by Mike Ashley
“Why should I do so?” the chaplain countered with a derisive grin. Anne did not care for it. “The Bishop’s court spared me hanging at the price of a pilgrimage. As a true son of the Church, I bow to its rule.”
Ainslie laughed harshly. “He doesn’t wish to leave England. He’d defy his sentence and become outlaw, without me behind him! And well he might! If God gives justice, he’d fall overboard and drown before clearing the Severn, or be eaten by dog-headed men in Spain. Yet I’d liefer save God the trouble.”
“No, not in Spain,” Mandeville amended. “The Cynocephales, I can tell you, do not dwell in Spain, but much further, in the island called Nacumera, among the Isles of Ind. They fight well, and if they take any man in battle, in due course they do eat him. But your way will not take you there. Unless the Bishop has commanded that you travel beyond Cathay.”
“He has not,” answered Leonard the Chaplain. Hardened rascal though he appeared to be, he had listened to Mandeville with a child’s fascination. “How do you know all this?”
“I voyaged there with my uncle as a boy,” the herald answered casually. “Now then, Master Ainslie, you have not answered me.”
“I keep the axe.”
“Not while you travel with us, and there are six lusty shipwrights and a clothier’s bodyguard to support me,” Mandeville told him. “The axe?”
Ainslie glowered. Then, with a shrug and short laugh, he spun his weapon into the roadside grass. Its edge bit into the soil and the long haft stood up.
“Take care of it, herald, if you like a whole skin. By Saint Paul! I apprise you all that this dog has a purse crammed with gold florins, spoil of his robberies. I make it known to all we meet in the hope that some rogue will slay him for it.”
He received a malign look from the chaplain. “And in return I apprise all that whosoever will kill this man may have my gold with no need for robbing.”
Ainslie laughed scornfully. Anne reckoned his contempt might be well founded. He didn’t look like a man who would be killed easily.
“That’s a merry pair to have joined us,” she murmured to Johan later. “I cannot like either. Which one do you believe, squire?”
“I cannot say I wholly believe either. But the tale of the big rough one rings more true. The chaplain looks to be as shifty a liar as I’ve encountered.”
“I haven’t been in Bedfordshire,” Anne said, “and don’t know Sir Oliver Ketters, but is it right that robber lords often have their worst henchmen appointed castle chaplains? Finding it useful to have them, through benefit of clergy, exempt from hanging?”
“Right as rain. It’s full often done. Indeed, you may say that being a chaplain reflects very badly on a man’s character.”
Anne cocked her head and stuck her thumbs in her belt like a jaunty youth. She was practised in such attitudes by now. “Aye, Johan. It’s a great shame what naughty rogues there are.”
Johan de Mandeville, who finding himself masterless after the plague had survived among jugglers, minstrels and fairground riff-raff, and penned for coin many a false reference, writ of exemption from armed service, or certificate of freedom, had lost the knack of blushing.
“Lamentable,” he agreed, “but not our concern. What we must do, Martin, my lad, is gain steady employment as heralds again. With Lord Winchlade, maybe, once we reach Marlborough. I reckon that purple and silver livery would become us.”
“And steady eating more so.” Anne’s stomach rumbled. A wild cry interrupted them. Turning, Anne saw a wrinkled old woman hobbling across the resilient turf of the downs, lugging a covered basket and calling out with more spirit than coherence. Splashing through the roadside ditch, she favoured them with an all-embracing glare.
“Rascals! I ask for justice! Ill-doing – slaughter! My pig!”
“I cannot tell what your pig is to do with us, old woman,” the cloth-merchant said testily.
“Some rascal in this train has killed him!”
“We’d smell roasting pork a mile if that were so. None here is breaking his fast with fresh pig. I wish we were!”
“I’faith, I agree with that,” Anne said fervently.
“Did I say stole? Did I say ate? Nay, the devils stuck him and let him lie! Why, I know not. He was my only meat for the winter. See here!” The crone uncovered her basket and showed a bloody pig’s head. “I cry for justice!”
“Salt him or smoke him, then. That’s justice, for the meat will still be yours. D’you think we’d slay a pig and be such fools as to leave the carcass?”
“It’s a cogent argument, old dame,” Mandeville assured her. “Have you enemies who might do such a thing to spite you? Withal, I will give you a silver crown for that pig’s head here and now, to spare you the exertion of lugging the burden back.”
The woman accepted his offer gladly. A shilling would have been enough, not that Anne begrudged it. That Mandeville was generous to poor folk helped her stomach his triple-dyed rogueries. His traveller’s tales of Cathay and the Isles of Ind were harmless by comparison, though to the best of Anne’s knowledge he had not been further than France, and maybe a principality or two in the Low Countries.
“Dinner!” he said delightedly of the pig’s head.
“Yes, and I’m glad to have it. Still I’m puzzled, for squire, why would anyone kill the old woman’s pig only to leave it on the earth?”
Mandeville shrugged. “Spite, as I said. Or someone disturbed them before they were done, and they scuttled away craven. Lad, if you wonder why folk do a tithe of the idiot things they do, you will lose your wits fretting over it.”
The party travelled on towards Marlborough, beside the Kennet’s clear waters, with Savernake Forest to the north of them. Ainslie, black-bearded and dire, strode never more than arm’s reach from Leonard the Chaplain.
At mid morning they passed a patch of green oakwood. Ainslie said abruptly, “I’m going yonder. Watch him well.”
Anne felt astonished that he would leave the man he hated even for a call of nature. Still, he made for the oakwood with a long urgent stride that left small doubt of his need. The chaplain stared after him with sulphurous hatred.
Then he cried out. Before Ainslie quite reached the wood, two tall figures burst from cover and attacked him with cattle-killing spears. Roaring furiously, he fought back with a heavy sax-knife he pulled from his belt, but the long spears drove into his body so that blood spurted in freshets. The chaplain howled with delight.
Johan, disgusted, struck him so that he fell in the roadway. Despite his stocky form and short limbs, the herald carried useful muscle under his plumpness. Leonard lay groaning.
By the oakwood, Ainslie had gone down and nothing could be seen but his legs kicking, as his two assailants drove their spears down time and again. Mandeville seized the woodcutter’s axe, then made for the oakwood with his short legs pumping. Three shipwrights and the clothier’s bodyguard soon overtook, then distanced him. Anne ran with them, whirling the sling with which she had become skilful since she left home. Although she had nothing to add to the puissance of five strong men, she passed for a man herself. To show a white feather was to risk being bullied and perhaps exposed as a girl.
The murderers fled into the oakwood. They dragged Ainslie’s reddened body with them, for some reason Anne could not conceive. What use had they for his corpse?
Mandeville, a scowl of loathing on his rubicund face, knelt by the patch of gory grass and inspected it closely, even touching a splash of blood and rubbing it between his fingers. Then he lifted it to his nostrils and sniffed several times. A frown of astonishment took the place of his scowl. After thinking deeply for a moment, he tasted the blood, which rather repelled Anne. Nor did he explain why.
She knew him well enough to be sure there was a reason. She copied his actions, all but the last. Perhaps having just witnessed a brutal slaying disordered her mind, but she learned nothing. Mandeville still made no comment.
Anne sought a clue in his face. Oddly, he looke
d as puzzled as she felt, and a good deal less grim, almost as though his heart had grown lighter since he saw Ainslie die. Why should that be? Ainslie had not been likeable – a harsh, violent man bent on revenge – but he’d had strong cause to hate the chaplain – his nephew’s murder. Leonard did not even protest his innocence. Ainslie at least observed the law and would take no more than it allowed. Dogging the chaplain’s footsteps all the way from Bedfordshire, he must have had many an opportunity to brain him in secret – as he yearned to do – and yet had refrained.
“Let’s see whether we can track these murderers,” Mandeville said. “I’ve hunted often enough in noble company, and so have you, Martin.”
In Yorkshire, Anne had been a baron’s daughter. Like other highborn girls, her part in noble hunts had been more decorative than anything else, but her role as a young man had to be maintained. She stayed close to Mandeville and avoided treading on any tracks he might discover.
They proved to be few, and Mandeville lost them a furlong into the oakwood. The ones he saw he studied with care. Again, Anne was hoping for a comment, but Mandeville made none. She stared at three footprints he had found in a patch of leaf-mould, for they seemed to interest him more than anything else, but they told her little. Just footprints, and so vague she could not even discern what sort of shoes had made them, though the man who left them must have been legging it energetically. The stride was long and his feet had come down hard. Certes, that was only to be expected from a man fleeing the scene of a murder.
“This wood is not large,” Anne said. “The men in our band of travellers would suffice to search it, and the slayers are two; not enough to give us trouble if we caught them. Meseems that would be better than going ten miles to raise the posse in Marlborough!”
“True.” Mandeville rubbed his chin. “Go fetch the rest of the shipwrights, lad. That brawny mason, too. Just for mischief, ask the banker’s messenger with his silk, plume and dagged mantle to lend a hand. He’ll refuse, no doubt, but it’ll put him to the blush, saying no.”
The most thorough search they could make did not flush the murderers out of the little oakwood. Stranger yet, they found no trace of Ainslie’s corpse. Anne reckoned that baffling to the highest degree.
“I can believe the murderers might escape clear,” she said in dudgeon. “We have neither dogs nor archers, and the stream is not far distant. With a boat waiting, they could don’t, but a man’s dead carcass can’t vanish. And why should they take it with them?”
“That’s indeed the question,” Mandeville agreed. “Why take a dead carcass with them? Plainly enough they slew him to earn Master Leonard’s purse, but if I know rogues they must have come to some sort of firm arrangement with him first, for what would they do if he reneged? Bring his Nemesis back to life to plague him again?” He shook his head. “I must have a word with our holy chaplain.”
His “word” was not mild.
“You precious villain, this is your doing!” he raged. “The devil’s in it, but these two murderers were among those who heard of your promise to reward any who’d slay Ainslie!”
“What if they were?” the chaplain retorted. “I stood lawful trial and am carrying out my sentence; it was not for him to hinder. He’s crow’s meat now. Should I pretend to grieve? What affair is it of yours, master herald?”
“I’m a squire, from a family of coat-armour,” Mandeville barked, “and not the king himself would ‘master’ me. Withal, to answer your question, it’s my affair and that of all these good folk, because the murderers are like to track you for the dirty payment you offered. And, Master Leonard – I shall not prevent their cutting your throat if they don’t receive it.”
“You need not fret.” Master Leonard grinned unpleasantly. “Meseems they were hard men, to dispose of Ainslie. I’ll yield them my purse if they come for it. Why, they’d slay me else.”
“Yea,” Mandeville said ironically, “that would be woeful sad.”
He turned away in dudgeon. Despite his own rogueries, the chaplain’s depraved and utter lack of principle repelled him. He was scarcely the only one. The pretty Prioress would not look at Leonard, and even the clothier’s bodyguard, a rough, ill-looking fellow, kept his distance.
“It’s as though those two wolf’s-heads had vanished from the earth,” he growled to Anne. “What do you make of it? They must desire to be paid for their murder from the chaplain’s fat purse, and they must remain close to him to receive their due. In their place, what would you do, my chick?”
“In their place? I’d follow and seek a chance to talk with him privately. I’d also be wary lest he hand me over to the law. After all, I should be guilty of Ainslie’s murder, and the chaplain is not – or not that any man can testify. It’s a foul business, Johan.”
“Oh, granted. It distresses you, Martin, doesn’t it?”
“Sieur Jesu!” Anne erupted. “Bloody murder done before my eyes, and I helpless to stop it? Yes! It distresses me, rather.”
“Yea, you’re a sweeting,” Mandeville said indulgently, making Anne fume thereby. “Yet think, as you haven’t done yet, and there are aspects of that bloody murder which must strike you as curious. Ainslie was going into that wood – to relieve himself, I suppose – at the time those wolf’s-heads attacked him. Why did they rush out? Wouldn’t most murderers wait until he entered the trees and slay him there, rather than do the deed before witnesses, in high daylight? Apply the wits God gave you, and you will find several other things about it equal odd.”
Anne knotted her brows. What Mandeville said was very true, and he had made it clear by now that the murder of Ainslie was more than it appeared. Also that he felt disappointed in her acumen.
Beaming across his ruddy, chestnut-bearded face, Mandeville added, “Let me tell you something about Master Leonard, too. It’s nothing direct to do with the murder, but I ought to apprise you. His sentence was light because he has benefit of clergy, he told us, and so can be tried in ecclesiastical courts only, which cannot condemn malfeasors to death. He even displayed the bishop’s warrant that appointed him a castle chaplain.”
“Well?” Anne prompted.
“It’s not worth a sheep’s dag. No Bishop’s clerk made it out. I ought to know. I penned it myself, oh, three years ago, during the plague. Told you I’ve been in Bedfordshire. By the Host, so I was! I was Sir Oliver Ketters’s captive and clerk all that winter. Moving, eloquent ransom notes I wrote at his orders, Martin. Besides forging that chaplain’s appointment for Leonard. By the way, this is not the same man, which is why I didn’t know him, nor he me. We must take it the original Leonard of Dunstable is dead.”
“This rascal succeeded to his place with Sir Oliver and assumed his name also?”
“It’s probable.”
“The Bishop’s court never knew this when he came before it on charges? Hades, what a muddle! I suppose half its former members were dead in the pestilence, though. You are saying this impostor has no entitlement of any sort to benefit of clergy?”
“No. He has it. Another man’s entitlement that was counterfeit anyhow. Ainslie neither knew it nor could ever have proved it, I daresay. I copied the Bishop’s seal well.”
“Saints, what a tangle!” Anne rounded on Mandeville with her eyes blazing. “And where are you going to put justice?”
“What justice?” the herald asked patiently. “Benefit of clergy is a bad custom whether a man enjoys it under false pretence or not. We have agreed on that.”
“The fellow murdered Ainslie’s nephew and then Ainslie! Or might as well ha’ done! He should have danced on air!”
“That’s passion, not thinking,” Mandeville complained. “How often must I say to you that you are not using your wits?”
“Johan! Your forging pen saved this rogue from the gallows! We saw a man done to death by his contriving! Will you do nothing about it?”
“Yes,” Mandeville said with sudden energy. “I shall. That long woodcutter’s axe of Ainslie’s is ill to hav
e around me. It shivers with bloody, vengeful intent. Bad luck only can attend the thing, and I mean to bury it in the earth at the first convenient moment. Martin, my comrade, you may help me instead of carping. Now stint your noise.”
Anne gritted her teeth. However, if Johan had not explained all, he had still been explicit that there was more to this matter than met the eye. What had she not seen? The murderers had been madly rash in letting witnesses see them kill Ainslie, and witnesses, at that, who might pursue. (As they had.) But she had thought no more of it than that. Some men were both bloody and rash.
Why, though, had they carried away his body, and what was there about his gore on the ground that had interested Johan so? Anne cast her mind back to that hour. She tried to see the dark blood on the grass, to feel and smell it once more. Johan had found some great meaning in it, she knew, and she had studied the blood herself in an effort to discern what.
Oh.
Anne, remembering the precise look of those dark and sticky stains, splashed about, drawing flies, felt a blaze of enlightenment.
Oh!
No wonder Johan had said, more than once, that she was not using her wits.
Nothing was as it had seemed, nothing at all. Johan’s avowed intention to bury Ainslie’s axe included. Anne, staggered, sought to regain her presence of mind and paint her entire picture of the situation again, in other colours. A dozen questions came to mind while she did so, some concerning the two men she had seen spear Ainslie in such a savage onslaught. Would the chaplain (she might as well continue to think of him as one) see them again, after all, and would they dare come to him demanding their blood money for the slaying? Unless Master Leonard (his real name might be anything, and Anne did not care) turned from the highway, the pair would have to venture upon it to confront him. Anne did not envision their doing that until they could catch him alone. They would require to watch him very closely, though, lest he give them the slip meanwhile. They must be skulking after the band of travellers, waiting for the time they and Master Leonard would part.
“Johan, I see now what you have been hinting at,” she murmured as they walked, the clothier’s pack-horses clopping behind them, the clothier himself and the Lombard dandy riding ahead. “Do not tell me it is late! Just tell me what you wish to do. Anything? We reach Marlborough today, and you and I go no further. Can we leave this business as it stands?”
