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  DEATH RIDDLE

  An Anglo-Norman Mystery

  By

  Maureen Ash

  Copyright © Maureen Ash 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cast of Characters

  The English

  Estrid – A thegn’s daughter

  Gytha – Estrid’s attendant

  Godric – Estrid’s son

  Judith – an apprentice embroiderer

  Cuthbert – Estrid’s servant

  Wulfstan – a blacksmith

  Helewysia – Wulfstan’s wife

  Eadhild and Valerie – Wulfstan’s daughters

  Tosti – a pig farmer

  Cenred – a healer

  Eric – a shoemaker

  Osferth – a tanner

  Mildryth – a prostitute

  Arni – a silversmith

  Ulf – Judith’s father

  Edgiva – Judith’s mother

  Alfred – Judith’s brother

  Hildegard – a village woman

  Rolanda – Hildegard’s daughter

  Leofwine – a soldier

  Ugg – a soldier

  Gruntzen – a pig

  The Normans

  William Rufus – King of England

  Lanfranc – Archbishop

  Gundulf – Bishop of Rochester

  Odo – Earl of Kent and Bishop of Bayeux

  Robert of Belleme – a knight

  Hugh of Montgomery – a knight

  Eustace of Boulogne - a knight

  Stephen – Gundulf’s steward

  Rocher – a serjeant

  Humbert – a monk

  Roger – a monk

  Baldock - a soldier

  Fulk – a soldier

  Glossary of Old English Words

  (Diacritical marks have been omitted in glossary and book)

  Alehaus – alehouse

  Burh – fortified dwelling place

  Dohtor – daughter

  Frea – Mistress (term of address)

  Fyrd – English militia

  Hadseax – small eating knife

  Hel – Hell

  Ja – Yes (still in modern usage in Germanic languages)

  Knattleikr – a team game played with a ball and sticks

  Langseax – large dagger

  Modor – Mother

  Scitan – excrement

  Scop – bard or poet

  Nithing – coward

  Scramseax – small dagger

  Taefl – an Anglo-Saxon board game

  Wyrd – fate

  Glossary of Norman-French Words

  Maistresse – obsolete form of French ‘maitresse’ – mistress

  CHAPTER 1

  Rochester, Kent

  Early Summer, 1088

  The odour of pig in the tiny confines of the shack was strong, almost overpowering. When the burly Norman serjeant from the castle garrison pushed open the flimsy door and entered, he reeled back from the malodorous smell.

  “For the love of God, that animal stinks. Put her outside,” he ordered, throwing up his arm to shield his nose.

  The young Englishman facing him shook his head, fondling the head of the huge old sow nestling at his side. “Gruntzen has more right to be here than you, Rocher. This is her home, not yours. And it was you who demanded we meet in secret, not me, so if her presence offends you, then leave.” The sow glared at the Norman with her little red eyes and snorted in agreement.

  The soldier conceded the argument and, taking a deep breath from the relatively untainted air within the depths of his leather jerkin, dropped his arm. “I know what you are about, Tosti, and if you do not tell me the name of your accomplice, I will denounce you.”

  The Englishman gave a derisive laugh. “And damn yourself when you attempt to explain how you discovered my cheat? I do not think so, for then you will be the one who is deep in scitan, not me.”

  “It already smells in here as though I’m standing in shit, you bastard, and now I’m hearing it too. I know you are not the only one involved in the ruse. Tell me who it is, or…”

  A sudden shadow at the entrance to the shack halted him in the middle of his threat, and he turned to face the intruder. “What are you doing here? This is no business of yours…” His words trailed off as he noticed the ax in the newcomer’s hand.

  “You have always been too greedy for your own good, Rocher,” the intruder replied and, before the soldier had a chance to defend himself, raised his weapon and leapt forward. With a single blow he cleaved the serjeant’s shaven nape and Rocher fell dead, his spine severed.

  As he crumpled to the floor, a fountain of blood spurted from the wound, most of it splattering on Tosti, who cursed. “You fool,” he growled. “You didn’t have to kill him. When he doesn’t return to the barracks, there’ll be a hue and cry out to find him. It will be only a matter of time before we are discovered.”

  “You might be, but I will not,” the murderer said, bending over the fallen Norman and removing the short sword from the dead man’s belt. As he straightened, he lunged, and thrust the blade into the Englishman’s belly, then arced it upward, almost disembowelling him.

  Tosti’s eyes widened in pain, and he fell to his knees, hands grasping at the gaping wound. “Whoreson,” he managed to get out, “you won’t get away with this….” The killer’s response was to strike again, plunging the sword into Tosti’s heart and stopping his voice forever.

  Throwing the weapon onto the dirt floor near Rocher’s lifeless hand, the murderer snatched Tosti’s scrip from his belt. But what he had expected to find was not there; it contained only a few coins and nothing else. With an exclamation of disgust, he removed the money, and threw the pouch onto the floor. A frisson of apprehension went through him. Was it possible that Tosti had not brought the evidence of their collusion with him? No, he decided, he always kept it by him and so it must be here somewhere.

  But, in his concentration on finding what he was looking for, he had forgotten the pig. As he moved to search the pile of crumpled blankets that Tosti had used as a pallet, she gave a loud squeal of rage and charged him, almost toppling him over.

  “You devil,” he cried and swung the ax at the pig’s head. Despite her age, the old sow was too fast for him and avoided the blow, dodging underneath it and sinking her sharp front teeth into the calf of his leg. Blood spurted and he aimed another blow at her, but again he missed and she rushed him once more, crashing into his legs so heavily that he staggered backwards. As he fought to steady himself, the ax slipped from his blood-stained hands, and he was forced to run outside to escape the pig's next onslaught.

  Gruntzen followed, biting at his heels as he raced towards the gate in the wooden fence surrounding the property. With one last spurt of speed, he managed to get through the gate and slam it shut behind him, penning her inside the yard.

  He leaned against the fence, taking stock of his situation, ignoring the sow’s furious squeals as she repeatedly charged the gate in a frantic effort to reach the man who had harmed her beloved master. Without a weapon, he could not get rid of her, so he would have to come back later and despatch her before he could make a further search for the proof he was so desperate to find.

  Grabbing a handful of some weeds growing near the gate, he cleansed the blood from his hands and the sleeve of his tunic. There were a few gory spatters on the leg of his hose, but the material was dark and the stains not very noticeable, so he could afford to wait until he reached the watering trough in the main street and wash them off there. Muttering a final malediction at Gruntzen, he hobbled off down the alley,
limping slightly on his bitten leg.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rochester sits at the base of a small promontory that nestles within a curve of the Medway River and is a town of strategic importance guarding access to the London road via the bridge that spans the river. Of moderate size, it has been fortified ever since the time of Roman occupation, and houses just over two thousand souls. On the southern side, just outside the stone walls that encircle the town, on a rise called Boley Hill, is a castle built by William of Normandy after his conquest of England twenty-two years before, but this has now fallen into disrepair and a new keep is under construction within the town precincts.

  The main thoroughfare, named the High Street, bisects the town from west to east and along its length are a cathedral, houses, a market place and a few tradesmen's workshops. Lesser roads and pathways lined with humbler dwellings and a few storage buildings radiate on both sides of the thruway and, in a cluster of alleys huddled next to a portion of the northern town wall, is a scattering of hovels.

  There is an apprehensive atmosphere among the populace on this June day, but this is not new; it had been there for months, since the previous September when William of Normandy died. On his deathbed he split the inheritance of the lands that he ruled between his two oldest sons, leaving the eldest, Robert Curthose, the dukedom of Normandy and to his second son, William Rufus, the throne of England. Curthose, enraged that his younger brother had been apportioned part of a realm he considered should have been entirely his own, declared his intention to wrest the English crown from his brother's head and was firmly supported in the venture by his uncle, Odo, the Earl of Kent.

  The strife between the two siblings erupted into rebellion at Eastertide. Although Curthose remained in Normandy, Odo had, on his behalf, and from his base in Rochester, begun to pillage and plunder the surrounding countryside. Rufus had been quick to retaliate, bringing an army composed of his own supporters and the fyrd—the English militia—to attack the rebel forces and the traitorous earl was now walled up and under siege in Pevensey castle with his brother, Robert of Mortain. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Rufus was victorious, but Odo was cunning and until he was safely under lock and key, the whole country awaited the outcome in a state of trepidation.

  The Rochester townsfolk were mainly of Saxon stock, their ancestors from the province of Saxony having settled on the southern shore of England centuries before, and all were caught up in the war raging within the ruling family of their Norman oppressors. Despite the likely possibility of Odo's imminent capture, the garrison were on the alert, newly manned by soldiers who were loyal to the earl instead of Rufus, and led by a vicious Norman noble, Robert of Belleme. The town gates were guarded, and men-at-arms paced the walkway atop the walls. There would be no relief for Rochester until the struggle was over.

  ***********

  In a house on the High Street, one of the few built of stone and with a tiled roof, was the workshop of an embroiderer, a woman named Estrid. She was in her late thirties, tall of stature and roundly fleshed, handsome rather than beautiful. Her eyes were a deep blue, the colour of gentian, and set above high cheekbones, a determined chin and a generous mouth. Her hair, covered by a filmy and delicately embroidered head rail, was a shade of dark flaxen, and braided in the traditional English manner of three plaits, one on each side of her face and the other hanging down her back.

  As the hour neared noon, she rose from the bench where she had been working with her attendant, an older woman named Gytha, and Judith, her fourteen year old apprentice, and walked over to the casement, the shutters of which had been left wide open in an attempt to catch any stray breeze that passed. It was very hot, for the onset of summer had brought a warmth that was unseasonable for the time of year. The workshop was on the second storey of the house and, as she leaned on the sill, afforded her an excellent view out over the town and a small glimpse of the river to the west, where sunlight glinted sparks of brightness on the stonework of the bridge that spanned it.

  With a worried expression on her face, she scanned the streets for sight of her son, Godric. Her two companions fell uneasily silent as they watched her. This had been the fourth time in the space of an hour that she had left her work to check the streets below. Godric was Estrid's only child, born three months after her young husband Lief had been slain in the battle that the English fought against Duke William on a grassy ridge near Hastings that had come to be known as Senlac—the field of blood. She had also lost her father, a thegn of lands in Kent, and her only sibling, an elder brother named Ceadda, in that same battle. And now she feared that Godric, too, would lose his life in this new struggle once again spawned by Normans.

  Gytha, a short and stocky woman in her middle fifties, watched her mistress covertly. Estrid was not prone to displays of emotion, but her tension on this occasion was evident. 'May God damn the Normans all to hell,' Gytha muttered under her breath, and not for the first time, for she hated the foreigners with a passion that was common to all those old enough to remember the invasion of the Normans and its bloody aftermath. Judith, her merry little face downcast, glanced worriedly from one to the other.

  She knew the history of them both, and that Gytha had been one of the young women serving as attendants to Estrid's mother, who died bringing her daughter into the world. From that day, Gytha watched over the motherless child as though she were her own and had been her stalwart protector during the dreadful days when Estrid, only sixteen years old and six months with child, had been forced to flee her slain father's burh and take refuge with her widowed aunt, Lady Emma, in Rochester. In the short space of time since she had been taken on as apprentice, Judith had become very fond of the pair. Estrid had been calm and patient with Judith as she clumsily tackled the tasks set for her and the girl soon realized that Gytha, although often stern, had a kind heart beneath her gruff exterior. Because of the hours Judith spent in their company, she had become very close to both of them, and so was well aware that the danger threatening Godric was a real one.

  A few weeks before, his young wife, Willa, had been knocked down by a troupe of Belleme’s soldiers who had come thundering through the town on horseback, forcing all of the people on the street to scramble for safety. Willa, heavily pregnant, had not been able to move fast enough to get out of the way and one of the horses had crashed into her, its steel-shod hooves striking her head and rendering her senseless. The soldier riding the horse had not even stopped, but only cursed her for making his mount stumble before spurring it onwards. Neighbours had brought Willa home to Estrid’s house, but she never regained consciousness and a few hours later, she and the babe she carried drifted into death. Out of his mind with grief, Godric had sworn he would search out and kill the soldier who had been riding the horse that had caused his wife’s death. It had taken all of Estrid's powers of persuasion to forestall him from carrying out his threat.

  But although Estrid had managed to restrain him, his mood remained bleak and he had taken to drowning his sorrow in a mead cup.

  Judith hoped, for her mistress' sake, that Godric had merely spent last evening, as he often did lately, gambling with friends in the storage shed behind the blacksmith's shop where he worked, and been too cup-shotten to return home. But even as the notion formed in her mind, she admitted it was a forlorn one. On every previous occasion when Godric stayed out all night, and aware of his mother’s concern that he might succumb to the temptation to commit some reckless action against the Normans, he usually stumbled in at dawn to reassure her or at least reappeared at noon to partake of the midday meal. As the sun dropped lower from its zenith in the heavens, and there was still no sign of him, she felt her own anxiety rise. Had he, in the misguided mazing that accompanies drunkenness, decided to belatedly carry out his promise to avenge his wife? Was he, even now, arrested and incarcerated in a cell in the castle or, God forbid, slain by a Norman sword?

  Judith shuddered at the thought as Gytha rose and went to stand beside Estrid
at the open casement. On the street below people shopped at the market a little way along the High Street, a few children were desultorily kicking an air-filled pig's bladder in a game of foot-the-ball, and a couple of stray dogs snarled at each other as they fought for possession of a scrap of offal. On the far side of the thoroughfare, a pair of Norman soldiers was patrolling and, just opposite Estrid’s house, at the entrance to the cathedral grounds, two monks, hands tucked in the wide sleeves of their habits and tonsured pates glistening with sweat in the fierce rays of the sun, were standing talking together. As Estrid and Gytha watched, the monks ceased their conversation and turned and went into the church precincts. Although the appetizing aroma of the stew that their manservant, Cuthbert, had prepared had been wafting up the stairs to the workshop for well over half-an-hour, there was still not a trace of Godric's tall figure to be seen.

  “Try not worry overmuch about Godric, frea,” Gytha said to Estrid, using the English form of address instead of 'maistresse', one of the Norman French words which had become common among the English populace during the years since the invasion, and was included in the pidgin language they used to communicate with their overlords. “I am sure there is no reason to fret; it may just be that he has been too busy at the forge to get away.”

  “I pray you are right,” Estrid replied apprehensively, 'but a feeling in my bones tells me that you are not.”

  CHAPTER 3

  As Estrid was looking out of the window for sight of her son, Godric was walking along a back street that led to the lane behind Tosti’s property. Judith had not been mistaken in her opinion that he had gambled far into the night but he had not, as he usually did, returned home because he had been worried about his friend, Tosti. Tosti had come last night, as usual, to the storeroom where they gambled, but he had seemed distracted and had not played well, especially at taefl, a game at which he excelled. Then he left early, saying he was tired, and would return to the forge in the morning to make arrangements for the next game before he returned to his pig farm in a village outside the town walls. But although Godric had waited for him, Tosti had not appeared that morning and, as the hour grew towards noon, Godric became worried about him and decided, instead of returning home, to go and see if he was in the shack where he spent the nights that he stayed in town.