It was much smaller, approaching from the north, but it held the merit that the Baron and his posse would surely assume he would continue on the broader reaches of the river if they thought of coming this way. And no matter where this led, he must be out of the jurisdiction of Sir Ralph’s court soon.
He took the turn, but first he spread water over some dry rocks further up, to make it look as though he had continued within the main stream and hadn’t turned away. A little farther still, he grabbed a pair of stout tree limbs near the banks, hoping that a hound would notice it, and the hunters would carry on without turning off.
The tributary was much smaller, and he had to walk carefully to prevent his steps moving outside the water, where they could be seen – or smelled. Saplings and smaller trees fringed the water, and he kept well within their protective screen, peering nervously between the branches while not touching them. After a half mile or more climbing a shallow valley, at the bottom of which lay his stream, he saw some rude dwellings through the trees. A small barton. There was the odour of cattle, and the wind brought the distinct, almost human, stench of pigs’ dung. One house stood higher than the others, but there were four or five stretched below it, all pointing to the top of the hill.
He was exhausted and starved. If only he had made time for a meal before leaving, but he hadn’t. The thought of warmth and food was poignant in his present state, but he dared not ask for help. He wouldn’t cut a very respectable figure in his present sorry state.
Just as he was thinking this, he saw a door open in the nearest house. A short man walked out, stopped, sniffed, and then ambled around the side of his house, a wooden pail in his hand, a dog scurrying at his heels. Before long Mark saw them wandering up a lane, into a pasture, and over to a cow.
Afterwards he would remember it with shame, but at that moment all he could think of was his belly. When he saw the man crouch at the side of the cow, Mark clambered out of the stream and tried to hurry to the house inconspicuously, although after spending so many hours in the cold waters of the streams, he was incapable of speed.
The opening was a rough affair with a long strip of leather supporting a wooden door. Splinters attacked his hand as he touched it, but he pushed it nonetheless. If he was asked, he would beg food, declaring himself a mendicant and relying on the peasants’ respect for the tonsure, but when he opened the door, his breath caught in his throat at the smell of fresh bread. There was no time to consider. He snatched the loaf where it lay cooling, turned, and was gone, ripping shreds from the loaf as he went and stuffing them into his mouth.
Sir Ralph soon had his horse saddled and ready. Piers had arrived at the castle on his own sturdy little pony, but had left as soon as Sir Ralph bellowed for his mount. They were to meet with the posse out at the bottom of Deave Lane, where the girl’s body still lay under the protection of the first man Piers had found.
The knight spurred his mount furiously and clattered out through the gateway, turning north up the road towards Throwleigh. His route led him under the great trees, whose boughs gleamed under fluffy, emerald mantles of moss. At several places, the muddy track was so full of puddles that the knight’s horse threw up immense sheets of water on either side, but he didn’t notice. He was thinking only of the dead girl.
That she should be dead was unthinkable! He couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe that he’d never again see her smiling face, hear her cheerful voice, thrill to the sound of her laughter. The light was verdant beneath the trees, the sun slanting through thin, new leaves, but he saw nothing of it. If he had, he would have thought it obscene that such freshness, such explosive fruitfulness, should be here still, when that beautiful, perfect child was destroyed.
The journey passed by in a whirl. He cantered up the hill towards Deave Lane and reined in at the sight of the men milling. There were a few on horseback, but most were afoot, all the villeins from the fields and houses nearby, from twelve years up to forty-odd, strong, hearty men, all wearing their horns and staffs, a couple with their billhooks in their belts, but most only armed with their knives. All about them were the hounds, great monsters with drooling jowls and powerful shoulders.
Stopping, Sir Ralph stared about him with his mouth agape. ‘So few men? Piers!
Piers!
Jesus Christ above! Where in God’s name have you got to?’
The Reeve had been talking to a pair of hunting men, but hearing the hoarse bellow, he immediately made his way to his Lord. There was no telling with Sir Ralph. Sometimes he could be sensible, but more often than not he was overbearing, taking no account of how others felt. Not that it was surprising. Sir Ralph’s family was an old one. It was said that many years ago a clerk for the King had demanded to know by what right he held his lordship and the rights to his own court, and Sir Ralph had smiled, then fetched down a rusting sword from his wall. He threw it at the now anxious clerk.
‘
There’s
my right. That’s the sword my father wore; it’s the sword he used to kill the man who owned this land before him.’
‘You’re threatening me!’
‘No. It was a fair fight in the tournament,’ Sir Ralph had said softly, taking back the sword, but then he had suddenly swung it. It whistled as it sliced through the air, narrowly missing the clerk’s head. ‘But I won’t give away my inheritance just because a pissy priest who took to the Law decides he must see papers. Tell the King I claim the right by ancient privilege.’
Ancient privilege, Piers thought to himself. That was all this family ever thought of. They certainly had little enough feeling for their servants. Looking about him here, at the men standing so quietly, he could see too many whose faces were gaunt. Scurvy again. The poor harvest last year, the depredations of the King’s Purveyors, grabbing everything they could for his armies as they marched to Scotland, all the good food gone when the peasants here were already hungry.
‘My Lord?’ he said respectfully.
‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling for you.’
‘My Lord, I had sent those men to see if the priest was in his chapel.’
‘Well?’ Sir Ralph demanded, leaning forward. ‘Did they find the foul scroyl?’
‘No – there’s no sign of him.’
‘He’s fled!’
‘All the other men of the vill are accounted for, but he is gone, and I know some have said that he was sleeping with her. You know how rumours always start, but now… well, it looks very possible that it could have been Mark who killed her.’
‘Right, then, organise the men to chase the mad bastard down! I want him – alive or dead makes no difference to me!’ Sir Ralph bellowed at the top of his voice.
‘If we can, Sir Knight,’ Piers said, glancing about him with a feeling of helplessness.
‘Is this all the men you could find? We need at least twenty men on horseback for the posse, and you have found only seven!’
‘There aren’t the men, my Lord. Who has horses in the manor? Too few. And not many can ride. We have all the men over twelve years here, but these seven are the only men with horses. Even my own son is here,’ he added pointedly. Esmon, Sir Ralph’s son, had not turned out for the posse, Piers saw, nor the castle’s men-at-arms. The lad was no doubt sitting in his great hall, dreaming of owning it when his father died.
Sir Ralph gave the Reeve a long, cold stare. ‘God’s blessed will! If we don’t catch this murderer, Piers, I’ll have you flogged until I have the hide off your back, d’you hear me? Now get on your pony and let’s be off!’
The dogs were ready, and as soon as they had sorted out who was to go where, the hounds were released and the small party set off.
Piers had already instructed the men in what they were to do. He and Sir Ralph would hasten along Deave Lane and use the hounds to see whether they could catch the priest. Meanwhile, the bulk of the men would follow, separating at the different paths. Messengers had been sent to neighbouring vills and Hundreds already, so that the population would rise and attack Mark if he appeared. Finally, a small group was to make its way to the priest’s home and chapel and wait there, in case he returned to collect belongings while the posse was abroad.
Their way led them up along the old Deave Lane to where the poor girl’s body had been found. Sir Ralph slowed as they reached her. She lay with her legs parted, a red mess between them. One eye was closed as though she was winking, but there was too much blood for her to live. Sir Ralph felt a dreadful hatred stir in his breast. He wanted to find her killer and skin him alive, cut out his beating heart, make him suffer all the agonies a man could, for this defilement.
It was not only he who felt this rage against the murderer. He could feel it among the men about him. There was a stillness, a silence, that spoke of their horror at the sight of that pretty young girl, her body violated –
desecrated
– by this foul attack.
‘You! Put a shirt or something over her face!’ Sir Ralph said.
At Mary’s side stood a guard gripping a pole with a bill hammered onto the end as a makeshift weapon. This man nodded emphatically, then glanced about him. There was nothing near with which to obey, and at last he sighed to himself, set his polearm leaning against the hedge, and pulled off his own thin jack. He draped it over the girl’s face, but as he turned away, picking up his weapon, the butt caught the material and snagged. His jack came away, and suddenly Mary’s head lay oddly.
‘Her neck’s been broken, Sir Ralph,’ Piers said, peering at her.
‘The shit broke her neck,’ Sir Ralph whispered. ‘It takes effort to do that. He must have meant to kill her – this was no accident!’
‘Many a priest has been accused of killing off his woman when she grew pregnant,’ Piers said sorrowfully as the embarrassed guard set her head more naturally and draped the jack once more over her.
Sir Ralph swallowed his sadness and raked his spurs along his horse’s flanks. The mount burst into action, throwing a large pool of black water up into the air. On they went, into Throwleigh and then north and east, the dogs eagerly following a scent, tails waving like so many saplings in the wind, occasionally baying as the excitement got to them.
‘Huward’s not with us?’ Sir Ralph shouted.
‘No, sir. I think Huward would tear him limb from limb, if he was to catch him,’ Piers responded. All too true. If Huward caught Mark, the lad wouldn’t last two minutes. At least this way, with a posse, Mark could be captured and taken back to Sir Ralph’s goal.
‘Bad. You should have brought him along.’
Piers opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut. In that moment, he realised that Sir Ralph intended executing the priest as soon as they caught him. He felt the urge to protest, but there was no point. Sir Ralph was within his rights to slaughter a fleeing murderer. An outlaw could be beheaded on sight, and there was no more obvious felon than a man who murdered a pregnant woman and then fled with her blood on his hands. Except that Mark was a priest.
‘Where can he be heading?’ Sir Ralph cried with frustration as the dogs took them eastwards, towards Frog Mill. ‘This goes nowhere.’
Piers himself had little enough idea of the direction of the roads from here. In his youth he had once travelled to Oakhampton, but apart from that one journey, he had never been further than Chagford and the local market there. He’d never had the need of a longer trip.
Today the hounds led them down the track away from Throwleigh, but suddenly they bounded off north, through a large pasture shared by the vill, until they came to the Blackaton Brook. There they milled uncertainly.
‘Devious scroyle!’ the knight muttered as they waited for the hounds to pick up the scent. ‘He’s done this a’purpose. Running into the water to hide his trail.’
‘What shall we do, sir?’ Piers asked. If he had the choice, he’d head downstream a way, with some dogs on each side of the water. He doubted that the priest would have gone north and west, back towards the moors themselves. That was too dangerous. Only men who had grown up here knew the safe routes through the shifting mires, and the priest would surely be too fearful to attempt such a path. No, he must surely have followed this water until it met the Teign, and maybe hurried on the banks of that river towards the sea. Or until he met with more outlaws, he told himself gloomily.
Sir Ralph agreed with him. ‘We’ll go down the stream here. He’s only a damned priest, not an experienced felon. He isn’t used to hard walking. Chances are we’ll find him down here, lying on the bank dozing. Come!’
Piers nodded and they went down to the stream, wading slowly through it where they must, at those places where the vegetation on either bank was impenetrable, at other times riding at the water’s edge and watching the dogs all the while. Sir Ralph egged them on as keenly as any huntsman after a hart, hoping to catch sight of the murderer. He wanted the man who had killed the young maid.
Piers felt more ambivalent. He had liked Mary – who hadn’t? She was a bright little thing, with a saucy manner when she flirted, but generally a kindly soul if she wasn’t annoyed; if her temper was fired, she could be as ferocious as any alewife. Yet mostly she was a good, comely member of the vill, and Piers would have liked to see her murderer caught. His only concern was, if the knight should catch her killer, he might well run him through for what he had done to Mary, one of his own peasants. Piers didn’t want that. He was content to see the killer pay for his crime, but it was wrong to execute a priest. They had protection from God, and Piers wasn’t sure he could stand aside quietly and see Mark struck down.
For him it was a relief when, after hunting the priest for many hours, Sir Ralph finally called a halt to their search. Men had already gone to the other Hundreds to warn them that there was a renegade priest on the loose who had murdered his lover and his child. All should be aware, and all should have arranged for their own posses to search for Mark.