Alys Clare - Ashes of the Elements

He asked instead, ‘I believe your husband — er — worked with his cousin Seth? And another man — Ewen, is it?’

The dull eyes raised to his had a sudden spark of life in them. ‘You’re very well informed,’ she said tartly. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Woman, it may interest you to know that I’m about the only person hereabouts who has the slightest interest in bringing your husband’s murderer to justice!’ he cried, suddenly angry. ‘I am trying to find out all I can about him, and I shall want to talk to everyone who knew him!’

‘Huh! That won’t take you long! There’s me, and I don’t know nothing about what he got up to, leastways, except he used to go into the forest, for all that I tried to stop him.’ She sniffed, making a thick snorting sound in her throat; had Josse not been standing in front of her, she might well, he thought, have hawked up the loose phlegm and gobbed it out on to the road. ‘Right, weren’t I?’ she flashed, with a sudden angry spiritedness. ‘Seeing as how them Forest People’ve gone and done for him!’

‘Yes, I know. As I said, I’m sorry.’ Josse brought his irritation under control. The woman was, after all, recently bereaved. ‘Did these men Ewen and Seth go with Hamm into the forest?’ he asked, trying to keep his tone conciliatory. ‘Did they — er — hunt with him?’

She eyed him with half-closed lids. Her eyes, he noticed, were an indeterminate pale colour, and the lashes were short and sparse. ‘They were poachers, the three of them,’ she said baldly. ‘As well you know. Everyone knows that, someone’ll have told you by now.’

‘Yes, I did know,’ Josse acknowledged. ‘The general view is that your husband was poaching the night he was killed, and that the Forest People didn’t like it.’

‘T’aint their game, no more’n it were his,’ the woman said bitterly. ‘They’ve got no call to go stopping other folk helping their-selves. Not to the game, anyhow, and as to the other-’ She bit off whatever she had been about to say.

‘The other?’ He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll not say no more. I’ve been beaten by my own man long enough, I won’t risk one of them others starting where Hamm left off.’

‘But-’

‘No.’

And he watched as, with a dignity he wouldn’t have thought she possessed, the woman got to her feet, carefully picked up her pot and gathered her vegetables up in her fraying and filthy skirt, then stepped down inside her house and firmly closed the door.

* * *

Josse came upon Hamm Robinson’s partners in crime by sheer fluke. Riding up into the outer fringes of the forest, intending to have a look at the place where Hamm was found, he heard their arguing voices.

His luck did not extend to overhearing anything useful; hearing his horse, instantly they stopped talking. Far from being cowed like the woman, though, they went on the offensive.

‘Oi! What d’you think yer doing?’ one man called out.

The other was brandishing a stout staff. ‘State yer business!’ he said grandly.

Josse rode right up to them; Horace was a tall horse, and, being mounted, Josse felt he had the upper hand. Despite the stout stick.

‘Ewen and Seth, I take it?’ he said. ‘Friends of the late Hamm Robinson? Or should I say fellow thieves?’

It was a stab in the dark. But it got a response; the man carrying the stick began to swing it threateningly above his head, crying, ‘It were his idea! Hamm found it, it were Hamm made us go in along of him! I never-’

At that point, the other man hit him. Swung his elbow violently into the man’s stomach, so that he bent over into a right-angle, whooping for breath.

‘Take no notice of Ewen,’ Seth said over his friend’s gasping. ‘He’s right, sir, it were Hamm who said there was good game to be had in the forest, and us what went along with him.’

‘Game,’ Josse repeated. The wounded man had not, he was quite sure, been speaking of game. But, whatever he had meant, Josse wasn’t going to find out.

‘We’ve got our bellies to fill, same as everyone else,’ Seth went on self-righteously. ‘When there’s rabbit and deer aplenty in there,’ he jerked a thumb back towards the dark forest behind him, ‘then where’s the harm? That’s what I say, sir!’

‘Quite,’ Josse said. ‘Only someone, apparently, didn’t agree. To the extent of slaying your late cousin with a well-aimed spear.’

The man paled visibly at the reminder, but stood his ground. The wounded man — Ewen — renewed his moaning. ‘I told you, Seth!’ he said shakily. ‘Told you, aye, and him too! Hamm, I says, you go in there again, and they’ll-’

He was, Josse observed, not a man to learn a lesson quickly; as before, what he had been about to say was abruptly cut off. This time, the blow was severe enough to floor him; as Josse turned Horace’s head and kicked him into a trot, he saw Seth aim a booted foot at his fallen friend’s head.

* * *

All the way back to the Abbey, Josse puzzled over what a smalltime poacher and, probably, petty thief, could have discovered deep within an ancient forest. What could be valuable enough to make not only Hamm but his two colleagues go into that place of fearful legend? Superstitious, like all their kind, it must surely have been something extraordinary.

Whatever Hamm had discovered, it seemed to have led directly to his murder. It had always struck Josse as fairly unlikely, that these mysterious forest folk should have speared a man to death purely for snaring a brace of coneys; it was far more credible that, somehow, Hamm had uncovered something they preferred to keep secret.

But what?

Something, probably, that Hamm reckoned he could turn readily into cash, for nothing else, surely, would have made him risk the forest by night.

Buried treasure? A hoard of Roman coins? The rumours spoke of Roman occupation of the great Wealden Forest; they had extracted iron from it, made sound tracks through the primeval woodland, traces of which could still be found now, a thousand years later. Had Hamm, in the course of his poaching, dug into a rabbit warren under some ancient oak and come across a bounty he didn’t expect?

Speculation. It was all speculation. No matter how likely it was beginning to sound, Josse had no proof.

And, he concluded as he rode through the Abbey gates, there was only one way to change that.

* * *

Abbess Helewise was sitting in the cloister, eyes closed, the late sun on her face. Josse didn’t like to disturb her, but, on the other hand, she had said he might report any findings to her …

He was still hovering, trying to decide if to wake her or not, when she said, ‘I’m not asleep. And I know it’s you, Sir Josse, nobody else here wears spurs that jingle when they walk.’

He went to sit beside her on the narrow stone ledge. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I know you’ve had a busy day.’

She sighed. ‘Indeed. But the outcome has, in part, been satisfactory. The sick baby was baptised — his brother, too — and he has, I think, taken a turn for the better. He is suckling well, and has a little colour.’

‘Thank God,’ Josse said.

‘Amen.’ There was a slight pause, then she said, ‘And you, I imagine, have news, too?’

‘Aye.’ Briefly he told her what he had discovered, and what he now thought had happened. ‘I’m going to have a look,’ he added, with an attempt at nonchalance. ‘Tonight, probably. Nothing like striking while the iron’s hot!’ He attempted a laugh, not very convincing, even to himself.

The Abbess said slowly, ‘You think Hamm Robinson was killed by the Forest People because he had found out about something they prefer to keep to themselves, and now you propose to go into the forest tonight, and try to find out what this something was.’