A Head for Poisoning (17 page)

A
t Stephen's words, there was a concerted rush to the staircase, Bertrada jostling Hedwise as they vied for first place. And then the hall was silent again, except for the muffled thump of footsteps on the wooden ceiling above, and the occasional hiss of collapsing wood in the fire. Geoffrey sat on a stool and stretched his hands out to the glowing embers.

“You should come, too, Geoffrey,” said Stephen, walking down the hall towards him. “I know Godric would like to see you before he dies. He has always liked you better than the rest of us.”

“If he ever said that, it was only because I was not here,” said Geoffrey wryly. “He does not usually even remember my name.”

Stephen smiled. “But you wanted to see him. Come now, or you might find your journey was in vain.”

Geoffrey followed his brother towards the stairs. On the way up, they met Hedwise, who was descending.

“You are too late,” she said, without the merest trace of grief. “He is already dead. You called us too late, Stephen.”

“He cannot be dead yet,” said Stephen, startled. “You must be mistaken! He spoke to me only moments ago. I told him Geoffrey was back and he grinned at me. Then he informed me he thought his end was near and that I should fetch everyone. He cannot have slipped away so fast!”

He ran ahead of Geoffrey and disappeared into a chamber on the uppermost floor. Geoffrey followed more slowly, pausing to glance through a door at the tiny chamber in the thickness of the wall, which he had once shared with Walter, Henry, and Stephen. It now seemed to be Walter and Bertrada's room, with plain, dirty walls and an unpleasant, all-pervading odour of stale clothes.

He reached his father's bedchamber and poked his head around the door, just in time to see Walter pulling at a ring on the dead man's finger. On the other side, Bertrada was rifling through the corpse's clothes, while Henry, Stephen, and Olivier watched them like hawks. When they saw Geoffrey, Walter turned his tugging into a clumsy attempt to lay out the body, while Bertrada pretended to be straightening the covers.

“As a mark of respect, you might consider waiting a little while before you plunder his body,” said Geoffrey, unable to stop himself. Although he had seen many acts of greed during the Crusades, most men—even knights—were not usually so ruthless with their kinsmen.

“You would think that.” Henry sneered. “You who could not even loot a city properly! Where is that dagger of Godric's, Stephen—the one he claims the Conqueror gave him?”

“If I knew, I would not tell you,” said Stephen. “He always said that I should have that.”

“Rubbish!” said Walter, abandoning his pretence of laying out the body, and beginning to haul at the ring again. “The dagger should be mine because I am his eldest son. Look in that chest, Bertrada. It will be in there.”

“It is not,” said Stephen. “Believe me, I have checked. The old goat has hidden it somewhere, so that none of us will be able to find it.”

“Do you mean that thin, worn thing he used at the dining table?” asked Olivier disdainfully. “Why would any of you want that?”

“The hilt is silver,” explained Henry. “It can be melted down and made into something else.”

Geoffrey looked around the room, surprised at the changes in it since he had last been there. Gone were the practical whitewashed walls, and in their place were dark-coloured paintings depicting gruesome hunting scenes and improbably gory battles. There were soft rugs on the floor where there had once been plain wood, and the pile of smelly furs had been exchanged for a large bed heaped with multi-hued covers. He imagined that his military-minded father must have softened indeed to substitute his functional quarters for a room that reminded Geoffrey of the Holy Land brothels.

“There are a great many things to do now,” said Olivier, edging towards the door. “I must inform the Earl of Shrewsbury that Sir Godric Mappestone is dead.”

“You are going nowhere,” said Walter, abandoning his father's hand, and leaping across the room to slam the door closed as Olivier reached it. Henry bounced over the bed, uncaring for the corpse that lay on it, and took up pulling at the ring where Walter had left off.

Walter glared at Olivier. “You will stay here until I have secured my hold on the manor. I do not want you running off to the Earl of Shrewsbury until I am ready.”

“I only want to inform him about this sad death,” protested Olivier in hurt tones. “And he must be told quickly, because the will is contested and he is your overlord. You might think that
you
are due to inherit, Walter, but remember what we discovered only last summer—that there is some question regarding your legitimacy. If that is true, then my wife Joan is the next in line, and although it is unusual to inherit through the female line, it is not unknown.”

“But if Walter is illegitimate, the manor will pass to me,” snapped Stephen. “I am the oldest legitimate son.”

“But none of you will succeed!” cried Henry in wild delight, triumphantly waving aloft the ring he had wrested from the old man's finger. “I have the best claim: I am legitimate and I was born in England. And better yet, I have a Saxon wife—just like the King. My marriage will unite the Normans with the Saxons, and all these border skirmishes will be at an end!”

“I thought your border skirmishes were with the Welsh,” said Geoffrey, puzzled, “not the Saxons.”

No one took any notice of him as they argued with each other, so he walked to the bed and looked down at the body of his father.

“God's teeth!” he swore, the shock in his voice instantly silencing his squabbling kin. “He is not dead!”

He punched Henry off the bed and cradled his father gently in his arm. Henry staggered to his feet and advanced, eyes blazing with fury. Geoffrey looked up at him steadily, daring him to attack, and Henry, realising he would not win a physical confrontation with his taller, stronger brother, kicked the bed in frustration and thwarted anger. Geoffrey ignored his tantrum and pulled the covers up around his father's chin, realising that the chamber was fireless and chilly.

Sir Godric Mappestone, hero of Hastings and honoured warrior of the Conqueror, opened his eyes, and Geoffrey saw that he was not as near death as his family had led him to believe. He was pale and gaunt certainly, and perhaps even mortally ill, but his breathing was deep and regular and his sharp green eyes were alert and as calculating as ever.

Geoffrey studied him curiously, remembering the fiery, aggressive man who had ruled his childhood home with a rod of iron. His thick hair was solid grey, and the strong-featured face was lined with age and a life spent out of doors. His eyes held a trace of amusement, and Geoffrey wondered if his father had not feigned his “death” so that Geoffrey might witness exactly the scene that he had, with his brothers fighting over the ring and searching his body for valuables. It would certainly be an act in keeping with his crafty character.

“Godfrey, my son!” said Godric in a weak voice. “You have come back from the Crusade to see me before I die!”

“Geoffrey,” corrected Geoffrey. He smiled at Godric, saddened to see the great warrior so incapacitated. He shuddered at the sickness that had reduced the mighty, blustering Godric to the skeletal figure that lay in his arm, and decided that falling in battle was infinitely preferable.

“One of my treacherous brood has poisoned me, Godfrey,” muttered Godric. “With arsenic, my physician thinks. Or perhaps the fungus galerinus.”

“He is rambling again,” said Bertrada, from the other side of the room. “He often claims that one of us is killing him. He will be accusing you in a moment.”

“She is trying to make you believe that I have lost my wits, Godfrey,” said Godric with a faint smile. “But I am as sharp as I ever was. Someone has been poisoning me slowly and deliberately for months now, and I have grown more feeble each day. Did you see how they searched me for items of value, hoping I was dead? It is not even safe for me to sleep!”

“They will not do so again,” said Geoffrey. “I will see that they do not.”

Godric regarded him uncertainly. “You are a good boy, Godfrey,” he said eventually. “Even if you did harbour odd notions about wanting to be a scholar. Perhaps I should have sent Henry away instead of you—then I would not be lying here dying now.”

“You think Henry is poisoning you?” asked Geoffrey, fixing his long-haired brother with a disconcerting stare. Henry was the first to look away.

“I do not know which of them it is,” said Godric. “Walter and his wife, Bertrada, Joan and her husband Olivier, Stephen, or Henry and his angelic Hedwise—they all have their own reasons for wanting me out of this world. If you had come a few weeks earlier, you might have saved me.”

“You may recover,” said Geoffrey, hoping the doubt he felt did not reflect itself in his voice. Whether Godric was in control of his mental faculties, Geoffrey was not qualified to say, but the knight had seen enough dying men to know when a body was beyond repair.

Godric gave a rustling laugh and closed his eyes. “I will not get better now, Godfrey. The poison has damaged my vital organs. Ask my physician about it. He will tell you.”

“If you are so certain that someone wishes your death, why did you not hire a servant to prepare your food, so that no more poisons would reach you?” asked Geoffrey, certain that
he
would not have lain down and let the likes of Henry and his kin sentence him to a lingering death while he still had strength to prevent it.

“I did. But servants can be bribed, or if not bribed, then dispatched with no questions asked.”

“Torva's death was an accident,” protested Walter wearily. “He was drunk, and he fell in the moat. There was nothing remotely suspicious about his demise.”

Godric fixed watery eyes on Geoffrey. “And what do you think, Godfrey? Do you consider such a timely death to be mere coincidence?”

Geoffrey's thoughts whirled. “The man you hired to prepare your food was drowned?”

Despite his low opinion of his brothers, Geoffrey still had not convinced himself that one of them would subject their father to a death by degrees. But Torva's death seemed opportune, to say the least.

“It was an accident,” insisted Bertrada. “Accidents do happen, you know.”

Geoffrey looked around at his assembled relatives, seeing a variety of emotions expressed. Henry appeared to be bored, twisting the stolen ring round on his finger, while Hedwise watched him absently. Walter and Bertrada were acting as though this were a discussion that had been aired many times before, and they were heartily tired of it. Stephen seemed uneasy, although whether this reflected a guilty conscience or was merely due to the uncomfortable nature of the conversation, Geoffrey could not tell.

“Was this Torva an habitual drinker?” Geoffrey asked eventually, supposing that there might conceivably be an innocent explanation of the servant's death.

“Yes, he was,” snapped Walter. “He went to the tavern every night after he prepared father's dinner. He was found dead in our moat one morning, where he had fallen as he had weaved his way home. The guards said they thought they had heard a splash, but it had been too dark for them to see anything.”

“And before you ask, there was not a mark on his body,” said Stephen, rather too quickly for Geoffrey's liking. “He was drunk and he drowned. End of story.”

End of Torva, too, thought Geoffrey. “And did you hire another servant to take Torva's place?”

“Oh, yes,” said Godric. “But I am uncertain as to whether he can be trusted. With Torva, I told him that if I became worse, I would kill him—so he had an incentive to keep me alive. But young Ine knows that I am not in a position to carry out such a threat on him. Why should he not take a bribe from the villain who is killing me by degrees?”

“Godric has been spreading these lies all over the county,” said Bertrada to Geoffrey. “He even sent for the Earl of Shrewsbury, who arrived with his personal physician. Neither found anything amiss—the physician said Godric has a wasting disease, for which there is no cure.”

“You have come just in time, Godfrey,” whispered Godric, the softness of his voice forcing Geoffrey to lean close to hear him.

Not wanting to miss anything, the others clustered round, jostling each other to secure the best places. The old man's eyes gleamed with malice when he saw them elbowing each other just to listen to his whispered conversation with Geoffrey, and Geoffrey suspected that his father derived a great deal of pleasure from the dissension and suspicion that festered between his children and their spouses.

“Three weeks ago, when Stephen told me that Godfrey was returning, I made a new will,” Godric said, just loud enough for the others to hear.

His eyes glittered as he spoke, and Geoffrey's spirits sank. He sensed he was about to hear something he would rather not know.