The King's Riddle Read online

  Gytha had told him that Estrid had declared she would never marry again after Leif was slain at the battle of Senlac, vowing she would bring no more children into the world to live under Norman oppression. But Leofwine still had hope that one day she would change her mind and agree to wed him. Gytha supported him in his goal and did all she could to help him and, in the meantime, he at least had the consolation that the woman he had so long loved was not likely to countenance any other suitor’s proposal.

  Estrid sat motionless for some time, a habit he knew she had when confronted by a problem, be it large or small. At home in Rochester, so Gytha told him, Estrid would often, when the day’s tasks were done, retire to her workshop for the same purpose, letting her thoughts drift and rearrange themselves into a pattern that brought a solution. Here, she was using the silence of the mote place to mull over all that had been said by the witnesses that day.

  Estrid’s voice drifted to him and broke into his thoughts. “Do you remember, Leofwine, a murder trial that was held when we were very young—that of a farmer who had murdered his wife and also a neighbour’s slave?”

  Leofwine searched his mind and recalled it vaguely. “I think so. Was he the one that was not suspected when the crime was committed and then found guilty some months later?”

  “That is he. When his wife’s murder took place, he said that he had heard her scream late one evening and gone outside to see what had alarmed her and found her dead at the hands of the slave who, he believed, had killed her when she fought back against his attempt to rape her. But it was later found, through the evidence of another slave in the neighbour’s household, that the husband had killed them both, his wife for committing adultery and the slave so he could not give witness of her murder. If the dead slave had not, before the incident, confided he was having an affair with the farmer’s wife to the slave who later revealed it, the truth would never have been known. Do you see the lesson to be learned from this?”

  Leofwine did not. In the first instance, there were no longer any slaves, for Duke William had abolished the practice soon after he had donned the crown of England. In the second place, he did not believe it possible that fitzRanulf had murdered the girl he had just wed, so there did not seem to be any semblance between the two crimes.

  When he shook his head, Estrid gave a sigh of impatience. “The wife was never suspected of bedding the slave—she was deemed to be a woman who had been faithful in her marriage and that is why the husband was believed when he told his lie about her being raped. She was a woman with a secret, and kept it well. Is it not possible that Alfreda might be the same? I wonder if she, like the adulterous wife of the farmer, also kept privy some circumstance that, if we can discover what it was, might lead us to the person responsible for her death?”

  CHAPTER 23

  As Estrid and Leofwine walked back to Godser’s mill, they discussed the premise she had posited. “All that we have heard of Alfreda has been praiseworthy—she was beautiful, kind and liked by all—but no one is without some fault and usually has at least one or two shortcomings, or perhaps just misplaced ambitions, which are often kept secret,” Estrid said.

  “It is certainly a notion worth investigating,” Leofwine agreed.

  When they arrived back at the mill, they found Valerie sitting with Tilde at the table in the house, obviously anxious, as she nervously twisted the ends of her girdle strings back and fro, back and fro in endless repetition.

  Tilde looked up at them and motioned to a linen wrapped parcel that lay on the table in front of their visitor. “Valerie has brought you that bundle, but she has not yet told me what is in it.”

  Estrid and Leofwine sat down on the bench on the other side of Valerie and waited for her to speak.

  “I decided to sort through Alfreda’s clothes this morning,” she said finally. “Some of her garments would fit Helga or, if she does not relish the idea of wearing them, can be cut down to fit her little daughter or given to the church for the use of poor women in the village. It was a duty I did not relish, but I knew it had to be done.”

  She took a deep breath before continuing. “After that, I opened the coffer she had packed to take with her to her new home in Ashford after she was married. It contained two new gowns she had recently made, a summer cloak and a little wooden box in which she kept her jewellery. I already knew what was in the box—a couple of cloak brooches, a pendant belonging to her dead mother, and a silver bangle that I gave her many years ago—but I opened it anyway, longing for one last look at the things she had treasured before I gave them into my brother’s keeping.“

  Here Valerie took another deep breath and then said, “But there was not only Alfreda’s jewellery in there. At the bottom was that bundle and, when I removed the linen covering, I found a bottle inside.” She looked with fearful eyes at Estrid. “I am not certain, but I think it may have contained the poison that killed her.”

  With trembling fingers she undid the linen wrapping and exposed a glazed pottery flagon, yellow in colour and stoppered with a tightly rolled bung of leather. The only decoration on it was a design of whirling lines etched around the bottom. Carefully, Estrid picked it up shook it. It sounded as though there was a very small quantity of some type of liquid inside.

  “Have you opened it?” Estrid asked.

  “No,” Valerie replied. “It frightened me, so I just wrapped it up again and brought it here.” She looked up at Estrid. “I have seen those bottles before. Redwald makes them. Men fill them with apple wine or mead and then tie a thong around the top to lace onto their belts to make them portable. Harold has one, but this is not his; I saw the one he has among the cups on the shelf at home only this morning. But Alfreda had no use for one, and even if she had, why would she hide it in that box?”

  Her eyes were filled with apprehension as she asked Estrid, “Do you believe I am right in thinking it might have been filled with the poison that killed her?”

  “It is possible, I suppose, but it might be something completely innocuous. The only way to find out is to test it.”

  She spoke to Tilde. “I would assume that Godser sets rat traps in the mill?”

  “He does,” the miller’s wife confirmed.

  “Then please ask him if he has any live ones on which we can try this liquid.”

  Tilde was gone for only a few moments. “He has two that he has not drowned yet and will bring them into the yard.”

  They all went outside, Tilde taking a piece of griddle cake smeared with honey on which to drop the liquid to entice the rats into consuming it. Godser had already placed a small cage in which the rats were ensnared on the ground. The vermin were large ones, red-eyed and agitated, scurrying around the cage and tumbling over each other in a vain attempt to escape. Carefully Estrid loosened the leather stopper on the bottle, protecting her fingers by covering them with the square of linen in which it had been wrapped. The bung was tightly fitted and it took her a few moments to ease it out. Cautiously she smelled the liquid. It did not have a noxious odour, merely a faint scent of greenwood.

  Still using the square of linen, she tipped two drops of the greenish and slightly viscous liquid onto the piece of griddle cake and then pushed it between the bars of the cage containing the rats. The rodents were cautious at first, but after sniffing the air for a few moments, went over to the cake and, once each had tasted it, frantically devoured it until not one crumb remained. When all of the cake was gone, they slunk back to the far side of the cage while Estrid and the others stood and waited to see if the liquid had any ill effects.

  And it did. It took the rats nearly an hour to die, and their reactions were different. One vomited almost immediately and then its bowels loosened. It was the first to expire. The other rodent, slightly larger than his dead companion, took a little longer. For a time it seemed not to suffer any symptoms at all and then it began to tremble for a time before its eyes suddenly glazed over and it fell dead on its side.

  “I think there can b
e no doubt, Valerie, that this is what killed your niece,” Estrid said. “Maud told us that Alfreda asked to be left alone for a few minutes after she had donned her wedding finery. The reason she gave was that she wished to pray, but it could have been to take this mixture in private and then replace the bottle in the coffer until she could dispose of it discreetly.”

  “That is impossible,” Valerie declared, tears streaming down her face. “She would never take her own life. Not only is it a mortal sin, but she had everything to live for. Why would she take poison?”

  “Perhaps she did not know that is what it was,” Estrid replied, thinking to herself that this hidden bottle was almost certain to be the secret she had, just a few moments before, suspected Alfreda of having and reluctantly wishing, for Valerie’s sake, that it had not been revealed.

  *************

  After carefully replacing the stopper, Estrid wrapped the bottle up again and they all returned to the house.

  “Had Alfreda suffered any ailments in the days before her marriage?” she asked Valerie. “A sore throat perhaps, or a fever, something for which she would have sought a remedy?”

  “None of which I am aware,” Valerie replied. “Do you think that is what she believed the poison was—a medicant?”

  “Perhaps,” Estrid replied.

  “But why would she hide it away from the rest of us?” Valerie asked.

  “I do not know—perhaps she wished no one to realise she was ill in case it delayed her wedding, or had a woman’s complaint she did not wish to discuss, even with you. But if she was seeking a remedy of some sort, I assume she would have gone to your village cunning woman?”

  Valerie nodded. “We all go to her whenever one of us is sick.”

  “Is this the same healer who declared it was yew poison that killed Alfreda?

  When Valerie again nodded, Estrid response was immediate. “Then she is the next person that must give witness.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “I cannot believe that Merwenna was involved in Alfreda’s murder; she has been tending the sick in the village ever since I was a young girl,” Valerie declared as she and Estrid, along with Judith, walked towards the cunning woman’s small cot on the western side of the village. Humbert had been left behind to write up a report of Valerie’s finding of the bottle and the subsequent testing of the liquid it contained on the rats. Alongside the three women Leofwine strode as escort.

  “Merwenna is an older woman then?” Estrid asked.

  “About ten years older than myself,” Valerie replied. “She was the only child of elderly parents and was born with a twisted leg. Because of this, her marriage prospects were low and so, when she was just a young girl, and had a seeming aptitude for the craft, the cunning woman who cared for us all at that time took her into her home and instructed her in the healing lore.”

  She paused for a moment, and then went on. “She is skilled in the craft, and has cared for many of us over the years, sometimes sitting up all night watching a woman afflicted with fever after childbirth, or a person suffering a grievous illness. I think it unlikely she would contrive to take the life of any person, or even an animal. And besides, why would she want Alfreda dead?”

  When they arrived at the cot—a humble dwelling set close inside the wooden palisade that encircled the village and near to the gate that led out to the river—Estrid stayed Valerie for a moment before they walked up the narrow track that led to the door. “Before we go in, I would have you tell me if you mentioned your finding of the poison bottle to anyone—Siward, perhaps, or another member of your family?”

  Valerie shook her head. “I was so shocked when I found it that I could think of nothing except bringing it to you,” she replied.

  “That is well,” Estrid replied. “Until I have spoken to Merwenna, I would not have news of it spreading through the village.”

  Just as Leofwine was about to rap on the door of the cunning woman’s cot, Valerie motioned to a woman that was coming towards them from further down the path, limping crookedly along with the aid of a stout wooden staff and carrying in her free hand an osier basket full of herbs, and told them she was Merwenna. The cunning woman was tall, about fifty years of age and dressed in a plain grey kirtle. Braids of auburn hair streaked with grey hung over her shoulders below her head rail, and her skin was darkly burnished by the sun. Her eyes were green and deeply set in a face that was strongly boned at both cheek and jaw.

  Valerie gave her greeting and, after introducing her companions, told her that Estrid had come to ask some questions about Alfreda’s death.

  Merwenna just nodded and led the women inside the cot while the goodwife in the adjacent dwelling peeped nosily at them from behind the edge of her barely opened door. Leofwine took up a post outside and, when he looked the neighbour’s way, she quickly withdrew.

  The interior of the cunning woman’s home reminded Estrid of Cenred’s dwelling in Rochester. Bundles of herbs hung from the ceiling; there were shelves with a selection of pottery jars laid on them and, over a low burning fire in the hearth in the middle of the one chamber the cot possessed, was a cauldron filled with a liquid that was gently steaming, the vapour slowly rising and escaping through the smoke hole in the roof.

  Laying down her basket of herbs on a small rickety table, Merwenna turned to face them. “What is it that you wish to ask me?” she enquired bluntly, leaning heavily on her stick.

  Sensing that here was a woman who did not waste words, neither did Estrid. “My purpose in coming is twofold. The first is to do with your pronouncement that the poison that killed Alfreda was in the mead cup she drank from, which I have been told is very unlikely, for yew does not usually kill so quickly. Can you explain your error?”

  Merwenna gave an exasperated exhalation of breath. “No, I cannot, for I did not make it.” She looked at Estrid straightly. “I only told the king that I believed it was a toxin made from yew, and that it had most probably been in something she had recently eaten or drunk. Before I could say any more, he and all of the others in the hall immediately supposed that it must have been in her mead cup. I tried to tell them it was not likely to be so, but I was ignored, and I did not press the matter. Alfreda was dead, there was nothing I could do for her, and it was not my business to seek out her murderer.”

  Estrid found herself believing the cunning woman’s claim. Not only was she forthright and not of a kind to dissemble, her tale rung true. She could well imagine the confusion as Alfreda had collapsed and died, everyone gathering round as the cunning woman examined her, waiting to see if she could revive the girl. When she could not and pronounced she had been poisoned, minds would leap to the cup of mead from which Alfreda had just been drinking and assume the poison had been in that, and an immediate search for who might have contaminated it would take place, while any protest the cunning woman tried to make would go unheeded in the pandemonium.

  Estrid nodded her acceptance of Merwenna’s words and then went on to ask if Alfreda had come to her to seek a remedy for an ailment in the days before her death.

  “She did come to see me shortly before she was married,” Merwenna replied, “but not because she was sick.”

  “Then for what purpose did she come?” Estrid asked.

  The cunning woman’s face hardened. “She wanted a potion to help her conceive, one that would, at the same time, ensure the babe was male. I told her I am not a witch and would not help her.”

  “But why would she want such a thing before she was even wed?” Valerie blurted out. “I know she was anxious to give her husband an heir, for she told me so. I advised her to wait and see if she proved fertile and, if she did not, to pray to Our Lady for aid in bearing a child.”

  “I told her the same thing, but still she was insistent that I make her a potion, and I was forced to show my anger before she would accept my refusal.” Merwenna replied. “I am a Christian woman and do not deal in magick. It is the Devil’s work and a curse on mankind.”

  A
gain Estrid believed the cunning woman for the disgust showing on her face was real and not feigned. But Estrid was more forgiving of Alfreda’s request than either Valerie or Merwenna, for they had not taken into consideration—perhaps had even forgotten the wild impulses of their own young days—the foolish impatience of a young girl in love. FitzRanulf was baseborn; it was natural he should earnestly desire a legitimate heir to inherit the lands left him by Hugh de Montfort, and also that Alfreda, overcome with eagerness to please the man she was to wed, should seek a way to grant his wish as quickly as possible.

  “Do you know of any witch she might have consulted?” Estrid asked.

  Merwenna shrugged. “There are none in the village, but I have heard there are one or two living in the greenwood near Bearsted.” The cunning woman’s eyes narrowed and she looked suspiciously at Estrid. “But why do you ask? Do you think one of them may have agreed to help her?”

  “It is possible. A bottle containing a liquid which we tested on rats and is poisonous has been found, and most likely it is the yew toxin you believe killed Alfreda.” After describing the effects the rats had exhibited, and Merwenna agreeing with her conclusion, Estrid said they were also certain that Alfreda took the draught willingly. “Now you have told me of this fertility potion she desired,” Estrid added, “it is certain she would only have drunk it if she believed it to be such a concoction.”

  Merwenna’s deformed leg gave way under her and she slumped down on the stool that stood by the table. “The poor foolish girl,” she murmured sorrowfully. “May God watch over her soul and guide her to heaven.”

  “That is why I wish to know of a witch who may have made it for her,” Estrid continued, “telling her it was the mixture she had asked for but instead giving her poison, perhaps for payment by a person who wished Alfreda dead.”