Milon dropped his eyes. ‘I know. But Elanor didn’t — I didn’t want to upset her, when we loved each other so much. Getting married was the only way, you see — we’d never have been allowed to be together unless we were wed. So I never told her who I really was.’
‘But surely Sir Alard would have done!’ Josse protested. ‘Great God in heaven, he should have been more responsible than to let such a union go ahead, no matter how much the pair of you wanted it!’
Milon waited until the blustering had finished — Josse must be beside himself, Helewise thought absently, to blaspheme like that, although the provocation was understandable — and then said, ‘Alard couldn’t have told her, since he didn’t know himself.’
‘Then how can you be so sure?’ Helewise asked gently.
‘My mother told me,’ Milon said. ‘When she was dying, I was the one she wanted to be with her.’ He gave a brief ironic smile. ‘That didn’t go down at all well with my brothers, but then they’ve always been jealous of me. I was different, you see. I looked different, for one thing, and I always had my mother’s favour. Even when they all ganged up on me, she’d look after me.’ He sighed. Then, as if recalling himself to the present, went on, ‘She didn’t have long to live, they were all saying that, so I did as she asked and went up to her room.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘It smelt. She smelt. I didn’t like it there, I wanted to go back to Elanor. But then my mother said I had to go and find my father, and when I said, all right, I’ll fetch him, she grabbed my arm and said she didn’t mean him, she meant my real father.’
‘That must have come as a great shock to you,’ Helewise said tonelessly.
‘It did, oh, it did!’ Milon agreed. ‘Of course, though, once it had sunk in, I realised. I saw how it explained a lot of what had been happening, all through my childhood. Then I got interested, and I asked her to tell me about him. My father.’
Helewise pictured the scene. The dying woman, anxious to impart a long-held secret to her favourite son. And the son, listening not out of love but because he was ‘interested’.
‘She said, “Go and find him, and get your inheritance off him,”’ Milon was saying. ‘She was very bitter, you know. She always had been, but I didn’t know why till then. From what she said — and she said a lot, believe me, for a woman who was meant to be dying — I gathered that she had imagined it would mean a bit of comfort for her, having a child by a rich man, even if she wasn’t married to him. And when the child turned out to be a son, well, that made it even more important, given that the man only had daughters. But it didn’t work out that way. She never even managed to tell him about me — he sent her letters back unopened. Didn’t want his wife, the Lady Margaret, knowing he’d had sex with another woman, that’s what she reckoned. She — my mother — couldn’t pursue it, she said, because, if she made too much fuss, she’d risk her husband finding out. And she only slept with Alard the once!’
What a tale, Helewise thought. Dear Lord, what a tale of greed and dishonour.
But it was not all told yet.
‘So your mother ordered that you try to obtain what she felt you were entitled to?’ she prompted. ‘Having told you where to go, she left it up to you to announce yourself? To convince Sir Alard that you were his son?’
‘Yes.’ Milon smiled faintly. ‘Daunting, wasn’t it? I mean, if, as my mother said, he only bedded her the once, would he even remember? I thought it was unlikely. And, if I told him and he refused to believe it, what then? I’d have blown my chances, and, no doubt, he’d have thrown me out and told his damned manservant to make sure I never darkened his door again. I had no proof, you see!’
‘Indeed I do,’ Helewise murmured.
‘The alternative — my plan to marry Elanor — was the best I could come up with,’ he went on. ‘It was her or nothing, I reckoned. Gunnora wouldn’t have looked at another man, and Dillian was smitten with Brice. So I went in search of my father’s niece.’ He paused, and the silence continued for some time.
Then he said, ‘But I fell in love with her, you see. It wasn’t about the money any longer, or not just the money.’ His eyes met Helewise’s. ‘I truly loved her.’
That, apparently, was too much for Josse. ‘Loved her enough to put your hands round her throat and choke the life out of her!’ he burst out. ‘Fine kind of love that is!’
It could have been that Josse didn’t see that Milon was weeping. But Helewise did. ‘Can you tell us what happened, Milon?’ she asked gently. ‘The night Elanor died?’
He raised his wet face to look at her. ‘We’d been making love, like I said. Carefully, because of her being pregnant. But it was as good as it always is. Then, afterwards, she was telling me about him. That Sir Josse.’ It was as if he’d forgotten Josse was in the room. ‘She was frightened of him, frightened of the questions about Gunnora, and she wanted me to let her come away with me there and then. But I said no, it’d only make things look even worse if she did, the only way was to sweat it out and keep denying everything. So she said she couldn’t, that she was tired, and sick, and needed me, and I got angry with her because we were there then, we’d all but done it, my father was on the very point of death and very soon it’d be over, she’d inherit and we could go away and live happily ever after!’
Happily ever after, Helewise thought. Just like a fairy tale. Appropriate, when this man and his wife were a pair of children. ‘You got angry,’ she repeated. ‘Lost your temper with her.’
‘It was frightening, her saying she wanted to tell him everything! I mean, how would it look? He’d never have believed I didn’t kill her, none of you would!’
‘But you did kill her,’ Josse said coldly. ‘You throttled her.’
Milon gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Yes, I know! I didn’t intend to, my temper got the better of me. I was just trying to stop her crying so loudly. But I didn’t mean Elanor. I’m not talking about Elanor.’
Helewise felt a small — a very small — song of triumph. I knew it! she thought. Knew it! She wondered what Josse was thinking.
‘Elanor,’ Milon was murmuring, smiling and humming to himself. ‘She’s my wife, you know,’ he said to the room at large. ‘My loving, clever, pretty wife. She’s going to have my baby. I’m going to go home to her, very soon now, and she’s going to take me into her bed and make me warm again. She’s going to light all the candles, and drive the dark and the shadow men away.’
Helewise made herself block it out.
Had Josse realised? she wondered. Did he know, before an answer was demanded of Milon, what it would be?
‘Milon?’ she said softly. ‘Milon, listen to me. If you weren’t talking about Elanor, what did you mean?’
‘I meant’ — Milon spoke as if to a dim child — ‘that I didn’t kill Gunnora.’
* * *
Helewise stepped back then, and Josse took up the questioning. I have no heart for this, she thought as she listened, this brutal hurling of words at someone who is already broken. Besides, I know that, even if Sir Josse carries on till Christmas, Milon will not vary his story.
Because he is telling the truth. We have to look elsewhere for the killer of Gunnora.
‘You ask us to believe,’ Josse was saying, with heavy sarcasm, ‘that, although you admit that you and Elanor cooked up a plot to separate Gunnora from her inheritance, yet you are innocent of her murder? When we know you were in the immediate vicinity at the time of her death, and she was killed only yards from your secret hiding place? With the marks on her arms where Elanor held her, and the slit in her throat which you made with that great knife of yours? Milon, give us credit for more sense!’
‘It’s true!’ Milon cried for the fourth time. ‘She was dead when we found her!’