The Tolls of Death

Chapter Twelve

Coroner Jules concentrated on the faces before him, but it wasn’t easy. My God, no! What a terrible state of affairs. The woman strangling herself from a beam while her children’s bodies lay beneath her. And the smell in that little cottage! Everyone knew that bad air could kill even the strongest men, and Jules had put himself at risk, going in there to see the bodies in situ.

Still, at least the case was almost done.

Why ever had he taken on this revolting job? he asked himself. Roger was a nasty little man who treated him like a dog’s turd on his sandal, and the men here in the vill hardly seemed to notice him. The Keeper, that tall, intense man, he seemed to constantly hang about nearby as though he was watching every error Jules might make. Well, damn him! Jules might not be the best Coroner in the land, but he was conscientious. He was doing his best in very difficult circumstances.

Sir Jules glowered at the jostling men and women before calling for silence again. These noisy brutes! They had no idea about the correct behaviour at a time and gathering of this sort. They were restless and keen to hurry off to the nearest alehouse, he guessed. Well, they could wait. He wasn’t going to rush just because a bunch of yokels might miss their lunchtime cider!

Roger was waiting for him to continue, reed poised over his parchment, and Jules pointed to the next witness, fitting a stern expression to his face.

Sternness he could manage. It involved muscles which might otherwise display his anxiety and horror. Even here in the open air the smell from the corpses was overpowering. He could feel nausea threatening.

Next time, he would bring some fruit or sweet herbs to conceal the stench, he swore, before taking a deep breath and posing his next question.

Baldwin and Simon remained at the edge of the clearing before the church after their evidence had been given to the Coroner.

For Simon it was unpleasant listening to an inquest on such a sad little incident, but the two had seen worse. In recent months they had witnessed sudden death in all its hideous variety, and Simon himself had almost been killed, first in Spain and then on a ship attacked by pirates. Somehow, though, this was more poignant.

He had left home months ago, and he missed his wife dreadfully — and not only her. A proud father, he longed to see his son and daughter too. There was some fear in him. He had adored his little Edith from the day she was born, so perfect, so blonde and beautiful; and now she was old enough to seek her own husband. Soon she would be readying herself to become a mother and preparing to make all the same mistakes that he and his wife had made with their children.

There was some time left before she departed from his household, and he wanted to make the most of those months, to enjoy her company — but also to learn how to live without her. It would be a hard loss when she went.

Somehow this inquest made him feel maudlin. The sight of the mother with her dead children made him appreciate his own family that much more. Especially when he heard that the woman was a widow. He realised just how grim his wife’s life would be once he had died. If he were to die here, for example, before he reached home, dear Meg could be put under the same sort of pressure as this poor maid. Perhaps she, too, would be threatened with eviction.

That news had brought a black scowl to his face. It was Iwan, an old smith, who had volunteered the fact that Serlo the miller owned Athelina’s cottage and had told her to pay more rent or go. The miller didn’t deny it, but blustered that he had no responsibility to the chit. It was her problem if she’d podded two children and couldn’t feed them. If the Church wanted her saved, the Church should have donated enough to see her remain in her home, rather than accuse an honest man who tried only to make a living.

Simon wondered whether he was an honest man. To his mind, Serlo looked a brute; the dead bodies like so many chickens slaughtered in a yard by a fox. The vision of this man threatening the woman, clenching his fist and demanding more money, repelled him. How could a man cause so much suffering and death, yet show no remorse? If anything, he seemed intent on proving that he didn’t care a fig for the dead.

‘She and her children were useless mouths,’ Serlo was blustering now. ‘Can we afford to keep a house for her sort, when decent men and women are struggling to find a room of their own?’

‘Her boys would have grown to be men,’ Baldwin observed with a tone that could have frozen the pond.

‘Perhaps. How long would we have had to feed them before they grew?’

‘Is it your place to assess the value of another’s life, miller?’

‘Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Jules said with a note of some petulance, ‘I think you can leave the questioning to me. I am the Coroner.’

Baldwin subsided with a poor grace, turning his back on Serlo. Simon was disappointed. He would have liked to see Baldwin launch into a verbal attack on the miller.

Serlo appeared amused by Baldwin’s discomfiture. He grinned broadly until Sir Jules snapped, ‘Don’t smile in the presence of death, churl!’

Simon wondered how the man could smirk like that when his greed had led to these three deaths, but as he told himself, there were many unscrupulous people who were equally greedy. If Baldwin was right, the King’s own advisers were among the most avaricious men yet born. The Despensers were capturing highborn women and holding them prisoner in gaol until they agreed to sign over their inheritances. It made Simon very glad to be living under the protection of the Abbot of Tavistock, Robert Champeaux. ‘God Bless Abbot Robert,’ he muttered quietly to himself.

‘Bailiff?’

The quiet voice of Lady Anne brought him back from his reverie. ‘My lady?’

‘There is something I feel is odd — something about the woman. Surely, yes, she was desperate …’

‘Go on.’

Anne’s face was troubled. ‘If she was utterly without hope, if she was convinced that she had no reason to live longer … I can comprehend her despair although I know self-murder is a sin. Yes, but to kill her sons? I met up with Athelina many times, and never saw her show anything other than love and affection to her children. She adored them both individually, and also as the last remaining vestige of her husband. I find it hard to believe that she could have killed them.’

Simon wanted to pat her hand, but restrained himself. It would be presumptuous. Instead he lowered his voice. He could all too easily remember his own wife, Meg, failing to understand human cruelty when she had been pregnant.

‘Lady, it is often hard to understand how a woman’s mind works when she is deranged. As we have been told, she was in a frenzy and that was why she killed the boys.’

‘Who saw her in a frenzy, though? I did not, and I have not heard anyone else say they did. It sounds like an assumption: Athelina is dead, the children are dead, so she must have killed them. If she did, she must have been mad, so she was in a frenzy.’

‘It makes some sense,’ Simon said soothingly. Women weren’t as rational as men. Well, apart from his Meg, of course, who was brighter than many men of his acquaintance. This wife of Nicholas’s wasn’t in Meg’s league, though. She was a pretty thing, but clearly she was upset because she was close to giving birth herself.

‘And another thing,’ she said.

Simon turned a patronising smile upon her. ‘Yes?’

‘You must have seen many dead bodies — as a bailiff, I mean?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Is it normal for a hanged woman to have those marks on her throat? What would have made them?’

Simon’s smile grew a little stiff as he wondered what she meant. But then he peered down at Athelina’s neck once more and decided it would be rash to dismiss this woman’s intuition. ‘Baldwin. Look at this!’

The knight was still smarting from the Coroner’s rebuff, but hearing Simon’s urgent tone, he glanced down, but just then there came the sound of sobbing, and all present turned towards the gate. There, walking slowly, holding in her arms the sobbing figure of Aumery, came Letitia, followed by her distraught sister-in-law, cradling her second little son in her arms.

‘I congratulate you, Serlo,’ Letitia spat as she neared him. ‘You looked after your sons so very carefully, so very well!’

Baldwin had nothing but sympathy for the miller. The man stared as though disbelieving, and then he put out a hand as though to touch his son’s face, but his wife drew Hamelin away from him. She stood staring, eyes wild, a woman driven insane, and Baldwin was shocked to see how blood coursed down the side of her head from a raking cut.

Suddenly she screamed again, a high, wordless shrill sound that tore at the hearts of all who stood there.

‘He was your son! All you had to do was give him to another woman to protect him, but you left him playing in our home, with no one to look after him! No one,’ she sobbed, falling to her knees, still holding her scalded son. ‘No one …’

She bent her head to his little body, and wept again for Hamelin.

Serlo said, ‘But I don’t understand … what happened? What’s wrong with him? Letty, for God’s sake tell me what happened.’

‘I offered to take both the little mites off your hands, but you refused to let me! You killed your son! You left them alone with their mother when she was in her bed, unable to care for them. Look at her! She ought to be there now, but because of you she’s here, bleeding, with a broken heart. All because of you.’

The Coroner stepped forward and glanced at Baldwin. The knight saw the indecision in his eyes, and quickly shook his head. While Serlo stood uncertainly, his eyes brimming and a single tear falling down one cheek, Baldwin moved to Sir Jules’s side and whispered a few words into his ear.

‘Wife, your child needs to rest in the church’, the Coroner said compassionately to Muriel. ‘Take him there, and pray for his soul.’ He looked at Letitia. She gave him a stiff nod, ignoring her brother-in-law, who stared after them in deep shock. Baldwin was relieved to see Iwan, as well as Alex the Constable, go to Serlo’s side and gradually draw him away.

‘I think, Coroner,’ Baldwin said quietly, ‘that we’ll have to leave this matter until later.’

‘Perhaps so,’ Sir Jules said, and he seemed glad of the fact. ‘And I shall have to remain here a little longer in order to hold an inquest on the child, too.’ He looked about him. ‘Nicholas, it would be cruel to ask that poor woman what happened now. She is in no fit state to speak. Will you have the jury come here again tomorrow morning, and we shall review this matter and hear the cause of this latest tragedy, too?’

‘Certainly.’

Simon, Baldwin saw, was staring at Athelina’s body, and now he caught the knight’s eye and beckoned. ‘Look,’ he said.

Baldwin followed his pointing finger. ‘What? Her neck?’

‘Scratches,’ Simon said bluntly.

Baldwin peered closer. When they had cut her down, they had left the rope about her neck, and until now he had not been near enough to study her flesh too closely. The murder of her children and her own subsequent suicide had seemed so convincing, he hadn’t deemed it necessary to look further. Now he cursed himself for a fool.

‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘She scratched at her neck in a fight to save her life. She never wanted to die. And if she didn’t, she couldn’t have killed her children. This woman was murdered.’

Julia watched the early part of the inquest, but she didn’t stay long. It was all too depressing, and more than a little unpleasant, with those bodies there. Anyway, when she caught sight of Ivo, who had gone to find her and given up, she reckoned she could spend her time more fruitfully than by playing the ghoul.

Soon she heard his hurried footsteps, and a breathless, ‘Hello, maid.’

She sniffed and didn’t face him. ‘Oh, so you don’t mind talking to me now, then? I thought you were too busy up at the castle with your fine friends to bother seeing me again.’

‘How could you think that?’ he asked with mock hurt. ‘When the most beautiful woman in the vill is down here?’ Over her shoulder he saw Squire Warin riding off towards Temple, and he opened his mouth, but shut it again. Julia wouldn’t like him to be distracted.

‘Who’s this beautiful woman, then?’

‘Aw, I can’t think right now,’ he said playfully. ‘It’ll come to me. Everything does in the end, you know!’

‘Cor, you’re a cocky bugger, aren’t you?’ she said, turning to look at him at last. ‘Think yourself special, do you?’

‘I know I am, maid, and I think you reckon it too,’ Ivo grinned.

She turned away again.

‘Did you know her?’ he tried after a moment.

‘Athelina?’ She shot him a look, then nodded. ‘Yeah. She was all right.’

‘Doing that to her boys, though. Terrible, that.’

‘She was desperate.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Her man paid the rent for that house of hers, and he’d lost interest in her, so she couldn’t afford to stay. She didn’t have any money or anything.’

‘Still a terrible thing to do.’

Julia pulled a face. ‘What else can a woman do when she’s got nothing? Without money, she’ll starve and so will her children. Maybe she reckoned it was better to save the boys a long starvation. As for her boyfriend, he’s moved on now, the bastard.’

‘That was said with feeling!’

‘Yeah. He moved from her to me, and then he dropped me when he found another skirt to reach into.’

‘You think she killed herself because he ditched her?’

‘Maybe she loved him!’ Julia snapped, but now when she faced Ivo, there were tears in her eyes.

In the church house, Nicholas the castellan frowned irritably. ‘I don’t understand the logic of what you are saying. She could have repented and decided to save herself at the last moment, surely?’

Baldwin motioned to Simon to explain. For his part, he was still so angry with himself that he could hardly speak. His incompetence was inexcusable: he had seen what others expected him to see. He had heard a little about the woman and instantly believed the scene placed before him; he hadn’t thought to seek the truth below the cord that killed her, he hadn’t enquired about the circumstances of her death and the fabrication that now seemed so obvious.

‘It is clear,’ Simon began, ‘that she was killed there by the rope. It strangled her to death. We had thought that she was mad — the miller’s threat to evict her could have sent her insane — and that she had killed her boys, then hanged herself. But that would mean she’d committed the worst crime there is: infanticide. Could she then regret her own death? If she was mad when she slaughtered them, it could only have made her still more mad. In God’s name, no woman could have decided to save herself after destroying those she most loved. If anything, a sane woman who killed her children could become more mad afterwards, but never sane!’

‘Perhaps she wanted vengeance? Having killed her sons, she decided to seek the man who forced her to do it, in order to make him pay?’ Sir Jules suggested.

Baldwin waved a hand impatiently. ‘Coroner, are you a father?’ When the man nodded, Baldwin continued harshly, ‘Then suppose you yourself murdered all your children. Would you give a damn about anyone else in the world? If despair so entrapped you that you were committed to destroying all that you adored, you would simply wish to end your life as swiftly as possible.’

‘Perhaps the woman had time to repent her crimes and sought to live longer to find God’s forgiveness,’ Adam suggested.

‘You seriously think a mother could do that?’ Simon demanded. ‘I know of no woman who could kill her children and then save her own life. Not if she loved them.’

‘And she certainly seemed to,’ Nicholas breathed.

Sir Jules looked from one to the other. ‘I bow to your greater knowledge on this. I have never held an inquest on — uh — such a case.’

‘You have only recently been given this task, Coroner?’ Simon asked tentatively.

‘I have been enquiring after sudden deaths for some days,’ Sir Jules said haughtily, but then added more honestly, ‘Nearly a week and a half. I believe I have much to learn.’

Baldwin reflected that he too had much still to learn. ‘The woman had the rope around her neck, but she struggled with it, trying to insert her fingers behind it to pull it away, yet she failed. The killer managed to throttle her, and then staged her suicide.’

‘Not easy, surely, with a dead body?’ Nicholas said.

‘No, but not impossible. She was no great weight. A man could set the rope about her neck, the other end over the beam, and pull.’

The men nodded.

‘I think we should seek a murderer.’ Simon looked at the Coroner. ‘I was glad you didn’t think to try to hold an inquest on the woman’s child.’

He pulled a face. ‘I couldn’t! I was too appalled. The very woman I all but brained in the morning loses her child in the afternoon … I’ve never been so close to a recent death, and seeing her so … grief stricken — well, I couldn’t face questioning her. That would have been unbelievably cruel.’

‘Which means we shall have another inquest tomorrow as well as completing Athelina’s,’ Baldwin noted. ‘And seeking her killer, of course.’

‘Quite so,’ said Sir Jules. His face was drawn and fearful with this new responsibility. ‘Yes … quite so.’