Alred finds another

“Who? What?” Alred stammered, waking from a strange dream.

“Your Grace must come quickly.” It was his valet with a candle – and with his sword.

He threw the covers off and sat up. “What is it?”

The valet glanced uneasily over at Matilda, whose head turned on the pillow.

“All right, man,” he whispered. “Tell me outside.”

“Alred?” she asked, waking.

“Go back to sleep, my beauty. Keep my pillow warm for me.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going out to hunt Spackbears,” he said, pulling on his leggings.

She sat up. “Why does he have your sword?”

“That’s a very funny story, Matilda, but I shan’t be able to tell it properly now. Wait till I get back. Now lie down and sleep. That’s a good girl.”

“Be careful,” she mumbled, lying down again.

“I shall.”

“There’s been another killing,” the valet said as they trotted down the long hall.

“Oh, God, where? Wait – what night is this? What moon is this?”

“Your Grace would have to ask a farmer.”

“What’s the date, man?”

“I don’t know.”

“Damn!”

“Not to the stables,” the valet said, laying a hand on his arm as he started towards the front gate. “We don’t need horses. It’s at the chapel.”

“The chapel? My God!” Alred ran.

There were already men with torches standing before the door. Alred shoved a few aside and stopped at the foot of the stairs. A woman’s naked body lay on the bottom step, her legs trailing onto the dirt.

“Who found her?” he asked.

“I did,” one of the men said. “But she been here a while.”

Alred bent closer to look at her. She had not been mutilated as savagely as some of the earlier victims, but her eyes had been cut out of her face.

Alred pressed his fingers to his own eyes, trying to calm himself. What could he tell? The woman had been dead for hours. A dark bruise around her throat showed she must have been strangled. Moreover, there was too little blood on her face for her eyes to have been cut while she yet lived, and the blood had run vertically down her cheeks as if she had been sitting up at the time. Nor was there more than a few spots of blood on the ground or the stairs. Therefore she had been carried here after her death. Only, why?

“Where’s the moon?” he asked the men.

“It’s the new moon,” one of them said ominously.

“Damn!”

“It wasn’t him we got last month,” the man said.

“Or there is another one,” a second man suggested.

“Anyone know who the woman is?” Alred asked.

“She’s one of Your Grace’s maids,” he was told.

“Damn! They’ve all been mine. Why?”

“I don’t know,” the man said.

“I wasn’t talking to you! Damn!”