Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) (21 page)

"As you will," Faucon said to the mute once Edmund had his basket on his back. "Lead us to your sister."

Johnnie immediately swiveled toward the pale. Again, as he walked he threw no backward look to see that he was followed. Faucon wondered if this was because the simpleton trusted his Crowner to come along, or if Johnnie lacked the capacity to doubt. Across the stubbled and furrowed fields they went, Johnnie leading the way at his awkward pace until he reached the hatch Gawne had used yesterday when he escaped Odger. The gate in the wooden pale was foreshortened and narrow to prevent deer from fleeing the forest for Wike's fields. As such any man wanting to enter the king's woodlands had to do so one at a time, with his head lowered and his back bent.

With an ease that said he'd done this often enough, the half-wit opened the little gate and ducked through it. Once on the other side, he tiptoed without hesitation across the narrow plank bridge, the one Gawne must have yesterday kicked off the embankment as he made his escape. That it again spanned the deep ditch said Wike's folk had come this way to enter the woods.

As Faucon watched through the narrow opening, Johnnie turned to the west, again moving off without a backward look. Alf followed Johnnie, almost folding himself in half to pass through the hatch. The soldier paused on the opposite side of the ditch as if he meant to wait for his master and the monk. His view framed by the opening, Faucon waved Alf to move on as he waited for Edmund to pass through the pale ahead of him.

A moment passed, then another. Still, Edmund didn't move.

Faucon came to stand alongside his clerk. The monk stared through the hatch, his gaze locked onto the three lashed planks that bridged the deep gap. His hands were wrapped so tightly around the strap of his basket that his knuckles were white. There was aught in his expression that suggested the monk liked that makeshift passageway as much as his employer liked the water in the well.

"Will you cross?" Faucon prodded gently.

His clerk made a strangled sound. "I—" Edmund started. He looked at his employer and almost pleaded, "Is there no other way?"

Faucon nodded. "There is, but you'll like it no better than what is before you. Yesterday, the bailiff went through the holly." He gestured toward the hedge Odger had pierced and that had surely pierced him in return as he exited. "I speculate, but I suspect that yon shrubbery hides yet another bridge such as this," he offered with a shrug. Then before Edmund could reply, Faucon continued. "There's a third option, one that might please you better than the first two. Now that you've taken oaths from the smiths and made note of what we've learned thus far, there's no need for you to be here in Wike or the forest, not until the jury is called. As of the now, I don't expect to do that until late this evening or perhaps even the morrow."

"But we've yet to find that old man," Edmund started.

Faucon held up a hand to forestall his clerk's protest. "I agreed last even to meet Hew sometime over the course of this day. When I do, I can take his oath. You can note that he's given it at the same time you record the names of the jurors at the inquest. Why not return to Alcester and spend your day in the abbey's chapel?"

Much to his surprise, his offer didn't win him the gratitude he expected from the monk. Instead, Edmund shot him a hurt look, dragged in a deep breath and hurtled through the open gate. He clattered across the planks at top speed. With nothing holding the ends of the bridge in place, it bounced precariously on either bank as the monk ran. An instant later Edmund was beyond Faucon's view.

Faucon followed, albeit at a more moderate pace. As he crossed, he glanced into the ditch. A ladder leaned against the slope, suggesting that retrieving the planks from the ditch was a frequent chore.

Edmund had stopped well beyond the gateway. His basket lay on the ground while the monk had his hands braced on his thighs. He was bent in half, gasping for breath as Alf and Johnnie continued on ahead of him, already a good distance into the king's lands.

Coming to a stop beside the monk, Faucon looked around him, grinning in delight. The air that filled his lungs was lush with that particular spice that was autumn, one that held hints of dying leaves and an earth made richer by their passing. The foresters who served their monarch had laid a heavy hand on these lands, or at least in this area. He saw it in the unnatural spacing of the mature trees and the flexible withe panels—protection from ravaging deer—wrapped around the saplings chosen to one day take the places of their parents once their elders were harvested.

Not far from where he and Edmund stood, this grassy meadow gave way to something a little more shaded and tangled. There holly, elderberry, and blackthorn had been allowed to grow as they would, their feet buried deep in bracken and felled trees. These natural hedges and thick barriers were intended to supply hiding places and dens for those creatures that both Man and Beast loved to hunt.

When Edmund realized his employer was waiting for him he waved for Faucon to move on. "Go," he gasped. "I'll follow in a moment."

"If you're certain," Faucon replied. His comment only won him another wave of Edmund's hand.

Setting out at a trot after the two men ahead of him, Faucon's pleasure grew as he moved deeper into this place. His footfalls startled sleeping hedgehogs and sent mice skittering into the fallen leaves. Overhead, squirrels chided as the last of the season's birds darted among the almost barren branches.

If Faucon needed proof that Odger had brought Wike's folk this way, he found it in the shoe- and footprints left in the moist soil of the path and in the wide swath of trampled grasses along its verge. But human spoor wasn't all he saw. Badger, fox, and weasel had all come this way since the rain. Although he found no mark of deer, Faucon knew as well as any man that these woods were stocked with both red and roe. And boar. Oh, to have a bow in his hands and a day of his own to spend as he wished!

Still reveling in both his longing and the joy that accompanied it, Faucon came abreast of Alf. Ahead of them, Johnnie moved steadily forward at his strange pace, looking neither right nor left as he went.

"You won't get it," Alf said, shooting his Crowner a swift glance as Faucon matched his stride.

Faucon blinked, startled out of his pleasure. "Won't get what?" he asked, looking at the soldier.

"The murdrum fine," Alf replied, this time without turning his head to meet his Crowner's gaze.

That brought Faucon up short. Alf stopped with him, watching his better in unguarded amusement. For the briefest of instants, Faucon considered challenging the commoner's assertion with the king's name, then thought the better of it.

"Why not?" he demanded instead.

Alf cocked his head, yet wearing his amusement openly. "Because the moment their bailiff realizes that's what you're after, he'll force some man to claim he fathered the girl. If I were that headman, I'd claim her myself and take my punishment to avoid what you want to press on him," the tall commoner replied. His tone suggested that this was so plain he was surprised his new master hadn't considered it.

And of course it was that plain. Faucon grimaced and released a frustrated breath. He'd let himself be carried away by Edmund's rigid and uncompromising honesty, when Wike was an underhanded and sly place, a den of lies and liars.

As Alf read his employer's expression, he grinned. It was a snaggle-toothed smile. "Well then, if you're set on collecting that fine, you'd best be very circumspect," he warned. "It's in your favor that the smiths don't seem to have realized what you won from them with their oaths. More importantly, even if they do suspect, they won't have an opportunity to speak to their bailiff until he returns with his folk. Which, if it were me," Alf added, narrowing one eye as if calculating, "won't be until dark has fallen, after you've retreated and the smiths have retired behind their own walls. That is, if this bailiff is doing his best to avoid you."

Faucon laughed at that. That was one sign he hadn't misread. But murdrum fine or no, he'd see that Odger's ploy cost him. Given what he now understood of Jessimond's murder, that price would still be far more than the bailiff expected to pay. "Avoiding me he most surely is, much to his detriment."

"Just know that he'll defend himself by saying the corpse had gone missing, then rightly claim that without a body no jury could be called," Alf warned. "He'll offer the same ploy on the morrow, taking his folk away, if he can."

"That's only if my corpse remains missing," Faucon replied, smiling as he again started after Johnnie. "My thanks, and know that I've taken your advice to heart."

That made Alf laugh as he strode alongside his new Crowner, then he indicated the youth ahead of them with a jerk of his chin. "So, you're certain this odd creature can lead us to the girl's body?"

It was Faucon's turn to destroy assumptions. He grinned at the commoner. "I not only think he can, but I believe he leads us to the dead lass's mother because she asked him to do so. You heard the smith. And now, thanks to you, I know to keep the body of Jessimond the Leper's Daughter a secret until I call that jury. Odger won't have time to recruit any other man to assume the role of Jessimond's father."

Disbelief and confusion flashed across Alf's face. "Tell me this. How is it a leper can come from a place as isolated as this one?"

That made Faucon offer his new man a sour smile. "It's a complicated tale, one that includes a headman who misuses his power over those beneath him, a child of anonymous rape and a woman wrongly driven from her home, forced to whore to care for those she loved. Worst of all, it was from one who had taken vows of chastity that she acquired her disease."

Alf freed a breath and gave a shake of his head. "That's the sorry way of our world, isn't it? Only by my uncle's goodness did my mother avoid a whore's fate after my father abandoned us. So, do you know yet who throttled this child?"

Once again, the pieces Faucon held in store shuffled and rearranged themselves as he pondered how to answer Alf's question. There was no pattern that satisfied him. At last, he gave a frustrated shake of his head.

"That I cannot settle on anyone to accuse surprises me. There's been only one other death since Halbert's that's had me confounded this way." Then Faucon shot an amused sidelong glance at the Englishman. "I know who I hope did the deed, but hoping is not the same as confirming."

As he spoke, he caught a sound from behind them and threw a look over his shoulder. Edmund jogged steadily toward them, his basket bouncing on his back, the hem of his black habit flying. As Alf saw the monk, he stepped off the trail, only returning to it once Faucon and his clerk had walked ahead of him.

That was how they proceeded, moving single file behind Johnnie. Faucon marked the fork where Odger had lead his folk to the right, while the simpleton bore to the left. As Johnnie tiptoed steadily on, the landscape around them shifted from wooded grove to grassy meadow and back again. But once they crossed a streamlet the hand of Man became less evident. Holly and brambles grew to the edge of the path, their leaves and branches reaching out like claws to catch sleeve or hem when they passed too close. Overhead, autumn-thinned tree limbs tangled to cast dense shadows that were only occasionally pierced by narrow shafts of light.

Then Johnnie left the path, turning abruptly onto the weaving thread of a game trail. Within a few yards, they were passing between two thick walls of vegetation—blackthorn, elderberry, and laurel. Again turning sharply, the mute pushed his way through one of those leafy barriers. Faucon followed, only to catch his breath in appreciation as he entered a fairy glade.

An uneven circle of trees—oak, ash, and slender beech— enclosed a small parcel of cleared ground, their thick canopy shattering day's light, sending golden droplets raining down to dapple all that lay below. At his feet what remained of former trees thrust up here and there from the thick carpet of fallen leaves. These rotted stumps were studded with mushrooms and coated in brilliant green moss. Water trickled somewhere nearby.

In that instant, Faucon knew this was the place where Amelyn and Jessimond had met, the same place that Jessimond and Gawne had made their own, and where Jessimond had died. And now it was the girl's sepulcher. The lass's corpse lay at the center of the glade. Amelyn had done as she'd warned her former neighbors; she'd prepared her child for burial. Faucon wondered if Hew had found her the rough hempen fabric she'd used for a winding sheet. Gawne sprawled crossways at Jessimond's feet, his head pillowed on one arm while he'd crooked the other over his head as if to block light. The lad was so deep in slumber that he didn't stir at the crunch of Johnnie's footsteps when the half-wit walked past him.

Faucon scanned the glade again, this time seeking the nest Hew mentioned. The children had used the single rowan, one with low hanging branches. About a third of the way up the tree, they'd erected a short wall woven from osier and other thin branches. It looked much like the blinds that foresters and huntsmen employed when they wished to observe their prey in secret. Had the tree been in full leaf, the wall would have been invisible. But even with its limbs barren, the rough construct looked more like a tangle than a man-made shield.

Rather than stop near Jessimond, Johnnie continued across the glade, yet moving at his peculiar pace. Faucon glanced past him to see what drew the mute. Only then did he notice Amelyn. The leper also slept, curled in slumber. She'd made her bed at the base of a tree, a thick stand of tall fern serving as her bed curtains.

Just then, Edmund pushed through the leafy barrier behind him. Faucon twisted, his hand rising to warn the monk to silence. But his clerk's gaze was fastened on Jessimond's corpse.

"I cannot believe it! He really did bring us to the girl!" the monk cried out.

Before Edmund's last word was out, Faucon was leaping for Gawne. Yet half-asleep, the lad shot up to sitting. The boy's unfocused eyes latched onto the man coming at him. With a frantic yelp, he wrenched around, scrabbling on hands and feet as he sought to escape his crowner.