Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

“I see it,” said Julian, bending to inspect the destrier’s damaged fetlock. “It needs to be washed with clean water. I will draw it from the well myself.”

There was something odd about Julian that Geoffrey could not place. He was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, and so they could never have met. But the peculiarity had nothing to do with recognition; it was something else. However, the lad clearly had a way with horses, and Geoffrey had no reason to dismiss him in favour of one of the allegedly drunken grooms. He smiled at the boy’s eager face.

“It seems you know your business, Julian.”

Julian grinned back at him. “And I see you know yours. Sir Olivier never trusts me with his pathetic nag, although I am by far the best carer of horses at the castle.”

“Who are you?” came a voice from behind them, hostile and angry. “What do you mean by demanding entry under false pretences? I do not know you!”

Geoffrey turned, and came face to face with a short man with jet black hair and a matching moustache. Noting the half-armour and handsome cloak of a knight at ease, Geoffrey assumed he was Sir Olivier. The small knight had drawn his sword, but let it fall quickly when the guard’s torch changed Geoffrey from an indistinguishable shadow to a fully armed warrior wearing a Crusader’s surcoat. Olivier looked him up and down, took stock of his size and array of weapons, and beat a hasty retreat by backing away across the courtyard. Geoffrey heard Julian giggling helplessly at the unedifying spectacle.

“Guards!” yelled Olivier, unable to control the tremor in his voice. “Seize this man! He is an impostor!”

It was not the welcome for which Geoffrey had been hoping, but it did not entirely surprise him. He strode towards Olivier, aiming to get close enough to state his name and business without having to bawl it for half the county to hear. Olivier, however, seemed to be in no mood for discussion-he promptly dropped his sword and fled up the stairs into the keep, slamming the door behind him. The guards regarded Geoffrey uncertainly, but made no attempt to do as Olivier had ordered. Clearly, neither of them wished to indulge in a sword fight with a Crusader knight whose skills would almost certainly be superior to their own.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Geoffrey in exasperation, gazing at the closed door. He turned to the boy. “Julian, please inform Sir Olivier that I am Geoffrey Mappestone, and that I have come simply to pay my respects to my father. I did not imagine it would prove to be so difficult.”

“I guessed who you were,” said Julian, carefully passing the reins of the destrier back to Geoffrey. “They have been expecting you since your letter arrived two weeks ago, although Henry lives in hope that you might have perished on the journey.”

“That is reassuring to hear,” said Geoffrey. “But you had better do as I ask, before Sir Olivier orders his archers to shoot us from the windows.”

“They would miss,” said Julian disdainfully, but dutifully sped towards the keep where Geoffrey heard him yelling through the closed door. While he waited, Geoffrey surveyed the inner ward. Some parts were familiar, like the keep with its three floors, and the ramshackle stables. Other parts were new, like the kitchen and the housing on the well.

He glanced to where Julian was still conversing through the door, and shivered. It was cold standing in the dark, and his clothes were still wet from his plunge in the river. After what seemed to be an age, the keep door opened and a woman whom Geoffrey did not know came down the stone steps towards him, bearing the traditional welcoming cup.

“Geoffrey! At last! We were beginning to think you would never come!”

As the woman approached him, bringing with her the goblet of warm wine that was usually offered to travellers as a symbol of welcome, Geoffrey wondered whether his misgivings about returning might have been unduly pessimistic. She was smiling and, in the dark, her friendly words of greeting seemed genuine enough.

She waited while he passed the reins of his destrier back to Julian, and then thrust the cup into his hand before he was really ready. It was full to the brim, and so hot that he almost dropped it. He bit back an oath that would have been bad manners to utter at such a point, and smiled at her, wondering whether she was his sister Joan or one of his brothers” wives. However, all the Mappestones, except Stephen, had brown hair, but this woman’s luxurious mane was paler, almost beige. He decided that she must be his eldest brother’s wife, Bertrada, performing her duty as the lady of the manor.

Others followed her out into the bailey, and within a few moments he was surrounded, all talking at once and asking him questions that they gave him no opportunity to answer. Bewildered, Geoffrey tried to fit the barely remembered faces of twenty years ago to the rabble of people who clustered around him.

Geoffrey’s eldest brother, Walter, had been married to a wealthy local merchant’s daughter called Bertrada, and the guard had already told him that Joan was wed to the cowardly Sir Olivier. After Walter and Joan came Stephen, whom Geoffrey recalled as taciturn and crafty. But none of the people who shouted questions at him in the bailey seemed in the slightest bit quiet, so perhaps Stephen had changed. After Stephen was Henry, two years older than Geoffrey, and whose overriding passions had been fighting his younger brother and killing the rats he trapped in the stables. Geoffrey wondered whether it was Stephen’s or Henry’s wife who had died the previous year. Perhaps she had been murdered too-like Enide.

He shook himself irritably. Such speculations would do him no good at all. He was tired and cold, and he needed time to work out who was who in his family, and how much they had changed. There was no point beginning to ask questions about Enide’s death, or about who was poisoning his father, until he had allowed himself some time to become at least superficially reacquainted with his relatives. After all, he was a stranger to them, and there was no reason why they should trust him either: if there were anything untoward about Enide’s death, interrogating them about it would serve only to put them on their guard.

A burly, balding man had picked up Geoffrey’s saddlebags, and was testing their weight with an acquisitiveness he made no effort to hide. Geoffrey shivered again, noticing that a frost was settling, turning the churned mud of the inner ward to a rock hard consistency. The woman who had brought him the welcoming cup-Bertrada, Geoffrey had assumed-took his hand solicitously.

“You are frozen. And wet, too. We should be ashamed of ourselves! You return to us after so long, and we keep you in the cold.” She led him up the steps to the keep. “How was your journey?”

“Relatively uneventful,” Geoffrey replied.

He felt unaccountably nervous at being the centre of attention among so many people he did not know, and was not inclined to mention Caerdig’s ambush or the death of Aumary until he was certain that one of his family was not responsible.

Bertrada laughed. “Oh, come now, Geoffrey! You travel from Jerusalem to England, and you describe the journey as ‘relatively uneventful”? You must have more to say than that. You have not spoken to us for twenty years.”

“Would that he had not for another twenty,” muttered one man, eyeing Geoffrey with rank dislike.

Henry, thought Geoffrey immediately, regarding his third brother with interest. Henry had changed little, although he now wore his brown hair long and tied at the back in the Saxon fashion. He had not grown much-Geoffrey still topped him by a head at least. He studied Henry closer and saw a curious mixture of health and debauchery. Henry was sturdy, and looked fit and strong, but the red veins in the whites of his eyes and the purple veins in his cheeks suggested that the wine fumes that Geoffrey detected on his breath were nothing unusual.