Caught Red-Handed Page 5

  Two older lasses, the eldest surely no more than twelve, their hair the color of honey, followed their younger siblings. Although they wore gowns of the same pale blue as their mother, it was Waddard's reflection and his grief that Faucon saw in their faces. These two were bolder. They came to stand behind their mother in the track.

  As Waddard halted his ancient nag before the woman who had once been Raymond's wife, Faucon raised a hand, signaling his party to halt. Edmund wasn't quick enough with his reins. His donkey pushed forward, stopping only when he was between Legate and the verge. That trapped the monk's foot against the side of the track. Muttering in irritation, he yanked it free, then dismounted to stand on the verge.

  "Juliana, I bring someone even more powerful than the abbot," the potter told his wife. His voice was tense, suggesting long-running discord between them. At his call the door to the cottage closest to the churchyard fence opened, and an old woman leaned out to look up the track at her neighbors.

  "This is Sir Faucon de Ramis, our shire's new Keeper of the Pleas," Waddard was saying. "By the order of our king it is he, rather than our sheriff, who now investigates all unnatural deaths and calls our jury. Sir Faucon says the king has also given him the power to protect Dickie's body. This he has promised to do. He will keep Dickie safe until he calls the jury to accuse Raymond of killing our son."

  Faucon frowned at Waddard's misunderstanding of his duties. But as his mouth opened to correct him, a man's frantic shout echoed forward from the roadway behind them. "These knights come to protect Dickie's corpse?! What of us? Who will protect us from Dickie?"

  Turning in his saddle, Faucon looked back along the track. The dogs had dispersed. In their place was a gaggle of youths, no boy among them old enough to sport more than a wisp of a beard. Standing with them was a lass wearing dark blue. She was a pretty thing, with fine features set in an oval face and thick black hair. Her wide-set dark eyes were reddened and the downward pull of her full lips suggested grief.

  As the lass caught him looking at her, she bowed her head and swiftly stepped up onto the verge. Darting around Brother Edmund, she moved off in the direction of the church. The youths milled for an instant, glancing between each other, then followed her. The old woman crossed her arms as the youngsters passed in front of her home on their way to the churchyard.

  The departure of the youths left about four dozen adults yet in the roadway. Although they were mostly men, a surprising number of women stood among them. Given that he'd tallied over sixty homes since that first pair of cottages, it seemed that most of Mancetter's householders had joined this procession.

  "Milo is right, Waddard," shouted a heavy-set man wearing a blanket over his shirt and chausses. "We all know how much trouble Dickie was while alive." He paused to glance around at his neighbors. "We all agree he's sure to be just as much trouble in death, isn't he?"

  "Like father, like son," agreed an oldster. He held a ragged cloak closed around him with one hand as he shook his finger at the potter. "Waddard, you went to Merevale on a fool's errand. Even if you'd brought the abbot with you, neither he nor these knights can stop us. Admit it. You know we're right, and so is what we mean to do."

  "Tell us, sirs. How do you intend to protect us from a corpse we all know will walk?" called yet another man, his powerful voice radiating forward from the back of the crowd.

  As his challenge reverberated off the houses at either side of the track, folk began to shuffle and shift, opening a way for him. In his middle years, he was tall and broad-shouldered. Unlike the others, he wore no cloak or blanket to protect him from the onset of a chill evening. Fair hair hung to his shoulders, framing his square-jawed face. A thick scar, one that suggested a blade, ran from beneath his left eye to his jaw. It had cut deeply enough to leave a bare patch through his thick golden-red beard. If this man had once been a soldier, whatever his present occupation, it kept him just as fit. His green tunic stretched taut over his upper arms and hung loosely across his belly.

  Faucon shifted toward Waddard. "This is your reeve?" he asked in a low voice. In truth, he needed no one to tell him that this was the man who ruled Mancetter; both his challenge and his swagger said as much.

  Waddard, already twisted in his saddle as far as pain would allow, nodded. "Aldo is also our smith," he offered, his voice equally as low and his tone cautious. "It was in his smithy that we found Dickie this morn."

  "Aldo, leave be," Father Godin called as he slid off the back of Alf's horse. Coming to earth without stumbling, he turned to face his flock, his fist on his hips. "Dis ist a ting for our Church and the king's man, not any a ja. Go to home, all a ja."

  "What right have you to instruct us?" the reeve shot back as he came to a stop at the front of the crowd, just out of arm's reach of the priest. "It's you who will no longer have a place here if you persist in protecting one who doesn't deserve your protection. Nor can you expect us to sit idly by and do nothing, not when we all know what will happen. If there's naught we can do to stop Raymond, we can stop Dickie. All of us, even you, Father, know what must be done."

  He half-turned to glance at those behind him. "Do we not?" The folk he ruled supported him with a roar of approval.

  "Why do we listen to this Churchman? He's not even our priest," a woman shouted angrily. "Father Berold would never have stolen Dickie's body from us. Nor would he have locked us out of our own church."

  Faucon found her easily in the crowd. Her brown gown clung to her voluptuous form. Her resemblance to the pretty girl said that, if they were not mother and daughter, they were surely kin. Unlike modest wives who pulled their head coverings to the top of their foreheads to conceal their hair, this woman wore hers pushed back to the middle of her head. Thick wings of black hair swooped out from under her scarf, falling softly over her cheekbones and framing a face that would have been lovely if it hadn't been twisted in anger.

  She pushed her way forward until she stood next to her reeve, then turned to face those behind her. "Neighbors, we should drive this imposter priest from Mancetter and do it this very moment. He should be punished for his daring!"

  When only a few in the crowd lifted their voices in agreement, she pressed her case. "Hear me, all of you! Alive, that boy took my daughter, ruining her. Now that he's dead, I won't have him seducing my Tibby into following him!" That won a much stronger reaction from those watching, albeit more surprise than outrage.

  "My son did no rape to Tibby!" Juliana cried in protest.

  Trapped in front of her husband's nag, she shifted right then left, but could find no safe pathway through the horses. Unable to confront her son's accuser, she settled for shrieking, "If Tibby says Dickie took her against her will, she's as much of a lightskirt as you are, Bett."

  "How dare you!" Bett shouted in the direction of the potter's wife.

  "Juliana, mind your tongue!" Waddard shouted at the same instant. From atop his mount, he extended a forestalling hand. "Now is not the time for this."

  Raymond's former wife turned her blazing gaze on her second husband. Her mouth trembled. "Now is not the time," she mocked, her voice raised to a level that all but the most distant in the crowd could hear her. "That's what you said three days ago when I warned you what would happen if you did not allow me to act. Nor was it ‘the time' the day before that, nor the day before that. Now, there's no time left, all because you refused to take even the smallest action at any time to stop this!"

  Waddard blanched. "Juliana!" He turned his wife's name into a shocked cry.

  Flinching, he wrenched around in his saddle to plead with his reeve. "Aldo, I pray you take no heed of my wife. She is bereft and doesn't know what she's saying."

  "I know exactly what I am saying," Juliana retorted. "I've never known better what I must say than in this moment. I'm saying that if anyone is to blame for Dickie's death, it is you, Waddard." As she spoke, she yanked off her head covering and threw it to the ground, then pulled at her overgown as if she meant to undress in front o
f everyone.

  "Mama, stop!" her eldest daughter cried in shock. Beside her, her next younger sister snatched up the discarded headcloth and hugged it to her chest. Her eyes wide, she glanced between her parents.

  Juliana ignored her children. "Listen closely, all of you," she shouted again to her neighbors, yet yanking at her overgown. "Hear me as I say that if Tibby is ruined, it's because she wanted Dickie to ruin her. I'm saying that each and every one of you who dares to celebrate my son's death today are the very cause of his demise. Rather than help me, all you wanted to do was blame him for Raymond's wrongs, when my child never knew his sire.

  "Now, today when you should know guilt, you instead harden your hearts and seek to deny my child, my precious son, any chance at heaven! Should you succeed, know that I will forever pray that all of you are damned for what you wish to do to him!"

  Her curse reverberated off the houses on either side of her and sent shock rippling over the crowd. At the same instant Juliana's overgown tore down the middle. She shrugged it off her shoulders. When it lay in the roadway, she gave it a vicious kick and looked at her husband.

  "All the years I've wasted! Would that I had never wed with you!" she screeched, then lifted her skirts and raced in the direction of the church.

  "Mama!" her next oldest daughter protested, her voice breaking in pain as all her sisters began to cry.

  "Juliana, come back!" Waddard called after her, sounding heartsick.

  Faucon breathed out in disappointment as he watched the potter's wife run. Oncoming night had painted the whitewashed homes around him a gentle gray, and dark shadows now piled softly in every corner. There’d be no perry for them tonight. Instead, they'd make their beds on the hard floor of Mancetter's church alongside a dead boy who might seek to escape them at any moment.

  The old woman in the cottage nearest the church still stood in her doorway. After Juliana raced past her, she retreated inside her walls, leaving her door wide. At the churchyard fence, Dickie's mother scrambled out of the track and dashed through the gate that Tibby and that gaggle of youths must have left open behind them.

  As his wife raced across the grassy yard toward the church door, Waddard yanked painfully around on his nag to address his reeve. "You must forgive her, Aldo,” he cried frantically. "Neighbors, you all must forgive her. You know Juliana. You've known her all her life. Has she ever before behaved like this? Nay, she has not. She's crazed with grief."

  "I do not forgive her," Bett shouted. "Aldo, I demand you fine Waddard for the slander his wife spews at me."

  "Dismount," Faucon told Will and Alf at the same time, his voice low enough to keep his words between them. "We're for the church."

  Then he looked at his clerk, who yet stood on the verge. "Brother Edmund, hurry ahead of us and stand ready at the church door. You'll enter the instant it opens to guard the boy's body while we hold the door against these folk," he told the monk, when what he really wanted was to keep Brother Edmund out of harm's way.

  With a nod the monk lifted his heels into what was almost a trot. That was both unusual compliance and speed for him. As Alf followed Edmund along the verge, Will dismounted. Faucon's brother smirked. "Does our king allow his new Coronarius to kill his subjects? If so, know that I'm willing to help."

  Faucon clenched his teeth, biting back his frustration with his brother. Before his accident Will would never have uttered such nonsense. It had been their father's first lesson, given on the day he put wooden swords into their small hands. An honorable man only drew his weapon at the command of his liege lord or his king, or when he had exhausted all other means of resolution. Even an idiot could see how complicated this situation was. Violence would destroy any hope of cooperation, and cooperation was what Faucon craved most from Mancetter's folk, for he was swimming in questions.

  Blessedly, Will turned to follow Alf rather than demand a response. Faucon started after his brother, then glanced over his shoulder at Father Godin. "Father, you must open the church for us so we can protect the boy's body," he called in French, hoping he was right about the man's fluency.

  He was. The priest whirled. In an instant, the churchman had threaded between the standing horses and passed the yet-mounted Waddard. Then, lifting the skirt of his long gown, he raced full tilt in the direction of his church.

  "Our priest means to allow these strangers into our church," Aldo bellowed at the same time, revealing that he also understood the tongue of his betters. "We cannot allow them to keep us from reaching Dickie's corpse. Hie, all of you!"

  Mail jangling, Faucon kept pace with Will while ahead of them Alf dogged Brother Edmund's heels. Father Godin darted past the knights, then around the soldier and the monk to dash through the open gateway. Juliana was already on the nave porch. She crouched to one side of the locked door, her head buried against her knees, her shoulders shaking.

  Again Faucon glanced behind him, this time looking to see where the reeve was. The smith was only now passing Waddard's horse as the potter struggled to dismount. That had Faucon wondering if what Mancetter's reeve really wanted was a chance to beat his shield in front of a stronger foe, seeking to impress those he ruled.

  If that was Aldo's intention, then it was a shame only a few would witness their headman's performance. Only Bett and a dozen men had answered Aldo's call to follow him. The rest of the villagers in the track were putting their backs to their reeve and their church, choosing instead to return to the safety and warmth of their own hearths and homes.

  Ahead of Faucon, Will climbed out of the roadway to jog through the gate into the churchyard. Alf and Brother Edmund were almost at the porch steps, while a panting Father Godin now stood before the church door. As the priest pulled a large iron key out of the leather scrip that hung from his rope belt, Juliana came to her feet. Standing with her head bowed, the grieving mother swayed a little.

  Faucon eyed the church door as he followed Will across the yard. As with any door built from heavy oak, long metal braces extended from its massive hinges to help support the weight of the wood. But there was another metal strip— one not connected to a hinge— on this door. Nailed above the handle, it aligned with a second metal strap that was fastened to the church wall. A massive iron lock connected the two straps. Thus, was the door held shut without the need of a bar or someone inside to man that bar.

  The priest turned the key in the lock, then removed it. With his other hand, he yanked at the lock, then yanked again, then twisted and pulled, seeking to free the shank from the holes in the two straps. Tucking the key back into his scrip, Father Godin then fixed both hands around the lock and pulled with all his might. Juliana eased closer to him.

  Metal scraped on metal as the shank came free. The priest rocked back on his heels. In the same instant, Dickie's mother lunged forward and threw open the door. It slammed into Father Godin. Already off balance, he stumbled backwards, then dropped to sit on the porch floor.

  "Of all the insolence!" Brother Edmund shouted at the woman, dashing across the porch to scold. He was too late. Juliana had fled into the church.

  "Brother Edmund," Faucon called to his clerk as he followed Will toward the porch steps, "take Father Godin inside now and be quick about it. Alf, open the door to its widest. Will, hie! Join Alf in the doorway. Stand with your swords drawn, tips to the ground."

  As monk and priest entered the church, Alf took his assigned position. Will bypassed the steps and leapt onto the porch. He joined the English soldier in the arched opening as Faucon reached the center of the porch. Turning to face the yard, he stood with his arms relaxed at his sides and his sword yet sheathed.

  The reeve entered the yard with only Bett and six men at his back, half of his original support. The other six, craven laggards all, had stopped at the corner of the old woman's house. There they huddled in the deepening shadows, all of them watching the churchyard.

  Faucon's lip curled. Mancetter's men were no different than their dogs. Like that pack of curs, they were con
tent to slink cautiously along, offering only the pretense of threat.

  Aldo came no farther than the porch steps. No surprise that. Had the reeve closed the gap between him and those he pretended to challenge, it would have been an indication that he intended to provoke violence.

  As the reeve's remaining male supporters gathered close behind him, Bett continued forward until she stood alongside the big man. "Why do you halt?" she demanded, asking the question that Mancetter's menfolk should have posed. "Lead us to the door. They are only three. We can push past them and enter our church."

  Aldo ignored her, his gaze on Faucon. "Who are you to prevent us from entering our own church?" he demanded in English.

  Again Faucon's lip curled, this time his scorn aimed at the reeve. For all his size and bulk, Faucon wondered what sort of soldier Aldo had been. As blows went, this one was badly thought out and poorly executed.

  "I am Sir Faucon de Ramis, your shire's newly-elected Keeper of the Pleas," he replied in the same tongue. That won a startled blink from the reeve and open surprise from the men behind him. "I am charged with protecting the body of Dickie of Mancetter until the jury of the hundred is called to confirm the name of the one who took his life. Know that to challenge me is to challenge our king."

  At his proclamation the men behind Aldo glanced uneasily at each other. Almost as one, they took a backward step. Not so Bett. The pretty woman lifted her head to a proud angle. Her eyes narrowed.

  "You're a stranger to us, sir, known here by no man," she said to Faucon. "What proof do you offer that you are who you say and have the rights you proclaim?"

  The reeve yelped as the woman's insult struck him instead of the man she'd intended to disparage. And just like that, control of this encounter fell neatly into Faucon's hands. He pulled his sword from its sheath. Resting the tip on the porch floor between his feet, he folded his hands over the pommel.