Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

“So, I can sleep safe in my bed tonight, then?” asked Geoffrey, raising an eyebrow.

“Hardly!” said Norbert, with a shudder. “Someone has been poisoning your father since last spring, and someone tried to poison your sister Enide too. Goodrich is a place where you would be safer outside it than in.”

“My father is demanding that you attend him immediately,” said Geoffrey, reluctant to discuss poisoners and murderers with the servants. “Do you mind, or shall I say I could not find you? It is very late.”

Norbert’s pale blue eyes opened wide with astonishment. “I will go. But thank you for your consideration-it is more than I have been given in fifteen years from the rest of your family. They regard my learning more as a necessary evil than a hard-earned skill.”

“They seem to regard our father as an evil, too,” mused Geoffrey, more to himself than Norbert. “His life is a burden to them and his death will be a cause for rejoicing.”

Norbert laughed quietly. “And vice-versa. Have you noticed that you are the only one who calls him ‘Father”? A year or so ago, he demanded that the entire brood and their spouses call him Godric, because none of them were worthy of the right to claim him as a parent. You can imagine how they took that insult!”

Geoffrey could only shake his head over both sides in this futile feud. He stood and followed Norbert out, tripping over the same tools and discarded saddles as he had on the way in.

“Could you not find a more conducive place in which to mend your bows?” he grumbled, rubbing his chin, where a rake had sprung up and hit him.

“When it is very cold, I stay in the hall,” Norbert answered over his shoulder as he walked. “But no one ever uses this building in the evenings, and I like the solitude. It is often a relief to escape from the Mapp-from people.”

Geoffrey knew exactly what he had been going to say, and concurred wholeheartedly with him. He led the way across the yard and through the hall. The others looked up as he walked towards the stairs with Norbert in tow.

“Where are you going?” demanded Henry immediately, standing so abruptly that he spilled his wine. “What are you up to, fetching Norbert at this time of night?”

“Father sent for him,” said Geoffrey.

“You are going to change his will,” said Walter accusingly. “You are going to make him alter the name from Godfrey to Geoffrey.”

“How dare you try to cheat us!” hissed Bertrada furiously. “You have no right!”

“You are all ridiculous!” Geoffrey snapped. It had been a long day, and he felt he had already been more than patient with his relatives” accusations. “Use the few brains you were born with before you make such outrageously stupid comments! First, I can write as well as Norbert, and so do not require him to change the will-if I were so inclined. Second, who would witness this new document? Wills need two independent witnesses to be legal. Third, if I wanted Goodrich, I would take it and none of you would be able to stop me.”

He stalked out of the hall and up the stairs, Norbert scurrying behind him. He forced himself to take several deep breaths to control his anger before he opened the door to Godric’s room.

“Here is Norbert,” he said, ushering in the clerk.

“Thank you. Now get out,” said Godric viciously. “I do not want any of my brood listening to my private business with my clerk. Kindly remove yourself and shut the door.”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Geoffrey, slamming it as he left. He rubbed hard at the bridge of his nose, and then stamped up the narrow spiral staircase to the tiny door that led to the battlements, longing for some peace.

The door to the roof had not been used for some time, and Geoffrey was beginning to think he would have to rejoin his squabbling siblings in the hall, when it shot open, sending cobwebs billowing everywhere. Leaving the door swinging in the breeze behind him, he stepped out onto the parapet that ran around the top of the keep.

Battlements was too grand a term to describe the low wall that ran around the gently pitched roof. It reached Geoffrey’s waist in parts, but mostly it was little higher than knee level. Geoffrey supposed that archers might be able to operate from it if the keep ever came under attack, but they would be horribly exposed each time they stood to fire. He was a passable marksman himself, although he had not taken to the bow much as a weapon and did not like to hunt, but he would not have liked shooting from Godric’s crumbling parapet.

He found a stretch of wall that seemed more sound that the rest, and leaned his elbows on the top. A light wind ruffled his hair and bit through his shirt and leggings. Once alone, he felt mildly ashamed of his outburst in the hall, and of his brief flash of temper with his father. Enide’s letters had been full of the contest between his siblings for control over Goodrich, and it was clear that inheritance had become such an important issue to his family that they were unable to think of little else. He knew he should not allow them to irritate him.

But what was said was said, and he would know to hold his tongue the next time. He leaned over the parapet and looked down into the bailey, three floors below. It was dark, but he could just make out the outlines of the buildings in the outer ward, while in the village beyond he could hear distant laughter as the celebrations for the return of Ingram, Barlow, and Helbye continued.

He lost track of the time he stood leaning on the wall, enjoying the peace of the evening and the pleasure of being alone. Lights were doused in the hall, and Geoffrey could hear Godric yelling furiously for something. He suspected that the old man wanted him, but he was in no mood to deal with his father’s cantankerous nature that night. Bertrada had been right, he thought with a grim smile-Godric was lucky no one had poisoned him before.

“Why are you out here, all alone and in the cold?”

Geoffrey jumped in shock at the soft voice close behind him, and spun round. Hedwise stood there, laughing coquettishly at his alarm, covering her mouth with her hand and her eyes bright with laughter. Geoffrey was appalled at himself. No one could have slipped up so silently behind him in the Holy Land-and if they had, it would probably have meant a Saracen dagger between his ribs. As he had done at the ford the previous day, he wondered whether he was losing his touch. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes and told himself that he would need to take greater care if he did not want Henry or one of the others sneaking up behind him with lethal intent.

“It is peaceful here,” he said in answer to Hedwise’s enquiry. “Or at least it was.”

Hedwise’s face turned sulky. “Now, now, Geoffrey! You have no cause to be hostile to me. The door was open and a gale was blowing down the stairs. I was puzzled, so I came to investigate. No one ever comes up here-it is not safe.”

Geoffrey leaned his elbows back on the wall, and she came to stand next to him.

“It should be better maintained,” he said. “Supposing the castle were attacked? What does Father plan to do-kill the hostile forces with the bodies of his archers as they tumble off the walls?”

Hedwise laughed. “You are right, but we have no money for such repairs. Everyone was hoping you might provide that from your Holy Land loot. But let us not talk of such things. I am delighted you have come to visit us. I was beginning to think that I might never meet you, or that I would be an old woman by the time you returned.”

“I am surprised you gave it any thought whatsoever,” said Geoffrey. “It cannot be that you have gained a favourable impression of me from Henry.”

“Oh, Henry!” said Hedwise, waving a dismissive hand impatiently. “I was unlucky to have such a bore foisted upon me. I did not want to marry him, but my family thought it was a good match, so I had no choice. Henry is a lout-I would have done better wed to one of the farm hands.”