The Merchant’s Partner aktm-2

by Michael Jecks

  Baldwin appeared at the door as they approached, peering past them to the people on horseback. Watching him, Simon saw the concentration, the intensity of his stare. He felt his belly chum at the thought that the woman might be involved. Oh, God, he prayed, please let it be someone else. I couldn’t face Baldwin if I made it clear it was her!

  Chapter Twenty-four

  When Angelina Trevellyn and her manservant arrived at the door, they were met by the stern-featured Edgar, who took her horse and pointed her to the front door. She curtly passed him the reins and entered. In the screens, she found herself glancing up and around, assessing the property. It was clearly not as good as her own place, neither as new nor as spacious, but it was warm and appeared to be comfortable. She could see rooms off to her left, but before she could investigate, a taciturn, dark-faced glowering man came out from the furthest and indicated the door near her that led into the hall itself.

  She haughtily looked him up and down briefly, and when her gaze returned to his eyes she was angered to see that he stared back. If he had been one of her own servants, he would have been whipped, then thrown out of her house for his presumption. At least Alan had always treated the men correctly, she reflected, even if he was wrong to beat her and her maid. After staring at him for a moment, she condescended to enter, but she had only gone a few paces when she felt her legs begin to falter.

  To Margaret it looked as if the poor woman was close to fainting. At first she entered as if she owned the place – and if she was as aware of Baldwin’s infatuation with her as everyone else was, Margaret thought, she had good reason for arrogance. But her steps began to stumble at the sight that met her gaze. The brown and black dog seemed to understand this too, and walked to her with his tail wagging as if trying to sooth her, but she recoiled from him, and he withdrew, offended, to sit beside the figure of Harold Greencliff.

  Looking at her husband, Margaret suddenly realised how well he had arranged the benches and tables. Simon had insisted on pulling the table to the far end of the hall so that Mrs. Trevellyn must walk across the length of the floor to get to a chair. Ranged opposite at the table were Baldwin, then Simon and Tanner. Margaret was at one end, and at the other sat Harold Greencliff. Thus, as she entered, the woman saw the knight at first, directly in front of her, then as her gaze ranged over the other people, it met the unflinching stares of the bailiff and constable. Only after meeting their eyes could she glance over at the last actor in the sad little drama: Greencliff.

  Whereas the representatives of the law were sitting grimly pensive, the youth had at first looked enthusiastic. He appeared to want to leap up and greet her, but realised that it would not be right. Seeing how her gaze flitted over him, and seeing the contempt in her eyes, his face fell. When she looked back at Baldwin, the boy almost fell back as if suddenly nerveless.

  They had exercised no torture, no cruelty against him, but the seriousness of his position was clearly apparent in the dejected way that his body slumped, an elbow resting on the table top, his head hanging as he stared at the floor. Now he understood he had lost her too. He looked up and all she could now see in his eyes was a pathetic, total and abject misery before his eyes fell, full of shame.

  The look had not gone unnoticed by the others. Simon cleared his throat authoritatively and motioned to a chair set before the table. “Please be seated, madam.”

  She strolled to the chair, then stood beside it while she tugged off her gloves with a contemplative air. Sitting, she raised an eyebrow and stared at Baldwin. “So, sir? I thought I was asked to come here as a friend, to join you in a meal. Why am I subjected to an inquiry? I assume that this is an inquiry?”

  The knight opened his mouth to speak, and she thrilled to see his expression of hunted apology. He clearly had not had much desire to see her here like this, then. Glancing at the others, her gaze fixed on the bailiff, and she knew she was right. It must have been him that organised this.

  “You will be welcome to join us at our lunch as soon as we have sorted out a few problems, madam,” said Simon smoothly. “We have been talking to Harold Greencliff here, and we would like you to help us with a couple of points.”

  To Baldwin it looked as though the blood immediately drained from her face.

  “Well?” she asked composedly.

  “In the first case. On the day that the old woman died, Agatha Kyteler, you went to see her. It was to arrange for a miscarriage, wasn’t it?”

  At his words, Greencliff covered his face with his hands, but the woman merely stared back silently, her face as rigid as a mask. After a moment she stiffly inclined her head in agreement, her lips pursed into a thin, bloodless line of rage.

  “And while you were there, you left Harold minding our horse, didn’t you?” Again there was a slow nod.

  “While you were there, what happened?”

  Shooting a look at Harold Greencliff, she seemed to steel herself. “When I got there, the old woman was fine. I had seen her the previous Saturday to ask for the… medicine. She had said that it took time to collect the leaves and herbs, so she could not make it for some days, but it would be ready on the Tuesday. I went there, paid her, and took the draught. I did not wait, I drank it there, with her watching.”

  “What then?”

  “Then? I returned to my horse. Harold was there, and he gave me back my horse and I made my way home.”

  Greencliff stirred, and his hands fell from his face. Staring at her bleakly, he said, “No. That’s not how it was. She told me she was going there to get a potion to make a child – our child – strong and healthy. She said she believed the rumours about old Agatha.”

  “Harold!” she cried, suddenly scared.

  “She thought Agatha was a witch, she said. She said the old woman could help her to have a strong baby. I didn’t think she was right, but I wanted her to be happy, so I agreed. I held her horse for her while she went to the witch’s house, and I waited until she came back. But when she was there, she looked sort of smug, and I knew something was wrong!

  “Then she told me. She said she’d bought a draught and our baby would die. She’d always promised me we’d live together, that we’d run away to her family in Gascony, where her husband wouldn’t dare to come for us, and when she said she had gone there to drink a mixture that would kill our baby, I was horrified.”

  “What did you do, Harold?” asked Simon, angrily cutting off the sudden attempt at interruption by the woman, who now sat with her magnificent eyes wide in her horror as she stared at Greencliff, shaking her head slowly from side to side.

  “I tried to talk her out of the idea, tried to tell her we’d be all right, that we could get away and we’d be safe in Gascony, but she just laughed, and that was when she told me she’d already taken the potion. It was too late! She said that I was mad if I thought she was going to leave a wealthy husband to live the life of a pauper in another land. She rode off, and I was sort of struck dumb. Well, I had to do something, so I went to the inn and had a drink. I was mad, furious about the witch taking away my child. She’d killed him, sure as anything, because if she’d not given Angelina the mixture, she could have had our child.”

  “Harold!” she murmured softly with a catch in her voice. He ignored her.

  “Well, I hadn’t been there for long when a friend arrived, frozen from the weather. He had not expected it to be so cold and had left his surcoat behind. When he saw what sort of a state I was in, he asked what was the matter, and I admitted to him what had happened, and he said that I should see the witch and make sure she kept her silence, otherwise she could make great trouble for me and for Angelina. I still hoped that she might change her mind, you see, and thought that if we could make sure that there was no gossip about us, she might decide to come back to me.

  “We left straight away. It didn’t take long to get to the old hag’s place, and when we got there we went in…”

  “Who went in first?” said Simon, frowning intently.

&nb
sp; After a moment’s consideration, he said, “Me. I went inside while he saw to his horse, and the… She was on the floor, covered in blood. The dog, this dog, was on the floor by her head, whining. I think he had been hurt too. That was when I realised… Well, I thought…”

  “You thought Mrs. Trevellyn had killed old Kyteler to keep her mouth silenced permanently, didn’t you?” The boy nodded dumbly. “And you immediately thought that she must be suspected as the murderess?”

  “Yes, I thought that if the body was found there, there would be bound to be an inquiry, and someone may have seen her going there and then what chance would she have? They would be bound to guess it was her, and I didn’t want that. So I sent my friend away, and took the body to hide it. My friend, he was…” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  “You might as well tell us it all. Your friend will not be hurt for trying to protect you,” said Baldwin.

  “I think he was sure that I must have killed the old woman. He thought I had done it while he was seeing to the horse. When he came in, he saw the body and stared at me, saying, ”Why, Harold? There was no need to kill her!“ He was very shocked. Anyway, he left me, shocked, and I took her body back to my house. It was too dark to do anything with her that night; the earth was solid, I would never have been able to bury her, so I was going to hide her the next morning. Then I went back to the inn as if nothing had happened. He was in Wefford, and I met him on the way, so we entered together. Next morning, when I was going to hide her somewhere in the woods, old Cottey arrived and found her before I could, and that was when you were called.”

  “I see,” said Simon, frowning as he concentrated. “And what of the night when Alan Trevellyn died?”

  “I bad been trying to see Angelina ever since the day that old Kyteler had died, but she always refused. Then my friend managed to get a note to her, and he told me we could meet. He came with me through the snow and when we saw her, he left me to speak with her alone. I swear I didn’t see Alan Trevellyn. Or kill him. I spoke with Angelina and tried to persuade her to come away with me, but she laughed at me. She told me she would never leave her husband while he was alive and told me to leave her alone.”

  “Then what?”

  “I went back home and tried to sleep. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t. I just kept thinking of her and how my life would be. I couldn’t face it. Knowing I would be always seeing her in the village, or out in the fields and the woods, it made me sick to think of it. So I decided I must leave. I decided to go to Gascony without her. At least there I could forget her and start a new life. I packed some things and went. I went… Well, you know the rest.”

  Simon was nodding. Certainly it matched the facts that they had so far managed to piece together. Shooting a look at the woman, he said, “Well?”

  She started. For the last few minutes she had seemed to lose herself in her thoughts, staring into the fire roaring close by. “Yes? Oh, I suppose it’s true. It is how I remember it. But I didn’t know it at the time. After I had been to see that old hag, when I heard she had been found dead, I was sure that it must have been Harold who killed her. Especially when I heard that she was found in his field. It was obvious. I was scared to see him after that. I thought he might try to kill me. That was why I insisted that he came without a weapon when he came to see me.”

  “You insisted he came without a weapon?” Simon said.

  Greencliff said, “Yes. She took my dagger and gave it to my friend before we met. She refused to see me alone while I had my dagger with me.”

  Simon leaned back in his seat, both hands on the table top, and stared wide-eyed at the youth. For a moment he was silent, but then he spoke with a voice slow and deliberate. “When did you get it back? When did your friend give you your dagger back?”

  “My ballock knife? When we left the Trevellyn house, I suppose. Oh, no. No, he must have set it down at my house. That’s right, I found it on the floor in the house when I was packing. He must have put it there for me.”

  “Tell me one last thing. This friend, it was Stephen de la Forte, wasn’t it?”

  The misery in his eyes was plain to see as the boy answered simply, “Yes.”

  After they had checked the story to make sure that they understood it, Baldwin told Tanner to hold both Greencliff and Mrs. Trevellyn at Furnshill, and then led the way out. Simon and he quickly donned thick jackets and cloaks. The bailiff also grabbed a woollen scarf which he wrapped round his neck before tugging on his gloves. Then he went back to the hall to see his wife before leaving. Having given her a hug, he turned, and caught a glimpse of Baldwin.

  He was standing by the doorway, and Mrs. Trevellyn had crossed to his side, as if expecting to receive a similar farewell to that which Simon and his wife had exchanged. It felt as if his heart would stop when Simon saw the knight look at the woman without recognition, only to turn dismissively on his heel and make his way to the front door. Not from sympathy for the woman, but because he could see how much his friend was hurt at the story he had just heard. As if recognising the knight’s despair, the thin figure of the black and brown dog followed at his heels.

  Outside, Edgar was already mounted on his horse, and Hugh stood nearby, holding Baldwin’s and Simon’s. They swung up, took their reins, and made their way down the driveway towards the lane. The dog followed behind as, once on the road, they turned their faces to the south and set off to Wefford.

  Whenever Simon glanced at his friend, Baldwin’s face was set as solidly as the brass plate on a tomb. Although he maintained an expressionless demeanour, Simon could see the pain in his eyes. It was too clear, and it made him try to think of something to lighten his friend’s mood. But what can soothe a wounded heart? In the end he gave up the struggle and stared ahead glumly, sadly aware of his inability to offer any comfort.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  They clattered up to the entrance of the house in the early afternoon, halting and dismounting before the front door. Soon hostlers appeared and took their horses while Baldwin tied the dog to a hook by the door. Then they entered. In the hall they found the lady of the house, sitting alone in front of her fire and looking up at them with fear in her eyes.

  “Yes?” she said, her voice quavering.

  Baldwin stepped forward, but Simon interrupted him quickly and, pushing in front, bowed quickly to the lady. “Madam, we need to speak to your son. Is he here?”

  She shot a glance at Baldwin and Edgar, her eyes wide and fearful, before they rested on the bailiff once more. “You want to speak to Stephen again? But why? He told you all he knew the last time you were here, what more do you want of him?”

  “I’m sorry, madam, but we need to ask him some questions. Is he here?”

  “No… No, he’s in Crediton. He left some time ago. He should be back tomorrow, though, so if you want to come back then.”

  “No, I think we’ll wait.”

  “But why?”

  Simon looked at her sympathetically. He was beginning to feel that all he could do today was try to offer support to those he was bound to upset. Trying to smile, he said as soothingly as he could, “We have to ask him about the death of Agatha Kyteler and Alan Trevellyn. We think that…”

  He paused at the sight of her pale, terrified face in which the eyes appeared to have grown to the size of plums, huge and startling against the pallor of her skin. “Are you all right? Can we get you anything?”

  Waving a hand in irritable dismissal of the offer, she held his gaze, and to his sudden distress, he saw a large tear roll down her dried and wrinkled cheek. It was as if he had upset his own mother, and he felt her pain like a band constricting his chest. Yet there was nothing he could do to make it easier for her. If her son was, as he believed, responsible for the two murders, she would live to see her only son die, and in a cruel and degrading manner.

  He averted his gaze and settled to wait, but he had only just made himself comfortable in a small chair, while Baldwin and Edgar stood lounging
against the screens, when Walter de la Forte came in, closely followed by the thin and perpetually anxious manservant.

  It was apparent that he had not seen the knight and his man to his left as he entered, because he immediately strode to the bailiff and stood before him bristling with rage.

  “What is this? I understand you’re here to question my son again? What gives you the right to invade my house? You may be an officer, but you’re not an officer here?”

  “I am an official. I can…”

  “Not in my house, you can’t. I’ve a good mind to teach you not to molest a man in his own home. I could kill you now, and all my servants would swear that you attacked me and…”

  At the sound of Baldwin clearing his throat from behind, he underwent a sudden transformation. His anger disappeared to be replaced by a kind of cunning sharpness before he risked a quick glance over his shoulder and found Baldwin and Edgar to be close behind him. He slowly turned back to Simon, who did not move or respond, but merely sat and stared up at him with an expression of faint disbelief. When it became apparent that the man was still wondering what he could say, Simon softly spoke. “You just threatened an officer in the presence of two other men of high honour. You will sit and be silent. We shall deal with you later.”

  At first it looked like he was going to attempt an attack on Simon. His eyes bulged with his emotion, and his hands clenched, but then the fire died. His shoulders dropping, he looked as though he recognised defeat. Turning away, he stumbled to a bench and sat, his face in his hands.