Michael JECKS - The Oath

‘Master Vyke, where are you going?’ The priest appeared, carrying wood he had gathered.

‘Father, I am sorry, but I have to see if I can find where it was that I was struck down.’

‘I can understand your confusion, my son. But I do not think you should be using that leg yet. Will you not stay here a little longer and rest it?’

‘I thank you, but no. I cannot sit idly, while a man’s body lies rotting.’

The priest nodded slowly. ‘Do you have any idea where you should go?’

‘No, but it cannot be too far from here, as the man who knocked me down must have carried or carted me here.’

Paul looked dubious. ‘Perhaps so. Well, if you head east from here, and a little south, you will come to Bristol. That may be a good place to aim for, my son. Perhaps you will strike the place on the way. Otherwise, you will have to search in all directions trying to find it, and I do not know that you would be content to hunt all over the shire.’

‘No, I am sure you are right there, Father. Will you give me a blessing?’

Paul gave him a hug, and muttered a prayer, making the sign of the cross over his brow and wishing him Godspeed, and soon Robert was on his way, following the road as Paul had suggested.

But as he set off, his teeth gritted against the pain, he knew that the reason he wished to seek that body was less because of the dead man, and more because he was determined to learn what had happened to himself.

He remembered finding the head, remembered crouching to vomit – and then nothing. Perhaps it was the effect of the knock on his head the previous day, but surely the blow wouldn’t still have had such an awful impact on him after such a long time.

Stopping in the road, he ran his fingers questingly over his skull, quickly finding the area of intense soreness where the tranter had hit him. And then his finger found another place, right above his left ear. Touching it was enough to make him wince. So that was it, he thought. Someone had knocked him down again.

But why would his attacker take him somewhere else, unless it was to confuse him and hide the location of the dead man? If that was all the fellow intended, surely he would simply have killed Robert too, as a witness to his crime? It made no sense.

Robert suddenly set his face to the north. There were trees in the distance, and he was sure that there was smoke, too. It was painful to walk on his bad leg, but it would heal sooner if he kept it moving. Resting it too much was the surest way of losing his mobility for good and all.

The way soon became overgrown with brambles and blackthorns. Robert struggled on for a while, until he found himself on the edge of a small wood. He turned off through the trees, hoping that the way would become easier, and at first it was, but only if he followed a shallow incline to a little valley below. Here there was another trail, this time heading more southwards and getting marshy. He went carefully on the soft ground, testing the ground with his staff before putting his foot anywhere dangerous.

It was a slow, painstaking progress along this track, and he could have wept when he saw that the track was bending around to head south-east of here. He was going in the wrong direction entirely. Soon, if he wasn’t careful, he would be back at the priest’s house where he had started.

And then he saw the trees. There was something about them… He stopped, and stared hard, before setting off again in his jerky manner, moving carefully to protect his bad shin and skull, all the time aware of his emotions being pulled this way and that.

At the forefront of his mind was the necessity of finding the dead man, if there was one. If a fellow had been killed, and his body dismembered, Robert wanted to find it so that it could be reported. There were many people who would hurry away from a corpse on the basis that they would not want to be attached as first finder. Robert himself didn’t want to have to pay any man to be bound over to return to this place when the Coroner came to hold his inquest, and later, when the Justices came to listen to the evidence in court. No, of course he didn’t want to get caught up in all that, but still less did he want the murderer to escape.

Also, it was only by finding the body that he could assure himself he wasn’t mad. His dreams had been growing more and more grotesque, the dead man’s head following him as though begging him to return. Maybe if he did so, peace would be granted to him.

The path led in among a stand of trees, and he saw with a thrill of excitement and trepidation that there was a hedge on one side, with a puddle nearby. With a grunt of resolution, he forced himself to look at the hedge. Sure enough, there was a gap in it large enough for his body to have crawled through. If he was right, the head was just over there… He bent and peered in.

And saw the head still sitting on the branches where it had lain before.

Near Amesbury

Simon and Margaret sat gratefully on the stools provided, and sipped the wine passed to them.

‘So, Master Puttock, I think you must be glad we appeared when we did, eh?’

Simon looked up at the man who had appeared. He was a big fellow, but a man encased in a coat-of-arms and mail tended to have a commanding presence. This one still had his face concealed by his helmet, and Simon stood, a little unsteadily, and bowed. ‘Sir, I am very glad to see you and to be able to offer my profound thanks. I don’t…’ Then he paused. ‘How did you know my name, sir?’

‘How would I not know the name of a friend?’ The man laughed, and lifted off his helmet. ‘Remember me?’

Simon gasped with pleasure to see Sir Charles of Lancaster. ‘Sir, never was a knight more welcome!’

The knight nodded with a grin. He was a tall, confident man, with clear, blue eyes that told the world he knew it existed, in large part, in order to entertain and amuse him. Sir Charles was not a man to suffer from a sense of inadequacy or jealousy. He believed that he had a right, by birth and position, to enjoy his life in any way he wanted to.

There had been some significant changes since the last time Simon had spent any time with Sir Charles. That had been in France, and there, Sir Charles had suffered the loss of his most devoted man-at-arms when he was murdered, and Simon and Baldwin had helped him.

It was apparent that Sir Charles recalled the same incident. ‘So, it seems I am able to return your favour to me,’ he said. ‘You helped me in Paris, and I am able to help you here.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Simon asked.

‘The country would seem to be growing a little fractious,’ Sir Charles said loftily. ‘I have been asked to come and try to keep this area quiet, and I’ve been doing my best, but I confess, it appears that my best is inadequate. There is,’ he added thoughtfully, taking a large mazer of wine from his servant, ‘quite a vast amount of unrest among the peasants.’

Sir Charles and his men had killed all the members of the gang which had attacked Simon and Margaret. There had been one survivor, whose horse had died in the attack, and who had tried to bolt for some trees to escape, but two of Sir Charles’s men cantered easily after him, and in a few moments, the man was hacked into pieces. There was no sympathy for such scoundrels. Outlaws could expect instant justice.

‘This is the first we have seen of it since leaving London,’ Simon said. ‘I had thought we had left the madness behind.’

‘When a kingdom collapses, I fear that some men will always rise up and take what they want,’ the knight said, airily waving his mazer while his servant struggled to unbuckle his greaves. ‘You have these peasants who toil in their fields musing about life, and when they see law and order dissipating, they think, “Aha, I could steal a shilling or two, and live like a lord for the day.” They really are that simple: they only look for the next ale, the next pie. Further than that, they are blind, poor fools.’