‘Do you wish to know what he said?’ Baldwin asked Simon. His old friend looked away, towards Edith, but did give a curt nod of the head.
Before leaving, Baldwin had visited the men in the town’s little gaol. In truth, he would have preferred not to have gone to the noisome little chamber. It was filled with the odour of faeces, of damp rocks and earth, and the chill was relentless. One man, when Baldwin looked about him, was very still, and wore the grey sheen of death. He was one of those who had been struck down by the horses, Baldwin recalled. He nodded to Basil, and the watchman with him grabbed the fellow by the shoulder, yanking him to his feet and half dragging him out through the door, while the others glared and snivelled.
‘What do you want with me now?’
Basil had spirit, Baldwin saw. The fellow might be a most unappealing sight, with his right eye ruined, and blood and pus dribbling down his cheek, but for all that, and although he must have been in pain, he stared at Baldwin without apology.
‘Your father is dead. You know that?’
‘Yes. And as soon as I may, I will have the whole matter laid before the king and my lord Despenser,’ Basil spat. ‘And when your own part is explained in these affairs, in the murder of my father, in the ravaging of my manor, the destruction of the stables and sheds, the wanton—’
‘Be silent, viper! I am not here to listen to your feeble threats. Do you think you can intimidate me as you did those poor devils on the roads about here?’
‘You tell me to be silent? You old cretin! You will not be so proud when you are before Sir Hugh le Despenser and trying to explain yourself. You rode into our manor, you—’
‘Released a woman whom you had captured, illegally, and against all the rules of chivalry, fellow. And proved that you had been attacking all who passed near and robbing them of their goods. I think there is not a court in the land that would protect you. No matter how many jurors the good Sir Hugh were to place at the court’s disposal.’
‘He would be able to provide many, you piece of shit,’ Basil blustered, leaning forward. ‘He will buy up all the jurors, and the judge, too, in order to break you.’
‘Even when we show that you robbed the party on its way to the king? You stole the king’s silver when you robbed those men.’
‘We didn’t,’ Basil sneered. ‘Show we did it!’
‘I shall,’ Baldwin said. ‘You killed not only a group of archers, boy; you slaughtered two monks. You will not be set before a court that Sir Hugh can buy up. You will stand accused before a court in Exeter, in the presence of Bishop Walter. And he will have the pleasure of convicting you to die on his own gallows.’
Basil was shocked by that. ‘We didn’t kill two monks! We only found the one. The other one must have made off before we got there, rot his bowels!’
‘Hardly likely,’ Baldwin said.
‘It’s the truth!’
Gradually Basil had told the whole story: how the man Osbert had insinuated himself into the group of travellers, how he had persuaded them to turn north from Oakhampton, to avoid the known danger of Sir Robert’s men, while in reality leading them all into Sir Robert’s trap.
Baldwin repeated the story now as they jogged down a hill near the tiny vill of Sampford Courtenay, and even as they rode, Simon’s attention was taken by the tale. ‘You mean they’d been planning this for some days, then?’
‘They must have been,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Simon, just consider the effort involved. They had to make sure that this man Osbert was ready to join the group at the earliest moment, probably not long after they left Tavistock. He had to have time to get to know them, after all. And probably to start to spread concern about the depredations of his own master. He wanted them to be so fearful of Sir Robert that they would willingly and swiftly agree to his suggestion of an alternative road to Exeter, bypassing Bow completely. They could hardly go south, not with the paucity of roads in that direction; their only path must take them north. And that meant Abbeyford Woods. The rest of Sir Robert’s men knew where he would lead them.’
Mark was frowning. ‘But Anselm, he would know that was a daft idea.’
‘That was, I think, the point,’ Baldwin said caustically. ‘One stranger would be unlikely to swing all behind him. But if there was another there, a man who was viewed as knowledgeable, who was wearing the cloth, that would inevitably help.’
‘You mean he colluded in this? No!’ Mark was emphatic. ‘I will not allow that! To suggest such a slander is a disgrace, Sir Baldwin. You shame yourself more than his cloth and our order when you say such things. Where is your evidence? What proof do you have, eh?’
It was Simon who shook his head sadly. ‘Mark, Baldwin’s right. Look at it sensibly. Sir Robert needed details of the men in the guard. And if Anselm had nothing to do with it, where is he now? What happened to him after the robbery? Why wasn’t he there with all the other bodies?’
Sir Richard rumbled as he considered. ‘So this one-eyed arsehole was there to lead them all astray and he colluded with the renegade monk to get them all up into the woods?’
‘That’s how I read the tale,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Except the money wasn’t there. So someone had taken it already.’
‘Perhaps Anselm himself?’ Sir Richard said.
‘No!’ Mark protested. ‘He wouldn’t take the money and see all those people murdered.’
‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin mused, ‘he aided Osbert in doing that.’
Simon shot a look at Sir Richard. ‘It was a large sum of silver, wasn’t it? More than one man could carry, I’d bet.’
‘Sirs, there is one thing,’ Roger said. He was walking briskly at their side. ‘I saw the camp on the morning after. I am sure that all the people there were deliberately murdered. One man I found had six arrows, and yet someone had stabbed him through the eye to make sure. All were like that, bar the monk himself and one other – a man who was lying further away from the middle of the camp. He was another fighter, I think, and yet he hadn’t been taken down by the attack – he had been stabbed in the back some four or five times.’
Baldwin was nodding. ‘And you think …’
‘That he was a sentry, the first to be killed. If this Osbert was in the camp as you believe then this man was killed so that the money could be removed.’
Simon shook his head. ‘It wasn’t there. I looked most carefully, and there was no sign of it near the camp. I even looked about the woods to see if anything could be learned. So did Mark here. He found a lovely cross, all enamelled. It was Pietro’s, apparently.’
‘I remembered it,’ Mark said. ‘It had been thrown into a bush.’ He drew it from beneath his robes now and displayed it.
Baldwin pursed his lips. ‘I would that I had been able to see the site after the attack. Perhaps I would have noticed something …’
‘We all did our best,’ Simon said coldly. ‘As did Sir Peregrine.’
‘I was not criticising,’ Baldwin said.
Sir Richard had his mind fixed on the money and seemingly did not notice Simon’s petulance. ‘So we think that this Osbert had a heavy hand in the robbery and killings. But the money was already gone? Did the cardinal send it by some other route, and this was a mere distraction to tempt robbers?’
‘No. The money was with this party,’ Simon said. ‘The cardinal would have told us if it had already been safely sent, surely.’
‘How would Sir Robert’s men have known that the party were there already?’ Mark said. ‘Is it possible that some other man than this Osbert killed the sentry and took the money?’
‘He could hardly carry all that money himself,’ Baldwin said. ‘I doubt one man on his own could.’
Simon frowned. ‘The man Hoppon was nearby. He could have helped take it.’
Mark nodded. ‘And when poor Anselm realised that the money was stolen, he trailed after in order to tell the camp who had taken it, and to where.’
Simon looked ahead. ‘Or Anselm saw Osbert kill the guard and decided to ta
ke the money himself. He picked up the chest and made away with it.’
‘A money chest full of silver?’ Baldwin questioned.
He was right. It would be too heavy. ‘There was Hoppon nearby. He is crippled, though. His leg is all but useless. Still, perhaps he could help a man take a chest and hide it?’
‘I have often noticed that men who have been injured will have increased abilities in other ways,’ Baldwin said. ‘A man with one weak leg will have the other much stronger, a man with poor hearing may have better eyesight than most, or a fellow who’s lost an arm will have a more powerful remaining arm to compensate. Perhaps this Hoppon is the same?’
Sir Richard gave a loud ‘Ha!’ that made Edith jump almost from her pony, while Mark blanched and threw a look of mute appeal to Simon, as though begging him to either plead with the knight to show a little restraint, or perhaps to slip a dagger into the man and silence him that way.
But the knight continued. ‘Simon, you remember that Hoppon’s house was the very nearest to the attack itself, eh? What would be easier than for the fellow to hop on over there and knock down an unsuspectin’ guard, hoick up the lucre and hobble off again, eh? Or perhaps it was the monk killed the guard, not this Osbert, and Hoppon helped him to take the chest away?’
Simon recalled the log pile outside Hoppon’s house. It was hard to imagine that he could have been involved – Simon had liked the fellow. He was as suspicious, tetchy and truculent as Simon’s old servant Hugh. But it couldn’t be denied that the man had the strength to pull large logs into his house for his fire. A man who could do that could as easily haul a money chest away.
Baldwin glanced over at him. ‘What do you think, Simon? He was nearest the site of the attack, if Sir Richard is right. If Osbert had to have an ally, perhaps Hoppon was the man?’
‘I find it hard to believe,’ Simon said after a few moments of consideration. ‘But you are right. We ought to ask him more about that night and see if he could have been involved in any way.’
He looked over his shoulder at the group of men and women behind them. Agnes and Edith appeared to have formed an alliance over the night, and even now were close together a matter of a few feet behind him. Edgar formed their rearguard, from where he could keep an eye on the women as well as Roger, whom he distrusted.
It made Simon think of another cavalcade, two weeks and a few days before, and an old man in his hovel, sitting near his fire of tree trunks, his little dog at his side, glowering at the embers as he listened to the sounds of horses and carts quietly rolling past. Simon could believe that the man would have sat there and listened – but to go from that to the picture of Hoppon leaping into the clearing and murdering a man, then carrying off a great treasure: that was too fanciful for him.
‘You say you think he could have been involved in the robbery. I doubt it. He does not seem the sort of man who would do something like that.’
‘You would trust to your belly in this?’ Baldwin asked.
‘My intuition about people has rarely been wrong,’ Simon said shortly.
Baldwin said nothing, but he gave his old friend a look of great sadness, almost mourning. Both felt that their friendship had never been so sorely tested, and Baldwin felt it all the more, for he could not even hope that Simon would ever understand his action yesterday. It was clear that for Simon, his daughter’s life was all, and his faith in Baldwin had been rocked to its foundations.
Jacobstowe
It was a pleasant little home, Edith thought as she crossed over the threshold with Agnes. Edgar was with them, and he stood outside with that little smile on his face that seemed to indicate ironic amusement about the scene around him, especially as he watched Mark limping slightly as he made his way to the church. The brother’s pony had been given to Roger for him to follow Baldwin, Simon and Sir Richard at their pace, rather than having to slow them to his own, while they rode to Hoppon’s house to question him.
Agnes had already been to fetch her little boy, a fellow christened Antony, but who had invariably been known as Ant. ‘It was my husband used to call him that,’ Agnes said sadly. ‘He always gave everyone a nickname.’
‘My husband sometimes does, too,’ Edith said. ‘He can be so childish like that.’
‘Hush, dear,’ Agnes said as Edith began to sob. She fetched a little ale in a cup and passed it to her. ‘Drink this.’
Edith took it, and wiped at her eyes. ‘I am sorry, but the thought of him lying in the gaol at Exeter fills me with horror. They were talking about putting him into court to stand for treason, and you know what that would mean. No one ever escapes from a charge like that.’
‘Perhaps he is freed already,’ Agnes said. She was at a loss for words as to how to soothe this woman.
‘I only pray that he is,’ Edith said. She snivelled a little. ‘I am sorry – I fear the loss of my man, but you are already widowed.’
‘At least I already know the worst,’ Agnes said flatly. She looked at the child in her arms. ‘But I keep waking in the middle watches of the night and wondering where he has gone. There is nothing worse than that loneliness, when you realise that he’s gone for ever.’
‘You may find another man,’ Edith said tentatively.
‘The vill may decide to impose one on me,’ Agnes said without self-pity. ‘At least it would mean food in our bellies, I suppose.’
Edith said nothing. They both knew the reality of widowhood. It was hard for a woman to survive when her man died. All too often the community would suggest alternatives, no matter how unsuitable the woman might think them. ‘It is hard when you are unfree,’ she said.
‘It is harder when you were born free,’ Agnes said. ‘But my son, he was the son of a serf, so he is a serf too. And I was married to one, so I relinquished my freedom willingly for him.’
Edith nodded. Then a vision of her husband’s face came before her eyes again, and she dissolved in tears. Agnes went to her, and the two women sobbed together for their men, one in misery at her loss, the other terrified that she would soon experience the same; both in fear for their futures.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hoppon’s house
He could hear them long before they arrived. That was one of the benefits of a little area like this. Sound travelled.
The noise of squeaking harnesses and jingling chains came to him clearly over the creaking of the trees and the soughing of the wind in the dried leaves. ‘Easy, Tab,’ he said, snapping his fingers as the dog rose on his haunches and started a low rumbling deep in his throat.
Hoppon walked from his door to the open space before it, and rested his backside on a log that lay handy. He had used this as a chopping board for so many other logs that it was scarred and notched with a thousand axe blows, but it was also in just the right position for him when he was tired from gardening or when he had returned from his daily walk down to the river to fetch water. The aches and pains of old age were inevitable, as he knew, but the gradual deterioration was depressing. There had been a time when he wouldn’t have needed so many little resting places. Before the damned fire, he would have been able to stride about his place without problem. But now every step was that little bit painful. Not outright, harsh, ferocious agony, but debilitating, slow, steady, nearly not hurting, just a constant ache that flared whenever the weather was about to change.
‘God, why didn’t you just let me die in the fire?’ he muttered. Not that he had to ask. He knew that answer already: God wanted to test him, just as the priest once told him.
‘Hoppon, God give you a good day,’ the first rider said as he sat on his horse, gazing about the place with his dark eyes.
‘God speed you, sire.’
‘You remember me?’ Simon asked, taking his horse forward until he was level with Baldwin. ‘This is the Keeper of the King’s Peace, Hoppon. We want to ask you some questions.’
‘Oh?’
‘About the night the travellers were slain,’ Baldwin said.
&nb
sp; Hoppon grunted and rose to his feet. ‘You want to know what about the night? It was dark.’
‘We think that there was a man with the travellers who was a spy and was there only to destroy all those innocents,’ Baldwin said. ‘He was with Sir Robert’s men. A one-eyed fellow called Osbert.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘You knew him?’
‘Few about here didn’t. He wouldn’t hurt me, mind. Always respectful to me, he was. But that didn’t mean he’d be the same with others. And he was always keen for profit.’
‘Do you know more about him and the robbery?’ Simon asked.
‘No.’
‘You see,’ Baldwin said, ‘we were trying to think whether this man Osbert could have had an ally near here. He would need someone who would be easy to call to his aid. A man who would be within a certain distance. Someone of strength, and determination.’
‘So you thought of me, naturally,’ Hoppon said. He jerked his chin to the south-west. ‘But I wouldn’t have seen a thing. The trees between here and there are too thick.’
‘In the dark, fires light the sky,’ Baldwin mused. ‘And in still air a scream will travel further than an arrow.’
‘I was asleep when it happened, then, for I saw no fires or lights, nor heard any cries for help.’
‘So you want us to believe that all those fellows passed by you, and you did nothing to see where they went?’
‘They were too quiet at first. The second lot made more noise, but they were later.’
‘How much later?’
‘Well, a goodly while. Perhaps as long as an hour of the night?* It was long enough for some twigs an inch and a half thick to burn right through.’
No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27) Page 35
