Season of the Raven (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 1) (14 page)

"Brush aside this ash. Let's see what hides beneath it," he commanded.

As Faucon returned to his feet, slapping smut off the knee of his chausses, Emmie set her young charges to clearing away the piles of ash. This they did with a shovel and broom, arguing over who was to use which implement. A few moments later and all of them, young and old alike, looked upon an uneven circle of stained earth that was already attracting more insects than just the flies. Not realizing its import, the little ones made play out of gagging over the sight and smell.

Drue shook his head. "You were right, sir," he told Faucon. "Here is the spot where Halbert died. They carried him into Simon's croft, did their worst, then waited until he bled his last. When he was in God's hands, they removed him to the race then added more ash from the pit to cover this area, thinking no one would notice, not even Simon. Even if he caught the smell, why would he think anything amiss? He wouldn't, not when he'd slaughtered here earlier the same day."

Drue looked at the fuller. "If not for Sir Crowner, we would never have found it, would we have, Simon? Even you thought it must be just a bit of offal that your lads had missed, didn't you?"

At his words, Emmie once more lowered the child she held to the ground. Then, turning to the side, she lifted the hem of her apron until she could bury her face into it. After a moment of dry retching, she began to cry, her face still covered by the fabric.

Simon fell to his knees on the ash-covered ground, then slid to the side to sit. His face was as gray as what coated his bare legs and feet. His eyes were wide in terror.

"God save me, call Father Walter to come here for me, Drue. He must bless this ground else Halbert will haunt me for certain."

"Nay," Edmund said in stern reply and frowned at his new employer.

Upon Faucon's return to the mill from Simon's croft, he'd called Edmund down from his perch on the porch. They stood near Halbert's corpse. There was no longer a crowd in the courtyard, now that so many had viewed Halbert and confirmed the verdict, then returned to what remained of their day. The only men yet waiting to make their way past Halbert were those whom Faucon had first encountered, the ones who had the misfortune to approach the mill from the lane beyond the wall.

"You don't have the right to say me 'nay,'" Faucon warned the monk.

It was a toothless reply. Although he was looking at his clerk, he was giving him only half an ear. The remainder of his attention lingered on that bloody spot in Simon's croft. He'd missed something beneath that chestnut tree. Try as he might, he couldn't identify what it was.

He breathed out in frustration. Or, perhaps he hadn't missed anything and this was just his reaction to watching the fuller tremble in fear of Halbert's ghost. For sure, the depth of Simon's distress left Faucon regretting he'd ever sought out the site of the murder. This was especially so since locating the spot hadn't added anything to what he already knew of Halbert's death.

Or had it? Faucon huffed again in frustration. What had he missed?

"Sir Faucon?" Edmund asked.

Faucon blinked, pulling his thoughts back to his clerk. Edmund was watching him. When the monk realized he had his employer's attention again, he launched into speech without preamble.

"Indeed, as your clerk, I have no right to deny you. However, Bishop William wished me to guide you. I would be remiss if I didn't warn you against a misstep," Edmund offered, no hint in his voice that he intended to be disrespectful even as every word he spoke betrayed his arrogance.

"I do not think it can be your duty to seek out the man who committed the miller's murder." The monk offered a firm shake of his head to emphasize just how strongly he believed what he said. "I think our only duty is to reveal and note the details of an unnatural death. If murder has been done, as it was here, I think it is still the sheriff's right to pursue and capture the one who committed the act."

Faucon eyed him in surprise. "You only
think
it isn't our duty? Yesterday you were far more certain of what is and is not ours to do. You recited a great list, doing so with complete certainty."

As he spoke Faucon realized all he knew of his position was what Edmund had told him. The monk was hardly objective, not when he classified his service to Faucon as a despised penance.

"Tell me exactly what the archbishop said about the Keepers of the Pleas and their duties. What was said when this new office was announced? When you've told me that, I can determine for myself what is mine to do."

The monk crossed his arms, tucking his hands into the wide sleeves of his habit. His expression flattened until it was as shielded as his body. "I don't think it matters what was said at court."

"Perhaps not, but I would know," Faucon pressed.

"It wasn't much," Edmund replied, his lips barely moving as he spoke.

"Tell me what was said," Faucon commanded without anger. He didn't begrudge this argument. So it would be between them until they learned to trust each other.

"Well, if you must know," Edmund said almost irritably, then closed his eyes to better draw the words from memory. "'In every county of the king's realm shall be elected three knights and one clerk to keep the pleas of the crown.'"

Faucon waited. Edmund uncrossed his arms and opened his eyes. He looked at Faucon, his expression still shuttered.

Faucon blinked as he realized the recitation was finished. "That's it? There's nothing more? What of all those duties yesterday? Where did they come from?"

"You speak as if I created them out of clear air," the monk protested. "I didn't. Most of them already existed, being part of what the sheriffs did when keeping the pleas was their duty. The others are those Bishop William told me would soon be added to the duties of all the coronarii."

Faucon freed a surprised breath. "Well, answer me this then. What sense is there in only recording the manner and means of a murder, and not taking the next step to discover the man who committed the act? We're at hand, viewing what happened and how it was done. The sheriff is not. Think on it, Brother Edmund. Do not those who commit murder forfeit all to the king?"

"Not all their property is forfeited," the clerk replied in what Faucon was beginning to recognize as his rote reaction to an error. Edmund had to correct, the way a fish needed to swim.

"Murderers forfeit the profit they would accrue in a year and a day, along with all waste land and all their chattels," the clerk said.

"Well, then it must be we who seek out and arrest the one who killed the miller. That revenue is exactly what Archbishop Hubert Walter wishes to collect for our king and the reason for the creation of my new position. If we do not prove the murderer guilty and deliver him to the sheriff, how can we collect what he owes?"

Edmund's eyes widened in pleased surprise at this. "I never considered that!"

"Apparently not. I hereby state it is my duty to find the man who ended Halbert Miller's life, and with all my heart I shall do my duty to my king," Faucon told him. "Feel free to scribe that I spoke these words in that record of yours. Put it right below the description of Halbert's death wound." Offering Edmund a nod and wondering if the monk would discern the sarcasm, Faucon started across the courtyard, walking toward the gate that led to the miller's croft.

"Where are you going?" his clerk cried out.

"To speak to Halbert's widow. Talking with her is my next step as I seek the man who killed her husband," he threw back over his shoulder.

"Wait for me!"

From the corner of his eye Faucon watched Edmund dodge and dart through the last of the commoners. The monk twisted this way and that, as if he wished to avoid making physical contact with any of the men and boys. He came abreast of his employer just as Faucon entered the miller's garden.

"Of course you are right, sir," Edmund said, new enthusiasm in his dark eyes. "We must identify and pursue those who do murder, so they might be brought before the justices and right be done. This is sure to please Bishop William well indeed." The clerk nigh on glowed at that thought.

Faucon almost grinned. 'We,' was it now? He wondered if Edmund realized he'd again revealed that it wasn't the shire's new crowner he intended to serve.

The miller's croft was no different in size than Simon's. But where the fuller grew his crops in small plots, Halbert's family opted to raise their vegetables in long rows that ran the length and half the width of the croft. The other half was a grassy swath that hosted a number of sheds and small barns. A ewe and her half-grown lamb grazed near one such structure, while nearby a young pig lifted its head and grunted a greeting to them.

Waist-high hurdles, double-sided braces made from thick branches, separated the back of the miller's whitewashed cottage from the croft. Agnes, or maybe Stephen's wife, had used them to dry the household laundry. Three shirts, two tunics, two pairs of chausses, a child's tiny blue gown and four aprons, two of them so ancient and well-used that they were now a mottled brown, had been left to air on them. Faucon and Edmund made their way through the braces and started toward the rear entry of the cottage.

"So now that we are agreed you must seek out the one who killed Halbert," Edmund said, his previous excitement dimming into new worry, "how will you do that? How can you know who committed the act?"

"By following the trail that began with the lack of foam in Halbert's mouth and his cloudy eyes," Faucon replied, shooting a laughing, sidelong look at his clerk.

The creases on Edmund's forehead deepened into crevices. "I don't understand how those things can lead us anywhere."

This time Faucon did laugh aloud. "Neither did I until I arrived at Priors Holston this morning. Yet here I am, learning to read this trail just as I was taught to track game animals by reading their spoor."

Their voices were enough to announce their arrival. Even before they reached the cottage, the top half of the back door opened. If no more wet streaks marked Agnes' face, her nose remained reddened from her earlier upset. As she recognized who waited outside, she opened the lower half of the door and stepped into the portal.

"Have you come to remove me from this house, sir?" she asked quietly, speaking Faucon's native French with more fluency than he expected.

"Nay, that is not my purpose nor my intent," Faucon replied in the same tongue. "However, I fear that moment is coming for you all too soon, goodwife. Might we enter and share a word or two?"

She offered him a tiny smile. "Thank you for asking and not commanding." Her words were little more than a whisper. Then she drew herself up to her tallest and squared her shoulders. "Since the moment of my removal has not yet arrived, I still have the right to offer you welcome in my stepson's home. Please come within and take your ease."

As she shifted to the side so her guests could enter, Edmund breathed out a quiet "Oh." The only thing this cottage shared in common with other peasant abodes was a floor made from bare earth, which generations of feet had walked into rock hardness.

Hidden within these walls was all the opulence Faucon expected of a miller, and that meant chattels aplenty to assess for levying the death tax. Decorating the plastered wall across from them were two tapestries. If their colors were dissimilar, their designs reminded Faucon of the Holy Lands. Two brass-bound chests stood against the wall beneath the tapestries. The smaller of the two was open and items of clothing were draped over its raised lid and sides.

Three well-made chairs, their tall backs looking like half-barrels, were arranged around the hearthstone near the right end of the room. There were no cooking implements near the hearth. That suggested the miller's meals were prepared in one of the outbuildings and carried within doors, just as was done in much grander households.

A yellow and red cupboard, as tall as the wall and finer than anything Faucon's mother owned, was placed where it would be the first thing visitors saw when they entered through the front door. Items crowded its shelves: green ceramic serving platters and bowls, cups made of horn as well as several carved from wood, a large mazer and a number of wooden serving utensils.

The miller slept at the end of the room farthest from the hearth. The curtain that divided the sleeping area from the living area was open. Faucon could see a bed that rivaled the one he now used as his own. A second bed of equal richness stood in the open loft that stretched overhead, the loft's floor reaching about halfway across the main chamber. A ladder, sanded until it gleamed like silk, offered access to this upper sleeping chamber. Judging by the cloth poppet that dangled its arm over the edge of the loft, this was where Stephen and his family found their nightly rest.

The wooden table at the center of the room was sturdy enough to suggest it was left assembled at all times, and not dismantled when it wasn't in use as was done in many other households. The two long benches pushed beneath it offered seating. Various items cluttered the table's surface: a few prettily carved cups, a small trinket box, a pair of shoes, bits of ribbon and head scarves. Agnes was packing.