Michael Jecks - No Law in the Land

Sir Richard rumbled as he considered. ‘So this one-eyed arsehole was there to lead them all astray and he colluded with the renegade monk to get them all up into the woods?’

‘That’s how I read the tale,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Except the money wasn’t there. So someone had taken it already.’

‘Perhaps Anselm himself?’ Sir Richard said.

‘No!’ Mark protested. ‘He wouldn’t take the money and see all those people murdered.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin mused, ‘he aided Osbert in doing that.’

Simon shot a look at Sir Richard. ‘It was a large sum of silver, wasn’t it? More than one man could carry, I’d bet.’

‘Sirs, there is one thing,’ Roger said. He was walking briskly at their side. ‘I saw the camp on the morning after. I am sure that all the people there were deliberately murdered. One man I found had six arrows, and yet someone had stabbed him through the eye to make sure. All were like that, bar the monk himself and one other — a man who was lying further away from the middle of the camp. He was another fighter, I think, and yet he hadn’t been taken down by the attack — he had been stabbed in the back some four or five times.’

Baldwin was nodding. ‘And you think …’

‘That he was a sentry, the first to be killed. If this Osbert was in the camp as you believe then this man was killed so that the money could be removed.’

Simon shook his head. ‘It wasn’t there. I looked most carefully, and there was no sign of it near the camp. I even looked about the woods to see if anything could be learned. So did Mark here. He found a lovely cross, all enamelled. It was Pietro’s, apparently.’

‘I remembered it,’ Mark said. ‘It had been thrown into a bush.’ He drew it from beneath his robes now and displayed it.

Baldwin pursed his lips. ‘I would that I had been able to see the site after the attack. Perhaps I would have noticed something …’

‘We all did our best,’ Simon said coldly. ‘As did Sir Peregrine.’

‘I was not criticising,’ Baldwin said.

Sir Richard had his mind fixed on the money and seemingly did not notice Simon’s petulance. ‘So we think that this Osbert had a heavy hand in the robbery and killings. But the money was already gone? Did the cardinal send it by some other route, and this was a mere distraction to tempt robbers?’

‘No. The money was with this party,’ Simon said. ‘The cardinal would have told us if it had already been safely sent, surely.’

‘How would Sir Robert’s men have known that the party were there already?’ Mark said. ‘Is it possible that some other man than this Osbert killed the sentry and took the money?’

‘He could hardly carry all that money himself,’ Baldwin said. ‘I doubt one man on his own could.’

Simon frowned. ‘The man Hoppon was nearby. He could have helped take it.’

Mark nodded. ‘And when poor Anselm realised that the money was stolen, he trailed after in order to tell the camp who had taken it, and to where.’

Simon looked ahead. ‘Or Anselm saw Osbert kill the guard and decided to take the money himself. He picked up the chest and made away with it.’

‘A money chest full of silver?’ Baldwin questioned.

He was right. It would be too heavy. ‘There was Hoppon nearby. He is crippled, though. His leg is all but useless. Still, perhaps he could help a man take a chest and hide it?’

‘I have often noticed that men who have been injured will have increased abilities in other ways,’ Baldwin said. ‘A man with one weak leg will have the other much stronger, a man with poor hearing may have better eyesight than most, or a fellow who’s lost an arm will have a more powerful remaining arm to compensate. Perhaps this Hoppon is the same?’

Sir Richard gave a loud ‘Ha!’ that made Edith jump almost from her pony, while Mark blanched and threw a look of mute appeal to Simon, as though begging him to either plead with the knight to show a little restraint, or perhaps to slip a dagger into the man and silence him that way.

But the knight continued. ‘Simon, you remember that Hoppon’s house was the very nearest to the attack itself, eh? What would be easier than for the fellow to hop on over there and knock down an unsuspectin’ guard, hoick up the lucre and hobble off again, eh? Or perhaps it was the monk killed the guard, not this Osbert, and Hoppon helped him to take the chest away?’

Simon recalled the log pile outside Hoppon’s house. It was hard to imagine that he could have been involved — Simon had liked the fellow. He was as suspicious, tetchy and truculent as Simon’s old servant Hugh. But it couldn’t be denied that the man had the strength to pull large logs into his house for his fire. A man who could do that could as easily haul a money chest away.

Baldwin glanced over at him. ‘What do you think, Simon? He was nearest the site of the attack, if Sir Richard is right. If Osbert had to have an ally, perhaps Hoppon was the man?’

‘I find it hard to believe,’ Simon said after a few moments of consideration. ‘But you are right. We ought to ask him more about that night and see if he could have been involved in any way.’

He looked over his shoulder at the group of men and women behind them. Agnes and Edith appeared to have formed an alliance over the night, and even now were close together a matter of a few feet behind him. Edgar formed their rearguard, from where he could keep an eye on the women as well as Roger, whom he distrusted.

It made Simon think of another cavalcade, two weeks and a few days before, and an old man in his hovel, sitting near his fire of tree trunks, his little dog at his side, glowering at the embers as he listened to the sounds of horses and carts quietly rolling past. Simon could believe that the man would have sat there and listened — but to go from that to the picture of Hoppon leaping into the clearing and murdering a man, then carrying off a great treasure: that was too fanciful for him.

‘You say you think he could have been involved in the robbery. I doubt it. He does not seem the sort of man who would do something like that.’

‘You would trust to your belly in this?’ Baldwin asked.

‘My intuition about people has rarely been wrong,’ Simon said shortly.

Baldwin said nothing, but he gave his old friend a look of great sadness, almost mourning. Both felt that their friendship had never been so sorely tested, and Baldwin felt it all the more, for he could not even hope that Simon would ever understand his action yesterday. It was clear that for Simon, his daughter’s life was all, and his faith in Baldwin had been rocked to its foundations.

Jacobstowe

It was a pleasant little home, Edith thought as she crossed over the threshold with Agnes. Edgar was with them, and he stood outside with that little smile on his face that seemed to indicate ironic amusement about the scene around him, especially as he watched Mark limping slightly as he made his way to the church. The brother’s pony had been given to Roger for him to follow Baldwin, Simon and Sir Richard at their pace, rather than having to slow them to his own, while they rode to Hoppon’s house to question him.

Agnes had already been to fetch her little boy, a fellow christened Antony, but who had invariably been known as Ant. ‘It was my husband used to call him that,’ Agnes said sadly. ‘He always gave everyone a nickname.’

‘My husband sometimes does, too,’ Edith said. ‘He can be so childish like that.’

‘Hush, dear,’ Agnes said as Edith began to sob. She fetched a little ale in a cup and passed it to her. ‘Drink this.’

Edith took it, and wiped at her eyes. ‘I am sorry, but the thought of him lying in the gaol at Exeter fills me with horror. They were talking about putting him into court to stand for treason, and you know what that would mean. No one ever escapes from a charge like that.’