The ranks scattered before her blazing eyes and levelled arm.
“Stand, damned murderer, face me! Hear me!” The whole Foregate, surely, must be hearing her and crossing themselves in superstitious dread, envisaging a demon come after some prodigious sinner. As for Simon, he stood aghast, too taken aback, it seemed, even to retreat before her. He stared open-mouthed, speechless, as she halted challengingly before him, her black eyes huge and flaring redly in the torchlight. Beside him Guy turned a startled stare helplessly from one to the other, and drew back a furtive pace or two from this new and deadly battlefield.
“You killed him! None but you could have done this. You rode off beside him to this hunt, close to him in the line—I know, I heard how it was drawn up. You, FitzJohn, say, let them all hear! Where did this man ride?”
“He was next to Sir Godfrid,” admitted Guy dazedly. “But…”
“Next to him, yes . .. and on the way home, in those thick woods, it was easy to take him by surprise. Late and quiet you come back, Simon Aguilon, and you have made sure he will never come back!”
Sheriff and abbot had drawn close to witness this encounter, startled and appalled like everyone else, and made as yet no attempt to interrupt it. She was past reason. Simon said so, when he could speak at all, swallowing hard, and still breathless.
“For God’s sake, what have I done to be so accused? I am altogether innocent of this death, I knew nothing of it… I last saw Sir Godfrid Picard three hours ago, well alive, threading the woods like the rest of us. The poor lady is crazed with grief, she strikes the nearest…”
“I strike at you,” she cried, “and would if there were a thousand in between. For you are the man! You know it as I know it. Pretense will not save you now!”
Simon appealed wildly to the sheriff and abbot, spreading gloved hands. “Why, why should I so much as think of killing a man who was my friend? With whom I had no quarrel in the world? What possible motive could I have for such a deed? You see she has run mad.”
“Ah, but you did have a quarrel with him,” shrieked Agnes vengefully, “as well you know. Why? Why? Do you dare ask me why? Because he suspected—he as good as knew—that you had killed your own lord and uncle!”
Wilder and wilder grew the accusations, and yet this time Simon drew in breath sharply, and for an instant was still and pale. He wrenched himself out of shocked silence with a great heave, to defend himself strongly. “How can that be? Everyone knows that my uncle dismissed me, put off all company and rode out alone. I went to my bed, as I was bidden. I slept late … they came to wake me when they found he had not returned …”
She swept that aside with a contemptuous motion of her hand. “You went to your bed, yes, I make no doubt… and you left it again to steal out in the night and set your trap. Easy enough to leave unseen and return unseen when your wicked work was done. There are more ways in and out of any house than by the hall door, and who was so privileged in going and coming as you? Who else had all the keys he needed? Who stood to gain by the old man’s death but you? And not only in being his heir, oh, no! Deny too these here present, if you dare, that in the evening of the day Huon was brought back dead, you came to my lord, before your uncle was cold you came, to make a bargain with us that you would step into his shoes with my niece, inherit bride, and honor, and all. Deny it, and I’ll prove it! My maid was there!”
Simon looked round the ring of watching faces wildly, and protested: “Why should I not fairly offer for Iveta? My estate would match hers, it is no disparagement. I esteem, I honor her. And Sir Godfrid did not reject me. I was willing to wait, to be patient. He agreed to my suit…”
Iveta’s hand gripped and clung convulsively in Joscelin’s clasp. Her stunned mind went back over those two meetings when Simon had seemed to her the only friend she had in the world, when he had pledged her his help, and Joscelin his loyalty. The first meeting countenanced by a smiling and gracious Agnes, complacently welcoming fortune restored. The second … yes, that had been different indeed, he had professed himself disapproved and banished, and the event had borne him out in his claim. What could have happened between, to change everything?
“So he did,” shrilled Agnes, glittering with hatred, “thinking you the honest man you seemed then. But Huon’s throat was bruised and cut—the monk there said it, and my lord heard it, and so did you—bruised and cut by a ring the murderer wore on his right hand. And once you had heard that said, who saw you again without gloves? In season and out! But my husband was at the coffining of Huon de Domville yesterday, and then you were forced—were you not, wretch?—to doff your gloves for once to take the aspergillum. And it was to him you handed it thereafter! He saw—oh, not the ring, no, that you had taken off hastily as soon as the monk here spoke of it, but the pale band where it was wont to be, and the square whiteness under the stone. And he remembered then that you used to wear a ring, just such a ring. And he was fool enough to speak out what he had seen, and what he believed, when you came visiting. He cut off all ado with a man he had cause to think a murderer.”
Yes, so he had. So that was the reason for the change! But not, thought Iveta, grown by force too suddenly into a woman, not because a murderer would not have been acceptable to him, provided no breath of suspicion ever blew his way. No, rather because while suspicion was even possible, he dared not risk contamination. Give him absolute security on that point, and he would have made up his differences quickly enough. And Joscelin had still been the law’s quarry, and Joscelin might still have been taken, taken and hanged … And she would have been left believing despairingly that she had but one kind friend in the world, and that was Simon Aguilon! He had sworn that the very reason he was banished was because he had declared his faith in Joscelin! And he might—given time enough to dull pain—he might even have prevailed! She pressed close to Joscelin’s side, and trembled.
“I urged him, I begged him,” moaned Agnes, writhing, “to sever all ties with such a man. You knew all too well he might feel it his duty to speak out what he suspected, even without proof. You have made certain he never shall. But you have not reckoned with me!”
“Woman, you are mad!” Simon flung up his hands against her, his voice high almost to breaking. “How could I have set a snare for my uncle, when I did not know where he had gone, or what he intended, much less by what narrow path he must return? I did not know he had a mistress anywhere within this shire, to tempt him to a night’s visit.”
Cadfael had stood silent throughout this duel. He spoke now. “There is one who will say, Simon Aguilon, that you lie, that you did know, none so well. Avice of Thornbury says, and I fancy there will be two other witnesses to bear her out, once they know she is not at risk and asks no silence, that you, and none other, were the trusted escort who conducted her wherever her lord wanted her. You brought her to the hunting-lodge. The way between was well known to you, for you had ridden it. And Huon de Domville admitted but one man at a time to his private amours. For these last three years you have been that man.”
Agnes uttered a long wail of glee and grief together, that drifted eerily on the blown smoke of the torches. She pointed a triumphant hand. “Strip him! You will see! The ring is on him now, he never would leave it off his person, for another to see and understand. Search him, and you’ll find it. And why should he doff it, if it never left mark on a murdered man?”
The men-at-arms had read the sheriff’s signs, and closed in silently, a tight ring of leather and steel about the two antagonists. Simon had been too intent on the threat before him to regard the quiet vigilance behind. He loosed a defiant cry of anger and impatience, and swung on his heel to stride away. “I need not stay to hear such venom!” he spat, too shrilly.