“Why?”
“I don’t know. There are all sorts of rumors, including that she was a moon priestess doing a spell to bring down the government. My favorite is that she hated changing diapers so much that she lost her temper when she couldn’t find a nursemaid.” His smile was not amused. “But there’s no denying she was found covered in his blood, and the only remains were bones.” He said this with the practiced calm of royalty, betraying no emotion. “She was violently ill afterwards. The consensus is that she ate part of the corpse.”
“What does she say?”
“She says she can’t remember. We’d been at a state dinner, and she left early to go put him to bed. Her maids said they left her alone with P.D., and when they came back they found her passed out, covered in blood, surrounded by moon priestess paraphernalia. Candles, knives, incense, the works.”
“Could it be a setup?”
“I wish it could be, but how? She was in the nursery, in the middle of the most well-protected building in the whole country. And why? If someone breached our security and got into the castle, why kill a baby? Why not her, or me?”
I nodded. “Yeah. ‘Why’ is a good question, all right.”
He was silent for a moment as he met my eyes. “I was hoping you could find the answer to it.”
“Figured as much.”
“I need someone from outside, who I can trust, and who’s up to the challenge. Believe it or not, you’ve got quite the reputation for cleverness. In some circles, at least.”
I held my goblet out to Wentrobe for a refill, then tossed it down. “I don’t normally work in circles this high off the ground.”
“But I can trust you, Eddie,” he repeated, so simply that I was both touched and infuriated.
So this was it. My best friend, who I hadn’t seen in twenty years, wanted me to help prove his wife wasn’t a child killer when everyone else seemed sure that she was. To do that, I’d no doubt have to move around through these places loaded with memories for me, memories I’d gladly cut out of my brain with a rusty butter knife if I knew it would get rid of them. And I knew he wouldn’t offer me money, just like he knew I wouldn’t accept any. My only reward would be helping a friend.
I stood. “Well… ah, hell, you know I’ll do it, so we can skip all the hemming and hawing. I’ll need to see the official reports on it, the witness inquisition notes and everything.”
“All waiting for you,” Wentrobe said, “in your room.”
I managed half a grin at Phil. “Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“That’s why they let me wear the fancy hat.”
I put the goblet down on his desk despite the temptation to ask for another refill. “Okay, then. Guess I’ll go get cleaned up a little. Think I could get some food?”
“Yes. Emerson, I know it’s a little beneath your standard duties, but would you show Eddie to his room?”
“Certainly, Your Majesty. And I’ll send up something-ham and cheese were your favorite, as I recall.”
I nodded, and picked up my jacket and saddlebags. “Once I’ve read through this stuff, I’ll probably want to talk to the same people. Hopefully I’ll have some new questions for them.”
“Sure,” Phil said.
“And then… I guess I need to meet your wife.”
SEVEN
I hadn’t enjoyed such swanky accommodations in a long time. When we were kids, Phil and I watched his father’s guests go in and out of these elaborately appointed rooms, often accompanied by a train of assistants and servants. Once we planned to sneak our dates into one of them, but his mother busted us and we both got grounded. And once I had sneaked into one, with Janet. So even though I was a grown man, I still felt like I was about to get in trouble as I sat on the edge of the ridiculously soft bed.
After a bath I changed into clean clothes and ate two of the huge rolls, packed with ham and cheese and brought by a serious-looking, matronly servant. Two thick parchment folders were stacked next to the reading lantern on the desk. I finished the second roll, opened the top folder and began to read.
Two hours later I’d finished the files, and the rolls weren’t sitting too well alongside what I’d learned. I closed the second folder, walked to the window and opened the wooden blinds. It was dark, and although the night was filled with city sounds, the breeze seemed cool and clean. I certainly didn’t feel the same way.
All the guests at the state dinner the night of the murder agreed that Queen Rhiannon had seemed in her usual good spirits, charming the visiting bigwigs and even, once the after-dinner wine started flowing, favoring them with a song. She’d left at around 9:30 and gone upstairs, ostensibly to feed her son before retiring.
The head nursemaid, Beth Maxwell, reported that the queen arrived just before ten. I knew something about the layout of this castle, and nearly thirty minutes seemed a long time to get from the dining room to the nursery. Still, why would she hurry? Dawdling certainly wasn’t a crime.
Nurse Maxwell left the baby with his mother and went to fold some linen in the laundry. Next, one of the maids, Sally Sween, entered the nursery to refill the night lamps with oil; the queen appeared to have dozed off in her rocking chair, with young Pridiri asleep in her arms. This, evidently, was not unusual, and the maid left them alone. And they stayed alone for the next hour. So from about 10:30 to 11:30, the queen could’ve done anything.
At 11:30, Nurse Maxwell returned to the nursery to put away the fresh bedclothes and diapers. She found the door locked, which according to her had never before happened. Miss Sween joined her in pounding on the door, but they got no answer. When they smelled smoke, they summoned a captain of the guard, Thomas Vogel, who forced the door open.
Here I found the guard’s report most illuminating, because he was a trained soldier who could observe accurately in a crisis. The queen lay on the floor, naked, covered in “a red substance that appeared to be blood.” Marked on the floor was a circle, with “various ideograms inscribed along its border with chalk.” He also described a knife, a stick with three feathers attached, and a bundle of what he correctly judged to be sage. In the center of the circle, a cauldron had been set up over a small brazier. This, plus the incense, supplied the smoke the two women smelled.
As the women attended to the fallen queen, Vogel examined the cauldron. Inside it he saw “boiling water and several pieces of bone, one of which appeared to be an infant human skull.” The window was open, but he stressed that no one could have gained access through it, as the window was barred and opened onto a sheer four-story wall well inside the castle’s guarded perimeter.
The queen awoke then, and was immediately violently ill. Vogel, in some sort of triumph of observational skill, mentioned that “she expelled large chunks of what appeared to be boiled meat.”
Vogel dispatched Nurse Maxwell, the calmer of the two women, to immediately fetch King Philip. He then shut the door to the room and insisted nothing be touched. He spent the few minutes before the king and Wentrobe’s arrival sketching the designs and placement of items within the circle. He also provided a list of banquet guests, along with capsule summaries to help jog people’s memories: Lady who bark-talked to her poodle, Blond man with the ugly chimpanzee, Countess with flatulence problem, Baron and young footman with family resemblance.
I smiled; with a dozen men as cool-headed as Vogel, I could rule the world.
And so the king and Wentrobe arrived, and pieced together-no pun intended-what must have happened. The queen, who had never before shown any interest in mooncraft, had, for reasons unknown, ceremonially sacrificed her son and cannibalized his corpse.
The queen claimed to remember nothing other than falling asleep while she nursed. This obviously wasn’t much of an alibi, and the scrutiny Phil knew he’d face if he tried to delay action left him with only one option: he arrested her for murder and had her held in the prison tower reserved for the most dangerous, or most important, criminals. And then secretly, he sent for me.