The Merchant’s Partner aktm-2

by Michael Jecks

  “So was she, though!”

  “I know, I know. She confessed to that. But I wonder…”

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking: why did she want to see the old woman? Agatha Kyteler was supposed to be a midwife, but Angelina Trevellyn says she has never had a child.”

  Just then their food arrived, and they set to with gusto. Breakfast felt like it was a long time ago. Speaking between mouthfuls, Baldwin’s eyes narrowed as he peered at Simon. “If Harold Greencliff was having an affair with Angelina Trevellyn, isn’t it likely that he was trying to kill her husband so that he could take her for himself? It would make more sense than thinking that she was involved.”

  “I’m not so sure, Baldwin. I don’t know her that well, but if she really hated her husband that much, especially after the way that he apparently abused and mistreated her, I think she could easily become angry enough to kill. And don’t forget, she is a Gascon. She’s French.”

  “ French?” the knight stared at him open-mouthed. “What on earth’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You know,” Simon’s eyes were suddenly hooded and he glanced around quickly. “They do tend to get overexcited, the French.”

  “God in heaven! Simon, you and I must talk soon. You believe in witches, you trust to all the old superstitions, and now you think all the French are mad as well!” The humour had returned to the knight’s eyes, Simon saw with a degree of bitterness.

  “No, not all French. It’s just that…” Simon shrugged. He knew he would not win this argument, so he changed the subject. “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand dimly what actually happened.”

  “There’s still a lot we need to find out.”

  “We need to talk to the people of Wefford again and find out what they haven’t told us.”

  “How? We’ve already spoken to most of them. How can we find out more?”

  “Well, first I think we ought to go back and see Sarah Cottey – especially,” he nodded towards the group in front of them, “especially while her father’s in here. Then we must see Jennie Miller. She knows more than she’s told us, she seems to know all the gossip in the village, if Hugh’s right. And I want to speak to Harold Greencliff again. I don’t know how to get him to talk to us, but he must know more.”

  “That’s a lot of work. It’ll take time to get into Crediton to go to the town gaol.”

  “Have him brought up to the manor, then. The innkeeper can get a man to fetch him and Tanner. It’ll save us a journey, and probably do them both some good to be able to stay in a warm place, compared to that cell.”

  Having decided on their course of action, they finished their drinks and made their way to the Cottey holding, but when they arrived, there was no sign of life. Simon hammered on the door, and rode round to the back, but there was no sign of anyone, apart from the thin streamers of smoke drifting idly on the wind from the roof. After looking all over the plot, they decided to go on to Jennie Miller’s instead.

  Here they were more lucky. As soon as they came through the trees into the clearing, the sound of voices, shrill and laughing, met them. Coming to the small bridge, they could see the Miller children running and playing tag over at the line of the trees, their mother sitting on a stool and watching as she plucked the feathers from a chicken, laughing every now and again and calling to them to urge them to greater efforts.

  At the sound of the horses, she spun round, and Simon was vaguely sad to see the happiness die from her features as she recognised her visitors. The cries from the children faded too, as if the slight breeze was taking away their pleasure and enjoyment with its gusts. The bailiff urged his horse on with a rueful grin. Such was power, he thought. To bring joy, but also to destroy it. Sighing, he brought his horse to the door, to where Jennie Miller had now risen, the fowl forgotten beside her, wiping her hands on her apron to rid herself of the tiny feathers clinging to the blood on her skin.

  It was the knight who greeted her, sitting and watching her gravely from his horse. “Jennie, we have come to speak to you again about the death of Agatha Kyteler. Can we come in?”

  At her shrug of apparent indifference, they dropped from their horses and followed her inside. Sitting at the same place, she watched them take their seats and sat back, waiting for them to begin with a slightly nervous mien, as if she was anxious of what they wished to know from her.

  “Jennie, we wanted to find out from you anything that could help with these two murders,” Baldwin began, and her eyes swiftly sought his face.

  “What do you mean? You already have the killer, don’t you?”

  Simon gently interrupted. “You mean Harold Greencliff?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “You have him held in gaol, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but do you think he could have killed them‘

  “No!” The answer was categoric.

  Baldwin stared at her. “But why? Who else had a chance?”

  At this her gaze dropped and she stared at the floor in silence. Simon tried again.

  “Jennie, you must tell us anything you know. After all, you wouldn’t want Harold to be sent to trial and executed if he had nothing to do with it, would you?”

  She shook her head, but no words came.

  “Jennie, it’s obvious you have some idea about this. Why? Who do you think it was?”

  She started to speak in a low and halting voice. All the time her eyes remained downcast, and her features anxious. “I knew after I’d spoken to your man at the inn… I would have been better to hold my tongue… It was the drink got to me… But it’s true, I’m sure of that.”

  “What…” Baldwin started, but Simon cut him off with a short movement of his hand.

  “Carry on, Jennie.”

  She gave a sigh, a massive effort that looked as though it rose from the very soles of her boots, then looked at Simon and held his eyes. “When I came out of the woods, I was sure who it was I’d seen. I was certain it was Angelina Trevellyn. At the lane, I saw Harold Greencliff. And I know Sarah Cottey saw them too. She’s a good girl, is Sarah. But she has not been able to admit to herself what sort of a boy Harold is.”

  “What sort of a boy do you think he is?” asked Baldwin. She ignored him, her eyes staying fixed on the intent bailiff before her.

  “You see, Harold and Sarah, they’ve grown up together, been with each other for years, and they’ve always been very fond of each other. But now Sarah wants to marry and settle, she thinks Harold does too, and he doesn’t. He never has, really. He’s always been a boy for enjoying himself, and no girl ever could say no to him, he was always such a good-looking lad…” As if in answer to an unspoken question in Simon’s eyes, she suddenly reddened and half-turned away in apparent embarrassment, but then faced him once more with an air of defiance, as if she knew her words might shock, but was now careless of effect.

  To Simon it looked as though she was almost proud, and he realised with a quick insight how she must feel, working every day to bring up her family, toiling as she tried to help her husband keep the mill profitable so that there would be bread on the table for them. Would it be a surprise if a few kind words from a “good-looking lad” like Greencliff could remind her of a time when she was free of worry and had the opportunity to enjoy the comfort of another man?

  “And?” he asked softly.

  “There are many he has known in the area. Sarah was one. But over the last few months, he has been seeing another woman, one who was not from Wefford. She was married, so he said…”

  “What? Harold Greencliff told you this?” Baldwin cried, leaning forward suddenly.

  “Harold?” There was a faint sneer on her face at this. “Oh, no. Harold didn’t tell me. No, but there’s been a few he did tell. Like Stephen de la Forte. He told me.”

  “What exactly did he say?” asked Simon gently.

  She frowned in concentration. “When was it? Oh, yes.” Her brow cleared a little and she glanced up at Simon quickly, looki
ng as if she wanted to confirm that he was concentrating. “It was at the inn. Maybe… Maybe a month or so ago. He was laughing and joking about his friend, that is, Harold. Harold wasn’t there at the time, and Stephen said that he was out with his new lover. He said that her husband was a fool to be cuckolded like that by Harold, but he said there’s no fool like an old one. Stephen said he wished his friend good luck, and drank a toast to him. Well, as you can imagine, we all wanted to know. We asked him who it was, and at first he refused to answer, but later, when there was only a few of us left, he swore us all to silence, and then told us.”

  “He actually said who it was?” asked Simon.

  “Well, he hinted. But it was impossible to miss who he was talking about. He said it was a woman he knew, someone married to a man close to him, someone wealthy, living close to the village. It could only be Mrs. Trevellyn.”

  “Do you think it was her, then?”

  She looked up with a fire of bitterness glinting angrily in her eyes. “Who else? She hated her husband, everyone here knew that. And it’s not surprising either, the way he treated her and his servants. I’m sure she loathed him enough to kill him or to have someone else do it for her. I’m sure it wasn’t Harold.”

  “You said,” Baldwin said pensively, “that you saw them at the woods. Did Sarah?”

  “Oh yes. She must have done. And she knew what the rumours were about Mrs. Trevellyn and Harold, too. So when we saw her in the trees on the way to the witch’s house, and then him at the roadway, she went quiet. She put the two together. Why else would they be there like that?”

  Now it was Simon’s turn to frown. “I don’t understand, do you mean that she was ill and…”

  Jennie Miller gave a sudden harsh laugh. “Ill? It’s no illness to be with child, Bailiff!”

  He stared at her open-mouthed. “You… You mean the woman was pregnant? That she… She was to have Harold Greencliffs child? They went to the midwife to get her help with the delivery?” he stammered, but it was Baldwin who answered, with a tired kind of sigh to his voice.

  “No, Simon, not like that, anyway. I should have realised. It’s obvious, now I think about it. A midwife can be useful to a woman to help in bringing a child into the world, but she can also sometimes be of help in stopping a child, too. That was why there was yew in Kyteler’s cottage. Yew can be used to make a mixture that will make a pregnant woman lose her child. It forces a miscarriage.”

  When he looked at Jennie, she nodded. “Yes. I think that’s why Angelina Trevellyn was at the witch’s house: to lose the child she and Harold had produced.”

  ***

  They were both quiet as they rode away from the mill towards the road, and they had travelled some way before Simon dared to interrupt the knight’s thoughts. When he looked over at Baldwin, he could see that the knight was deeply troubled. The evidence of Jennie Miller had thrown the whole matter into a different light.

  “Well, Baldwin?” he asked as they turned into the Cotteys’ lane. “What do you think?”

  Looking up, the knight’s face registered a bleak sadness. He felt that the evidence was so overwhelming now that there was certainly good cause to doubt that the boy had confessed honestly. But what teased at his mind was why the boy should have admitted to a crime he had no responsibility for. And whether Angelina Trevellyn could have killed her own husband. It still seemed impossible somehow that such a beautiful woman could be capable of such a deed.

  But then his mind went back to the chronicles he had seen and read while he had been in Cyprus and other countries while he was still a member of the Order of the Temple. There were many examples there of women prepared to take up weapons, from women who killed and threatened to take control of lands they wanted, to others who were more subtle and devious in their approach. Alice of Antioch was one, Constance another. Both had tried to take over lands and rule them alone. It was possible that Angelina was struck from the same mould.

  “I have no idea, Simon,” he said heavily. “All I know is that it seems that there is some reason to doubt whether the boy Greencliff was truly responsible for the murders. And we need to hear from the lady herself why it was that she went to Agatha Kyteler’s house. I don’t know.”

  They had almost arrived at the cottage now, and Simon nodded thoughtfully as they made their way to the door, through the flocks of chickens that scrabbled at the dirt for any food missed by their sisters. Dismounting, he lashed his reins to a tree and banged once more on the front door. This time there was only a short pause before it was opened to show Sarah Cottey, whose eyebrows rose at the sight of her guests.

  “Sarah,” Simon said, “we have come to ask you about the day you went to the witch’s house again, and about Harold Greencliff.” To his horror, she immediately burst into tears.

  Baldwin was still on his horse, but swung down and walked over to join them with a grimace of sympathy twisting his mouth. Throwing a disdainful sneer at Simon, who stood staring at him with frank amazement at the response to his words, the knight barged past, took the girl by the shoulder and gently led her indoors.

  “Come on, Sarah. Don’t worry, we know most of it already.” He helped her to a bench at the table and sat before her, holding her eyes with his, and she began to calm, sniffling. Eventually, rubbing at her nose and drawing in gulps of air, she glanced up at Simon, then began to weep again.

  “Come now, child,” Baldwin said. “We must know what really happened. Otherwise, you know what will happen, don’t you? Harold must die. He has admitted both killings. He has confessed to them both. You can’t believe he killed them. Tell us the truth.”

  Looking up, she found herself gazing into the knight’s dark eyes. Under that solid stare she found herself relaxing, as if she was becoming entranced by their deep brown depths. “He can’t have meant it. None of it.”

  “Meant what, Sarah?” the knight asked softly.

  “What he promised me,” she said, her eyes filling again with tears, one huge drop forming in her right eye and slowly descending like a feather dropping in a clear air. “He promised me he would marry me as soon as he could.”

  “When did he promise, Sarah?”

  “Months ago. He said he loved me, that he wanted to live with me for ever. But he was lying. I heard about him and that French cow, and how they were carrying on…”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “At the inn. They were all talking about it up there. But when I asked him about it, he said it was untrue! He said it was all lies, that he’d never seen her, there was nothing in it. He said he still wanted me.”

  Baldwin looked at her steadily as the tears fell in a constant drizzle, but he could almost feel her pain and it was only with an effort that he stopped himself from touching her to try to offer some comfort. “What happened to make you doubt him? Why did you think he was untrue to you?”

  “Because he was there! He was at the road to that woman’s house. I didn’t realise at the time, I couldn’t really see…”

  “Did you see the woman in the trees? Did you see Mrs. Trevellyn?” Baldwin interrupted quickly, and saw with relief that he had brought her back to her story again.

  “Her? Oh, yes, I saw her! She was there in the trees, hiding a little back from the lane, dressed so clean and expensive, like a lady, she was. But she was still there for the same reason…” She broke off suddenly, and her eyes glanced away.

  “I think we know why she was there, Sarah,” said Baldwin. “You had gone there for the same reason before, hadn’t you?”

  Her head came up once more and she looked him full in the face with a kind of pride as she said, “Yes.”

  “Why did you think she was there at the time? Is that what you thought immediately, or did you think she was there for some other reason at first?”

  “I…” Her eyes lost their focus with the effort of recollection. “I didn’t think anything at the time. I think it was just like seeing anyone. No, it was later, when I came to the lane
and saw her horse there that I knew.”

  “What do you mean? Why?”

  “I never saw Harold, he had dropped back into the trees, but he must have been there holding the horse.”

  “Why do you say that? Surely it could have been anyone there holding her horse – she might have brought an hostler to do that. Why do you think it was Harold?”

  There was withering scorn in her eyes as she sneered at him. “Why? Because I may not have seen Harry at the time, but when I spoke to Jennie later, she admitted she saw him there, before he ducked back into the trees. He hid when he saw me. I’m not surprised he wanted to stay hidden from me.”

  Leaning back, Baldwin gazed at her with doubt. “So Harry Greencliff was definitely there – but as far as you could see, he was alone? You saw no one with him?”

  “That’s right. She must have been in the trees on the way to see Agatha by then. There was only one reason for him to be there – he was there to give her comfort after she had been to see Agatha. And then she killed the poor old woman.”

  “What?“ It was almost explosive the way in which the word forced itself from his lips.

  “Well, of course she did. Just like she killed her husband. And with both killings, she tried to blame other people!”

  “But why?”

  “Why?” Again he could see the disdain in her eyes. “Because when the witch knew she was pregnant, Mrs. Trevellyn had to kill her so that her secret was kept. Then she killed her husband too.”

  “Wait!” Baldwin held up a hand and sighed. This was becoming impossible, the suggestions and allegations were flying around too quickly for him to be able to think them through. “Why would Mrs. Trevellyn have killed the old woman? Surely she could rely on her to keep the thing quiet?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. How could she trust the poor old dear to keep her mouth shut? It’s one thing for me, an unimportant woman, unmarried, I knew I could trust her. But her? Angelina Trevellyn? She had lots to lose.” Her head tilted and she looked as if she was giving the matter judicious consideration. “I imagine she never thought of killing her husband, but then she realised how easy it was after killing old Agatha, and then I suppose the next time her husband tried to threaten her, it seemed like the best thing to do.”