‘Oof!’ she exclaimed, and fell back to sit on her rump.
‘Christ’s ballocks!’ the coroner roared, clutching at his upper belly, where her arm had caught him. Dropping his stick, he stumbled backwards, and his foot caught on a loose stone, wrenching his ankle for a second time. ‘God’s bones! You stupid bitch! Can’t you look where you’re going?’
She gazed at him in horror. In her mind’s eye she saw herself chained alongside her husband as they were led from the vill and into captivity. In her terror she was mute.
‘Well?’ he bellowed roughly, gripping the wall to hoist himself upright. ‘Are you dumb, woman?’
Jeanne had witnessed the scene, and she joined the coroner, who was trying to reach his prop. She passed it to him, then crouched at Nicole’s side. ‘Are you all right? You fell with quite a thump.’
‘I… I am well, I thank you,’ Nicole stammered, rising and wiping her filthy hands on her apron, then remembering that it was her cleanest apron and her best tunic, she burst into loud, gulping tears.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Coroner Roger sighed. He licked his lips and glanced guiltily at Jeanne.
She saw his look, but she was already helping the other woman. Putting a compassionate arm about her shoulders, she led the weeping peasant into the tavern.
Coroner Roger rubbed at his belly, shaking his head. The damn woman had almost winded him, he thought ruefully. He’d been going to speak to the parson to see whether he could learn anything useful, not that he held out much hope. Priests were always tricky. Getting information from them was like getting a free meal out of a Winchester innkeeper. Now, however, he’d lost interest. The distance looked too great.
He was standing before the inn rubbing at his ankle, when he heard a cheerful shout from the other side of the road.
‘Coroner Roger, as I live and breathe!’
‘Sir Laurence. It is good to meet with you once again,’ the coroner said, less heartily. He did not in all honesty like Sir Laurence, because the job of purveyor offended him: it was simple extortion, to his way of thinking, but he was prepared to accept that the purveyor’s task was none the less necessary. After all, Roger didn’t much like executioners, but someone had to do the job.
‘I was told that I might find you here,’ Sir Laurence said. He was idly tossing his war hammer in the air and catching it. ‘A man called Houndestail said so. I have brought him back with me.’
Behind him, Coroner Roger could see the anxious features of Alexander in the doorway, peering over the knight’s shoulder. As Sir Laurence spoke, Drogo and his three men pushed past Alexander and stood listening. The coroner said, ‘You are here to prepare for the coming war?’
‘I think it will have already begun,’ Sir Laurence said easily. ‘No, I am simply collecting food and money to help support the effort.’
‘I see.’
Sir Laurence smiled more broadly and he snuffed the air, taking a deep breath. ‘Smell that? Shit and piss all over this place, isn’t there?’ he said conversationally. ‘It’s a revolting little midden, this. Still, we can’t choose where we have to go, you and I, can we?’
‘No,’ Coroner Roger said. Behind Sir Laurence he could see that Alexander’s face was mottled with rage to hear his precious vill so described. ‘I suppose you have to come this way often enough? The road to Cornwall is paved with good manors, so I am told.’
‘There are plenty of wealthy enough demesnes in among Lord Hugh’s lands,’ the purveyor agreed. ‘But this is my first trip so far south. Usually I deal with the northern pieces of the shire. There used to be another man down here – Ansel de Hocsenham. I don’t know if you ever met him?’
Coroner Roger saw Drogo and Alexander exchange a glance. It was so fleeting that he could have mistaken it, but he was sure he was right. Ansel de Hocsenham, the man who had sired the girl whose body was found this morning; the man who Miles Houndestail thought had been murdered.
He turned his attention back to Sir Laurence. ‘No, I never met him.’
‘So if he died here, you didn’t investigate his death?’
‘Not so far as I remember, but while there are only two coroners for the whole of Devon, it’s not surprising. We have fifteen murders a year to cope with, and that doesn’t count all the other sudden deaths I have to investigate or the wrecks I have to inspect.’
‘Wrecks?’
‘A coroner’s duty is to the King. If a ship is wrecked, the King owns any salvaged goods, so I am expected to rush to the coast at short notice to rescue any casks of wine or fine silks and have them sold for the King’s benefit. It’s not surprising that I didn’t meet your predecessor. When did he die?’
‘No one knows if he is truly dead, but he must be. He disappeared just about the time he was supposed to have arrived here in Sticklepath, oddly enough, but no one seems to know where he went or what happened to him.’
‘Surely nobody would fail to report a dead body, would they?’ Coroner Roger said, and shot a glance over Sir Laurence’s shoulder again. Alexander met the coroner’s stare with an expression of despair, before turning his back and going into his hall.
If Roger hadn’t seen him, he would never have believed that a man could suddenly appear so broken. Even Drogo looked sympathetic, and soon followed Alexander into the house, his men trailing after them.
The knight smiled lazily and pointed his war hammer at them. ‘You could almost think he had a guilty conscience, couldn’t you?’
‘Surely not a reeve like him,’ Roger said drily.
Laurence de Bozon chuckled. ‘Could you join me while I speak to him?’
‘My leg, I…’
‘Not right now. Leave us a little while. Let us say, when the sun is dipping below that hill. That should give me time to prepare myself – and leave the reeve in a state of fright, wondering of which crime I intend to accuse him!’
* * *
Jeanne took the woman through the tavern to her own room. There, while Petronilla and Edgar hastily rearranged their clothing, she persuaded Nicole to sit on a bench and sent Edgar (when he had retied his hose) to the buttery for a jug of wine. Petronilla she sent out to walk with the baby, for Richalda was awake now and demanding her mother’s attention.
‘Tell me your name.’
‘I am called Nicole Garde, madame.’
‘You come from France?’ Jeanne asked in that tongue.
Nicole started with delight on hearing her own language again. ‘Yes, but how do you speak it so well?’
‘I was raised in Bordeaux. Where were you from?’
‘A village called Montaillou, near to Pamiers in Arriège.’
‘And how did you come to be here, married to an Englishman?’ Jeanne asked. Edgar returned as she posed the question, and the two women waited while he poured them a cup each, and then quietly left them.
‘Madame, I was the daughter of the local headsman. The executioner. He was a good man to his family, but you know how people hate the headsman.’
‘Yes,’ Jeanne said. It was not only in France that the people loathed the man who represented the ultimate power of the Crown.
‘When my husband Thomas saw me being mistreated, he rescued me and brought me here to live with him. I was nothing loath, for it is a healthful place.’
‘Really?’ Jeanne asked. It said little, she reflected, for Montaillou.
‘But the people here have never accepted me. Nor, I think, do they wish my husband to remain.’ Suddenly her eyes were brimming once more. ‘Oh, madame, the reeve, he has arrested my Thomas, and he says he will have him taken to Exeter to the gaol, to wait there for the next Justices to try. That could be a year… more. He will die there, and I shall be a widow, all for no reason.’
‘What is he arrested for?’
‘This morning they said he killed the child.’ Nicole dried her eyes on her sleeve. ‘This afternoon they said he tried to kill his brother. It is not true. He hates Ivo, but he is not violent. He is too calm and gentle to ha
rm another, but they say that he will be taken away as soon as they can arrange a guard.’
Jeanne patted her arm comfortingly. ‘Do not fear. My husband will look into it.’
‘What can he do?’
‘He is Keeper of the King’s Peace. The reeve will not dare to argue with him,’ Jeanne said confidently.
‘Keeper?’ Nicole pouted doubtfully. ‘You think so?’
‘Why do you believe they should want to arrest your husband?’
‘If they can have him arrested, the jury will convict him of murdering those children. You have seen how the people here are scared of strangers. They want to blame us for everything, and they will have Thomas killed, just so that the man who is really guilty isn’t shown up. Why else would they arrest my husband?’ Jeanne shivered. Convicting a man because he was new to an area was a complete travesty of justice. ‘Who is the real killer?’
‘I do not know,’ Nicole said miserably. ‘If I did, I would appeal him before the whole vill and save my husband.’
‘Are you wealthy? Perhaps someone covets your property.’
‘We have very little.’
‘Your only defence is to help show who did kill the girls.’
‘I know nothing of them except Aline – she I knew. The others died before we came here. Ivo said that Denise died long ago, when he was buying provisions during the famine.’
‘What was Aline like?’
Nicole thought a moment, her tears drying now that she was distracted. ‘She was a quiet little thing, but it was the end of the famine, you know? All the children were subdued. They were so hungry all the time. Except, I know that Aline was…’
Her voice trailed off and she shot Jeanne a look from lowered lashes. ‘Well?’ Jeanne asked.
‘Madame, the girl, she was with child.’
‘Are you sure? But I thought she was only eleven years old?’
‘I know. And she did not even have a boyfriend, you know? Her father would not let her walk about the vill on her own.’
‘What of his wife?’
‘She was dead many years ago. I never met her.’
‘How well do you know Swetricus her father?’
‘He is a neighbour, but I had thought that others here were friends and neighbours. I will not call anyone here friend again.’
‘I have not seen any other children. Does he have more?’
‘Yes: Lucy is the eldest, then there was Aline, then Gilda and Katherine, but they rarely come to the vill to play with other girls. They are too shy, I think.’
‘Perhaps,’ Jeanne said, but even as she breathed the word, her mind was considering that the three young girls might wish to avoid others for another reason. So that their secret could not be spoken of.
She had never been touched by her own father, but Jeanne knew only too well that men were capable of molesting their daughters; especially their most beloved daughters.
‘Swetricus,’ she murmured. Could a man murder his own daughter to hide the fact that he had made her pregnant? And could he have killed the other girls as well?
Then she realised something else Nicole had said. ‘Ivo told you about Denise, you say? Ivo was here when she died?’
‘Oh, yes. He is often here, and knew Denise well, so he said.’
Chapter Twenty-one
Baldwin could see that the woman Meg was terrified to be confronted by Simon and him, and he tried to calm her nerves, smiling gently and speaking slowly and carefully.
Her voice was low, and although she had an impediment to her speech, she was easily understood. If she had been healthy, Baldwin considered that her voice could have been quite pleasing. By turns she was agitated and twitchy, picking at one hand with the other, and then calm, her round face vacant, as though uninterested in proceedings. Apart from that, as he spoke and as she gradually gained confidence in their company, he saw the signs of her affectionate nature. She held on to Serlo’s hand, but with less and less of a firm grip. As she eased, she took to stroking his bare forearm, not a conscious thing, but merely a proof of affection.
They made an odd couple, Baldwin thought. The man so twisted and graceless after his terrible injuries, and she so dumpy and clumsy, but for all that the two had one thing that shone from them: love. She adored him, watching Serlo’s face eagerly as he spoke, and for his part, when Serlo looked at her, his expression softened, like a man watching his own daughter.
Serlo was gentle as they explained about her daughter. ‘You have to be brave, Meg. Try to be brave. Emma, she can’t come back.’
‘My Emma?’
Serlo glanced up at Baldwin, gave a short shrug which was a confession of his own inadequacy. ‘She’s dead, Meg. I’m sorry.’
He had his arms wrapped about her as he spoke, but Baldwin saw her face crumble like a child’s. She looked up at Serlo with desperate hope, as though thinking he might be joking, and her expression as that hope faded tore at Baldwin’s heart. He hated to think how Serlo must feel. He regretted coming here like this, intruding on the grief of a poor, simple woman, but the alternative was to have some petty official come here from the vill, someone like Drogo, who would give her the news without Serlo to calm her afterwards. This was surely kinder. For a moment he tried to tell himself that so simple a woman could not appreciate her loss, but then he could have cursed himself for his callousness when he caught a glimpse of her face. This was no dim-witted girl he was watching, but a mother who had lost her only child. There could be no more hideous pain than that which Meg suffered now. Her very simpleness made her feel the pain all the more keenly. She could not imagine any alleviation of her grief.
‘NO! Not my Emma as well! No!’
Suddenly shrieking, she struck feebly with her fists at Serlo’s breast. He had to grab them and hold her, mumbling sympathetic noises, calling to her by name, and after some minutes she collapsed against him, weeping and shaking her head, her wrists still gripped in his hands.
It took a long time to calm her and prepare her to be questioned, and even then her face would occasionally become blank as her eyes appeared to turn in upon some inner thought or memory. ‘She was my baby,’ she said several times.
‘I am sorry to have to tell you this,’ Baldwin said, feeling stiff and formal in the presence of her overwhelming grief. ‘I want to find out who killed her.’
Meg nodded, but there was little comprehension in her features. She responded dully to his initial questions.
‘Tell us about Emma, Meg.’
‘She was my girl.’
‘When was she born?’
Meg turned to Serlo with a bewildered look on her face.
He answered for her. ‘She was about ten years old. Not above eleven.’
‘Who was her father?’
She smiled happily. ‘It was my husband. He married me, in the field by the river, my lovely Ansel. He worked so hard, and he had to travel much, but he always came home to me.’
Baldwin stared at Serlo in confusion.
The warrener sighed. ‘Look, he made his promises to Meg about six years after the crowning of the King—’
‘That would be about 1313 or so,’ Simon muttered.
Serlo shrugged. ‘I don’t have much use for numbers. Only seasons. He made his promises, and he came back when he could. Emma was born, and Ansel came back for a couple of years—’
‘Until about 1315?’ Simon pressed him.
‘Yeah, well, then he left, and didn’t say farewell, and about a year later, Athelhard returned. He had heard that Meg had had a daughter, and he came to protect them and help as best he could. He wasn’t happy with the situation, but which older brother would be? At least Athelhard had helped with money.’
‘It was our home,’ Meg burst out suddenly. ‘Our house in the woods. Ansel built it for us. He liked it there.’ A dullness came down over her face like a shadow from a veil. ‘But he said he wasn’t going yet. He promised he’d be about for another week. He would have said farewell.’
> ‘Miserable bastard son of a whore and a dog fox,’ Simon muttered viciously under his breath. He hated to hear of women who were taken for a ride, and all too often men could get their own way by pretending to marry someone. Litigation was expensive, thus many escaped censure or punishment. If the purveyor had been murdered, perhaps he deserved his end.
Baldwin shot him a look to silence him, then, ‘He said nothing? Gave no hint that he was leaving?’
‘No, he just upped and went.’ Serlo shrugged.
‘Will Taverner said he’d left, but he wouldn’t have, not without seeing me first,’ Meg said tearfully.
‘I see,’ Baldwin said. ‘What of the rest of your family?’
Her reaction startled him. She stiffened, and then her eyes grew wild. Suddenly she spun around, as though fearing an attack from behind her. Serlo had to catch at her wrists again and talk to her quietly. All the while she moaned with a keening noise as though mourning.
Serlo grunted, ‘Her family died many years ago, all but her brother, Athelhard. He was older than Meg, and when their father died, he was all she had left, but he was away with the old King hammering the Welsh. When he died, Athelhard stayed in the retinue of a Marcher Lord. He did well and brought back plenty of booty, so that was fine, but he wasn’t here for Meg. Like she said, when she was alone, she married but then her man disappeared and it was a good year later that Athelhard returned here to look after her and take over the assart.’
‘Which assart was that?’ Baldwin asked.
‘The one where I met you today. It was theirs. Ansel had built the cottage for Meg, but it was Athelhard who started to clear the woods about it to create some pasture.’
The Sticklepath Strangler Page 25
