‘I should hate to see you lose your patience, friend. So let me say, I am Sir Baldwin of Furnshill, Keeper of the King’s Peace in Crediton, and friend to Coroner Roger de Gidleigh, who should be visiting you here shortly to investigate a body. Now, who are you?’
The man didn’t answer him, but merely spat. ‘A keeper to help a coroner! What a blessing. We are fortunate to have so many officials here to help us sort out a four-year-old murder. Maybe there’s some mystery everyone forgot to tell us about, eh?’
‘And you are?’
He stared up at Baldwin with unconcealed disgust. ‘Nothing to do with you!’ and strode from the place with every appearance of bitter fury. After a few moments the other men trailed after him, one of them with a pronounced limp. The last, whom Drogo had called Vin, stood as if working up the courage to speak, but then he too walked away, giving Baldwin an apologetic grimace before making off after his leader.
Only the woman remained. She was attractive, of middle height, and her hair was a mouse-brown. She looked as though her inclination tended more to laughter and singing than melancholy, but it was obvious that sadness had affected her, and as Baldwin gave her a politely welcoming smile, she looked away hurriedly.
Baldwin was intrigued by Drogo’s assertion that there was a four-year-old murder to be investigated. He had expected something much more recent. Aware of Jeanne moving her Arab nearer to him as Edgar entered the inn, he thought she was nervous of Drogo and his men.
He was wrong. Jeanne knew he was capable of protecting himself, even with his bruises. No, it was the atmosphere. It felt as though there was a miasma of violence and fear about the place, almost as though it was infected by a malignant disease, and it reminded her of stories she had heard in France many years ago, stories in which evil spirits could invade a vill.
The fear which she had known as a young woman in France was with her again here. There was a curious deadness of sound. None of the usual squealing of children, none of the barking or yapping or whining of dogs, no whinnying – nothing. There was not even the hum of people talking, or the dull thud of axe hitting wood, only a low grumbling from the earth as though the soil itself was complaining. Seeing the mill she realised that it came from there.
Baldwin did not notice his wife’s distress. He chewed at his moustache while they waited for Edgar to return, which he did a few minutes later with a large man who wore a long leather apron. He wiped his hands on it as he bowed to Baldwin.
‘Master, I’m William Taverner. Your man said you want beds.’
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards Edgar, who now leaned nonchalantly against the doorpost, his hands in his belt, apparently staring into the middle distance and unaware of the conversation.
‘Yes, master Taverner. I need a room for my wife and child and their servant, and somewhere for me and my servant. In the meantime, I want a jug of wine for each of us in front of your fire.’
The taverner was a short, fat man with straggling brown hair scraped over a bald pate. He rasped a hand over his poorly shaven chin as he considered. ‘I have a small chamber at the back, but I’d have to throw out some others, and they’ve already paid for the use of it. It’s not reasonable for me to evict them.’ As if to aid his resolve, he fiddled with coins in the pocket of his apron.
‘I am sure you will find a way,’ Baldwin said with suave confidence. ‘Has the coroner arrived yet?’
There was a faint but noticeable stiffening of the man’s manner. ‘You’re friends of his?’
Baldwin never liked being answered with a question, especially after the rudeness of Drogo and his men. His tone sharpened. ‘Has he arrived?’
His answer was a surly grunt which persuaded Baldwin that Sir Roger had already made his presence felt. It gave him some little amusement, and he was pleased to have had the behaviour of the locals explained. If the coroner was in the vill and throwing his weight around, it was no surprise that folk here were resentful.
‘You will help my man empty the room for my wife and bring in all my belongings,’ Baldwin said coldly. ‘And I am sure your wife will be pleased to serve me in your hall.’
Will Taverner shook his head. Another bleeding knight. It wasn’t enough that there was Drogo biting the head off everyone and the reeve was like a feral cat being stoned, running all over and scratching at everyone, no, now there was a coroner and a keeper. And he was expected to chuck out Ivo and Miles, both of whom had paid well, to accommodate this idle bugger’s wife. Sod him!
It wasn’t only the King’s officials that were upsetting everyone, though. Since Swet’s daughter had turned up – and no one doubted that it was Aline’s bones up there – everyone had grown tetchy. People avoided each other’s eye. They all knew why. Aline was only the latest of the Strangler’s victims to be found.
Will made one last attempt. ‘My wife, she—’
Suddenly the knight was off his horse. With one bound he landed immediately in front of Will, and the innkeeper gave a startled squeak and jumped back, only to find himself pressed against Edgar, who caught his upper arms.
Baldwin was flushed, and he looked enraged. Staring at the innkeeper with glittering eyes, he said quietly, ‘Master Taverner, I have much to be getting on with to help the coroner and I do not wish for delay. If your wife is busy, send your son or daughter.’
Taverner looked away. ‘My son’s dead. The flooding.’
‘I am sorry. So many have died,’ Baldwin said more gently, although not solely in compassion. His leap from the horse had jolted his flank and his injuries were aching dully. For a moment he thought he might topple over.
‘God’s will,’ the taverner muttered, turning away. ‘I’ll fetch my daughter. She can serve you.’
‘I am grateful,’ Baldwin called after him. The French-sounding ‘Nicky’ had already gone, and when he glanced around, he saw that she was striding towards a small cottage at the western edge of the vill. ‘Edgar, see to the wagons. I shall be back shortly,’ he said.
‘Where are you going, Husband?’ Jeanne asked.
‘To take a look about the place,’ he said. ‘Would you care to join me?’
She let her gaze sweep around the view, from the stained walls of the tavern to the sodden roadway, on past the chapel with its small, desolate graveyard to the grim, dark moors above.
‘I think perhaps I shall wait here with a warming drink,’ she said.
Chapter Four
Drogo le Criur turned and stared as Jeanne entered the inn. He saw Baldwin wander off westwards and frowned after him, chewing his lip.
‘What’s the matter, Drogo?’ the fair young man asked him timidly.
‘Shut up, will you, Vin,’ he said sharply. It was difficult to concentrate. Drogo knew nothing at all about this keeper. Fleetingly he wondered whether Baldwin was as corrupt as other men in official positions, but he knew he couldn’t count on it. Bribing a King’s Officer was a risky business.
The coroner was the same. Drogo had met him briefly when he came to the vill earlier, a big, powerful man with the glowering mien that showed he was used to finding liars wherever he looked. With him was another fellow, tall and rangy, with an open expression that hinted at integrity. He, Drogo heard, was one of the Tavistock Abbot’s men, a Stannary Bailiff charged with maintaining the law among the tin miners on the moors.
Three officials, all important men, none of them known to Drogo for corruption. He was convinced that he would be found out, and the thought made his belly turn to liquid. If the identity of his son’s mother was discovered, he knew his life would be in danger; if the truth of his involvement seven years ago in the death of Royal Purveyor Ansel de Hocsenham became known, he would be executed. No doubt about that. The King couldn’t allow someone who had offended his authority to live. Drogo would be hanged, his chattels forfeit to the Crown, his body left hanging to be picked at by crows and ravens. Not alone: he’d take Reeve Alexander with him.
The purveyor would never have d
ied if the King hadn’t decided to send him here. A purveyor was only a spy, a thief, a bent, niggardly whoreson dog’s shit who would take the food from a starving family’s mouth without caring, and Ansel de Hocsenham was one of the worst. Always looking to see how he could enrich himself, and to hell with anyone else. He would have seen the whole population die. Bastard! Drogo knew the importance of power to control people, for without that power, people would run amok. Any King’s Officer knew how vital it was to keep the King’s Peace. Still, if Ansel hadn’t died, Sticklepath would be a shadow now, a place filled with ghosts and nothing more. Drogo had been to Hound Tor, and had seen how a vill could be destroyed.
Hound Tor was a ghost town all right. The famine had ruined the place; gradually families had given up, leaving their dwellings and taking their few remaining animals with them as they made their way down into the valleys seeking better soil in which to grow their crops, and better pastures for their cattle and the few sheep which had survived the successive murrains.
The place was desolate now. Only two years before he visited it, seven families had lived there, and their noise and chatter, the contented sounds of their animals, created a healthy row. The stream, dammed further up the hill, provided all their water, and the hillside was enough for their meagre crops of rye and oats.
That was then. When Drogo went that last time, just after the floods had washed away the crops for the second year, the place was empty. Two dogs scavenged among the weeds that grew in the reeve’s old house, searching for scraps, but the people were gone. As Drogo walked between the houses, looking in at the little ovens used to try to dry the sodden grain, he had encountered only bats and the odd rat. The roofs were sagging, the hurdles and fencing on the point of collapse. It was a depressing experience.
If that evil bastard had succeeded, Sticklepath would have ended the same way. It was one thing to take from a community in a time of plenty, but to try to steal from people when they had insufficient to tide them over to the next harvest was unforgivable.
At least the purveyor’s body had never been found. They had hidden it well enough up on the hill. Not like those little bitches killed over the last few years. Drogo had heard the complaints of the parents, their grief as the bodies were discovered, but he had no sympathy for them. His own little lass Isabelle had died during the famine, and he didn’t remember anyone giving him much support. After his wife’s death, he had not married again – it would have been an insult to his dead woman – so he had never sired another daughter. At least the fathers who mourned their children hadn’t been forced to watch them starve to death.
‘Drogo? You all right?’
It was Adam Thorne who spoke, a short, wiry man with the dark hair and features of a moorman. He was one of Drogo’s oldest serving men. He had been a forester for nine years now, and knew the moor like the back of his own hairy hands. His shambling limp tired him quickly, the pain from the badly mended leg a constant reminder of the cart which had run over it. Drogo had only seen him lose his temper once. Adam had picked up a farmer who was twice his weight and punched him twice in the face while the man was in the air, before hurling him through a door into the street. Drogo had made a mental note on the spot never to upset Adam.
At Adam’s side was Peter atte Moor, who stood eyeing his leader anxiously. Slim, with ferret-like features, the man had never got over the death of Denise, his young daughter. Pale, with bright eyes, he always looked feverish. The only time he looked contented was when he saw felons paying for their crimes. There had been a hanging last year, and Drogo saw him lose his haunted look. Instead he became calm, serene, almost like a man in a sleep. As the condemned man’s body twitched and jerked, Peter relaxed, as though the sight was soothing.
‘I’m fine. Fine. I just don’t like having strangers in my vill,’ Drogo said.
‘Do you think they’ll be here for long?’ asked Vincent. ‘I’d have thought they’d soon go.’
Vincent Yunghe had the expression of a dog desperately eager to please, Drogo thought contemptuously. The youngest of the foresters, Vin was only in the group because Jack Yunghe had asked Drogo to look after him when he was dying. Vin’s mother was long dead by then, and Jack had been desperate to see his son under the protection of his old friend Drogo, but although Jack died pleased to know that his son was under the wing of a powerful forester, he had not realised how much Drogo loathed the lad.
Vin was weakly and insipid, a pathetic fool. Drogo detested him – and yet was bound to him. It was a bloody nuisance.
Drogo hawked and spat. ‘There isn’t the keeper born who can scare me. Nor coroner, neither.’
‘What, even if they find out about the pur—’
He got no further. Drogo thrust him back against a wall, his fists gripping handfuls of the young man’s tunic. ‘So you think they might find something out, eh? I reckon they’d only do that if someone told them. Now who’d do a stupid thing like that, Vin?’
As he released Vin with a snort, Drogo noticed the faint twitch at Peter’s cheek, and knew that if he gave the order, Peter would punch, kick, stab or batter puny Vincent to death.
‘Now you listen to me, lad,’ Drogo hissed. ‘You forget everything you’ve heard about deaths in this vill. If I learn that someone has been blabbing to the coroner or his friends, I’ll come and find you, and when I do, I’ll tear out your entrails with my bare hands and feed them to the dogs! Got that?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘That goes for you others as well. If anyone opens their trap, I’ll make sure they suffer.’
‘I wouldn’t tell, Drogo,’ Vin whispered. ‘I’m your man, you know that.’
‘You?’ Drogo sneered. ‘You serve me from fear, and that’s good. Don’t lose that fear, boy, because if you do, I’ll ruin you.’
Adam Thorne watched without interest. As Drogo turned away, Vin stood with his head hanging. ‘Better get a move on, boy,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘You don’t want to upset the man.’
There was spirit in Vin’s retort. ‘Don’t call me boy!’
Even with his misshapen leg, Adam was taller than Vin and now he pulled the lad up until Vincent’s resentful face was on a level with his own. Adam wore a faint smile, as though he was amused by some joke that only he could understand.
‘Boy, I’ll call you anything I like. Anything at all.’
‘Let go of me!’
Adam’s face held only an expression of mild regret, almost sadness as he gazed at Vin. ‘Don’t ever raise your voice to me again, boy. Show respect for those who know more than you.’
‘Enough!’ Drogo said. He was staring back at Baldwin. The knight was at the far end of the vill now, walking towards the steep hill, and Drogo tried to put him and the coroner from his mind. ‘We have work to do. There’s no point in fighting among ourselves when there are plenty of thugs out on the moors to keep us busy. Come on, back to work! And afterwards I’ll buy you all ale in the tavern.’
* * *
After the long journey, Baldwin was relieved to be able to wander about the vill and stretch his muscles, Aylmer trailing behind, sniffing at every bush, corner and post.
Baldwin was aware of eyes watching him at every step, but now he knew that the coroner was here, he was less bothered. Roger must have been throwing his weight about.
The road was a swathe of mud, and he took a straight line past the chapel and cemetery, which had a row of pollarded trees and a fence of hurdles to keep dogs from digging up the bones of the dead. At the far side, where the mill lay, there was a low stone wall. Baldwin circled around the cemetery and headed towards the mill. It had a great overshot wheel, and he stood watching it turn slowly as the water poured into the wooden compartments, some splashing over the sides, and listening to the dull rumbling of the massive stones grinding against each other inside. It was always good to see how mechanisation made life easier for people, he thought. The mill would help feed the place, saving men and women from the drudgery of grinding grai
n themselves, and earning Lord Hugh a little revenue from the miller’s profit.
Baldwin passed the mill and found himself at the foot of the hill. This, he knew, was the road out to the west, towards Cornwall. He started up it, thinking that it might be interesting to see the vill from a different angle, and soon he found it rising steeply, but after a short way it levelled off and he could breathe more easily. Quite a way ahead, he saw two men standing close to a broken wall. One was a tallish fellow, clad in a faded blue tunic of some coarse-looking material, and gripping a polearm in his hand. However, it was the guard’s companion who caught Baldwin’s attention.
He was a thickset little man, not a dwarf, but only marginally taller than one. If he had been a child, Baldwin would have said he was some ten or eleven years old, but he was plainly much older than that. His face sprouted a thick dark beard, and there was only a small area between his wide-brimmed hat and moustache for his eyes to peer through, like a suspicious peasant watching a stranger approach his house through a crack in a wall. Although he was short, Baldwin had the impression of great power in his frame. His shoulders were broad, his hands the size of an adult man’s, and his legs were planted widely apart like a fighter’s.
While Baldwin watched, the guard let his weapon slip into the crook of his arm and lifted the front of his tunic to direct a stream of urine at the roots of a nearby tree. His companion nodded down the lane, pointing at Baldwin with his chin, and both eyed Baldwin with what looked like suspicion. Baldwin, who was growing heartily bored with being the object of so much silent observation, met the guard’s stare with one that showed his authority. He would not knuckle under to some peasant.
Aylmer noticed the men too, and Baldwin heard him rumbling deep in his throat. The dog padded past Baldwin, his head dropping as his pace slowed to a more menacing stalk. Hackles up, it seemed as though he had a stripe of darker fur running from his nose to his tail, but then he looked sheepish when Baldwin called him back.
The Sticklepath Strangler Page 6
