This morning, he wondered why Esmon had been so keen to have that body hidden. He could have got his own men to move the corpse if he was truly that concerned about it, but instead he had told Sampson to go up to the moors and conceal Wylkyn. Not that hiding the body was difficult. Surval knew of several ideal hiding-places, and the one he had picked was perfect, especially with a few stones piled over it to protect the body from wild animals. Henry was fast asleep before they got there, so he was no obstruction. Dunderhead! He would pay for his failure. The Coroner would demand a princely sum for failing to protect the body from theft.
Gradually the noise of hooves broke into his thoughts. He rose and strode to the door. There, at the bridge, were a number of carters, their faces pale, their manner urgent and fretful, starting at every noise. Surval stood at his door, grasping his staff and leaning upon it like the old man he felt himself to be as he recognised their fear. These were the men captured and ransomed by Esmon. ‘Is there no end to their damned rapacity?’ he muttered to himself.
‘Old man! This is the right road to Chagford, isn’t it?’ The speaker was Alan, and Surval took in his thin, wispy beard and pale skin. Weakly-looking fool, he thought.
Alan sported a blued and half-closed eye, and he spoke with a slight slurring, because his jaw was bruised after being punched, but overall he felt happy enough. His worst fear, of being recognised as having escaped Sir Ralph’s men before, had not materialised, and he was still alive. That was better than the alternative, he reckoned.
‘Yes. You must follow the road up the hill there. Are you well, boy?’
‘I’m fine. Yeah, fine. Are there any footpads between here and the town?’
‘Hoy, Alan!’ another man shouted out. ‘We’ve told you there’s nothing else. For God’s sake don’t keep whining.’
‘Oh, shut up, Saul!’
‘What is he complaining about?’ Surval demanded grimly.
‘We’ve been ambushed, our goods ransacked, a companion taken from us, and there’s nothing we can do! Why – should we expect another attack?’ Alan asked.
‘Shut up, boy! Don’t talk about what you can’t change!’ The second man was a thickset fellow with the ruddy, well-lined features of one who spent much of his life in the open air. He had a bushy beard and black, suspicious eyes, which were made malevolent by their red rims, which Surval at first thought were due to lack of sleep or torture, but then he saw the man wipe his nose on his sleeve and heard him snort loudly. It was only a cold.
‘Wylkyn has gone – disappeared, for God’s sake! Do you feel nothing for him?’ Alan burst out.
‘No. Little enough. Can I bring him back? No. Can I give him back his goods? No. So what’s the point of complaining? We can’t do anything about it, so that’s that. Meantime, I’ve got a wife and children to feed. It’s buggers like you make that hard. Oh!’ He wiped at his nose again, muttering, ‘This damned cold. Flies in summer, colds in winter. You can’t do anything about either, damn them! Why did God send such pests to plague us?’
‘It was murder.
Murder!
They must have killed him! And now we’ve been held in his castle while his men go through all our goods! Does everyone passing through here get taken and held, their goods snatched from them?’
The older carter shrugged. ‘Yes. It happens. And we didn’t see anyone killed, did we? Maybe he ran off and we’ll find him waiting at Chagford. More to the point, if we don’t get on, we’ll miss the market altogether, and then we’ll lose the rest of our goods. My cheeses won’t last in the wet for long. So stop your bloody dawdling, boy, and get on!’
‘Hermit, what would you do?’ the boy Alan appealed. ‘You’re a man of God! In His name, what would you do?’
Surval could say nothing. The lad stared at Surval as though hoping for some sort of answer, an explanation for what had happened to him, a suggestion as to a course of action that might return that which had been stolen from him, but Surval remained silent. He bowed his head in shame, knowing that if he was a real holy man he’d be able to make this man feel better. But he had nothing to give. God knew, he’d tried often enough to help people, but how much use was he? It was bad enough trying to deal with his own shame and guilt.
The lad spat at the ground, disgusted by his rough treatment at the hands of Sir Ralph and Esmon’s men and equally disgusted by the hermit’s inability to offer even verbal support. He snapped his reins.
‘Godspeed, hermit. Buy a capon!’ the older man called. He flicked a penny at Surval, who automatically caught it and bobbed his head in thanks, then watched as the group ground past him, the axles squeaking and grumbling, the iron tires cracking over small stones and making pebbles fly.
Surval watched them go with a feeling of emptiness in his belly. He knew better than Alan or Saul what had happened to Wylkyn.
‘Poor Wylkyn!’ he murmured, shaking his head. It seemed obvious that Esmon and his men must have killed him, and yet there was little he dared do about it.
With that thought, he re-entered his chamber and prostrated himself before his cross, praying for the man’s soul, while all the time at the forefront of his mind was the picture of Wylkyn’s body lying in the shallow grave while he and Sampson set the stones all about it.
He could have gone to the Port Reeve at Chagford and told him all, but here he was, lying before his altar, begging God to forgive him. It made him feel his cowardice. If he had courage, he would go, and damn the consequences. Esmon and Sir Ralph were ruthless, they would trample any man who stood in their path. They should be restrained. Yet there were loyalties too strong to be broken, and Surval couldn’t throw the two to the dogs, even if they were guilty of killing Wylkyn.
‘Forgive me, Wylkyn!’ he implored.
They spent as much time as possible searching along the line of the road, then up and into the moors, before Baldwin took a look at the wall and peered over it. ‘Could they have taken him over here?’ he wondered aloud.
‘Baldwin, look at the sun!’ Simon said. ‘We have to get back for the court.’
Regretfully, Baldwin agreed. He went to his horse, but could not help staring over the wall again.
Simon noticed the direction of his gaze. ‘The boy Henry was asleep there. If someone took the body of Wylkyn away, they’d hardly drag it right over the lad’s head, would they? They must have carried it over that wall, I suppose, but where in all this shire did they hide the damn thing? Perhaps we could use dogs to find it.’
‘That’s possible,’ Baldwin agreed, and allowed himself to be led back to the castle. Once there, he found that many of the peasants still hadn’t arrived. On a whim, he turned to Piers. ‘How far is it to this boy Sampson’s home?’
‘Not far.’
‘Simon, would you mind sending Hugh to our inn and telling Thomas and Godwen to come here? I have a feeling we might need them. In the meantime, we could ride on to meet this Sampson and see if we can find out anything more about poor Mary.’
With that agreed, Piers took them down past the castle’s entrance, then right, heading westwards, along an old track. After a half mile or so, he climbed from his pony and led the way in among the trees. ‘There it is.’
It was a rough dwelling of the sort that charcoal-burners might construct: rough timbers with the spaces filled by mud, and a roof of thick thatch stapled in place by hazel spars.
‘Sampson? You there?’ Piers called.
A vacant, fearful young man appeared, crouching to duck under the lintel. He had a nervous smile that twitched at his lips and made him look as though he was more stupid than Baldwin thought he probably was. In his experience, the men described as ‘fools’ could remember things as accurately as the brightest men. Not that it said much for the intelligence of the brighter men whom Baldwin had known.
He smiled to put Sampson at his ease, climbing from his horse. Sampson seemed to have a lame foot. It was something which often went with foolishness, Baldwin knew.
‘Master Sampson. I hear you were in the road when the poor child Mary was killed. Is that right?’
Sampson nodded slowly. He had told the Coroner already. He didn’t like that man. He was suspicious. This one was kinder. Had a nice face. Sampson quite liked his face.
‘Could you tell me what you saw?’
‘I didn’t see. I was lying down so they wouldn’t see me,’ Sampson explained.
‘I quite understand,’ Baldwin said. ‘What did you hear, then?’
‘They argued. He wanted her to take something. Something to stop her baby. No, she wouldn’t, no. Not that. Killing her baby. No. So he grew angry. Hit her. Heard that. He smacked her. And then he says, “What have I done?” and he cries, and he’s sick, and he runs off.’
Simon looked up sharply. ‘He was sick? And what of her?’
‘She was quiet.’
‘She must have miscarried,’ Simon said to Baldwin.
‘If so, she was unconscious, or she would have been crying out, calling for help,’ Baldwin mused. He looked at Sampson. ‘Was she still, as though she was asleep?’
Sampson frowned with the effort of recollection. ‘No, master. She was sniffin’. Sad. Very sad. Didn’t say anything, but wept.’
‘It does not sound as though she was in mortal pain or aware that her child was to miscarry,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘Sampson, did you hear a loud cracking sound?’
‘Cracking?’ Sampson queried, mouth hanging slackly.
‘Someone broke her neck,’ Baldwin explained. Something made him frown. A fact which niggled, but he could not put his finger on it.
Sampson sniffed, and his eyes filled with tears. ‘I didn’t know that. No. Didn’t know that then. Only heard later.’
‘Did anyone else walk by on the road?’ Simon pressed.
Sampson averted his head slightly. Didn’t like the Bailiff. He was loud; scary. Sampson didn’t want to be scared. Didn’t want to say Sir Ralph came by. Sir Ralph was scary too. Sir Ralph was on a horse, though, Sampson remembered slyly. ‘No one
walked
by.’
‘What, then?’ Simon demanded. ‘Did she sit, did she walk away, did she hit herself?’
Sampson shrugged. ‘I came home,’ he said simply.
‘Can you remember seeing anyone else there who might have had something to do with her death?’
Sampson remembered what Surval had said only the night before. ‘No. No one.’
‘See, Sir Baldwin? Easy. And now,’ Piers added, looking up at the sky, ‘we should get back to the castle. The court must be about to start.’
Chapter Eighteen
Baldwin glanced about him when he walked into Sir Ralph’s hall that afternoon with a feeling that this would not be a straightforward meeting.
He had told Godwen and Thomas to wait outside. There was no point in additional witnesses, and from the look of the men traipsing in from the fields, there would be enough and to spare.
‘But do not drink too much, and for God’s own sake, try to resolve your problems,’ he said crossly.
‘Nothing to sort,’ Thomas grumbled.
‘I fear that any conversation I attempt is a little too far over his head,’ Godwen said with a chuckle.
‘Try to behave like sensible adults, not warring children,’ Baldwin snarled as he left them.
It was not only the two men, it was his frustration. Piers’s son Henry had obviously slept all night, and his fear and anxiety had stemmed more from nervousness at what his father would say when he realised Wylkyn’s body was missing, than from terror of wild dogs overnight.
For all Baldwin’s diligent searching, all he had learned was that Henry had slept in the shelter of the wall, away from the body, to be out of the wind. After he fell asleep, someone had come and taken Wylkyn away. Obviously that man would avoid Henry, so he dragged or carried the body away, and yet Baldwin had found no sign. It was infuriating.
Now he stood in the hall with Simon; Hugh stood behind them wearing a fixed scowl that seemed to demonstrate that he would have preferred by far to be out in the buttery with Godwen and Thomas, their ongoing feud notwithstanding, than in here with a reeking population of villagers.
Baldwin ignored him, concentrating on the men in the hall. Huward was there, he saw, at one corner of the room, while Sir Ralph had taken his seat in a carved chair like a throne on his dais, a table before him. He sat impassive as the men filtered into the room. Baldwin could see that Sir Ralph had brought in all the men of over twelve years to act as jury, and Piers was there among them all. Esmon loitered against a wall.
‘A good-sized hall,’ Simon muttered.
‘Good if you want to entertain the King and his Host,’ was Baldwin’s murmured opinion. ‘It is larger than a small castle like Gidleigh warrants, I should say.’
‘It was built smaller originally.’
Baldwin nodded. He too had seen the tell-tale marks on the walls where the place had been extended and limewash painted over the new plaster. ‘No doubt before long Sir Ralph will attach it to his keep and construct a real moorstone wall about the place.’
‘Provided he can solicit the necessary permits to castellate.’
‘I doubt,’ Baldwin said, ‘that he would find that to be a difficulty if he remains on close and amicable terms with Hugh Despenser the Younger.’
‘True enough.’
‘So what do you think?’
Simon snorted. ‘That young fool dozed and the murderer returned to hide the body.’
‘But
where
?’
They had searched carefully in and around the place but found nothing. Blood was spread thickly where the body had lain, but there was no sign to show how or to where Wylkyn had been removed. It was maddening, but it pointed to a serious urge to conceal the murder. Fine. So Baldwin and Simon must seek more diligently, then.
Baldwin glanced about him. The hall was certainly generously proportioned, and the roof timbers seemed as high overhead as a cathedral’s, although he knew that was an illusion created by the warm fug. The room was filled with the odour of dirty, soggy men and their dogs. Smoke from the fire rose to the rafters. All the tables had been stored away around the walls, their trestle-stands collapsed and set in front of the tables to stop them toppling. Thus the floor was clear, apart from Sir Ralph’s great throne and his wife’s alongside.