Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

The lane began dropping, and she sensed the familiar smell and feel of the sea, though it was still more than a mile distant. Trees became lower and sparser, with gorse, broom and heather taking their place.

Then the track entered a shallow valley, where more trees were able to shelter from the gales, and soon some strip-fields heralded the edge of a village. She saw the tiny church at the top end of the hamlet and then the scattered dwellings, barn and manor-house that made up Ringmore.

A couple of bare-foot children appeared, guiltily clutching some scarred apples that they had obviously stolen from someone's trees, the last survivors of the autumn harvest. The sight of a strange woman in their village was enough to make them forget their crime for the moment and they stared open mouthed at this apparition from the outside world. Hilda asked them where she could find the bailiff, as William Vado was the only person that John had mentioned in Ringmore. Wordlessly, one pointed towards the stockade of the manor-house and she went towards it, soon meeting two men who came out of the gate, leading a pair of oxen. They stared at her curiously but said nothing, and she went inside the compound and peered in through the open main door. A couple of girls and an older woman were scattering new rushes on the floor, and stopped to stare open-mouthed at her as if she had just dropped down from the moon.

Within minutes, she had explained who she was to the woman, and as soon as the servant had assured herself that this was an earthbound woman and a Saxon as well, she was eager to help.

'I'll fetch the bailiffs wife directly,' she said in an accent so thick that even the village-born Hilda had difficulty in following it.

With much bustling and shouting, another woman appeared with a young baby swaddled across her chest in a shawl, two other young girls hanging on to her skirts. Once again, explanations were made and the bailiffs wife made Hilda welcome, taking her through to one of the rooms off the hall, where a couple more young women and an older grandmother were sewing and preparing food for the evening meal.

'My husband is out on his rounds,' explained Martha Vado. 'He has four vills to supervise for his lord's steward in Totnes, but he will be home well before the daylight ends.'

Hilda was pressed to take food and drink and afterwards offered to nurse the new baby, a job she remembered well from her days in Holcombe, where she had three younger brothers and a sister. With the other women clustered around, even though one was still plucking a pair of ducks, she explained all that she knew about the death of her husband and went on to tell them of the murder of the lord of Shillingford and the attack on his son and steward, which seemed to the coroner to be connected with the deaths of Thorgils and his crew.

The women were round eyed with wonder at these tales of mayhem from the world outside, which on top of the shipmen's killing and the murder of old Joel from Burgh Island gave them more to gossip about than for years past. Like the old man at St Anne's Chapel, they were concerned at an unaccompanied woman moving around the countryside, but Hilda impressed on them that she felt it her bounden duty to find out all she could about the death of her husband.

She said the same to William Vado and his reeve when they returned late in the afternoon. When he discovered that she was a friend and indeed now almost a business partner of Sir John de Wolfe and one of the Exeter portreeves, he became deferential and sympathetic.

'Tomorrow, we will take you to where the vessel was beached and also to where your unfortunate husband was found,' he promised. 'Also you may see the church where his body lay in dignified rest for a time. No doubt our Father Walter will speak to you to reassure you on that point.'

That night, Hilda was given one of the best mattresses, one stuffed with goose feathers rather than straw or ferns. She bedded down with the women and children in the side room, Martha and William Vado taking the other small chamber where the new baby slept in an old box alongside them.

The following morning she followed the itinerary that the bailiff had suggested, calling at the church for a prayer and a rather short, stiff interview with the parish priest, who seemed unimpressed by her pilgrimage to the scenes of her husband's demise. Then William found her a pony, which she sat on easily with just a sack for a saddle, and they went down to the beach opposite Burgh Island to view the resting place of the Mary and the place where Thorgils and his men had been found. She looked up at the now deserted cell on top of the island and was told that Joel had been laid to rest in the churchyard at Ringmore, where he had spent the last two decades of his life.

'The parson revealed that he had been a Knight of the Templars,' said William Vado. 'But no one seemed to know anything of his family, and we thought he would have preferred to be laid to rest among us.'

Hilda realised that she had learned nothing at all of any use to her from these well-meaning people, mainly because they had nothing to tell her. What now exercised her mind was the shadowy image of three black-robed monks, who seemed to have appeared too many times for it to be coincidence. They had been seen on the track up from the other beach near Ringmore, then at St Anne's Chapel and once again far away near Shillingford. True, it seemed at their first appearance that there were four, rather than three, but she felt that these appearances might have some significance.

Now this single-minded woman wanted to pursue their last sighting in this area, which seemed to be down the road from the chapel, according to the poor vision of the old custodian. She needed to get away from Ringmore now and with a twinge of conscience at her deception, decided to fabricate a means of leaving her most recent hosts.

'I am meeting another group of pilgrims at St Anne's Chapel,' she lied. 'I met them in church at Salcombe some days ago and they said they would be returning from Tavistock to take ship at Salcombe again, passing the chapel hopefully around noon.'

The Vado family insisted on filling her with food before she left, and the bailiff sent his older sister and Osbert, his reeve, as chaperone and escort on the short journey up to the chapel. They wanted to stay with her to see her safely reunited with her mythical pilgrims, but she managed to dissuade them by saying that she would remain in the chapel in prayer for her husband and his men until the travellers arrived. Thankfully, the bandy old man did not blurt out his ignorance of any pilgrims due to arrive and, with expressions of genuine good feeling, the pair from Ringmore said farewell and left for home.

After they had vanished around a bend in the track, Ivo de Brun, the scarecrow that cared for the little chapel, gave Hilda a conspiratorial leer.

'I think, my lady, that you have other things in mind.'

She sighed and nodded. 'I have indeed! I have sworn not to rest until the murderers of my husband have been brought to justice. I need to follow every suggestion that might lead the law officers to them.'

'I told you that the crowner has already been here on that mission,' the old man pointed out. 'He went down to Bigbury, but I doubt he learned anything useful.'

'I know Sir John well,' she answered. 'He has told me of the monks you saw and he tried to discover more, but to no avail. Yet the itching of my thumbs tells me that some mystery attaches to those men.'

The custodian shrugged his pitifully thin shoulders. 'Go you then to Bigbury, lady. It is but a mile or so down the road, so I doubt any harm can befall you in that distance. Then return here and wait for more travellers who can see you safely back to Salcombe, for the roads are no place for a solitary woman, especially at this time of year. It threatens snow again today.'