Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

The innkeeper sighed. ‘If you do, you’ll only make life difficult for yourself, Tom Garde. You’ll have the Reeve on your back.’

‘The Reeve, my arse! It’s got nothing to do with him.’

‘Alexander came by today, before going to Samson’s inquest, and asked me to let Ivo stay on. So if you’re not happy about it, you speak to him.’

‘You could have told him to go to the inn at South Zeal, you bastard. You could have told me he was here, you could have warned me and my wife, couldn’t you?’

‘Tom, let go of my hand.’ His voice was cold, and Thomas immediately released him. None of this was the innkeeper’s fault.

Thomas sipped his ale. ‘This inquest – what good is it doing? How can anyone hope to find what happened to Aline after so many years?’

‘God knows. You were here when she disappeared, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. We came here just after the famine, about the same time Peter’s daughter was killed. Terrible business, that. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

‘No,’ the taverner agreed.

‘And now Ivo is here again, curse him,’ Thomas sighed.

‘Yeah, well. You leave him be. He’ll soon push off. What’s the point of punching him and getting a fine? If you’re that keen to lose money, give it to me. At least I’ll spend it wisely, which is more than I can say for some around here.’

Thomas managed a wry grin, and by the time he was halfway through his drink, his mood had improved to the extent that he could chuckle at some of the taverner’s sallies.

‘All right, Will, I’ll leave him for now, but you tell him that if I find him anywhere near my wife, I’ll kick his teeth so far down his throat, he’ll have to stick his food up his arse to chew on it.’

Nicole’s words haunted Simon for the rest of the day, and it was with relief that he saw the last of the drinkers leave the inn so that he, Baldwin and Coroner Roger could settle down to sleep.

‘You’re quiet, Simon,’ Baldwin yawned.

‘Yes, well, there’s been a lot to absorb today,’ Simon said.

‘Too many corpses,’ Coroner Roger grunted in agreement.

‘You spoke to Houndestail?’ Simon asked. He had forgotten in the emotion of Samson’s inquest.

‘Yes. For a fee he agreed to go back to Exeter, the tight-fisted, thieving son of a moorland horse-dealer! Still, it will be good to see whether there was any record of the Purveyor’s death.’

‘Tomorrow I suppose the funerals will go ahead?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Yes, the miller’s and the girl’s bones.’ Sir Roger sighed heavily. ‘Mind, with that priest, it’s a gamble. I hope he does not get them confused. He was so drunk today it’s a miracle he could remember his Offices.’

‘What did you think of the story about vampires?’ Simon asked reluctantly.

‘It was nonsense!’ Baldwin stated bluntly. ‘Purest nonsense. A story to scare a child.’

‘But your friend, the man who wrote that book…’

‘William of Newburgh died over a hundred years ago.’

‘So how did the folk here know of such things? Why should men mention them?’

‘Simon, are you really asking me to guess at the workings of the minds of the local peasants? Dear Heaven, just go to sleep.’

Coroner Roger chuckled quietly. ‘If you will tell these stories, Keeper, what do you expect? Simon is concerned that someone might come and cut out his liver tonight.’

As he spoke, a mournful howl shivered on the wind, then a second.

‘What the devil?’ Roger demanded. ‘Wolves?’

Simon explained, ‘I think it’s the miller’s hounds. They started earlier on.’

‘Wonderful! At least he’ll soon be in the ground and out of the way!’ Roger said unsympathetically, rolled over, and was soon snoring.

‘Baldwin?’ Simon asked a few moments later, but Baldwin was either asleep or pretending to be. He had turned the cold shoulder to Simon, and the Bailiff was left staring up at the ceiling, starting at every creak and groan of the building. No matter how he tried to stop thinking of vampires, in his mind’s eye he could see the cemetery fringed with its pollarded trees, and figures moving among them.

Next morning, after Mass, Simon joined the funeral parties at the graves of the miller and Aline; a doleful pair of ceremonies, but that of the girl’s bones was strangely touching. Her father Swetricus was there, with his three other daughters, aged from twelve up to sixteen years old, all weeping unaffectedly. The girl had been dead these four years past, and yet from looking at her sisters, Simon thought, one could believe that she had died only days before.

The ceremony at Samson’s graveside was not improved by the behaviour of the priest, who was already drunk at this early hour of the morning. His voice was a low mumble, his hands shook as though he had the ague, and Simon felt disgusted that he could so demean the service. Matters were not helped by the steady howling of Samson’s dogs; nor by the sudden shriek as they all approached Samson’s grave.

‘No, no! I won’t have him put in his grave without a coffin. He must be done properly!’

Simon turned to see Gunilda, Samson’s wife, their daughter beside her.

‘There’s no time to build a coffin, mistress,’ one man said. There was a hint of exasperation in his voice, from which Simon guessed that she, like her husband, was not very popular in the vill.

Still, they humoured her. Two men went off to the mill, and soon returned with some long timbers.

‘We can put him under this. That will have to do.’

She sniffed, then sobbed again, her daughter wailing at her side, and the grave was dug with the howling of the hounds throbbing in the background.

Simon watched as a rough board was fashioned from the timbers, two men lashing them together with thongs, and then the funeral continued, the priest looking annoyed that it had taken so long to get things done. When the men were finished, the priest moved to the head of the corpse and swayed gently as he sprinkled it with holy water from a sprig of hyssop. Simon recalled that the ceremony came from Psalm 51, which said, ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ As usual there were the solemn Latin phrases, but Simon was sure that the priest missed out a few words. He wasn’t certain, because it was some time since he had learned Latin, and weeks since he last attended a funeral, but one thing he did know – the priest, in his hurry to get away, was rattling through the service faster than he should.

The body was wrapped in a winding-sheet which was brown and stained, as though it had already lain some months in a grave. At the head Simon could see the blood still leaking from the scalp wound.

Simon felt sad on behalf of the dead man. To his eye it was disrespectful to put the miller in his grave in this way: hastily, without preparation, wrapped in a soiled shroud, the priest drunk. He watched sombrely as men picked up the corpse and set it down in the grave. One of them placed some large rocks at either side of Samson for the lid to rest on. He may not have a proper coffin, but at least his body wouldn’t be crushed. He would have some dignity in death. The boards were passed down and set over the body and then, while the priest intoned more doggerel and flailed about with his sprig, dashing water into the grave but over many of the congregation as well, the two men began to shovel soil back into the hole.

It was a grim scene, made still more bleak and unpleasant by the cross in the middle of the cemetery, which appeared to have chosen this moment to droop. The cross arm had slipped from the horizontal, and as Simon looked at it, he could see that the wood was rotted by the wind and rain which lashed at the vill.