Lucifer's Harvest

by Mel Starr

  I had found the hairs near to the opening for the neck, so their location made sense. But the length of the tunic did not. I stood and held the garment to me. It fell to just above my knees. Here was a man’s tunic with three strands of some woman’s hair upon it.

  Perhaps the hair came from a child, a lass, who often wore her father’s worn tunic. This was surely possible, but did not explain why it was left behind when the family fled.

  I was yet holding the tunic to myself, pondering these things, when Arthur said, “What is there?” and pointed to the garment.

  Because of the brown color of the tunic I had not noticed the stain under the sleeve. ’Tis a wonder Arthur saw it, and he might not have but that the tunic was so old and faded that a deeper color was noticeable. Where the dark stain was the tunic was stiff. Had blood made this stain? I lifted the tunic for a closer examination, thinking I might see under the sleeve a slash made by a dagger thrust.

  Not so. The garment was whole. And because dried blood is brown, as was the tunic, there was no way to know certainly that the blot was blood.

  First blood on the rim of a bucket, now blood, perhaps, upon a frayed tunic. Or was my imagination seeing bloodstains where none were? Surely Sir Simon would not have worn such a tunic, and when he was pierced he was surely not wearing the garment. For what purposes does a man disrobe?

  To sleep? But why in Couzeix? Surely he would not slumber upon the flags of the church, nor would he seek a decaying barn for his rest.

  A lass, then? Could it be that he caught some maid returning to her village and forced himself upon her? Or did she meet him willingly? Perhaps for a few silver coins. Couzeix was clearly a poor village.

  But if Sir Simon went to Couzeix for a tryst, why did he die there? If ’twas a lass that brought him to Couzeix, did she have an enraged father? More questions, and few answers. I folded the frayed tunic and placed it under my arm, along with the clothing from the Easter Sepulcher, and set off for the English camp.

  Sir John readily identified his son’s garments when I laid them before him. “Where’d you find them?” he asked. “Were they where you left them?”

  I told him where I had found the cap, chauces, and braes, ignoring his imputation, then brought the old tunic to his attention. Sir John fingered the threadbare wool, a curl of distaste upon his lips.

  “Never seen that before. Even my villeins do not wear such ragged stuff.”

  “Did Sir Simon ever speak to you of seeking maids hereabouts?” I asked.

  “Hah. My son was always seeking maids, here or elsewhere. Much like other young men.”

  “But he never said anything about finding a lass in Couzeix or meeting her there?”

  “Nay. Wouldn’t, would he? If he’d found a willing lass he’d keep the discovery for himself.”

  I began to think that Couzeix was not so vacant as I had thought. Folk might know of the grain in the decrepit tithe barn and might visit the place in the night. I had found a way to enter the barn; perhaps others had also done so. Two of the sacks stored within it had been opened.

  Someone had scattered fresh straw upon the floor of a decaying barn. Before or after Couzeix’s inhabitants fled?

  I am a dolt. ’Twas while considering these things in my bed that night that I suddenly remembered what I had not seen in Couzeix’s church when I found Sir Simon’s clothes. The porringer and wooden cup which had sustained the crone were not in their place behind the font. I had not seen them elsewhere in the church, either. Someone had removed them and I was too intent upon other matters to notice. The porringer and cup were worth little, but to an impoverished villein they would be too valuable to discard.

  Arthur was already snoring upon his cot when the missing porringer and cup occurred to me. ’Tis always best to fall to sleep before Arthur does, as his snoring will prevent Morpheus from attending any man within twenty paces of his slumbering form. So ’twas likely past midnight when I finally fell to sleep. In the wakeful hours of the night I devised a plan whereby to discover if Couzeix was visited more often than I had supposed. But the scheme, as any other, would best be effected after a night of sound sleep.

  I awoke before dawn, which, now that days were growing shorter, was easy to do. Arthur grunted with displeasure when I prodded him awake, but as I explained the reason for drawing him from slumber he became eager to see what might be the result of my plan.

  Chapter 10

  We swallowed cold pease pottage, washed the meal down with watered ale, then set off on the darkened road to Couzeix. The eastern sky was growing yellow with the dawn, and I wished to be in the village and hid before the sun appeared. We made haste.

  The house which included a cistern was in such a place in the village that from its skin-covered windows a man could see to nearly every corner of Couzeix, if he peeled the skin away from a corner of a window.

  Which is what I did. Arthur and I had crept as soundlessly as possible into Couzeix, gone to the rear of the house, and pushed through a rear window to enter the place. ’Twas black as Lucifer’s heart, but the skin windows at the front of the house glowed softly in the pale light of early dawn.

  I sent Arthur to one window with instructions to peel back a corner of skin, just enough that he could see through. I did the same with a second window. A crude table and benches had been left when the family fled, likely because they had no cart with which to transport them. We moved the benches to the windows and sat peering through the tiny gaps we had made.

  Two hours later full daylight illuminated the empty street and vacant houses of Couzeix. Would a man enter the village when he might be seen? Should we have come to the place earlier, or waited till dark? ’Twas now too late for second thoughts. Arthur and I were hidden in Couzeix and there we might as well remain.

  Near to midday I saw the cat. It ran from behind the vicarage and darted behind a barn opposite the house which hid Arthur and me. Arthur also saw it run.

  The cat was not prowling for vermin. A cat will run only to catch something or to escape from some other thing. I could see no prey where the cat disappeared. Perhaps something frightened the animal behind the vicarage. Or some person.

  The tithe barn was not visible behind the vicarage, being quite small and my vantage point not the best. I kept my eyes upon the space between church and vicarage from whence the cat had come, to see what, or who, might have frightened the scrawny feline. Had it been seeking its dinner amongst the vermin I knew inhabited the tithe barn, and been chased off by someone also seeking a meal from the vicar’s store?

  I had nearly given up the thought when I saw a head appear around a corner of the vicarage. Slowly, after studying the village to be certain that no man saw her, a lass appeared. She wore a ragged blue cotehardie and carried a small sack – filled with the vicar’s corn, no doubt. Her tangled hair was long and dark.

  “You see ’er?” Arthur whispered.

  “Aye.”

  “Shall we seize ’er?”

  “Not yet. Watch where she goes.”

  The lass crept from church to house, trying to blend with walls and shadows, till she came to the house behind which we had found the tattered tunic in a barn filled with fresh straw. She followed the shadowed wall to the rear of the house, disappeared, then a moment later reappeared. She cast her eyes about as if seeking some person or thing, and I thought I knew what that thing was. She sought the ragged tunic which had been tossed to a corner of the barn. Ragged it was, but not much more tattered than the cotehardie she wore. Why would she know where the tunic had been? The time had come to ask her.

  I motioned for Arthur to leave his window and come near. I told him that we would leave the house through the rear, as we had entered it, go in opposite directions around the place, and come upon the lass from two ways. If she fled from one of us she would run toward the other.

  Arthur has many fine qualities, but agility is not one of them. The lass saw us approach, decided that I was closest and therefore the greate
r threat, and turned to run past Arthur. She did so, avoiding his ponderous gait with ease. He turned to follow after as she danced past, but he might as well have been a bear attempting to catch a hind. If the lass was to be caught and questioned before she reached the wood and disappeared, it would be up to me.

  Fear gave wings to the maid’s heels. We were a hundred paces beyond the church before I caught her. She had refused to release the sack of grain, or she might have made good her escape. Kate’s cookery has slowed my pace, I fear.

  I seized the lass by her collar and spoke reassuringly to her that I meant her no harm. This had no effect. She shook so violently that I thought she might swoon. Her agitation, I believe, was not due to exertion, but to fear.

  I spoke to the lass in French, but her reply, when she was finally able to speak, was in the same dialect the crone in the church had used, and I could make little of her gasping words. I took the sack of rye in one hand, grasped a wrist firmly enough with the other that she could not flee, and led her back to the village.

  The church porch, I thought, would be a convenient place to speak to the lass of recent events in Couzeix, and Arthur, not of much value in a chase, would serve well to impede an escape if the maid thought to flee through the porch entrance.

  Stone benches occupied both sides of the tiny porch. I pointed the lass to one of these, told Arthur to block the entrance, and sat opposite the maid.

  When she understood that I seemed to have no evil intent upon her, her quaking ceased, and after much repetition I learned her story.

  Her name was Heloise. She came to the village nearly every day to get food from the tithe barn, which a small person could enter from the rear through a place where the wattles and daub were rotten.

  The crone hiding in the church was her grandmother, and she knew not what had become of her until I told her of the fresh grave in the churchyard. A tear flowed down a grimy cheek at the news.

  Her mother and younger sister, she said, were hid in the forest shelter two miles from Couzeix. There was no man there; her father and a brother were dead, and another brother was taken when the Duke of Berry captured Limoges and compelled him to serve in his army.

  Each day when the lass returned to her village she had brought pottage for her grandmother and filled her small sack with barley or rye or peas to take back to her mother and sister.

  “What will become of them,” she wailed, “if I am hanged for theft?”

  I tried to reassure the lass that I had no authority over her, nor would I turn her over to one who did. Such reassurance was difficult enough for me to explain in Parisian French. I am yet unsure that the maid completely understood my words.

  When I asked of the tunic found in the barn the lass fell silent. Her reluctance to speak was not due to ignorance of the garment, I felt sure, but to knowledge she did not wish to share.

  Folk who are asked questions they find inconvenient will avoid their interrogator’s eyes, I have found, and cast their gaze about as if seeking a deceptive but credible reply, or a way of escape. Heloise did this; glanced to Arthur where he stood squarely in the porch entrance, decided that flight was impossible, and so began to dissemble.

  The tunic was her brother’s, she claimed. He had no need of it, being given the Duke of Berry’s livery when taken into his service. When Heloise discovered that it had been left behind, she said, she washed it with water from the bailiff’s cistern and spread it upon the fresh straw to dry, intending to return for the garment soon.

  “You washed it?” I asked.

  The lass nodded.

  “Then why was a bloodstain found under the arm?”

  Heloise swallowed deeply. This was a reply of sorts, but not the one she intended.

  “Was your brother attacked whilst he wore the tunic? Did the Duke’s men wound him when he was taken?”

  The maid nodded. “Aye … that’s how it was.”

  “But you washed the garment, you said. Why does the blood from your brother’s wound remain?”

  Heloise again fell silent, caught out in deception.

  “You went daily, or near so, to the church to take food to your grandmother, so you said.”

  “Aye.” The lass brightened, seemingly pleased to no longer be questioned about the tunic.

  “Did you ever see any other folk about the church when you came to your grandmother? Perhaps men from the English army seeking candlestands or plate?”

  “Nay,” she shook her head. “Vicar took all such stuff with him when he fled.”

  “What of the Easter Sepulcher? Did you see who placed a man’s clothing there?”

  “Clothing?” she said. “In the Easter Sepulcher? Why would a man’s garments be there?”

  Heloise’s words, what I could understand of them, spoke ignorance, but her reddened cheeks and hands twisting together said otherwise.

  “Did you ever see three men together in Couzeix?”

  “Nay. Never saw no one here. All are away.”

  “Not folk of the village. Men of the English army. Did you see me and my men when we first came to Couzeix a few days past?”

  “Nay. Never stayed here long. Fed grandmother, fetched more corn, and left.”

  “Just so. Dangerous for a maid to be alone with an army of bored soldiers so nearby.”

  The lass’s eyes fell to her hands, which were yet twisting upon her knees. She did not disagree with my assertion, and I wondered if she had reason to know its truth. I asked.

  “You said that you never saw men in Couzeix when you came seeking food. But that is not true, is it? Did they do you harm? Is that why you will not speak of it? Or them?”

  “Wasn’t three,” the lass finally whispered, “but two.”

  “Two men came upon you whilst you were in the village?”

  “Aye. Found me in the church, with grandmother.”

  “They had their way with you?”

  “Aye,” Heloise sniffed. “Only but one. Sent the other away, he did. Gave me a silver coin and said that there’d be another did I meet him here on the morrow.”

  “Did you?”

  “Aye,” she said.

  “You met a man here in Couzeix twice?”

  “Nay … three times.”

  Was that what the crone meant when she gasped, “Trois”? Did she mean to say, “Trois reprises”?

  “You met the man in the church?”

  “Nay, but for the first time when he come upon me sudden.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Barn, behind me house.”

  “Where the tunic was found. The tunic you claimed to have washed, but did not. Did the man give you a coin each time you met?”

  “Not the third time.”

  “Why not? Did he tire of you so soon?”

  The lass’s lip began to quiver, and a tear sought a path down her cheek.

  “Why not?” I asked again.

  “He was slain,” she finally whispered.

  “The murdered man, had he a misshapen ear, standing from the side of his head?”

  “Aye,” Heloise whispered.

  “What coins did he give you? Do you yet have them? I will not seize them.”

  The lass nodded and reached for a threadbare woolen pouch under her belt. She likely thought that I would take her money, regardless of my assurance, and had no fight left in her to object. With Arthur looking on, no wonder. She opened her hand to show two farthings. Sir Simon had valued the lass’s favors no more than a quart of cheap ale.

  “How was the man slain?” I asked.

  “Not sure. I was upon the tunic, me eyes closed, an’ it bein’ near dark, when ’e rose up an’ I heard ’im say, ‘You … why are you come?’ Next I knew, he groaned and fell upon me. All bloody he was, too. I didn’t slay him,” she added hurriedly.

  Heloise bit her lip. Perhaps she feared that she had said too much.

  “You lied about washing the tunic. Are you also lying now?”

  “Nay, sir. Thought you being E
nglish, you might be a friend of the man what was slain, and think I slew him.”

  “No friend of ours,” Arthur growled.

  “Did the murdered man tell you his name?” I asked.

  The lass shook her head.

  “He was Sir Simon Trillowe. Do you know where he was found?”

  She shook her head “No” again.

  “Men found him next day, face down in yon well. He spoke to his attacker, you said?”

  “Aye … said, ‘You – why have you come here?’”

  “Was there but one man, or several?”

  “Dunno. Nearly dark, an’ when he groaned an’ fell upon me I was confused. And then I felt the blood.”

  “What did you then do?”

  “Ran, didn’t I. Thought if some man pierced ’im, they might do the same to me.”

  “You left Sir Simon upon the tunic and fled? Was he yet alive?”

  “Dunno.”

  “When you fled the village, did you see others about? Did any man try to follow you as you fled?”

  “Nay. All was quiet. Don’t know where him as did murder went. I think he fled the barn as soon as he struck the man who gave me the coins.”

  A frightened lass running through the near darkness might not notice other folk about Couzeix, even if there had been. Heloise had not at first wanted to tell me of events in the village, but had evidently come to trust me and so told me of Sir Simon’s death.

  None of her menfolk had come upon the two of them and sought vengeance against Sir Simon, for they were dead or away. And Sir Simon had recognized his attacker, even in the dim light of dusk.

  “How is it that Sir Simon’s clothes were placed in the Easter Sepulcher?” I asked.

  “Came back next morn, at dawn, to see was he dead or alive. He was gone, but his braes and chauces were yet in the barn. Didn’t think he’d leave without them. Knew then ’e was dead.”

  “So you folded his clothes and hid them in the church, in the Easter Sepulcher,” I concluded her tale, “where you thought they’d not soon be discovered.”