I might have a man’s body but a child’s heart still beats in my chest, he thought ruefully.
In his youth, he had often awakened in the deep night to the sounds of scuffling and moans outside his room, and he had cowered in terror, waiting for the sun to chase away those demons he knew must be waiting for him just outside his door. In the morning he would rise, open the door and, with bravery bought with sunlight’s coin, look out to see just such stains on the stone floor. He imagined the marks must from the blood of giant gray werewolves struggling with great black demons, until an older man took some pity on him and said that the blood was from mortal men fighting over petty things, and nothing to fear at all. He had been relieved that the creatures were not supernatural, but some fear had remained with him although he was no longer a little boy alone in the dark.
“I am a man, not a lad anymore,” he reminded himself with some success, then bent to look more closely around the area where Henry had been murdered. After a few minutes he shook his head. There was nothing here to suggest anything had happened than the most obvious. An examination of Henry’s body would reveal more details, of course, but he feared there was naught here to help Robert’s cause.
He hunched his shoulders as they began to ache in the cold and considered the possible ways of escape from this place. Henry had been killed right in front of the guestrooms assigned to Sir Geoffrey and his wife. Their chambers were at the opening to the staircase that wound down to the dining hall and then out to the castle ward. That was one exit. The rooms also faced the point where that inner passage turned and led toward one of the defensive towers at the corner of the wall surrounding the inner ward. That would be the only other way a murderer could have escaped because, in the other direction, the corridor ran straight down to the room Thomas shared with Father Anselm and abruptly ended there as if the workmen had never finished it.
“When Robert first claimed he had heard voices as he climbed the stairs but saw no one,” Thomas said aloud, “the speakers might have been anywhere. In the stairwell, in the dining hall, near the guestrooms or further into that tower passageway.”
Since the stairs were deliberately designed to be steep and sharply curved so any attacker would have difficulty swinging his sword against defenders above him, it was not surprising that Robert could not see anyone just ahead of him. Had Robert been near the dining hall when he heard the voices or had he been beyond that and closer to the living quarters above the hall? He could not remember if the man had said. Now, of course, Robert was denying that he had heard two voices at all so it would be useless to ask him, and, needless to say, Thomas did not believe his abrupt retraction.
“If the voices had come from the dining hall,” Thomas continued, “the speakers might have remained there until Robert passed that entrance, then retreated down the stairs he had just climbed. If, however, they had come from this higher level, the murderer, or murderers, might have heard him coming and escaped down the passageway to the tower before Robert emerged from the stairwell. Those are the only ways to escape.”
What if the speakers were further down the corridor where there was no exit? They might not have heard him climbing the stairs and that meant they might not have been able to escape before Robert emerged and would have been trapped. Thomas closed his eyes and tried to picture exactly what he had seen last night.
He and Anselm were in the very last room in that corridor. When the Lady Isabelle screamed, Anselm had been asleep. Thomas could confirm that he was there and no one else was in the room. Nor had the priest ever emerged. He had been sitting at the edge of his bed, pale and quaking, when Thomas returned with the grim news.
Next to them were the baron’s chambers, and as Thomas was leaving his room, the baron was rushing from his own door. He had been fully dressed and had his sword in hand. No one was in the corridor between those two rooms. That Thomas could confirm as well.
Thomas hesitated and opened his eyes. “Was it odd that the baron was fully dressed at such an early hour?” Perhaps not, he decided, for Robert had said that his father was often up before cock’s crow. Still, the hour had been very early. Any cock would still be enjoying the lush charms of his hen of choice and not yet sated enough to bring forth his morning boast. Perchance the Baron Adam had also just returned from the warmth of another’s bed. Or, like Thomas, suffered sleepless nights alone. He would think more on that.
The baron was, in fact, now residing in Robert’s usual quarters. When his grandson fell ill, he had given up his rooms with their luxuries of a curtained bed and hearth for warmth. The room next to the baron was now where Richard lay. The prioress shared it with Sister Anne as well while they cared for him. Of course, he had seen his prioress leave the room just behind her father. Sister Anne had returned to be with Richard as soon as Henry’s body was discovered, so Thomas had looked behind him as she left. Again, no stranger was in the corridor.
Next to the boy’s sickroom was the chamber assigned to the Lady Juliana. Had he seen her? He closed his eyes. The image of Juliana’s face peering around the door of her room came to mind. He could recollect nothing but her head.
Her head? It was covered, covered with a hood as if she had just returned from a walk and still had on her cloak. Indeed, she was dressed in a cloak, now that he thought more on it. Odd, that. With whom might she be walking at such a black hour? Not Robert, surely. Not alone? Or was it? Perhaps they had been together and Robert had wanted to protect… Nay, there was no need to protect his lady’s virtue. Few would begrudge a betrothed couple the right to sample a bit of marital pleasure before the final vows were spoken. After all, a betrothal was binding in the eyes of God…but there was no betrothal yet. Might that be Robert’s reason for wanting to protect the lady?
“If the two had spent some hours in bed together, they would have done so in Juliana’s room surely, since Robert had moved to the barracks to provide room for the guests when the Lavenhams arrived. Thus she would not have needed her cloak.” Thomas rubbed his eyes where a dull ache had taken up residence.
Unless it had indeed been she who was in the chapel when he had gone with Anselm to pray. He had thought she had left before they did, had he not? Nay, now he remembered that he had thought the woman might have moved further into the shadows. If she had left before he and the priest had returned to their room, she would have had time to undress for bed. If she had left so much later that she was still in her cloak when Robert was discovered with Henry’s corpse, however, she must have seen something. Surely…
“Yet she has said nothing. Could Robert have just left her bed and, to cover her nakedness, she threw on the cloak? But why do that when a blanket would serve as well?” Again, he could not imagine that she would not have confessed their tryst with her soon-to-be-betrothed when his life was at stake. “There is something amiss here, yet I cannot grasp what it is.”
Had Wynethorpe been like many other castles, Thomas thought, there would have been a private entrance to the chapel from the lord’s solar or indeed from any of the other chambers, especially that of the resident priest. Whatever the reason for the omission of such a comfort, Thomas had heard from Father Anselm that it was the source of one of his most joyful trials. No matter how foul the weather he had to wend his way down those perilous stairs past the dining hall, into the inner ward, and around the quarters to that small entrance in the inner ward wall. Thomas had caught himself thinking at the time that the trip to the chapel in a heavy rain might be the only time Father Anselm ever got a bath. He smiled at the thought of the priest sprinting through the open ward to avoid even God’s attempt to bathe him.