Michael Jecks - The Tolls of Death

‘Poor children, more to the point,’ Nicholas said, and Muriel had to agree with him. She could feel little empathy with a woman who could slaughter her own children like lambs for the pot.

The scene was terrible, and although she would have liked to see the bodies removed, because all men and women must be intrigued by death, yet she was suddenly taken with a feeling of guilt, as though she was intruding. Athelina must have been dreadfully depressed to have committed this grievous crime, and listening to these men speculating on her last moments felt almost blasphemous.

At the mill, when she returned, she told Serlo about the woman’s death.

He was quiet for a few moments as he absorbed her words, but then, when he turned to her, his face twisted petulantly. ‘Bugger! It’ll take an age to clean all the blood away. How are we going to get money in from the place if it stinks like a charnelhouse?’

She was left with the impression, as he walked off, that he had already known of the matter, and she wondered why he hadn’t admitted it. Serlo was not the type to bottle up such things. If he thought that he knew more than another, he would gladly boast about it. Most unlike him, she reckoned, but then she heard Aumie cry, and her maternal instincts took over for a while. It was only later that she returned to the theme. ‘It was terrible, Serlo!’ she told him. ‘Those two poor boys, dead like that! I don’t know what to say!’

‘Then shut up,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘I don’t give a toss for that beggarwoman or her brood. Now what’s for supper?’

She couldn’t ignore his mood. All too often in the past when he had been in this frame of mind, he had beaten her. Rather than risk that, she offered him a thickened pottage with some lamb meat, and left him to his solitary contemplation of the fire, walking out to watch over her children as they played in the yard. She was still there a while later when he came out.

‘I’m going to see my brother,’ he said, and strode off up the road towards the vill and his precious Alexander.

He was a hard devil to please sometimes, that husband of hers.

Lady Anne heard the men return from the vill and, rather than wait for her husband, she walked carefully down the stairs to greet him and learn what had been happening.

He was still in the yard when she reached the top of the staircase outside the hall. Like so many newer castles, this one was built with a view to defence, so the hall was up a flight of stone steps; beneath was a large undercroft for storing foods. From her vantage point, she could see that Nicholas was visibly upset. He had the expression that he usually wore when a dog misbehaved and sprang the game too early, or when a peasant didn’t turn up for his traditional labour days. He carried his head lower, like a bull preparing to charge, and his brows came together above his nose, giving him, so Anne thought, a deliciously aggressive aspect.

Others would quail in his presence when he wore that expression, but not Lady Anne. She knew her man better than that. For her, there was no danger from him. Although he could be as terrifying as an ogre to the men-at-arms about the castle, towards her he was ever a polite and kindly gentleman. Even now, she saw the two new men-at-arms, Richer and Warin, receiving a blunt reproach from Nicholas. Richer, she noted, looked close to answering back. For a moment Anne actually thought he would, but then Warin took his shoulder, and he calmed down. Fortunately, Nicholas hadn’t noticed; he was shouting at a groom for being lazy.

‘It was Athelina? She is dead?’ she asked Nicholas, running down the stairs to his side.

‘Yes,’ he responded. His eyes met hers for a moment, and then he roared at a servant to fetch him wine. ‘She killed her boys, too. No one’s seen them for a couple of days, not since Saturday evening, so we think she did it then. Christ Jesus, but I have no idea why! What can she have been thinking? Oh, my love, I am sorry!’

Anne had winced on hearing his words, a hand instinctively rising to her belly as though to shield her child’s ears. She could feel herself blench even as her husband rested his hands upon her shoulders, his eyes full of compassion. ‘My dear, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It was a terrible thing to kill the boys,’ she said.

‘Dreadful! The pair of them lying there, their throats …’ He looked drawn. Anne put her hand up to cover his on her shoulder as he continued. ‘I’ve seen enough of rapine and murder in war — you expect it. Every man’s heart hides a wild brute, and it’s only in time of war that the beast is released to act as it wishes … but this? It’s abnormal wicked to see children murdered by their own mother — the woman who’s supposed to seek only their safety and protection.’

‘It is the way sometimes, though,’ she said. He was haunted by these deaths, she saw, and she wanted to comfort him, but wasn’t sure how. She’d never seen him so affected. Yet it was natural, surely, for an honourable man to feel this way? Especially when his wife was expecting her own first child, she told herself with a faint sinking sensation in her heart.

She loved him. She adored him. How could God have deceived her so and made her betray him?

‘Who’s that?’ Letitia muttered as she heard the footsteps, but she needn’t have wondered. There was only one man who would walk to Alexander’s door at this time of night without hesitating.

‘Where is he?’ Serlo demanded, seeing her at the hearth.

‘If you mean your brother, I expect he’s still at Athelina’s. Someone has to keep an eye on the place until the Coroner arrives, and goodness knows when that will be.’

‘I want to see him,’ Serlo said.

Letitia saw how he grimaced as he said it. There was something on his mind that he knew was going to annoy her husband, and she stood up, wincing slightly as a knee clicked. She knew that she was intimidating to Serlo; it had something to do with her height, for she was at least two inches taller than him, but it was also her manner.

She had been born into the family of a merchant in Bodmin, a wealthy enough man, and when she agreed to marry Alex, it was a move designed mostly by her father. Alex was even then a forward-thinking man, and his fame was travelling farther than merely Bodmin.

She deliberately used her ‘older sister’ tone. It was the same tone she had used to intimidate her younger brother when they were children, and she had always found that it suited her perfectly in dealings with Serlo. Standing taller than him, she inclined her head until she was looking down her nose at him. ‘What have you done now?’

‘I ain’t done anything!’ he snapped. ‘Least, nothing much.’

‘Have you been demanding money from travellers again? You’ve been warned already by that fool Richer only yesterday. Alexander was very upset to hear that. You were stealing from us — from him. If he learns that-’

‘I’m not scared of that scrote Richer. He can go and-’

‘Save your great oaths for your customers, Serlo. I have no use for them,’ Letitia said, holding up her hand. ‘All I want to know is, what’s upset you this time?’

‘It’s nothing. I’ll find him myself. He’ll be at Athelina’s place, you say?’

‘I imagine so. You should try there first,’ she said, with a distant expression. If the fool didn’t wish to confide in her, that was fine, she thought, but as he slammed the door behind him, she could have kicked the hearth in annoyance. The ridiculous fellow! Walking in here as though he owned the place! He’d probably been caught with his fingers in someone’s sack of grain again. The idiot was so incompetent, he couldn’t even rob his customers without being found out.