The Faithless Fool Read online

  “I don’t know that word,” Godfrid said.

  “A centurion commanded a company of men.” Conall shot Godfrid a grin over his shoulder. “Now ask me how I know that.”

  Godfrid laughed. “Do tell.”

  “I had to learn Latin, just as you did, and my teacher had a fondness for the writings of Livy.” And he quoted at length from a passage before stopping abruptly, too embarrassed to continue.

  Gareth slapped his thigh. “Bravo. I came to reading late, and my lessons did not include Roman chroniclers!”

  “I came to reading reluctant,” Godfrid said. “That was me hiding behind the priests’ robes while others recited Latin. I wasn’t one to appreciate learning when I was younger. I do now.”

  Conall knew his friends were trying to make him feel better for expounding on what he knew, and he loved them for it.

  And then Gareth added, “While we’re talking about everything other than the dead man in the church, I might as well finish my part of the story and tell you that this palace was the seat of the Welsh Kingdom of Rheged, which was lost to King William Rufus only sixty years ago.”

  “You never cease to amaze me, my friend,” Godfrid said. “I expect such pearls of wisdom from Conall, but where did you learn all that?”

  “My father-in-law is a bard. He has forgotten as many songs as he maintains today in his repertoire. The splendid prince of the North; The choicest of princes.” Though Gareth’s voice couldn’t rival either Meilyr’s or Gwalchmai’s, it was perfectly passable, and he sang with the same casual by-the-way attitude as he’d spoken.

  In fact, since they’d left the vestry door, Gareth had remained content to let Conall lead. It was one of the things Conall admired most about the Welshman: he had no need to take charge or assert his authority. In Conall’s experience, few men knew themselves that well.

  At last, Conall skirted a large raised stone grave, implying it housed the remains of an important man—and then stopped abruptly, his toes on the edge of a gaping hole in the ground.

  The others crowded close to the edge as well, Gareth holding up his lantern, as Conall was doing, and peering into the depths.

  By now, they were near the edge of the graveyard and within a few yards of the palisade.

  Conall swung the lantern back and forth to illuminate the vegetation and graves nearby. Just within the ring of his light, a wilder growth began, as if the workers who maintained the graveyard had decided that those beyond had been dead so long nobody cared to remember them. In truth, if Conall had needed to hide the body of a man he’d killed, he would have buried him there. Really, one wouldn’t even have needed to dig a grave at all. He could simply have left him in a thicket.

  “I think we can safely say that whoever removed the body had no interest in hiding where he got it.” Godfrid crouched lower to the ground, his great boots compressing the dirt of one of the mounds created when the body had been excavated.

  “And why would he?” Gareth said. “It isn’t as if we weren’t going to notice the body he left in the church. It wouldn’t have taken much, really, to dump some of the dirt back into the grave, or even scatter a few downed branches and leaves to cover the hole.”

  “He did care about stealth, though,” Conall said, “to the extent that he didn’t want to get caught.”

  Gareth began to sweep at the dirt around the grave, first with his feet, and then, once he set the lantern on the ground, with his hands.

  “What are you looking for?” Conall made to join him, but Gareth pointed him to a pile of dirt on the opposite side of the open grave.

  “I’m looking for a grave marker. I want to know if this hole was dug specifically to bury our dead man, or if he was piggy backing on another and there’s a second body down there.”

  It was a gruesome thought, but just as Gareth finished speaking, Conall’s hand hit something solid. He brushed away more dirt and pulled out a flat, square stone, one foot on a side.

  Gareth nodded to see it. “Like that.”

  Many of the graves in the near vicinity were marked by a similar stone. Some, like the one Conall had found, featured a dove, which usually indicated it was a woman’s grave. A few farther on were larger, real stone slabs meant to cover the full body as it lay in the earth. The bigger the stone, the more wealthy the individual buried beneath it. The very wealthy would be interred in the church itself—if they didn’t choose instead a giant stone sarcophagus like they’d passed earlier.

  Godfrid made a rueful face. “I’m having a hard time reconciling our Aelred with a dove.”

  “We need the priest in order to know who is supposed to be buried here,” Gareth said. “But since he isn’t here, we’ll have to dig a little deeper.”

  “When a killer buries his victim in the grave of someone recently dead, the earth is easy to turn and nobody remarks on the fresh scar in the grass.” Godfrid spoke without emphasis, as if remarking on the weather. “We’ve seen it before.”

  “We have.” Gareth matched his tone. “It isn’t all that easy to get rid of a body, you know.”

  “We’ve noticed.” Conall kept his tone dry.

  Gareth spun slowly on one heel, surveying the area. “This is a good spot for some illicit gravedigging too. Secluded—or as secluded as any place can be in a castle as busy as this one.”

  “Where exactly did this happen before?” Conall asked him.

  “It was before Rhun died,” Godfrid said heavily. “I was there.”

  “If the garrison captain is right that the body in the church belongs to this soldier, Aelred,” Conall spoke slowly as he thought it out, “the only way he could have ended up in a grave with a second body, without anyone knowing and without the proper rites, is if he died an untimely death.”

  “So are we or are we not hoping there’s another body down there?” Godfrid was now on his knees, reaching into the hole. After discovering even his long arms were insufficient to the task, he swung his legs into the grave so he was briefly sitting on the edge, and then jumped in.

  Up until now, their mutual irreverence had been confined to a verbal back and forth, but Conall flinched when Godfrid landed heavily on what could be another body, hidden beneath a shallow layer of dirt. Then again, Godfrid, as a Dane, had no fear of death at all, never mind that his peoples’ pagan ways had ended two centuries earlier.

  They’d been talking the way they had, not because they didn’t respect the dead, but as a way to accustom themselves to their task. By this point, even Conall would have been just as happy to return to the hall for a nice cup of mulled wine and diplomatic conversation.

  Both Conall and Gareth would have investigated the grave if Godfrid hadn’t decided to take on the task himself first. Scuffing about in the dirt much as Conall and Gareth had been doing with their hands above him, Godfrid came up with a shovel. After gazing at it for a moment, he let out an unamused laugh and then set the shovel on the edge of the grave. “Whoever dug up our Aelred really was in a hurry, wasn’t he?”

  “We can’t know if the shovel was left behind today or three months ago.” Gareth tucked his toe under the handle, tossed the shovel into the air and caught it. “It could have been left by the one who buried him.”

  “In that case, we would have found it on the surface, not at the bottom of the hole.” Conall inspected the blade. “I see rust and dirt, but if it was a murder weapon, I can’t tell now.”

  Gareth had handed off his lantern to Godfrid, who lowered it to the bottom of the grave, discovering in the process a length of soiled, linen cloth. With a sigh, he passed it up to Conall, who shook it out. After Gareth took the other end, they stretched it between them. It proved to be roughly ten feet in length.

  Neither of them felt the need to say that it was long enough to wrap a body in.

  Instead, Conall said, “Perhaps this isn’t a murder. Someone just moved a body.”

  “The man in the church still isn’t a woman.” Godfrid was crouched down now, scraping at the earth gently with both hands, not wanting to risk an injudicious prodding with the toe of his boot.

  “Please tell me she’s there, and I won’t be finding her body left somewhere else.” Gareth gestured to the opposite end of the grave. “Her head would be to the east, Godfrid, if she’s here at all.”

  “I know; I’m looking.” If possible, his motions became even more gentle, but instead of a skull, he handed up his next find: a man’s purse, simpler than the one Conall wore at his waist, but still a leather sack tied with a string.

  Gareth’s fingers were working to unknot the tie, when Godfrid’s boot made a crunching sound. He swore. “Just what I was trying to avoid.”

  “No one is blaming you, Godfrid,” Gareth said. “It could be either of us in there.”

  Working quickly now that he’d found what he’d been looking for, Godfrid scraped away dirt to reveal the outline of a body. Unlike poor Aelred, this body was still wrapped in its shroud. Godfrid hesitated in the act of pulling back the covering over the face. “How important is it that we look?”

  During the pause where they each considered the consequences of not looking, Conall felt a drop of rain on the back of his head.

  “I suggested we look for her in the first place because I was concerned about rain getting her wet.” Gareth gestured to Godfrid. “Do it quickly.”

  Conall crouched on the edge of the grave, holding his own lantern so Godfrid could see better. It would be best if this part happened once and only once. By now, they were all filthy, something Conall hadn’t been for a long time. He was always dressed well, the better to represent Leinster. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter.

  Godfrid carefully pulled the piece of linen aside. The face revealed was nearly indistinguishable from that of Aelred in the church: skin turned brown by decay and time, lips pulled back and teeth exposed. The dead person’s hair, however, was still present and braided in a long plait—and when Godfrid pulled the linen shroud down further, the person was revealed to be wearing a dress with a high collar.

  Gareth sighed. “Now we really do need the priest. That nobleman, James Carr, either forgot to send him to me or was unable to accomplish the task.” He looked at Conall. “While Godfrid and I cover her again, can you find him for me, please? Tell him that more than one of his parishioners is in need.”

  Chapter Ten

  Day One

  Godfrid

  “What do you make of all this, Gareth?” Godfrid was moving quickly at Gareth’s side, both taking long strides to get out of the rain, which was coming down hard now.

  Fortunately, a folded hemp tarp had been readily available in the shed that housed the tools for the maintenance of the church grounds. Both Godfrid and Gareth had gone to enough funerals to have expected to find it there. Usually gravediggers mounded the dirt taken out of a grave on a tarp so the soil could be easily deposited over the body after the funeral, and the surrounding graves were not inadvertently covered over with excess dirt.

  “I’m trying very hard to make nothing of it as yet.” Gareth hunched his shoulders against the rain.

  Godfrid had no such qualms about speculation. “Someone killed a man and, to cover it up, buried him in a grave already belonging to someone else. Then either that man or another man—”

  “Or woman,” Gareth interjected. “Best not to rule anyone out this early.”

  “I don’t see a woman doing this,” Godfrid said. “Few women would have the strength to bury Aelred, much less unbury him.”

  “I would not have said unbury was a word, but if it isn’t, it definitely should be.” Gareth reached the church porch a stride before Godfrid and pushed back his hood, the water from it dripping onto the stones at his feet.

  “We will keep it for our own private use.” Godfrid joined him, grateful to be out of the wet.

  “Hopefully, we won’t have to use it very often after this.”

  “Regardless, someone dug up the body—“

  “Unburied it,” Gareth corrected.

  “—hauled it into the church, and propped it up in the priest’s chair.” Godfrid finished his sentence as if Gareth hadn’t spoken.

  “That does seem to describe the facts as we currently know them. It is possible, if you are feeling we must dismiss the idea of a woman doing the heavy lifting, that it would be a different matter if she had help.”

  “You do not comfort me.” Godfrid laughed. “And you don’t have to tell me what’s possible. My own wife, were she not pregnant, would be perfectly capable of digging a hole and dumping a body into it if she had to.” He loved his wife to distraction, and part of the reason he had found her so attractive was because she was very practical. If Cait saw something that needed doing, she did it. And if she’d felt threatened by Aelred, she would have done what she had to, up to and including killing him, to protect herself. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t proud of that fact.

  “That’s the crucial issue, isn’t it?” Gareth said. “If she had to.”

  “Thus, before the hauling about, burying, and unburying, there was an initial murder—”

  “Let’s just say initial death,” Gareth put in.

  Godfrid nodded, neither of them in any way fussed by the back and forth between them. Rather, that they could speak to each other this way made the pursuit of this investigation more palatable. If Conall had been with them, rather than off to find the priest, he would have joined in with enthusiasm.

  “Initial death, then. Burying the body in a convenient spot smacks of desperation, not premeditation. Whether an accident or on purpose, the death was not planned, and the burial of it was not planned either.”

  “Which is why I can’t rule out the possibility that a woman did this.”

  Godfrid grunted. “Agreed. I will hold my speculation in abeyance for now.”

  “I’m not ruling out robbery either, but ...” Gareth untied the leather thong that held Aelred’s purse closed and spilled the contents into his palm.

  Out came tinder and flint, for lighting a fire, and a smooth stone, one that could have been picked up from any creek bed. These items could be found in any man’s purse. Really, Aelred was just so ordinary, it was hard to imagine why he’d died, been buried over the top of another body, and then unburied. If he’d had money, which seemed unlikely given the quality of the purse, the person who’d buried him had taken it with them.

  “Is it time to examine the body?” Godfrid suddenly wished Gareth had asked him to find the priest instead of Conall.

  “Long past time, but there’s something I want to show you inside the church first.”

  Shaking out their wet cloaks, they stood for a moment in the entryway. The church was unchanged from when Godfrid had last seen it, except for Aelred’s absence, which was a relief. The smell seemed a little better too, though still musty and lip curling the closer they got to where the body had been.

  Gareth led Godfrid past the priest’s chair to the chancel, the area reserved for churchmen. “What do you see?”

  “Choir stalls.” Godfrid’s eyes narrowed as he looked them up, down, and around and could find nothing amiss. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

  “They’re new—or at least newish.” Gareth put his nose to the front rail and sniffed, after which he gestured for Godfrid to do the same. “You can still smell the oil used on them. It wasn’t done this week, but it was done in the past few months.” He paused. “Maybe even, one could guess, three months ago. You couldn’t smell it before from over there because it's faded with time and, of course, the scent of Aelred was overwhelming.”

  Godfrid sniffed as he was bid. Linseed oil permeated the wood and thus his nostrils. “All right. I smell it. Why is it important?”

  “Now step away and put your nose to this.” From underneath his cloak where he’d tucked it, Gareth pulled out the length of linen likely used to wrap Aelred. He didn’t bother unfolding it for Godfrid’s momentary sniff.

  Given that a dead man had been wrapped in the cloth for the last three months, Godfrid was reluctant in the extreme to put his nose to it, but Gareth kept holding it out, and Godfrid accepted that his friend was trying to make a point. He sniffed, and then took an involuntary step back. “It smells the same. Linseed oil.”

  “So I thought.”

  Godfrid tipped his head towards the door. “Let me clear my senses, and then I can try again.”

  Gareth obligingly walked out the door and back into the porch. The squall that had driven them from the graveyard was coming to an end, and the air was fresh with the smell of wet grass and earth.

  This time, Godfrid was willing to keep his nose in the cloth for a few heartbeats longer. It was still appalling to be smelling the cloth used to wrap a dead man, but he no longer feared the scent of decay.

  “Oil,” he said definitively.

  “Even after three months in the ground,” Gareth agreed, “which means that this cloth came from the church and had potentially been used to protect the floor, let’s say, during the oiling of the new choir stalls.”

  “Now we know where he died!” Godfrid looked at Gareth over the cloth. “This could also tell us when.”

  “Maybe. At the very least, we can place the person who buried Aelred inside the church when he died.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Day One

  Gareth

  “What’s this? What’s this? What did I hear happened?” A priest bustled through the church gate and up the walk to the porch where Gareth waited.

  Gareth had been about to enter the church one more time, following after Godfrid, who’d taken the linen cloth with him, with the idea to try to match it to another in the vestry.

  Although Gareth was impatient either to go after Godfrid or to start work on the body in the laying-out room, speaking to the priest was a top priority, and he met him at the entrance to the porch.