A Conspiracy of Wolves Read online

  ‘Benedicite, Captain Archer, Master Chaucer.’ Michaelo’s delicately arched nose quivered. ‘God’s grace is upon us, that we should meet you on the road home. We were on our way to Freythorpe.’

  Is this what Magda had seen?

  While the monk spoke, his companion had scrambled from his mount and made straight for Owen, latching onto his arm. ‘My son! My son! You must come at once. I’ve left orders that he should stay as we found him, though, God help me, it pained me to leave him lying in his own blood. But I said Captain Archer must see it all as it was. He will find who did this to my Hoban.’

  ‘Hoban?’ Owen looked up at Michaelo.

  The monk crossed himself. ‘His son Hoban has been found dead in the wood. I have told Master Bartolf that you are the prince’s man and cannot be expected to help in this, but he’ll not be swayed.’

  ‘I am nobody’s man at present,’ Owen said.

  ‘No?’ Michaelo glanced over at Geoffrey Chaucer with a little sniff. ‘Your friend must be disappointed. But all the better for Bartolf Swann.’

  Alfred had drawn the cart up to the dismounted horsemen and had hurried round to assist Lucie in stepping down.

  ‘Dame Lucie.’ Brother Michaelo bowed to her. ‘I pray you forgive us for intruding on your mourning.’

  Lucie waved him silent as she joined Owen and the distraught Bartolf. ‘My dear Bartolf, you are injured. Let Brother Michaelo tell the tale to my husband while I see to that gash on your head.’ He had blood caked on his cheek and in the hair over his left temple.

  ‘What do I care about my old head, Dame Lucie, my son is murdered—’

  ‘I insist.’ She nodded to Owen as she put an arm round the old man and led him away to the back of the cart, where she kept a basket of supplies.

  Owen was grateful for Lucie’s graceful intercession. ‘How do you come to be escorting Bartolf Swann?’ he asked Michaelo, now also dismounted.

  ‘Well you might wonder, Captain Archer. It seems Bartolf knows of your close friendship with the archdeacon and thought to engage Jehannes’s help in persuading you to take on the task of finding his son’s murderer. The archdeacon advised him to leave you in peace to mourn Dame Philippa, but the old man would not hear of it.’ Michaelo glanced over at Bartolf with a look of distaste. ‘So many years serving as coroner, yet look at him – did he believe his own seed immortal?’ An impatient sigh. ‘But as I saw he could not be dissuaded, I offered to escort him to Freythorpe, as I know the way.’

  ‘Father, what has happened?’ Gwenllian asked sleepily from the cart.

  ‘Hush, my love. Some trouble in the city, nothing to do with you.’ Owen kissed her and coaxed her to lie down beside her brother. ‘Rest. We will be home soon.’

  Lucie seemed to have noticed that Gwenllian had awakened and had drawn Bartolf farther off the road, in the shade of a tree. Alfred and Geoffrey held the man steady while Lucie cleaned and bandaged his wounds. As Owen went to join them he heard the old man muttering about dogs, his son’s throat torn, a bloody clearing near his home in the forest.

  The wolves circle their prey. ‘He was savaged by dogs?’ Owen asked Michaelo, who had followed him.

  ‘So he says.’

  ‘Bartolf’s dogs?’ Swann kept a brace of hounds at his property in Galtres.

  ‘He is adamant that his own dogs would never harm Hoban. But one wonders. Hoban’s purpose in riding out yesterday evening was to bring the hounds back to his home in the city, where his father has been biding. This morning, discovering Hoban had not returned, Bartolf took a servant and rode out. They found him in a clearing.’

  ‘And the hounds?’

  ‘Gone. As is his horse.’

  ‘Not at the house?’

  ‘No. Zephyrus and Apollo – hounds with the names of pagan gods.’ A sniff. ‘Nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘Why did he ride out in the evening? Why not wait for morning?’

  ‘I have asked as little as possible, Captain, but I believe someone informed him his hounds were running loose, and he was wild with worry, insisting on riding out himself. Hoban thought to calm him by bringing the hounds to him. I should say that Bartolf had enough presence of mind to request one of the York coroners to record the death, knowing he could not do so with any clarity.’

  ‘I am glad to hear that. The coroner will have left a guard over the body.’

  Lucie joined them. ‘I have given him something to calm him. He will soon sleep.’

  Indeed, propped against the trunk of the tree, eyes closed, his breathing rough but beginning to calm, Bartolf seemed well on the way to slumber.

  Owen crouched down and gently roused him. ‘You will ride back to York in the cart with my wife and children, Bartolf. Alfred and Master Chaucer will accompany you.’ He glanced up at Lucie. ‘Brother Michaelo and I will ride ahead.’

  She nodded her agreement.

  Owen assisted Bartolf to his feet. ‘Michaelo says that one of the York coroners was out there?’

  ‘Gerard,’ said Bartolf, his voice weak. ‘Been and gone. Left his men to guard my son.’

  ‘Has Mauley been informed?’ asked Owen. ‘As sergeant of Galtres he should be.’

  ‘Mauley, of what use is he?’ Bartolf whined.

  ‘He’s gone south,’ said Michaelo.

  ‘How do you know that?’ Owen asked.

  ‘I am a scribe for hire at present, Captain.’

  Useful.

  Bartolf clutched at Owen’s sleeve. ‘You will find my son’s murderer? You will see that justice is done?’

  ‘I will go to where he lies and learn as much as I can,’ said Owen. ‘That is all I can promise for now.’

  ‘Do not leave me behind!’

  Lucie met them at the cart. ‘Bartolf, you and I must go to Muriel. Remember, she carries your son’s child. She must not feel alone.’

  ‘Muriel. Oh, my poor child.’ Bartolf gave a sob of dismay. ‘I meant to send for Mistress Alisoun. Pray God someone had the wit to do so.’

  ‘He had not the wit,’ Michaelo muttered as Owen drew him away. ‘What need have we of a coroner for the forest of Galtres? How often is that shaggy man called upon to sit a jury and decide whether a crime is committed, and who responsible? Is that not the job of the steward of Galtres, punishing the poachers and thieves who haunt the woods and marshes? What other sort of crime is there? Why would Swann care to chase after such riff-raff?’

  Many wondered that. It was a lesser post than that of the coroners of York. Why would a successful merchant such as Swann have been chosen to serve the crown in such a capacity? He received no pay for it, no lands or titles. At least, nothing official.

  ‘I am not so well acquainted with Bartolf as to answer your questions,’ said Owen. ‘But as to the crimes, the small villages in the forest have their share of trouble, though not so often as in York.’ And yet as the years fell away Bartolf had spent more and more of his time at his small home in the forest, leaving the townhouse to his wife and children, and, upon his wife’s death, his son and heir. His trading partners had grown accustomed to dealing with Hoban rather than his father.

  ‘Perhaps he wanted merely a quiet place to drink himself to death,’ said Michaelo, punctuating the comment with a sniff of disapproval.

  Brother Michaelo, a fount of information, a master of scorn. Owen urged his horse to a trot.

  TWO

  A Clearing in the Wood

  Dappled sunshine, a pair of horses tied to a low branch, and, beyond them, their riders lifting a stained cloak over the blood-soaked body, then gently lowering it and bowing their heads. Alisoun had spied another horse and a donkey across the clearing. Gerard Burnby, one of the York city coroners, talking in a low voice to the clerk who wrote on a wax tablet propped on the donkey’s back. Dogs. Throat torn out. Hoban Swann.

  Hearing that, Alisoun had hurried away; Hoban’s wife would need her. She’d taken the narrow trail along the river to save time, her heart heavy, praying for Hoban, for Muriel, for the unb
orn child. Had she heard twigs snapping behind her? Turn and turn again, she’d seen nothing, yet sensed a shadow. By the time she’d reached Magda’s house she was out of breath, yet she stopped only long enough to add to her basket a sleep powder gentle enough for an expectant mother – milk of poppy, valerian, and various herbs to calm and cool. The grieving mother-to-be would need sleep.

  Now, as Alisoun sat in the shuttered bedchamber listening to Muriel Swann’s even breathing, she sipped watered wine, calming herself. She’d had all she could do to quiet the grieving woman long enough to coax her to drink a cup of wine in which she’d mixed the sleep powder. Bartolf Swann had foolishly sent a hasty message to Muriel with the first servant he’d encountered, a boy who embellished the details into a terrifying tale of snarling wolves dismembering Hoban. Alisoun had arrived to find Dame Muriel’s mother, Janet Braithwaite, physically restraining her daughter, who was leaning halfway out the window. She’d come perilously close to leaping out and ending her own life and that of the child she carried.

  ‘How can I bear to see him so? How can that not curse our child?’ Muriel had wailed.

  After a long struggle involving the cook, reluctant at first to touch his mistress, they succeeded in guiding the expectant mother to a chair. Alisoun rubbed Muriel’s hands and talked and talked until she at last convinced the grieving woman that she had seen Hoban, and that, though mortally injured, he was whole. Once Muriel could hear it, she fell to weeping, an expression of grief far safer than a leap out the window. Dame Janet had blessed Alisoun for knowing just what her daughter needed to hear. Alisoun wondered why the woman had not shouted for assistance.

  As the wine settled Alisoun, she winced at the memory of her fearful flight along the river. She’d carried her bow – why hadn’t she turned and confronted her shadow? At the least she would know whether she’d imagined it. Though she had not seen him since the night she’d tended his wound, she’d feared it was Crispin Poole, who would be concerned that she would connect this attack with his encounter with a vicious dog and consider it her duty to report it. Yet why then had he not shown himself? Confronted her? She would have reassured him that she meant to keep her word. Despite her doubts about why – honor or fear – she had no intention of betraying him. He, too, had been attacked in the wood.

  Though not so viciously.

  The royal forest of Galtres was a combination of woodland, marsh, small farms, and villages, subject to laws that protected game, especially deer, and their habitat, and also restricted the felling of trees. Owen had convinced Brother Michaelo to accompany him as his scribe, recording his examination of the corpse and the clearing in which Hoban lay. As coroner for Galtres, Bartolf Swann was known for keeping detailed accounts of the circumstances in which a body was found; though the coroner from York would have dutifully recorded his observations, Bartolf would expect a more thorough accounting from Owen. Michaelo had not been keen, admitting that he’d never ridden through Galtres without a full complement of armed guards, as was Archbishop Thoresby’s wont. Bands of outlaws were known to hide there.

  ‘Not to underestimate your skill with the bow, Captain Archer. But you are a complement of one.’

  ‘I should think that sufficient to guard a monk who has taken a vow of poverty.’ Owen was already regretting his request. But he had a purpose in testing Michaelo’s mettle.

  Once past the hovels of the poor clustered close to the walls of the city and St Mary’s Abbey, Owen led the way through woodland and meadows, aware of a subtle shift as his awareness sharpened, his thoughts focused. He surprised himself with the thought that he’d missed this, the search, the sense of responsibility for restoring order.

  Just past Overton, he guided his horse onto a track through coppiced woodland leading toward the marsh, fanning at the insects determined to blind his one good eye as he searched for signs of passage along the underbrush. He had instructed Michaelo in what to watch for. If the attacker had come through at night with a horse and one or more dogs, the animals at least would have spilled over the trail somewhere.

  ‘It seems to me that unless Hoban’s animals fled at the first sign of danger there must have been more than one attacker,’ Michaelo had observed.

  The monk showed promise in his attention to detail.

  They’d almost reached the Swann property when Michaelo called Owen’s attention to trampled underbrush at the turnoff to a narrow track.

  Observant. He might just do. Owen thanked him.

  The ground grew spongy, part of the marsh in a flood, and the insects even more insistent and loud, the buzzing and whining almost dizzying, conjuring in Owen unwanted memories of fields of corpses stewing in the sunlight after battles, the ever-present droning of flies feasting. He reflexively covered his nose and mouth. But the vision passed, and he muttered a prayer of thanks as the way opened into a clearing and the insects thinned out, heading for the more interesting body covered by a blood-stained cloak. Two men stood guard, one using a leafy branch in a futile effort to fend off the flies.

  ‘We’ll walk the horses from here,’ said Owen. As he dismounted, he noticed how Brother Michaelo lifted the hem of his habit and tucked it into his belt in order to follow suit, glancing down with distaste at the blood-stained weeds near his booted feet.

  ‘Yet so far from the body,’ the monk muttered.

  That was important. ‘Either Hoban was dragged, or he was not the only one injured,’ said Owen.

  He could smell it now, the strong, metallic scent. It took a great deal of blood to overpower the ripeness of the early autumn marsh. The scent spooked the horses, and it took much coaxing to lead them closer to the body. The guards had covered their noses and mouths with rags – more for the swamp odors than for the blood, Owen guessed. Some believed the pestilence came from the odor of decay.

  ‘Tie up the horses by that stand of trees,’ Owen ordered Michaelo. ‘Then come and join me by the body. Be ready to record my observations.’

  Lifting the rag from his mouth, one of the guards said, ‘Well met, Captain Archer, well met. We did not hope to see you so soon.’

  ‘I am here to record the condition of the victim and the surrounding woods. What are your orders concerning the removal of Master Hoban’s body?’

  ‘The sheriff is sending a cart. We are to take it to Swann’s home on Coney Street.’

  Michaelo joined them. ‘It would be a help if I might sit to write,’ he said.

  The man fanning the flies nodded in the direction of an uprooted stump.

  ‘That will do.’ Michaelo waited, but when no one rushed to bring it to him, he reluctantly fetched it, dragging it a few feet.

  ‘Closer,’ said Owen. ‘It is better if you see for yourself what I am describing.’

  With a sigh, Michaelo bent to the work of dragging it up to where Owen stood. Brushing off his hands, he sat down with grace and drew a wax tablet and stylus from his pack.

  Owen crouched beside the body and nodded to the guards to lift the cloak away. Hoban’s pale gold hair was matted with blood, his comely face twisted in pain and terror above an unnatural rictus that had been carved across his throat. Michaelo breathed in sharply at the sight, but made no complaint. Nor did he gag. All good signs.

  Before beginning his examination, Owen bowed his head over Hoban’s body. ‘O Lord, I beseech you to receive him with love, and give comfort and ease to his wife, Muriel, his unborn child, and his father, Bartolf, who have lost one dear to them,’ he prayed.

  Michaelo and the guards responded with ‘Amen.’

  Owen used the hilt of his dagger to lift Hoban’s chin, gingerly, for there was little left connecting head to body.

  ‘Large dogs. Or wolves,’ said one of the men. ‘Ripped out his throat.’

  Quietly, for Michaelo’s ears, Owen corrected the account. ‘A man wielding a knife slit Hoban’s throat ear to ear.’ His right shoe was missing, his stocking torn and blood-stained, his foot partially gnawed, his calf clawed. ‘But a dog mig
ht have brought him off his horse,’ said Owen. ‘We will know more once we cut his clothes away.’

  Michaelo glanced up, his stylus poised above the wax tablet. ‘We?’

  Owen chose to ignore him. ‘But we will not do that here.’ He looked up at the guards. ‘Let me show you how to support the head and shoulders while we wrap him in the cloak, as in a shroud.’

  The guards knelt and followed his instructions, working gently, with respect.

  When Hoban Swann was shrouded, Owen thanked the guards and rose to take a slow turn round the clearing to see what it might reveal. Brother Michaelo followed, wax tablet in hand.

  ‘Two men – or more if Hoban had already collected his father’s hounds – his horse, and their own animals, as well as their victim,’ said Owen. He crouched beside some flattened brush, poking it with a branch, stirring up the stench of urine and blood. ‘One of the animals was injured.’

  ‘Those attacking, or one of Swann’s?’ Michaelo wondered aloud.

  ‘Cannot say. But I see no hoof prints just here, so one of the dogs, not a horse.’ In fact, he’d noticed only one set of hoof prints; perhaps only Hoban had been mounted. He followed the bloody trail of flattened brush to the bank of the Ouse, toed an indentation in the mud, the grass compressed. ‘Keel of a small boat. Planned with care, this attack? Or did Hoban happen upon men desperate to hide their activities? The boat could move the men and the dogs, but what of Hoban’s horse?’ He looked round, saw no hoof prints by the river.

  ‘Master Bartolf said it had not returned to the house,’ Michaelo noted. ‘Nor were the dogs there.’

  ‘One of the men might have ridden Hoban’s mount to the ford farther upriver. We should go to his home, see whether the horse simply returned by now. Or the hounds.’

  Michaelo made a sound deep in his throat.

  ‘Are the signs of so much violence hard for you to see?’ Owen asked.

  ‘Does it not disturb you? The violence, the blood.’

  ‘My dreams are haunted by it. But I honor the dead by doing what I can to expose the darkness that took them.’