Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

“But the Duke does not hold Normandy,” pounced Henry immediately. “Luckily for Normandy! When he decided to go gallivanting off on Crusade, he sold Normandy to Rufus. It is now part of King Henry’s realms.”

“The Duke did not sell Normandy to Rufus!” protested Walter indignantly. “He merely pawned it to raise funds for his holy Crusade. And he pawned it only on the assurance that he could reclaim it on his return.”

“But unfortunately, Rufus is no longer here to sell it back to him,” observed Stephen, looking from Walter to Henry, as if he were amused by the dissension between them. “And anyway, the Duke cannot buy it back, because everyone knows he has no money.”

“Nonsense!” spat Walter. “The Duke made a profitable marriage, and has plenty of money to purchase Normandy.”

“He does not,” shouted Henry triumphantly. “He has squandered it all already. The Duke may be a fine warrior, but he is a worthless administrator, and he would make a worse king.”

Voices rose and fell, Henry’s loudest of all. Geoffrey shivered, and stretched his hands out to the fire. He was still damp, and no one had bothered to stoke up the fire since the servants had retired to bed. He was also hungry, but the food laid on the table looked greasy and stale, and anyway, he had not been offered any.

He flexed his aching shoulders, and cursed himself for ever considering something as foolish as returning to Goodrich after so many years. He looked up from the flames to the door at the end of the hall, thinking that if Caerdig had not ambushed him and Aumary had not died, Geoffrey would not have been charged by the King to investigate the mysterious happenings at Goodrich Castle, and he would have no reason at all not to stride down the room, fling open the door, and escape from his family once and for all. Even the dangers of travelling alone on the forest roads would be nothing compared to the battleground his family had created. He wished fervently that he had never set eyes on Aumary.

He tuned out the quarrelling voices, and thought about Enide, imagining how unhappy she must have been, trapped among their schismatic siblings. No wonder she had taken a lover! Had she seen Caerdig as a way to leave Goodrich, aware that her days there were numbered when someone had begun to poison her? Could Geoffrey believe Henry’s claim that the poachers had confessed to her murder, or was there truth in Walter’s belief that Caerdig may have hired them? Or had Henry hanged two innocent men for some sinister reason of his own?

Geoffrey stared into the embers of the dying fire, and let the sounds of dissent wash over him. He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine what Enide might have looked like. But he was tired, and almost immediately began to doze. He awoke with a start when he became aware that the hall was silent, and that everyone was looking at him. Since he had not been listening to them, he did not have the faintest idea what he was supposed to say. He smiled apologetically, and took a deep breath to try to make himself more alert.

“See?” said Henry, favouring his younger brother with a look of pure loathing. “He does not even do us the courtesy of paying attention to what we say!”

“No matter,” said Olivier, coming to sit on a stool near Geoffrey, and slapping the younger knight’s knee in a nervous attempt at camaraderie. “I merely asked whether you had managed to do much looting while you were in the Holy Land.”

“We heard there was looting aplenty to be had once Jerusalem fell,” said Walter eagerly, his argument with Henry forgotten. “And we heard that the knights had the pick of it.”

There was another expectant hush as Geoffrey looked from face to face. “I took very little,” he said eventually. “I do not particularly enjoy looting.”

There was yet another silence. A barely glowing log on the fire collapsed in a fine shower of sparks, and the dog snuffled noisily in the rushes, sniffing out an alarming array of unwholesome objects that it ate with a gluttonous relish.

“But there was not just Jerusalem,” said Bertrada eventually. “There was Nicaea, too, and Antioch. You must have looted some of them.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “Not really. These were not abandoned cities, you know-there were people living in them. In order to loot houses and shops, their owners first had to be slaughtered, and I did not feel especially comfortable with that notion.”

“But you are a knight,” said Olivier, clearly mystified. “You are supposed to slaughter people. What do you think knightly training is all about?”

“I have no problem with fighting armed men, but I do not like the idea of killing the defenseless.”

“How curious,” said Olivier, turning his puzzled gaze to Walter.

“You always were a little odd,” said Walter, folding his arms and looking down at Geoffrey with a mixture of curiosity and unease. “But you have something in your saddlebags, because I felt their weight. They certainly do not contain your spare shirts!”

“Unfortunately not,” said Geoffrey, thinking of the shirts” theft that afternoon. He suspected that the chances of begging a spare one from anyone at Goodrich were likely to be minimal.

“Well, what do they contain?” pressed Bertrada. “You must have some treasure, even if you were too squeamish to loot for yourself. Surely the knights shared such riches between them?”

“I have some books,” said Geoffrey, unable to suppress a look of disbelief at her bizarre suggestion that Holy Land knights would share anything at all, but especially loot. “And three Arabian daggers.”

“Books?” echoed Henry. He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “There go your hopes for funds to build a new hall!” he said, jabbing a finger at Walter. “And you, Stephen, will have to raise your own cash to buy that hunting dog you have been boring us with details of for the past six months! So little brother Geoffrey returns empty-handed from what was reputed to be some of the easiest looting in the history of warfare!”

“I have heard enough from you tonight, Henry,” said Stephen, rising from where he had been kneeling near the fire. “I am going to bed.” He turned to Geoffrey and smiled. “Despite what Henry says, it is good to have you with us again. I hope we can talk more in the morning.”

He walked towards the narrow, steep-stepped spiral staircase, and they heard his footsteps receding as he climbed.

“Did you bring nothing else?” asked Walter pleadingly, ignoring Henry’s renewed gales of spiteful laughter. “No jewels or golden coins?”

“I have enough to travel back to Jerusalem,” said Geoffrey, although that was only because Tancred had declined to let him leave without ensuring that he had sufficient funds to return again.

“And that is it?” insisted Bertrada. “Enough coins for your passage to the Holy Land and a sackful of worthless books?”

“They are not worthless!” protested Geoffrey indignantly. “At least one of them is almost beyond value-a tenth-century copy of Aristotle’s Metaphysics . Let me show you.”

He rummaged in his bags for the text, and brought it out. Walter took it warily, as though it might bite him, and inspected the soft covers.

“Interesting,” he said, despite himself. “This is not calfskin, as I would have expected. Perhaps it is goat, or some animal I have never heard of. I am told there are strange beasts in the Holy Land.”

Bertrada snatched it from him impatiently and opened it. “Very nice,” she said with disinterest. “How much will we be able to sell it for?”

“It is not for sale,” said Geoffrey, watching her turning the pages and holding the book upside down. He had forgotten that he and Enide alone had been the literate members of the family. “Such a book could never be sold.”