Blood Oath: The Janna Chronicles 1 (12 page)

“I poured the water myself, and brought it to her. She thanked me. She said the water had cooled her. In fact, she soon complained of feeling cold.” Cecily still looked indignant. Janna knew she could not press the matter further.

“Did my mother take any food or drink before she saw Dame Alice? Could she and the apothecary perhaps have taken some refreshment together?”

“I doubt it!” Cecily gave a brief snort of laughter at the idea. “There was no love lost between them right from the very beginning. He never wanted your mother to come, it was only that my lady insisted on it.” She looked up at Janna, suspicion in her eyes. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

Janna hesitated. She was being too blunt. “Forgive me. I believe my mother’s death was an accident, and I’m trying to find out how it happened. Did she swallow any of the decoctions she prepared for Dame Alice?”

“No.”

“So they could not have caused her death?”

“No.”

“Yet Dame Alice took them—and they helped to stop the bleeding and they gave her strength?”

“Yes, indeed.” Utterly serious now, Cecily faced Janna. “We’d heard of your mother’s knowledge and skill in the matter of carrying and birthing babes from one of the kitchen maids. That was why—” She stopped abruptly, pink washing over her pale face.

“That was why…?” Janna prompted, curious to understand why Cecily looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“Why…why Dame Alice sent Master Fulk to fetch your mother.” Cecily had hold of her girdle and, with restless fingers, was busily shredding the delicate fibres. Janna wondered at her apparent distress. Before she could question her, Cecily hurried on. “It was my lord Robert who asked Master Fulk to attend my lady. She soon saw that he had even less knowledge than the midwife when it came to…to…and the maid had said—”

“I’m glad my mother was able to help Dame Alice,” Janna intervened, taking pity on Cecily’s reluctance to speak of womanly matters. “Did she say anything else before she died? Did she give any clue as to what ailed her?”

Cecily hesitated. “I wondered if her wits had gone wandering. She said there were ants in the bedchamber, but there never were!” Indignation sharpened Cecily’s tone. It seemed she took the accusation personally. “‘Ants,’ she said. ‘Ants.’ Her words were quite clear.”

Eadgyth’s intention was clear to Janna too. Her mother had told her that symptoms of monkshood poisoning included feeling cold, and also having the unpleasant sensation that ants were crawling over your skin. To be sure, she questioned Cecily again. “You said my mother called for a monk?”

Cecily nodded vigorously. “That is true. I offered to send for the priest but she shook her head most violently. ‘Monk,’ she said. Even though she could hardly talk by then, she was most insistent about it.”

“Are you sure she said monk, not monkshood?”

“You mean the plant with the pretty blue flowers?” Cecily frowned, puzzled. As understanding came, she clasped her fist to her breast in shock. “But…but it’s poisonous!” she stammered.

“Yes. Yes, it is.” Janna was torn between wanting to clear Eadgyth’s reputation and keeping her suspicions a secret until she could prove them. “It was just a silly thought I had. Don’t worry about it,” she said quickly.

“Your name was on your mother’s lips as she died.” Cecily seemed anxious to switch to a safer topic. “Johanna.” Her voice softened in sympathy. “I am so sorry you came too late to speak to her.”

“She called me Johanna?” She was only Johanna when she was in trouble. Eadgyth must have taken the anger of their argument to her death. The thought, piercing as an arrow, was enough to bring Janna to tears.

“Actually, I thought Eadgyth was calling for ‘John,’ but when I asked one of the tiring women where he might be found, she told me your name. Your real name.”

Janna felt sick with misery, sick that her mother had died without forgiving her for their quarrel. “I thank you for your time, for answering my questions.” She turned away, too dispirited to ask any more.

A couple of small, grubby children were scooping mud from a puddle in the lane and carefully fashioning it into a castle. They reminded Janna of one last question. “Dame Alice’s new babe? How does he?”

Cecily’s face crumpled into sadness. “He does very poor. When she first arrived at the manor, your mother bade us wash him and rub him with salt, and then wrap him tight. The cord had been cut to separate him from my lady, but it was not tied and there was a great deal of blood. Your mother took care of that, and took care also to cleanse his mouth and rub his gums with honey. As soon as she was done, the priest came in to Dame Alice to baptize the child in front of his parents. The baby is now in the care of a wet nurse, but he does not thrive. Your mother brought back with her a mixture to stimulate the child and help him suckle, but she fell ill before she could do much more than instruct the nurse as to its use.”

Cecily’s voice echoed with misery. Janna felt a flash of warmth toward the tiring woman, who seemed so kind and compassionate. She wished Cecily could be her friend, even while acknowledging that the young woman was so far above her in station that this would always be impossible. Yet a friend was what Janna most desperately needed right now.

“Cecily!” Hugh’s voice captured Janna’s attention. She tried to still a sudden kick of excitement as they turned in his direction. Janna watched him lead the huge black destrier toward them, along with a smaller brown horse on a leading rein. The gleam of appreciation in his eyes was for Cecily, not her. She bobbed a curtsy as his gaze swiveled to encompass her.

“Johanna.”

“Sire.” She would have spoken her thanks for his presence at her mother’s burial, but he forestalled her.

“I understand that grief may have unbridled your tongue, but it was rash of you to speak as you did beside your mother’s grave. I fear you have made an enemy of the priest.”

Janna flushed, shamed by his reproof, yet she was determined that he should understand her. “The priest is already my enemy,” she said. “He made himself so when he refused to bury my mother in consecrated ground.”

“Nevertheless, you should not jeopardize your position in the village with public displays of this sort. I understand there has been a lot of hostility directed toward your mother, which might now spill over onto you.”

Janna’s face darkened with resentment; she had thought Hugh an ally, but it seemed she’d been wrong.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said quickly. “I agree with you that the priest acted outside his duty and showed no charity toward you or your mother, and I have just told him so. I’ve also warned him that I’ll be speaking to the abbess about it. She holds the barony from the king and has the bishop’s ear. You must let them deal with this priest together. Meanwhile you should more properly show concern for your own position in the village now that you no longer have your mother to protect you.”

“I am of an age to protect myself!”

“Certes you have the temper for it,” Hugh retorted, but he smiled as he said the words. Janna blushed anew. Mercifully, he turned his attention to Cecily, who stood silent by Janna’s side.

“I asked you to wait for me until my business with the priest was done so that I might escort you back to the manor,” he said courteously.

“I…I thought a walk in the fresh air might revive my spirits, sire.”

“But you are still ailing. Why do you not rest?” There was sympathy in Hugh’s eyes as he surveyed the tiring woman.

“I had long enough to rest yesterday morning.” Cecily looked down at her muddy shoes rather than meet his eye.

“Yet you did not rest,” Hugh observed drily. “Dame Alice said you were gone from the manor all morning. She’s worried about you, particularly as you looked so ill on your return. When she realized you had come out again today, she sent this palfrey to me with a messenger. She has asked me to ride home with you.”

“Dame Alice is kind to think of me.” Cecily looked stricken. Her face was so white, Janna thought she might swoon.

Hugh led the palfrey to a post nearby. Janna tried to suppress a flash of jealousy as she noticed the care he took while helping Cecily to mount. Did his hand linger unnecessarily on the lady’s waist? He held the leading rein all the while, gentling the palfrey so that it would not startle and upset Cecily. Their journey back to the manor would be slow and decorous, utterly unlike the wild ride Janna had shared with the groom. She felt a flash of resentment over the lack of respect shown to her, but knew, had she been given a mount of her own, she would not have been able to ride it. She and the groom had been racing against time. When death awaited there were far more urgent considerations than the chance exposure of a lady’s ankle or leg.

A lady! Janna made a disgusted noise in her throat. Truly she was reaching far above herself with these thoughts. All the same, she found it hard to smother a pang of envy as she watched how solicitously Hugh settled the young woman into the saddle.

“God be with you, Johanna,” he said, and mounted his own horse. Slowly, they rode away.

Janna stayed still, watching them depart, her head crammed with questions. Cecily’s description of her mother’s symptoms had dispelled any doubts as to the poison her mother had ingested. Aconite was fast-acting. Janna knew that from what her mother had told her when warning her about the properties of various poisonous plants. So whatever Cecily believed, her mother must have had some refreshment on her arrival at the manor as well as the water she had accepted.

A thought stopped Janna: If her mother had taken only a little of the aconite in something well flavored, there might not have been enough in the taste to warn her, while a tiny amount of poison might take some hours to wreak its damage. If that was so, Eadgyth could have taken the poison even before she arrived at the manor house. Who then might have given it to her?

Janna frowned as she sifted through various possibilities. It was true Eadgyth had exposed Fulk as a charlatan and that he would have access to monkshood, but Janna now knew her mother was treated with suspicion by more people than the apothecary. She would have to cast her net more widely to encompass everyone her mother might have met on that last fateful morning of her life. She would start with her mother’s mysterious visitor. Who was she? Certainly not one of the villagers. A lady, her mother had said. Up until yesterday they’d known no-one like that.

Janna stood stock-still, pondering who she might be. The woman visiting her mother had insisted on secrecy. Cecily had just revealed that she knew it was a long walk from their cot to Babestoche Manor, and also that Eadgyth’s skill with women’s troubles was known to the household. More, it seemed that she’d tried to fool everyone at the manor into thinking she was resting when, in fact, she’d gone out without telling anyone. If Cecily had visited her mother yesterday morning in a desperate attempt to get out of trouble, it could explain why, in return, she’d tried to look after Eadgyth in the last moments of her suffering, and why she’d come out to see her buried today. It would also explain why she looked so distressed and ill.

Janna decided she must find out from Cecily if she, or anyone else, had shared food or a drink with her mother. Someone must know something, and Janna vowed she would not rest until she had discovered it.

She set off to climb the downs toward the forest and home, but a hoarse shout stopped her before she’d taken more than a few steps. Turning, she found herself confronted by the miller’s wife. Hilde’s face was flushed dark red; her eyes were bright with anger as she waddled up to Janna.

“Whore!” she spat. “Ill-gotten harlot! Taking a man to your bed even while your mother was breathing her last!”

“What?” Janna felt like she had been slapped.

“I suppose you thought you were safe to do as you pleased, with your mother out of the way dispensing her potions and poisons up at the manor?”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Janna didn’t know how to defend herself against Hilde’s wrath, but she couldn’t let the smear against her mother’s name go unchallenged. “My mother was working no poison up at the manor. She was helping to save the life of Dame Alice and her newborn son.”

“Then how did she come to poison herself at the same time?” Hilde’s eyes twinkled bright with malicious glee.

“She did not poison herself. She did not!”

But Hilde was no longer listening. She began to scratch at the rash of sores on her arm, unaware that she was drawing blood. “You leave my husband alone!” she spat. “He told me he was going out to check his eel traps last night and he didn’t come home. I know he was with you and I’m warning you, you will join your mother in her grave if he visits you again.”

“But…but I haven’t seen your husband!” Janna remembered the scene at the mill, the scene the miller’s wife had witnessed. “Well, I saw him when I went to fetch the bag of flour, but his actions were none of my doing.”

“I don’t believe a word of it! I saw you talking to him, leading him on. You invited him to come to you in the night, did you not?”

“No!” Janna was disgusted by the very thought of it. “If he was gone from your bed, mistress, I assure you he was not in mine! You must look elsewhere for someone to blame for his roving ways. Perhaps, indeed, you should ask your husband for an explanation!”

Hilde’s hand, bloodied from scratching at her arm, moved down to her bulging stomach. She touched its rounded contours with soft fingers. Janna felt a twinge of pity, until she caught Hilde’s expression. Stony and unforgiving, her glance raked over Janna.

“I saw you in his arms. I saw you kiss him!”

“He kissed
me
—and I kicked him in the bollocks in return!” Janna felt sick, poisoned by the woman’s suspicion.

Hilde looked momentarily nonplussed. Then she gave a snort of disbelief. “I am warning you, miss. Do not entice my husband to your bed again.” She pulled a small knife from the purse at her girdle, and brandished it in Janna’s face. The blade glinted bright in the sunlight. “Tempt him again and it’ll be your turn to feel how sharp this is!”

Janna blinked. Before she could respond, Hilde had shouldered her aside and lumbered back down the lane. Janna looked after her, shocked and upset by the unexpected confrontation. That the woman was unbalanced was obvious, yet her mother had told her it was not unknown for pregnant women to become unsettled and to take odd fancies. It was certainly true that the miller gave Hilde good cause to worry and fret. She resolved to keep out of Hilde’s way in future.