The Bloodstained Throne

Ulfrith gaped. ‘What are they doing?’

‘I thought you grew up near the sea,’ said Geoffrey, advancing cautiously. The birds took to the air, although they did not go far. ‘You must have seen this sort of thing before.’

‘You mean they are eating him?’ exclaimed Ulfrith, appalled. ‘But he was a man!’

Geoffrey did not reply but stared at the body in the sand. Vitalis’s wives had made a poor job of burying him. They had interred him below the high-water mark, so the next tide had scoured him out. Their hole had been too shallow, and they had not protected the grave with stones. Moreover, the birds were not the only ones to have ravaged Vitalis; it appeared that the villagers had been at him, too.

Geoffrey indicated that Bale was to help him carry the corpse to the boggy meadow behind the beach. He then set the squires to scooping out a decent hole with pieces of driftwood, while he gathered rocks to make a cairn. Fortunately, the soil was soft, and it was not long before they were able to roll Vitalis into his new final resting place.

‘He has a nice cloak,’ said Bale, fingering it. ‘And I like that ring.’

‘No,’ said Geoffrey sharply. He and Bale had had this discussion before. ‘We do not steal from the dead. Besides, clothes harvested from cadavers carry diseases.’

‘Only after they begin to rot, sir,’ countered Bale. ‘Vitalis is relatively fresh. And the ring-’

‘The ring belongs to Vitalis,’ said Geoffrey firmly. ‘And with Vitalis it will stay.’

‘But he will not be needing it where he is going,’ reasoned Bale. ‘And you are about to embark for the Holy Land without so much as a spare shirt. The ring would mean you would not have to borrow funds from Sir Roger. Besides, if we do not take it, those greedy villagers will.’

‘That is why we are burying him deep,’ replied Geoffrey. He looked around uneasily, suddenly assailed with the sense that they might be being watched. ‘Put the ring back, Bale. We are not corpse robbers.’

Bale looked sorry but did as he was told. Geoffrey gazed out to sea, wondering what it was about corpses that Bale so liked. He was one of the least greedy men Geoffrey had ever known, but he seemed unable to resist items belonging to the dead.

‘You should say something, sir,’ said Ulfrith. He was pale, and Geoffrey supposed he had not buried many men who had been half-eaten by birds. ‘We cannot just leave. It would not be right.’

‘Say something in Latin,’ suggested Bale helpfully. ‘That always sounds nice.’

‘Oh, yes!’ agreed Ulfrith keenly, removing his hat in anticipation. ‘Like a priest. Lady Philippa will like that when I tell her.’

‘I wish my horse had not died in this wretched place,’ said Geoffrey in Latin, staring down at the dead, sand- brushed features of the old knight but thinking of the animal he had lost. ‘Should I have listened to Roger about the omens? But that is odd! What is that line on Vitalis’s neck?’

‘Amen,’ said Ulfrith and Bale in unison as Geoffrey dropped to one knee to inspect the mark more closely. It lay under Vitalis’s cloak, which Bale’s rummaging had disturbed.

‘Something is tied around his neck,’ said Geoffrey, turning the dead man’s pecked head in his hands. ‘A piece of twine.’

‘It is tight,’ said Bale, squatting next to him and touching it with his forefinger. He took one of his sharp little knives and cut through it, showing where it had bitten deeply into the skin below. Then he leaned all his weight on Vitalis’s chest. Nothing happened. ‘There,’ he said in satisfaction.

‘There what?’ asked Ulfrith, bemused.

‘He did not drown,’ explained Geoffrey. ‘Or Bale would have been able to squeeze water from his lungs. No, he was strangled with that piece of twine.’

‘Not twine,’ said Bale, handing it to Geoffrey. ‘Ribbon. Fine red ribbon.’

‘I have seen its like before,’ said Ulfrith, staring at it. ‘But I cannot remember where.’

Geoffrey frowned. ‘Paisnel used red ribbon to keep his documents in order.’

The documents that had been in Paisnel’s bag, he thought, but that he himself had seen Juhel inspecting the day after Paisnel’s mysterious disappearance.

‘Then Juhel killed Vitalis!’ exclaimed Ulfrith, wide-eyed. ‘Philippa said he killed Paisnel, so he must have strangled Vitalis, too.’

‘There is no evidence to suggest that,’ said Geoffrey, his thoughts whirling. He had red ribbon of his own in the saddlebag he had saved from Patrick, but his was coarser. He looked at the stuff in Bale’s hand and tried to assess whether it was the same kind that Paisnel had owned. But ribbons were often used by clerks, and it could belong to anyone.

‘It was a long time before Juhel rejoined us yesterday,’ Bale pointed out. ‘He could have been off throttling Vitalis. And Lady Philippa was right to accuse him of dispatching Paisnel, because they were always squabbling. Men get a taste for killing, see, and they cannot help themselves.’

‘Well, this is definitely Juhel’s ribbon,’ declared Ulfrith, as Geoffrey wondered uneasily whether Bale had a taste for killing, too.

‘You seem very sure of that. How?’

Ulfrith shrugged. ‘I saw Paisnel reading documents with important-looking seals one night, and I saw Juhel glancing through similar ones after Paisnel went missing. Red ribbon kept them in a neat bundle. It is obvious what happened: Juhel used Paisnel’s ribbon to strangle Vitalis.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Even if Juhel did take Paisnel’s documents, we do not know if he salvaged them when the ship sank. And you cannot prove this particular piece of ribbon belonged to Juhel. The stuff is not exactly rare — I have some myself.’

‘You did not kill Vitalis, though,’ said Bale loyally.

‘Then who else could it have been?’ asked Ulfrith. ‘The pirates?’

‘Possibly,’ said Geoffrey. ‘But they were not with Vitalis when he died. Nor did they try to bury his corpse.’

‘Philippa and Edith dug the grave,’ said Ulfrith. ‘And they were with him when he died. Philippa told us herself that Vitalis’s last words were that he had spoken the truth when he accused you of. .’ He trailed off when the implications of what he was saying dawned on him.

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey soberly. ‘It very much looks as though Philippa and Edith are the prime candidates for their husband’s murder.’

‘This is monstrous!’ yelled Ulfrith, tears of rage and distress rolling down his flushed cheeks as he followed Geoffrey and Bale along the beach. ‘You have no right to make such accusations.’

‘I accused no one,’ said Geoffrey calmly. ‘I merely outlined the evidence.’

‘You will see Philippa hanged,’ shouted Ulfrith. ‘How could you? I thought you liked her.’

‘I do like her.’ Geoffrey saw that was the wrong thing to say, because Ulfrith’s eyes narrowed.

‘You intend to hold it over her,’ he said, white-faced. ‘To force her to lie with you.’

If it had not been for the promise Geoffrey had made to his sister, Ulfrith would have been flat on his back with a blade at his throat. Seeing his master’s hand twitch towards his dagger, Bale turned quickly and rested a warning hand on the younger man’s shoulder. Ulfrith shrugged it off.

‘I am going back to her,’ he said. ‘I want to be at her side if she is accused of terrible crimes.’

‘No one will accuse her,’ said Geoffrey, struggling to be patient. ‘The only people who know Vitalis did not drown are us and his killer — who may or may not be Philippa.’

‘Or Edith,’ added Bale helpfully.

‘And we will say nothing, so they have nothing to worry about,’ Geoffrey went on. ‘But you cannot ignore the facts. We all saw Vitalis alive as we abandoned ship, and Bale has just proved he did not drown. Ergo, he was strangled on the shore.’

‘But not by Philippa,’ persisted Ulfrith.

Geoffrey continued with his analysis. ‘Philippa said Vitalis reiterated his accusations about my family before he died. She also said there was water in his lungs and that he gurgled as he spoke. We know that was not true, because we just saw for ourselves that his lungs were dry. She lied.’

‘She was mistaken!’ cried Ulfrith. ‘She must have heard the gurgle of waves in the pebbles and assumed it was her husband.’