Bernard Knight - Figure of Hate

Ralph pushed forward and glowered at the coroner. 'What do you want here? I had hoped that after this blessed respite when you stayed away, you would have forgotten us.'

'The Chief Justiciar sent me to Wales at the King's personal command — together with William Marshal, Earl of Striguil and Pembroke,' he retorted, deliberately dropping in the great names to emphasise that they should not attempt to push him aside like some petty local officer.

There was a pause while they digested this, then Ralph continued in a somewhat less belligerent tone. 'We have no more to tell you, Crowner. There has been nothing new forthcoming about my brother's death since you were last here.'

'That damned whore from the laundry is the culprit, I'm sure of it!' snapped Richard de Revelle. 'The time has come to try her at the manor court and get her hanged out of the way, the dangerous bitch.'

De Wolfe glared at him. 'That's utter nonsense, and you know it! She had neither the weapon nor the motive to repeatedly stab the victim.'

He jerked his head at Gwyn to follow him towards the door.

'I came to question your armourer and his assistant again. They will be required. in Exeter the day after tomorrow for a resumed inquest on the murdered silversmith. You will make sure that they are there an hour before noon at the courthouse in the castle. This man Longus failed to appear last time, but if he flaunts this attachment that I have placed upon him, you'll soon be looking for a new armourer!'

With his team trailing after him he marched out, ignoring his brother-in-law completely. Out in the bailey, he stopped and rubbed his stubble thoughtfully.

'Before we go looking for Longus and his crony, I may as well have a word with the girl Agnes. I suppose she'll be around the back of the house in one of those huts.'

Gwyn was most familiar with the domestic arrangements, as at every place they visited he made a point of rapidly getting on good terms with the domestic servants, especially the cooks.

'The wash house is next to the main kitchen,' he declared, striding around the side of the manor house. They found Agnes, together with another girl who worked at laundering and mending the Peverels' linen, dumping a batch of washing into a large wooden tub. A ten-gallon cauldron hanging on a tripod over a firepit supplied hot water, and Agnes was rhythmically prodding the soaked fabric with a club-like stick. The other girl, little more than a child, was throwing in a handful of crude soap, made from goat's tallow boiled with beech ash.

When Agnes saw the men approaching, she dropped her dolly and came hesitantly towards them, wiping her reddened, crinkled fingers on her ragged kirtle. The big, dark man had been kind to her before, saving her from those bastards Longus and Crues, when they were dragging her from the church, so she felt no fear of him.

'We just wanted to make sure that you were well, Agnes,' said John reassuringly. 'No one has tried to harm you, have they?'

The girl shook her head, the untidy plait of hair swinging as she did so.

'Thank you, sir, but I have been left alone. Though I fear that if you stop coming here, one day they will seize me again, because they need someone to blame.' She looked at him with eyes that held more than a spark of intelligence, belying her rather bovine face. John thought that for a young girl who had almost certainly never set foot outside this village in her whole life, she was far from being a simpleton.

'You remember nothing more of that night when Sir Hugo died?' he asked, with little hope of any useful reply.

Agnes's podgy face creased in a frown. 'I can't actually recall any more than I told you before, but … ' She left the sentence hanging in the air and de Wolfe seized upon it.

'But what, girl?' he rasped, then was afraid that he had spoken too sharply and might have frightened her words away.

'That night, sir — and when you gave me questions — I was upset. Now I seem to remember hearing voices when I was leaving the ox byre, but I cannot be sure and I don't know who they might have been.'

'You said "voices"? You mean there were more than one?'

The girl look abashed, rubbing her bare toes in a half-circle in the dirt of the yard and twisting her fingers together in nervous concern.

'I'm just not sure about any of it, sir! It's sort of come to me slowly — as I've thought about that terrible night. I seem to half remember hearing someone — maybe it was one, maybe two. Or maybe none at all!'

She began to cry and Gwyn, the softest heart among them, went to kneel by her and put a huge arm around her shoulders. 'Don't fret, good girl! You just stop worrying about it, it may come back to you later.'

He threw a warning look at de Wolfe, but the coroner could not resist one last question.

'And you have no idea whose voices they may have been?' he asked, in what he imagined was his most gentle voice.

Agnes sniffed and gulped, then shook her head.

Gwyn wiped away her tears with a finger the size of a chicken thigh and, as they left her in peace, he slipped half a penny into her hand.

'Interesting, but of little use, even if what she says was true,' muttered John, as they left the wash house. 'Maybe more than one assailant — and we presume men, not women.'

'Never saw this stabbing as a woman's crime, Crowner,' growled Gwyn.

'Two women had a motive — and everyone in the damned village had the opportunity,' retorted de Wolfe. 'Avelina thinks Hugo killed her husband — and Beatrice was tired of living with a philandering adulterer, when she was sweet on brother Joel.'

They were walking towards another, larger open-fronted shed, set right at the back of the compound against the stockade. This was the forge and armoury, where they expected to confront Robert Longus.

He was there, as well as his assistant, the heavy oaf Alexander Crues. Both were wearing stained and scorched leather aprons over their tunics and breeches, to protect them from the sparks and hot metal that spat from the anvil on which they were hammering at some small glowing objects. Behind them in the forge, an older man was tending a furnace and a small boy was pumping away at a bellows to keep the charcoal incandescent.

Longus scowled when he saw the coroner and his three attendants. So far, poor Agnes seemed the only person in Sampford Pevere! who was not unhappy to see them. The conversation took its expected course, with Longus denying any knowledge of anything and truculently refusing to come to Exeter on Thursday, on the grounds that he had absolutely nothing to say about anything at any inquest.

'You'll come and like it!' barked the coroner. 'Why were you not there the last time?'

'I told you before, because my master, Sir Hugo, said that I was not to go.. It was a waste of time, he said, and he needed me here to do my work. And he was damned right, too!'

'Well, as I told you last time, if you're not there on Thursday, the sheriff will send a posse to fetch you back to the gaol in Rougemont! And if you feel like vanishing to avoid them, I'll outlaw you, which is as good as you being dead. Understood?'

He glared at Robert Longus, then switched his pugnacious expression to the inarticulate assistant, who was standing stupidly with his mouth open.

'And all that goes for you, too!'

They strode away, leaving the armourer to blaspheme under his breath at their retreating figures. He pulled off his apron and heavy gloves and threw them on to the ground.

'I'm off to see Ralph about this. If we've got to go to Exeter, then I want him with us.'

Eustace was enthralled by what he saw as the drama of the day's visit, and though he continued to plague Thomas with whispered questions, the clerk had become less irritated by the earnest young man. In truth, Thomas began to relish his superior knowledge as the teacher in him came to the fore. He began to enjoy explaining the intricacies of legal procedures and the difficulties of this case, where no hard evidence was forthcoming from anywhere.