Cathedral of Bones Page 2

  Ela swept out of the hall, glad to leave the din of so many voices, and into the adjoining armory. Swords and shields decorated the walls, hung and stored in geometric patterns on the whim of some distant ancestor. The long table in the middle, used for sharpening, polishing and the like, now bore the girl’s body and its fetid aroma. Her sodden gown hung down to one side, dripping insistently into a dark pool on the stone floor.

  Two guards stood in the corners of the room. They were always there, safeguarding the garrison’s weapons, but now she found their presence disconcerting. She needed to remove the girl’s clothing to examine her body. She could wait for the coroner, but on reflection she’d prefer the gentler hands of another woman on her own corpse. “May I have a knife?”

  The guards stared at her for a second, then one pulled a small knife, the kind used for eating, from his sheath. She thanked him and cut into the woman’s gown, starting at the hem and working up the side of her torso to the neck. It seemed less invasive than trying to wrestle the garment off over her head.

  The white and blue embroidery at the neck was simple, unlike the gold-threaded finery Ela had worn to bury her husband. Her head was bare, but her head coverings could have come off in the water. Her gown was good quality, made with tightly woven wool, but some wear around the hem and cuffs suggested that she wasn’t wealthy.

  Ela pushed the damp wool back from her chest, and cut her linen chemise from neck to hem, conscious of the eyes of the soldiers on her. She returned the soldier’s knife with thanks. “Is Giles Houghton arrived yet?”

  “I’ll go check, my lady.” He exited the room. She wished she could think of a reason to get rid of the other, to give this poor dead girl a modicum of privacy. “Could you fetch me a bowl of water and some rags?”

  His startled expression revealed that he felt this task beneath his notice, but at least he showed deference enough not to protest. With him out of the way, Ela pulled back the sodden garments to reveal the stark pale skin of the girl’s small breasts and swollen belly. She was about six months along in her pregnancy, maybe more. Her breasts showed no sign of having nursed a previous infant, and the scars from her skin stretching, which rose around the lower part of her belly like thorns, were fresh and livid. This was likely her first pregnancy to come this far.

  Ela let out a sigh and whispered a short prayer. This poor girl wasn’t much older than her daughter Isabella. Perhaps Isabella was right to be so afraid of marriage. Even if her husband didn’t beat her or crush her heart by taking a mistress, she might die in childbirth with any pregnancy.

  The door opened and coroner Giles Haughton entered flanked by two palace guards. Ela quickly covered the girl with her cut clothing, and Giles, perceiving her concern for the girl’s modesty, turned and told the guards to leave them for now.

  “God be with you,” she greeted him.

  “And with you, my lady. It was a moving service today.” He approached the body and crossed himself. Ela followed suit, then pulled the girl’s clothing apart again.

  “Yes, praise be to God. And now another tragedy.” She struggled to maintain her brave demeanor.

  “A young, pregnant woman, found in the river,” murmured Giles. “No obvious signs of strangulation. Bruises at her temple could be from a fall or a blow.” He grasped her firmly by the chin and tilted her head first one way, then other, parting her hair. “No cuts or puncture wounds, but look at this ear. It’s swollen. She might have sustained a blow to that side of her head.”

  “The swollen ear is on the opposite side from the bruises. Can you tell if she was dead before she entered the river?”

  “If we cut her open. There would be water in her lungs if she drowned, and no water if she didn’t.”

  Ela recoiled at the thought of cutting into the poor girl’s flesh. But if she intended to be sheriff of Wiltshire—and she did—she must be capable of the least pleasant tasks associated with that duty. “Go ahead.”

  Giles pulled a sharp knife from his scrip and cut a deft incision down the center of her chest.

  Ela felt her own blood drain from her body and for an instant she was sure she’d faint. She gripped the edge of the table and willed herself to recover, offering a quick prayer for strength to the Virgin Mary, who’d bravely borne the cruel public death of her own son.

  Thankfully, she rallied—in time to press her hand to her mouth, retching, as he pulled the flesh apart in a way not so different from how she’d parted the dead girl’s clothing.

  Ela was no stranger to seeing bodies laid out and prepared for burial, but she’d never witnessed one being rent open before.

  The guard returned with the water and some coarse linen, which Giles used to clean his knife before asking him to wait outside.

  With the neat precision of a trained butcher, Giles sliced in between her rib cage and exposed the exterior of her lung. Ela had spent many hours poring over medical texts composed by her personal heroine, Trota of Salerno, and learning the various points of interior anatomy. Giles cut carefully into the lung—a fleshy bag, not unlike a leather money bag—with his knife. She expected water to spill out, but to her surprise it was solid inside, a bag filled with a thicket of vessels. She couldn’t tell if there was water in there or not.

  Giles made several more cuts and palpated the patterned tangle of veins while Ela steadied herself on the table and tried not to be overcome by the freshly awful smell or the grisly sight of the poor girl’s innards.

  “No water. She was dead before she was thrown in.”

  Ela was grateful to Giles for not patronizing her with pleasantries. “So she was murdered?”

  “Very likely, yes.” He pulled her torn garments back over her ravaged chest. “Who is she?”

  “No one seems to know. It’s a shame her features are so swollen.” She shuddered at the thought of showing the woman’s cleaved body to one of her relatives for identification. “Perhaps I can make a drawing of how she might have looked in life and we can circulate it around the villages. She might be from quite far upstream.”

  “Someone knows she’s missing.”

  “Her killer.”

  “It’s usually the husband,” said Giles, with a hint of apology in his voice. “In my experience.”

  Ela nodded. “We’ll find him. I have no intention of letting this crime go unpunished. I am taking on my husband’s role as sheriff.”

  Giles paused and stared at her for a moment. Her chest tightened. Did the idea seem so preposterous to him?

  “I have experience since I’ve served unofficially in the role when my husband was abroad and his deputy traveling with him.”

  “You are a credit to your late husband and to Salisbury, my lady. I can think of no better sheriff to serve us.”

  She suspected he was just offering lip service, but for now that would do. She’d prove her worth to him over time. “Do her hands show signs of a struggle?” She ignored a tiny frisson of revulsion and picked up the poor girl’s cold right hand.

  “Sometimes a victim will have torn nails or cuts from fighting of their attacker.”

  Small calluses where the victim’s fingers met the palm suggested a life of labor rather than ease. Her hands were swollen and her nails discolored, but she saw no signs of tearing.

  Giles looked at the other one. “Some dirt under the nails, but that could be from the river or just from normal life. No tearing or abrasions.”

  “So she didn’t struggle with her attacker?”

  “Which suggests that it was someone she knew.”

  Chapter 2

  Ela stared at the dead girl’s swollen and discolored features. “We must find out who she is so we can question her husband.” If she had a husband. She wore no ring, but that was hardly unusual.

  Giles Haughton tilted her head in one broad hand. “I suppose she might have been killed by a stranger if she was taken by surprise. Hit from behind. There’s bruising on the side of her skull here, near the front, but let’s check the ba
ck.” Her dark hair was drying in snakelike tendrils, which he parted gently. “There is some bruising to her skull. I feel an indented area here, which would be from an impact.”

  “Can you tell what kind of instrument made the marks?” Her husband had told her of a case where the abrasions caused by a very particular set of fleur-de-lis iron fire tongs had identified their owner as a murderer.

  Giles peered closer. “Nothing sharp. The skin isn’t broken.” His fingers roamed through her hair like he was looking for lice. “And no hard edges to the marks. Inconclusive, but something with blunt edges and not too narrow.”

  “Like a wooden club.”

  Giles looked up at her. His pale blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “As if anyone still carried a wooden club in this age.”

  Ela regretted her fanciful suggestion. “An ogre perhaps.” She shot him a grim smile. She wasn’t entirely humorless.

  “But, yes, a blow from an object. I doubt she could have simply fallen and hit her head at such an angle.”

  Ela made mental notes of the details of the scene, with a view to sketching the body once she returned to her room. She wanted the particulars seared into her brain in case her killer’s trial was months from now.

  They checked the whole body over, her legs, back, arms, feet, all waxen and devoid of compelling evidence. “Is there anything else we should study?” Ela was growing desperate for fresh air.

  “I can say with confidence that this is the most thorough inspection I’ve ever seen performed on a corpse.” Giles shot her a glance with more than a hint of his irksome amusement. “Your attention to detail is a credit to you.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her or not. “I don’t intend to let her down. We’ll find her killer and bring him to trial. God go with you.”

  “And with you.” He nodded soberly.

  Ela turned for the door, ready to run from the awful stench that filled the room, but not wanting to betray her weak stomach. Outside the door, the soldiers lolled, restless and sullen.

  “Please see to it that her shroud is prepared and sewn, except around her head, and have her moved to the mortuary. We’ll need her relatives to see her face when we find them.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Ela swept away as fast as she decently could. No doubt there was some particular person who should perform the unpleasant task of sewing the shroud, but surely the guards could figure that out and summon the person themselves.

  The foul air of the windowless armory seemed to follow her into the great hall, where the servants were bringing out platters of food for the funeral banquet. She now realized why the mortuary was an outbuilding far from the hall. Another lesson learned the hard way.

  Guests crushed close along the benches pulled up to the long tables spread with crisp linen cloths. The floors were strewn with fresh straw and herbs that released their aroma under the heels of busy feet. Friends and cohorts of her husband filled the hall: squires and knights and barons in all stages of life who’d come to pay their respects. Men who’d fought with him in the Crusades and more recently in France. The king himself would have been here if not for a pressing engagement. The reassuring sight rallied her.

  She took her seat at the head of the table nearest the fire, amid a murmur of sorrow at her husband’s death and exclamations over the beauty and vigor of her children. “William would be sad that his funeral feast must be during Lent,” she sighed, feeling rather sheepish at the spread of pastries filled with vegetables and nutmeats, tureens of meatless soups and platters of artfully arranged fish. “I’m sure he’d have preferred to be wished farewell around a fat suckling pig and a brace of freshly killed pheasant.”

  “No doubt he would, my lady.” William Marshall raised his cup, and they joined him in a toast to her husband. “A man who loved life and lived it to the fullest. Now he and his brother John shall feast again in heaven!”

  Ela paused with the cup at her lips. It was hard to be confident that King John was enjoying a place at the right hand of the Father after the way he’d quarreled with the pope and managed to excommunicate the whole of England, but she smiled politely. “God willing, my lord.”

  “What drew you from the procession?” asked Ralph De Tosny. “By the time I found my way out of the cathedral you were gone.”

  “A body was found in the thawing river.” Ela decided now was as good a time as any to try to get these barons on her side. “As sheriff of Wiltshire it was my duty to put the needs of our people before my own grief.”

  “Quite so,” came the responsive murmur, but she felt—or imagined—a cross-current of shock and alarm under it.

  “Sheriff, you say?” The Baroness Delamere raised a plucked eyebrow. “Surely young Will shall be sheriff.”

  “He’s not yet of age, I’m afraid.” Ela was grateful for the excuse. “And he’s soon to be married. When he’s settled I look forward to seeing him assume his father’s many roles.”

  “Ah.” The baroness peered at her with suspicion. “Who is he to wed?”

  “He’s betrothed to Idonea de Camville.”

  “How appropriate for the families of two great women to unite,” chimed William Marshall. “Idonea’s grandmother has been castellan of Lincoln for decades, and sheriff as well. Didn’t she hold the castle against a siege from your husband?”

  Ela managed a smile. “It’s a long story. Suffice to say that Nicola de la Haye is pleased that her granddaughter will be marrying our son. And I’m grateful for the precedent she set as a female castellan. I need hardly worry that people will be scandalized by me following in her footsteps here in Salisbury.”

  Ela wasn’t at all sure that Nicola didn’t hate the lot of them. Her granddaughter’s great estates had been enriching Ela’s family, not Nicola’s, because the girl had been William’s ward since her father died. But she hoped to win Nicola as an ally when the dust settled.

  “I can’t believe she’s still holding Lincoln castle. Isn’t she nearly eighty?”

  “I think she’s closer to seventy.” Ela did hold fond hopes that the proud old woman might be persuaded to step down to make room for her son, leaving Ela to hold sway in Salisbury without dissent. So many plans needed to fall into place, and so fast.

  Where was Will? Her younger children gathered about Bill Talbot, the kind knight who gave the boys lessons in swordsmanship and gentlemanly deportment during their father’s recent absence.

  Will wasn’t with them, though. She scanned the crowd and saw him laughing and drinking with Herbert FitzMaurice and Robert Lemains, two noisy young men with more bluster than sense. She’d have to work hard to keep Will on the right path until he gained the wisdom and maturity to balance his bravura. Too much power too soon had ruined many a bold young man.

  It was late into the night by the time Ela finally felt able to leave her guests and climb the stairs to her solar. She was used to sleeping alone since her husband traveled so often, but since his death a different, grimmer kind of solitude hung in the spacious room, almost palpable as the tapestry hangings.

  Wiping her tired eyes, she moved to her writing table and spread out a fresh piece of parchment. Her husband had teased her for the amount of money she lavished on parchment and vellum and colored inks, but it was one of her few indulgences and she didn’t begrudge herself, especially since most of her drawings illustrated prayers and Psalms she copied for her children.

  Now she hoped her skill at drawing would come in useful in a more earthly way.

  She planned to draw the woman as she would have looked in life, standing and with her arms at her sides in a natural gesture. She carefully sketched the features, generalizing them on account of the swelling that obscured their exact lines. She drew the waves of her dark hair, her narrow shoulders and small, high breasts, then the outline of her pregnant belly under her long robe.

  She drew the pointed leather shoes that she’d retained on one foot and her small hands with their rather delicate, curved fingers
. She painted in the rust color of her gown, then replicated the design around the neck of her robe as carefully as possible. She couldn’t know what detail might jog someone’s memory.

  Next to the drawing she made notes in a careful hand. Today’s date—as if it weren’t engraved on her heart for all eternity—the time of day the body was found, who found it and exactly where. She detailed the physical findings, including a small sketch of the woman’s poor swollen face, with its bruises and the swollen ear. She didn’t want to rely on her overtaxed mind to retain the important details. When she was satisfied, she closed up her inks and rinsed and dried her pen.

  She knelt at her carved oak prie-dieu with a sweet sense of relief. At the end of a long day she could take refuge in prayer and remind herself of the many blessings she enjoyed. If life was to be harder now without her husband, she’d just have to be stronger and face it, with God’s help.

  After her prayers, she washed her face in the copper bowl Sibel had left for her and dried it with a fresh scented cloth, then removed her robe. She’d stayed up so late that the fire Sibel had set was dying out, and a typical March chill had descended on the room. She could call the boy to replenish the wood and stoke it, but he was probably fast asleep at this late hour and she didn’t feel like waking him.

  It would be morning soon enough. Sibel had closed the bed curtains, so she lifted them apart and climbed in. Then she pulled the heavy, quilted covers over herself and nestled deep into the soft fabrics, willing the heat of her body to warm the chilly bedding.

  Ela resented these dark, cold hours when she had ample time to regret each moment she’d spent chastising her husband for some infraction or absence that seemed quite meaningless now. She’d tried to apologize for her own shortcomings and failures, but in those last hours before he died he’d been delirious and likely hadn’t heard a word of her frantic mumblings.