Season of the Raven (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

"When I left him, he was standing right there," he pointed to the same spot Agnes had indicated at the edge of the channel. Then the fuller lowered his hand to the miller in the race. "And when I arose this morn, he was where he is now."

"Does that make it any less this outsider's fault for my father's death, Simon Fuller?" Stephen demanded. "You know he's been a changed man since he married again. Because of his new wife, he's taken to drink, and because of drink, he's been destroying our trade, and because of drink, he went into the race."

The fuller made a scornful sound. "You can blame Agnes if you want, but we all know your father was losing his mind to drink before they wed. All their marriage did was make sure my children and I lost our peace at night."

Stephen's mouth narrowed to a thin line. He looked at Faucon. "What say you to that, sir? You heard Simon Fuller. It wasn't the wheel that killed my sire, but his cup. You," he gave Agnes a shove that propelled her back toward the corner of the building, "go collect all the cups from the house and bring them to these men so they can be made deodand and dedicated to the Church. After that, pack your belongings. I won't tolerate you in my home any longer."

Burying her face in her hands, the woman turned and made her way toward the corner of the mill, her shoulders shaking in quiet sobs. The men in her path shifted aside to let her pass, a few offering quiet words of sympathy.

"No cups!" Brother Edmund shouted after her, once more speaking when he had no right. "If the wheel held Halbert under the water until he breathed no more, then it and only it must be removed and cleansed."

At the opposite side of the race, Simon Fuller crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Stephen. "Mayhap the wheel did kill him. After I left him, he started shouting. He went on for some time. I didn't need to hear what he was saying to know he was once again cursing your precious wheel."

Here the fuller paused to scan the watching men, gathering their attention before he continued his tale. "It's what he always did every time he got that besotted. He'd stand out here and shout his curses, then he'd start blaming the profits he'd earned from milling for attracting Agnes and saddling him with one he deemed a whore. When he was done, he'd fall into drunken slumber right on the edge of the race," he told them, then looked back at Stephen.

"Last night, after he finally fell silent, I thought I'd have some peace. I found the comfort of my bed, then of a sudden the wheel began again to turn, making all its usual racket. I was about to come out and confront your father, thinking he'd released the brake to spite me, when it stopped All remained blessedly quiet after that. That must have been when it happened. I suspect your father misjudged how besotted he was, having been almost knee-walking when I'd last seen him. In that state, opening the brake would have been too much for him. I'm guessing that when he yanked on the handle of his tool, it overbalanced him. As he fell into the race, his tool went flying to where we found it this morning."

He pointed to a spot a little way from the axle, then sneered at Stephen as he moved his hand to indicate the millwheel. "Or mayhap yon wheel reached out and grabbed him. Mayhap it dragged him into the water so it could eat him. Mayhap your wheel was as tired as Agnes at being held responsible for all the wrong your father found in what seems to me a blessed life. After all, Halbert didn't come by his trade through the sweat of his brow like some of us do. He got his wealth and comfort by marrying your mother and letting her teach him how to turn grain into flour." The fuller ladled scorn into his words. All who heard him called out their agreement.

"Mayhap you all should keep your opinions to yourselves." Stephen mocked, sending a scathing glance across the men nearest to him.

When the miller's son once more looked at Faucon, it was to plead again. "You cannot take my wheel. Without it, the village and the priory cannot grind their grain."

Faucon held up his hands. "Why don't we leave the matter of deodand until after we've extracted your sire and viewed his injuries as you know we must." He raised his voice so his words could be heard by as many as possible. "I'm sure you all would like to be back at your daily doings. The sooner the miller is viewed and the cause of his death is confirmed, the sooner you all may leave."

"But, Sir Faucon," Edmund started.

Faucon shook his head in warning, lowering his voice and shifting back to French to keep his words private between him and the monk. "Not now, Brother. No matter what protocol is expected, I'm not leaving that man under the wheel a moment longer. It is not meet."

Edmund's eyes widened. The look on his face said he did not approve, but he held his tongue.

"So how do we retrieve your father from the race?" Faucon asked of Stephen.

Rather than answer the question, Stephen turned toward the front of the mill. "Alf, the sheriff has gone," he shouted in the tongue of the commoners. "Come out and help me free your master from the wheel."

Faucon blinked in surprise. How had Stephen refused to aid to his lord sheriff when Sir Alain had wanted to extract the miller, and why? Somehow, Faucon doubted Edmund's protests—that the sheriff had no right to move Halbert—could have been that persuasive.

A moment later, a tall fair-haired man appeared. This man's worn leather apron covered a dusty green tunic, while the fabric of his shoes was so completely permeated with flour that there was no telling their original color. Tucked into the cord that tied his apron around his waist was a long-handled tool Faucon didn't recognize. As powerfully built as the new miller and no more than a dozen years Faucon's senior, there was something about the way this man moved that reminded Faucon of Stephen. Then this Alf nodded to the new miller; the movement of his head identified him as a servant rather than kin.

After Alf offered a show of respect to Brother Edmund and Faucon, he looked at his employer. "Master, we cannot divert the water," he told his better in the commoner's tongue. "Remember, your sire took apart the sluice gate the other day. He never got to rebuilding it."

Stephen gave an irritable groan at that news. "Well then, we'll have to bring him out with the water still flowing, won't we?"

"So
we
shall," Alf replied with a grunt of amusement.

He stepped across the race and went to the brake on the axle. Faucon watched as the servant placed the tool from his apron over one of the two great screws that made a clamp of the twin blocks of wood. Alf yanked once, twice then a third time. The screw released. The wheel groaned as if alive, the axle straining to turn.

Ducking under the shaft, the workman put his tool to the second screw in the brake, then looked over his shoulder at Stephen. "Master, I'll need someone in the water to hold onto the old master when I free the wheel, else he'll just be drawn deeper."

"I cannot, not in this," Stephen said, the sweep of a hand indicating his fine attire.

"Not I," the fuller said, almost speaking over Stephen in his hurry to refuse. "I'll not risk Halbert's fate." There were many men within hearing who agreed with him.

Faucon shook his head in his own refusal. He'd never been comfortable in the water, and he certainly wasn't going in while wearing his heavy gambeson. He'd once seen a knight nearly drown in waist-deep water because the weight of his armor held him pinned to the bottom after he'd fallen.

"I can do it," a man called from the pond bank at the head of the race.

It was a monk wearing the same black habit as Edmund, although this brother's attire was already well wetted. On his head was a broad-brimmed hat that concealed most of his face, while on his back was a large leather pack, the feathery green fronds of Mare's Tail making a huge spray above the top of the pack. Stepping over the dam at the head of the race, the brother half-swam, half-slid down the channel in the waist-deep water until he neared the wheel. After laying his pack and his hat upon the edge near Alf's feet, revealing a face as wrinkled as a dried apple and a thick head of pure white hair, he reached into the water for Halbert's feet.

"Should I pull or push?" he asked Alf.

"Pull, Brother. Know that both wheel and water will be against you, so you'll have to pull with all your might just to hold him in place," the servant told him, then pointed to his deceased master. "Look how his shoulder is trapped beneath the paddle? Perhaps if you shift toward me and pull in this direction? If he's not caught too deeply, his shoulder and arm may slide out from underneath what pins it. Whatever you do, don't let him be dragged any farther under the wheel when it begins to move else he'll be jammed even tighter than before. I'll join you in the water the very instant I release this last screw. Are you ready?"

"I am," the monk replied.

With that, Alf pulled hard on the handle of his tool. The wheel gave another shuddering groan. It stuttered and strained, trying to rotate, but unable to do so as long as flesh and bone remained trapped beneath it. The monk shouted wordlessly as he pulled with all he had.

There was a subtle crack from beneath the water, and the paddle that trapped Halbert's shoulder broke. With the snap of bone as the rim rode over the dead man's arm, the wheel squealed and began to turn. The miller floated free.

Shouting out a surprised cry, the monk stumbled backwards in the water and lost his hold on Halbert's feet. Even as the current again took the dead man toward the wheel, Alf was there. Grabbing up his deceased master, he easily lifted Halbert out of the water and laid him on the ground beneath the turning axle. Then, hoisting himself out of the race, he returned to the brake and used his tool to secure it once more. When the screws were tight and the leather-lined wooden clamp once again snug around the axle, the wheel shuddered to a halt.

As it stopped, Faucon stepped to the other side of the channel, followed by Edmund and Halbert's son. The fuller came to stand with them. Not being as tall as Alf, the monk in the water found he couldn't lift himself up over the edge, so he splashed back up the race to find an easier spot to clamber out.

The miller had already grown stiff in death. This meant his head remained turned to the side, making it seem as though he rested his cheek on an unseen pillow. His arms were bent at the elbows as they had been in the race, which meant his hands now thrust awkwardly out to the sides. Beneath half-closed lids, his eyes were cloudy, but Faucon could still see that his irises were the same greenish color as his son's.

"So now that he's free," Edmund said, turning a shoulder to Priors Holston's new miller as he addressed Faucon in French, "we must do what we should always do first, and ask for proof of the man's ancestry. We must ascertain if he is English or Norman."

"Proof of Englishry is not required when the death is accidental, is it?" Faucon asked, frowning at Edmund as he followed him into the same tongue.

All men in England knew that a murdered man was considered to be from England's Norman ruling class until proved otherwise. But Halbert hadn't been murdered, not if the fuller was speaking the truth. The miller's drowning had been nothing but a drunken accident.

"It is required for all unnatural deaths and must be included in my record for this death. As you would have commanded of me if you'd been here when I arrived, I've already scribed the fuller's name as first finder, as well as recorded the names of the four neighbors he recruited to stand surety for his appearance at court, when the time comes for him to testify that he did raise this day's hue and cry," Edmund told him.

Stephen made an angry sound deep in his throat. "First, you want to steal my wheel, now you wish to extract a
murdrum
fine from me and my community?" the miller's son cried in outrage. "Well, you won't get it. My father was English through and through, and so will I swear, as will my wife and my aunt." He glared at the two officials of the royal court who faced him, his look daring them to say otherwise.

The wave of Edmund's hand swatted away the young miller's oath as if it were a pesky fly. "You can swear, you are his son. But no women can offer up an oath to prove Englishry."

"Alf can swear." Stephen drew his servant closer, his arm over the man's shoulder.

"I can and do," Alf agreed, his French so accented that Faucon could barely understand them. "Halbert was as English as I am."

"You offer up a servant?" Edmund shot back. "What proof is that?"

Faucon pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples as his far-too-empty stomach groaned. Twenty pounds a year wasn't nearly enough compensation for keeping Edmund as his clerk, and so he would tell his uncle at the first opportunity.

"Halbert came out of Essex and has only relatives by marriage in Priors Holston," someone shouted from the crowd in English. "How do we swear when we don't know how he was born?"

Stephen glared in the direction from which the voice had arisen, shifting back into English. "Do you want to pay that fine, Jos?"

Shifting back to French, he told Faucon, "My father may not have lived here all his life, but I can supply as many witnesses as there are men here, all of them willing to swear to his English lineage. What say you, Simon Fuller? Will you swear on my father's behalf?" Stephen demanded of his neighbor.

He offered the man a sly grin. "Perhaps I should mention that my sire told me he saw the mill you described, the one being used to full cloth, when last he was in Coventry."

The fuller's arms opened. His gaze clung to Stephen, the expression in his eyes wary. "Did he now? And what think you of such a use for your mill? Are you of a similar mind as your sire, that building such a machine on my side of the race would be a waste of time?"

"On the contrary, I think anything that brings you more prosperity will also benefit me," Stephen replied.

All the hostility drained from the fuller. He smiled, the movement of his mouth slow and pleased. "Then I have no doubt we'll be able to find all the witnesses this good knight needs from among this crowd."

Stephen shot a smug look at Edmund. "This chore is better done at the front of the mill, where more can see and hear us. Come, Alf. Simon."