Ironfoot Page 18

  When William and I returned to the sanctum, we found the wheelbarrow parked outside, and a lanky youth pacing up and down, trying to keep warm. Even without the fact that he was dressed as a squire, one glance at him would have been enough to tell me whose brother he was.

  “This is Squire Kenric, Adept,” William said.

  Kenric hesitated, then touched his forehead in salute to me. “My knight said you wanted this guarded, Adept.”

  “I don’t want it, but unfortunately I need it. Thank you. . . . Before you go, did you know the sage’s boy, Colby?”

  “No, Adept.” Kenric’s expression stated emphatically that a knight’s squire did not associate with riffraff like that.

  “Pity. Then you may go with my thanks.”

  Kenric stiffened, turned pink, and said, “Squire William . . .”

  The other fighting cock bristled to match. “Squire Kenric?”

  “My knight has ordered . . . He says that you are so dangerous that I must withdraw my challenge to you.”

  William took a moment to consider this request and ooze a few bucketfuls of contempt. Then he looked to me. “What do you think, master? Should I permit this? This muttonhead said he would make me eat my balls.”

  “Squire, I have warned you and warned you,” I said sternly. “Sooner or later you are going to kill someone with those fists of yours. That man you battered yesterday was very lucky that I was available to stop you and save him from permanent deformity.”

  Kenric gulped appropriately.

  William sighed. “Oh, very well. You can stop worrying, boy. I’ll let you off this time—provided you make a full apology at the dining table, with a frank admission that I am a better man than you are.”

  Kenric shuddered. “He just said I must ask. I’d never apologize to trash like you.”

  William beamed. “Then I will make you polish your horse’s shoes with your tongue as I promised.”

  Normans! They conquered France, they conquered England, Sicily, Russia, Jerusalem . . . anywhere they went. Living was what they did to fill up the time between fights, and in their eyes it wasn’t nearly so much fun. Now they were teaching honest Saxons to think the same way.

  “Good. I’ll be there, snot.” Kenric strode off with a spring in his step.

  William gave me a triumphant smile. “See? Now will you stop trying to mother me, Saxon? Do you want me to bring this, yuck, load inside?”

  “Not yet. We still have to rehearse the incantation. No one can get at it without our seeing them through the window.”

  The grimoires were safe in the secret locker where William had put them, but we were almost out of tablets to write on. I set my helper to sanding the used ones clean again with the sandstone block and began transcribing the versicles for Morðor wile ut onto one of the blank ones. Sanding was a standard chore for a sage’s varlet, but a hated one. A couple of days ago William would probably have rammed the stone down my throat, but he accepted the assignment without a word of protest.

  While he was doing it, I made his life more interesting, and also instructive, by reading the text aloud and having him guess the meaning of each phrase. In those days adolescent Normans usually denied any knowledge of the old tongue at all, but many had picked up a smattering from their nursemaids when they were little. I had been told that this long-forgotten skill often emerged when one of them found himself alone with a pretty girl.

  I was halfway through Morðor wile ut when someone tapped softly on the door.

  Scuffing his hands together to clean the dust off, William jumped up to answer the summons, then announced, “A woman wishes to see you, master. Says she is Udela the seamstress, relict of Udell.”

  I sighed. That new sage the count has appointed—a Saxon, can you believe it? So young! And a cripple! Now that my reputation had spread, every sore finger and constipated bowel would be trooping in to get a good look at me.

  “Bid Widow Udela enter, then.” I rose.

  She had dressed in her best, although a seamstress would always display her own handiwork. Her gown, bonnet, and shawl were finely made and of passable material. She was likely in her late thirties, but still attractive enough that she should not remain a widow long. Clusters of lines around her eyes suggested that too much close work was taking a toll on her sight—I hoped she did not expect me to treat that. She wore a purse at her waist.

  Udela curtseyed. I acknowledged with a respectful nod, not quite a bow, but she seemed flattered.

  “I am Adept Durwin, mistress. Pray be seated there and tell me how I may serve.” I sat down as she settled on the stool I indicated.

  “It is a medical problem, Adept.” She glanced at William.

  “A good physician keeps his patients’ secrets like a good priest keeps his flock’s. My assistant would not talk either, but he will leave if that is your wish.”

  To my surprise she nodded. If mere nosiness was her motive and all she wanted was to be the first to consult the new sage, then she should have just invented a headache and asked for a powder. If she were about to plead some woman’s complaint, why had she not brought a female companion along for decency’s sake? Or was indecency what she wanted? Had Archibald’s womanizing tarred all sages with the reputation of stud rams?

  Or she might have come to kill me.

  “William,” I said. “That person that Squire Kenric did not know . . . I would dearly like to speak with any close friends he had.” I spoke in French, but yet still guarded my words because in those days many Saxons understood more French than they usually admitted.

  Yesterday my squire would likely have responded with an obscenity. Today he said, “Of course, master,” and went out.

  Relict Udela studied her hands. “It is three years since Udell died, Adept. There is a man . . .”

  I said, “Ah! If it is the state of your soul that concerns you, mistress, then go seek out Father Randolf. I am concerned with bodily things, and I am old enough to know what happens when a man and a woman are inflamed by passion.” And not just in theory, although my experience was more limited than I wished.

  She did not smile, nor look at me. “In truth, Adept, now there is another man.”

  This time I waited.

  “And I will not tempt him into sin so I can pass off my previous transgression as his. He is honorable.”

  And she was not a skilled liar. My staff lay on the floor, I had nothing within reach that would serve as a weapon. I was undoubtedly stronger than she, but if she came at me with a knife to expand her collection of sages, then I might not be nimble enough to survive her attack. But William had seen her, and William would flatten her if she lay in wait for his return.

  “You come seeking a miscarriage, mistress.”

  She nodded.

  “That is simple, a draft that I can mix at once, a short spell I will chant, and two days’ extreme discomfort. And a confession to the priest. Promoting miscarriage is not a crime, but it is a sin.”

  She sighed, perhaps with relief, but still did not look up. “In payment—perhaps a pair of gloves for the winter? My stitching is much praised, and I have some offcuts of kidskin that will serve.”

  “Count Richard will pay me,” I said, although he had never said so, only that he would reward me if I could unmask the killer. “And a simple procedure like this would barely be worth three fingers, let alone all ten. But I must be quite certain that your problems are caused by what you believe, and also that matters have not progressed too far. If you will lie down for a moment on that . . .”

  I stared at the bench under the window, with its hard leather surface. A thought stirred; I put it away for later.

  “Adept, despite what I have told you, I am not a loose woman.”

  “And I am not a loose man. All I need do is lay a hand on your belly and palpate . . . and feel the size of the lump. You need not undress and it will take but a moment. Go and fetch a witness if you will.”

  Then as now, women’s garments were volumi
nous, because the Church insists that they must mask the shape of the female body, lest it lure men into lechery.

  Silence.

  “Or just tell me the real story.”

  “I was sent by another,” she whispered.

  “To find out if this sage demanded the same price as the last one?”

  She looked up, startled. And nodded.

  “I have not lied to you about that. Were I that sort of lecher, you would have no need of gloves to make payment. But you are wasting my time. Go and fetch the other woman.”

  Udela shook her head. “She must not be seen . . .”

  What lady could be so noticeable? And if she were who I at once suspected, what was her real motive in wanting to lure me to some unknown destination? I could not believe Baroness Matilda could want dalliance with Saxon trash like me, and she was one of the suspects in Rolf ’s murder. Was this a trap?

  “I fear my present duties are too pressing for me to go calling on her today.”

  Udela nodded doubtfully. “If she comes here . . . you will be discreet?”

  “Mistress, I have said so. If she needs my skills, they are available for the asking. There will be no price to pay, and I will not tell, or threaten to tell, her husband, lover, brothers, or father. But I have other, much more urgent, matters to deal with, so please decide.”

  “Then I shall go and ask her. It is not far.”

  I saw Widow Udela out and went back to work.

  A sharper knock on the door came a few minutes later. Taking up my staff, I went to open it and invite the caller to enter.

  She was tall, slender, and draped in black, including a heavier veil than I had seen her wearing in church that morning. She passed me without a word and marched over to the table, where she turned around before sitting on a stool, so she was facing me as I followed her from the door. Nothing of herself was exposed except pale hands clasped on her lap. No more than four women at the funeral had been garbed like that. I went down on one knee, steadying myself with my staff.

  She drew breath. “Do you kneel to all your patients, Saxon? Rise!”

  I stayed where I was. “I saw that turquoise ring as you went by me in the church, my lady.” And now I recognized the whiff of rose water.

  “Stand up, I said!”

  “As my lady commands.”

  I rose. Baroness Matilda lifted back her veil and looked up at me angrily. For a few moments I just returned her inspection.

  The angle was awkward for her, but gave me a perfect view of her glorious face. Seeing it fully for the first time, I realized why she had seemed so familiar: she was Edla. When I had first arrived at Helmdon, a gawky, lamed, and hopelessly homesick stable boy of fourteen, I had fallen head over heels in love with a girl in the village. Edla had been the same age as me, but taller, long-legged, and incredibly gorgeous—the same flaxen hair and gray eyes as Matilda, a complexion fresh as a summer dawn, lips to set men on fire. I had never dared speak to her, and within weeks she had been swept away into marriage by a boy from the next village. I still saw her sometimes, on market days, wizened like a dried apple, fat and toothless from childbearing, bent from field labor, her face weathered and blotched. Four children in six years—Matilda must be almost exactly Edla’s age, but Matilda had borne a single child, which she would have fobbed off on a wet nurse at birth. She seemed as eternally young as a pagan goddess.

  I was the first to look away. Matilda had not blushed, but I feared that I was about to. And I was not so spellbound that I had failed to notice her complete lack of interest in her surroundings. Not even the stuffed crocodile had deserved a second glance as she entered. She had been here before.

  “Udela explained my problem to you?”

  “We discussed ways to promote a miscarriage. I explained that it could be done with a potion and a simple incantation, and I would charge no fee.”

  The critical question, of course, was what Sage Archibald had charged for the same treatment, and whether the lady had submitted to his sexual blackmail without success. Red-hot meat hooks would not drag such questions out of me.

  I had wondered why Udela the seamstress wanted to terminate an early-term pregnancy if she were about to remarry. Seven-month babies were a dozen a penny in Norman England. Tongues might wag, but most peasant fathers would swallow their doubts, especially if they were offered a healthy son. Gentry were less flexible, obsessed by the inheritance of wealth and the purity of bloodlines.

  Matilda’s family had the resources to let her bear a child in secret and foster it out. Was the father of such low status— stable boy, cowherd—that she dared not confess even to her mother? Udela’s story of an impending betrothal would make much more sense if it applied to Matilda. Although common folk’s weddings were often no more than an exchange of promises before two witnesses, landowners like the de Mandeville family made great festivals of them. Manors and forests might change hands.

  “And tell no tales?”

  “My lady, I will swear that on a bible if you so wish. You can trust Udela?”

  “She has been with me for years. She makes all my clothes, and now my mother’s also. She came back with me from Kilpeck.”

  For the count’s daughter to pursue a secret love affair in an overcrowded cage like Barton Castle could not have been easy. Had Udela’s cottage been the trysting place? And what of Lady Aveline, Matilda’s companion, whose purpose was to provide respectability to a single lady. What had her silence cost?

  “Proceed, then,” the baroness commanded.

  “I must ask some unpleasant questions, my lady. How long since your courses ceased?”

  “The third was due a week ago.”

  Not a chance. Even at four months, her figure would not give her away in the draperies worn by high-rank ladies, but my trained eye ought to be detecting hints in her face already.

  “I shall need to examine you. Please rise.”

  She did not. “What sort of examine?

  “Just feel the swelling of your belly.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To confirm that you are as far advanced as you think.”

  “I have walked this road before, Adept. I know of what I speak.”

  “So do I. If you do not trust me, please find another healer.”

  “You are insolent. Proceed with the treatment.” Her cheeks reddened. She was not accustomed to backtalk from servants.

  “My lady, I must rely on my training and experience,” I said stubbornly. “Enchantments can cause serious trouble if wrongly applied. I must consider my reputation.”

  “Your reputation? Who cares about a boy mountebank’s reputation?”

  “I do. I do not wish to be spoken of as Sage Archibald was.” She bit her lip, which was probably an admission that I was in the right. “You are very young,” she declared disapprovingly, although she must be younger. “You have performed this service for other women?”

  “I have watched my tutor do so many times and done it twice under his supervision.”

  “Very well.” She stood up and turned her back on me.

  I pressed a hand to her belly and concluded that she might not be with child at all. If she were, it was a very recent conception. I retreated a couple of paces; she sat down again, folding her hands carefully once more. She was accustomed to deference and groveling obedience. If I inadvertently murdered a baroness I would hang.

  “You are not so far along, my lady. Indeed, I cannot be certain that you are with child at all. The treatment I can offer might be dangerous if you are not. Even if you are, it may make you very sick for some days, so you would be wiser to wait a couple of weeks to make sure that it is needed at all.”

  “You will not be here in two weeks.”

  “Possibly not,” I admitted. I must return the horses to Helmdon. “The academy at Northampton would—”

  “Out of the question! Give me the potion now and instruct me in its use. I will take it if I find it necessary.”

  “
Alas, I cannot. The incantation is part of the treatment and must be chanted at the same time as you drink the infusion.”

  “Did you not hear my orders, Saxon?” She sounded like her father.

  “And if you die, what happens to me?” I decided I must risk treading near the forbidden topic. “Did Sage Archibald ever treat you for anything—chant over you, for instance?” I had never heard of a spell that would induce a false pregnancy, but it would not be an impossibility. Matilda was a strikingly beautiful woman. I already judged that Archibald had been a very evil man, and my opinion of him would be even worse if he had used his skills to cozen his victims into believing that they were with child when they weren’t, so that they would keep coming back to him for more fake treatments.

  Matilda flamed like tinder. “That lecher? No respectable woman in the castle would go near that slimy, odious rogue!”

  Yet she had not peered around at the cabalistic decor when she entered. She had been here before. But that proved nothing, for the castle had been her childhood home.

  She was not done. “I do not know why my father put up with him for so long. I would never have consulted him were I dying in agony. Give me the potion!”

  She wanted confidentiality, that was all, treatment from a transient healer who would vanish within days and take her dark secret with him.

  I shook my head. “I promise you, my lady, that I will treat you as required before I leave Barton. Your problem may solve itself before then.”

  “I have silver!” she said furiously.

  Enough silver, perhaps, to pay for two more years’ instruction at Helmdon? To my own astonishment, I managed to resist the temptation. “That will not be necessary. I rely on your father’s generosity.”

  “Men have starved doing that,” she said. “Do not smile at me, Saxon. I am not jesting.”

  chapter 25

  so I lost a patient and made an enemy. Matilda departed in a fury, slamming the door. Cursing myself for a stubborn fool, I went back to my favorite stool to continue my work.