Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

Sobbing with fear and shock, Matilda sank to the floor, her hands still tied with the rope that trailed beneath her as she lay on the dirty straw. Oddly, one of the thoughts that churned through her confused mind was that her new cloak would be soiled and hard to clean. Then a voice penetrated her consciousness and she felt soft hands trying to lift her shoulders.

'Lie here on this mattress, lady. Let me take these bonds from your wrists.'

As her eyes became accustomed to the dim greenish light, she was aware of a female figure bending over her. Gratefully, Matilda lifted her arms so that the woman could unpick the simple knots in the rope and then sank to her hands and knees as the woman guided her to a thin pallet in the centre of the room.

'Who are you? What are we doing here?' she croaked, as the face above her gradually took shape through the tears in her own eyes and the gloom of the chamber.

The woman with the bedraggled blonde hair did not reply at once. She had recognised the new arrival and was dumbfounded. An instant later, Matilda, even more incredulous, saw that the woman who was succouring her in her adversity was none other than Hilda of Dawlish, one of her husband's mistresses.

It was many minutes before Lucille calmed down sufficiently to give any sort of coherent account of what had happened. Almost out of his mind with anxiety, the impatient coroner was inclined to slap the silly wench's face until she came to her senses, but it was Thomas who was best able to deal with her. He gave a meaningful glance and nod of his head at Gwyn, who took the hint and diverted John de Wolfe's attention, while Thomas led the maid aside and sat her on the old peoples' bench that ran along one wall of the chapel. Talking to her softly in her native French, for she came from the Vexin on the Seine, he soon reduced her hysterics to a steady snuffling sob, then began to extract the details of the recent tragic drama. As she haltingly mumbled and cried, Thomas beckoned to the others and they came nearer to listen.

'Poor Lucille here says that Mistress Matilda came here to pray and visit the holy well,' he explained. 'She rode out with her brother, who went off on some other business.'

'And what business would that be, out in this wilderness?' snapped de Wolfe.

Lucille looked up timorously at this stern, dark man. 'I know nothing of that, sir, but he told the mistress to wait a short while until he returned to collect us and take us back to Revelstoke.'

Gwyn looked at his master. 'So he must be somewhere fairly near, if they were waiting for him.'

'Then what happened, Lucille?' prompted Thomas gently. The skinny girl burst into tears once again and began shaking.

'Come on, girl, pull yourself together!' roared John de Wolfe. Though Thomas's softer approach seemed to have been successful, this outburst shocked the maid into lucidity.

'These three foreign devils burst in, sir! Terrible, they were! Huge men, dressed in long robes, cloths wound round their heads and waving great daggers.'

'What d'you mean, foreign?' snapped the coroner.

'Like Turks or Mussulmen. I saw some in a fair in Rouen once, jugglers and fire-eaters. Evil dark faces and hooked noses.'

'Then what? Tell us, quickly, for Christ's sake!'

'They seized Mistress Matilda — and I ran to bar myself in that room, otherwise they would have slain me as well. I saw them stab the old man, just as I was shutting the door.' She began shaking again and her eyes rolled wildly.

De Wolfe threw up his hands in desperation.

'What in hell is going on? These must be the same three Saracens. What do they want with my wife?'

Although none of them voiced the thought, it seemed unlikely that she was a target for ravishment, especially when Lucille, though skinny and unattractive, was a good twenty years younger.

'And where is Richard de Revelle, I wonder?' said Gwyn thoughtfully.

'I might have guessed that that bastard would be involved in anything underhand that was going on,' snarled de Wolfe.

'He would hardly want his own sister kidnapped,' Gwyn pointed out, reasonably.

John stalked to the open door, Gwyn and the bailiff behind him, leaving Thomas on the wall-seat with the snivelling maid.

'Where have they taken her, that's the thing?' he bawled, staring at the deserted road.

'And where's de Revelle?' repeated Gwyn. 'He can't have gone back to his manor without his sister!'

De Wolfe swung round to William Vado, who had been a silent and mystified observer of these strange events. 'Bailiff, you had better ride at once to Revelstoke, to make sure Sir Richard has not returned there. Then explain what has happened and get his steward to turn out with some armed men as fast as he can and come back here with them.'

'That will take a good few hours, sir. Where will you be when we return?'

The answer to all this mystery has to be somewhere near here. Gwyn and I will ride to Bigbury to see if anything is known there, so look for us along these roads.'

As Vado hurried to his horse, John called after him. 'You'd best take that damned girl with you on the back of your horse. We can't leave her here alone with that eyeless corpse. I'll attend to him later.'

Now that he had at least instigated some action, however futile it might prove to be, de Wolfe felt better. But two of his womenfolk were missing — he hoped to God that at least Nesta was safe in Exeter.

Matilda de Wolfe was a very self-sufficient, almost hard-bitten woman, but the shock of her recent experiences had caused her to dissolve into racking sobs as she slumped on the mattress in the dim chamber. Though she was exceptionally devout and firmly believed that she would eventually be received into heaven, she had no desire to go there just yet. Hilda crouched alongside her, speaking softly as she supported her shoulders and stroked the wiry curls of her hair, for the older woman's cover-chief and wimple had been lost when she was thrown across the horse.

As she gradually calmed down, Hilda's story slowly percolated into Matilda's brain. How she had vowed to seek out details of her husband's murder, then had been captured when she was following up the villagers' tales of strange activities in the forest. Though Matilda had long been aware of her husband's romance and adultery with the Saxon, she now felt a grudging admiration for her determination to track down her husband's killer. She had immediately recognised the handsome blonde, as she had seen her in Exeter a number of times and, in common with most of the population there, knew that she had been de Wolfe's mistress since before she herself had ever met him. Matilda also knew, through the grapevine of intelligence provided by her snobbish friends at the cathedral and St Olave's, that for some time John had not been dallying with the woman from Dawlish, being too besotted with the Welsh cow from the Bush tavern.

Their common peril, together with Hilda's tender concern and sympathy, prevented Matilda from voicing the scathing antipathy that she would have offered in any other circumstances.

'But why are we here?' she sobbed. 'Who are these terrible men? What is this place? Why does my brother not rescue me?'

Uneasily, Hilda felt that she could no longer delay telling Matilda another uncomfortable truth.

'I am afraid your brother is indeed here! But he is also a prisoner. He lies in the next room, beyond this wall.'

She explained to a dumbfounded Matilda that she had witnessed the attack by the Arabs upon Richard de Revelle and the French knight. 'But I have no notion of what it all signifies,' she concluded.

Perversely, the news seemed to have the effect of lessening Matilda's distress and strengthening her resolve. She stopped weeping and sat up on the mattress, drying her eyes with her sleeve. 'You are a resourceful woman, or you would not have come seeking your husband's killers. Surely there is something we can do between us?'