Forsaken Soul

Chapter Eighteen

“You’re standing in my light.” Will lowered his hammer as sweat made pale and twisted paths through the black ash on his face, arms, and chest. The air stank of hot metal and unwashed flesh.

Ralf did not move. “I offer you a bargain then. I will give you light if you will enlighten me.”

“Not changed at all, have you? Landless Norman spawn with naught to do but torment honest tradesmen. You always were a troublous cur. Only Tostig could stand you, but I’ve oft thought him a cokenay, since he doesn’t keep a woman and hasn’t shown much longing for the cloister.” The smith smirked and rubbed his hand under his nose. “Which of you holds the lance, I wonder?”

Ralf grasped his sword.

Will reached over for his tongs and picked up a white-hot coal.

“Drop it, Will!” a voice shouted. “’S Blood! The man will skewer you before you ever decided what to do with that.” Hob emerged from a hut near the smithy, wiping his hands on a ragged piece of cloth. A muscular beige dog, with blotches of pink scarring along one side, followed him but carefully kept his distance from the elder blacksmith.

Sparks scattered as Will tossed the coal back into the fire.

The dog yelped and ran back to the dark interior of the hut.

“Lout! Are you trying to burn the village down?” Hob grabbed a bucket and dashed water on some ominously glowing embers. When rising steam confirmed all danger of fire was over, he turned to Ralf. “Why bother us, Crowner? You have Martin’s murder to solve. Or is the killer too clever for your frail wits and your pride demands you punish someone to prove your manhood? There’s no other reason for you to be here.”

“You and Will were the last to see Martin the night of his death. Witnesses heard you quarrelling with him.” Ralf had eased his weapon back but kept his hand on the hilt. “I think you killed your boyhood friend.”

“Talk to the whore, Crowner. We left. She was alone with him.” Will snorted, his eyes still dancing with eagerness for a fight.

“Use what little wit you own,” Hob warned his brother. “He has no reason to accuse us. If you lose your temper, you’ll only give him cause to arrest you for that alone. Let me speak for both of us.”

“Maybe Ivetta tells a different tale.” Ralf addressed Hob but kept an eye on the brother.

“Tell me why we’d have wanted to kill him. Will and I often fought with Martin, as you would remember if you have even half a wit. It meant nothing. Ivetta had reason enough to hate him though.”

“Why would a harlot suddenly want to kill her longtime bawd?”

Will shrugged. “She was too well-used for Martin. He liked a tighter hole.”

Hob put a cautioning hand on his brother’s arm. “It wasn’t only that,” he said. “She boasted to us that he’d promised to marry her at last.”

Ralf frowned. “Another one of Martin’s jokes?”

Will spat just in front of the crowner’s feet. “She should’ve known that no man will buy where he can get it free. But Ivetta always was a bit slow. Much like you.”

“That night, he was going to tell her that he had no intention of taking her to any church door. Not only that, he’d no longer be her bawd,” Hob said, glaring at his brother. “He had hopes of a younger woman.”

“So he’d leave her to spread her legs in whatever dry ditch she could find,” Will added, licking his lips suggestively.

Hob threw his hands up in exasperation. “Don’t listen to him, Crowner. None of us would have left her to starve or beg on the king’s highway.”

“Would you have married her instead?” his brother asked.

Hob shook his head. “Martin mightn’t have married her either, but he never would’ve shoved her aside without…”

Will roared with laughter. “That’s not what he told me! He jested that she’d soon find only lepers and friars to pay her with whatever they could beg from honest folks.”

“You said she had reason to hate him, enough to kill.” Ralf directed this to the younger brother.

“I didn’t say she killed him, only that she had reason to hate him. We didn’t have cause, and she was with him last…”

“She only had grounds if he told her what you say he was planning. Did he tell her or did he not?” Ralf shouted.

“Why should I know?” Hob yelled back. “I wasn’t there.” He tossed his head at his brother. “And neither was he.”

“Martin was cruel in his jesting,” Ralf said, turning to Will. “You knew that best of all and often came to blows…”

Will’s face flushed with blood lust, and he clenched his fists.

Hob stepped in front of him. “Stand back or I’ll let him run you through, Will.”

With but a brief hesitation, his brother did.

Ralf also retreated a step. “Do you believe he meant to toss Ivetta aside or was that just another of his callous jokes? After all, she was bearing his child.”

Hob’s mouth dropped open. “May God have mercy on her, Crowner! We did not know…”

“Did Martin?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered what she claimed,” Will growled. “Enough men had mingled their seed in her. What reason had he to believe he was the father any more than…” He grinned. “Me, for instance, or one of the priory monks?”

“Was there another woman or was that false, said only to wound her more deeply?”

Will began to shift from foot to foot like some eager boy. “You’ll like this one, Crowner.”

“Shut up, Will!” Hob snapped.

Ralf looked from one to the other. “What do you mean?”

“He had another, for cert!” Will leered at the crowner. “Signy, the innkeeper’s niece.”

Ralf swallowed hard, his face turning pale.

Will the blacksmith bent over, holding his sides as he roared with laughter. “Can’t you share the jest, Crowner? Or does it trouble you that she found Martin more pleasing in bed than she did you!”

The crowner lunged.

Hob leapt between the two men and shoved his brother backward through the door of the hut. “Leave us in peace,” he shouted from inside, over the barks of the unseen dog. “My brother may be rude, but neither of us had aught to do with murder.”

Feeling his face seared by humiliation, Ralf shut his eyes.

Suddenly, he heard a hiss behind him.

Drawing his sword, he spun around.

A very pregnant cat sat nearby and glared. Her eyes glowed red in the light of the dying fire in the forge.

“Devil, thy true name is Woman,” the crowner grumbled, replaced his weapon, and strode out of the smithy.