‘No. You know I cannot set him free.’
‘Then I shall ride with him to this outlandish place,’ Roger Scut said. He gave Baldwin a look which expressed only distaste. ‘If the good knight won’t protect this poor priest, I shall do it myself and see that no harm comes to him. I will shield him with my own body.’
Baldwin eyed him wonderingly. ‘Why? What do you seek?’ he wondered aloud.
‘I seek nothing for myself, only to serve the best interests of this unfortunate.’
‘I thank you, friend,’ Mark said. He was weeping, and he humbly held his hands up towards Roger Scut in gratitude.
Baldwin grunted. He had intended to be home last night. Into his mind flashed a picture of his wife sitting at his great fire, the light gleaming in her red-gold hair, shining on her tip-tilted nose, sparkling in her green eyes. It was a most appealing scene, the more so because in it there was no place for Roger Scut.
‘Won’t
anyone
believe me?’ Mark wailed. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her. I couldn’t have done that to her!’
‘Done what?’ Baldwin demanded harshly, brought back from his mild daydream with a jolt.
‘Killed her… killed our baby!’ Mark cried despairingly. He bent forward and burst into sobs of despair, exhaustion and self-loathing.
Baldwin watched him cynically. He had witnessed all too many felons who wept and moaned when their guilt was established. Often they would then declare their misery over a momentary lapse, a flaring of anger that resulted in a death. It was usually shame and sorrow for being discovered, in his experience.
And yet there was something about this lad. Mark was like a youngster caught filching a penny for food because he was starving. He watched the fellow, in two minds, then looked at Dean Peter. The older man appeared as doubtful as Baldwin himself.
‘Oh, in God’s own name,’ he exclaimed, ‘damn it all! Peter, could you send a messenger to ride straight to Simon Puttock? Ask him if he could come and help me with this matter. He works for the Abbot of Tavistock, after all. It’s more his duty than mine to save this wretch from the people of his vill.’
‘You mean, you will hand this fellow over to Simon?’ Peter Clifford asked hopefully.
‘I mean I shall go with this fellow and protect him.’
‘I am so glad. I thank you,’ the Dean smiled. And then, ‘When all is done, you must come and speak to me, though. I will need to arrange a penance for your swearing.’
Chapter Eleven
Huward stood, drained his cup, and walked to his door when he heard the footsteps in his yard. He stood silently in the doorway, his thumbs hitched in his belt, watching in silence as Piers approached the house.
‘Morning, Huward.’
‘Reeve.’
Piers was shattered. He’d hardly slept at all. His son had snored after a night of drinking at Mother Cann’s ale-house, but that wasn’t the reason why Piers had thrown his blankets away and dressed in the middle of the night, walking out and sitting on a log near his door, staring up at the clean, bright white stars in the moonless sky. No, it was the peasant’s accusation.
Sir Ralph was a hard bastard. No one who knew him even remotely could doubt that, and Piers could easily imagine that he might have killed the girl. Yes, and raped her too. It was perfectly easy to believe, as it was that he might have ridden away with a smile on his face. Sir Ralph was a killer, when all was said and done. He was used to getting his own way. If a girl thwarted his desires, he was capable of hitting her hard and then breaking her neck.
The worst of it was, if Sir Ralph was guilty, there was nothing that Piers could do. He was the Reeve to Sir Ralph’s court, and the one man who couldn’t be tried in a court was the man who owned it. Piers knew that, and he knew that Sir Ralph would have to be tried in another court, a court that was higher than Sir Ralph’s own. Perhaps the Sheriff’s – except it was too late. Elias had kept his mouth shut, so the Coroner had taken his money and fled. Just as they always did. So the murder was recorded as having been committed by Mark. The fact that he had bolted was proof enough; it made his guilt apparent and the jury had been happy to declare him responsible.
So an innocent, perhaps, would be forced to pay for the crime committed by Sir Ralph. Piers wasn’t happy with that. It made his gorge rise to think that a rich, greedy brute like that knight could benefit by seeing another convicted.
The sky had been no assistance to Piers’s grim assessment. He had stared up for inspiration, but all he got was a slight stiffness and a sore arse. It didn’t stop him looking up again now, though. He peered at the clouded skies for an age, trying to think how to broach the subject with Huward. It wasn’t easy to know how to begin, but when the wind began stirring about him and the first drops of rain pattered gently on his back and into the puddles in the roadway, he made an attempt. ‘Huward, I’ve just come from the castle. Was called there to look at the chapel.’
Huward shrugged without interest.
‘Someone set the place afire, you see,’ Piers went on. ‘It happened last night, after taking your girl to the church, we reckon. One of the servants at the castle thinks she heard something after dark, but she didn’t bother to tell anyone at the time. Probably thought it was the wind in the trees. Couldn’t see from there, of course. So by this morning, there’s nothing left but the stones.’
Huward scratched at his ear and scowled at the ground, impervious to the rain that had begun to fall around them. ‘Probably that monk left a fire untended when he ran, and it flared.’
‘Yes. Maybe it did,’ Piers said distantly. ‘If it didn’t, I’d have to think it was someone here in the vill who did it. That would be terrible.’
‘Bad enough. What makes you think it was deliberate?’
‘Nothing, Huward,’ Piers sighed. There was little point telling him that Piers had gone to the chapel and prayed there before the inquest. There had been no fire then, he knew, nor had there been the collection of rubbish in the middle of the floor. It was all made clear from the ashes: someone had built a fire in the place and left it to rage. Not that Piers cared overmuch. ‘How are you, man?’
‘How do you think?’ Huward snarled. ‘I’ve lost my daughter. That doesn’t make a man happy.’
Piers could see that. The miller’s face was pale, apart from the dark shadows under his eyes, and the lines seemed to have deepened at his brow and at the side of his mouth. He had been a cheery, happy-go-lucky fellow until Mary’s death: it was awful to see the change wrought by her passing.
‘Old friend, it’s hard to lose a child, but life continues.’
‘Ah! Life continues. Life goes on. One girl dies, but what’s that? All the others must live,’ Huward grunted. ‘It’s not very convincing right now, you know, Piers? Not what I’d call comforting. I loved her. She was my own, precious little angel, she was. Everything I ever wanted to see in a child. And now she’s snuffed out, her and her child within her.’
‘I know. It must be terrible.’
‘
You
know? You
can’t
know!’ Huward suddenly raged. He felt his frustration and hurt welling up. ‘I want to punch someone, kill them, take away another life. I want that snotty little scrote here, in my hands, so that I can strangle him, see the life slowly fade from his eyes as he feels his own death approach, then I’d release him, let him breathe a little, until he realised how precious his life was to him, and only then would I start to squeeze, squeeze again, until he was on the brink, and then I’d let him recover again. I’d do that ten times, or twenty, or thirty if I could. Make him suffer. Make him feel his own horror. Make him hurt like I hurt, like my poor wife…’
‘How is Gilda?’
Huward wasn’t weeping. He couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come today, for some reason. Last night he’d cried like a baby when he huddled himself alone in his bed, but now there was nothing, as though he’d emptied his well of grief.
‘She’s still at the church, but Gilda is destroyed. She hasn’t spoken to me yet. Not since hearing that Mary’s died. She walks in a daze,’ he said. ‘That’s what I find really hard, you know? I can’t even talk to her about it. I can’t comfort my own wife.’
He looked at Piers. The Reeve could do or say nothing to ease his pain. Huward had known Piers most of his life, but the two men had never shared their innermost secrets, they had never been close companions like some, and now in the depths of his misery, Huward looked at Piers and saw a stranger. Piers must have felt it, because the miller saw him half lift a hand as though to pat Huward’s shoulder in a show of affection, but then he allowed his hand to fall and thrust it behind his back like a thief hiding his gelt.
‘So I am a leper now, am I?’
Piers didn’t raise his voice. ‘I want to give you my sympathy, Huward, but I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do is try to help you and your family.’
‘We don’t need help. I just want to be left in peace.’
‘They may catch the monk.’
‘And what then? Would you allow me to kill him as I want? No, I didn’t think so. I’ll have to watch him be pulled up in the court before our lord, and then he’ll claim Benefit of Clergy. There’s no justice for my girl, is there?’ he added bitterly.
‘What do you want me to say? There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘No. So all we can do is get on with things. Mill the flour and fill the sacks. That’s all we’re good for, isn’t it? Serfs to our lord.’
Piers nodded, but less sympathetically. Everyone hereabouts knew that the miller was treated with generosity when the rents were assessed. He shrugged his head lower, and water dropped from his hat and dribbled down his neck. This weather was only good for ducks and fish.
‘Hoy! Ben! Where are you going?’ Huward suddenly roared.
‘To an ale-house, Father. Away from this gloom-ridden midden.’
‘Get back in that house. We have work to do. You can’t go running about the vill today.’
‘I can do what I want,’ Ben said over his shoulder as he marched up the road towards Gidleigh.
Huward started as though to spring forward to catch his boy, but he stopped and bent his head, bursting into dry, racking sobs. He waved Piers’s hand away, spinning on his heel and leaning his brow against the doorframe, trying to regain control of himself.
The pause was embarrassing, but terrible too. Piers felt as though he was the unwilling witness to a man’s death. That was how it felt. Huward had always been a strong man, strong in the arm and in the head, and to see him in this state was scary, like seeing the collapse of an oak. No matter how hearty the soul, any man could be felled by losing a daughter, he reflected. Somehow it was worse than losing a son. At least a boy might have marked his attacker. A girl would be less likely, especially if she was punched suddenly. She could have been unconscious when her neck was broken.
Huward whispered, ‘Look at us! What can I do? My wife’s lost her mind, my son’s a wastrel, and look at
me
! I can’t even control my son! What will become of us all? We’re ruined, and all because of an evil priest’s lusts! Nothing else. Just to satisfy a beardless lad’s greed.’
‘Is it a great deal further?’ Roger Scut asked plaintively.
It was foul weather, and sure enough, he was soaked through already. He almost regretted his spontaneous offer to escort Mark back to the wild lands west of Crediton. The rain here seemed to fly horizontally, especially now that they had climbed a hill and had nothing in front of them to shield them from the miserable weather.
‘We have only travelled some eight or maybe nine miles, Brother,’ Godwen responded cheerfully. ‘Not even a third of the distance, I reckon.’
‘God, please give me patience!’
There was a brief lull in the wind, and Roger Scut looked up. The terrible rain had stopped, and as he peered, he saw a sudden break in the clouds. A shaft of sunlight lanced down, and he could see the country ahead clearly. Already the horizon was taken up with the grim, blue-grey grandeur of the moors.
Perhaps if the weather was better, Roger might have felt happier. After all, this was the best outcome he could have hoped for. All he had originally intended was to thwart the knight’s aim of taking the monk back to Gidleigh, it being a firm principle of Roger’s that the secular authorities should always be forced to bow to the might and power of the Church. Under no circumstances would he ever agree to allow a knight to put a cleric in court, for that was an appalling concept, and yet if there was one monk whom he wouldn’t mind seeing in irons, that fellow was Mark.
Now that Sir Baldwin had made clear his determination to drag Mark back to Gidleigh, there was perhaps a benefit. Mark would certainly not be permitted to remain there in charge of the chapel whatever happened, and if Roger was there, he might be able to acquire the living. The man already present was more likely to be granted the running of the place than any other. He could take it over, smarten things up, and when the affair had blown over, install another young cleric so that Roger could farm the profits. There would be justice in Mark’s shame and fall, then. Just the thought made his mood lighten.
He shot a look at the forlorn figure on the pony at his side, his wrists bound together. Poor Mark! So innocent, so good, so
bright
! The apple of the Chapter’s eye at Exeter, he was. Such a talented singer, an elegant and accomplished scribe, mathematically sound, and a good logician – and also, although with his calm manner, soft voice and gentle, doe eyes, he was almost as pretty as a maid, he was considered to be sticking to his vow of celibacy. No one had ever disputed his godliness. He behaved and looked like a saint of old, so it was said.
Saint
my ballocks! Roger thought to himself scathingly. The wastrel was no better than he should be. No better than any number of other young fools who thought that they deserved a better, easier life by mere virtue of their learning.
Learning!
It hadn’t done much for young Mark now, had it? Roger tilted his head back the better to view Mark, but there was nothing to see except ordinary self-pity. That was it. The great fool was miserable because he’d been found out.