, except that, for the past hour or so, he and Brice had been enjoying a long conversation about the end of Henry II’s days, and discussing what likelihood there was of as good a life under the rule of his son. It had, Josse thought, put them on a new level of intimacy. Or it might have been the ale, and the sharing of the excellent food which Mathild had provided for the midday meal.
Either way, he plunged on and asked his question.
‘Your brother, Olivar,’ he began.
‘My brother.’ Brice sighed, sticking his legs out straight in front of him and regarding his boots. As if he, too, now felt able to speak of more personal matters, he added, ‘My poor suffering brother.’
So he did know of Olivar’s grief!
‘Suffering?’ Josse echoed innocently.
‘Indeed. He laments her every waking minute. All his hopes gone awry, all he’s waited and prayed for these three years or more.’ He sighed again. ‘I blame her, although I know it is wrong to speak ill of the dead. But she was ever a cold fish. Calculating, so that you never knew whether her actions had an honest motive. Me, I’m sorry to admit it, but I usually suspected the opposite. She was a devious woman. I can’t understand what the attraction was, but it was there all right. He adored her.’
‘His hopes?’ Josse had no idea what Brice was talking about. Had Olivar concealed a private love for Dillian? Hoped — although surely it must have been hopeless — that one day he would win her? But no, that couldn’t be right — nobody had suggested Dillian was a cold fish; quite the contrary. And, if he were speaking of his late wife, would Brice sound quite so offhand?
‘Yes.’ Brice frowned. ‘I thought you knew? Thought they would have told you?’ The frown deepened. ‘No. Of course they couldn’t have done. They didn’t know. Nobody did, except the three of us.’
‘Three.’ Brice, Olivar, and-
‘They kept it hidden from everyone,’ Brice said. ‘I only knew because Olivar confided in me. He felt bad, I think, because she’d turned me down. Not that I minded!’ He laughed briefly. ‘Only my pride was hurt. I was prepared to marry her, as I said earlier, but, in all honesty, I never really cared for her.’
‘Three,’ Josse said again. He wished he had not drunk so much ale; just when he needed his wits, here they were all fuddled.
‘Yes.’ Brice’s dark eyes were on him again. ‘My brother and me, naturally, and her.’ Then, as if Josse could possibly still be in any doubt, ‘Gunnora.’
Chapter Sixteen
As if fully aware that this new topic meant his guest was in for quite a long spell of sitting and listening, Brice got up and refilled Josse’s mug.
‘Had you, before we met,’ he asked his guest, ‘formed an impression of Gunnora of Winnowlands?’
Josse, who had quietly and, he hoped, unobtrusively, pushed the full mug out of his reach, considered. ‘To some extent,’ he said. ‘I sensed, from what I was told, that she was self-contained, lacking in warmth, manipulative.’
‘How astute,’ Brice murmured. ‘She was all of those. I knew her from childhood — my father’s lands bordered Alard’s, and it was inevitable that our two families should be on terms of some intimacy. Gunnora was several years my junior, but, nevertheless, it was she with whom I learned to dance, she with whom I harmonised when we were summoned to sing our little songs for our parents.’
‘You did not like her,’ Josse said.
‘Not greatly. I respected her, for she was intelligent and, when she put her mind to the task, capable. But’ — the heavy brows drew down in an expression of intense thought — ‘there was ever an air of superiority about her, as if privately she was thinking, “I am better than you. I only join in these inane activities because, just at present, it pleases me to do so.”’ He glanced at Josse. ‘She could be cruel. One of her father’s serving women had fallen for a groom — a handsome fellow, but brainless, some years younger than her — and he let her down. Gunnora, pretending to console the poor wretched woman, said that someone of her years and her looks would do better to set her cap at a man her own age.’
‘Sound advice, surely?’ Josse said.
Brice smiled grimly. ‘Indeed. Except that she didn’t content herself with that. She went on to suggest a suitable man, a half-blind old fool who was fat, stinking, and chronically indolent. Said he needed looking after, and Cat — the woman’s name was Catherine — could do the job.’
‘A little heartless.’
‘More than a little, if you could have seen the two men, the one so attractive, the other so foul. Gunnora made it clear to Cat that she considered Cat’s own looks more akin to the old man’s.’
‘I begin to see what you mean,’ Josse remarked. It sounded like a gratuitous piece of spite. ‘And Gunnora, was she beautiful?’ He had seen her in death, and her features had seemed regular enough: But a dead face gave no clue to how it had appeared in life, when it was animated, crossed with a dozen emotions, and-
‘She could have been beautiful,’ Brice said. ‘Her hair was thick and dark, her skin was perfect, and her eyes were large and deep blue, like her sister’s. But her chin was too small. That alone would not have detracted seriously from her looks, but, in conjunction with her pursed, prim mouth, the effect was too strong to miss.’
‘You studied her closely,’ Josse observed.
Again, the quick grin. ‘She was meant to be my wife.’
‘But she was in love with your brother, and would not have you.’
Brice considered that. ‘My brother, definitely, was in love with her. As for her…’ He seemed at a loss.