Cathedral of Bones Read online

  Over lunch, attended by her children—at another table—since she could hardly exclude them from lunch in their own hall, De Burgh harped on his theme that Ela was far too busy with her maternal role to waste her time policing the county. She didn’t waste her breath arguing with him since she had already taken her request over his head and straight to the young king. Still, she now suspected that becoming sheriff would be more of an uphill battle than she’d anticipated

  After lunch, Morse and Brice were brought back up from the dungeon and the now-well-fed jurors settled back at their tables.

  Fitz-Peter addressed them. “The countess has described her ordeal in great detail, and we have established that the deceased Robert Harwich killed his daughter. We are now trying to determine the guilt or innocence of Alan Morse and Elizabeth Brice in the death of John Brice.” He turned to Ela. “Did the deceased utter any words that might indicate the guilt or innocence of either of the parties standing before us?”

  “I’m afraid not, my lord. Harwich admitted to killing his daughter because he thought she would turn him out of his forge, but he had no reason to be interested in John Brice, the second victim. Brice’s name wasn’t mentioned.”

  “So the two cases are not connected?” Fitz-Peter peered at her.

  “Well, no.” Ela frowned. Did he really not know? “Katie—the dead girl—was visibly pregnant. It’s been established that her husband was not the baby’s father, and it’s likely that John Brice was. Morse potentially had motive to kill Brice for cuckolding him, and Elizabeth Brice had motive to kill her husband for his adultery.”

  Fitz-Peter looked from Morse to Elizabeth Brice, who shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

  “Alan Morse, did you kill your neighbor, John Brice?”

  “I did not.” His voice was rough from lack of use. “I never laid a hand on no man. Not since I was in the battle that left me unable to sire children. I didn’t kill Brice any more than I killed my own wife that I miss sorely.”

  De Burgh sat like a statue. What was he thinking?

  “Elizabeth Brice, did you kill your husband for the crime of bedding another woman?”

  “Never! Why would I leave his poor children fatherless?” Her plaintive voice pierced Ela’s ears. “How will we ever survive without him?”

  “Master Morse.” De Burgh addressed him in warm tones. “Your anger at your wife’s betrayal is quite understandable. No man would blame you for wanting to take matters into your own hands.”

  Ela glanced at Fitz-Peter, whose impassive face revealed nothing.

  “It’s a man’s duty to defend his honor,” De Burgh continued. “In fact some would say you weren’t a man if you didn’t exact revenge for such a crime.”

  “I never—” Morse started to protest.

  “Silence!” uttered De Burgh. “The prisoner must not speak unless questioned. I’m on your side here. I’m simply pointing out that avenging yourself on the man who stole your wife is something that any of us can sympathize with.”

  Where was he going with this? Ela was almost sure that Morse—odious as he was—was innocent of the crime. Elizabeth Brice had motive and opportunity. Why would De Burgh seek to incriminate Morse while heaping false empathy upon him?

  “Elizabeth Brice seems like the true victim here.” De Burgh tipped his head to her. “A poor, simple farmwife just trying to raise her children while her errant husband wasted his working hours in seducing a neighbor. Women are gentle creatures and easily led astray—”

  Ela felt her blood start to boil. He was doing his best to undermine her authority while also throwing the facts of the case under his cart wheels where they’d be trampled into the mire and emerge unrecognizable.

  Right now he was reminding everyone that Morse had inherited his farm unexpectedly when his brother died. He didn’t come out and accuse Morse of killing him, but he was sowing seeds in his already plowed field.

  Elizabeth Brice had seemed a strapping woman, a classic shrew, berating her errant husband in the marketplace just days earlier. Here, bedraggled and undernourished from imprisonment, she appeared a forlorn and pitiful figure.

  Morse, although whey-faced and thinner, was still burly and imposing. Ela felt a surge of fear that a miscarriage of justice was imminent.

  She was further distracted by Will striding into the hall, pink-cheeked and breathless, clutching a scroll of parchment in his hand. He walked right up to her and whispered in her ear. “May I speak to you alone, Mother?”

  “Not right now.” Did he really think she could just get up and leave? De Burgh would love that. Her domestic duties summoning her away from official business would feed right into his scheme to unseat her. “You can show me later.”

  “It’s important,” Will insisted. His eyes shone in a way she’d never seen before. Bill Talbot hovered close behind him, his usually warm expression absent and a grim intensity hardening his features.

  Sure the assembled men would all shake their heads over the pressing call of her domestic duties, she followed her instincts and beckoned for Will to follow her out the door toward the kitchen. She accosted him in the hallway. “What’s going on?”

  “This.” Will rapped on the parchment with his fingers, then unfurled it. It was covered by a closely written hand in somewhat faded black ink.

  Ela peered at the broken seal. “Is that De Burgh’s seal?”

  “It is. This is a contract that he wrote to Robert Harwich for the sale of his forge.”

  “What?” She peered at the document. “He bought it?”

  “No. The sale was never completed. Harwich refused to sell.” Will’s eyes shone. “We visited Bishop Poore to see if he knew the details. He told us that De Burgh was interested in taking over three properties that abut the cathedral close, possibly to build a residence there. He was able to make contracts for two of them but was unable to persuade Harwich to move.”

  Ela shook her head. “I’m not surprised that he wouldn’t move. His blindness made him dependent on the familiar. But how does that affect anything here?”

  “No doubt he still wants the property,” said Talbot softly.

  “No doubt. He can just buy it.”

  “From who, Mama? Morse would be his heir through marriage. And Morse probably knows what it’s worth now that New Salisbury has sprung up around it and is growing bigger and faster than anyone expected. Perhaps he hopes to get it cheaper if Morse is hung and his goods put up for auction.”

  Ela frowned. “I’ve taken control of the property, to hold in trust until Morse is tried.”

  “Thus his attempts to discredit you and push you out of the picture,” murmured Talbot. He took a deep breath. “I’ve never wanted to punch a man so badly.”

  “Your restraint is greatly appreciated. And so is this document. At the very least it will throw water on the funeral bonfire that De Burgh is piling high for Morse in there right now.”

  “There is a risk that you could draw more fire to yourself if the only way to the property is through you.”

  “He’ll have to go through Morse and myself since I don’t intend to allow this trial to convict an innocent man.”

  She took the paper from Will, rolled it up and headed back into the chamber. Mistress Brice was busy playing the role of helpless mother, sobbing into her wimple and bemoaning her fate while the jurors questioned her about her husbands’ infidelity.

  Ela took her seat at the high table, where she sat on one side of Fitz-Peter, with Burgh on the other, and unrolled the scroll.

  De Burgh looked satisfyingly discomfited by the sight of his own seal.

  “What have you here, my lady?” asked the justice.

  “A paper my son discovered in Harwich’s forge, my lord. It appears that my lord De Burgh offered him a generous sum to buy the property four years ago, and it was refused.”

  “Why would he refuse such a thing?” Fitz-Peter addressed De Burgh.

  De Burgh simply looked amused. “He said that because
he was blind he couldn’t adapt to new surroundings. I even donated generously to fund Bishop Poore’s new almshouses to provide him with a more comfortable home for his final years.”

  “And he still wouldn’t move?”

  “He’s a stubborn old fool.”

  “I half-wonder why he didn’t try to kill you instead of Ela,” exclaimed Fitz-Peter with a laugh.

  Ela stilled. Was there even a shred of possibility that De Burgh had paid Harwich to kill her? Now she knew there was a relationship between them it seemed like a grim possibility. They both wanted her out of the way. The old man needed money and—

  No, it was too far-fetched. She needed to stay focused on the trial at hand and save De Burgh’s battle against her family for another day when she was better mounted and defended.

  “Why do you put this before us now, my lady?” asked Fitz-Peter.

  “Oh,” Ela tried to look flustered. “I’m not sure, my lord, except that my son just found it in his quarters and thought it might be important.” She couldn’t risk accusing De Burgh of trying to throw the trial. She’d have to let his own actions do that.

  “I fail to see the relevance myself,” said De Burgh with his usual smarmy smile. “Indeed I barely recall the event. Though there’s no doubt the cathedral close would be improved by the removal of that ramshackle hovel.”

  Ela glanced at Morse, who looked thoroughly stunned by her pronouncement, but then his features settled into a morose sadness. As if he could already see his future unfurling as the doormat De Burgh would wipe his feet on as he passed into his glittering property in the heart of New Salisbury.

  “May I speak, your honor?” Ela addressed Fitz-Peter.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Ela felt De Burgh’s eyes on her.

  “It’s my belief, based on conversations with Morse and others, that Alan Morse is innocent. His relationship with his wife was based on practical concerns, not romantic notions. He does not seem to be a man of passions, murderous or otherwise. If he beat his wife it was probably done soberly and out of a misguided sense of duty. Until we informed him of his wife’s death he was unaware of it. He thought she had left him for her lover, whose identity he didn’t know. He had quietly accepted that fate.”

  “He didn’t report her missing?” De Burgh’s voice rang out.

  “No. No one was looking for her. Katherine Morse’s body was discovered in the river when it thawed.” She leveled a cold look at him. “On the morning of my husband’s funeral.”

  “Surely Morse not reporting his wife’s absence was cause for suspicion that he murdered her himself.” De Burgh turned to Giles Haughton. “How are you so sure he didn’t?”

  Ela opened her mouth to protest that the real murderer had confessed when she realized that just by raising the question De Burgh was calling the veracity of her statement into question again.

  “Naturally that was our assumption,” said Giles. “But he protested his innocence and convinced us to keep looking. Similarly, he was an immediate suspect when Brice was killed, but the circumstances turned our attentions to Mistress Brice.”

  Giles glanced at Ela. “As my lady has stated, Morse does not appear to be a man of strong emotions. He’s a practical and hardworking man to all appearances. Plodding, if you will.” He glanced somewhat apologetically at Morse. “Whereas Mistress Brice demonstrated to all of Salisbury that she is a woman with a violent and demonstrative nature.”

  Elizabeth Brice’s tears had dried and she peered at Ela through eyes narrowed with hatred.

  De Burgh lifted a silvered brow. “And being a woman”—he glanced at Ela, as if implicating her in the crimes of her gender, before looking back at Haughton—“of such violent passions, you think it likely that she slew her husband and the father of her children?”

  “Yes.” For once, Haughton himself didn’t have a gleam of mischief in his eye. “The manner of stabbing, several ineffectual thrusts of the knife, suggest an inexperienced killer. Not a man who’s fought in battle.”

  “A female.” De Burgh raised a brow. “Or one who wishes to appear so. Morse might have made such ineffectual stab wounds to confound the coroner.”

  Ela struggled to hold her tongue. Who was De Burgh to command the proceedings thus?

  The king’s justiciar. That’s who. She reminded herself of the high stakes for her personally, and for her family and her son’s future. At least they could all read between the lines of that old contract and see that he might have an ulterior motive.

  Was Fitz-Peter struck dumb? His gaze bounced from De Burgh to the prisoners like he was watching a jousting tournament. Ela wondered what the stakes were for him. No doubt he was bought and paid for by De Burgh and only waited to serve his master like a loyal dog.

  Was there no justice to be had in England? Ela cleared her throat. “Will you be polling the jurors for their opinions, my lord?” She addressed Fitz-Peter directly. She had more faith in the solid local men of the hundred than in the king’s emissaries.

  “Naturally. We’ll listen to opinions one by one, starting from the left, if it pleases the king’s justiciar.” He looked mildly at De Burgh, who nodded in silent assent.

  Ela breathed a sigh of relief. As expected the jurors mumbled what they knew of the case and the evidence that pointed solidly at Harwich being his daughter’s killer and Elizabeth Brice being her husband’s.

  Fitz-Peter had been scratching notes for himself. He looked up and around the room. “Does anyone gathered here have any last words to add?” Ela glanced at Morse and Elizabeth Brice but they both looked equally morose and sullen.

  De Burgh shifted and Ela felt her nerves prickle. Was he really going to make a last-ditch effort to incriminate Morse when all the evidence pointed to Mistress Brice? Even though they all knew he was interested in owning the property that would rightfully belong to Morse if he escaped hanging?

  Silence throbbed in the air as all held their breath. De Burgh leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing.

  Fitz-Peter stood and muttered a preamble about justice and the kingdom and the good men of the hundred. Then he cleared his throat and Ela held her breath. “I pronounce Elizabeth Brice to be the murderer of her husband, John Brice. She despised him for his adultery and his weakness and saw the opportunity to rid herself of him and blame her neighbor for the crime. The murder was premeditated, which is why she sent her children to her sister earlier that day. She used the element of surprise and her native strength to overpower him, then stuck him repeatedly so he’d bleed to death. For punishment she shall be hung by the neck until she is dead. May God have pity on her soul and on her orphaned children.”

  Elizabeth Brice’s screams rent the air, and Ela felt emotion rise in her chest. Surely no mortal could bear to see young children abandoned to their fate without mother or father and not feel pity. She resolved to check regularly on the Brice’s young brood and find them jobs at the castle or in her manors once they were old enough.

  Morse, far from looking happy and relieved, collapsed in his chair sobbing, with his head in his hands.

  Ela looked for Deschamps. “Please arrange for Morse to be reunited with his cows, today if possible.” She hated that the perverted course of justice had kept him imprisoned during calving season and prayed his herd would still be in milk and no lasting harm done.

  She felt Giles Haughton’s gaze upon her. He leaned in. “The search for justice is a rocky road and one that forks right when you think you’ve reached the end.” For once his twinkle of amusement soothed her. “Unfortunately, tomorrow there will be fresh crimes to investigate.”

  “Indeed.” She could feel De Burgh’s eyes on her as well. “But I’m sure I’ll never tire of seeking the truth amidst the lies.”

  “And you are to be commended for that my lady,” chimed in Fitz-Peter. He nodded to her. “As well managed a case and trial as I’ve ever sat in judgment on.”

  Looking back she could see plenty of room for improv
ement, but she’d do her best to learn from her mistakes. “My husband taught me well. He was a great man and will never be forgotten as long as Salisbury stands.” She was still waiting with baited breath for a letter from the king pronouncing her the new sheriff.

  The jurors applauded, joined by Haughton, Fitz-Peter and finally a reluctant, and clearly fuming, De Burgh. Her enemy’s discomfort gave her almost as much pleasure as the justice she’d worked hard for. Katie Morse’s murderer would hang, but her husband’s killer still sat at the king’s right hand. She prayed for the day De Burgh would fall from grace and her husband’s soul could rest in peace. She intended to secretly further that cause in any way she could.

  In the meantime she must learn to find satisfaction in small things, she thought, as she petted her beloved greyhound. “Some wine, perhaps?”

  THE END

  For information about upcoming Ela of Salisbury mysteries, please visit www.stoneheartpress.com.

  Author’s note

  I first came across the name Ela Longespée while researching a nineteenth century ancestor of mine. When I Googled my ancestor’s name, she cropped up on an internet list of people descended from William the Conqueror. As I looked at the line of people in between then and now, I found Ela Longespée and discovered that she’d been Sheriff of Wiltshire in the early thirteenth century.

  I was intrigued, partly because she was the first female sheriff I’d heard of, and also because—weaned on Robin Hood—I am used to thinking of the Norman-descended sheriff as the villain. I became intrigued with writing a story about Ela and imagining her life.

  Considering that she lived nearly eight hundred years ago, I found a fair amount of information about her, especially in the exhaustively researched Annals and Antiquities of Lacock Abbey written by William Lisle Bowles and John Gough Nichols in 1835. Dean of Salisbury during Ela’s time, William de Wanda provided crucial dates for the story in his Historia Translationis Veteris Ecclesiae Beatae Mariae Sarum ad Novam. Roger of Wendover’s contemporary Flores Historiarum provided some surprising background details, including the suspicion that Ela’s husband was poisoned by Hubert De Burgh. When William Longespeé’s tomb was opened in 1791, a rat was found curled inside his skull, with traces of arsenic in its body. There is no record of anyone being accused of or tried for the crime, so his murderer remains unpunished.