A Head for Poisoning (58 page)

“And since I suspect that King Henry knows more than he is telling about his brother's timely demise we had better not ask who,” said Joan. “So, all those accusations and counter-accusations about Godric's murder were for nothing—no one killed him, no one poisoned him or Enide?”

“Right,” said Geoffrey.

“Well, at least the Earl of Shrewsbury did not get away with foisting his false will on us,” she said, after a moment. “Olivier managed to get his fat priest drunk and indiscreet, and he learned that the Earl really
did
forge the document that claims Godric left Goodrich to him. But it does not matter now—Goodrich is ours once more.”

“I cannot imagine that the Earl will accept defeat lightly,” said Geoffrey. “He will be back to try again.”

“I do not think so,” said Joan confidently. “He is no fool. He knows he has been beaten over Goodrich, and he will not risk the King's anger to continue his war of attrition with the Mappestones. He might come for us if the Duke of Normandy ever claims the crown of England, but that will not be for many years yet—if ever.”

They had reached the large chamber at the bottom of the stairs. Geoffrey entered it cautiously, holding the torch above his head and his sword at the ready. The room was deserted, and appeared exactly as it had done the last time he had been there.

Joan shuddered. “What a foul place. And this is where Enide lived for four months?”

“Not all of the time,” said Geoffrey. “I imagine she stayed with Adrian on occasions, or Malger. She has not been here since Father's murder or Rohese would have noticed.”

“I had no idea this room existed,” said Joan, running her fingers along the shelves curiously.

“But you knew of the tunnel,” said Geoffrey. It was not a question.

“Oh, yes. I was in my teens when the keep was being built, and since girls are not permitted the freedom of boys to go gallivanting around the countryside, I watched the castle's progress with some interest. I guessed what the shaft was for, and I did my own exploring, and discovered the tunnel and where it went. Godric thought it was his secret, and I did not tell him that I knew about it.”

“He might have had you executed as a threat to his security,” said Geoffrey, smiling, but not entirely sure that it was too remote a possibility.

Joan grinned. “He might well have done. I explored the passage as far as the door to this room, looking for Rohese the night Godric died, but it was barred from the inside. I have never actually been in here.”

So that cleared up another loose end, thought Geoffrey. Joan had not been able to enter the room at the end of the tunnel because it had been barred at that point. Rohese, however, had found it open, and so Stephen must have unbarred it when he had gone from the woods up to Godric's chamber. He had slipped through Godric's room while Walter, Geoffrey, and Rohese had been sleeping, and returned later to argue with Godric after Walter had left.

Joan continued to explain. “When I got back to Godric's room, you and Walter were preparing to go back to sleep. I hid in the garderobe passage until you dozed, so you would not know where I had come from. I had to move the chest from the door, back to the end of the bed. I wondered why you slept through the noise I made: Walter was drunk, but you were not. I did not know then that you had been drugged.”

“Why did you move the chest?” asked Geoffrey.

Joan regarded him with a sideways tilt of her head. “Because I wanted to leave, bird-brain! I could not get out with the chest blocking the door, could I? Anyway, I did not realise why you had put it there in the first place. I thought Walter had placed it there by mistake in his drunken stupor.”

“Hunting Rohese down to sleep with the Earl seems a little callous,” said Geoffrey. “She is only a child and surely too young to be thrust into the clutches of a man like him, even for only a night.”

“Nonsense,” said Joan. “She had been with the Earl every night since he forced his presence on us at Rwirdin—except for the last one, when he chose a girl from the village. Rohese was unreasonably jealous, and refused her favours to show him her displeasure.”

“She slept with him voluntarily?”

“Of course she did,” said Joan, surprised by the question. “Do you think I would let her go to him if she were not willing? It is something about which I happen to feel very strongly. I am in the process of preventing Julianna from falling victim to a similar fate, but Olivier mentioned that he had told you about that. I was a little concerned, actually, thinking that a Holy Land knight was hardly someone to be trusted to protect a young virgin. But you have proved that my fears were unfounded: not only have you not forced your attentions on her but you have been kind to her and Rohese.”

So Rohese had not been strictly truthful with Geoffrey when he had been so gallant in saving her from what had seemed to be a fate worse than death. He wondered what other lies or misleading statements she had made to him.

“Did you stand in for Rohese when she could not be found?” asked Geoffrey, and immediately regretted his impertinence. If she had, it was none of his business.

Joan glared at him in outrage. “I most certainly did not! What do you take me for? Have I changed that much since we last met?”

Geoffrey thought that she had changed very little. She was still aggressive, sharp-tongued, critical, and intolerant, but she was also somewhat prudish and not especially attractive. She certainly was not the kind of woman to leap into bed with any passing earl—or be the kind of woman any passing earl would want there. Geoffrey was embarrassed that he had asked such a question.

“Olivier stayed with the Earl that night,” said Joan stiffly.

Geoffrey was more embarrassed than ever. Joan saw his reaction and sighed in exasperation.

“Geoffrey, what is the matter with you? Has your stay in the Holy Land deranged your mind? Olivier played dice until the Earl was ready to sleep, and then played the rebec. Olivier is a very skilled musician and the Earl finds his playing soothing.”

“Ah,” said Geoffrey, not knowing what else to say.

Still offended, she looked around the room. “Someone has made this hole quite comfortable.”

“Do not stand around chattering,” called Henry, who had gone on ahead and was at the door that opened into the woods. “This door is locked and I cannot open it.”

Geoffrey's blood ran cold. “We are trapped?”

Joan watched him. “We are not,” she said firmly. “Enide has just blocked the door, that is all. Give it a push with your shoulder, Henry.”

Henry did as he was told, but the door was stuck fast. Geoffrey inspected it, and then gave it a solid kick at waist level. It moved a little.

“A stone is blocking it,” said Henry, elbowing him out of the way. “Move. I can open it now.”

Geoffrey stood back and watched as Henry heaved and shoved at the door, accompanying his efforts with an impressive litany of curses and blasphemies. Geoffrey offered to help, but there was only enough room for one, and Henry was clearly intent on doing it himself.

“Making up for not firing your arrow at Drogo to save Geoff, are you?” asked Joan waspishly.

Henry glared, leaning his back against the door and shoving with all his might. “I could not be sure that I would not hit Geoffrey,” he grunted. “Then you would have been all over me for murder.”

“That would not usually stop you,” said Geoffrey.

“Well, things are different now,” muttered Henry. “I am lord of Goodrich; I can afford to be gracious.”

If not committing murder was Henry's notion of being gracious, Geoffrey decided yet again that the sooner he was away from Goodrich, the better. He backed away from the door to give Henry more room.

“It will not budge,” said Henry. “You try.”

Geoffrey leaned his weight on the door, and pushed as hard as he could. It remained fast.

“This is useless,” said Henry, watching. “I need a lever.” Before Geoffrey could stop him, he had grabbed the torch and darted back up the stairs, leaving Joan and Geoffrey alone in the darkness.

The pitch-blackness in the cavern pressed down on Geoffrey. Somewhere, he heard a light patter as some sand fell from the roof. The soft stone through which the tunnel had been excavated was completely inappropriate for such a structure, and Geoffrey felt part of the wall crumble even as his outstretched hand brushed against it. And then there was a hiss and a crackle as yet another trickle of earth and pebbles dropped from the ceiling. He found he could not breathe deeply enough to draw air into his lungs, and he started to cough.

He began to walk blindly towards the stairs, hoping to catch up with Henry, but he had not gone far before his foot caught on the uneven floor and he went sprawling forwards onto his knees.

“Geoff? Where are you?” came Joan's voice. He felt her hand on his shoulder. “Do not try to chase after Henry. He will not be long.”

“We are trapped in the dark,” said Geoffrey tightly. “And the dust is choking me.”

“There is no dust,” said Joan reasonably. “And we are not trapped. We will be out soon, and we can always go back up the stairs to Godric's chamber, anyway.”

Geoffrey swallowed, and tried to bring his panic under control. “I know.”

“I understand your dislike of enclosed spaces,” said Joan sympathetically. “You wrote about it in your letters.”

“My letters to Enide,” said Geoffrey, still coughing. “Or rather my letters to some scribe, who was doubtless enjoying himself thoroughly at my expense. Still, at least I know it was not Norbert. That man could not pen a decent letter to save his life.”

“Actually, they were letters to me,” said Joan in the darkness. “You addressed them to Enide, but she lost interest in writing to you within a year of you leaving—especially after her accident. Dictating a letter takes a long time, and she was too active and too impatient to sit so long at one task. She usually left them lying around in our room, and I took them to Olivier to read.”

“So my letters were to Olivier?” asked Geoffrey, horrified. “Wonderful!”

“It was wonderful for me,” said Joan quietly. “It gave me an excuse to see him, and we enjoyed the business of composing letters to you together. He wanted me to tell you that it was us and not Enide when we first started to write to you, but I was afraid that if I did, you might not write again, and then I would have lost two things I had come to care about—my reason for spending so much time with Olivier, and writing to you.”

“No wonder Olivier knew that I had been transferred to Tancred's service, but my brothers did not,” said Geoffrey, recalling his surprise when the small knight had mentioned it when they had first met.

Joan nodded. “He has followed the career of a fellow knight with great interest.”

“And it was not Enide who was considering becoming a nun,” Geoffrey went on, remembering another subject in the letters. “It was you. And it was not me you were telling—it was Olivier, so that he would make up his mind and marry you.”

Joan sighed softly. “It did not work—I think that ploy was too subtle for him. But I felt that I came to know you much better after you had left than I had when you were here. And then, when Enide died—or we thought she did—it was too late to be honest. We had to stop writing, even though we longed to continue.”

“But it was all based on deceit!” objected Geoffrey. “You are right—I might not have written back to you had I known what you had done.”

He was startled to hear a soft intake of breath that sounded like a sob. He reached out in the dark, but she moved away from his hand. He scratched around for something to say to break the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“I wrote to you for twenty years. Did you love Olivier all that time?”

Her voice was unsteady when she spoke. “I fell in love the first time I saw him, but you see how he is. He would never have gathered the courage to ask me to be his wife. In the end, when I was almost resigned to remaining a maiden all my life, Walter took your manor at Rwirdin so that the Earl of Shrewsbury would become interested enough to force him into action.”

“So, first you steal my letters intended for Enide, and then you steal my manor,” said Geoffrey, unimpressed. “All to secure Olivier for yourself.”

“It was worth it,” said Joan, sounding defiant. “I might have lost you now, but I gained Olivier in the process. He might not look much, but he is the most gentle, charming man I have ever met, and quite unlike all the other pigs that call themselves knights—including you. You can keep your paltry manor! I do not need it now. I have what I really want.”

Geoffrey recalled the tender words about the lover he had assumed was Enide's. So, it was Joan's, and the astonishing object of her affections was the cowardly Olivier, a man so feeble that he had taken years and years to secure his wife. Geoffrey recanted that thought almost immediately: Joan was a formidable woman, and perhaps Olivier had done well in eluding her amorous clutches for so long.