Michael JECKS: The Sticklepath Strangler

Keeping an eye on him, Jeanne answered, ‘I can guess at her reaction. She is French, Husband, and herself the daughter of a King. I have lived among the French, as you know, and I think I know how a Frenchwoman would react to learning that her husband had little interest in her. She would not be patient for… Baldwin? Perhaps you would prefer me to demonstrate how a French wife would behave when she was being ignored?’

Hearing the caustic edge to her voice, he tore his gaze from the approaching rider. ‘Sorry, my Lady?’

‘Nothing, Husband,’ Jeanne said with poisonous sweetness. ‘I am sure I was only talking nonsense. What interest could it be to you? Who is it on that horse?’

Baldwin was squinting in his effort to recognise the rider. ‘I can’t quite see.’

Jeanne cast a quick look over her shoulder, but she need not have worried. Edgar, who had been sergeant to Baldwin in the Order of the Templars, and who took seriously his duty to protect his master, was already approaching, a long staff in his hands. He stopped a short distance from Sir Baldwin, resting the staff on the ground, gripping it loosely in his right hand, ready to deflect an attack.

The rider was a young man, probably not yet twenty, with sandy hair and the thin, pinched features of hunger. He reined in before the door, near to where Baldwin, Jeanne and Edgar waited, and ducked his head like a man used to being polite to officials. ‘My Lady, God’s blessing on you. I seek Sir Baldwin Furnshill – is he here?’

Jeanne put out a hand to restrain her husband on his bench, but she was already too late.

‘I am,’ Baldwin said, sweeping the cloak away and standing. He studied the rider with a calm gravity. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Sir Baldwin, I am glad to have found you so soon. My master, Sir Roger de Gidleigh, asked me to request your help.’

‘A murder?’ Baldwin said. Sir Roger was one of the Devonshire Coroners. From the look on the messenger’s face Baldwin realised that his eagerness must have sounded strange, but he had conducted two enquiries with Sir Roger, the most recent during the Oakhampton tournament in which Baldwin had received his wounds, and he respected his judgement. If Sir Roger was asking for help, it should prove to be a matter of interest.

‘Of a sort, sir, yes.’

‘What do you mean, “of a sort”?’ Jeanne demanded.

The lad looked at her with a sort of weary acceptance that there was no way to ease the impact of his news.

‘Madam, I fear Sir Roger is investigating a matter of cannibalism.’

Felicia could hear the row as she approached the mill, even over the harsh rumbling of the great stones grating over each other as they ground the corn. Her parents were at it again.

There was no surprise in it. The whole vill knew about them. Other families were normal, they lived easily with each other, with only the occasional flarings of anger, but not in her home. Her parents detested each other. The only surprise was that Samson had not yet killed her mother.

At the mere thought of her father, she shivered. Felicia was a strongly built girl of twenty-one, with thick dark hair swept back under her wimple. Her eyes were large and almost blue; her face had high cheekbones that could make her look beautiful when she was excited and flushed, but her mouth was thin and severe. When she smiled her features lit up as though with angelic calmness, but she never smiled when thinking of her father. He aroused too many conflicting feelings in her, ones she couldn’t altogether understand. His large hands were as coarse and rough as moorstone, far better suited to clenching in anger than to soothing and stroking in love, although some women liked that. Felicia shivered again. That was the trouble. He enjoyed so many females, and Felicia’s mother Gunilda raged with jealousy. Never, even in their bed, would he turn to her to fulfil their marriage duties, but always sought younger flesh.

Felicia stood at the door while their voices rose inside, his a hoarse bellow over the constant noise of the stones, hers a petulant whine. She wanted him, although Felicia couldn’t understand why. The bastard hated her, just as he hated everyone.

She couldn’t go in. The thought of coping with the pair of them fighting, him striking Gunilda then his rage overwhelming him so that he turned on Felicia too, made her panic. She scurried around the house and slipped away over the far wall, past the dogs’ kennels, and into the church ground. She felt safe in the shadow of the great cross. It was far enough for her parents’ voices to be overwhelmed by the grumbling of the mill’s machinery and the noise of the river rushing past. For a while she could be at peace as she walked around the chapel.

It had been a dream of hers for as long as she could remember, the idea of escaping from Sticklepath. There was nothing to keep her here. Odd, to think that her father would find that idea shocking. He must think that she loved him in her own way, but she didn’t. She obeyed purely from a fear of punishment. If it weren’t for that, she’d never submit to him.

Yet as she walked she saw the one thing that could tempt her to stay: Vin. There he stood, guarding the place where the body of Aline had been found, up the hill. Several years ago they had kissed and cuddled out on the riverbank, a clumsy fumbling together in a clearing among the bushes, and although it wasn’t very satisfying for Felicia, especially when he groaned and fell across her when she had only begun to play with him, she had been oddly gratified, and expected that he would want to marry her. Except they had heard Samson bellowing, and Vin had run off, terrified.

That was the last time she saw Vin with any intimacy. Afterwards he seemed to avoid her, as though ashamed of his behaviour with her, or perhaps it was simple fear of Samson. Or, more likely, he was put off her by what she did with Samson.

Whatever the reason, Vin never made love to her again.

Once the messenger had gone to the buttery to refresh himself, Jeanne followed Baldwin into the house. Her mood was not improved by his twisted grin. ‘I know what you are going to say, my love: you are unhappy that I should consider going. That is fine, but–’

‘But nothing , my Lord. You are a man and feel you must ignore your injuries and return to take part in an investigation many miles from here in the miserable waste of Dartmoor.’

‘I have not yet agreed to any such thing,’ he protested, smiling. ‘And anyway, your own manor is as near to Dartmoor. You never complained about it before.’

‘I am aware that Liddinstone is near to the moors,’ she said, with dignity. And it was. Her comfortable, pretty little manor was out near Brentor. Although she had lived there during her first miserable marriage, the fact of her husband’s cruelty had not changed Lady Jeanne’s love of the place. But that was not her only memory of the moors. ‘You haven’t forgotten the hideous murder at Throwleigh, and that sad woman Katherine, losing first her husband and then her son?’

‘Just because there was one murder there–’ Baldwin began, but she cut through his emollient speech.

‘Not just one murder. You haven’t forgotten Belstone?’

‘Ah, that was different,’ he said, and gazed at her with suspicion. ‘I never told you about that.’

‘You didn’t have to, Husband. A hundred little clues can tell a wife what she needs to know. Besides, I bribed Bishop Stapledon’s messenger with several pots of ale when he came to thank you for your help. The simple fact is that the moors are dangerous – and for you particularly. Why, when you were at Belstone you were almost killed.’

‘I survived,’ he murmured.

‘Yes. To go to Oakhampton and be all but ruined there instead,’ she said acidly. She went to his side and crouched, holding his hand. ‘I fear losing you, my love. And I feel you treat the dangers of the moors with scant regard.’