Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

“They will slit our throats in the night,” grumbled Ingram.

“We will not be sleeping,” said Geoffrey. “At least one of us will be keeping watch.”

“I saw no one else in the forest, other than them,” said Barlow doubtfully. “I do not think they are innocent of the murder of Sir Aumary. Do you, Sir Geoffrey?”

Geoffrey shrugged. “It is not for me to say. We will deliver Sir Aumary’s dispatches to Chepstow, and that will be the end of it. What the King believes or does not believe about Caerdig and his men is no concern of ours.”

“I have never been to Chepstow,” said Ingram. “How far is it? I was hoping we would be home in Goodrich tonight. I have been away for four years now, and I am tired of travelling.”

“Sir Geoffrey has been away for more than twenty,” said Barlow. “So stop your whining.”

“Chepstow lies perhaps eighteen miles from here,” said Geoffrey. “We should reach the Great Dyke around nightfall, and from there the road to Chepstow will be good.”

“I think the King will hang Caerdig,” said Ingram, returning again to the subject of Sir Aumary’s murder. “I cannot see that he is innocent. And it will serve him right for stealing Lann Martin from Goodrich manor. Caerdig claims he won it legally in the courts, but I wager he bribed the judges to get the result he wanted.”

“I always thought, from the information in Enide’s letters to me, that Goodrich’s claim on Lann Martin was dubious,” said Geoffrey, half to himself. “It seems just that Caerdig won his case.”

Ingram and Barlow exchanged a glance of appalled disbelief at the notion that justice should enter the discussion, and Ingram tapped a finger to his temple, to indicate to Barlow that he considered his leader short of a few wits even to consider uttering such a ridiculous notion.

“Perhaps the King will reward us for bringing him Sir Aumary’s killer,” said Ingram after a moment, his eyes brightening. “Perhaps he will give us Lann Martin in exchange for Caerdig, and we will be able to loot it.”

Both young men looked at Geoffrey hopefully. The knight sighed, and wondered, not for the first time on their long journey, whether bringing them home with him had been a prudent decision. Since Pope Urban’s call for a Crusade four years before, Christian soldiers had cut a bloody swath from France to Jerusalem, killing and looting every inch of the way. Barlow and Ingram were no longer the simple Herefordshire farmers who had set out to reclaim the Holy City from the Infidel, but were ruthless, avaricious mercenaries whose bulging saddlebags were crammed with treasure stolen and cheated from the hapless people they had met along the way. Geoffrey seriously doubted their willingness or ability to return peacefully to a life of agriculture, which was what they claimed they intended to do.

He nodded at them noncommittally, and coaxed a little more speed from his horse, so that he could ride with Helbye instead. The old warrior gave him a grin, and began to chat about the old days, before the Conqueror had come to England and Goodrich had been under the control of a Saxon thegn. Caerdig and his man rode ahead of them, following a little-used trackway through the forest that Caerdig assured them led to the Chepstow road. Geoffrey’s dog slunk behind them, looking this way and that for signs of woodland wildlife that might be barked at, chased, or butchered.

“Our villagers are not happy with this arrangement,” muttered the black-capped Daffydd to Caerdig in Welsh, unaware of Geoffrey’s knowledge of the language. “They think you are a fool to risk riding with a Mappestone and his henchmen.”

“What choice do I have?” snapped Caerdig. “It is either ride with him, or have him tell the King that we slaughtered the messenger. And then Lann Martin would be given to the Mappestones for certain.”

“He cannot be trusted,” said Daffydd, scowling at Geoffrey.

“Who said anything about trusting him? But my uncle, Ynys, always said that Godric’s youngest son was the only one of the entire brood with any honour.”

“He may have been honourable in those days,” argued Daffydd, “but look at him now. He has been on the Crusade, and we all know that only the strongest and most ruthless warriors survived that ordeal. Any honour they might have had when they started was battered from them long before they reached the Holy Land, so I am told.”

Suddenly, Caerdig leapt into the air, and gasped in disbelief. “Hey! That dog just bit me!”

“Sorry,” said Geoffrey, embarrassed. “It is a habit of his that I cannot seem to break.”

It was not the first time the dog had jeopardised truces with a belated show of aggression, and with a sigh, Geoffrey dismounted and hunted around for the piece of rope he used to tether the beast when its behaviour degenerated to the point where it needed to be kept away from anything that moved. It had made Geoffrey many an enemy at the Citadel in Jerusalem with its penchant for nipping unprotected ankles. Seeing the hated tether, the dog bared its teeth at Geoffrey, and slid away into a dense patch of undergrowth. Helbye prepared to help ferret it out.

“Oh, leave him, Will,” said Geoffrey, exasperated. “He will follow us in his own time.”

“Well, just so long as the thing does not decide to take up residence here,” said Caerdig, rubbing his heel. “I would not want it near my sheep.”

“Are you Ynys’s son?” asked Geoffrey, to change the subject. He suspected that Caerdig, or some farmer like him, would dispatch the dog in an instant if they knew of its history of goat and sheep slaying in the Holy Land-and they would be perfectly justified to do so.

Caerdig shook his head. “I am Ynys’s nephew. But I am also his heir, and I inherited his lands after Henry murdered him last year.”

Geoffrey saw he had chosen a poor topic for casual conversation. He tried again, leading his horse so that he could walk next to Caerdig. “How long has my father been ill?”

“His health began to fail noticeably last summer. Since November, he has grown far worse, and the gossip says that he will not see Easter. You have arrived home just in time-now when the Mappestone brood carve up their father’s great estates, you can ensure you are not left out.”

“I want nothing from him,” said Geoffrey. “My mother left me her manor of Rwirdin when she died, and that will be quite sufficient for me, should I ever decide to live in England again.”

Caerdig snorted with derision. “You will be lucky to get that back! Your brother Walter arranged for Rwirdin to be given to Joan as part of her dowry two years ago. Rwirdin now belongs to your sister and her husband, Olivier d’Alencon.”

Geoffrey did not believe him-even Walter would not do something so flagrantly illegal-but he did not feel inclined to argue. He took off his helmet, which was beginning to rub, and scrubbed at his short brown hair with his fingers, relieved to be free of the heavy metal for a few moments. Caerdig watched him, and then reached out a hand to feel the material of Geoffrey’s surcoat with its Crusader’s cross on the back. It was faded now, and grimy from years of hard use, but in the brown winter countryside of Wales, it was exotic indeed.

“I have heard a lot about the Crusade,” Caerdig said, “although few Englishmen took part. I have been told that the glory was great and the opportunity to amass wealth even greater.”

“Then you were not told the truth.” said Geoffrey, replacing his helmet. “There was no glory at all in what we did. We marched thousands of miles-sometimes in the freezing cold, and other times in the searing heat-and more of us died of disease and from raids by hostile forces along the way than ever saw the Holy Land itself. I suppose it is fair to say that there was plentiful wealth to be looted at the end of it, but when a loaf of bread costs its weight in gold, such fortunes do not last long.”