Adam slammed his fist on the table. “You may have your faith, Prioress Eleanor, but my charge remains a more earthly one: to protect all within the walls of Wynethorpe. In that, I have failed. As to the nature of my priest’s accident, do not insult me so. I have spoken to Brother Thomas, who seemed quite sure that the poor man’s head was pushed with force into a wall and his body tossed from a window to finish the deed.” He smiled grimly. “Surely, you do not now doubt the judgment of a man whose praises you sang to me so recently?”
Eleanor said nothing until the fires of her father’s exhausted anger had sputtered and dimmed. Silence was a woman’s wisest response until a man’s choler cooled and reason regained a seat in his soul, her aunt once said. It was man’s nature to swing at flies with an ax at such times, however much he might later rue the consequences. “Nay, I trust him implicitly,” she said at last, her tone gentle.
Adam snorted. “Good! While Sister Anne has been tending to Richard and Brother Thomas has been piecing together evidence with perceptive logic, I assume you have contributed to the search for justice by offering sufficient prayers so the murderer will be found before my son is taken away to be hanged?”
“Dare you suggest that prayer is not effective, my lord? Such would be heresy,” Eleanor snapped, but her pride was wounded. “Perhaps you might tell me what you have discovered from your questioning of those within the castle?”
For just an instant, she saw the fury she felt reflected back at her from her father’s eyes, then the fires were banked and he replied in a calm voice. “Every man in this fortress has been questioned about where he was the night of the murder by one of three under my command I trust the most. So far, all have either been where they should have been, passed out with drink, or with some woman, wife or no. Nor was there any indication that anyone did more than wish Henry’s soul a hotter fire in Hell for the accident he caused.”
As Eleanor began a question, he raised one hand and continued. “At your suggestion, I did approach Sir Geoffrey about his thoughts on the murder when he came to the dining hall this morning to break his fast. As I suspected, he is a most generous friend. He said he could not believe that my son could have done the deed and thinks someone else must have killed Henry. Robert simply came upon the body at the wrong time, he said. He would be most willing to present other possibilities at any trial. As the most likely event, he suggested that Henry ran into a drunken soldier in the halls of Wynethorpe and was murdered for no better reason than the discordance caused by too much wine or a gaming debt. Henry was known to play at dice and rarely won the rolling of them.”
A noble gesture but an indefensible supposition, she thought, considering the results of the questioning. “You told me none of this until I asked. May I know why?”
“Because I am lord of Wynethorpe!” he thundered. “The accused murderer is my son and the murder occurred in my castle. I have been far too tolerant of your involvement. None of this is woman’s business.”
“First you accuse me of doing little to help Robert and then you dismiss me as a weak woman who could do little if I tried. You may not have it both ways, my lord. As to what is woman’s business and what is not, may I remind you that I have full responsibility at Tyndal and there is no question there about what is and is not my authority. In addition, need I remind you that Robert is also my brother, whom I love as well as any sister can, and that Isabelle, Juliana, Henry and George are almost kin to me in my heart. Although you are, without question, lord of this place, I am your daughter. As such, I have the right to be involved and know what is happening by the love I bear for all concerned.”
The baron turned pale, then sat down on the bench with a heavy thud. After a moment, he continued, his voice hoarse but calmer. “Let us make peace, daughter. I do not wish to argue with you.”
From the pinched look around his eyes, Eleanor realized that her father was in as much physical pain from his old wound as he was emotional pain from the accusations against his son. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nor do I wish to argue with you, father. Please tell me all that Sir Geoffrey had to say.”
Adam stretched out his leg and began to massage it. “Little of help. He said he had never seen Robert strike in anger and he has known him from a time he was younger than my grandson. Of course, my son and his have never been close, but they were of different ages and temperaments. On the other hand, he said he had never known Henry to raise a sword or fist to anyone either, although he had seen a change in the lad recently.”
“His father mocked him cruelly in front of all at dinner the other night. Did he taunt Henry for his lack of manhood often?”
Adam snorted. “Geoffrey was sick of the boy’s whining. Henry had taken it into his head that he would wed the Lady Isabelle. When Geoffrey announced he would have her instead, the boy acted like a baby whose wet nurse had taken away the tit.”
“Surely Henry had reason to believe Isabelle would be his wife after all these years. Perhaps he had even grown to love her.”
“I would have agreed with you once, but, if I may be so blunt, a man does not rape the woman he loves. And he did rape Lady Isabelle, did he not, if we are to believe her and I understand that you do?”
It was Eleanor’s turn to be surprised at her father’s words. “Indeed, my lord, I do believe her tale if for no other reason than she did herself no favor in the telling.”
“Well reasoned. I would agree.”
“I must wonder, however, why Henry never told his father about his bedding of Isabelle. He might not have confessed to a rape as such, but the act would have prevented his father’s marriage with the lady and guaranteed the success of his own wishes.”
“According to Sir Geoffrey, Henry did swear that he had bedded the woman.”
“Yet…”
“There was blood on the sheets when Geoffrey awoke next to her. In her grief at losing her virginity, she pointed that out to him and he believed her.”
“Smearing a little chicken blood on the sheets to prove virginity when the gate had already been breached is an old trick. I wonder that a man of Sir Geoffrey’s experience could be duped with such ease.”
“By God’s right hand, whatever are they teaching girls in convents these days?” Adam laughed. “That you should know such a thing is…but never mind. If you have enlightened me about how much nuns know about worldly tricks, let me perhaps enlighten you about the nature of good men.”
“Do,” Eleanor said. The earlier tension between them had dissipated and she began to relax.
“My dear friend is a true innocent with women. Although he may have dallied as boys do before marriage, I know that he was never once unfaithful to his first wife after they took their vows at the church door, even when her pregnancies would have given him cause to seek relief elsewhere for his own health.”
“Yet surely he knew that women do such things…”
“He chose to believe Isabelle’s story and disbelieve that of his son. As I have said before, he is besotted with his ward or, since we are speaking unadorned truth here, besotted with the idea that he had regained his virility and that it was he who had gotten her with child.”
“Thus he also chose to believe that his son had lied. Men cannot be such fools, surely.”
“My child, we are all mortal, men and women alike. Fools we have always been and fools will we always be, especially when our greatest frailties breach the walls of our better sense.”
“I have learned from you, my lord. But please continue. I did not wish to interrupt.”