The Dead Don't Wai

by Michael Jecks

  When I asked, I was told that the mill was out to the north of the village, and I did not bother to fetch my horse, but set off on foot. Anything to escape the accusatory stares of Dorothy and Harknet – and the loud voice of Sir Richard.

  I walked up the road, trying to avoid the worst of the potholes. I can remember hearing once about a man who was walking on a road near an abbey, which had the duty to maintain the roads in its area, when he came across a hat. It looked to be of good quality, so he picked it up, only to find that the owner was still wearing it. ‘Please keep the hat,’ the fellow said, ‘but first, I beg, help me out of this pothole!’

  It is said that the abbeys and monasteries used to be very lax and often neglected their duties when it came to maintaining the roads and lands under their control. As long as the religious folk kept up their standard of living, they didn’t care about the others who depended on them, so I kept clear of potential potholes, which meant avoiding all the puddles.

  The mill was down a narrow lane upstream of the village, its path heavily wooded on both sides, with trees and bushes that encroached on the roadway, and branches that met overhead, blotting out any view of the clouds. What with the lack of sun and the shadow of the branches, it was a gloomy walk. I began to feel that there were eyes in the woods, watching me. As the trees blocked out more and more of the sky, I grew aware of a tingling at my scalp. My heart began to beat a little faster, and it was not the exercise. I heard a strange noise, a dull thud, as if a man had slammed into a tree, and span around, to see – nothing. I stood, staring about me with the expectation of … something. I didn’t know what: a ghost, an outlaw, a sudden slamming agony from an arrow, anything! More likely, I told myself, it was just Ben once more. But then there was another crackle, as of a stick breaking underfoot – yet I could see no one. It made my hackles rise, as if there was in truth a ghost stalking me.

  Eventually, I gave up and walked on down the lane. But even as I continued, the sense of lingering danger remained with me. Stories of old witches who lived in the woods came to my mind, and when there was another snap, as of a step breaking a stick, I felt the sweat burst out at brow and armpits. It was a struggle not to dash down the path in a panic. I cast glances over my shoulder every few paces, and at one point I thought I saw a figure moving amidst the trees.

  However, I am nothing if not bold. I stiffened my back, and if I happened to walk a little more swiftly, well, I have often heard that a trot is a most restful and effective means of travel.

  Nonetheless, by the time I reached the miller’s house, I was a nervous wreck, clutching the grip of my gun in one hand like a talisman, while my left had a solid grasp of my dagger. My hands felt incapable of releasing them, they were clenched so tightly.

  The mill was a tall building, with two storeys. To reach it I had to cross a small bridge over the leat, and then walk down to the door. The wheel was still just now, the leat almost empty.

  When I knocked, the place rang hollow. You know how a building that is empty can sound like a box with nothing inside? I have often noticed that a house with people inside sounds full of life, like a drum or cymbal, somehow, but the same home with everyone dead or fled sounds utterly different, as though everything has been sucked from it and all that remains is an echoing shell. I tried again after a few minutes, but there was no response. Setting my hand to the latch, I pushed, and the door slowly swung wide.

  ‘Hello?’ I called, and even to my own ear I sounded nervous. Still, it was better to be inside than out, with that feeling of being pursued by an invisible wraith of some sort, and I slipped inside in a hurry.

  The place was like most mills of my acquaintance. It smelled damp and slightly of mould. There was a hollow, empty feeling about the place, and the strange noises that a mill will often contain: creakings and groanings from timbers under stress.

  ‘Hello?’ I called again, but I knew there would be no answer. The place was deserted.

  Reluctantly, I stepped inside. The boards of the floor had not been swept since the last milling. That was dangerous. Even I knew that the dust from milling could grow explosive. If a man lit a candle, the whole place could go up like a tub of gunpowder. That was why millers tended to be careful, thoughtful men, who were keen to sweep the floors regularly, often with a bucket of water first. It was surprising to see that this miller had left his place in such a mess.

  There was a short step up to a platform on the right, and over that a ladder up to the next floor, where the grain would be dropped into the hoppers. On the platform I could see the grinding wheels, and the chute down which the flour would fall. When I went to it, the little floury deposits which lay in the channel were damp to the touch. With the moisture all about, that was hardly surprising, but it showed that the mill had not been in use for a little while. The miller would have swept this of all damp, old flour regularly, so that no damp entered his sacks of fresh flour. A little damp flour could easily turn a sack rancid. If the flour had been left in the chutes long enough to get damp, the mill could not have been used for several days.

  At the other side of the room there was a bedchamber, separated from the rest of the space by a thick curtain. The miller had obviously created a chamber in the drier part of the room for himself and his wife to sleep in. Many peasants had such rooms, often built in the eaves, made from simple planks on which a palliasse could be rested, up away from rats and other pests.

  I walked about the mill, but there was no sign of any occupants. I went outside and looked at the mechanism of the wheel, then at the leat itself. I had heard from a friend once that the commonest way for a miller to die was by falling into his own machinery or drowning in his leat, but there were no bodies here.

  Inside once more, I glanced at the bedchamber’s curtain. It was the only place where I had not looked so far. Reluctantly, I set my hand to the fabric and pulled it aside until I could peer into the gloom of the bedchamber. With relief, I saw that there was no dead body inside, only a mess of bedding.

  And then I almost bolted from the place when my nose discerned the horrible metallic odour of blood.

  Sir Richard stood by the curtain and grunted. It was dark inside, with the growing twilight, but no one was of a mind to strike a light with all the flour dust around. He reached inside and grabbed the blankets, throwing them out. Then he pulled the palliasse out, too. To my delight, the first blanket completely enveloped Harknet, who happened to be standing nearest to the bedchamber.

  ‘Ugh!’ someone exclaimed, seeing the state of the blanket.

  Harknet gradually reappeared. I enjoyed his look of restrained fury as he pulled the last fold from his head and retrieved his cap from the depths of it. Only then did he see what everyone else had already noticed: the blood.

  ‘Ye can all see this, hey?’ Sir Richard demanded, staring about him. There was a freezing anger about him as he spoke. I got the impression that if I were to touch his skin, I would stick to it like flesh to frozen metal.

  He picked up the palliasse and led the way outside with it, where there was a little light remaining. He rested it against a litter of logs so all could see. ‘See here? Blood all about the top half of the bedding. It is clotted. Probably a few days old. Some of you may be thinking this could be a woman’s monthly bleed. All I can say is, if she bled this much, she would still be in her bed.’

  Beckoning me, he bade me hold the mattress up so that the others could see it, and then took the blankets from Harknet and two others and held them up. ‘This one, you will see, has had a similar effusion of blood. And in the midst of the blood,’ he added, thrusting a finger through the material, ‘is a knife hole. Do you see that? It looks to me as though whoever was lying in this bed was stabbed through the blanket. We know that the priest was struck with one blow separate from all the others. This could well explain that. He was here, lying in a bed, and someone stabbed him. They dressed him, stabbed him another eight times through his clothes, and carried him to the road where he
was left.’

  The villagers were a sullen lot, but all nodded as Sir Richard spoke.

  ‘The man who lived here. He was married?’

  ‘No. The miller lost his Katherine years ago. He had a daughter, though – young Jen.’

  ‘Where is she? Has anyone seen her?’

  ‘Not since three days ago,’ Harknet responded.

  ‘What of the miller? Who saw him last?’

  There was a muttered dispute at this, until one elderly fellow, with the build of a starved lurcher and balding pate, tentatively lifted his hand. ‘I saw him four day ago. He were in the cart, goin’ off to town to fetch grain, so he told me.’

  ‘That would have been the day before the body was found,’ Sir Richard said.

  He continued in a similar vein for some little while. I meanwhile took the time to think that four days ago was the day before Sir Richard bounded into my life, so the day that the priest was actually murdered. If Father Peter had been here, enjoying himself with the miller’s daughter, then it was possible that the miller had returned to find Peter’s backside hammering his little princess, and had been angry. Angry enough to stab the man through the heart, and then try to cover up his crime by carrying the body in his cart out to the roadside, and dumping the priest there? Very likely. Millers were solitary folks, and often held in low regard, because they tended to take a share of whatever flour was milled. Many peasants viewed them as little better than thieves. There was a certain logic to that, I had to admit. As a result, millers often had short tempers.

  But what happened to his daughter?

  Sir Richard was holding up other blankets for the peasants’ scrutiny, and I gazed about us at the men crowded in the mill. There were more in the doorway, and women behind them.

  ‘Where’s the daughter?’ I said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Where is the man’s daughter? She should be somewhere. Didn’t she come and tell anyone that she had seen her father kill a man?’

  Harknet sneered nastily. ‘You think the maid would come and seek help, when she’d been on her back with a priest in here? Her father may have killed the man, but it was her fault. You think she’d want to come and admit she’d been involved in lewd and lascivious acts with the vicar? It was she who brought the vicar’s fate upon him! She was the temptress, she was the whore who—’

  ‘I’ll have no more of that language,’ Sir Richard boomed, and although Harknet opened his mouth to speak again, Sir Richard bent towards him, a finger pointing very firmly. It stubbed into Harknet’s breast, and I could hear the thud as it connected, pushing Harknet back a pace. Sir Richard said, very low and quiet, ‘If I hear anything more from you, you will regret it swiftly.’

  Harknet looked up into Sir Richard’s eyes and found that, yes, he probably would. His mouth closed firmly.

  ‘Now! Did no one see her on that day or the day after? Has no one seen her or her father? Come along, someone must have seen them?’

  There was no comment, only a general shrugging of shoulders and reluctant muttering. Sir Richard shook his head, walking about the outside of the mill. On his order, two men bundled the blankets together with a bloodied scrap of cloth, and tied them securely. There was a soft murmuring as the jury shuffled from foot to foot, some few of them glancing out to see where the sun was. They all had work to be getting on with, they were muttering. What was the point of remaining here at the mill?

  Sir Richard glanced about him, and told the peasants that they could leave. I was relieved to hear it. After handling the bloodied palliasse, I was keen to be away and drink a good quantity of ale or wine. Anything to take away the memory of the blood. It left a taste in my mouth that I could not get rid of. I began to move towards the door.

  ‘Wait with me, Jack,’ Sir Richard called. He looked down at the pile of bedding and palliasse, then back to the door to the mill. ‘If the man killed poor Peter, then where is he? And where is his daughter?’

  I submitted to the knight’s suggestion that we should take a look about the mill and surrounding area, and I walked about the place with some resentment. After all, when you’ve seen one muddy pool, you really don’t feel the need to stare into many others. And I wasn’t sure what the Coroner was hoping to find.

  To be fair, for the most part he seemed to be interested in staring at the ground near his feet as he stomped across the pathways.

  There was a second bridge a little farther down from the mill itself, and here we could look across to the mill pond. It was a pretty scene, with rushes thrusting their heads above the water, some ducks dabbling and bickering, and an occasional splash as something appeared from below and disappeared again. Trees surrounded the pool, some of them running right to the waterside.

  ‘Not here,’ I heard Sir Richard saying to himself. He had, at last, discovered how to speak with moderation. His words didn’t deafen me.

  ‘What isn’t here?’ I asked.

  He looked at me. ‘Me first thought is for the daughter. A man ran in there, went to the bedchamber and stabbed a fellow. Someone who would do that is a man who feels the pressure of honour. A man like that is the sort who could think the woman is also defiled; a man like that, whose blood is already up, could well decide to kill her as well. Perhaps he thought she had betrayed him, betrayed his trust, his honour, his home?’

  ‘So you think the miller did this? That was my thought, too,’ I lied.

  ‘We don’t know what sort of man he is, but a miller would find it easy to pick up a man like poor Peter and throw him over his shoulder to take him to the roadside. Any man used to handling sacks of grain and flour could grab a man like Peter with ease. But what did he do with his daughter?’

  I glanced about us. ‘Surely you don’t think he just stabbed her as well? Could a man do that to his own daughter?’

  The Coroner gave me a long, considering look. ‘When ye’ve been a coroner for as long as I have, you come to realize that there is nothing that a man with fire in his blood won’t do. Think! The fellow was here for some years with his daughter. He didn’t have a wife, he didn’t have a woman staying here. And he shared his bed with his daughter, from the look of it. There was only the one bed roll in the chamber. So he looked on her as his own property, mayhap his lover. How would he react when he came home to find his daughter opening her legs to another man? He would react the same as many would on finding their wife acting the slut. It’s very likely he killed her, I think.’

  ‘If he could pick up your brother, how much easier to pick up his own daughter! But why didn’t he leave her in an easy place? He was happy enough to leave your brother at the roadside. Why not her, too?’

  ‘She was his flesh and blood. Perhaps he decided to give her a decent burial?’

  ‘Is that what you are seeking now?’

  ‘Yes. Her body must be around here somewhere. I would wager that she is buried as well as the miller could manage.’

  ‘And what of him?’

  ‘His cart isn’t here. I would think he’s most likely in London. Any murderer can hide in a cancerous hellhole like the city. It’s easy. There are so many dives and whorehouses where a man with no qualms could hide himself. He might have friends, of course. Men he knows from the market where he buys grain, or drinking companions from one of the alehouses near the market. And then there is his cart. He’ll have had to find somewhere to lodge that, and his horse.’

  He was frowning now as he walked. For my part, I was content to let him consider the options. It was really none of my business, but I didn’t want to leave the knight there while I hurried back to the inn, thence to collect my pony so I could get to the city before nightfall and curfew. No, I was happy to remain with Sir Richard, even if it meant another night in this foul little village. The alternative was to walk alone up that lane through the woods. A glimpse of a figure through the trees came back to me. Of course, I am not superstitious, but in case there was something in there that I should be concerned about, I would prefer to ha
ve the company of Sir Richard on that walk.

  So I stumbled along in his wake as he strolled about the place, seeking for a body or the disturbed soil of a fresh grave.

  I was relieved that we failed.

  We returned to the inn as the light was fading. I was happy just to get in front of the fire, but Sir Richard was still wearing a pensive expression as we entered and took our seats on a bench near the fire.

  There was a good crowd of local folk in there. Men who had been working stood in huddles and spoke in their slow, almost incomprehensible local dialect. These fellows from east of London were so backward it was almost sad. Harknet was in the corner, but as we entered, he took up his pot and left. Others were of a happier bent, and Sir Richard seemed already to have made his mark with them. As we walked in, three or four called to him, asking if he would give them a song or a joke. Sir Richard smiled faintly, but shook his head. At the bar, I saw Roger drinking a pot of ale and talking with great earnestness to Dorothy. Nyck appeared in the doorway, and Roger was suddenly still. He nodded to Dorothy, and then seemed to catch sight of Sir Richard. He crossed the floor to join the knight and was soon discussing the funeral arrangements for Peter.

  After that, Roger walked out. Nyck was at the bar, and I felt sure that Roger would prefer not to speak to him. I went out to the privy a while later and was surprised to see Roger chatting with Dorothy at the back door. Both fell silent as I passed, and when I returned, they were gone.

  Sir Richard was not good company. He remained deep in thought after speaking to Roger, staring into the fire’s flames as though he would get the truth of his brother’s death from them. Personally, I was happy enough to join the locals, but first I was keen to get some food inside me. The innkeeper said that Dorothy had cooked a pottage and bread, and soon I was eating a thick pease pudding with hunks of bread that were more crust than anything else. Trying to get a decent piece of bread outside London is next to impossible. Still, it was filling, and I ate the pease pudding with relish. Obviously, it was poor fare compared with what I was used to, but it did at least remind me of some meals when I was young, when I would occasionally be fed by one of the young mothers in the area after my mother’s death.