The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) (14 page)

She was left with the impression, as he walked off, that he had already known of the matter, and she wondered why he hadn’t admitted it. Serlo was not the type to bottle up such things. If he thought that he knew more than another, he would gladly boast about it. Most unlike him, she reckoned, but then she heard Aumie cry, and her maternal instincts took over for a while. It was only later that she returned to the theme. ‘It was terrible, Serlo!,’ she told him. ‘Those two poor boys, dead like that! I don’t know what to say!’

‘Then shut up,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘I don’t give a toss for that beggarwoman or her brood. Now what’s for supper?’

She couldn’t ignore his mood. All too often in the past when he had been in this frame of mind, he had beaten her. Rather than
risk that, she offered him a thickened pottage with some lamb meat, and left him to his solitary contemplation of the fire, walking out to watch over her children as they played in the yard. She was still there a while later when he came out.

‘I’m going to see my brother,’ he said, and strode off up the road towards the vill and his precious Alexander.

He was a hard devil to please sometimes, that husband of hers.

Lady Anne heard the men return from the vill and, rather than wait for her husband, she walked carefully down the stairs to greet him and learn what had been happening.

He was still in the yard when she reached the top of the staircase outside the hall. Like so many newer castles, this one was built with a view to defence, so the hall was up a flight of stone steps; beneath was a large undercroft for storing foods. From her vantage point, she could see that Nicholas was visibly upset. He had the expression that he usually wore when a dog misbehaved and sprang the game too early, or when a peasant didn’t turn up for his traditional labour days. He carried his head lower, like a bull preparing to charge, and his brows came together above his nose, giving him, so Anne thought, a deliciously aggressive aspect.

Others would quail in his presence when he wore that expression, but not Lady Anne. She knew her man better than that. For her, there was no danger from him. Although he could be as terrifying as an ogre to the men-at-arms about the castle, towards her he was ever a polite and kindly gentleman. Even now, she saw the two new men-at-arms, Richer and Warin, receiving a blunt reproach from Nicholas. Richer, she noted, looked close to answering back. For a moment Anne actually thought he would, but then Warin took his shoulder, and he calmed down. Fortunately, Nicholas hadn’t noticed; he was shouting at a groom for being lazy.

‘It was Athelina? She is dead?’ she asked Nicholas, running down the stairs to his side.

‘Yes,’ he responded. His eyes met hers for a moment, and then he roared at a servant to fetch him wine. ‘She killed her boys, too. No one’s seen them for a couple of days, not since Saturday evening, so we think she did it then. Christ Jesus, but I have no idea why! What can she have been thinking? Oh, my love, I am sorry!’

Anne had winced on hearing his words, a hand instinctively rising to her belly as though to shield her child’s ears. She could feel herself blench even as her husband rested his hands upon her shoulders, his eyes full of compassion. ‘My dear, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘It was a terrible thing to kill the boys,’ she said.

‘Dreadful! The pair of them lying there, their throats …’ He looked drawn. Anne put her hand up to cover his on her shoulder as he continued. ‘I’ve seen enough of rapine and murder in war – you
expect
it. Every man’s heart hides a wild brute, and it’s only in time of war that the beast is released to act as it wishes … but this? It’s abnormal
wicked
to see children murdered by their own mother – the woman who’s supposed to seek only their safety and protection.’

‘It is the way sometimes, though,’ she said. He was haunted by these deaths, she saw, and she wanted to comfort him, but wasn’t sure how. She’d never seen him so affected. Yet it was natural, surely, for an honourable man to feel this way? Especially when his wife was expecting her own first child, she told herself with a faint sinking sensation in her heart.

She loved him. She adored him. How
could
God have deceived her so and made her betray him?

‘Who’s that?’ Letitia muttered as she heard the footsteps, but she needn’t have wondered. There was only one man who
would walk to Alexander’s door at this time of night without hesitating.

‘Where is he?’ Serlo demanded, seeing her at the hearth.

‘If you mean your brother, I expect he’s still at Athelina’s. Someone has to keep an eye on the place until the Coroner arrives, and goodness knows when that will be.’

‘I want to see him,’ Serlo said.

Letitia saw how he grimaced as he said it. There was something on his mind that he knew was going to annoy her husband, and she stood up, wincing slightly as a knee clicked. She knew that she was intimidating to Serlo; it had something to do with her height, for she was at least two inches taller than him, but it was also her manner.

She had been born into the family of a merchant in Bodmin, a wealthy enough man, and when she agreed to marry Alex, it was a move designed mostly by her father. Alex was even then a forward-thinking man, and his fame was travelling farther than merely Bodmin.

She deliberately used her ‘older sister’ tone. It was the same tone she had used to intimidate her younger brother when they were children, and she had always found that it suited her perfectly in dealings with Serlo. Standing taller than him, she inclined her head until she was looking down her nose at him. ‘What have you done now?’

‘I ain’t done anything!’ he snapped. ‘Least, nothing much.’

‘Have you been demanding money from travellers again? You’ve been warned already by that fool Richer only yesterday. Alexander was very upset to hear that. You were stealing from us – from him. If he learns that—’

‘I’m not scared of that scrote Richer. He can go and—’

‘Save your great oaths for your customers, Serlo. I have no use for them,’ Letitia said, holding up her hand. ‘All I want to know is, what’s upset you this time?’

‘It’s nothing. I’ll find him myself. He’ll be at Athelina’s place, you say?’

‘I imagine so. You should try there first,’ she said, with a distant expression. If the fool didn’t wish to confide in her, that was fine, she thought, but as he slammed the door behind him, she could have kicked the hearth in annoyance. The ridiculous fellow! Walking in here as though he owned the place! He’d probably been caught with his fingers in someone’s sack of grain again. The idiot was so incompetent, he couldn’t even rob his customers without being found out.

He was looking very sad, though. Letitia began to wonder whether there wasn’t something more important at the heart of his strange behaviour. But for the life of her, she couldn’t think what it could be.

It was almost dark when Letitia heard her husband returning down the lane. He was declaiming loudly, as he sometimes would when he was particularly incensed by some petty or foolish action.

‘The fellow should be set in the stocks for all to throw their waste at. Fancy thinking he could get away with it!’ he was saying as Letitia opened the door for him. She gave him a perfunctory kiss on his cheek and took his jack from him, hanging it from a hook on the back of the door. Serlo she left to his own devices.

‘Alex, come to your chair, dear.’

‘In a moment, wife. My brother has much to tell me, apparently,’ Alex said, in that bluff, hearty way of his that Letitia liked so much. It was at once open and friendly, but simultaneously powerful – so masculine. ‘Serlo, sit and take some ale with me. You fetch it, while I kiss my wife. You know where it is.’

Serlo grunted, and Letitia thought, he
ought
to know – he’s guzzled enough of our best ales over the years. Just as he has eaten our best food. Always appearing whenever we’re sitting down to eat or drink, the foul, scrophulous chancre. Then he sits and dribbles, glopping his drink like a ploughman in an alehouse. It’s enough to make you want to throw up.

Alex knew her feelings only too clearly. He went to her and patted her hand, but in a way that showed he wasn’t best pleased with her.

‘Letty, he’s my brother.’

That was just what she needed to hear! ‘I think, husband dear,
that I knew that already,’ she said with poisonous sweetness. ‘But I was hoping to be able to talk to you myself tonight. I didn’t realise that we were once more to be joint advisers to your brother.’

His smile was a little warmer than his pat. ‘Come on, now. He won’t be here for long. You know what he’s like. He gets a bee in his shirt and has to shake it loose. I’m the only man he can trust. It’s always been that way. Remember, he’s never known a mother. That sort of thing marks a man.’

‘Marks him enough to steal from you?’ she asked pointedly.

‘If he’s been making a little on the side – well, you can’t blame him,’ Alex said, but less forcefully.

‘He’s robbing you after all you’ve done for him!’ Letty hissed. ‘You heard what Richer said at the church just as I did.’

‘Richer’s always been an enemy to us.’

‘Maybe, but was he lying?’ Alex was so unlike his brother, Letitia thought gratefully. He had seen his father’s decline into poverty and ruin, and it was that which had spurred his own ambition. Alex had started with a cottage and a few chickens, but in four years he had developed his assets and now he had this house, a large share of the mill, three sheepfolds, and numerous other investments. He was the most important man for ten miles in any direction outside of Bodmin.

Serlo followed in his father’s footsteps. What he had, he risked in gambling; what he didn’t have, he tried to win by threats and cajoling. Sometimes he succeeded, because many people here had a nervous conviction that what Serlo wanted, Alex would get for him.

Letitia watched as her brother-in-law sat down on the bench in front of her husband’s chair. Alex sat easily, relaxed. This hall was a recent acquisition, but he wanted a home that suited his new status. The size of the place went to prove how important he was; the dimensions dwarfed the people inside. It was even larger than
the hall in the castle. The buttery and pantry always contained food and drink for friends.

‘I’m sorry, Alex. I …’

Alex waved a hand. ‘Come on, Serl. What’s the matter this time? Is it that arse Richer again?’ he asked, leaning forward keenly. ‘If it is, I’ll deal with him.’

‘No. It’s just that bitch Athelina. I wish she’d killed herself out on the road and saved us all this trouble!’

Alex allowed a short frown to cross his face. Letitia knew he hated to hear women slighted.

‘You ought to show her a little more compassion, brother. She’s dead, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, stuff that. She was asking for it. Useless baggage. Never did a decent day’s work after her husband died, did she? No. As for those squalling brats … I’m not surprised she topped them first. I’d have done it for her if I’d had a chance.’

Alex sucked on his teeth. ‘What is the problem?’

‘You know how behind she was with her rent. I told her to get out if she couldn’t pay. Said she must find the money somehow or I’d break one of the boys’ legs.’

‘And? Is that all you said?’

‘She didn’t pay.’ Serlo shrugged.

Letitia watched him with a feeling of intense, sickening rage. She daren’t open her mouth in case she screamed abuse at him for using those words, those cruel, horrible, unrepeatable words. In that moment, she learned what true hatred was.

‘I’d have done it if she had the cash and was holding out on me, but since she hadn’t, what was the point?’ Serlo continued. ‘There wasn’t any way she could get that money together. She had nothing. I’d asked for it so we could empty the place and put someone in for more money, but now! Well, how in God’s name can we find new tenants when it’s crawling with guards and the castle’s men? And even then, it’ll take a load of money to get the
stench of death from it. Who’s going to want to live in a place that smells of filth?’

‘Blood isn’t filth,’ Alex remonstrated quietly. Letitia thought he should have bellowed. When she looked at his still, inexpressive features, she saw that in his heart he had.

‘The blood of two bastards and their bitch of a mother is. She must have rutted like a stoat before her husband died. Probably wore him out – that’s why he had that fall.’

Letitia felt as though the air itself was starting to throttle her as Serlo continued his vile tirade. Her face was reddened in shame and self-disgust, she could feel it. It was almost as though her head could explode from the pressure of her humiliation.

Serlo must have known that she and Alex had been trying for a child all their married life, while he himself, who had been married only half as long, had already managed to produce two boys.

All those nights when she had sweatily and hopefully rutted with Alex, all those happy days when she thought her monthly time was going to be missed, and the despair when she had suddenly felt the menstrual ache grip her abdomen.

They had agreed now that they couldn’t continue like that. There was no point in worrying about children, not when every other aspect of their lives was so good. Their marriage was strong, much more so than those of many others, and Alex was growing ever more successful in his work, so there was no need to torture themselves any more. Better by far to enjoy the lives they had and hope that some day God would reward their patience. The barrenness could be caused by any number of problems and Alex, bless him, was as aware as Letitia herself that the culprit could be either of them. There were as many dogs who couldn’t father a litter, or bulls a calf, as there were barren bitches and cows.