‘Man, be silent. Before anything else, we must wash your back,’ Matthew said soothingly. He looked up at Jeanne, who nodded.
‘I shall fetch some help from the inn. They must have water and cloths there. I’ll bring some men, too.’
‘I’m not sure we need …’
She curtly shook her head, then bent to the sobbing man. ‘Who is after you now?’
‘Sir Geoffrey. He has all his men with him and they mean to kill me.’
‘No one will harm you here,’ she said.
Nicholas looked up at her. His eyes were raw, and filled with the pain of his run all the way from the chapel to this church; his feet felt as though they were beaten to raw meat with the pace of his flight, and his lungs were sacks of loosened flesh. It was all he could do to take in air.
‘No harm? No harm? After the way he burned out and murdered the poor man in the cottage here? I’m dead. It’s just a matter of how long it takes him to pull me from the altar.’
Matthew stiffened. He lifted Nicholas and pulled his arm about his own shoulders, grabbing Nicholas’s wrist in one hand, and putting his left arm about Nicholas’s waist to support him. ‘No one will pull you from my altar, man,’ he declared sharply. ‘This is God’s house, and any damned heretic who seeks to pollute my sanctuary will find God’s vengeance is swift!’
So saying, he led Nicholas up to the altar and set him at the side, pressing a fold of the altar cloth into his hand. ‘Lady Jeanne? A pot of wine, too, please. I have a feeling this poor fellow will need it before long.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Baldwin entered the chapel silently.
It was a small place, only the one room, perhaps twelve feet by twenty, with a door to the left which no doubt led to a small chamber where the priest would sit and sleep. For the rest, it was an empty space with some patterned tiles set into the floor, and a small, low table at the far end for an altar. The cross wasn’t gold, but it was a good pewter, maybe, and had been polished until it gleamed like silver. Over the table was a good quality altar cloth, with gold threads stitched into it. All in all, it was a pleasant little chapel, and the pictures on all the walls livened the atmosphere.
Still, it was very quiet, and he began to be aware of a certain unease.
At the wall to his left was a large chest, and he walked to it and threw it open. Inside was all the paraphernalia of a priest, from his robe to his alb, with a book laid on top. He shut the lid again, glancing at the room anew. ‘Hello?’ he called, but there was no reply.
On hearing his shout, Simon opened the door and peered in. ‘Where’s the priest, then?’
‘A good question, Simon. Out, perhaps, seeing a parishioner …’ Baldwin stopped speaking suddenly. He strode to the altar, where he had noticed a parcel wrapped in a large square of cloth. Unwrapping it, he found a shirt, some bread and some dried meat. ‘What is this? A pack made up for a journey?’
Simon was at the inner door and now he called to Baldwin. ‘I think I’ve found the priest.’
Baldwin caught his tone of voice and crossed to his side. ‘My God.’
The coroner arrived at the hall in a bad temper.
He had expected the lights to be on and a welcome from his host, since he had obeyed Sir Geoffrey’s commands — or, rather, suggestions. They were of equal rank, after all.
But there was no knight, no men-at-arms, only a couple of old fools who seemed to know nothing. Their master was gone out, and all the others had gone with him. How thoughtful of Sir Geoffrey!
‘Damn his eyes. I ought to have gone home and not buggered about here. What’s the point?’ he muttered to himself, and a good deal more besides. He demanded wine, and the servants fetched him some in a hurry, as though they feared him almost as much as their master. So be it! If they were so easily cowed, that was fine by him. He sank the first jugful; then, as the level of the second began to fall, he started to feel rather more optimistic.
He was here as the king’s representative, and if Sir Geoffrey had some scheme afoot which would allow him to fleece the locals, so much the better. So long as he paid his friend the local coroner. And he would! Oh yes! If he’d been committing murder for his own advantage, he would soon come to appreciate that it was in his best interests to look after his friends. Especially if he wanted those friends to help protect him from the consequences of his actions.
And still more especially if he didn’t want his friends to try to remove him from this lucrative little manor and take it for themselves.
Sir Geoffrey was soon inside the little chamber with them, Edgar ever present behind him.
‘Who can have done this?’ he gasped.
‘A good question,’ Baldwin commented. ‘You have the coroner on his way already, I believe? It is good. He will need to speak to everyone in the area.’
‘Who’d kill a priest like old Isaac?’ Sir Geoffrey said with a shake of his head.
If he had not been so suspicious of the man, Baldwin might have been inclined to take his words at their face value. As matters stood, though, he was not of a mood to trust Sir Geoffrey. He moved about the corpse, gazing intently at the old man’s body. ‘There is no apparent wound. Perhaps …’ He pulled open the dead mouth and stared in at the yellowed teeth and tongue.
‘What are you doing?’ Sir Geoffrey demanded with distaste. ‘You defile the man’s body!’
‘I am seeking to learn how he could have died,’ Baldwin said impatiently. ‘It wasn’t an obvious poison, Edgar. No marks on the flesh, and he has not bitten his tongue in agony. If anything, I’d say his ending was happy.’
‘Happy!’ Sir Geoffrey snorted disdainfully. ‘How can a man’s death be happy?’
‘If he has lived many good years,’ Baldwin said ruminatively, ‘and he has enjoyed them, and he has known that at the completion of his time on earth the good Lord would take him to His bosom, then I think you could say his end was happy.’
‘He’s been murdered by that man le Poter. I expect this poor priest refused to offer sanctuary to a killer of widows. When the priest denied him, he turned on him.’
‘And felt so remorseful that he set the dead man on his bed like this, with his arms crossed, I suppose?’ Baldwin demanded contemptuously. ‘If you have a brain, Sir Geoffrey, please begin to use it. Besides, where is the wound that ended his life? Simon, could you help me to turn him over?’
Reluctantly, Simon took hold of the frail old shoulder and pushed.
‘See?’ Baldwin said delightedly. ‘No wound. Plainly this was no murder, but a simple death of old age. May all our deaths be as gentle.’
‘What is that?’ Sir Geoffrey asked, eyeing the pack which Simon and Baldwin had left on the floor by the doorway.
‘That? Only a parcel I found near the altar.’
‘It’s Nicholas’s shirt. He has been here. Perhaps he sought to rob the church as well as kill the priest. He is entirely evil!’
‘He is a man like any other,’ Baldwin remonstrated. ‘He entered, he found the priest dead, and he fled.’
‘Why should he bolt if he had nothing to hide?’
‘A man may have nothing to hide and yet still be wary of allowing himself to be caught by a posse bent on his destruction,’ Baldwin said dismissively.
‘You suggest my posse was …’
Baldwin looked at him for a long moment, then turned on his heel and left the chapel.
Humphrey tried to yawn. It seemed the natural thing to do, after waking from sleep, but even as he opened his mouth the pain shot from his temple to his jaw, and he hiccuped in pain.
‘Oh! Oh! God in Heaven, ow!’
‘Think yourself lucky, friend. You could have been struck with a knife instead.’
Opening an eye cautiously, Humphrey found himself staring at a rock.
The voice continued conversationally. ‘Of course, if you had been killed outright, it might have saved you a not inconsiderable amount of grief for the future.’