Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

He refolded the parchments and turned his attention to the pouch. Inside were more letters. Geoffrey looked closer. They were not so much letters as notes-short, concise missives that aimed to provide information rather than entertain. He held one close to the candle and read.

“Midnight on the fifth day of June 1100. Expect five.”

Nonplussed, he read another.

“Midnight on the twenty-fifth night of July 1100. Everything is almost in readiness. Only details regarding horses left to manage.”

And another.

“The first day of August at Brockenhurst. The evil is about to end.”

He gazed at it blankly. Had Enide gone to Brockenhurst on the first of August for this meeting? he wondered. It would have been shortly before her death.

He scratched his head and pondered. These documents were not written in Norbert’s spiky scrawl, but they were not in Enide’s writing either. This was a confident roundhand that made use of an archaic form of the letter T . Were these messages written for Godric, who was not adverse to dabbling in subterfuge and secrecy from time to time? Or were they for one of the others-Stephen perhaps, who of the three brothers was easily the most cunning and devious? Or was Enide involved in something else? Geoffrey thought about the claim that she was being poisoned, before someone had come along early one morning and whipped her head from her shoulders. Had she died for these fragments of parchment and their sketchy, indecipherable scraps of information?

He leapt to his feet in alarm as he became aware that Father Adrian was standing over him.

“I have finished my prayers, Sir Geoffrey,” said the priest, regarding Geoffrey curiously. “I called out to you, but you did not answer me.”

“Sorry,” said Geoffrey, stuffing the parchments back into the pouch. “I was reading some letters of Enide’s.”

“Enide?” asked Father Adrian, startled. “I do not think so!”

“What do you mean?” asked Geoffrey, wondering how the priest imagined he would know whether Enide had kept letters hidden away in a secret place, and resentful of his presumption.

“Enide never wrote letters,” said Adrian. “She could not.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Geoffrey, bewildered. “She could read.”

“She could read,” agreed Adrian. “But she could not write. She had an accident-probably not long after you went to Normandy-and it left her right hand virtually paralysed. She could manage simple tasks with it, but never something like writing.”

Geoffrey did not believe Father Adrian’s claim that Enide had lost the use of her writing hand for an instant. He pushed past the priest to go back into Godric’s bedchamber, annoyed that he had allowed himself to be caught reading what might be vital clues to the mystery. Adrian followed him.

“Many things must have changed since you left all those years ago,” said the priest. “I suppose Enide’s accident happened so long ago, and her family grew so used to her injury, that they came not to notice it any more. The same would have been true of me, but I tried to persuade her to learn to write with her other hand. It became something of a contest of wills.” He smiled, perhaps more fondly than was appropriate for a priest reminiscing about one of his parishioners.

“You must be mistaken,” said Geoffrey. “She wrote to me often after I left. And she mentioned no accident.”

“She was proud,” said Adrian, shrugging. “She did not like anyone to know that the accident had deprived her of the ability to perform certain functions-she could no longer sew, for example. And she certainly could not write.”

“But I had letters from her several times a year,” insisted Geoffrey. “You must be thinking of someone else.”

“Do I seem like some doddering old fool who cannot tell the difference between women?” demanded Adrian, finally nettled into sharpness. “If you had letters from her, then she paid for someone else to write them-because, I assure you, she could not. Ask any of your family. Ask Francis the physician.”

“What happened to her, then?” asked Geoffrey, still far from convinced.

Adrian shook his head. “The accident occurred many years before I came here. She told me that she had been picking plums in the churchyard and had fallen. She landed awkwardly, breaking the bones in her arm, so that her hand muscles no longer worked. She usually had it wrapped in a scarf or tucked inside her gown, but she showed it to me once, and it was withered into a claw, like this.”

He hooked his fingers and splayed them out to show Geoffrey what he meant. He saw the knight’s consternation, and patted him on the shoulder.

“It happened many years ago, and she said it gave her no pain. She probably did not mention it to you because she was sensitive about it, and she was fond of you. She would not have wanted you to consider of her maimed.”

“I would never have thought such a thing,” said Geoffrey, stung. “I thought we were friends.”

“Then perhaps she did not tell you at the time because she did not want to worry you, or because she thought it would heal. And then, by the time she came to accept that her arm would be crippled permanently, it was too late. And why should she confide in you, anyway? You were absent for twenty years.”

“But we often talked of my coming back in our letters,” protested Geoffrey. “Especially early on, when we were still young.”

“But you never came, did you?” said Adrian. He softened. “Look, I am sorry to have upset you. It is the second time I have spoken out of turn about her, it seems. I took you unawares about the nature of her death, too.”

“I do not seem to know much about her life either,” said Geoffrey, not without rancour. “Is there anything else about her that I should know? Was her face green? Did she play with the fairies at night? She was a woman, I take it, and not a man in disguise?”

“Sir Geoffrey!” admonished Adrian, shocked. “Not so bitter!” He smiled suddenly, almost wistfully. “Her face was pale and delicate, like a blossom. She did not dance with the fairies, although she danced with an elegance and energy I have never seen equalled. And I can assure you that she was most certainly a woman!”

“You seem very sure of that,” said Geoffrey, his eyebrows raised.

“Just because I have sworn a vow of celibacy does not mean that I can no longer tell the difference between a man and a woman,” said Adrian, his smile fading.

“She wrote to me …” Geoffrey hesitated. “Her letters mentioned that she had a lover. At first, I thought it was Caerdig, who later asked to marry her. But now I think it was you.”

“Please!” exclaimed Adrian, turning away. “Think about what you say! I am a priest!”

“So?” asked Geoffrey. “Tell me the truth, Adrian!”

The priest refused to meet his eyes, and Geoffrey understood exactly why Enide had not mentioned the name of her lover in her letters. She could hardly tell her brother that she had fallen in love with the parish priest, who had sworn a vow of chastity.

“You loved her dearly, I see,” Geoffrey said softly, watching the priest’s inner struggle. “But someone killed her, Adrian! Tell me what you know and together, perhaps, we might catch her murderer.”

“No!” said Adrian with sudden force. “That is not what she would have wanted-I have already told you that. You will only put yourself in danger if you persist with this, and it will do no good anyway, given the amount of time that has passed. One of the last things she said to me was that I should let her die peacefully and unavenged.”

“So, she told you where she was to be buried, and she instructed you that no one was to avenge her death?” said Geoffrey, his stomach churning at the notion that his sister had so despaired of her hopeless situation that she had made ghoulish arrangements for her funeral and mourning. “She knew she was going to die, and you did nothing to save her?”