Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘I don’t like making threats I can’t fulfil,’ Simon said, almost to himself.

The clerk looked at him. ‘Ah, you’re the sort that’d rather build up than pull down! And…’

‘Go on, man.’

To his astonishment, Luc blushed. ‘I’ve – well, I’ve got my own reasons why I don’t want the village destroyed.’

‘The usual?’ he asked tolerantly.

‘She’s what they call a comely wench, my lord.’

‘So you can speak their tongue?’

‘Who said anything about speaking, my lord? But we’ve got one on the way, and to my mind – well, isn’t conquest by the cock kinder than conquest by the sword?’

‘So it’s a political bedding, is it?’ Simon laughed. ‘Go and fetch your foreman, Luc, and we’ll see if we older ones can achieve what the younger ones can’t.’

Within a few minutes a familiar figure bent a polite but not obsequious head. Beom. So that was the foreman. Simon wasn’t surprised. Beom listened with an air of calm dignity, but, as Luc had predicted, gave little away. Little – apart, perhaps, from a tiny frisson of – of fear?

Surely not. Within the tiniest of moments, his face was phlegmatic again. Nodding, he listened to Simon, raising a hand to his ear when he wanted a phrase repeated.

‘You know this knight of mine?’ Simon asked at last.

Beom’s features assumed a sneer, and he mimed the big-balls swagger of a man set on sexual conquest. Oh yes: He knew him, all right.

‘And does he have enemies?’

Beom’s disbelieving shrug would have put a Norman’s to shame it was so expansive. Such a man undoubtedly had enemies. Beom even managed an ironic smile, pointing to the scar left by Villeneuve’s whip.

‘Did you kill him?’

Eyes meeting his lord’s, Beom shook his head.

‘Do you know the man who did?’

The same response.

‘Tomorrow morning I shall question every man in the village, and you will tell me their answers. If the murderer confesses, I shall spare the rest of the village.’

Beom nodded. Simon waved him away. But he stood his ground, and for the first time spoke. He had to repeat what he said several times before Simon could understand him. At last it seemed to make sense: ‘Have you found this man’s body yet?’

Simon decided to treat the man honestly. He shook his head.

Was it relief that flashed across Beom’s face? Ah, a man like him would know the law, wouldn’t he? Wherever a Norman body was found, the nearest village would find itself paying a punitive fine.

Simon had no compunction in ousting what had been the thegn from his hut and appropriating his chair. The only chair. My God, no wonder these people shuffled round older than their years if they squatted all the time! He asked each villager, freeman or serf, the same questions, making them lay their hands on his Bible as they replied. And Simon, even without this, would have believed them. There was an air of bafflement about them, not to mention the terror of losing more of what little they had.

At the end of a tedious morning, Simon waved them all away. ‘Beom, get them all back to work. My wife will be coming next week: everything must be ready for her.’

It was the sort of day that you wished you could cram into a flask and keep forever. The sun was warm on his back, the air full of birdcall. And the news, that the Lady Rosamunde had but this morning whispered that she was soon to offer him another pledge of her love for him, still sang in his ears. Simon rode gently down to the village. Another hut was being built: Beom had told him it was his and his new wife’s. Aedburgha was nowhere to be seen. She must be near her time now. The squeals of her charges told him where he might find her, and he never had any objections to being smiled on by – what was the term? – a comely wench. He reeled in shock when he saw what she and another woman were doing to the young pigs they’d penned immovably in a tight wattle tunnel. It was all very swift, of course, but the very thought brought tears to his eyes.

If Beom was now speaking a little of his tongue, Aedburgha still relied on sign language. She pointed to the sows, the sleekest and best looking he’d seen since he’d come over from Beaune. Then there came piglets. She mimed a fierce boar, then a snip. She smiled, waving her hands to show all fierceness was over, and that the desexed animals would grow big and fat and healthy. Next came a fearsome pregnant sow. She gestured a slit: The female ones, untroubled by pregnancy, would do the same. Suddenly she reached for one and held it up, still bleeding after surgery. Heavens, she was giving him a pig.

He took it graciously, but handed it swiftly to the soldier escorting him. He hoped and he trusted that the villagers were coming to appreciate his humanity and realise they could get a man six times worse in his place, but he didn’t take risks. This, however, must be the ultimate peace offering – a woman who had been insulted by one of his henchmen giving something she could ill afford. She waved away the coin he offered. A good woman. The sort who might attend the Lady Rosamunde when her time came.

‘Pig?’ he said carefully, pointing at the wriggling animal. No, it would be another word for the female. ‘Sow?’

She shook her head. ‘Gilt,’ she said. She pointed to an animal which had not yet been on the receiving end of her ministrations. ‘Sow.’ Then she pointed to the one she’d given him. ‘Gilt.’

Lords might do as they liked, and if Simon chose to visit a small wattle enclosure to check his animal’s daily progress, there was no one with the temerity to laugh. In fact, it was while he was scratching her ears and speculating on the quality of the meat she would produce that Luc came up to him. One look at his face told Simon he’d rather not hear his news.

Luc produced from his tunic a ring. ‘Found it when I was casting a line yesterday evening. Villeneuve’s, isn’t it, my lord?’ He polished it before he handed it over. ‘See – that’s his crest.’

Simon took it. Yes, it looked like it, didn’t it? ‘The river you say?’ He held Luc’s gaze. ‘The man must have dropped it and tried to save it. The water’s very swift, and of course his helm and hauberk would weigh him down. Even Villeneuve wasn’t so stupid as to go round without them. Drowned, swept away. Poor bastard. Still, it’s good to have the mystery solved. I’ll get the priest to write to his family. Thank you, Luc.’

Alone once more, Simon stared at the sow, currently tucking into scraps from last night’s venison and some mouldy bread. Her little eyes were contented, almost benign. Not like those of the raging sow that had almost done for Villeneuve. The pregnant ones were dangerous under provocation. Aedburgha had shown him. He shivered. Provocation? What if Villeneuve had renewed his assault on Aedburgha? What if the sow -? Or, God help him, what if pregnant women were equally dangerous. God knew she’d been provoked…but sufficiently provoked to kill? There was no doubt how she’d have disposed of the body – her pigs would have fallen readily upon anything they thought edible.

He buried his face in his hands. He represented law and order and justice here. If there was a crime, it must be punished. But Beom had told him only two days before that he was now the proud father of a hopeful son, and Simon had offered to be a sponsor at the child’s christening. In his mind’s eye he could see the little family, the newborn suckling at its mother’s breast – a breast that he’d hoped would nourish his and Rosamunde’s own child when the time came. Could such a woman really have killed a man and fed his flesh to those remarkably healthy sows? If he ordered Beom’s hut to be pulled down, would they find the contents of Villeneuve’s purse buried under the foundations? He looked at the ring.