‘Yes. He said you’d want to speak to me, and I agreed. If not, he said he’d tell Nicholas to command me to come here.’
‘Better now than at the inquest,’ Baldwin said harshly.
‘If I tell you all I can, would you swear to save me such a public humiliation?’ she asked shyly.
‘My lady, I would save you any embarrassment I can,’ Baldwin said, but his tone was brittle, and he continued, ‘but I cannot do so if there is any risk to an innocent, no matter how lowly. If by withholding anything tomorrow, I put the wrong man’s neck in the noose, I shall speak.’
She paled as he spoke, and her hand went to her breast, then down to her belly. ‘I suppose that is reasonable. But there is nothing I know which could put a man’s life at risk. I can’t believe that.’
‘Tell us all you know, and we can judge it for you.’
She led them to a small stone seat near the gate, from where they could see the entire bailey. Sitting, she surveyed the whole of the area as though distrusting the very ground to hear her words.
‘It is difficult to speak of this,’ she said, putting her face in her hands. When she took them away, there were streaks down both cheeks. It made Simon feel guilty, but he knew that a small detail from one life could sometimes explain the most confusing murders.
‘I was born near Fowey. During the famine I was orphaned, and must find a new home. My father died in Exeter, I believe, on his way to the Scottish wars. I was forced into a common house – a brothel. I remained there some weeks, but food was scarce, and so were customers, so I was told to go. I resolved to see my father’s grave.
‘On the way, I met with a group of travellers, one of whom was a friar, who tried to rape me. It was only the arrival of another man which saved me, and when we came here, I realised I was secure at last when I saw that I had won the heart of my husband.
‘Nicholas is a good, kind man. I love him. He saved me from the rapist, he gave me his name, his honour, and he treated me like a lady. He thought me beautiful.’
She looked up then and met Baldwin’s stern face unflinchingly. Simon immediately felt a tingle run up his spine. This was the practised acting of a woman who knew that her looks could win over any man. She was not to be believed, he thought, but surely Baldwin would be moved by her beauty. Baldwin was always easily swayed by a dark-haired woman.
Simon opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Baldwin said, ‘Come, Lady Anne, you do not expect me to respond when you test your skills as a flirt. Tell your story and give us less of this coquetry.’
Her face hardened. ‘Very well. I see that chivalry plays little part in your life, Sir Baldwin. Yet the point remains he thought me beautiful. He wanted me, and he persuaded me to give him my hand and my heart. He hoped that his love for me would produce an heir for him, and so did I. I was grateful to him, because he had saved me from that friar. I was glad to take his hand when he offered it to me, and I am pleased to give him an heir.’
‘Except this heir is a cuckoo,’ Simon said.
‘You could say so.’
‘He knows you carry another man’s child, yet will allow that man to remain here?’ Simon burst out in horror. ‘Sweet Christ, I couldn’t support my wife knowing she carried another man’s bastard or—’
‘This wasn’t meant to happen!’ she protested. ‘I was desperate! Nicholas was away with the King’s host, and I didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. I thought he must be dead, because else why was there no message? I needed comfort!’
Dimly Baldwin comprehended. ‘You thought he had deserted you, or died?’
‘The only other man I have ever loved was my father,’ she said with an air of pride, and then her voice grew cold and harsh. ‘And he died and I never saw him again. I thought the same thing had happened, that I was again alone. I wanted him back, but if he was dead – and I had heard nothing for months, remember – then what was to become of me? This castle wasn’t his, it was Sir Henry’s, so I might lose position, wealth, my home, all in one swoop, if I was widowed. All I did was seek the protection of another man. What else was there for me? The brothel again?’
Simon looked away. It reminded him of his thoughts about Meg, were he to die. His reflections were not pleasant.
‘What did you do last night?’ Baldwin asked after a moment.
The change of topic startled her. ‘Last night? I was here at the castle, of course.’
‘Was your husband with you?’
‘He slept with me.’
‘Before that he was in his hall?’
‘Why, yes. Except he went out for a while on his horse.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
‘He often rides for exercise. What of it?’
‘He could have been in the vill; he could have murdered Serlo,’ Baldwin said. ‘What of Gervase?’
‘I do not know.’
‘And now he is a fugitive.’
‘I know!’ she sobbed suddenly. ‘It’s my fault! He wanted me to go with him, to find a new life – but how could I leave my husband?’
‘You have lost your protection, Lady. If you depended upon Gervase, you erred.’
‘I cannot believe he killed anyone. He’s too gentle.’
‘Athelina was Gervase’s woman. It is possible that Gervase grew convinced that Serlo had murdered her and her sons; that enraged him, and he exacted retribution.’
‘But why should he kill the miller in that terrible way?’
‘Many say Gervase was father to the apprentice Dan who died in the mill at Serlo’s hands. Gervase thought Serlo had killed his son as well as his lover.’
‘No!’
‘So, as I say, I think you should look to finding another protector, Lady Anne. Because there is good reason to doubt that Gervase will have that potential for much longer.’
‘I am lucky that my husband is returned,’ she said with a cool smile. ‘He will protect me.’
‘Even when you give birth to a bastard?’ Baldwin asked, and her face shattered like a window struck by a stone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Simon was intrigued as they returned to the hall. He said, speaking low so that no one above could hear him, ‘What do we do about this, then, Baldwin? Did Warin give convincing reasons for thinking Nicholas murdered these people?’
‘He said that Nicholas probably guessed that he wasn’t really the father of his wife’s child, and deduced that his own friend Gervase, a known philanderer, had been disloyal. He was hurt and offended, and wanted to destroy Gervase’s happy memories. That was why he killed Athelina, but also why he killed Serlo, producing “evidence” which would appear to show that Gervase killed Serlo in a fury because of the death of his own son.’
Baldwin fell silent, his face creased with concern, and Simon sucked his teeth. ‘You think that makes sense?’
‘Not really. If he wanted to avenge his son’s death, Gervase would have done so sooner. The drive for revenge is less after a year. It could only be credible if there were another reason for him to kill.’
‘I suppose a man could allow his desire to avenge his son’s death to lie dormant until a suitable opportunity arose,’ Simon suggested.
‘Hardly likely, but possible,’ Baldwin said grudgingly. ‘Apart from that, the idea was sound. Nicholas kills Athelina and her children, presumably hoping that people will assume Gervase was trying to remove an irritation – this woman who kept demanding money from him. And then he kills Serlo because of the death of his son some months ago.’
‘The alternative is, of course, that Gervase himself was guilty,’ Simon said.
‘Yes – which magnifies our existing reservations about Nicholas’s guilt,’ Baldwin grunted tiredly.
‘We mustn’t forget Richer. He believed that Athelina was murdered by Serlo, so it may well be he murdered Serlo in his turn.’
Baldwin nodded unwillingly. ‘Except that Richer would never have had the imagination to thrust Serlo’s head into the machine: tha
t displays more thought than I would expect from a warrior like him. Ach, I don’t know! Let us wait until morning, then pray that we find Gervase and learn a little more from him, because otherwise we’ll end up with that fool of a Coroner coming to his own conclusions, and I doubt that the guilty man would then pay for his crimes!’
In Adam’s house, Julia banked up the priest’s fire, and then stood gazing about her at the room. Poor Adam, being held at the castle – but from what she’d heard, he’d tried to murder a man. It was hard to believe, although Julia knew well enough that any man was capable of violence if he got into his cups. Perhaps he’d been drinking a little too much of his wine in the church. She only hoped that he’d soon be released, because if he wasn’t, her future looked uncertain. Where would she live if she was thrown from this place? It didn’t bear thinking of.
Still, all was quiet for the night, and being a pragmatic woman, she put her fears from her. Taking a foul-smelling tallow candle from its spike in a beam and shielding its flame from the draughts, she walked from the hall into the parlour, and through that out to her little room beyond.
She set the candle on the spike and peered down at her baby. Ned lay quietly, snuffling a little in his sleep, but looked well enough, and she pulled up the old blanket a little, tucking it over his shoulder, before starting to untie her belt and make ready for bed herself.
It was a cold night, so she took off her overtunic, but left on her shirt and shift. With a shiver, she went to the door and dropped the wooden slat into its two slots, one on the door, one on the wall, which served her as a lock, and then went to her stool and ran her old bone comb through her hair a few times. It snagged and caught on the knots, but she persevered.
She was almost done when she heard something. There was a slight rattle, as though a stone had been kicked against her wall by an incautious foot. It was odd enough for her to pause, head tilted, listening intently, but she heard nothing more, so she shrugged to herself and pulled the comb through her hair again.
There was a stumble. She heard it distinctly, the slip of a leather sole on loose gravel, then a muttered curse. It made her leap up, ready to demand who was wandering about Adam’s yard, but then a little caution came to her. Athelina’s death had affected many in the vill, and suddenly Julia felt a faint expectation of danger. She caught her breath, thinking of Athelina’s children, and threw a nervous look at her own sweet boy, before walking stealthily across the room to her clothes. On her belt there hung a little knife, not much protection, but better than nothing at all.
The door was moving. She could see the timbers shift, could hear the wood scraping on the packed earth of the threshold, the hinges protest. Gripping her knife firmly, she stepped forward, her brow tight with anticipation and fear. ‘Who is that?’
There was no answer, but suddenly the door was struck a huge blow, and the planks rattled, the slat almost jumping out of the sockets. She screamed. Behind her, her baby moved, jerking awake, but she paid no attention. Her whole being was focused on the door, the door which leaped and bounced as blows were rained upon it.
And then, suddenly, there was silence, apart from the noise of her child sobbing with terror, and her breathing, ragged and fast. Her eyes moved about the room, but there was nothing; only the door gave access. That and the roof. Her eyes were drawn upwards, and even as she heard the first sounds of the thatch being attacked, she screamed again, a primeval shriek of a hunted animal.
There was a renewed pounding on her door, and she nearly died of fright, but then she heard Ivo’s voice, and with a blessed burst of relief, pulled the slat aside to let him in.
Baldwin woke with a tearing pain in his flank, and he pulled a grimace as he rolled sideways off the bench.
‘This is too much!’ he groaned.
There had been a time when he would have been happy to roll off a bench in the early morning. When he had been a Knight Templar, he would have woken earlier, and fresher, even if there had been neither bench nor rug. He would have been able to spring awake, leaping from his mat on the floor with the excitement of the new dawn. Not now. He was grown lazy and fat, and the last few weeks of travel had tired his frame. Even his bones seemed to ache and complain.
This wrenching pain was a little different, though. It felt as though he had torn a muscle in his side and he felt the area gingerly as he sat on the bench. It wasn’t serious, he thought, but it would slow him today.
It was still dark. From here, at the top of the steps, Baldwin could see the thin glimmering on the eastern horizon, but as yet the only light here came from the torches and braziers, their yellow and red hues flickering, throwing up occasional sparks. The castle was already awake. There was a shouting and the clattering of hooves from the stables, which showed that Nicholas’s men had heeded his command that they should all be ready to leave at first light, and there was a swirling rasp of metal from the smithy, where some squires and others were whetting their blades with the great spinning circular stone.
There was a fine mist on the ground, and smoke from the fires in the hall was hanging in long threads and streamers overhead. It looked as though the world of men was bounded by fog above and below, and Baldwin felt the idea strangely apt. Mankind wandered in a perpetual fog, he sometimes thought, seeing clearly only what was right in front of them, unaware of all that happened outside their near-sighted scope.
His mind was drawn to the great events which were happening in the country. The King probably had little idea of how much his advisers were detested in the realm; he only heard what his Household told him, which blinkered him to all threats. In the same way any great lord must be blind to all but that which his servants told him, and the intelligent ones would see to it that they were better informed. Sir Henry de Cardinham was a good example: he lived elsewhere, only very rarely visited this far-flung manor, yet knew full well that he must send spies to his old home in order to learn what his people felt about their lives. True, most villagers wouldn’t care what was happening in London or York, but there was an atmosphere in a kingdom that could affect even kings, and it was a fool who ignored brewing trouble just because it didn’t seem spectacular enough yet to merit action. Better by far to take off the bud of rebellion before the plant grew fresh branches.
Men stalking about, wandering witlessly through a fog … It was not a pleasing reflection, but he was sure that it was valid. Trying to sift through the irrelevancies had absorbed all their efforts, and it was only now, with Gervase’s hurried departure, that they had seen the truth of his offences.
‘A good morning,’ Simon grunted at his side. The Bailiff was dressed and had wrapped a thick fustian cloak about him against the chill of the morning. ‘Christ’s cods it’s cold isn’t it? Do you think there’s going to be food before we set off?’
‘No. We’ll have to take something with us, I think,’ Baldwin said.
‘Do you reckon we’ll find him?’
‘Oh yes. He’s only a steward when all is said and done, not a crafty villein used to covering his poaching or thefts.’
‘He’s bright enough to get away with murder, though,’ Simon commented. ‘Athelina would have been easy enough. She wouldn’t have expected him to kill her.’
‘No,’ Baldwin mused. ‘Although wouldn’t she have been suspicious when he came calling, since he’d ignored her for so long and refused her demands for money?’
‘We can ask him later,’ Simon said and sniffed. ‘Maybe it wasn’t him killed her. Maybe it was Serlo, and Gervase took revenge on him for her and his son Danny.’
Baldwin nodded, but all he could see was the drifting tendrils of mist and smoke encircling the waiting men.
Simon went to the kitchens and fetched some bread and hunks of cheese, which he shared with Baldwin while their horses were saddled. It was almost full light by the time all the men were ready. Nicholas had ordered that all the men-at-arms of the castle should ride to seek the fleeing steward, and had commanded that the men in the vill sh
ould also contribute to the posse. One of his men had gone and rounded up as many peasants as he could find.
While Simon and Baldwin walked to their mounts and swung up, both still chewing, and the men all about them organised themselves into hunting packs, a familiar face appeared in the gateway.
‘Where’s he been?’ Baldwin muttered darkly.
Simon followed the direction of his gaze and grinned to himself. ‘I’d imagine he’s been enjoying himself.’
‘Ivo!’ Baldwin shouted, and beckoned with a crooked finger. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Well, master, there didn’t seem much to be done here last night, so I thought I’d betake myself off to a place I know.’
‘Especially while Adam was languishing in a gaol here, I’ll be bound,’ Simon sniggered. ‘You’ll never miss an opportunity, then?’
Ivo smiled, but looked concerned. ‘I did go to Julia, yes, but there is something I didn’t understand. Julia was settling down before I arrived, when someone tried to break into her home. He attempted to bash down the door, then dig in through the thatch to get to her, and when I arrived, she threw herself into my arms, she was so petrified.’
‘She must have been,’ Baldwin commented sourly.
Ivo gave him a hurt look.
Simon shrugged. ‘She’s superstitious. You know how women are – they can be scared by the daftest things.’
Baldwin shot him an astonished glance. To his knowledge, Simon was one of the most superstitious people he had ever met. Certainly more so than a sensible peasant woman like Julia.
Ivo was shaking his head. ‘Don’t think so. The door had chunks cut from it when I looked this morning, as if someone had taken a hatchet to it. And there were great lumps of thatch taken out. Luckily, it was thick and took him time to get even most of the way through.’
Nicholas had mounted his horse, and now his great black rounsey pranced closer to them. He had overheard their conversation. ‘He tried to get into her room, you say? The foul devil’s trying to silence another woman, then! He has killed Athelina, now he tries to murder Julia too. He must be mad, quite mad. All those he has loved are to be destroyed. Next he would try to slaughter my wife, I expect.’ The reflection brought a black look into his eyes, and hurt too, Baldwin saw, and his heart went to the man who had lost his friend and his trust in his wife in the same moment. Nicholas set his jaw and jerked his reins about. ‘Well, we shall catch him today. If he was here in the town after nightfall yesterday, our ride today must be all the shorter.’
The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) Page 33
