The Poisoned Serpent

27

Richard Canville was dead. God had spoken. The murder of the Earl of Lincoln was requited.

So pronounced Lord Richard Basset, Chief Justiciar of England, as Hugh stood before him head bowed, black hair hanging in sweat-drenched strands, left arm slowly dripping blood into the packed-dirt footing of the Inner bail.

The Bishop of Lincoln concurred with this judgment, saying in a stern voice to Bernard, who stood beside Hugh, “Bernard Radvers, you are a free man.” Then, on a more kindly note, he recommended that Hugh have someone see to his arm.

Hugh nodded and turned and blinked as Thomas put an authoritative hand on his good arm. “Lady Cristen will take care of your arm,” he said. “Come with me.”

The silent crowd parted to allow Hugh through, Thomas on one side of him and Bernard on the other. Now that the excitement of the combat was over, the townsfolk were just beginning to take in the significance of what had happened.

Richard Canville had murdered the Earl of Lincoln.

It didn’t seem possible.

But it had to be true. God had spoken.

Still speechless, groups of people began to filter out through the east gate to join those clustered on the other side of the wall.

Bernard said to Thomas, “This bleeding must be staunched immediately.”

Then they saw Cristen approaching with a roll of bandage in her hands.

“Let me see that arm,” she said to Hugh, gesturing to Bernard to step out of her way. She placed the bandage right over Hugh’s sleeve. “I’m just going to bind it now. I’ll clean it and sew it when the bleeding stops.”

“How nice,” he said. They were the first words he had spoken since Richard fell.

Cristen began to wrap the roll of linen around his arm. He winced once when she tightened it, but otherwise he stood stoically and did not speak.

“All right,” she said when she had finished. She looked into Hugh’s pain-darkened eyes. “The castle or Ralf’s house?”

“Ralf’s,” he replied, and she nodded and turned to Thomas.

“He can’t walk that long way. Get Rufus.”

Thomas turned and ran to the stockade.

“Alan,” Cristen said. “Help Thomas.”

Alan raced toward the stockade as well, leaving Hugh alone with Bernard, who was bracing him with an arm around his waist, and Cristen, who was regarding him somberly.

“You took a dangerous chance,” she said.

He managed a fleeting smile. “There are some advantages to being smaller.”

“Did you deliberately let him drive you back to the wall?” Bernard demanded.

“Mmm. In his enthusiasm to crush me with his sword, Richard appeared to have forgotten all about the daggers.” Hugh’s words were clipped, as if he were expending as little energy as possible to form them. “But I hadn’t. And I can use my right hand as well as my left.”

He swayed slightly, and Bernard tightened his grip.

“Here comes Rufus,” Cristen said briskly.

The white stallion was led up to Hugh and Alan held the bridle while Thomas and Bernard lifted Hugh onto the horse’s unsaddled back.

“Lead on,” Bernard commanded Alan, who began to gently lead Rufus forward. Thomas and Bernard walked on either side of Hugh to hold him upright.

“I can stay on Rufus by myself,” Hugh protested with annoyance.

“We are not in the least interested in your opinion,” Cristen informed him in the same brisk tone as before.

“Oh,” Hugh said. His voice sounded meek, but there was a brief glint of amusement in his eyes.

At Ralf’s house they were greeted by an ecstatic Nicholas and Iseult. Cristen issued a few short, crisp orders, and Hugh found himself being guided upstairs to his old bedroom by Bernard and Thomas. He sat on a chest by the window and impassively awaited his fate.

She arrived shortly, followed by Mabel carrying a tray that held a water jug, a bowl, more linen bandage, a scissors, a needle, thread, and an ointment jar. Hugh eyed these items warily.

Mabel put down the tray on the chest next to him, and Cristen drew up a stool and sat down. “This will hurt,” she warned him.

His arm was already on fire with pain and he was feeling sick and dizzy. “Really?” he managed to say.

To his great relief, she dismissed Bernard and Thomas before she went to work, cutting away sleeve and bandage to expose the long ugly gash in his forearm.

“Can you make a fist, Hugh?” she asked.

Resolutely ignoring the pain it caused, he closed his fingers into a fist.

“Good.” Relief sounded in her voice. “Nothing vital is severed.”

“That is good news.”

Cautiously he moved his head from side to side. It had begun to ache shortly after the duel, and now there was a tight band of pain around the base of his skull.

It’s just because of the wound, he told himself firmly. It’s not a headache.

Cristen said, “The first thing I am going to do is clean it.”

Hugh stared at the corner of his bed and maintained a resolute silence as she washed his injury with warm water and soap. He made no sound all the time it took her to stitch the edges of the wound together and to anoint it with an ointment of centaury.

As she worked on his arm, the band of pain around his skull kept getting fiercer, and he could no longer ignore the fact that he was getting a headache.

Blood of Christ! he thought, half in anger and half in despair. Will I never be free of this crippling ailment?

Cristen was bandaging his arm once more.

He felt the pain begin to move into his forehead.

“Cristen,” he said. “Do you have any of your betony elixir with you?”

She looked at him and knew instantly what was the matter. “Aye,” she said. “I’ll get it.”

She stood and instructed her assistant, “Thank you for your help, Mabel. You may take the tray down to the kitchen.”

The door closed behind the girl. “Another headache?” Cristen asked.

“So it seems,” he said.

“Oh, Hugh.” Her voice ached with compassion. Then, more matter-of-factly, “Let me get you out of these filthy clothes and into bed. Then I will get the elixir for you.”

“All right.”

His lips formed the words but scarcely any sound came out.

Cristen had kept her scissors, and took care of his sweat-stained tunic and shirt by simply cutting them from top to bottom and sliding them off of his shoulders. Then she easily slipped his hose off his legs and feet. Once she had him stripped to his drawers, Hugh got under the blankets, which she had turned down for him.

By now the pain in his head was a furnace of agony.

Cristen pulled his blankets over him. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

He rested his head against his pillow, shut his eyes, and tried to think of something else beside the agony in his head.

Time passed.

“Hugh.”

It was Cristen again, the only person he could bear to have near him at such a time.

“The betony has never relieved you that much,” she said. “Let me give you some poppy juice instead. It will help the pain and perhaps put you to sleep.”

He squinted up into her large brown eyes. Cristen knew what she was doing, he thought. She would never give him anything that could harm him.

“All right,” he said and pushed himself up on his good elbow to drink from the cup she was holding out.

He lay back down and closed his eyes. His stomach began to churn.

He opened his eyes. “I need a basin.”

She had one ready, and held it for him as he vomited up the stew he had eaten for dinner.

The pounding in his head was sheer anguish. How could he endure hours more of this?

He felt her take his hand.

Time passed with excruciating slowness.

Then, slowly, the sharp edge of the pain began to dull. His head still throbbed, but it was not as unbearable as it had been.

“It is feeling a little better,” he said to her.

“Good.”

He was actually feeling sleepy. His stomach heaved again, but he forced it down.

Breathe, he thought. Think about breathing. In and out, in and out, in and out…

Suddenly he felt a strange humming sensation along all of his nerve endings. Then nothing.

He woke in the middle of the night. His mouth tasted terrible and his brain felt sluggish. His arm still hurt but the pain in his head was gone.

“Hugh?”

A shaded candle was burning and he saw her sitting in a chair next to his bed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His tongue felt thick and the words were hard to pronounce.

“Is the headache gone?”

“Aye. But my brain feels soggy.”

She smiled. “The aftereffect of the poppy juice, I’m afraid. Would you like some water?”

“Please.”

She brought him a cup and he finished it thirstily.

“How much poppy juice did you give me?” he demanded.

“A bit.”

“Even my arm doesn’t feel too bad.”

“Good.” She gave him more water and he drained the second cup.

“It’s after midnight,” she informed him. “Go back to sleep. Your brain will be back to normal in the morning.”

If Cristen said it would be so, then it would be so. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

When he awoke in the morning he was alone. His mouth still tasted terrible, but his head was clear.

His arm hurt, but the pain was negligible compared to the pain of a headache.

Cristen had left him a pitcher of water and a cup. He got out of bed and drank the entire contents of the pitcher, which made him feel much better.

He was regarding his pile of torn clothes when his bedroom door opened slightly and Alan Stanham peeked in. When he saw that Hugh was up, he opened the door farther and said, “How are you feeling, Lord Hugh? Would you like me to help you dress?”

“I would,” Hugh replied, “if I had anything to dress in.”

Alan carried Adela’s old wooden wash tub into the room. “I went around to the sheriff’s house earlier and asked one of the kitchen boys to pack up your clothing for me,” he said. “I’ll bring it to you after you have bathed.”

“Alan,” Hugh said appreciatively. “You are a gem of a squire.”

Alan looked bleak. “A squire who has lost his lord,” he said.

Hugh flicked him a look, but did not reply.

After his bath, Hugh dressed in clean clothes and went downstairs to break his fast.

He was only just beginning to realize that his long conflict with Richard was over. Richard the brilliant athlete, the charming lover, the deadly friend-Richard was dead.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and listened.

She was in the kitchen.

Hugh made his way to the back of the house.

She was stirring something in the big pot that hung over the fire, and her head was already turned in his direction when he came in. Her skin, delicately flushed from the heat of the fire, looked beautiful, set off by the plain gold tunic she wore over her dark green undertunic.

They looked at each other.

Nicholas and Iseult had been sitting on one of the kitchen benches next to Bernard, and as soon as they saw Hugh, both children jumped up and ran over to him.

Iseult regarded the bandage on his arm with huge blue eyes.

“Does it hurt, Hugh?” she asked.

“It’s not too bad.”

She slipped her hand confidingly into his good one and smiled up at him.

“I won’t be able to help you with your braids for a while, I’m afraid,” he told her.

Iseult gave him a sunny smile. “That’s all right. Cristen helped me. She is good at making braids.”

Nicholas snorted to indicate his impatience with this foolish conversation. “I wish I could have seen the fight yesterday,” he said. “I wish I could have seen you kill Sir Richard.” His tone was indignant. Obviously he felt that he had been deprived of something that was his due.

“He murdered my father,” Nicholas went on. “If I were old enough I would have killed him myself.”

“I’m sure you would have,” Hugh said gravely. “I hope you don’t mind too much that I did it for you.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Nicholas said. “What I mind is not being allowed to watch!”

“Iseult could not watch, and she could not be left alone,” Hugh said.

Nicholas scowled. “Having a sister is nothing but a nuisance.”

“Well, it’s just as much of a nuisance having a brother, I think,” Iseult retorted.

They glared at each other.

Cristen said serenely, “The porridge is ready. Who wants to eat?”

Food proved to be a wondrous diversion. Both children helped to carry bowls of porridge into the solar, and everyone sat down around the table to eat it.

Hugh knew it was for his sake that Cristen had cooked this meal instead of the usual ale and bread, and he ate hungrily. The porridge wiped out the last of the bad taste that the poppy juice had left in his mouth.

“There is one thing I don’t understand,” Bernard said, his eyes on Hugh. “Why did Richard think it was necessary to kill de Beauté when he had Elizabeth’s promise that she would defy her father and refuse to marry you? All along we thought that his motive was to hide the tax cheat, but it seems he knew nothing about that.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I wondered the same thing,” Hugh said. “We had a little time to chat while we were hacking away at each other yesterday, so I asked him for the answer.”

He scraped the last bit of porridge out of his bowl and ate it. Then he looked up, a distinctly sardonic look on his face. “It seems that Richard was afraid I would charm Elizabeth into changing her mind. He was determined to keep me from marrying her, no matter the cost.”

Everyone stared at Hugh.

“That makes sense,” Bernard said slowly.

At that moment, someone knocked upon the front door. Alan went to see who it was, and returned with William Rotier.

“My lord,” Rotier said to Hugh. “We have just received news that I think you will wish to hear.”

Hugh waited.

“An hour ago a messenger brought word to the castle that the king is on his way to Lincoln and will be here this very afternoon.”

Bernard and Thomas exclaimed in surprise.

“He is accompanied by the Earl of Wiltshire and by William of Roumare, Earl of Cambridge,” Rotier went on.

Silence reigned in the solar.

Then Cristen asked, her voice a little breathless, “What of my father? Do you know if he accompanies the king?”

“I believe he does, my lady,” William Rotier replied.

More silence. Nicholas and Iseult exchanged anxious glances, not understanding what was happening.

Then, “What a merry gathering we shall be,” Hugh said.

“Aye, my lord,” Rotier replied impassively.

Hugh frowned. “What is the temper in the town, William?

“The town is in a state of shock, my lord. Richard was very well liked. People are having difficultly realizing that he was a villain.”

Hugh nodded soberly, his gaze on his empty porridge bowl.

“However, you are well liked, too, my lord,” Rotier continued. “Neither the townsfolk nor the castle guard appear inclined to dispute the result of yesterday’s combat.”

Bernard said gruffly, “What of the sheriff?”

“He is under house arrest. There can be little doubt that Stephen will replace him once he learns of Gervase’s dishonesty.” Rotier grimaced. “God knows who he will name as sheriff in his place.”

Hugh lifted his eyes from his contemplation of the empty porridge bowl. “What a jolly time we are in for,” he said lightly.

“The king won’t take us away from you, will he, Hugh?” Iseult asked nervously.

Hugh looked at her in astonishment. “Why ever would he do that?”

She gazed back at him, wide-eyed and apprehensive.

“No one is going to take you away from Hugh, Iseult,” Cristen said calmly. She looked at Rotier. “Thank you for bringing us this news. We will prepare ourselves as best we can.”

Rotier bowed to her and turned to go.

Bernard stood and said, “I’ll go back to the castle with you.”

The two men went out together.

Thomas said gloomily, “Sir Nigel is going to murder me.”

“Nonsense,” Cristen said briskly.

“Why would Sir Nigel want to murder you?” Nicholas asked curiously.

Hugh stood up. “I suppose I really can’t return to the sheriff’s house, but I wish I weren’t staying here.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Cristen said.

He looked somberly at her small, tense face.

“All that matters now,” she said, “is that you convince the king.”