told me you were recovered.’
‘I have heard tales of men who talk to cadavers,’ said Ralph darkly. ‘Sometimes they encourage them to walk around. Is that what you have been doing, Sir Geoffrey? It would explain why there are suddenly so many Saxons in La Batailge.’
‘None of
‘I was talking to my dog,’ said Geoffrey. He frowned, thinking they were not the first to comment on the number of Saxons. Were they men rallying to Magnus and Harold? He did not have time to ponder, however, because Galfridus was regarding him with a shocked expression.
‘Dogs are not permitted in here! They have a tendency to. . to ravage, if you understand me.’
Geoffrey hoped the conclusions he had drawn from the animal’s poor condition were correct and watched with considerable anxiety as Aelfwig pulled away the blankets that covered the bodies. There were three of them: Edith and two men. Neither of the men was familiar: one was old and looked as though he had long been ill — Geoffrey assumed it was his rival for the abbey’s last coffin — and the other was a hefty, thick-set man. He tried to disguise his relief that all three appeared to be unchewed.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said to Galfridus. ‘I was not myself when I first arrived and regret any offence I may have given.’
Some of the rigid wariness faded from Galfridus’s face. ‘Your apology is accepted, although I suspect it was honesty, not illness, that made you refer to my amethyst horse as the work of a baboon. And to say that you had seen better art in brothels.’
‘I came to see if I recognize the man who was killed,’ said Geoffrey, to disguise his mortification. He wondered what else he had said.
‘He died clutching a dagger,’ said Galfridus. ‘But Sir Roger says he is not one of the pirates.’
Geoffrey went to inspect the body more closely, wincing when he saw Bale’s savage slash to its throat. It was a man in his late thirties with a strong, determined face. Its clothes were too tight for its muscular frame, and Geoffrey assumed that either someone had exchanged them after the man had died or he had borrowed them, perhaps as a disguise. When he inspected the fellow’s hair, he saw it had been dyed: in places it was black, in others yellow. He turned over one of the hands, which was soft-palmed with traces of ink on the thumb. The face was entirely unfamiliar, and Geoffrey could not imagine why this man should have been looming over his sickbed with a weapon. However, there were certain conclusions he could draw.
‘He was not a labourer, but a man who could write. I am not certain, but I saw a burly fellow rather like this on the beach with the villagers. His yellow hair suggests Saxon-’
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Galfridus, coming to inspect the dead man’s face himself. ‘It is Gyrth! I had no idea! Move him into the light, Ralph, so I can see better. Yes, it is him. But why is he wearing a peasant’s clothes, and where is his habit?’
Geoffrey looked from Galfridus to Ralph to Aelfwig, trying to work out what was happening. ‘Are you saying that one of your monks tried to stab me? But Aelfwig said he did not recognize him.’
‘I
‘He was a novice,’ explained Ralph. ‘Or he wanted to be.’
Geoffrey was sceptical. ‘He is older than me. How could he be a novice?’
Galfridus shrugged. ‘Men come when God calls them, and there is no statutory age to serve Him. However, it helps if you bring a little something to smooth the way, and Gyrth offered the abbey a handsome bracelet — solid gold and studded with rubies.’
‘Magnus and Harold mentioned a Gyrth,’ said Geoffrey. ‘He was Earl of East Anglia.’
‘Actually he was not,’ said Ralph. ‘His father held the title, but this Gyrth never did, although he never stopped railing at the injustice of his disinheritance. He was quite tedious about it.’
‘Then he came to us six months ago,’ elaborated Galfridus, ‘and professed to have had a dream in which God ordered him to take the cowl.’
‘I was unsure whether his calling was genuine,’ finished Ralph, ‘so I recommended that he be sent to the chapel at Lullitune, to see how serious he was.’
‘Why did no one recognize him when he was killed?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘Because no one here had ever met him, except Galfridus and me,’ explained Ralph. ‘We sent him off to Lullitune the day he arrived, and although we heard that a man had been killed in the hospital, it did not occur to either of us to come and inspect the corpse.’
Geoffrey was bemused. ‘So why was he here wearing someone else’s clothes and with black dye on his hair?’
Galfridus shrugged again. ‘He is one of those Saxons for whom the fire of battle still burns. Perhaps he took against you because you are Norman. Do you think he murdered poor Edith, too?’
Geoffrey was surprised Galfridus should think
‘Sir Roger says you have a way with murders,’ said Ralph. ‘And we would greatly appreciate any help. In return, we shall charge you nothing for the medicines Aelfwig provided, and, as Sir Roger told us you lost all your money in the shipwreck, this is a good offer. Just look at Edith’s body and see whether you can throw any light on her cruel death.’
Geoffrey wished Roger had kept his mouth shut. But the three monks were looking hopefully at him, and he felt a certain need to make amends for his uncharacteristically caustic criticism of Galfridus’s sculptures.
‘She was strangled,’ he said, walking to Edith’s body and noting that the red ribbon was still embedded in her neck. Someone had washed her face and dressed her hair, but the cord remained in place. He looked up questioningly, wondering why no one had removed it.
‘I did not like to poke her about too much,’ explained Aelfwig, embarrassed. ‘She is a woman, you see, and I took a vow to stay away from those.’
‘Surely you have female patients from time to time?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘Well, yes, but I am not tempted by those,’ replied Aelfwig enigmatically. Geoffrey decided he did not want to know more and applied himself to his task.
Whoever had throttled Edith had done so with considerable force. Broken fingernails showed she had struggled frantically to prise the ribbon loose, and there were corresponding scratches on her throat that she had put there herself. There were no other marks that he could see, and he had no intention of looking under her clothes when he was surrounded by monks. He stepped back with an apologetic shrug. Roger accused Lucian, Philippa accused Juhel, and the monks were suspicious of Gyrth, but there was nothing on Edith’s body to incriminate any of them.
‘Gyrth was strong,’ said Ralph. ‘He had a restrained tension that might have exploded.’
But Geoffrey was sceptical. ‘That means Gyrth strangled a woman with ribbon and then tried to stab a man. Two different modes of execution.’
‘What is the significance of that?’ asked Galfridus.
‘Most killers confine themselves to one,’ began Geoffrey, then stopped abruptly because he did not want the monks to think him overly familiar with such matters. Besides, it was too much of a coincidence that Edith should have been killed in exactly the same way as her husband.
He started to back away, loath to spend more time in the charnel house than necessary, but his dog, which had declined to stray far from his side, tripped him up. He could have saved himself by grabbing Gyrth’s bier, but it was unstable, and instinct told him that dragging a corpse to the ground would not be well received by the monastics. So he twisted to one side and landed on his knees. This placed him at eye level with Edith’s left hand, which he had not inspected.
Caught under one of her nails, and held there by dried blood, was a tiny thread of red. For a moment, he thought it was a fibre from the ribbon around her neck, but it was darker and made from cloth rather than cord. He was almost certain the fragment had come from her killer and that she had clawed it away during her death throes. He pointed it out to the three monks.
‘This means Gyrth is innocent,’ said Aelfwig. ‘There is nothing red on his corpse.’
‘He could have changed,’ suggested Ralph. ‘Although it makes no sense to remove clothes after one killing if you intend to indulge in another.’
