Simon Beaufort - A Head for Poisoning

“Norbert!” he exclaimed in astonishment.

But there was no time for analysis. Norbert seized on Geoffrey’s momentary surprise to land a hefty blow with a piece of wood that his groping fingers had encountered on the ground. Stunned and dizzy, Geoffrey felt the clerk sliding out from his grasp, and fought against the lights that danced in front of his eyes to lay hold of him again. He struggled to his knees, and grabbed the clerk a second time. Norbert struck out with his branch, but this time Geoffrey blocked the blow with an upraised arm. And then Norbert collapsed on top of Geoffrey in a spurt of hot blood.

Startled, Geoffrey gazed at him. From Norbert’s chest protruded the shaft of an arrow. Abandoning the dead clerk, Geoffrey looked around him wildly. How could he hide? He had been grappling with Norbert and so had no idea from which direction the arrow had been fired. He flinched instinctively as another thumped into a tree a few inches from his head, and he dropped full-length into the weeds. He knew now!

Wriggling forwards on his stomach in a way most Norman knights would never consider, he reached the trunk of a thick oak tree, and edged around the back of it. Raising himself to a crouch, he drew his dagger and listened.

There was nothing, except distant, excited shouts from the clearing. Was the King dead? wondered Geoffrey. Had Norbert succeeded in his mission? He risked peering out from the tree to look around. Norbert’s body lay where it had fallen, but otherwise, there was no movement.

A sharp crack from behind him made him spin round, but there was nothing to see. He looked back to Norbert. Even from a distance, Geoffrey could see that the arrow that had killed the clerk was smooth and straight-it was an archer’s arrow, not something that a villager might own with which to shoot hares or birds. And it was almost exactly the same as the one that had slain Aumary, fired with a good-quality bow that had the power to drive it through chain-mail. Had it been otherwise, Geoffrey would have risked bursting from his hiding place and running, trusting that his armour would protect him. But he knew chain-mail would be useless against the kind of weapon that his assailant held.

Another sharp crack sounded, this time to his right. Geoffrey frowned. Was someone throwing stones to mislead him and coax him from his hiding place, or did Norbert have more than one assistant hidden in the forest? But Norbert’s accomplices would not have killed Norbert, reasoned Geoffrey; they were supposed to be on the same side. So who had?

Geoffrey winced as an arrow hit the trunk of the tree so close that it all but grazed his ear. He leapt to his feet, and started to run in the opposite direction, only to find himself hard up against the sword of Sir Drogo, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s sullen henchman. Geoffrey backed away, but to his left was Sir Malger, armed with a fine bow and a good quantity of pale, straight arrows. And to his right was a woman, stepping out from behind another tree and smiling enigmatically.

“Geoffrey,” she said, coming towards him. “So we will meet after all! I did not think I would have the pleasure.”

Geoffrey did not need to be told the name of the woman who smiled at him so beguilingly in the forest clearing. He would have recognised her even if she had appeared in the Holy City with a troop of jugglers, for she looked very much like Geoffrey himself. With sudden clarity, he recalled the face of the child who had said a tearful farewell to him twenty years before-a face that had grown shadowy and indistinct through time, but now blazed in his mind as clearly as if it had been yesterday.

Enide was a good deal taller now-almost as tall as Geoffrey, in fact-but her hair was the same, and when she turned, he saw that it fell in a thick, glossy plait down her back in the same peculiar style she had adopted when she had been young. Her face had maintained the slight pinkness of fine health, and her cheeks were as downy and soft as they ever were. Her eyes, too, were the same pleasant green as were Geoffrey’s, and held the twinkle of mischief that he remembered so well.

“Will you not greet me, Geoff?” she cried, the smile dissolving to hurt.

Geoffrey’s heart wrenched, recalling that same sudden fading of laughter from years before, when Stephen had said something cruel or Henry had used his superior strength to take something from her. He swallowed, but said nothing.

“Geoffrey!” she said. “Do you not know who I am? It is me! Enide! I had to feign my death so that one of our brothers would not kill me because they believed I was poisoning our dear father.”

“Any one of them would have been delighted if you had poisoned our dear father,” said Geoffrey harshly. “But first, no one poisoned him. And second, someone most certainly stabbed him. Was that you?”

“It most certainly was not,” she said indignantly. “What have people been saying? To what lies have you been listening?”

“Father Adrian has been saying nothing but good,” said Geoffrey evasively.

“Adrian!” she said with an indulgent smile. “Poor, dear Adrian. He always believes anything I tell him. But what is this about Godric? He was being poisoned, you know-the physician said so.”

“He was poisoning himself,” said Geoffrey. “With his paints.”

“The paint?” echoed Enide. She laughed suddenly. “Oh, Geoff! Trust you to work that out! You always were quick minded. So, Godric lay in his vile chamber, slowly being killed by the fumes from his revolting paintings? And that explains why, before he became too ill to move, I was sick when I slept in his room. Godric spent his last days wailing and whining that someone was killing him, and all the time it was suicide!”

“Enough of this,” said Malger, stepping forward and nocking an arrow in his bow. Geoffrey noted that the knight’s chain-mail was carelessly maintained, revealing gaps and missing links that Geoffrey himself would have been ashamed of. His lack of attention to the details that might save his life indicated that he had been so sure of their success that he considered them unimportant. Geoffrey wondered whether he would be able to exploit such over-confidence to his own advantage. “Norbert missed the King, and I could not see well enough to get off a good shot. The King lives and so we should not tarry here and wait for him to accuse us of treason.”

“There will be another chance to kill him,” said Enide, unperturbed. “The King loves to hunt.”

“Fine. But I do not want him hunting us,” said Malger firmly. “The Earl will hardly be able to speak out for us if we are caught, and doubtless your brother here has spread the news all over the county that we would rather have the Duke of Normandy as King than the usurper Henry.”

“Geoff would not do that,” said Enide. “How could he? He has not had sufficient time to work all this out.”

“Maybe so, but I do not care to take the risk,” said Malger, raising the bow.

Geoffrey braced himself, but Enide strode over to Malger and put her hand on the arrow, forcing him to lower it. Her hand, Geoffrey noted, was rigid, like a claw.

“Malger! This is a brother I have not seen for twenty years.” She turned to Geoffrey, and her eyes were hard as flint. “I would have appreciated your help in keeping Goodrich from the likes of Walter, Stephen, and Henry, but I have achieved my objective perfectly well without you anyway.”

“You forged documents,” said Geoffrey, remembering the parchments he had found in her secret hiding place.

“Well, I did not do it myself,” she said bitterly, holding the claw-like hand close to his face. “Norbert’s documents-despite his dreadful writing and worse spelling-served to rid us of Walter and Stephen. Godric loathed them both, and was only too happy to go along with what he knew were lies-Godric never went campaigning with the Conqueror in 1063; and our mother certainly would not have wasted her time in breeding before she was married.”