A Man's Word (The King's Hounds series)

by Martin Jensen

  Turstan snorted haughtily.

  Winston furrowed his brow and tugged on his nose without any other visible response to the thane’s arrogant demeanor. Finally Winston looked up at Turstan and said, “Do you mean that if one man can perjure himself for a friend, a farmer’s companions can do the same?”

  “Is it your claim that Darwyn and Bardolf perjured themselves?” Turstan exclaimed, reddening with anger.

  Winston stared Turstan in the eyes for a while, then cleared his throat and asked calmly if Turstan was claiming that he believed otherwise.

  I noticed the ring-clad soldier jump to his feet, but Turstan didn’t move at all. Finally Turstan shook his head slowly and said, “Are you claiming that farmers can’t do the same?”

  Now it was Winston’s turn to shake his head. “The chance exists, but it’s small.”

  “Oh?” Turstan evidently didn’t agree.

  “Two men can lie and keep it under wraps. In my experience, the more men who are in on a lie, the harder it is to keep hidden.”

  “But not impossible,” Turstan said, biting his lip.

  “No, not impossible.”

  “And have you seen this Arnulf?”

  Winston shook his head. “Not since he left the tavern yesterday afternoon.” He turned to look at me, and now it was my turn to shake my head.

  “And,” Winston continued, “my lady and I were sitting here until late last night without any sign of him.”

  Willibrord, who had stood by silently until now, took a step forward and said that he had locked the door before Winston and Alfilda went upstairs.

  “And were these farmers back by then?” Turstan asked, staring hard at him.

  Willibrord cleared his throat and replied, “They had been back for a while. Winston’s company was the last to leave, and then I put the crossbar on the door.”

  So Alfilda and Winston had closed the place down with the coin makers.

  Winston rubbed his chin and said, “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking, Reeve Turstan?”

  There was a glint in Turstan’s eye. Then he looked at his soldier and didn’t say anything until the soldier nodded.

  “That something happened to Arnulf the Farmer.”

  That thought had occurred to me ages ago, but had been supplanted by another: maybe he just went home, sick with grief at having been hoodwinked out of his silver?

  Turstan turned to Alwyn and Sigvald and asked, “You’re sure this Arnulf didn’t sleep in the room last night?”

  Sigvald was definitely scrawny, but when he stood up he radiated self-confidence.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to convince you of for ages,” Sigvald said.

  “Should I send out the men?” the soldier asked, opening his mouth for the first time. His voice was deep and scratchy. My guess was that he’d shut down some other drinking establishment the previous night.

  “He’ll be found,” Turstan said. “Until then, everyone must stay here.”

  Winston argued, “But there are men here who know him.”

  Turstan retorted, “And who could find him and warn him if they wanted.”

  Now it wasn’t self-confidence but indignation oozing out of Sigvald’s slender body.

  “We have no reason to want anything other than to lead our friend safely here, so again, by our oaths, we repeat that he must be innocent,” Sigvald said.

  “All the same,” Turstan said, brushing Sigvald off, “you’ll stay here until we’ve found him.”

  “There are six men outside,” Turstan told his soldier. “Leave two to guard the door so no one leaves without the host’s word that they’re not staying here.” Out of consideration for Willibrord’s right to profits he didn’t order the door closed to thirsty or hungry tavern customers. “Have the other four go through the market and the town with a fine-toothed comb.”

  “My man knows Arnulf and has no stake in this case,” Winston said with a glance at me. “He’d be happy to go along.”

  I shot an annoyed look at Winston. First of all, I’d been planning to get a little rest after the previous night’s feats. Second, I didn’t hear him volunteering his own services.

  Turstan hesitated, then nodded.

  “Stigand! You two go together,” Turstan ordered.

  With a sulky glance at Winston, I crossed the room and opened the door for Stigand, who indicated I should go first.

  13

  Stigand was a man of few words. In clipped sentences he told the guards to find the man who had lost his case before the court the previous day.

  “You all saw him?” he asked them.

  They nodded, and two of them were curtly ordered to take up position outside the doors to the inn to carry out Turstan’s orders. The other four were dispatched into town with a hand gesture.

  Stigand stood quietly in the morning sun until a shiver ran through his body, like someone waking up from a dream, and he looked me over.

  “You’re carrying a sword,” he pointed out.

  “As are you.” Stigand had a leather-hilted weapon hanging at his hip.

  His brow furrowed but then immediately smoothed out again. Then he shrugged and said, “Let’s go.”

  Silence didn’t scare me. I was fond of it myself and had once pointed out to Alfilda that one of the reasons I welcomed her as Winston’s woman was that now she was the object of his sometimes suffocating torrent of words, which could drive me crazy when he wasn’t busy with his artwork or investigating a case.

  The market wasn’t overly crowded yet, so early in the day. You could see down the alleys and streets, so if Arnulf suddenly showed up, we would spot him, not that I imagined that was an option. The man had surely—as I’d thought at the tavern—either headed home or had fallen victim to a nobleman’s revenge, whether Delwyn had doled out the payback himself or left it to someone else. Therefore I didn’t spend much time looking down streets. Nor did Stigand, who likely thought as I did.

  Instead we looked under buckboards and behind counters and benches; we lifted up tent flaps, stepped into market stalls and small shops (despite their owners’ protests), and peered into dark corners and behind sacks and barrels. We spent most of the late morning this way without running into anything other than a couple of drunk merchants, who were sleeping it off, and in one spot, a whore servicing a greasy tradesman, who just gave us a quick glance and proceeded to finish up with her.

  Stigand and I hadn’t exchanged many words during our survey of the market stalls, just a “look over there” or “I already checked that one,” but we didn’t get in each other’s way at all.

  Now I stopped at the sight of a wool merchant’s stall.

  The seller was skinny as a spear shaft, stooped, and bald apart from a greasy braid at the nape of his neck. His face was sharp, his skin like one of Winston’s parchments after he’d stretched it on the frame, his cheeks hollow, his neck alarmingly thin, and his runny eyes deep set.

  It was no surprise Brigit was expecting to inherit before too long.

  She stood behind him, her eyes virtuously downcast, which was probably necessary since every single man nearby was openly ogling her. And for good reason. Her hair gleamed in the sun, and her full cheeks glowed. The curves of her breasts were visible beneath her blouse, because although she had demurely tossed a cape over herself, she let it hang open in the front. When she moved to lift a piece of cloth or hold up a tunic, she ran her hands down the front of her body, seemingly at random, emphasizing her curves.

  I stepped over to the market stall, held up a cap to her, and asked what it would cost. With a virtuous curtsy, she replied that if I wanted to buy something, I should speak to her husband.

  I glanced at the old man, who—between coughs—was working on convincing a corpulent matron of the quality of a piece of woven cloth. I leaned forward and whispered to Brigit, “Tonight?”

  “Maybe,” she said. She didn’t look me in the eye until she’d turned and started folding a sweater.

/>   Stigand cleared his throat behind me.

  I waited. The old man increased his efforts to close the sale. Brigit placed the sweater in a stack of sweaters and then turned to me. She was still looking demurely at the ground.

  “My husband will be ready to sell the hat to you momentarily.”

  Impatience made my throat constrict.

  “Tonight?” I hissed as quietly as I could.

  She responded with a shrug and then turned her back to me. I felt Stigand’s hand on my arm and tugged firmly to pull myself free. Stigand was strong.

  “We’re carrying out the reeve’s orders,” he reminded me and pulled me along without further ado.

  I stopped, dug in my heels, and leaned away from him, only to be tugged farther.

  “Let go of me,” I said, angrily slapping his hand where it grasped my arm.

  He did as I asked and we walked side by side down the street while I tried to calm the flush in my face. After a minute he veered off into an ale tent. I followed, wondering if I should punch him, but realized that with the strength he’d demonstrated, I would be wise to refrain.

  Soon we were sitting across from each other, each with a tankard. He raised his, drank, and set the tankard back down half-empty.

  “Ah, that helped,” he said.

  I didn’t respond, just drank, staring at the table in front of me.

  “I don’t think that Arnulf fellow is at the market,” Stigand said.

  I looked up and found him watching me calmly.

  “He might have ridden back home to the village.” It annoyed me to have to speak civilly to Stigand, but unless I wanted to fight him, I was going to have to swallow my pride.

  “Perhaps he fled,” Stigand said.

  “Why would he have reason to do that? He didn’t kill Darwyn,” I said, shaking my head.

  “According to his pals anyway,” Stigand said.

  “They’re telling the truth,” I said. “I’m convinced. As my master pointed out, it’s hard to hide a lie among more than two men.”

  “Still, he could have run away.”

  “Why?” I asked, but then I understood. “Out of fear that Delwyn didn’t care what the farmers said and was going to kill him simply out of anger at his son’s death.”

  “It’s been known to happen,” Stigand said.

  We drank for a bit while I pondered. Once our tankards were empty, we ordered two new ones, which we drained in silence.

  “His horse!” I said, standing up. “Let’s go down to the paddock and look.”

  Now that the market had picked up, it took a little while to get through. Just as we were passing the woolen ware stall, we had to stand still for a few moments until the crowds moved ahead. I glanced over and noticed Brigit standing as before, but her husband was sitting behind her enjoying a slab of pork.

  I don’t know if she noticed me looking or was just tired of standing around like a virtuous wife, but she looked up and stared at me. Then so quickly that I had to wonder if it had really happened, she winked, puckered her lips, and went right back to looking virtuous.

  Stigand gave a rumbling laugh and said, “She’s good, that one.”

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I jabbed my shoulder into a stubborn, rough-looking Viking who was trying to push his way not past but through me. I thrust a fist into his soft belly at the same time and heard him gasp for air as he yielded. Once I squeezed by him, things were better.

  My red gelding came running over when he saw me, snorting and nuzzling my hand, but was disappointed that I’d come empty-handed.

  “Do you see it?” Stigand yelled. Then he burped loudly, causing a couple of the horses in the paddock to look up.

  The gray mare was grazing peacefully next to Atheling, which said quite a bit about the mare’s ability to assert herself.

  “He didn’t take his horse,” I announced.

  Stigand turned so that his back was to the wattle fence surrounding the paddock and burped again, although somewhat more discreetly this time. Then he jutted his chest out, took a deep breath, and exhaled with a sound like a bellows.

  “Do you own land?” he asked.

  I looked at him, confused, and then realized he was back to wondering why I carried a sword.

  “Not currently,” I said.

  “Either you own land or you don’t.” He laughed his rumbling laugh. “Why do you carry the sword?”

  My story was no secret; so many people knew it by now.

  “My father lost his life at the Battle of Assandun along with my brother. All of my inheritance went to the Danes,” I explained.

  “The sword indicates that you think you’re a thane.”

  I bit my lip. My hopes for my future, unlike what I’d just told him, were not common knowledge.

  “I carry the sword so that I can protect my master, Winston the Illuminator.”

  Stigand raised his eyebrows, so I explained further, even though I thought that should have sufficed.

  “He carries valuable items with him. An illuminator uses not only gold, but also other expensive materials to carry out his work.”

  Stigand was quiet. Maybe he believed me.

  “And you? How many hamlets do you own?” I asked him.

  He chuckled. “None. My father is still alive.”

  Ah, so he served the reeve while awaiting his inheritance. But it turned out I was wrong.

  “And so is my older brother,” he continued. “When my old man dies, my inheritance will be the sword I’m wearing.”

  I turned to look at him and detected a faint smile. We nodded to each other in mutual recognition that we both hoped that one day we would regain the right to claim we were thanes.

  We stood next to each other, enjoying the sun’s warmth. The horses grazed behind us, and we heard the sounds of swishing tails as they slapped at the buzzing flies. And then there was a new sound, a horse’s worried whinny.

  We turned and saw my red gelding all the way down by the river behind a large gorse bush. He stamped his front hooves, anxiously flung his head, and showed the whites of his eyes, before rearing and running away from the bush.

  Leaving the fence behind us, we strode through the grass. A couple of horses had gone over to the bush, curious to see what had frightened the gelding, and now they too reared and whinnied and started galloping around the paddock, which made all the animals anxious, so it was like walking through a thunderstorm of hoofbeats.

  We reached the gorse bush and walked around to the far side.

  Stigand cocked his head and gave me a questioning look. I nodded.

  We had found Arnulf.

  Noses on the Trail

  14

  A lot had happened since Stigand and I bent over Arnulf’s dead body.

  He had been lying curled up on his side with his hand pressed to his right side, as if he wanted to stop the blood that was flowing out of him, but when we rolled him onto his back, we saw he’d been stabbed in several places.

  Arnulf’s collar was soaked with blood from a thin cut on the neck, the fingers of his left hand and right forearm had gashes, and when I opened his right hand, it was similarly cut up. His shirt was full of holes and bloody from a small stab wound below his breastbone.

  I carefully placed my hand under the dead man’s shoulder and lifted him long enough to see the grass beneath him, and then glanced at Stigand, who straightened up. He looked around the paddock as if whoever had committed the murder was waiting for us, which I told him was not the case.

  “He’s been lying here all night,” I said.

  Stigand’s eyes widened a bit, curious at how I knew that.

  “His clothes are still damp from the dew,” I explained. “But his back is dry.”

  “The horse didn’t find him until just now?”

  I heard the skepticism in his voice and scanned the meadow. About thirty paces away from us, the grass had been trampled down into mud and sand leading all the way to the river.

  “The horses ha
ve been drinking over there,” I said.

  He nodded. “So why did the red one come down here earlier?”

  I pointed out that there was really no way for me to explain that. “Who knows why a horse thinks the way it does?” I peered across the river at the northern part of town. The buildings over there all faced away from the river.

  Stigand noticed what I was looking at and said, “A few windows on this side would have been nice.”

  “Would it have helped, though?” I said with a shrug. “If the murder took place after sunset, it would have been dark over here.”

  He shook his head, which confused me until I realized he was right.

  “It was a full moon,” I said.

  “But the buildings are so close together it’s hard to believe anyone would have squeezed through those narrow side yards to stand and stare at the river. Oh well,” he continued almost cheerfully, “it doesn’t matter. We already know who did it.”

  I opened my mouth to correct him, but decided against it. Instead I asked if he wanted to inform the reeve.

  He bit his lip and glanced back over at our part of town. He spotted two of his men and shouted for them to come over. They obeyed, eyes widening at the sight of the body, but silently took up position, promising to guard the body until we had more specific orders.

  We parted at the ale stand, and I continued on to the inn, where the door was still under guard. I found Winston and Alfilda in the tavern engaged in idle conversation with the two coin makers, who were listening raptly to Winston.

  I walked up behind the coin makers, facing my companions, and waited for Winston to finish his speech.

  Alfilda looked at me first. Her eyes looked a little glazed over from boredom. Then she noticed the fire in my eyes and put her hand on Winston’s arm. Winston glanced at her with regret and continued pontificating, but when he saw my expression he paused. The coin smiths turned around and peered at me with curiosity.

  “Master Erwin,” Winston said standing up. “And you, Harold. You’ll have to excuse us.”

  Their faces fell, and they sat for a moment, at a loss for what to do. Then Erwin stood up, bowed aloofly to Alfilda and walked stiffly toward the door followed by his journeyman.