Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

"We shared with you," Hew offered, yet seeking to redeem himself.

"So some of you did," she agreed grudgingly and continued, gazing at her former neighbor. "But then the month for plowing arrived and Odger doubled the price Martha usually paid to use the lady's plow and oxen. Once again, he acted against custom, and once again, none of you spoke out to defend her."

This time, Hew made no response. Amelyn looked back at Faucon. "By then, I could bear it no longer. I left Jessimond with Martha and went to Alcester as Odger intended. For those next years, I whored, using the coins I earned to support us all, Martha, me, Jessimond, and Johnnie.

"Then this happened," she touched her hood, "and Odger brought me to our lady on one of her rare visits. He asked her permission to drive me from our bounds. Much to my surprise, and his too, I think, our lady instead bought me a place at the hospital in Saltisford. It was an unexpected kindness for which I will always be grateful, even if she strips it from me now for my defiance," she finished quietly.

This time when Edmund reacted to her words, it was to kneel next Faucon, coming but a hand's breadth beyond the reach of the leprous woman. Faucon stared at his clerk, beyond startled. He'd never before seen the monk come that close to any woman, much less one with a contagious and disfiguring disease.

"You must put your faith in our Lord," Edmund told Amelyn. "If your bailiff has done as you say, then it's certain our heavenly Father has taken note. Rest assured that He will see your bailiff pays dearly and for all eternity for the wrong he's done you," said a monk who was usually uncompromising in his judgment of sins and sinners.

"Many thanks, Brother," Amelyn murmured.

Edmund nodded his reply, then looked at his employer, speaking now in their native tongue. "Sir Faucon, the leper's tale of anonymous rape, and her later public sentencing by the bailiff for refusing to name the father—doing so before so many witnesses—makes public fact that no one in this place can truthfully state that the child is English," he whispered.

"Of course the lass is English," Faucon replied at the same low tone. "She has to be, even if the leper cannot be certain who did the fathering. Who save one of the men in this place could have done the deed on that night?"

"It matters naught who the girl's father might have been," Edmund said with a shake of his head, "only that his name is unknown. In this, the law is clear. If her sire cannot be named and proved English, then Englishry cannot be ascertained. We must name the child Norman and apply the murdrum fine."

Surprise and satisfaction tumbled through Faucon. Oh, but there was value in having so learned a clerk at hand, despite Edmund's oddities. This day would prove one of his most successful yet. The murdrum fine was dear, and everyone in the community would pay it, including their lady. As improbable as it had seemed an hour ago, the king would profit from the death of a bastard serving girl in a place as poor as Wike.

Aye, and Judgment Day was coming sooner than Odger expected. Those the bailiff ruled already resented him at least as much as they feared him. Faucon suspected that once their lady's purse had been lightened because her chosen headman had made so costly a misstep, she'd find it inconvenient to keep Odger as her bailiff. Just as Amelyn had fallen, so would her persecutor.

"Well done, Brother Edmund," he said to his clerk, grinning, "and know that I am grateful to have you at my side as an advisor."

Astonishment darted through the monk's dark eyes. His mouth opened as if he meant to speak, but words apparently failed him. In the next instant, he managed a nod then returned abruptly to his feet to once more step back as if promising to interrupt no more.

Amelyn lifted Jessimond's corpse from her lap and laid her daughter onto the damp and yet green sod in front of her. "Sir, if as you say, it's yours to discover who stole the life from my precious child, then I beg you to do so. Do it not only for our king, but for me. I can bear no more grief in my life. I need to not only know who killed my Jessimond, but why. Aye, and I pray you find a way to see that the one who took her life will face earthly justice for his crime as well as whatever punishment our Lord may choose to mete out."

"It shall be done," Faucon promised easily. Her goal was his. "But if I am to succeed at the task you set me, you must answer my questions honestly."

Reaching out, he traced a fist-shaped mark that discolored the area near the girl's shoulder. The color of these bruises suggested Jessimond had taken the beating a day or so before she disappeared. Odger wasn't the only one here in Wike who deserved heavenly justice for earthly wrongdoing. Meg had no right to use fists in her punishments, not when Church law stated that beatings were only to be administered with a stick no thicker than a man's thumb.

Looking up at Amelyn, he asked gently, "Who warned you to come to the well so you might say a final farewell to your daughter? Who told you that your child had thrown herself into its depths to end her life?"

The leper straightened as if startled. Her head began to move toward Hew, but she caught herself. Bringing her gaze back to center, she aimed her attention at her lap.

Too little, too late. Faucon eyed the rustic as Hew moved back a step or two to once more lean against the well's surround. The old man met his Crowner's gaze, but the only thing to be read in his wrinkled face was the flat blankness that those who served adopted when confronted by their masters.

"No one, I but assumed," Amelyn began, then her words faltered into silence.

She drew herself up. Her shoulders squared. Her hands closed.

Faucon fought a smile. Here was a woman unaccustomed to dealing in falsehoods. With every line of her body Amelyn proclaimed her intention to lie. And in doing so, she would repeat what had happened at the manor door all those years ago. Once again, she courted her own pain to protect another.

"No one told me," she began again. "What else could I think when I saw Jessimond on the ground here at the well? I knew Meg, knew that she was never shy to lift a hand. I believed that her beatings had finally driven my sweet child to seek her own death." Every word rang hollowly.

Faucon cocked his head as he considered how best to drive a grieving mother into revealing the truth. "Tell me this, then. By my estimate, it's a two-day walk from Warwick to the bounds of Feckenham Forest. Two days was your child missing, or so said your bailiff when he met me in Studley and so your bakestress repeated not long ago. Yet it was only on this day, the morning of the third day, that Gawne roused all and sundry with the call that Jessimond was in the well. Who told you to return to Wike at this precise hour?"

Then he added the most important question of all. "And how is it that you know the recent doings of your former home as if you'd never left this place?"

She gasped. Her mouth opened and closed as if she tried to speak, but no words fell from her lips. Still and silent, Faucon kept his eyes aimed at her. Shifting uncomfortably under his unflinching gaze, she turned her head away from him.

"No one sent for me," she said loudly, as if a stronger voice might convince him, or perhaps herself. Then she did what every liar does. She added a new lie to support the first. "I was traveling to Alcester and decided to pass through Wike this time, it being more or less along my way."

If her falsehood didn't move Faucon, it stirred Edmund. "What? Are the monks who care for you so casual? What reason would they have for sending you so far from them, and why to Alcester?" he demanded, sounding more like his usual judgmental self.

Still basking in his appreciation of the profit his clerk had wrung from a mere serving girl's death, Faucon didn't chide the monk for interrupting this time. Moreover, Edmund's questions were his own. Far better that they be asked by one who understood the doings of the brethren at a leper's house like Saltisford.

Amelyn pinched her shoulders as she fought to maintain her pretense of innocence. "The only benefit of my disease is that I can travel where I will, doing so in complete safety. All of us who are yet able to walk are sent out to plead for alms to help support our house. If I choose to beg in Alcester, why would the brothers care or stop me?" With every word her pretense slipped and her voice weakened.

"The house in Saltisford has no right to speak for the brethren who dwell in Alcester," Edmund retorted. "Nor can I imagine that your keepers might allow you to travel so far from them on your whim alone. They would want a guarantee that you could actually claim a place near the abbey's gate. This, when I'm certain there are already beggars aplenty who own the right to ply their trade in front of the abbey. I've dealt with such rabble. I know well enough that not a one of them would willingly move aside to make space for such as you, not without being commanded to do so by someone within the abbey walls."

Faced with his knowledgeable rebuttal, the leper's pretense collapsed. Amelyn again buried her face in her hands. When she finally lowered them, her hood had shifted back on her head, once more revealing her disfigured face. Her blue eyes glistened as she blinked back tears and met Faucon's gaze.

"I could not bear it," she cried. "When I was forced from this place, I left behind the only thing I loved and I could not let her go. It didn't matter to me that Odger would eagerly strip my pension from me were I discovered in Wike. It was better to die on the side of the road than to be denied my child."

Then she looked up at Edmund. "You are right, Brother. It was no easy matter getting my tenders at Saltisford to agree that I should be allowed to travel as far as Alcester. Aye, they wanted assurances, but those I gave readily and easily. I was well known to one from the abbey, one who could, and did guarantee me a place before the gate twice a month," she added quietly.

The monk drew a sharp breath at this. Whether it was because her words attested to a sin committed by one of his own or the fact that Edmund caught sight of her disfigured face, there was no telling. Either way, only in that instant did Amelyn realize her hood had slipped. Echoing the monk's sound, she wrenched it back into place, once more concealing her disease.

"Nor are my keepers at the hospital casual about my comings and goings. I only won their agreement when I reminded them that while I'm away they don't need to feed me. Each journey to and from Alcester keeps me out of their house for almost a sennight. That's two sennights each month that they have one less mouth to worry over."

She made a harsh sound. "Would that I weren't such a coward, that I could find the strength to let myself starve. I think it would be a kinder death than the one I face."

"How did your daughter know when to expect you?" Faucon asked, drawing her back to the details he craved.

"That was easily done. Remember that in the first year of my banishment, Meg was yet making a trip to Alcester to sell those loaves of hers, her trips as regular as the moon. I sent one I trusted to Martha with an explanation of my plan. Then, on the appointed day, I waited at the set meeting spot.

"Once again, bless Martha. She and Johnnie came with Jessimond that first time, both of them creeping and cautious, to be certain it was no trap to steal an unwary child. After that, Jessimond and I settled into a happy habit, with Martha and Johnnie joining us as often as they could. For those precious hours I was again a mother to my daughter, and a daughter to one I thought of as a mother. Only after they crept back to our home did I make my way out of the forest, following the deer paths and hog trails to the Street and Alcester."

She touched her hood. Quiet amusement filled her voice as she added, "Then, with me hidden from prying eyes by my cloak, I made my way to my appointed place at the abbey gate. I often passed Meg between Coctune and Alcester. She never once realized it was me." With that Amelyn fell silent, as if lost to her memories.

"Then Martha died," Faucon prodded.

"Aye, Martha died almost a year ago now, two years after Amelyn's banishment," Hew replied on the leper's behalf.

Nodding, the leper glanced from the oldster to her Crowner. "And with that, everything changed. Having to feed Johnnie as well as Jessimond meant Meg no longer had as many stolen loaves to sell and her trips to Alcester became erratic. That left Jessimond and me no option but to begin meeting during the depths of the night while Meg slept. How it broke my heart not to be able to look upon her face any longer," she added quietly.

"Someone aided you," Faucon said, looking at Hew even as he asked the question of Amelyn.

The leper made no reply, only sat with her head bowed and shoulders bent.

"If I'm to discover who killed your daughter, then you must answer all my questions honestly," Faucon reminded her. "Who helped you arrange your meetings?"

With a sigh, Amelyn looked toward the well and the rustic. "Hew?" she asked of the old man. "Will you have me speak further?"

"You may speak as you will and say what you must, Amelyn," the old man replied without a hint of hesitation.