The Winter King (9 page)

Meggie, looking round, noticed that there was a large, central house made of mellowed old stone, with two new-looking wings running out on either side. There were faint sounds of sawing and hammering from somewhere out of sight, and a voice yelled out something, followed by gruff male laughter, abruptly cut off. Lord Benedict, it appeared, had been in the process of extending his dwelling when death had interrupted.

Sabin called out – not very loudly – and after a while a young stable lad came to take the horses. It did not appear to be part of his duties to ask their business or usher them inside, for he did neither, simply leading the horses to a corner of the yard, where he tethered them before ducking back inside whatever building it was that he had just emerged from.

‘What now?’ Sabin asked in an anxious whisper.

You’re asking me!
Meggie thought, amused. ‘We’d better go inside.’ She strode across the courtyard and up the steps to the imposing front door, which was made of oak banded and studded with iron and looked new. It stood slightly ajar. She pushed it, and it opened on to a wide hall in which a fire smouldered in the hearth. The hall was hung with beautiful tapestries, their glossy sheen and the faint, woolly smell they emitted suggesting that they, too, were brand new, and there were some heavy pieces of fine oak furniture along the walls of the hall.

And then Meggie remembered exactly who Lord Benedict was, what his job had been, and the likely source of his sudden wealth. She almost blurted it out to Sabin, before realizing that, if Sabin didn’t already know Lord Benedict had been as close with the king as a flea to the hound’s back, then now wasn’t the time to tell her.

Feeling even more apprehensive, she stepped into the hall, Sabin on her heels. She called out softly, ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

At first there was no reply. Then there was the sound of hurrying feet, and an ample woman in the middle years came puffing up from a passage off to the left. ‘Her Ladyship’s not receiving callers and the steward’s out the back with the builders,’ she said breathlessly. ‘What do you—’ She caught sight of Sabin, standing behind Meggie. ‘Oh, it’s you again. Thought you’d finished last time. Come to lay him out, have you?’

Meggie dug her elbow hard into Sabin’s ribs. Sabin gave a sort of squawk and said, ‘Yes.’

The serving woman turned back down the passage. ‘Help yourselves. You know where he is. He hasn’t moved, as far as I know.’

Her coarse laughter echoed back along the passage.

‘Not exactly pining for him, is she?’ Meggie whispered.

‘He was an awful man,’ Sabin hissed back. ‘He—’

‘Hush,’ Meggie said. ‘Not now. Anyway, I know his reputation.’

Sabin, looking intrigued, opened her mouth as if to pursue the comment, so Meggie gave her a nudge to stop her. ‘We’d better do as that woman said,’ she said firmly. ‘Where’s this cellar?’

‘Down there.’ Sabin broke into a trot, hurrying off down a second passage which, presently, began to descend. Soon they were in the cellar; Meggie drew her cloak more firmly around her and wished she had something to press against her face.

They stepped up to the trestle table and looked down on the body of Lord Benedict de Vitré. Working together, they quickly removed his garments, and Sabin stood back while Meggie inspected him from head to toe. Then Sabin helped her turn him over, and she did the same to his back.

‘Bring that candle nearer,’ Meggie whispered. Sabin obliged. Meggie removed it from the holder and, with the flame close up to the corpse’s back, leaned right over the body. ‘What did you make of this?’ She indicated the spot with the crust of dried blood.

‘A pimple or a boil, or maybe a flea or louse bite,’ Sabin replied, ‘which he’d scratched and made bleed. There are lots of them, although that’s the biggest.’

Meggie said, ‘Hmm,’ and went on looking. ‘Would you hold the light?’ Sabin took it from her. With both hands free, Meggie peered at the bloody spot. Putting two fingers either side of it, she pushed the surrounding flesh this way and that.

Abruptly she stood up. She stuck the candle back in its holder and put it back at the corner of the trestle. Then, trying to keep her voice calm, she said, ‘Help me turn him over. We must dress him again and cover him up.’

‘What …’ Sabin began.

Meggie gave a
tsk
of exasperation. ‘Just
do it
, Sabin.’

Their four hands worked swiftly and efficiently, and soon the corpse appeared just as it had done when they found it. Meggie took one last, careful look at the body, the trestle table, the candles in their holders.
Have I missed anything
? she thought. Her heart was hammering in her chest.
No. I don’t think so.

She took a firm hold on Sabin’s arm and said, ‘Come on. We’ve got to get away from here.’

Up the spiral stair. Along the dark, cold corridor, their footsteps echoing. More steps, another passage … and then they were back in the hall, and it was still empty, and there was the open door and, beyond, the courtyard and their horses waiting.

It was all Meggie could do not to break into a run.

Only when they were a good five miles from Medley, deep within a stretch of pine wood – an outlying patch of the Great Forest – and out of sight of anyone on the road going to or from Lord Benedict’s house, did Meggie pull up.

She slid down from Daisy’s back and, taking hold of the reins of Sabin’s horse, looked up at her and said, ‘Get down. I want to know
exactly
what happened.’

‘But …’

Meggie ignored the interruption. ‘Last night, you merely told me that you’d gone with the two canons to inspect the body, and you were very afraid you might have missed something that would be dangerously incriminating. I undertook to return with you to see if I would spot anything you’d missed.’ She felt resentment rising in her, dangerously close to anger. She took a breath, then said more calmly, ‘I have done what you asked of me. Now, before I reveal my conclusions – before I say another
word
– I want the whole story, from the beginning, if you please.’

With a sigh, Sabin dismounted. She took her time over looping her horse’s reins round a branch, and Meggie guessed she was thinking how to begin. Finally, she squared her shoulders, looked Meggie full in the face and said, ‘She sent for me. Lady Richenza, that is; she’s Lord Benedict’s wife. She’s barely more than a child, Meggie, and yet they married her to that foul, fat old man.’ She paused, her face working as if she was trying to conquer strong emotion. Then she said, ‘She wanted me to give her something to stop her conceiving, and something else to render Lord Benedict impotent, and, God help me, I did.’

Meggie absorbed the information. It was not exactly what she had expected to hear.

‘You’re shocked and horrified,’ Sabin burst out, as still Meggie did not speak. ‘I
knew
you would be, I shouldn’t have told you. I—’

Meggie reached out and took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze.

‘I’m neither shocked nor horrified,’ she said. ‘I expect I’d have done the same thing myself. It’s very difficult to refuse such an appeal.’

‘Oh, it
is
!’ Sabin agreed fervently. ‘Meggie, she knew absolutely
nothing
about the mating process before she was wed to him – she told me she thought he was poking a stick into her to punish her for something!’

‘Yes, many high-born girls go ignorant to marriage,’ Meggie said.

‘It’s
wicked
!’ Sabin said passionately. ‘Have their mothers no compassion? No sense? Naturally, there’s no hope that a girl like Lady Richenza would have had the advantage of being able to observe animals in the farmyard or fields, or even creatures in the wild, as peasant-born girls do, but if their mothers only told them a little of what awaited them, then both the girls
and
their husbands would stand a far better chance of happiness!’

‘I agree,’ Meggie said mildly. She wondered what had made Sabin so forcefully angry on the subject.
Ask her
, she thought. ‘Were you a similarly ignorant bride?’

‘Me?’ Sabin gave a short laugh. ‘No. You forget, Meggie, I was long a healer before Gervase and I were wed, and when finally we found ourselves in our marriage bed, I was even more impatient that he was.’ A smile of reminiscence crossed her face. ‘You?’

‘I’m not married,’ Meggie reminded her. Sabin gave her a resigned look, and she grinned. ‘I was like your peasant girls, Sabin. I tended animals as soon as I could walk, and I grew up knowing full well what awaited me with the man of my choice.’

‘You have made your choice?’ Sabin asked. Meggie nodded. An image of Jehan swam before her eyes, his black hair loose around his dark-skinned, fine-featured face, the gold ring glinting in his ear. ‘And you had lovers before?’ Sabin persisted.

Suddenly another face imposed itself on Jehan’s. This one wore an expression of wry amusement, and the brilliant blue eyes were so fiercely intent that it almost hurt. Out of Meggie’s memory came a vignette of that day, a year ago now, when she had stood in the clearing by St Edmund’s chapel above Hawkenlye Abbey, a sword in her hand, facing a short, stout stranger who promised to teach her to fight and whose charisma, even now and merely a remembrance, still had the power to make her tremble …

Enough
, Meggie said silently. ‘Tell me how you helped Lady Richenza,’ she said firmly.

‘Yes. Sorry,’ Sabin muttered. ‘Well, she understood nothing, as I’ve told you, and at first she said,
“I don’t want him hurting me like that,” and then, “I am very afraid of pregnancy and childbirth,” as if the two matters were not connected. Do you know, Meggie, she told that stinking old man that she thought kissing led to babies! Imagine those fat, slobbery lips kissing you –
euch
!’

‘I’d rather not,’ Meggie said soberly.

Sabin’s face grew serious. ‘He gave her a lesson, the night she said that to him,’ she said. ‘It’s so deeply unpleasant that I don’t want to tell you.’

‘I don’t want to hear.’ Meggie was afraid she could imagine, all too well, what the old man had done to his child wife. ‘What did you prepare for her?’

Sabin sighed deeply. ‘For Lady Richenza herself, I made an emmenagogue of pennyroyal, houseleek, thyme and rue, to strengthen her menstrual flow and induce her courses. From what she told me, it seemed unlikely that she had already conceived, but, just in case, I prepared a concentrated decoction of birthwort and raspberry leaf, hoping thus to render her womb inhospitable. I also prepared a fleabane poultice for her to bind to her belly.’

‘You were very thorough,’ Meggie observed.

‘The lady was very desperate,’ Sabin replied.

‘What about him?’

Sabin frowned. ‘Lady Richenza said he was fat, lazy, and regularly overindulged on both rich food and fine wine, and I thought that such a man’s four humours would be so gravely unbalanced that he would probably not produce healthy seed. I did, however, prepare a distillation of seaweed, which, I’m told, makes a man’s seed thin and useless, added to a very few drops of tincture of fresh yew needles, to slow the heartbeat.’ She glanced down, as if suddenly unable to meet Meggie’s eyes. ‘I added some drops of my strongest soporific, comprising woodruff, valerian and a very small amount of poppy milk, since a very sleepy man is hardly likely to want to mount his reluctant wife. I also advised her to keep him drinking plenty of wine, and, if possible, to mix in with it some
eau de vie
. Do you know what I mean by that?’

‘I do,’ Meggie said. ‘It is a distillation, is it not, from some form of alcoholic drink? The distillation makes it very strong, I believe.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Sabin gave a shrug. ‘Really, Meggie, I was at a loss, for in all the years I’ve been practising as an apothecary, and the many years before that when I was my old grandfather’s pupil, I can’t remember ever before being asked for a potion to make a man impotent. The opposite, yes, all the time.’

Meggie smiled. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it, either,’ she agreed. She was thinking hard. ‘So, other than a large amount of alcohol, the only unusual items that your potion introduced into Lord Benedict’s body were the yew tincture and the strong soporific. Is that right?’

Sabin was looking at the ground again. She muttered something.

‘What was that?’

She met Meggie’s eyes. ‘I put a tiny amount of aconite in the mixture.’

‘You –
what
? Monkshood? Why?’

Sabin looked away. ‘It reduces the beat of the heart and they say it induces numbness. I thought it’d keep him flaccid.’

‘But it’s toxic, and you’re a healer.’

‘I
know
,’ Sabin wailed, ‘but, Meggie, the poor girl was desperate, and I had to help her.’

‘Yes, of course you did, but not at the cost of risking harming somebody else!’

‘But he was brutal to her!’

There was a short, awkward silence. Then Meggie slowly shook her head. ‘Oh, Sabin.’

‘What is it?’ Something in Meggie’s tone must have alerted her. ‘Oh, God, Meggie, what’s the matter?’ Frantically, her eyes searched Meggie’s. ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’ Sabin’s breathing was shallow and rapid now, her eyes wide with terror. ‘You spotted some sign, some symptom, and now they’ll notice too, that stiff-necked steward and the serving women, and they’ll ask Lady Richenza, and she’ll confess, and then they’ll come for me and I … I …’

Meggie grabbed her hands, briefly holding them in a tight grip. ‘
Stop
this, Sabin. You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t control your fear. I saw nothing that would have led me to suspect what you’d put in the potion that Lady Richenza gave to Lord Benedict.’

Sabin was still staring at her. ‘But there
is
something wrong. Isn’t there?’ Slowly, Meggie nodded. ‘Oh, dear God, tell me.
Tell me!
’

Meggie drew a deep breath, and slowly released it. ‘I did find something, yes. Something which, were anyone else to notice it, would alert them and, in all likelihood, lead to a new and far more thorough investigation of Lord Benedict’s death.’
When
, she could have added,
it is quite possible that they would cut him open and discover exactly what was in your potion
.