Geoffrey appreciated how it looked, but nothing, not even the most ferocious of battles, could evoke in him the blind terror that could a tunnel or a cave. He had once been supervising an undermining operation while besieging a castle in France, and the whole structure had collapsed while he was still inside. He recalled every moment of the hours spent trapped in the tunnel, with water slowly rising and the air growing thinner and thinner, not knowing whether he would ever be rescued. The black slit in the thickness of the wall in Godric’s garderobe held less appeal for him than an army of Mappestones.
“Where does it lead?” he asked.
“Go down it and see,” said Mabel. “If you are afraid of the dark, here is a torch.”
Several torches and kindling on a shelf just inside the tunnel suggested that Godric’s secret door had been used relatively frequently.
“Who else knew of this?” Geoffrey asked, taking the kindling from her and replacing it before she could light it. “Besides you and my father?”
“Enide knew-long before I did. I suppose Sir Godric told her. But none of the others knew, as far as I am aware. Sir Godric tended to trust only her.”
“But was there anyone outside the family who knew?” pressed Geoffrey. “One of the servants, maybe? Or Norbert the clerk?”
Mabel let out an explosive bark of laughter. “Of course not poor old Norbert! Sir Godric trusted him even less than he trusted his sons. I believe no one at the castle knew, but he did have visitors sometimes. Once or twice, Sir Godric sent me off early, and I saw others entering after me. I do not know who they were. Sir Godric was always very careful that they were not seen.”
Geoffrey looked at the sinister passageway and swallowed hard. Godric might well have told Rohese about it, especially if he had seen that Geoffrey had been drugged, and would no longer be able to protect her. It was very possible his father’s young whore was down there now, too frightened to leave, and he knew he should go to see. But the passageway would be too low for him to stand upright, and probably too narrow for him to walk without turning sideways. As he stood looking, he could feel the cold, damp breath of the tunnel oozing out around them, filling the garderobe passage with a rank, musty smell. He closed the door firmly.
“I will explore it later,” he said vaguely. “It-”
He was interrupted by loud voices outside the bedroom door. Mabel scurried from the passage, and began laying out Godric again just as Henry burst in, followed by Walter and Stephen. Julian slipped in behind them, her eyes darting everywhere for evidence of Mabel’s door. Geoffrey hoped the astute Stephen would not notice what the girl was doing.
“What have you been up to, all alone in here with father’s corpse?” Henry demanded.
He strode forward, as though he would lay hold of Geoffrey to shake the truth out of him, but made a hasty diversion when he saw the effects of the poison had worn off, and that Geoffrey would certainly no longer accept any manhandling from his smaller brother.
“He is not alone,” said Stephen, eyeing Mabel with amusement.
“Geoffrey! You should be ashamed of yourself!” cried Walter, aghast. “Seducing our father’s whore while his corpse is barely cold.”
“Excuse me!” said Mabel angrily. “What do you take me for? I am not for any man to take!”
“Well, Mabel,” said Stephen pleasantly. “To what do we owe this pleasure? You vowed never to set foot in Goodrich after our father’s preferences changed to younger women.”
“I came to do for his poor corpse what you would not,” said Mabel, scrubbing furiously. “Sir Godric and I had our good times and our bad ones, but I wanted to see him properly prepared for his funeral, and I knew you lot would not bother.”
“You came to search for the ring you claim he promised you, more likely,” said Joan, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “I looked for it myself, but someone had beaten me to it.”
“Henry took it,” said Stephen. “Before Godric was even dead.”
“Liar,” spat Henry. “I gave it back to him.”
Geoffrey was sure he had not, and moved away from the bed and his bickering relatives. He sat by the ashes of the fire, and gave a sigh. His head began to ache, and he felt sick again, as always seemed to happen when he set foot in his father’s chamber. He started suddenly, astounded at his sluggishness in putting together the facts that had been staring him in the face almost from the moment he had arrived at Goodrich. Godric had hired two food-tasters to assure him that no one was poisoning his meals, and the physician had found no poisons in what Godric had eaten. But the toxins were not in the food at alclass="underline" they were in the room!
Geoffrey had heard of poisons being put in clothes and materials, and Godric’s bed had always made Geoffrey cough and his eyes water. Had someone been placing some kind of poisonous powder in the bed, so that it would kill Godric as he lay in it, the poisons wafting into the air around him each time he moved-and the weaker Godric grew, the more he would be forced to stay in bed, and the longer the poison could work on him. That was it! Geoffrey grew more certain as he considered it. Geoffrey had been told that Godric had been confined to his bed around November, and had simultaneously taken a turn for the worse.
So, Geoffrey now knew something that the physician had been unable to deduce. He knew how his father had been poisoned when all the food had been carefully checked. He decided that he would ask the physician to see whether he could find traces of the poison in Godric’s mattress. His elation subsided as quickly as it had arisen. He knew how Godric had been poisoned, but he still did not know who had done it. Julian came to sit next to him, sniffing and rubbing her nose against an already slimy sleeve.
“You look sick again,” she said in a low voice. “Do not let on to Henry, or he will take advantage of it and kill you.” She reached for the bottle of wine Stephen had given Geoffrey two nights before, and offered it to him. “Drink some of this. It might make you feel better.”
“God’s teeth, Julian!” muttered Geoffrey. “Do not give me that. It contains the poison that almost dispatched me the last time.”
“It cannot,” protested Julian. “The seal is not broken. How can it be poisoned if the seal is intact?”
Geoffrey stared down at the bottle. Julian was right. He looked around, but it was the only bottle in the room. It was, without doubt, one of the same kind that Stephen had brought him, and before Julian had picked it up, it had stood next to the bowl in which Hedwise had brought the broth. Geoffrey leaned over and picked up the bowl. It was clean: someone had washed it. Geoffrey frowned, and looked at the bowl and bottle thoughtfully. It seemed that the murderer was taking great care to cover his, or her, tracks.
CHAPTER NINE
Once Geoffrey’s squabbling relatives had left Mabel to her business and she and Geoffrey were once more alone in Godric’s chamber, Geoffrey went to examine his father’s body. The wound in the stomach was small, although deep, and had penetrated an area that Geoffrey, who had seen many battle injuries, knew would be fatal because of the great veins there. But the wound to his chest was larger, and Geoffrey could come to no conclusion other than that it had been made by the one Arabian dagger that the Earl of Shrewsbury had declined to appropriate. The smaller wound, however, had not. Geoffrey made a search of the room, but could find no other weapon. He sat back and considered, watching as Mabel carefully combed Godric’s hair and beard.
It seemed clear to Geoffrey that whoever had stabbed Godric in the stomach was probably not the same person who had knifed him in the chest after he had died-it was unlikely that someone would wait at the scene of the crime before attacking him a second time with a different knife-and the physician’s evidence implied that the second injury had been inflicted later, after Godric had taken some time to die from the wound to his stomach.