A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

Na Lizier had climbed them today to judge from the thick shape of her boots in their dust. No, oh dear, here were the smaller prints of a hoofed animal.

Na Lizier had lied.

But, ah, this was interesting; the hoofprints showed signs of dragging the higher up the stairs they went, occasionally overlaid by the tread of shoes. By the time they reached the roof, they had been obliterated as if badly swept by a duster. Had Na Lizier poisoned or tried to strangle poor Auguste and the goat had hauled himself up to the roof to get away from her? Or to sniff fresh air?

Hmm.

Emerging into daylight once more, Adelia gave a clear order: “Take the body to the castle. There I will listen to what Auguste has to say.”

She felt a fool and a fraud, but for her own satisfaction she was going to perform an autopsy on the damned goat-though God knows how I’ll find anything. And she’d need privacy for it; Na Roqua was unlikely to regard the butchery of her pet as “listening.” Also, the castle hall possessed a large stone table.

It might have been the funeral of a hero. Under the stern eye of Na Roqua, Auguste was laid reverently on a blanket and four Roqua men, taking a corner each, carried him shoulder-high up the tiers of the village street, the Lizier family reluctantly following behind.

In the hall, Adelia turned to Ulf, Rankin, and Mansur. “Light some candles and get these people out of here. You stay, I may need you.”

Na Roqua wanted to stay, too, but was persuaded by Fabrisse that the mystery to be performed could only be attended by those who were in tune with the soul of the corpse.

“But I have always been in tune with Auguste,” Na Roqua complained.

“Has he spoken to you since he died? No. He will only talk to a mistress of the art of death. In private.”

“You’re staying,” Na Roqua pointed out.

“It’s my damned castle. Now go.”

Thomassia was sent out with the old woman to console her during the wait.

Once candles had been lit and the doors shut, Rankin and Ulf heaved the body onto the table while Boggart was sent to the kitchen to find the sharpest knife it had.

Tentatively, Adelia felt Auguste’s neck and then the rest of him. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, which meant, always supposing rigor obeyed the same law in goats as in humans, the beast hadn’t been dead long.

Anyway, since according to Na Roqua he’d been alive when she went to bed, whatever had happened to him had taken place at some time during the night.

It would be interesting to see whether the fall had killed him or he’d been dead before he hit the alley. She was beginning to suspect the latter.

The three men were entertaining themselves with making up reasons for the goat’s demise that would satisfy Na Roqua and not implicate Na Lizier.

“A massive eagle picked him up and let him fall into the alley”

“A self-respecting eagle wouldn’t touch him. No, he farted himself up into the air and dropped in.”

Adelia ignored them. She took the knife from Boggart, wondering where to start.

Ulf grinned. “Goats, eh? How the mighty are fallen.”

“Shut up,” she told him. “Your chatter got me into this. Now, then, you men each take a leg… that’s right, and turn him onto his back.”

With Rankin holding up the goat’s extensive and flea-ridden beard, she began the incision at a point just below the chin.

She hadn’t even got as far as the wattle when she found out how Auguste had died. Something had blocked his throat.

Drawing the object out, she put it on the table near a candle.

“What in hell is that?”

“I don’t know, it looks like sheep’s wool.” She used the knife to stir the mass apart. There was chewed wood in it, and some nail-like pins.

“Na Lizier did kill him, then,” Mansur said. “She choked the brute.”

“Hmm.” Adelia put the knife down and began pacing, fitting together what she had learned from inspecting the two houses with this latest discovery.

“Well?” Fabrisse demanded at last. “What do we tell those two old women that won’t start a war?”

Adelia made up her mind. “The truth. They are both to blame.”

Once the incision had been neatly sewn up and the beard combed down over it, Na Roqua, Na Lizier, and the rest of the village were allowed into the hall.

“Auguste tells me that what happened was this,” Adelia said clearly. “You, Na Roqua, left the door to your carding room open last night… ”

“No, I didn’t,” Na Roqua shouted. “I never do.”

“You did last night, so Auguste says.”

The old woman sulked. “Well, I may have done.”

“And Auguste found his way in and began eating your sheep’s wool…”

“That wouldn’t kill him,” a Roqua son pointed out. “Auguste could eat anything.”

“He also ate at least one of the carding combs,” Adelia continued firmly “Its pointed pins stuck the ball of wool into his throat so that he couldn’t swallow it. In his distress he found his way out into the night air and then he stumbled into Na Lizier’s house-your door wasn’t on the latch, was it?”

Na Lizier shrugged. Nobody in Caronne bothered to secure their doors-who was there to secure them against?

“Again, gasping for air, he made his way up the stairs to the roof. The exertion drove the comb’s pins more firmly into his poor throat, blocking it up with the wool, so that, by the time he gained the roof he was dying. Auguste tells me that Na Lizier found him there dead when she got up this morning and, frightened that Na Roqua would suspect her of murdering him-as you did, Na Roqua-pitched his body into the alley He doesn’t blame you for that, Na Lizier, any more than he blames you, Na Roqua, for carelessly leaving the carding room door open. He wishes you both to be the friends you always were.”

Some of it was speculation, but some of it deduction; it was the best she could do.

There was silence in the hall, except for an onset of grizzling from the Count of Caronne, still tied to his mother’s back and wanting his next feed.

The suspense was awful.

Na Roqua’s walking stick rapped on the stone floor as she made her way over to where Na Lizier stood. “I am sorry,” she said.

“And I am sorry.”

The two old women embraced.

Under the wave of cheering, Fabrisse put her arm around Adelia. “Our savior,” she said.

Auguste was picked up once more by the Roqua sons and taken away for honorable burial.

Following them out, Na Roqua paused to stare into Adelia’s face. “Did Auguste happen to tell you whose body his soul will inhabit now?”

“Er, no. I’m afraid he didn’t.”

Na Roqua sighed. “You should have asked him.”

Solving the riddle of Auguste’s death had been an incident of little moment compared to other investigations Adelia had successfully pursued, but for the health of Caronne it had been important, and at the Christmas Eve feast that night, she was the heroine.

Grateful Roqua and Lizier men presented her and the other ex-prisoners with beautifully wrought sheepskin coats; she had to raise her beaker and drink in reply to the dozens of toasts that were made to her; a wreath of bay leaves was put on her head; and, finally, after three hours of eating, and leaning somewhat heavily on Mansur’s arm-the Arab, banned by his religion from alcohol, being the only sober person around-was put on a chair on a platform in the bailey to watch the village dance around the enormous bonfire that Ulf and Rankin had built for the purpose.