The King’s Justice

by E. M. Powell

  Oh, Hugo, why didn’t you see more, ask more? screamed Agnes in her own head. Why?

  ‘And that was where your betrothed, the thatcher, gets in my way again. I needed my roof mending, went to the reed pond to find Theaker. Margaret didn’t know; she’d been called away by that harridan Folkes to help some woman birthing. So there I come. Theaker’s having trouble bending down to cut a tough bunch of reeds. His own huge belly’s getting in the way. He makes a jest of it, his face all red, smiles at me, asks me to help. I roll up my sleeves without thinking.’

  Agnes let out a moan. Oh no, no, no.

  Webb gave a broad wink. ‘You know what’s coming, don’t you, flower? You’re not so daft, are you? Your Theaker notices my bandage, the one covering this cursed burn I got from your precious father. Theaker asks me about it, doesn’t seem very convinced by my vague answer. I can tell by looking at him that the lardy oaf will say something to Stanton the second he sees him. So I shove your betrothed’s head under the water, drown him in the reed pond to shut him up. He bubbles, flails, but with my hand on his neck and his own huge weight, he can’t get free.’

  Agnes thought she might be sick with horror. Then Webb made it worse.

  ‘And it felt so very, very good to make sure he’d never rise again. I’d been itching to do it anyway. Theaker had stopped me getting hold of you the night I killed your father.’ The darkness moved across his face again. ‘See, this one was your fault, really. Trouble was, your dead fat thatcher gave me yet another problem.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Stanton looked at Barling, the younger man’s face drained of all colour. ‘Agnes swore to us she would never be parted from her lover’s pendant if she’d found it on his body. Yet it’s here. Hidden in the Webbs’ house.’

  ‘While Webb is out. Out.’ Barling said the words aloud to confirm his dreadful realisation. ‘Out in the woods. In the dead of night.’

  ‘Like the night I was ambushed,’ said Stanton. ‘By a hooded figure. That killed my horse.’

  ‘Who we thought was Agnes.’

  ‘But not Agnes. Peter Webb. Not poaching. But trying to kill me.’

  ‘Just as Agnes said to me: that a hooded figure had attacked her on the night her father was murdered. And would surely have killed her too.’ Barling pulled in a sharp breath. ‘Yet the girl has been blamed for everything. By me. There is no pact between Agnes and the Webbs. It is all Peter Webb.’

  ‘Because Webb has made it so, damn him.’ Stanton shot to his feet. ‘Barling, you have to send out new orders. Straight away. Agnes is being hunted down as a murderess. If folk find her before we do, she’ll be torn apart.’ He shot to his feet.

  ‘We can do our best. But I fear we are too late.’ Barling also stood, though more slowly, the weight of guilt pressing down on him. ‘Stanton, she is probably dead already. Buried where we will never find her. Webb has used her to cover his tracks all along. Covered them so very, very well.’

  ‘But what if she’s still alive, Barling? We have to try. We must!’

  ‘Alive where, Stanton? We have searched the entire village and she is not here.’

  Stanton swore long and hard. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Precisely. Rather than rushing off in what will in all likelihood be the wrong direction, our best hope is with Peter Webb himself.’

  ‘Webb?’

  ‘Yes, Webb. The order of his home shows he fully intends to return here. Given that we are almost at daybreak, I am sure it will be soon.’ Barling picked up the poker. ‘I do not want to risk raising the alarm, for it might warn him and he would slip away.’ He pointed to the kindling hatchet. ‘You take that. We will be ready for him when he does appear. Get that rope you found ready to secure him.’

  Stanton went back over behind the loom to get it. Stopped. ‘Barling.’

  ‘What is it?’ Barling dropped his voice. ‘Have you heard something?’

  ‘No. But I’ve seen it.’ He gestured to the sacks, the ropes, the snare handles. ‘This is what Webb uses for poaching.’

  And Barling did see. ‘And he does not have them with him. That means his business out there in the woods tonight is for another matter.’

  ‘God’s eyes. It could be Agnes.’ Stanton’s anguished gaze met Barling’s. ‘Yet we have no idea where.’

  ‘But I think we do.’ Barling pulled in a sharp breath. ‘She told me about it. The glade. By the waterfall. Where she met her lover. And where Webb first attacked her.’

  ‘We could be wrong.’ Stanton bent down and grabbed the axe. ‘But I’m going, Barling.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Barling gripped the poker tighter. ‘But I don’t have your youth, your speed. So you run, Stanton. Run. Fast as you can.’

  ‘I suppose you could call it a very large problem, eh, Agnes?’ Webb sniggered.

  She couldn’t answer, her stomach still churning at the hideous end of poor Bartholomew. She hadn’t loved him. But she should have been kinder to him.

  ‘I knew I had to do something about it, and quick. Clever, see? So I run back home, no one around. Luck’s on my side; Margaret’s still at that birth. I take my handcart with its empty barrel, get to the gaol fast. No one around still. Oh, and did I mention that I’d grabbed one of my good hammers and put it under my tunic?’

  ‘Oh, dear God.’ The gaol. She knew what was coming now. The real fate of Nicholas Lindley, the man she’d held responsible for Pa’s death. The man she’d wanted hanged, that she’d screamed to the world to do so.

  ‘God had nothing to do with it.’ He grinned. ‘Just me. I get to the window, call inside to Lindley. Offer him the hammer to break his way out through the bars. Didn’t want to break them for him, mind. Otherwise, it’d be obvious they were done from the outside.’ He tapped the side of his head, grin wider than ever. ‘Always thinking, me.’ His grin dropped again in an eye-blink. The darkness was back. ‘But the bugger doesn’t bite. At least not at first. Keeps whining on about the King’s man, that Stanton, that Stanton has seen the truth and all would be well, saying he has faith in him. Faith in Stanton?’ Webb spat hard in disgust. ‘So I use Stanton’s name. My one chance to get Lindley out. Tell him that Stanton has been to question me only a short while ago. That Stanton has said to me that Lindley’s guilty. That he’ll hang. No question.’

  ‘But he wasn’t,’ she croaked. ‘He wasn’t guilty.’

  ‘Nah. But Lindley, he starts to weep. Goes on and on about how he’s innocent, but that there’s no hope for him now. I’m looking around, still no one, but that can’t last long. I have to get him out before Theaker’s found. I tell him there is hope, that he can use my hammer to break out. He’s still crying but not so hard, asks me why on earth I would help him. I tell him I don’t care if he’s telling the truth, that all I want is paying for getting him out, as I need the money. He’s crying again, says he has no money. By now I’m sweating it. Then I see his good boots. Tell him “I’ll take those.” All of a sudden he’s happier, he’s doing it. The hammer’s in his hand, the bars are loosened and out, then he’s out. I take the hammer from him, tell him “Climb in the barrel.” “Wait,” the bugger says, “my boots.” He slips them off, and I thank him. So in he gets. “Crouch down,” I say, “so I can get the lid on.” He looks up at me with those dopey dark eyes. “Thank you,” he says, and ducks his head. I bring the hammer down in one almighty strike.’ Webb punched his fist into his open palm.

  His broad, wet smile was worse than the darkness. For it was pure joy. A man’s skull. Opened. That was his joy.

  ‘And next, of course, my cleverness again,’ said Webb. ‘Dene, the stonecutter, a man who worked with hammers all day every day. Do you see, Agnes, do you?’

  ‘Not Thomas as well.’ Betray her, Thomas might have done. ‘Not my Thomas.’ But she’d loved him, loved him, loved him with all her heart.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. He fitted my story too well. And he was your fault too. If you’d not been out whoring with him in the woods, if y
ou’d stayed home in your cottage, then I wouldn’t have come robbing. See? If you’d stayed home, your Thomas would still be alive, still have his handsome face in one piece.’

  ‘Stop it. Stop.’ She shook her head, her heart shattering at the depraved logic that Webb spewed forth.

  ‘Thing is, Agnes, I really couldn’t stop,’ said Webb. ‘Not by then and not now. Like I loved thieving more than poaching, now I love hunting more than thieving. Now I know why the wolf hunts the lambs. The fawns. Not only for food but for sport.’

  ‘Killing people is no sport.’

  Webb actually squeezed her like a lover.

  ‘Oh, but it is.’ He planted a kiss on her cheek with his slack, wet lips.

  That her hands, her fists were free. Not just to shove him from her, to land blows on him for his assault. But to wipe away the damp, revolting spittle that sat on her cheek, then block her ears so she wouldn’t hear another word.

  ‘Dene’s death should have satisfied everyone that Lindley had performed his last foul deed and was gone. Yet the King’s men carried on poking their noses in. I’d had enough of them, especially that Stanton. All smiles at my wife, all swagger. Has the luck of the devil and all. He should have snapped his neck coming off that horse. That would have sent that whiny clerk scuttling back to where he came from; he’d never dare put a toe out alone. And then the fool Stanton sets off running to my door. I barely got there before him. But thanks to my quick thinking, I tell him a great story. The best, because it was partly true. That I’m a poacher. And the soft, soft ninny believes it all. Believes it because he’s so grateful to me for saving his yellow hide.’ He grinned again. ‘Didn’t save his horse, though, did he, Agnes?’

  She wouldn’t respond. He didn’t seem to notice or care. Simply carried on.

  ‘Then I’m in another search party, being the loyal man that I am, near wetting myself laughing inside as that drunk Edgar leads us all in circles. But when Edgar makes that rambling speech about not tolerating any wrongdoing ever and naming all the wrongdoers he has on his lands, I’m not laughing any more. I know I’ll be named for theft. I’d promised Edgar three years ago that I’d never do it again, on pain of losing a hand. And with Stanton now knowing about my poaching, they’d all start talking. I’d lose my hand; Edgar wouldn’t think twice. And in carrying out the sentence, they’d see the filthy burn on my arm that I got from your father. Sir Reginald Edgar had to go.’

  ‘You’ve killed Edgar as well?’ The question came out as a horrified whisper.

  ‘Course. I know the layout of the lord’s hall very well from collecting urine for my fulling shed. From my thieving, I have a way of slipping in through a damaged wall out of sight at the back of the stables. Then inside I go through a broken kitchen shutter. I pick up a knife from the kitchen, slit Edgar’s throat, then leave the solar window open as a false clue. Or should I say, you did, Agnes.’

  ‘What?’ Maybe her mind was slipping.

  He stood up abruptly and walked behind her. She couldn’t see what he was doing.

  ‘I was in a bit of a tight spot by now.’

  Still she couldn’t make out what he was doing.

  ‘After I killed Edgar, I ran to your cottage. Where you were sleeping so soundly. To be honest, I thought you’d be a better fighter. I got you here easy.’

  The sound of his footsteps, and he was back before her once more, saying words that were taking her reason.

  ‘I needed to remove any doubt about who the killer is once and for all. I figured out that you had many reasons for carrying out the murders. The whole village knows about your temper too.’ He sighed again. ‘Yes, I’d love to rape you, whore.’

  And now her mind did start to slip, and a voice that could be hers but sounded more like an animal in pain ripped from her.

  ‘But I have to deny myself the pleasure. Because it should appear to all, Agnes Smith, the vicious murderess, that you have gone to hell from your own guilt.’ He held up a perfectly knotted noose. ‘Gone there by your own fair hand.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  ‘How do you like being the hooded figure in the woods, Agnes?’ Peter’s voice was close to the sack tight on her head.

  She tried to get a curse out, but he’d silenced her with a cloth tight round her mouth.

  Unable to see, she stumbled as he forced her along, her legs free but her arms still tight by her sides.

  She’d tried to be a dead weight, but his grip could be made from iron, each step bringing her closer to her own end, yet she could do nothing to stop him.

  A plea to God, a plea to the saints, a plea to her dead pa – she’d started them all. But she could finish none, as her terror scattered her wits and all she could think of was the life being throttled from her. A sob bubbled up in her constricted throat. She’d done nothing, nothing to deserve this end, save go and lie with the man she’d loved. She shouldn’t leave this world hanged by the neck like the worst criminal.

  Like she’d screamed for Nicholas Lindley to be hanged by his. Her legs sagged again and Webb wrenched her forward.

  ‘Keep going.’

  But her legs weren’t weak from fear but from a wave of self-loathing, which threatened to crush her. She could see herself now, a harridan in the street, attacking the cowering Lindley, tearing at his face and screaming for him to die.

  And he’d done nothing to deserve it. Nothing. He’d spent days and nights waiting for his end, knowing that he was innocent of Pa’s murder and no one would be coming to save him. Sobs racked through her now, stemmed by Webb’s cruel bindings cloying her throat. All she could do was beg for Lindley’s forgiveness over and over.

  Webb jerked her to a stop. ‘We’re here, Agnes.’

  She knew they were. She could hear the constant splash of the little waterfall. A sound that had always been the music to her lovemaking with Thomas. At this dawn it signalled her death.

  He tore the sack from her head with a smirk. ‘In your special glade.’ He looked at her and grinned. ‘Tears, eh? Well, if you can’t cry over your own death, then what can you cry over?’ He held up the noose to her again. ‘I’m going to put this up now.’ He shoved her to her knees on the ground. ‘Stay there. And don’t move.’

  He walked a few steps away, threw the noose up over a tree branch. He swore. It had tangled in a thick bunch of leaves.

  Agnes watched him, her pulse beating so fast it made her shake.

  The dark leaves were turning pale green as the first light of dawn reached them. Birds were in full song.

  She didn’t want to die. And she wasn’t going to.

  Her arms were bound by her side, her mouth was gagged, a tight band at her throat closed off most of her air. But her legs were free. She could run, outrun Webb as she had that night in the woods. She knew she could. She had to. It was her last chance. She raised one knee, swaying a bit, as she couldn’t use her arms for balance.

  Webb was still busy with his rope, still cursing.

  She was up, she was off, she was running. She was gone.

  Long, unsteady strides, branches whipping her face, but she was doing this, she was—

  Her hair. Her chin snapped up, her head back as she was jerked to a painful halt by a hand behind her.

  ‘You stupid whore.’ Webb slapped her face so hard she would have fallen had he not still had hold of her hair. ‘Stupid. Stupid.’ He yanked her back the few steps she’d gone, quickly securing her to a tree with another piece of knotted rope that he pulled from his bag.

  She tried to draw in air through her nose, fill her lungs to get out a cry for help. But all she did was make muffled noises that were easily drowned out by the waking woods.

  Webb cleared the noose in a few deft twists.

  It now hung free, just above a large tree trunk.

  ‘And now we’re ready.’ He lifted her up, sat her hard on the trunk. His face was level with hers. ‘If you could see yourself, Agnes. You look exactly like the despairing sinner that I need you to b
e. All tear-stained and sorrowful. And definitely a woman who despaired enough to hang herself.’

  His hand reached for her neck, and he freed the thin strap that had been round it for so many hours, keeping her short of breath and voice.

  She pulled in deep, deep breaths through her nose, her last, she knew, her very last before the final tight embrace of the noose.

  He held the strap up in front of her. ‘Won’t be needing this no more. It did its work in sending you senseless so I could take you from your bed. No one will notice its mark once you have the noose on top.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘See? Always thinking, me.’

  Then he lifted the noose. Placed it over her head. The thick rope sat heavy on her shoulders. He closed it up, closed it so it was a light hold.

  He ripped off the gag.

  She opened her mouth, let out a scream.

  The noose tightened. Choked it off. She could still breathe, barely. Kept her mouth open. But she could hear her pulse in her head.

  ‘I’ll cut your arms free when you’re dead,’ he said. ‘You won’t have any marks on you from those linen bands. I made sure of that.’ Webb walked over to where he had secured the rope. ‘Best of all, when they find your swinging body, your face purple, your bowels and bladder voided, they won’t even put you in the hallowed ground. You’ll wander for all eternity, your name damned and a curse for all who say it. Thinking again, see?’ He grinned at her with every one of his foul teeth. ‘Now, my dear. Up you go.’

  He gave a vicious yank on the rope.

  The noose closed tighter. But the rope was so thick, she had a little air. Then he pulled and pulled and she was being lifted by her throat; her neck was taking all her weight. She couldn’t breathe. And the pain. Dear God, the pain. The pain.