Fortune Like the Moon (16 page)

She studied it. ‘It’s the toe of a shoe,’ she observed.

‘I found it in a row of half a dozen or so, widely spaced.’

She nodded. ‘Hence your conclusion of someone running away.’

‘Aye. And—’ No. Too soon for that. He must present his facts as he had discovered them. ‘Abbess, Elvera presented herself here at Hawkenlye as an unmarried virgin, I imagine?’

The Abbess’s eyes widened, as if the question surprised her. ‘Yes, although – Yes. Why?’

‘Because she wasn’t. Well, as to her not being a virgin, I only surmise. But I know she was married. Her left hand bore a distinct indentation at the base of the third finger. Until very recently, she had worn a wedding ring.’

He had expected amazement. None came. Instead, she said slowly, ‘Married. One question answered, and, yet again, many more raised.’

‘You suspected?’

She lifted her eyes to his. ‘She was pregnant,’ she said. ‘Some three months, Sister Euphemia says. I had, naturally, been speculating on the circumstances of this conception, and why, indeed, she should choose the strange course of entering a convent, assuming she knew herself to be with child. At least, now, I know that it was her husband who fathered her child. Although that is scarcely any help when we have absolutely no idea of his identity.’

He said quietly, ‘But we have.’ And, when her eyebrows went up in enquiry, touched his wax cast.

‘How can you know?’ she murmured.

He traced the elongated point at the front of the print. ‘Not know, perhaps, but make a very likely guess. Because I have seen someone wearing shoes like this. They are common, I dare say, in fashionable circles in London, but, hereabouts, people do not dress in the court style.’

‘No,’ she acknowledged. But she was frowning, as if she did not entirely agree with him. ‘Assuming this print was made by the shoe you saw, then who do you think made it?’

‘His name is Milon d’Arcy,’ he said. ‘And I further conjecture that I also know the identity of the girl lying dead in your infirmary. I believe she was his wife. Elanor, niece to Alard of Winnowlands. Gunnora’s cousin.’

‘Oh, but this is too much!’ the Abbess cried. ‘A set of footprints – not even entire prints! – and a finger which, you claim, recently wore a wedding ring, and you present to me the identity of both murderer and victim! Sir Josse, much as I would like to believe you, I can’t!’

Then, he thought, I must make you.

How?

He said, ‘Abbess, may I have your permission to look at Elvera’s possessions? Will you come with me now to her cubicle in the dormitory?’

‘A nun has few possessions,’ Helewise said. ‘What, pray, do you hope to find?’

Two things, he could have said. But he did not. Instead he said evasively, ‘Anything that might help.’

She watched him for a long moment. Then said, ‘Very well.’

*   *   *

Elvera’s bed had been half-way along the dormitory. Again, the neatly folded covers, the thin hangings pushed back and secured. And, as the Abbess had said, little evidence of personal belongings.

He bent down and looked beneath the plank-like bed. Nothing, not even much dust; the nuns kept their quarters clean. He stood up, running a hand beneath the thin palliasse. Again, nothing. It was beginning to look as if she’d hidden them somewhere else, but she must have—

His hand encountered a small package. Something hard, wrapped in a square of linen.

He withdrew it, put it on the bed. Unfolded the linen. And there, glinting faintly in the morning light, was a wedding ring and a jewelled cross.

*   *   *

Back in Helewise’s room, they compared Elvera’s cross with Gunnora’s, and with the one that had been found by her body. The three were virtually identical, but for the fact that the rubies in both Gunnora’s own cross and the one found beside her were larger than those in Elvera’s. As was only to be expected, Josse thought, when Gunnora was Alard of Winnowland’s daughter and Elvera – Elanor – but his niece.

‘Your postulant Elvera gave you a false name and a fictitious identity,’ he said to Helewise, who was holding Elvera’s cross in her hands. ‘She was in truth Elanor, wife to Milon. Her uncle gave her a cross, as well, when he presented his daughters with theirs.’

In his head he heard the echo of Mathild’s words.
He’s fond of Elanor, Sir Alard is. Well, it’s hard not to be. She’s a lively little thing. Bright, full of fun.
Who, he wondered, his mind running off at a tangent, would have the sorry task of telling the dying man that, having lost both daughters, now his pretty and vivacious niece was dead, too?

Dear Lord, not me, he prayed silently. Please, of thy mercy, not me.

Helewise had put down the cross and was picking up the wedding ring, trying it on her own third finger. ‘Too small for me,’ she remarked. ‘Should we try it on the dead girl’s hand, do you think?’

‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Although I feel there is little point.’

She replaced the ring beside the three crosses, folding the linen around them once more. ‘Gunnora’s,’ she said, pointing, ‘and Elvera’s. Elanor’s, I should say. And this?’ She pointed to the one that had been left next to Gunnora.

‘It can only have belonged to her sister, Dillian,’ Josse said. ‘Although God alone knows how it ended up where it did.’

Helewise was watching him. The intent grey eyes were disconcerting. ‘God knows, yes,’ she said neutrally. ‘It is up to us to find out.’

He was trying to think, to put all these new facts racing through his brain into some sort of order. Some order that began to make sense.

After some time, he said, ‘Gunnora’s father is dying. He has two daughters, one who has entered a convent, and who, presumably, has forfeited her right to inheriting any of his undoubted wealth. Her sister, Dillian, married to the suitor chosen by Alard as eminently suitable for one of his girls, looks set to get the lot, but then she dies. She leaves no child, and her husband, it appears, is not without involvement in her death, albeit indirect. So who can Alard leave his fortune to? Gunnora is the obvious candidate – she is, now, all he has left. But what of the niece, who, so we understand, was always treated generously by her uncle? Given a cross only a little smaller than those given to his own girls?’

Warming to his theme, he leaned his hands on Helewise’s table, putting his face closer to hers. ‘What if, Abbess, this niece understood herself to be in line to inherit, only to have her young fashion-conscious husband discover, on one of his visits to check up on how near to death is his uncle-by-marriage, that the uncle is thinking of changing his will? Of reinstating the daughter who rejected him and gave herself to God? What would such a greedy and unscrupulous young man do?’

‘You are only conjecturing that he is greedy and unscrupulous,’ she pointed out.

‘Aye, maybe. But would he not have the greatest motive in the world for disposing of Gunnora? So that his wife, the niece Elanor, would then inherit?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Abbess, there are two basic motives for murder, lust and the hunger for money. Nobody, it seems, lusted after Gunnora – you said yourself she was not bothered by the rule of chastity. In addition, we know that she was not raped, indeed, that she had never—’ He paused, trying to think of a delicate way of saying it. ‘That she had never tasted of the fruits of love.’ He was aware of a very swift twitch of the Abbess’s lips, quickly suppressed. ‘She died a virgin,’ he said firmly. ‘So, with the lust motive removed, that only leaves money.’

‘You oversimplify!’ the Abbess cried. ‘And, however plausible your reasoning on the surface, what of the details?’

‘Such as?’ he demanded.

‘Such as, how did he persuade Gunnora to leave the convent that night? And why did she not recognise Elvera as her cousin Elanor?’

‘Who says she didn’t?’ he countered. ‘Elvera herself, in this very room, complained that the nuns kept saying she and Gunnora got on so well together that you’d almost think they’d met before. That was hardly surprising – they had.’

‘Then why did not Gunnora reveal that Elvera was married?’ Helewise demanded.

‘Oh.’ Why indeed. Then he heard Mathild’s words:
that worthless new husband of hers.
And – although this was hardly incontestable proof – Elvera had only been three months pregnant. A passionate young husband, bedding his new wife nightly, impregnating her soon after the marriage? He said triumphantly, ‘Because Gunnora didn’t know. Elvera and Milon were married
after
she entered the convent. And Elvera had taken off her wedding ring.’

Helewise nodded slowly. Then, suddenly: ‘How did you know about the cross?’

‘It had to be hidden somewhere. She wasn’t wearing it when she died.’

She gave a brief sound of exasperation. ‘How did you know she
had
a cross?’

‘If she really was Elanor, she had to have one. And I knew she had – I saw it.’

‘You did?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. I guessed. Remember when we spoke to her? She was grasping at the cloth of her gown – like this.’ He demonstrated. ‘I thought then it was just a nervous gesture. Only afterwards did it occur to me she might be clinging to her own personal talisman, hidden under her robe.’

Helewise’s expression was distant, as if she were thinking hard. ‘You make a good case, sir knight,’ she said eventually. ‘But, again, I ask for your proof. Oh, not of Elvera’s identity – we must, I think, accept that you are right.’

‘We can check,’ he said eagerly. ‘I can return to my informant at Sir Brice’s manor and ask after Elanor. Go to Milon’s house, to the relatives where, so I was told, she is staying.’

‘And what if you find her safe and well?’

‘Then I will have to accept that I am wrong.’

‘You are not wrong,’ she said quietly. ‘You will not, I fear, find any Elanor. She is Elvera, and she lies dead in my infirmary.’ She frowned. ‘But those established facts alone will not prove who killed my nuns, Sir Josse. And I do not know where we can go from here to find that proof.’

‘I will find Milon,’ he said simply. ‘I will go, now, to his house. If he is not there’ – he was almost certain that the young man would be anywhere but at home – ‘then I shall search elsewhere.’

She gave him a quizzical look. ‘England is a big country,’ she remarked. ‘With many lonely and desolate places where a fugitive may run and hide.’

‘He has not run away yet,’ Josse said.

And, before she could ask him how he could be so sure, he bowed, retreated from the room and set off to find his horse.

Chapter Twelve

On his way to Rotherbridge, Josse had decided, he would pay a call on Sir Alard. He needed to seek the old man’s confirmation that he had indeed given jewelled crosses to his daughters and to his niece. It was probably unnecessary, he thought as he neared the Winnowlands estates, but he felt he should not ignore any proof that was reasonably easy to obtain. Not if he were going to make a convincing case to back up all his theorising.

But he arrived back at Winnowlands to discover that Sir Alard had died the previous day. While Josse had been making his slow, hot journey back to Hawkenlye Abbey, Alard of Winnowlands had finally lost his long battle with death.

Josse knew. Even before he was told, he knew. There was a difference about the place. Sir Alard’s estates had not been a cheerful environment before, but, whereas previously the few of the peasantry that Josse had seen had looked merely dull-eyed and dejected, now he saw signs of more dramatic distress. Outside one hovel, a man had sat doing nothing but gaze down at his large hands, hanging idle between his knees, as if his situation were so dreadful that everything pertaining to normal life had suddenly come to a halt. From within another, better-kept dwelling, Josse heard the sounds of a woman weeping, so violently that he suspected she was close to hysteria.

Under the usual customs of inheritance, it would have been a case of ‘the king is dead, long live the king!’, as the new lord took over from his father; few, if any, major changes would be anticipated to alter the lot of those who depended for their very lives on the manor. But here, where there
was
no new lord …

Will, who came out into the yard on hearing Josse’s approach, broke the news.

‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly. Not even specifying of whom he spoke. ‘Last evening, it was. Afore supper, and he had a nice bit of pie to look forward to.’ Sudden tears glistened in the man’s eyes, swiftly blinked away. Josse, who had observed before how it was so often the little poignancies that undermined the recently bereaved, murmured sympathetically. ‘He began to cough, and the blood just flowed.’ Will went on. ‘Didn’t stop. Master, he sort of choked, couldn’t draw breath. Well, stands to reason, nothing left to draw it into, like, with his chest all rotten.’ He gave a sniff, wiped the back of his hand across his nose, and said softly, ‘I held him, till he was gone. Propped him up, like I always did, till he couldn’t breathe no more. Then I held his hand. After a bit, I knew he were dead. I let him be, overnight. Tucked him up, settled him down, with the fire well-stoked and a candle burning. Then, this morning, I sent word. Priest’s been,’ he added, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Josse nodded. Will himself, he noted, looked in a bad way. Haggard, his skin yellow and unhealthy looking, he had the appearance of a man who has spent far too long at his master’s sick bed, drawn in far too many breaths of contaminated air. Praying that this loyal servant should not himself succumb to the wasting sickness, Josse got down from his horse and, rather awkwardly, patted the sorrowing man on the shoulder.

‘I’m sure you did all you could to make his passing as comfortable as it could be,’ he said, hoping to console. ‘No man could have been better tended, Will, of that I’m certain.’

‘I didn’t do it for what I could get out of him, no matter what they say!’ Will burst out surprisingly. ‘Did it for his sake,’ he added more quietly. ‘For old times’ sake. We go back a long way, Master and me.’

‘Aye, Will.’ Trying to sound as if he were merely making polite conversation, Josse added, ‘Leave you a bit, did he? That’s a nice reward, for all your loyalty.’