A Head for Poisoning (43 page)

“Then he left, and—”

“Who left?” asked Geoffrey.

“Walter,” said Rohese, as though it were obvious. “And then you and Sir Godric had this argument before …”

She trailed off. Geoffrey regarded her blankly. “None of this makes sense. Tell me again. After Walter and I were asleep, Joan came out of the garderobe passage, presumably having come through the hidden door, where she had been searching for you in the tunnel. She moved the chest from where I had put it against the door, to where it usually stood at the bottom of the bed. She then left. Correct?”

Rohese nodded, her eyes still wary, and fearful.

“Then Walter also left. How long after Joan had gone was this?”

Rohese swallowed. “I do not know. I fell asleep. But I think it was quite some time, because the fire had almost burned out. Walter was gone when I woke, but you still slept.”

“Good,” said Geoffrey. “Then what?”

“Then I grew uncomfortable under the mattresses. I thought I might never walk again if I did not stretch my legs. I climbed out, and began to walk around the room. Then I saw the door at the end of the garderobe passage. Joan must not have closed it properly when she left. I know now that you need to slam it hard to make it stay shut, and Joan obviously could not slam it if she wanted to sneak out of Sir Godric's chamber without waking you up. I think she
thought
she had closed it properly, but it came open later by mistake.”

“Good,” said Geoffrey again, appreciating her logic. “Did you know what this tunnel was, or where it went?”

Rohese nodded. “Enide mentioned it once. Although she would not say so, I think she liked to use Sir Godric's chamber from time to time so that she could slip out and see her lover.”

“So you hid in this passage?”

“Not immediately. There was no need at first. The Earl seemed to have given up his search, and I thought I could just stay in Sir Godric's room until the next day.”

“So what happened next?”

“I took a torch, and went to look at the passage—more for something to do than anything else. I had peeped under the window shutters, you see, and it was only just beginning to grow light outside. I did not want to go back to sleep, but it was too dark to do anything in Sir Godric's chamber.”

“Then what?”

“As I was exploring, I heard voices. I thought it was you talking to Sir Godric. He was shouting with anger, and I was afraid he might wake the Earl and cause him to come to the chamber, where I would be discovered. It was then that I went back and closed the door.”

“And what was my father saying?”

“I do not know,” said Rohese. “I did not listen very carefully. Sir Godric is always angry about something or another, and it is usually something silly or boring. And once I was in the tunnel, I could not really hear anyway.”

“But it was a man's voice that you heard, talking with him?” asked Geoffrey, thinking that he could at least eliminate Joan as a suspect for the murder—which would be a relief, for he suspected that out of all of them she might prove the most formidable in the end.

Rohese frowned. “It may have been a woman. Joan, Hedwise, and Bertrada often go to Sir Godric during the night. There would have been nothing odd in them being there.”

“There is when my father claimed someone was poisoning him,” said Geoffrey. “Why did they ever need to come anyway? I thought you were his … chambermaid,” he said, selecting the term Julian had used.

“Not for the last few weeks,” said Rohese. “Before he became ill, he would come to my chamber—Enide's chamber, I should say—and spend the night there. I hate that room of his, and Enide said I did not have to sleep there if I did not want to.”

“And you heard nothing at all of this conversation between this person and my father?” said Geoffrey. “Not a single word?”

“Well, I might have heard a few,” said Rohese vaguely. “But I did not really understand what they were talking about. I only listened so that I could hear when they had gone, and I would be able to come out again.”

“Yes?” asked Geoffrey, his hopes rising. “What did you hear?”

“I cannot be certain. I think I heard Sir Godric say ‘Tirel.'”

“Tirel?” asked Geoffrey. “You mean Walter Tirel?”

“Yes!” said Rohese, giving a faint smile. “Walter Tirel. That was it. Who is he?”

“The man who shot King William Rufus in the New Forest,” said Geoffrey. His thoughts reeled. Was Adrian right after all? First, they found that the dates on Enide's hidden parchments corresponded to possible events connected with the murder of Rufus, and now the name of the murderer was mentioned in Godric's chamber by the person who seemed to have killed Godric himself.

Rohese sniffed. “Well, I do not know about things like that,” she said. “But later, I think I heard someone say ‘Norbert.'”

“Norbert?” asked Geoffrey. “Godric's scribe?”

“I do not know,” said Rohese again. “You keep asking me questions, and I do not know the answers. I do not know whether they meant Norbert the scribe or another Norbert.”

“Do you know another Norbert?”

She considered. “No. I suppose they must have meant Norbert the scribe, then.”

“Is that all?” asked Geoffrey when she was silent. “You heard nothing more?”

“After a few moments, Sir Godric gave a great groan, and started muttering and moaning. I thought he must have made himself ill, perhaps with that vile wine he drinks. Eventually, when I was certain he was alone, I crept out, to see if I could help him, but there he was, lying in the bed and all covered in blood.”

“And he was dead?”

“No,” said Rohese. “He was not dead. He was groaning and crying and making fearful noises, and cursing and swearing. …”

Geoffrey could well imagine how the ill-tempered Godric would take his impending death. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Rohese. “He cursed you all—although he called you Godfrey, so you need not worry too much. He told me that I should go to the tunnel in the garderobe and stay there until I was sure it was safe to come out—he said they would kill me for certain if they knew I had been there. I am still not sure it is safe, so I am still here.”

“Did he say who had killed him?” asked Geoffrey, knowing the question was useless because Rohese, apparently, had thought it was him.

As he had predicted, she shook her head. “He just said that there were dangerous men in the castle, and that I should never reveal to anyone that I had been listening in the garderobe passage the night he died.”

Geoffrey sighed. Godric, with his desire to protect his whore, and by not mentioning the names of the dangerous men to her, had closed an avenue of investigation.

“I stayed with him until he died, and then I left.”

“Did you look at the wound that killed him?”

“No,” said Rohese, surprised by the question. “It was in his stomach, though.”

So, Geoffrey thought, Godric had been stabbed in the stomach with his own dagger and had died. But who had come to his chamber later, after he was dead and after Rohese had left, and stabbed him a second time, on this occasion with Geoffrey's Arabian dagger and in his chest?

Certain things were clear though. Someone had planned his father's death with some care. Geoffrey stared at Rohese without really seeing her, trying to make some sense of the mass of information he had gathered. Someone had ensured that Walter and Geoffrey were drugged or drunk while Godric had been murdered, and that Geoffrey was still asleep the following morning to be discovered in a horribly compromising position with Godric's corpse.

Geoffrey rubbed one eye that was still sore from the dust. Rohese had said that Walter left the room before Godric was murdered. Walter had denied moving the chest to get out, and this was true, because, according to Rohese, Joan had moved it already. Walter claimed he rose early, and that Godric had still been alive. Rohese's evidence indicated that he was telling the truth.

However, while Rohese had explored the tunnel, someone had entered Godric's room and argued with him, after which Godric had been stabbed. The killer had then tipped the wine out of the window and followed it with the murder weapon. Rohese had emerged, and found Godric dying. Once he was dead, she had fled back to the tunnel, after which the killer, or yet another person, had entered Godric's chamber and stabbed the corpse a second time with Geoffrey's weapon. Was this to make Geoffrey appear guilty of the crime, or to make absolutely certain the old tyrant was dead? Godric had pretended to be dead the morning after Geoffrey had arrived, so that his youngest son would catch the others in the act of looting his corpse. With wily old Godric, it would certainly have paid to be certain.

He rubbed his eye harder. All he could deduce was that someone already inside the castle had murdered Godric, and that the culprit had not left via the tunnel
after
the crime because Rohese would certainly not be alive to tell the tale. And just because Walter had left the chamber before Godric was killed did not mean that he had not returned later to argue with and slay the old man.

Geoffrey thumped the rocky wall in frustration. He had a witness who had been awake and in the same chamber the night his father had been murdered, and yet she was able to tell him virtually nothing—even whether the voice of the killer was male or female.

“Did anyone else use the tunnel after you did?” he asked, certain that they had not because Rohese was still alive, but wanting to be thorough.

Rohese shook her head. “No one at all. I have been here all alone. Except for her.”

“Her?” queried Geoffrey. He turned to where Rohese pointed, and promptly dropped the torch in shock, plunging all into darkness once again.

G
eoffrey's hands fumbled and shook, and he found himself unable to relight the torch. Rohese eased him out of the way.

“Let me do it,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

“I am not afraid, either,” snapped Geoffrey. “Just shocked, that is all.”

“I was afraid at first,” said Rohese, as if he had not spoken. “But not any more. She cannot harm anyone, the poor creature.”

Once again, the cave sprang into light. Geoffrey snatched the torch from Rohese, and went to inspect the thing in the alcove.

It was, without doubt, the severed head of a woman. Geoffrey fought to keep the torch steady, but he found he could not. He swallowed hard, and looked at the leathery skin that stretched across the skull like a mask and the gauzy hair that cascaded around it, and searched for some sign that he was gazing into the face of Enide.

He raised a shaking hand to his mouth, and promptly turned away. Adrian had told him that Enide's head had never been recovered: Geoffrey now knew that the reason was because someone had hidden it in Godric's tunnel. Had Godric known it was here? Or had it been put in its niche after Godric had been confined to his bedchamber because poison was eating away at his innards?

He rubbed harder at his eye. Joan's role in Goodrich's sordid affairs was beginning to look very suspicious: she knew about the tunnel—and therefore also about Enide's head—and Rohese had not been able to tell whether a man or a woman had argued with Godric before killing him. Also, severing a head from the shoulders with a sword was something a knight might do—a man such as her husband, Sir Olivier. And finally, it was Malger and Drogo, friends of Olivier, whom Geoffrey had fought in the tunnel. How else could the Earl's henchmen have found out about the tunnel, other than through Joan?

Geoffrey looked around the chamber properly for the first time. It was roughly rectangular, with a door at each end, both of which stood open. One was the door through which Geoffrey had entered the cavern, while beyond the second was another tunnel, leading, Geoffrey assumed, to the woods, since Drogo and Malger had fled down it. A heap of rags on a low ledge in a corner had apparently been serving as Rohese's bed, and there was a shelf along one wall. In the middle, displayed with some pride, was Geoffrey's heavy silver chalice—the one that had been stolen from his saddlebags as he had rescued Barlow from the river.

Bewildered, he picked it up. It was without question the one Tancred had given him—there was a dent in the rim where Tancred had used it to brain the man from whom he had stolen it. Geoffrey stood on tiptoe to see if the shelf held anything else, and reached up to retrieve his Hebrew and Arabic scrolls that had been stolen at the same time. Someone had ripped them in half, perhaps in anger at not being able to decipher them. Saddened, he placed them carefully inside his surcoat, grabbed the cup carelessly by its stem, and turned to Rohese.

“You must be hungry,” he said. “Come on. Let's go.”

“There was bread and water here,” said Rohese, pointing. “And cheese and some wine.”

“Really?” asked Geoffrey. He bent to inspect Rohese's bed. He had been wrong when he had assumed it comprised rags: it was actually several warm blankets. Next to them stood a jug and the remains of a loaf of bread. Someone else, apparently, had intended to stay a while in the underground chamber.