Ironfoot Read online

  By the time I had worked that out, my laboring squire and I had arrived at the laundry. In both Helmdon and Pipewell good housewives spread their sheets on the grass to bleach in the sunshine, but lack of space within the bailey required the castle’s linen to be hung on lines, and who should be doing just that than the mighty Megan, happily singing a song about her gallant lover—without, of course, identifying him by name. She stopped and stared in horror at the grisly load approaching.

  “You want us to wash that?” she demanded of me, her tone lacking the respect due an adept. “That be the one the murdered boy was wrapped in, God save his soul?”

  “Amen to that, good woman. No, I don’t want it washed, at least not yet. But you do wash the castle’s fleeces?”

  “There’s not many as can lift a wet fleece, Adept.” Grinning, she flexed her massive arms, clenching great hands that were red and rough from her labors. If that didn’t bother Sir Kendryck, it was none of my business.

  “I don’t doubt it. I want you to explain to me how, when you have washed a fleece, you know whose it is?”

  She hadn’t thought of that, and the jollity drained from her face. “Each one bears a mark, Sir Adept,” she said reluctantly.

  “Such as?”

  Megan was certainly uneducated but she was not stupid. “A crown for His Lordship’s, and he has four that belong to him, not that he sleeps under them all himself, understand. The sage’s has a star with five points.”

  On the point of saying that the bench in the sanctum had no such covering, I remembered that the bed in the loft did. I nodded for her to continue.

  “Sir Hugh’s mark’s a castle; Master Alwin’s a horse; Sir Bertrand’s has squares.” That probably implied an exchequer cloth for counting money. “There’s others with other marks, Adept.”

  “Keep listing them, all you can remember.”

  She certainly knew why I wanted to know, and I was sure now that she was deliberately not mentioning the priest’s mark, as a possibility too awful to contemplate. But when she ran out of suggestions, I said, “You haven’t mentioned the one on this fleece. Do you want to take a look?”

  She shuddered as she shook her head. She seemed to have shrunk, drawing herself in, and she was fixedly not looking at the load in the barrow.

  “Then the person who murdered the child must have brought the fleece into the castle with him? Or might he have stolen it from someone who does live here?”

  Megan brightened at this wonderful escape from the unthinkable. “He never locks the vestry, sir!”

  “Father Randolf? And his fleece is marked with . . .?”

  “A cross, of course.”

  “This cross?” I lifted back a corner of the fleece to show her.

  She nodded.

  “Thank you, Megan. We’ll leave this barrow and its load here for the time being. Over there, please, William.”

  After we had cleaned up at the bathhouse and appropriated clean clothes—a red robe for the learned adept this time—we headed for the stable. William was clearly interested to know what was coming next. I knew, and didn’t want to think about it. My only hope was that I would be able to report to Sir Hugh and thus postpone the inevitable confrontation when the count heard the news.

  At the stable Sir Scur was resting on a hay bale, head back, apparently enjoying the sunshine. I halted in front of him.

  The old man opened his eye. “You were told to shed light, not block it.”

  “I will shed some if you do. Do you know where Sir Hugh is?”

  “Aye, that I do.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, I know it right here.” He tapped his temple.

  William found that funny, which didn’t help.

  “Tell me where Sir Hugh is.”

  “He is on his horse.”

  “And where is his horse?”

  “Underneath him, good sir, where else should it be?”

  “He’s not back yet,” said a new voice. Master of Horse Alwin was leaning against the doorpost, blond hair shining in the sunlight, wistfully lecherous smile in place.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And the count?”

  “He has ridden out with Sir Bertrand to inspect flood damage.”

  “I would be grateful if you would tell whichever of them first returns that I have news to report.” Oh, pray that it be the marshal!

  “Bad news?” No doubt Alwin was reading my expression.

  “No more murders, anyway.”

  “The best of tidings these days,” said Sir Scur.

  chapter 28

  i headed glumly back to the sanctum. Despite the evidence and the countess’s accusations against the clergy, I still found it impossible to believe that a man of God would callously murder a child and two men to conceal plans to assassinate the king. Worse, I was out of ideas. It would be unfair to subject William to more incantations that day, and the only one we had practiced was the Ubi malum, which had led us to the murdered Colby.

  There must be a better incantation to use than that one, for malum meant “thing”—neuter gender. So what would it lead us to this time: the flask of poisoned wine that was so worryingly missing from the sanctum? No doubt that had been emptied, rinsed, and returned harmless to the bottler’s store. Even enchantment might not be able to identify it now, and what good would it do us anyway?

  “Now what?” my cantor demanded, and I realized that we were passing a practice ground where squires were hammering up a thunderstorm with wooden swords and shields. William looked like a starving dog eyeing a heap of juicy steaks.

  “Go and join in if you want to. I have to chew through another two or three grimoires.”

  William was gone like an arrow.

  To each his own! I went back to the sanctum, making a mental note as I entered that I should exorcise the door and install a ward of my own choosing. Everything seemed to be as I had left it, but I climbed halfway up the ladder to check that no one was lurking in ambush up there. My timidity showed me how much I had come to rely on my stalwart squire to defend me from violence.

  Having retrieved all the grimoires—six of them, counting Guy’s—I settled down to serious work, starting with the two volumes I had not yet had a chance to study. Many of the spells appeared in more than one volume, and sometimes with curious variations, some of which were so blatant that even the most hidebound Helmdon sage would be hard put to dismiss them as copying errors.

  Early on, I found the Ubi malum with two summonings omitted. Later came the Malefice venite—“Come, villain”— which I had already rejected as too complex . . . except that I was looking at a shorter version requiring only two voices. I read it through with rising excitement, for it was far more specific than the Ubi malum, which only sought after some evil thing. This text allowed the enchanter to name the crime whose perpetrator he was summoning. I already knew, or thought I knew, who had smothered the boy Colby, but with this I could summon the person who had poisoned Archibald and Rolf. I limped across to the supply chest for clean tablets and ink, then went back to the table to copy out the parts.

  Soon I ran out of clean tablets and had to set to work with the sandstone, erasing our copy of Ubi malum. I should not have let William go out to play.

  A thunderous pounding on the door startled me. For a moment my hair stirred, as I wondered whether just concentrating too hard on an incantation, thinking about it too deeply, could activate it. Had I unwittingly summoned the killer already? Impossible! I heaved myself upright, realizing that I must have been sitting there for an hour or even two. Before I could reach the door, the banging was repeated.

  I opened it and found myself face to face with a ferocious baronial scowl. For a moment I just gaped. Nobility never went calling on commoners!

  “Well, do we have your permission to enter, Saxon, or will you leave us standing out here in this quagmire?”

  “Enter, of course, my lord! You honor my—” I backed up a pace to avoid being bowled over as the big man sto
rmed in. I was about to kneel, when another voice spoke.

  “And me too?” The speaker was a younger man, finely garbed and wearing a sword. Unlike his father, he was smiling, but it was the fond, tolerant smile of a superior—the sort of smile that could turn instantly to anger.

  “Oh, enter, Sir Stephen, and welcome.”

  The knight did so, raising an eyebrow to acknowledge the identification. “Thaumaturgy or the nose?”

  The nose, yes, but more the jaw. He was a younger, slimmer version of the count—younger, slimmer, and brighter of eye.

  “No great art, sir. You have inherited your father’s noble features. Pray be seated, my lord, sir knight. I have no hospitality to—”

  “We’ll stand,” the count snarled. “I was told you had news for me.”

  His tone did not sound promising. “Unhappy news, I fear, my lord. The fleece in which the boy’s body was found belonged to, um, Father Randolf.”

  “I know that,” the count barked. “It was stolen more than a week ago.”

  “He did not say so this morning when we—”

  “He does not need to explain himself to you, boy!” Count Richard moved threateningly close, as if about to bite me. “He came and told me this morning.”

  “But he had not reported its loss until now? Why? A valuable—”

  “Because he is the priest! Hanging thieves is not his business; saving souls is. He knew he would hear sooner or later who had taken it, so he could claim it back and impose a penance.”

  About to continue objecting, I bit my tongue. Father Randolf ’s rage when his valuable fleece was dragged out of the muddy moat was understandable, whether he had dropped it in there himself with a body in it or not, but the fact that he had not reported it stolen sooner seemed deeply suspicious.

  “Well?” the count roared. “Is that all you have to tell me— something I already knew? You would have me accuse my own flesh and blood, a man of God, of murdering three people in my own house, just on the basis of that?”

  That and Colby’s dying words addressed to a priest, although those were, in a sense, contradicted by Archibald’s speech to a woman.

  “So far I have no other evidence that would be accepted by a sheriff, my lord.” In those days each sheriff was responsible for maintaining the law in his shire. It was a few years after this that King Henry began the system of sending his own judges out on assizes.

  “Well, ‘so far’ is too far. You’re a fraud and a mountebank, and I am of a mind to have you soundly whipped for it. I need this place to billet a score of men tomorrow, so you and your thuggish young helper can get those horses out of my stable by dawn and move them and yourselves off my land as fast as you can move, understand?”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “And defang that door, so it won’t maim them.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “Tonight you eat in the kitchen, you hear?”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  His Lordship wheeled around and headed for the door. “Come, Son. Your mother will geld me if I don’t deliver you into her loving embrace most suddenly.”

  “Tell her I’m enjoying a leisurely piss, Father. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Stephen saw his father out, closed the offending door, and then looked around. “This grotto’s a lot tidier than it was in Charles’s time. Sit!” He waved me to a stool. As he walked under the stuffed crocodile, he reached up to tap it on the nose. “Charles used to call this lizard Maud. When he was talking to King Stephen’s supporters, it was the Empress Maud; to her supporters, it was Queen Maud, Stephen’s wife. We had a plague of Mauds in those days. If we billet twenty liverymen in here, the first thing they’ll do is drain all those bottles. What happens then?”

  I said, “It’ll leave more room for the living.”

  My humor was rewarded with an engaging grin. The young knight moved around the table to sit opposite; he leaned forward on his forearms. “So, tell me how you found the boy’s body.”

  He listened intently, nodding impatiently when I began speaking of things he already knew. “And what was the other evidence, which my father did not want to hear?” He frowned at the report of Archibald’s words to an unknown companion, and even more so at Colby’s dying pleas.

  “I do agree with your noble father that it is hard to imagine a priest committing such crimes,” I concluded tactfully, not mentioning that the countess was of the opposite opinion.

  “I don’t,” Stephen said darkly. “The king has just been hearing of more than a hundred cases of clerics escaping virtually scot-free after deeds as bad—rape, murder, manslaughter! That Randy is my cousin hurts, of course, but if he is indeed guilty he has forfeited any claim on our loyalty. If we can’t have witnesses, he must be judged on facts, and so far those are worrisome. What do you plan next, Sage?”

  “I am but an adept, sir.”

  “But you have almost completed your apprenticeship, surely? I am not wholly ignorant of your craft—Sage Charles taught me some rudiments, and I know that the most renowned enchanters of Europe would be proud to match what you have achieved in the last two days.”

  Oh, flattery, flattery! I explained my situation at Helmdon, and why I had remained a varlet so long. I did not mention my former hopes that Count Richard might sponsor the remainder of my training, for I thought Sir Stephen was quite quick enough to see the problem. Moreover, Stephen had the king’s ear, and that raised prospects too heady even to think about.

  How could father and son be so alike in looks and so unalike in manner? Richard was a rough warrior, who had fought for the greater part of his life and might well have taken a few taps from the same mace that had ruined Sir Scur. The suave Stephen was a courtier, too young to have seen much warfare at all. I reminded myself that manners could be deceptive; courtiers carried their knives under their cloaks.

  Stephen glanced at the window. Daylight was already starting to fade. “I must go. Forget what my father said. You stay on here at Barton and track down the monster. What do you plan next?”

  I explained about Malefice venite and the knight’s eyes widened. “You mean the culprit will just walk in here and confess?”

  “Not necessarily confess, sir, although he might. The author—whoever he was—claims the villain will feel a call, but will come for what he believes is some purpose of his own. We may get other visitors also, of course, quite innocent. The glosses—I mean, marginal comments added by later users—suggest that the power of the incantation seems to be limited to about a mile, which I would take to be a Roman mile, and the delay may amount to a day or even slightly more. In other words, the quarry may not arrive right away.”

  Stephen nodded. “The Council of Northampton,” he said, “has ended. Becket was found guilty of contempt for failing to answer the king’s summons in person last month, and His Grace leveled many new charges, mostly of embezzlement committed while the knave was chancellor. He escaped under cover of darkness and has probably fled the realm. I doubt if he will stop running until he can fall on his face before the pope. He is finished!” No question where Stephen’s loyalty lay.

  “The king has announced that he will leave for Rockingham Forest at dawn tomorrow, stopping by here on the way.” His frown softened into a smile. “But that doesn’t mean much. He is notoriously unpredictable. He can say that and then leave us standing around all day with our horses saddled. I have known him swear that he will stay where he is for a week and then decide to move out an hour later. How soon can you chant this miracle summons?”

  “When I have prepared fair copies, sir. The hand in the grimoire is antique, crabbed, and hard to read. Then my cantor and I must rehearse it until we can perform it without errors or hesitation . . .” Clearly Stephen de Mandeville wanted a straighter answer than that. “By dawn, no sooner, sir. It is unwise to chant any summoning during the hours of darkness.”

  “Work as fast as you can!”

  “I will, as God gives me strength, sir.”
/>   The knight sprang up. “Eat in the hall tonight, anywhere you fancy. My father has—with Father Randolf ’s blessing,” he added sardonically, “declared a suspension of mourning for my uncle. It will be a free-for-all, but don’t let the partying distract you. When you are ready, send word to me in the hall, no matter what the hour. I will take a bed on the dais, and see that mine is closest to the parlor door. I intend to witness this enchantment of yours, and I will tell my father that he must not evict you to billet the king’s men. I don’t expect His Grace to linger at Barton anyway. He yearns to cut to the hunt.”

  I was still bowing when Stephen reached the door. He turned to say something; there was a loud knocking. He opened it.

  “Lord’s mercy! What happened?” Then he looked to me. “Must you bid them enter, or can I?”

  “You can, sir. Anyone within.”

  “Come in, then, all of you,” Stephen said, and stepped aside as two hefty squires obeyed, supporting between them a very limp William, bleeding and barely conscious.

  chapter 29

  stephen slammed the door shut, eyes blazing.

  “Lay him here,” I said, indicating the bench.

  William gurgled and tried to pull loose from his holders. His face was a mass of bruises, his fists cut and swollen; blood trickled from his mouth and nose. Through bubbles of blood he insisted, “Amallrigh’! Amallrigh’!”

  Grinning, they let go of him. His knees buckled like string, and the smaller of the two—who was still enormous—caught him up like a baby and spread him on the bench.

  I exploded, cutting off Sir Stephen.

  “You were forbidden to fight him, you great thugs!” I roared. “Goons! Apes! Your knights forbade challenges! Who was in charge of that lesson?”

  “Sir Lucien of Leicester, Adept,” said the smaller with a smirk. “But the lesson was over. He’d gone. It was your ferret here who started it. He tried to pick a fight with Squire Colbert, and when Colbert refused to cooperate, your man kicked his kneecap and called him a—”