by Jason Vail
“Randall is right. We cannot underestimate the Welsh. As long as our foot don’t run away we’ll be fine,” Mortimer said. “You officers will see to that.”
“I wish Prince Edward had remained,” said a voice from the back of the pack. “He left too soon.”
“Well, I for one was glad to see the back of his mercenaries,” said another in the crowd. “They’re nothing but trouble.”
“But we’ve got more, damn it. Unreliable scum!”
“I shit more scum than the King’s deigned to send us in help. No good at all, what he’s sent. Might as well have done nothing!”
This sparked a chorus of “Oui’s” for here French was spoken rather than the rabble’s English. Nobody liked the army of mercenaries the King kept about him rather than depending on the local men raised by his loyalists. It was as if he didn’t trust the English to keep him safe, and this was one of Montfort’s bones of contention: Not only the presence of the mercenaries and the trouble they caused among the people with their bad behavior, but their cost, for their wages were a drain on an already taxed treasury. People were tired of being taxed to pay for them when the kingdom had so many other needs.
“But it means we have to fend for ourselves!” someone objected.
“When has it been otherwise?” Mortimer asked. “Our safety has always been our own responsibility. We’ve never been able to depend on Westminster to look out for us. They’re too far away, and let’s be frank, they don’t care. Now, enough of this. We’ve real work to do. We will march on the morrow and there isn’t time to waste.”
When it was clear that Mortimer was finished with his leading men and they began to disperse to their encampments to make ready for tomorrow’s departure, Stephen approached Mortimer as he settled into a chair by the fireplace, a mug of wine newly thrust into his hand.
“What do you want?” Mortimer asked, his scowl more pronounced.
“I have a request, my lord,” Stephen said.
“I hope you don’t want money, or anything like that.”
“No, I was hoping you’d find a place for me in the army.”
“You’re Attebrook, aren’t you?”
“Yessir.”
“The one with the missing foot.”
“Not all missing, my lord. Just a piece. I can ride as well as anyone.”
Mortimer stroked his chin. “There is a way you can be useful.”
“Yessir,” Stephen said hopefully.
“Crauford there will be taking over as constable for the duration of the campaign. He needs men to hold the castle while we’re gone. You can assist him. There’s not much likelihood of Ludlow being attacked. You two ought to be able to manage.”
“I see.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, my lord.”
“Good, then. Off you go.”
Chapter 3
“We’ve forty-two men, sir,” reported Philip Dainteth, the senior sergeant of the garrison, an old man in his fifties with a beard shot through with gray and deep wrinkles about his brown eyes. He had been left behind to work with Crauford’s Flemish and Dutch mercenaries when the rest of the garrison had marched off with the army. “Damned foreigners! You can’t understand a word they say. God help us if we are attacked.”
“It’s a big castle,” Stephen agreed, running his fingers along a crack in the table in the guard commander’s chamber of the inner gate tower. “But we’ll do what we can. I doubt there will be trouble.” His mind turned momentarily to what to do if the castle were attacked. The outer bailey was vast and it would be a challenge to hold it with forty-two men. He half made up his mind that if the worst happened they would retreat to the inner bailey, which was a castle within a castle, and hold out there until help arrived.
“You think we’ll win the battle?” There was worry in Dainteth’s voice, even though he affected a light tone to conceal it. He had a son and two grandsons in the army that had marched northwest that morning to confront the Welsh.
“Of course.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Well, battles are risky things.”
Dainteth nodded. “I’ve heard that. Never been in a battle, myself. A skirmish or four, and a few raids. But never a pitched battle in all these years of soldiering. What about you, sir?”
“I’ve been in a few.”
“Won them all, eh, sir?”
“No, not all of them. Let’s figure out a watch list. This isn’t peace time, and we’ll have to make sure the walls are manned throughout the night.”
“Christ’s blood, I don’t even know all their names yet! Nor do I care to. Can’t pronounce most of them, anyway.”
“Call a muster. We’ll sort them out. I’ll get a wax board and we’ll write down their names and the hours they’re to stand.”
“You mean the clerk will write them down. But we’ve no clerk.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Ah. It’s true then, you were a lawyer once?”
“Almost, but luckily I avoided that fate.”
“Can’t stand lawyers. They’re worse than clerics, arguing how many angels fit on the head of a pin. Fussy bastards.”
“Not a life I craved. Now, keeping these lads awake through the night won’t be easy. I’ll stay up. You’ll have them during the day. I want them working at the posts three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. No laying around, drinking.”
“You’re sure about the night watch, sir?” Night watch was hard duty and usually fell to a lesser man than the deputy constable. “I don’t mind.”
“It will serve to keep the boys on their toes. Put a scare into them every time I show up.”
“You’ll do that, sir, I don’t doubt,” Dainteth said. “You’re scary enough in daylight. I can’t imagine you coming up on me in the dark. Pity the army wouldn’t take you.”
“You know what people think about cripples.”
“Yes, but your wound hasn’t slowed you down that much.”
“Not everyone sees that. Let’s call the men together and get started.”
Most men would chafe at being left behind while their fellows rode off to battle, but Crauford’s sentence as temporary constable of Ludlow Castle did not seem to bother him. Mortimer and FitzAllan had hardly cleared the gates with their followers when he ordered a full cask of wine be brought up from the cellar. He had a servant fill a mug and settled by the fire until one of the whores from the Wobbly Kettle, making a house call, answered his summons. Then he repaired to the master’s chamber with the girl and was not seen for the rest of the day, supper being delivered to his chamber as well as a constant stream of wine.
Although Stephen was supposed to be his deputy, Crauford had not spoken a word to him about how he wanted affairs conducted. So the watch lists stood undisturbed, and the castle’s business went on unaffected by the change in leadership, as well-run castles were prone to do.
“Sir,” one of the younger Dutch mercenaries said in badly pronounced English, “you’re wanted.”
Stephen squinted, palm over his eyes, irritated that someone would awaken him at this time of day. It was nearly noon from the angle of the slices of sunlight that made it through the cracks in the shutters. He had been up all night again to keep the watch on its toes, sleeping through most of the day.
“What is it?” Stephen snapped more sharply than he should have done. It wasn’t the boy’s fault he was being awakened. It could be a Welsh attack, but that seemed unlikely. More likely some spat between the guards that the elder sergeant could not handle.
“Someone’s died, sir.”
This was news that Stephen had not hoped to hear. Although he was deputy constable, he was still deputy coroner and had to deal with any deaths that might happen in the vicinity of the town. “That is inconvenient. Who, do you know?”
“No, sir. Only that it happened on Lower Broad Street. A Thomas Tanner is in the yard asking after you.”
Tanner was a mem
ber of the parish jury. If he had been sent to fetch Stephen, it meant that the jury had already been convened. “Can’t Gilbert take care of it?”
“Master Thomas said you should come right away.”
Stephen flung off the blanket and swung his feet out of bed. “He did, did he?” He could hear Gilbert’s voice in that summons. There was no avoiding what had to be done now, no matter how much he wished to pull the blanket over his head and get what sleep he could during the remainder of the day. “There’s no shirking duty, is there. Tell him I’ll be right down.”
“Very good, sir,” the soldier said. He retreated from the sergeant’s chamber to allow Stephen to get dressed.
Thomas Tanner had his hat in his hands, twisting it out of shape so that it no longer had any semblance to a hat, when Stephen finally emerged from the gate tower.
“Ah, sir,” Tanner said. “There you are.”
“Unfortunately, yes. What’s this about a death?”
“At Sprunt’s, sir, it is.”
“Sprunt’s?” Stephen struggled to remember who that was. “On Lower Broad?”
“Right, sir. Found this morning, quite early, actually. But Master Gilbert said not to disturb you until the jury could be brought together.”
“That’s thoughtful of him.”
“He said you’d been sleeping late these days. Lucky you, sir. Wish I had the luxury.”
“I am a lucky one, Thomas. There is no doubt about that. Well, let’s not keep our corpse waiting.”
“Yes, sir. They do go foul quickly now that it’s getting warmer.”
Sprunt’s house lay on the east side of Lower Broad Street about halfway between Bell Lane and the gate. Stephen remembered something about Sprunt as he neared the house, the sign of a glove hanging above the door. Sprunt was a glover. That in itself was not extraordinary, but he also made hats. The combining of these two professions — glover and hatter — had caused some controversy in the town, since craftsmen were supposed to stick to one thing. But Sprunt was a younger son of the gentry who had been set up by his father, who had the connections and the stubbornness to overcome the guilds’ resistance. These dual professions plus an inheritance from his mother had made Sprunt one of the wealthiest men in Ludlow, to rival the goldsmith Leofwine Wattepas who stood at the economic pinnacle.
Gilbert met Stephen at the door. “You do not look the least bit rested.”
“I would be if it weren’t for these interruptions. What do we have?”
“A puzzle.”
“I hate puzzles. Especially when they keep me from my sleep. I was up all night again.”
“You should delegate that chore. Isn’t that what leadership is all about?”
“I wanted to delegate this business to you, but Tanner informed me that would not be possible.”
“This time, I’m afraid not. Especially since it’s Sprunt’s house. He will expect more than a clerk to manage this business.”
Gilbert led the way through the house, which was deserted, both shop and hall, an unusual thing for any house, to the back garden. Everyone in the household was there from Sprunt himself, a tall thin man with a long neck and a big head that bent forward as if too heavy for his body, to all his journeymen and apprentices, servants, his wife and children, and a few people who looked to be neighbors. Other neighbors were peering over the fence on the sides and back of the garden.
This crowd parted at Stephen’s approach. There on the ground by the wood pile was the body of a boy of thirteen or fourteen, his face obscured by tangles of curly red hair that in life would have fallen to his shoulders. The body lay upon its stomach, one arm above the head. There were no obvious marks that indicated a cause of death.
“Has he been moved?” Stephen asked.
“No,” Sprunt said. “We left him as we found him.”
“Who is he? One of your boys?”
“I have no idea who he is.”
“Anybody else know him?” Stephen asked, surprised at this answer.
Sprunt answered for everyone. “Nobody knows him.”
“That is odd.” Ludlow was a small town. In any given circle of people, you were bound to find that among them they knew everyone in town.
“I’ll say it’s odd,” Sprunt snapped. “Wait till you see the rest of it.”
Stephen glanced at Gilbert for some clue what this meant. But Gilbert was looking into space, his hands in his sleeves.
Stephen knelt by the body. This close he could now tell that the lingering scent of excrement was not from the privy nearby but from the body, which had voided upon the boy’s death, one of those unpleasant occurrences that made the job even less enjoyable than it was. He noticed now that the boy’s head was twisted at an odd angle that it could never assume in life. One eye was open, the eye itself having that odd flatness eyes attained after death. The lower half of the boy’s face was blue, as was half of his forehead and neck, the upside waxy looking. One arm was splayed above the head, the fingers of the gloved hand bent in a claw shape, the other arm under the body. Stephen felt the boy’s cheek with the back of his hand. The cheek was cold. When Stephen tried to turn him over, he found that the body had gone completely rigid.
“He’s been dead quite a while,” Stephen said to no one in particular.
“We found him this morning. He must have died sometime during the night,” Sprunt said.
Stephen flipped the body on its back. There were marks on what had been the underside of the face: stones and dirt embedded on the cheek, the underside eyelid, and the lips.
Stephen glanced upward. The body was directly under the projecting eave of the roof, which was four stories above the ground. The marks on the face and the proximity of the eave seemed to lead to only one conclusion. “It looks as though he fell off your roof. But what would a strange boy be doing up there in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t know,” Sprunt said. “But I can guess. Come inside and I’ll show you.”
“Show me what?” Stephen asked, bewildered.
“You’ll see.”
Sprunt led the way into the house. He climbed the stairs leading to the rear chambers, reaching the top floor, where he unlocked one of the back rooms. He stood back to allow Stephen and Gilbert to enter.
It was a small room. Expensive looking clothes hung from pegs on the left. There was a chest so large in the back right corner that it would need two men to pick it up. The lid stood open. A padlock lay on the floor beside it. The window on the back wall was open, giving a view of the rear garden and those of the neighbors.
“What was in the chest?” Stephen asked, suspicions stirring in his mind.
“The family silver,” Sprunt said. “My inheritance from my mother. A full twenty pounds of it.”
Stephen stepped to the window. The dead boy, surrounded by the circle of the curious who looked up at Stephen, lay beneath the window.
“You think he was one of the thieves?” Stephen asked Sprunt.
“What else could he be?” Sprunt snapped.
Stephen noticed that the bar that should have secured the shutters lay by his feet. “You kept the window closed and barred?”
“Of course. All the time. Unless I have business here, when I open it for the light. But no one comes in here but me or my wife. All our precious things are here.”
“And only the silver is missing?”
“Only the silver.”
Stephen bent down to examine the bar. There were nicks in the center where a sharp object might have probed to lever up the bar. He rose and closed the shutters. There was enough of a gap between the panels to allow the passage of a knife. “It seems you may be right.”
“Of course, I’m right,” Sprunt said. “I am always right.”
I wonder if your wife thinks so as well, Stephen said to himself.
“The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Me? I doubt there is anything I can do.”
“What good are you, then?” S
prunt growled and stomped out of the storeroom.
“I wonder how he got up there in the first place?” Stephen mused as he and Gilbert stood on the street outside of Sprunt’s house after the jury had returned a verdict of death by misadventure and fined the hundred the cost of Sprunt’s roof, which was a very expensive roof.
“Assuming that he actually fell from the roof.”
“You don’t think he did?”
“I admit that the evidence points in that direction,” Gilbert said. “But you’ve been wrong before.”
“You agreed. You said so.”
“I yielded to the pressure of public opinion.”
“You mean you surrendered to the force of my irresistible logic,” Stephen said.
“If you prefer to think of it that way. But it would be nice to have more evidence. I am particularly interested in how the thieves broke into the storeroom, assuming that they got in through the window. It’s so high up that the whole thing seems impossible.”
“Yes, it does,” Stephen said. “It’s certainly not something I’d attempt. Although I think Harry might have been mad enough to try it, when he was whole.”
At the thought of Harry, Stephen glanced toward Broad Gate, where Harry sat watching them from his nook, his begging bowl on what remained of his lap. Stephen strode down Broad Street to the gate.
“Morning, Harry,” Stephen said.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Harry asked.
“It seems the boy fell off Sprunt’s roof during the night.”
“You don’t say.” Harry’s eyes drifted away from Stephen’s and his lips pressed together as if he was having a thought. Whatever it was he did not share it. “Any of Sprunt’s hoard missing?”
“Yes.”
“From an upstairs chamber?”
“Yes. News gets around fast.”
“Well, it is a small town. And you think this child was one of the robbers?”
“That is the prevailing opinion.”
