Chapter Seven
Bronwyn took a step back. The sheep’s head had been found, and it was gory. The pink tongue stuck out of its mouth and the blank eyes stared at her. She shivered and felt sick, then spared a thought for Lady Susanna.
Tristan cursed. Lady Alice dashed to Lady Susanna’s side, fanning her with a hand.
Bronwyn stiffened. “How did it get there?”
“Someone put it there, obviously. How else does a snake get into someone’s bed?” Empress Maud said. “Get it out of here. Now.”
The squire made to leave, when Bronwyn stepped in his path. “Wait,” Bronwyn said. “Let me see it.”
“It’s a sheep’s head. You want it for your dinner?” Tristan joked.
“This is not the time for jokes, Tristan,” Lady Alice said.
He shot her a leering smile and straightened when he caught the empress’s eye. “I agree. Why would you want to see it, Bronwyn? It’s obvious. Someone left it here to frighten her.”
“I want it gone,” Empress Maud said. “Tristan, dispose of that thing.”
Bronwyn said, “Empress, could you tell me what happened?”
The empress sat back in a chair and pulled her robe tighter around her.
In the shadowy candlelight, she looked older, her features drawn.
Her hair was long and hung in great waves down her back.
She shivered and said, “I was asleep in bed when I shifted and felt something in the bed with me. I felt something wet on my hands—and sticky. A fly hit my face, and I woke up and saw it and screamed.”
“We all did,” Lady Alice admitted.
Bronwyn noticed the blood on the empress’s hands. “You touched it?”
“Yes. I thought maybe I was having a dream, but then when I saw what it was…” Empress Maud shook her head. She looked at her hands dazedly, as if seeing them from far away. “I should wash these. Does someone have a basin?”
Lady Alice rose to her feet and ordered a quick instruction to the guards outside to fetch a basin of water. One of the guards left without a word.
“I am sorry for that, Empress.” Bronwyn paused. “How did none of you see it before? Was it in the bed before you all went to sleep?”
“No. It wasn’t,” Lady Alice said. “That’s the strange thing. Everything was fine.”
“I did smell something odd,” Lady Susanna said from the floor. She slowly sat up.
“You did? Why didn’t you say anything?” Lady Alice asked.
“I thought it was nothing. And I didn’t see why none of you could smell it, either, so I kept quiet. I thought maybe one of you had left food in here or something.”
“You should have spoken up,” Agatha said. “We would never leave food on the floor. It brings flies.”
Bronwyn’s eyebrows knit together. No one had mentioned the floor before this.
As she peered at the floor, little white, wriggling lumps inched across the floor from the bed.
She stepped back. Maggots. The decomposing sheep’s head had attracted flies and maggots.
It made her recoil. She looked carefully at the ladies-in-waiting.
“When did you first notice the funny smell, Lady Susanna?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this evening, as we were getting ready to decide who would sleep in the empress’s room.”
“And who slept here tonight?”
“Mistress Agatha. We take turns,” Lady Susanna said.
“Were any of you out of the room this evening?”
“Yes.” Lady Susanna said as she and Lady Alice exchanged looks. “We all were. We go where the empress bids us.”
“What are you trying to achieve with these questions, Bronwyn?” the empress asked.
“A timeline. We found a slaughtered sheep on the grounds earlier this morning but without its head.”
The empress paled. Agatha looked as if she were going to be ill. Even Lady Alice looked away and fanned herself.
“We thought perhaps it was a prank. And we couldn’t find the head,” Bronwyn said.
“Until now,” Tristan said sourly. “Can I get rid of this already?”
“Go.” The empress waved him away.
The head was crawling with flies and maggots. The smell and wriggling larvae were enough to make Bronwyn retch.
“Why did no one report the slaughtered sheep to me?” Empress Maud asked.
“I suspect the men thought it was beneath your notice, Empress. The men thought it was a nasty prank.”
Empress Maud sniffed. “Quite right. But still. For the head to go missing…” She shuddered. “It doesn’t bear thinking about. And these little accidents keep happening. First the notes, and that filthy chamber pot, and now this.”
“Not to mention the attempted poisoning on your life, Your Grace,” Agatha added.
Bronwyn couldn’t help but give the taster a hard look. She wanted to challenge her but held her tongue.
“Yes, I cannot forget that. Truly.” Empress Maud nodded.
“Very well. Figure this business out, Bronwyn, and fast. I want no more of this nonsense taking place under my roof. We are at war. Just because we are at siege outside the castle does not mean I should be facing trouble within the walls as well.”
“Yes, Empress.” Bronwyn was given the empress’s bloody bedding, which bore horrid stains from the sheep’s head and small maggots and flies.
She bundled it up in her hands and took it out, but not before waking up another servant to visit the empress’s chamber and refresh the bedding.
She took the horrible bundle outside to the castle courtyard and shook out the sheets, flinging flies and maggots and spare offal into the night air.
As she peered into the night, feeling the cool air on her face, she wondered how Theobold was doing in Wolvesey Castle, and how Rupert was in the queen’s army.
It was strange that they could be just across the city and yet seem so far away.
Were it not for an invading army at their doorstep and for Rupert’s defection to the other side, she might see them.
She sighed and turned to take the bundle inside to wash, when she stopped.
Facing her, quiet as a mouse, stood Agatha.
“Mistress Agatha,” Bronwyn said. She wrinkled her nose. The woman smelled like beer.
“What are you doing with Tristan?” Mistress Agatha asked. “You’re working with him, aren’t you?”
Bronwyn cocked her head. How much should she reveal?
“You shouldn’t work with him,” Agatha said. “It’s not right. It’s cruel.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He uses people. You’re a smart girl, or so Lady Alice seems to think. I saw the way you two were exchanging looks, as if you both had a secret the rest of us didn’t know. You should take care he doesn’t use you for his own ends.”
Bronwyn realized she meant romantically. “I promise you, I have no interest in him. We aren’t—”
“You foolish girl. Ugh. Why do I bother?” Agatha gave a dramatic sigh.
“Look. Just heed my warning. If you value yourself, do not trust him. He’s not got anyone’s best interests at heart but his own.
Don’t lose your way and fall in with him, all right?
It’s bad enough Lady Susanna is making eyes at him. Stay away from him.”
Bronwyn blinked. If she was flirting with other men, did that mean Lady Susanna’s romance with her man was over? “Mistress Agatha, did something happen?”
Agatha ran a hand through her brown, greying hair, which looked black in the darkness. “No. Everything is fine. Just a little advice. I would hate to see a young woman like you waste herself keeping company with a man who is like a rotten apple.”
Bronwyn’s eyebrows rose. Maybe she wasn’t speaking romantically, after all.
Bronwyn washed the dirty bedding and hung it out to dry, then went straight to bed.
The next day, she let the castle’s laundress know it was for the empress.
With that well in hand, she returned to her pallet on the floor for a few hours’ sleep, then joined the cooks and kitchen servants for an early morning meal and set about her duties.
The siege resumed at first light, with the air full of arrows, whistling and screaming through the sky.
Bronwyn sometimes brought food up to the archers and men on the ramparts; other times, she tended the wounded.
But there was less food than before, as the weeks of siege were taking their toll.
The empress’s armies and noncombatants who relied on her couldn’t last like this forever.
And whilst the weather was still fine, the September sunshine would fade soon enough, and Bronwyn did not want to be stuck in a besieged castle for the winter with little food.
There had to be a way out. She instantly thought of the secret entrance that Sister Rebecca had talked about, but what would that achieve?
She couldn’t just slip out herself. Wandering around alone in a city under siege was a good way to get captured, or worse.
But she needed to do something. Anything was better than walking around waiting for the invaders to break down the walls.
Bronwyn took her frustrations out on some bread dough she was preparing, and rolled it into a ball, then slapped it against the wooden worktable again.
She thought about what Agatha had said the night before.
Why did the woman care if she was working with Tristan, and why did she mean to warn her against him? How had they crossed paths in the past?