Michael Jecks - The Tolls of Death

‘The bastard!’ Richer sobbed.

‘Friend Richer, please sit,’ Baldwin said, putting a hand on his shoulder and persuading him to rest again. ‘You have no evidence against Serlo, and if you go to him now, you will be guilty of murder yourself. Leave the affair to us. We can investigate the matter.’

‘Yes, very well,’ Richer said, but he was scarcely listening. Another thought had struck him, a memory from over the long years since the death of his parents. The voice which had first raised the alarm — it had been Serlo’s surely, the voice of a man who was coming from the vill to the field, as though he had seen the fire and was rushing to fetch help to put it out.

Yet it could have been the voice of the man who had himself started the fire, he now realised.

Letitia left the body of Hamelin soon after Adam returned from his meal. He stood silently over Muriel, like a broody hen contemplating a warm pebble, the fool! The man always irritated her, but rarely so much as now, with his jargon and his fake sympathy.

Letty could dimly comprehend Muriel’s devastation; she had always wanted children of her own, but she was barren. Whether it was her fault or her husband’s, she didn’t know, nor did she care particularly.

For now, she was only worried about one thing: her nephew Aumery. The poor fellow had seen his mother almost killed, and witnessed his brother’s hideous death. She took his hand and pulled him away from Muriel. He started to wail, but she picked him up and he rammed his face into the corner of her shoulder, sobbing. She carried him out to the lane, and started down the road to her home. She was concerned for Muriel, her state of mind and her debility, but the woman needed to sit out the vigil.

Already the shadows were lengthening, the air growing cooler as the sun slipped behind the trees. Letitia shivered at the thought of the night to come. It was long past summer, and although the fruit and vegetables had been stored carefully, the beans and peas dried, the grain packed away, even so, she hated this time of year. It was the period of plenty, with the curse of hunger to come as winter gripped the land in a frozen embrace.

Come now, she told herself. There’s no starvation in the vill now, and hasn’t been for seven years since the disaster of the rains, and Alex has been successful. Even Serlo had achieved much, although Letitia felt no equivalent pride for him as she felt for her husband. Especially after today.

Why the fool hadn’t agreed to let her look after his sons, she would never know nor comprehend. Jan had come back to Letty’s when Serlo told her she could go, never dreaming that the man would clear off to the mill, leaving a sleeping wife, a pot simmering over the fire, two unsupervised children and a pig with her sty gate open. It was an accident waiting to happen! Just another example of the stupidity of the man. He was responsible for his younger son’s death. Yet he’d probably convince himself that it was all Muriel’s fault and, knowing her, the poor mouse, she’d agree. As usual. There was no man in the world so certain of the correctness of his own opinions than Serlo. Letitia always thought it was a sign of a defective mind, the inability to appreciate when it was wrong.

She reached her front door and pushed it open, kicking it closed behind her. Poor Aumery was almost asleep in her arms, and she murmured kind words to him as she took him up to her little chamber. At her bed she pulled the blanket across and kneeled gingerly, aware of the child’s weight. She laid him down on the blanket and wrapped another over him to keep him warm, then pulled the string to raise the shutter in its runners, hooking it over the peg in the wall above, and softly walked from the room.

Downstairs again, she built up the fire and got it going. It took some while, and when she had a good blaze, she set her tripod over it and hung her pot dangling from the chain. She was standing and stirring the pot when Alexander arrived home.

‘What would I do without you?’ he sighed. ‘Already preparing food, even after a day like this one.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘A little,’ he lied. The sight of Muriel and poor Hamelin had quite ruined his appetite. A death so close to a man’s own family was devastating.

He’d tried to seek out his brother to offer his condolences, but Serlo was so far gone, he scarcely knew Alexander. He just apologised drunkenly for stealing so much money in tolls, and went on to curse the slut Athelina for not paying up on time. ‘It was all that bitch’s fault,’ he had said, weeping.

Alexander rubbed a hand over his head. There was a pain behind his eyes. Another child dead, just like the other. Poor, poor little Danny. Serlo should have been more careful, but he was so taken up with his own problems, he forgot his duties to others. And he never took responsibility for his actions. It was always someone else’s fault.

Looking at him, Letty saw the tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, my love, I am so sorry!’

‘How can God take away a lad like him? Only a matter of months old, and he’s gone. It’s … oh, dear Lord!’

She knew that he had been going to say ‘unfair’, but that was a word they both avoided. Life wasn’t fair — they knew that. Yet there was no denying that Letty would dearly have liked God to have given her Hamelin. She could have taken him in and protected him. There was no need to snatch him away so cruelly.

‘Thank God,’ she said, ‘the poor boy was baptised.’

‘Yes. At least that will be a comfort to poor Muriel.’

‘Darling heart, don’t trouble yourself,’ she said kindly. ‘There is nothing we can do in such matters but pray for his soul, and for Muriel’s recovery, and help her to continue life. We don’t want another suicide.’

‘Hadn’t you heard?’ he asked sharply. ‘They are saying that Athelina’s death wasn’t suicide at all. They think she was murdered.’

She could feel his eyes on her as she returned to the pot and stirred it. After a while she asked: ‘And do they know who did it?’

‘No.’

She nodded, but when she looked up, she could see his face, and knew what he was thinking. He was sure he knew who had killed poor Athelina, she thought to herself sadly.

They both did: Serlo.

‘Do you think Richer will do something stupid?’ Simon asked Baldwin as they walked away with Sir Jules.

‘He is in no fit state to hurt Serlo,’ Baldwin said. ‘In fact, in his present condition, I would expect the miller to thrash him .’

‘Would you care for some food?’ Sir Jules said.

‘Perhaps later,’ Baldwin said pensively.

‘That means at some time when he realises he hasn’t eaten for a month or more,’ Simon said caustically. ‘For my part, I’d enjoy some cuts of meat with bread.’

‘There is so much to do,’ Baldwin objected. ‘We have to speak to as many people here in the vill as possible, then perhaps go to the castle and question the men there. We should also travel to Temple to interview the priest there, find out what he thinks of Adam.’

‘You don’t believe him?’ Sir Jules asked. His young face was already troubled, but on hearing this his eyebrows shot up almost under his unkempt hair.

‘I don’t disbelieve him yet,’ Baldwin corrected him. ‘But in a situation like this, with a woman murdered, it’s first necessary to hear what people have to say about the matter, and then pass their evidence through the most effective sieve available — the mind. If one man says a thing is so, you trust him until you hear a second say that it is not so; then you ask a third, and see what he says.’

‘And if two men say a thing is so, and the third doesn’t, you assume the latter is the liar, so he’s the killer,’ Sir Jules said dismissively. If this was the sum of intelligence that these two could bring, then they were little more use than himself, he reckoned.