Michael Jecks - A Friar's bloodfeud

That was clearly how Simon felt too. He had lost a close companion whom he had trusted for many years, and he felt the guilt of not having been there when Hugh needed him. If Hugh had indeed been killed. Now he thought about it, Baldwin wasn’t sure why it was that he had been so convinced that Hugh must have been murdered. Perhaps it was simply some confusion: wasn’t it possible that Wat passed on a message that Hugh was dead , and Baldwin had assumed he’d meant murdered ? Or maybe Wat himself had made the error; on being told Hugh was dead had made the natural assumption, for Wat, that there must have been something unnatural about the death.

Yet men did die daily from accidents. There had been the prints of many men outside Hugh’s burned-out house, but they could have been trying to help … or gawping at the smouldering remains. There were always a lot of people who would go to stare at another man’s misfortune. They’d drink ale while watching a poor soul hang; they’d travel miles for a good execution, especially if it was a noble who was to be killed. An accident like this was meat and drink to most peasants. They’d all seen death, and this one was the death of a man who was a ‘foreigner’ and therefore not of any great social importance — it wasn’t as if he was related to anyone at all. He was dispensable. Easily forgotten. Irrelevant.

That word made Baldwin’s back stiffen. The thought that a man — even a miserable, whining, froward son of a cur like Hugh, and God knew how often Baldwin had cursed him under his breath — could be thought of as irrelevant was a disgrace. There were some, he knew, who believed that it was worthwhile hanging any number of men to make an example, but Baldwin was not one of them. Only the guilty should be condemned, he thought. The innocent should always be protected. If the innocent were forced to suffer, there was no justice. Justice existed to protect all: the strong, the weak, the innocent and the poor. There was no point in justice if it provided for only the strong and the wealthy.

Which made him look more sympathetically on David. The man was tedious, and Baldwin had taken a dislike to his sullen manner at the inn, but now he felt guilty at his initial reaction. ‘David, where do you live?’

‘Back up there.’ He pointed to their left, eastwards. ‘I’ve a small cottage up there.’

‘It’s good land.’

‘We grow enough to live.’

That was the proof of a plot of ground, Baldwin knew. It had to provide. That was how a man measured his space: could he live there. Nothing else mattered. ‘On the day that the family was killed, did you hear anything or see anyone?’

‘Nothing. It was Saturday night. I was up at home.’

‘Was there anyone with you?’ Simon asked sharply.

‘Why should there be?’ Davie whined. ‘I’m not married.’

‘So no one can vouch for you?’

David looked at Simon, and then a smile spread over his face. ‘Yes! Pagan was there. He lives a short way from my house, and he was there that night.’

‘Pagan?’ Baldwin enquired.

‘He’s the steward to Lady Isabel — the woman who used to own all the lands about here, from here down to Monk Oakhampton and the river.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Down there now. Since Sir Geoffrey took her hall,’ David said.

‘And where is the hall?’

‘There it is. Up on the hillside there.’

There was a strange feeling about this place, Jeanne thought. She sipped wine as she sat at the table rocking Richalda in her lap, listening as Emma slurped.

It was very sad to think that Hugh and his woman were dead. She had liked Hugh a great deal, and she knew full well that it was rare for a man like him to find a companion. Sometimes a shepherd or peasant farmer would meet a woman and marry, but a man like Hugh?

‘I never liked him,’ Emma said. ‘He was uncouth.’

‘You should remember that you are talking of a dead man, Emma,’ Jeanne said sharply.

‘There is no point in hypocrisy,’ Emma said, and burped.

Jeanne recalled that her maid had already been in the buttery for some while. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Me?’ Emma exclaimed horrified. ‘I hope I can hold my drink, my lady.’

‘Then do so. Hugh was a kind man, and he was honourable. That is all that matters.’

Emma sniffed. ‘He still took a nun from her convent.’

‘That is nonsense!’ Jeanne said hotly. ‘He only helped a poor woman when she had already left her convent because she should never have been there in the first place.’

‘So you say. I believe that a woman who has become a Bride of Christ should not resign her position. She chose her path and renounced it when it suited her.’

‘She was not there legally, Emma. She was taken in there when she was too young to choose,’ Jeanne said with a cold anger. This kind of small-mindedness was no more than she should have expected from her maid, she knew. Emma was a strangely cold, unkind woman, but she was a habit now as much as a companion. ‘If you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, then best it isn’t exercised.’

‘It’s not my fault if the chit betrayed her God and her vocation,’ Emma grunted. ‘But if you prefer me to keep my thoughts to myself, I’m sure I don’t mind.’

Jeanne snorted and turned from her. Emma’s unforgiving, almost brutal nature sometimes made her so angry, she could have happily told her to return to Bordeaux. But then she had to remember that Emma herself had given up everything for Jeanne, her home in the city with all its beautiful cloths and decorations on display, and come here to this miserable, cold, wet land where the nearest thing to civilisation was the monthly visit to Tavistock. Emma had decided views on Tavistock.

Just for once Jeanne wished that Emma could have shown a little compassion. Sitting here, she saw that Matthew the priest had entered the inn and now stood at the bar with a quart jug in his hand. He turned as Jeanne glimpsed him, and she was sure that he was surreptitiously trying to watch her from the corner of his eye.

Somehow Jeanne felt deeply unsettled by the sight of him. She was certain that he had overheard at least a part of her conversation with Emma, and something about the set of his shoulders made her think that he was not impressed with what he had heard.

David grew more disconsolate as they approached the channel of thick, brackish water that trailed down from the drained pool.

There was a small group of men hanging about the place. Baldwin noticed one in particular, a brute of a man, rather like a bear, who reminded him of someone. It was a little while before he realised that the man was very like the hunter and tracker, Black, whom he had used so often in his early days as keeper in Crediton. There were the same strong features in his face, the same thick dark hair, the same strength in the shoulders — and then there were the differences.

Black would never have looked away as though already cowed. He’d always meet a man’s eye, no matter what the station of the man concerned. There was something about the hunter that made him confident in the presence of anyone. That couldn’t be said for any of the fellows here. There was a consistency in their nervousness in the presence of strangers that seemed wrong. It was almost as though they were petrified of any man in authority.

Baldwin snorted and dropped from his mount. ‘You! Come here.’

The large man glowered, but obeyed. ‘Sir?’

‘I am Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, Keeper of the King’s Peace. I have heard that there’s a dead woman here. Where is the body?’

‘Sir Geoffrey has taken it, sir.’

Baldwin was still for a moment as he digested this. ‘Where has he taken it?’