Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

'I will first have to speak to everyone who might have some information — which I'm afraid includes every member of the family and your manor-servants. Then anyone else in the village who may know something about this tragedy. As today is already well advanced, that will take until tomorrow morning, but I have to return to Exeter then, as I already have another inquest set for the afternoon.'

'So when are you coming back here?' demanded Joel.

'The day after tomorrow — Wednesday. You may arrange your burial for later that day. The weather is cool for October, there will be little problem with the body. Matters may have been more difficult in high summer. He can rest with dignity here before the altar.' The brothers and their neighbour, de Revelle, protested at the delay, but the coroner was implacable.

'Now I need to begin speaking to all those who might have some information for me,' said John brusquely. 'Starting with that girl Agnes.'

'It was very unwise of you to insist that she be released so easily from our arrest,' huffed Richard de Revelle. 'That may be the last we see of her!'

'And where could she go, might I ask?' countered John. 'She'd hardly be welcome in the next manor, or anywhere else around here — a runaway serf belonging to Sampford.' He turned his back on Richard and addressed Odo. 'I'll walk to where she lives now, if someone will show me where that is.'

'We'll accompany you, Crowner!' snapped Ralph. 'She is our serf, I need to interrogate her myself.'

Again John noted that the 'we' slipped into 'I' — and he also observed that Odo's scowl deepened at the lapse. There was little filial affection between these two, he thought.

'You are certainly entitled to speak to your subjects as much as you wish,' he said. 'But not when I am conducting my enquiries. I wish to speak to her alone — or at most, with her mother present.' The Peverels huffed and puffed, but de Wolfe was adamant.

'In that case, the bailiff can take you,' grunted Odo. 'We will return to the manor house to discuss the matter further with Sir Richard and our ladies.' With ill grace, the brothers and their steward left the church and a few moments later Walter Hog led the coroner and his assistants up the dusty track towards the western end of the village. Beyond the green they passed the manor house on their left, its stockade seeming to dominate the rest of the dismal village with menace, emphasising the downtrodden status of the folk who laboured to keep the Peverels in relative comfort. The whole place seemed shabby to John, especially in comparison with his home manor of Stoke-in-Teignhead, where his brother William prided himself on ensuring a decent living for both his freemen and his bondsmen. Here many of the houses were little better than hovels, with mouldy grass-grown thatch and in some cases, disintegrating walls where the cob had eroded from the frames on which it had been plastered. As he walked up the rough track, he noticed that many of the fences around the crofts were broken and had been roughly mended with branches and sticks to keep the livestock from straying.

There were a few decent houses, and the bailiff proudly pointed out one as his own and another as the dwelling of the reeve.

The dusty road sloped up towards the west, where it went on to Tiverton. On the left, behind the line of crofts and toffs, were strip fields running away at right angles until they reached the meadow and waste, which in turn gave way to the edge of the forest. On the other side of the road, the fields sloped down into the shallow valley that carried the mill-stream, beyond which was more waste ground until the trees began again. Above these, low hills filled the horizon, sloping up towards the distant edge of Exmoor, the green beginning to turn brown as the autumn advanced.

As the village began to peter out, the dwellings became smaller and even more dismal. These belonged to the cottars, inferior bondsmen who had no land allotment in the fields like the freemen and villeins, but eked out a living by working for the lord at the more menial tasks. They tended cattle and goats, did the fencing, milking, ditching and thatching and some of the ploughing and raking on the lord's demesne.

Others were labourers for the farrier, smith or miller, or cleaned the stables and byres and spread the dung on the fields.

The bailiff stopped at the last shack, a mere few hundred paces from where the dense trees closed in at the edge of the village.

'This is where Agnes lives. It's a poor place, I'm afraid,' announced Walter, with a trace of embarrassment.

There was a ragged thorn hedge around the quarter acre plot and John pushed aside an apology for a garden gate, which was a few branches tied with twine.

In front of the hut was a garden where vegetables grew, though many had already been harvested and others, such as rows of beans, had died back at the end of the season. He could hear the bellow of a cow and the grunting of pigs behind the house and as he walked to the door he saw a female goat tied to a stake on a patch of coarse grass.

The building was of the usual cob under a tattered thatch, once whitewashed with lime, but patches of the surface plastering had fallen away to reveal the straw and clay underneath. The door was a sheet of thick boiled leather hanging from the lintel, and the bailiff pushed this aside and stuck his head in to shout.

'Aelfric! Gunna! Are you there? The coroner wants to talk to Agnes.'

A small lad, little more than a toddler, shot out of the doorway, pursued by a barking mongrel, and vanished around the side of the house. Then a large woman of Saxon blood appeared, probably not more than thirty years old, her face lined and worn with toil.

She had a small baby in her arms and her soiled and patched dress was pulled aside to allow it to feed from her breast.

She looked with lacklustre eyes at the bailiff, then at John and the two men standing behind him.

'My man is working, but Agnes is here. Two neighbours brought her home.' Her voice was flat and apathetic. 'You'd best come in if you want to talk to her. God knows how we'll manage if she loses her work at the wash house.'

Walter Hog held the door-flap aside and de Wolfe went in, Gwyn and Thomas standing at the threshold where they could hear what was being said. John found himself in a long room that smelt strongly of cow manure as at one end a wattle screen penned in two brown calves and a stinking billy-goat. At the other was a heap of dried ferns on a wooden shelf that served as the matrimonial bed, under which was more bracken to soften the sleeping place of three children.

A fire-pit in the centre was only smouldering at present, so there was little smoke to choke the atmosphere. Along the back wall was another wide wooden shelf with pots and dishes which appeared to be mainly used for skimming milk and brewing ale. Around the fire-pit, over which was an iron trivet from which hung a small cauldron, a few more pots and dishes indicated the cooking facilities. A couple of milking stools were the only other furniture, but the object of his visit was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. Agnes had a sullen, defiant look on her round face, but this cleared somewhat when she saw who the visitor was.

'Thank you for delivering me from those men, sir,' she said, in an unexpected bout of gratitude. 'I have done nothing wrong, I swear it.'

'You went with that… that man again,' snapped her mother. 'Is that not wrong?'

Agnes jumped to her feet, her face flushed with anger. 'What choice did I have? He was our lord and master — and you were glad enough of the two pennies I brought home.'

The woman shrugged and pulled the baby from her breast and laid it on a grubby cloth spread on the bed.

Agnes went to the infant and sat alongside it, gently stroking its sparse fair hair to soothe it to sleep, while her mother unselfconsciously rearranged her dress and tucked the ends of her head-cloth into her neckline. 'You answer this lord truthfully, girl,' she said sternly.