‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘She scratched at her neck in a fight to save her life. She never wanted to die. And if she didn’t, she couldn’t have killed her children. This woman was murdered.’
Julia watched the early part of the inquest, but she didn’t stay long. It was all too depressing, and more than a little unpleasant, with those bodies there. Anyway, when she caught sight of Ivo, who had gone to find her and given up, she reckoned she could spend her time more fruitfully than by playing the ghoul.
Soon she heard his hurried footsteps, and a breathless, ‘Hello, maid.’
She sniffed and didn’t face him. ‘Oh, so you don’t mind talking to me now, then? I thought you were too busy up at the castle with your fine friends to bother seeing me again.’
‘How could you think that?’ he asked with mock hurt. ‘When the most beautiful woman in the vill is down here?’ Over her shoulder he saw Squire Warin riding off towards Temple, and he opened his mouth, but shut it again. Julia wouldn’t like him to be distracted.
‘Who’s this beautiful woman, then?’
‘Aw, I can’t think right now,’ he said playfully. ‘It’ll come to me. Everything does in the end, you know!’
‘Cor, you’re a cocky bugger, aren’t you?’ she said, turning to look at him at last. ‘Think yourself special, do you?’
‘I know I am, maid, and I think you reckon it too,’ Ivo grinned.
She turned away again.
‘Did you know her?’ he tried after a moment.
‘Athelina?’ She shot him a look, then nodded. ‘Yeah. She was all right.’
‘Doing that to her boys, though. Terrible, that.’
‘She was desperate.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Her man paid the rent for that house of hers, and he’d lost interest in her, so she couldn’t afford to stay. She didn’t have any money or anything.’
‘Still a terrible thing to do.’
Julia pulled a face. ‘What else can a woman do when she’s got nothing? Without money, she’ll starve and so will her children. Maybe she reckoned it was better to save the boys a long starvation. As for her boyfriend, he’s moved on now, the bastard.’
‘That was said with feeling!’
‘Yeah. He moved from her to me, and then he dropped me when he found another skirt to reach into.’
‘You think she killed herself because he ditched her?’
‘Maybe she loved him!’ Julia snapped, but now when she faced Ivo, there were tears in her eyes.
In the church house, Nicholas the castellan frowned irritably. ‘I don’t understand the logic of what you are saying. She could have repented and decided to save herself at the last moment, surely?’
Baldwin motioned to Simon to explain. For his part, he was still so angry with himself that he could hardly speak. His incompetence was inexcusable: he had seen what others expected him to see. He had heard a little about the woman and instantly believed the scene placed before him; he hadn’t thought to seek the truth below the cord that killed her, he hadn’t enquired about the circumstances of her death and the fabrication that now seemed so obvious.
‘It is clear,’ Simon began, ‘that she was killed there by the rope. It strangled her to death. We had thought that she was mad — the miller’s threat to evict her could have sent her insane — and that she had killed her boys, then hanged herself. But that would mean she’d committed the worst crime there is: infanticide. Could she then regret her own death? If she was mad when she slaughtered them, it could only have made her still more mad. In God’s name, no woman could have decided to save herself after destroying those she most loved. If anything, a sane woman who killed her children could become more mad afterwards, but never sane!’
‘Perhaps she wanted vengeance? Having killed her sons, she decided to seek the man who forced her to do it, in order to make him pay?’ Sir Jules suggested.
Baldwin waved a hand impatiently. ‘Coroner, are you a father?’ When the man nodded, Baldwin continued harshly, ‘Then suppose you yourself murdered all your children. Would you give a damn about anyone else in the world? If despair so entrapped you that you were committed to destroying all that you adored, you would simply wish to end your life as swiftly as possible.’
‘Perhaps the woman had time to repent her crimes and sought to live longer to find God’s forgiveness,’ Adam suggested.
‘You seriously think a mother could do that?’ Simon demanded. ‘I know of no woman who could kill her children and then save her own life. Not if she loved them.’
‘And she certainly seemed to,’ Nicholas breathed.
Sir Jules looked from one to the other. ‘I bow to your greater knowledge on this. I have never held an inquest on — uh — such a case.’
‘You have only recently been given this task, Coroner?’ Simon asked tentatively.
‘I have been enquiring after sudden deaths for some days,’ Sir Jules said haughtily, but then added more honestly, ‘Nearly a week and a half. I believe I have much to learn.’
Baldwin reflected that he too had much still to learn. ‘The woman had the rope around her neck, but she struggled with it, trying to insert her fingers behind it to pull it away, yet she failed. The killer managed to throttle her, and then staged her suicide.’
‘Not easy, surely, with a dead body?’ Nicholas said.
‘No, but not impossible. She was no great weight. A man could set the rope about her neck, the other end over the beam, and pull.’
The men nodded.
‘I think we should seek a murderer.’ Simon looked at the Coroner. ‘I was glad you didn’t think to try to hold an inquest on the woman’s child.’
He pulled a face. ‘I couldn’t! I was too appalled. The very woman I all but brained in the morning loses her child in the afternoon … I’ve never been so close to a recent death, and seeing her so … grief stricken — well, I couldn’t face questioning her. That would have been unbelievably cruel.’
‘Which means we shall have another inquest tomorrow as well as completing Athelina’s,’ Baldwin noted. ‘And seeking her killer, of course.’
‘Quite so,’ said Sir Jules. His face was drawn and fearful with this new responsibility. ‘Yes … quite so.’
Chapter Thirteen
Richer went straight from the inquest to the alehouse, and he stood in the doorway looking for Susan.
‘Leave me alone!’
The enraged bellow came from Serlo, who stood in the far corner of the room with a quart pot in his hand. He took a long pull of his drink, then glared about him. ‘I’m staying till I’ve drunk enough,’ he said truculently, ‘and no one’s going to stop me. Sons of whores and bitches, the lot of you!’
Richer immediately knew he should leave. Staying could only provoke the man, and that wasn’t fair, not when he’d just lost his son. Also, Richer’s headache felt like it was about to develop into a migraine after seeing poor Athelina’s body. He had no wish to pick a fight today.
Serlo continued, ‘This place! Athelina’s dead, and suddenly everyone’s miserable. Why? She was only a whore with two bastards. Should have snuffed it long ago. Look at you all! Creeping around because she’s dead, but my baby, my little Ham … no one cares about him, do they? All you want is me quiet, isn’t it?’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘It wasn’t my fault he died. He was my son,’ he continued, more drunkenly introspective. ‘My little boy. I didn’t think he’d get hurt in my house, in God’s name! In my own house … I’d even got the pottage on to cook. How can he be dead?’
Richer was almost at the door, when he heard Serlo give a hoarse oath.
‘Hey, you! Come to gloat, have you? What, going already? You scared of me or something? I’m only a poor sod who’s lost his son, you know. Nothing to be afeared of!’
‘I wasn’t here to gloat, Serlo. I am sorry your son died. I’ll leave you to your grief; I’ve no desire to increase your pain.’
‘Increase my pain? Huh! How can you? When I look at you, I see a man who lost his whole family.’