Cruel As the Grave (28 page)

Geoffrey tried to laugh in disbelief, but what emerged was a strangled sound of despair. "This is madness, all of it. Why would I kill Melangell? Even if she had threatened to go to Adela, what of it? Master Serlo would not care that I'd been tumbling a peddler's wench. So common a sin would not jeopardize the marriage ... and what other reason would I have for killing her?"

Jonas smiled again, a hunter's smile. "So you admit that jeopardizing your marriage would be a motive for murder."

"I did not say that!"

"It sounded like that to me. How about you, lad?" Jonas swung around suddenly upon Daniel. "Didn't it sound like that to you?"

"I... I do not know! Why are you badgering him like this?"

Jonas was no longer smiling. "Because there is blood on his hands, the blood of two innocents. In killing Melangell, he killed a child, too, his own child."

Daniel choked back a cry. "Melangell was pregnant? Geoffrey, is that true?"

Stunned, Geoffrey could only shake his head mutely, the flowers for Adela falling unheeded to the floor at his feet.

"I spoke to the midwife myself," Justin said, with enough ice in his voice to turn that simple sentence into the most damning of indictments. "She remembers Melangell well, for she was so joyful upon learning she was with child, Geoffrey's child."

Daniel stared at his brother. "Christ Jesus... Geoffrey!"

"No!" Geoffrey finally found his voice. "No, it is a lie, all of it!"

"Are we all lying, then? The midwife, the Flemish mercer, your brother? If that is going to be your defense, God pity you, lad." Jonas sounded almost fatherly now, no longer accusing. "You'd do better to admit the truth, seek forgiveness from God and the girl's family. It cannot have been easy, living with a burden like this-"

"How can you have sympathy for him?" Justin asked sharply. "He killed that girl!"

"Yes, he did," Jonas conceded. "But I doubt that he meant to do it. There are different sorts of killings, and it is easier to understand one committed in a red-hot rage, one that was not planned and was most likely regretted afterward, once it was too late. That was the way it happened, Geoffrey?"

The serjeant's question was so natural, so disarming, that Justin half expected Geoffrey to confess without even realizing that he was doing so. But Geoffrey stayed stubbornly silent.

"Listen to the serjeant, lad." By now they'd attracted a shocked audience: the priest preparing to say Vespers, several parishioners arriving early for the service. "Repent your sin whilst you still can," the priest entreated. "The Almighty will forgive you, but only if you confess and do penance."

"I... I have nothing to confess," Geoffrey insisted, but it was a hollow protest, convincing no one. Realizing that, he repeated loudly, "I've done nothing wrong!"

That was Justin's cue. Clamping down on Geoffrey's arm, he said scathingly, "Look at your brother when you say that - if you dare! Mayhap Jonas is right and you did not mean to kill the girl. But even if the murder was unplanned, you knew exactly what you were doing when you set out to blame Daniel for the killing."

Geoffrey gasped. "No! I would never do that!"

"That almost sounded convincing," Justin jeered. "But we're past the time for denials. All your secrets have come home to roost, Geoffrey ... the Flemish mercer, Melangell's pregnancy, that bloodied rock, her jealousy of Adela. We know, too, about her St Davydd's cross. She gave it to you, a pledge of her love, and after you killed her, you hid the cross in your brother's coffer so suspicion would fall upon him-"

"No! It was not like that!" Geoffrey tore loose from Justin's hold, spun around toward his brother. "Tell them, Daniel, tell them you do not believe this!"

Daniel stood, frozen, staring not at Geoffrey, but at Justin. "Melangell gave him the cross? You are sure?"

"She told Cati," Justin said, and Daniel shuddered, a soft moan, involuntary and anguished, escaping his lips.

"Daniel, no, that's not the way it happened!" Geoffrey's words were slurring in his haste to get them out. "I never meant to blame you, I swear it!"

"You put the cross in with his clothes," Justin pointed out relentlessly. "And then when it was discovered, you urged him to flee, knowing that flight would be taken as an admission of guilt. Did you hope that he'd be killed resisting arrest? How disappointed you must have been when he managed to reach sanctuary!"

"No... no, it was not like that! I never wanted Daniel to be hurt!" Geoffrey reached out to his brother, but Daniel shied away from his touch. His face was ashen in the candlelight, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Geoffrey's mouth contorted. "Daniel, for the love of God-"

His voice broke and Jonas was suddenly at his side, a hand clasped on one of those quaking shoulders. "Then why did you hide the cross in Daniel's mantle?"

"I didn't..." Geoffrey gulped back a sob. "I did not know what to do with it... after. I could not keep it, but neither could I throw it away, for it had meant too much to Melangell... So I shoved it into our coffer of winter clothes till I could think more clearly. I never thought about the mantle being Daniel's, I swear I did not..."

"A touching tale," Justin said, with a sneer he patterned after Durand's, "but it is one not even your mother would believe. You had your chance to speak up and clear your brother the night we found the cross. Instead, you sent him out into the streets to run for his life, hoping that he'd be cornered and killed-"

"No ... Jesu, no!" Geoffrey shook his head vehemently, frantically. "I wanted him to get safe away! I know I should have owned up to the truth that night, and I would to God I had... Daniel, I swear I do. I never meant for any of this to happen. None of it was planned. Melangell and I were quarreling, she was threatening to go to Adela, I tried to stop her, and she pulled free, tripped, and hit her head on the cross..."

"So you panicked," Jonas suggested. "You ripped her clothes to make it look as if she'd been raped and fled, forgetting about the silk until it was too late. Was that how it happened, lad?"

"I never meant to kill her. None of it seemed real. Afterward, I could not believe it had truly happened. It would have been a bad dream, if not for the blood..." Geoffrey was visibly trembling by now. As they watched, he slowly sank to his knees by the altar and wept.

Jonas waited until the tear storm had begun to subside, and then got the sagging youth to his feet. "At least you've cleared your brother now," he said, and Geoffrey sobbed again. He seemed to be in a daze, all fight gone out of him. He looked back only once, imploringly, at his brother.

"I would never have let you hang," he said huskily. "I swear that upon Christ's own rood."

Daniel had retreated into the shadows behind the altar. He did not reply and the serjeant prodded Geoffrey toward the closest door. Before they could reach it, Daniel cried out suddenly, urgently, "Jonas!"

The other man turned, still keeping a firm grip on his prisoner. "What is it, lad?"

"You cannot take him." Daniel's face was still wet with tears, but his voice was steady. "You cannot arrest him here. This is a sanctuary."

~~

"You knew this would happen, de Quincy. Admit it!"

Justin met Jonas's accusatory glare composedly. "I thought it might."

Jonas shook his head in disgust. "You've been keeping too much company with Lord John," he said sourly, "for you're picking up his conniving habits." Turning on his heel, he strode from the churchyard, out into a street now dark and deserted. Justin followed, unrepentant, but prudently giving the Serjeant's anger time to cool. They continued along Cheapside, and finally Jonas said grudgingly:

"I suppose we could have had a worse ending to this bloody business. But I would like to know why you'd want to protect Geoffrey Aston from the hangman. For all those remorseful tears, he did bash the girl's head in with a rock."

"I was not trying to spare Geoffrey," Justin said hastily, for he, too, was haunted by that bloodied rock.

"But I did want to spare Agnes and Daniel... and as strange as it sounds, I was thinking of Melangell, too. As much as she loved Geoffrey, would she have wanted to see him hanged?"

Jonas grunted. "I have enough trouble communicating with the living, am not about to start asking after the wants of the dead," he said, and they walked on in silence.

15

LONDON

June 1193

The sunlight was white-gold, shimmering with summer heat. Butterflies floated like feathers on the still air, the Tower gardens in fragrant, vibrant bloom. But the tranquility was deceptive, a false Eden. In the grassy mead, a stable cat stalked unseen prey and a hawk circled overhead. Claudine watched as the songbirds scattered, alarmed by that lazily drifting shadow, death on the wing. She'd had a bad morning, forced to fast by the queasiness that still unsettled her days. The rose Justin had picked for her now lay shredded in her lap, stripped of all its petals by her restless fingers.

"Well," she said morosely, "if there was any doubt, it has bled away. I missed my third flux."

Justin glanced at her swiftly. "Did you have doubts that you were with child?"

"I tried to," she said, with a rueful smile. Justin wasn't sure what to say, so he plucked another rose and handed it to her. She flashed a more convincing smile, but petals were soon drifting down into the grass at her feet. "I asked the queen if the pregnancy would get easier in time. She said usually so, but that some are vexing to the very end. She said of all her pregnancies, she was the most uncomfortable whilst carrying John. So he was causing trouble even ere he was born!"

The best Justin could manage was a laconic "Not surprising." He doubted that there'd ever come a time when he'd feel comfortable jesting with Claudine about John.

"The queen says she has two nunneries in mind," Claudine confided, "either Godstow outside Oxford or Wherwell, which is near Winchester. You'll take me once we decide, Justin?"

He assured her that he would, but then he rose from the bench. Claudine frowned. "You are leaving already?"

"I must. This afternoon Geoffrey Aston is abjuring the realm."

"So soon? His forty days have not gone by, surely?"

"He chose not to wait. Daniel was hoping for a miracle to clear him, so of course he'd have clung to sanctuary until the last possible moment. Geoffrey has admitted his guilt, so he has nothing to gain by delay."

"Justin... take me with you." Claudine put a hand on his arm, looking up at him with a flirtatious smile. "I've never seen a man abjure the realm."

"Jesu forfend you miss an experience like that," Justin said dryly.

Claudine wrinkled her nose playfully at the sarcasm. "Wait here," she directed, "whilst I go tell the queen!" Justin sat down again on the bench, watching as she hastened back into the keep, moving with so light and lively a step that none would have suspected she was with child.

~~

By the time Justin and Claudine rode into St Paul's precincts, Geoffrey Aston had already emerged from the cathedral, blinking uncertainly in the harsh noonday light after several weeks of shadowed seclusion. He wore only a single, simple garment of coarse sackcloth, head and feet bare, clutching his wooden cross in an awkward, white-knuckled grip. Flanked by an impassive Jonas and a preening Tobias, he was kneeling before one of the sheriffs of London, Roger Fitz Alan, and the mutterings of the spectators made it clear that he had just confessed to killing Melangell in the churchyard of St Mary Magdalene' s.

Claudine pressed forward to see better, and Justin followed, leading their horses. A large crowd had turned out for the spectacle, and most gave way grudgingly. Searching for familiar faces, Justin soon spotted Agnes, her eyes swollen with weeping, leaning heavily upon her husband's supporting arm. Master Serlo was standing by St Paul's Cross, somberly dressed in black, although there was no sign of Adela. Justin wondered if she'd chosen to stay away, wanting to spare herself this last glimpse of the youth who was to have been her husband, or if she'd been bidden to do so by her uncle. Nell and Gunter were present, as were several of their Gracechurch Street neighbors. But he could not find Humphrey Aston or his wife, nor did he see Daniel, or Godwin and Cati.

The sheriff was proclaiming the rules of the abjuration, warning Geoffrey that he must remain on the King's road, that he must proceed straightaway for the chosen port of Dover, that he could not tarry for more than one night anywhere along the route, that he must take the first ship sailing for France and swear by the Holy Cross that he would not return again to England. Geoffrey's head was bowed, his voice almost inaudible as he promised to obey these strictures. The sheriff then reminded the spectators that Geoffrey was now under the protection of the Church.

Justin was startled to hear murmurings of sympathy rustling through the crowd; pity was usually in short supply when felons were forced to do public penance for their crimes. When he said as much to Claudine, she shrugged, saying that the handsome always fare better in this world. It was a cynical observation,

but Justin could not find fault with it; how else explain why people were calling Geoffrey a "poor lad," as if the true tragedy was the ruination of his life, not the loss of Melangell's? Justin stared coolly at Geoffrey's gleaming blond head. He was not sorry that Geoffrey would not hang, but he'd forfeited any right to forgiveness the moment he'd reached for that rock.