Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

‘You’re sure that she will be down here?’ Simon asked.

Baldwin continued as though he hadn’t heard. He could remember every stage of this path, even though he had only come down here the once. It was as though it was ingrained upon his memory; he could almost smell the place where he had seen the figure at the tree, and his feet unconsciously slowed as they approached.

‘Wait!’ he whispered. It was there, a tang of woodsmoke on the air, with a faint scent of burning flesh: sweet and slightly gamey. It made Baldwin’s stomach turn, reminding him too distinctly of the time when the pyres were lit and the living Templars were bound to their posts, praying, weeping, cursing and choking in the fumes as the flames licked higher and higher about their legs. Later, when the men were dead, this same odour lingered about the place.

Simon gave Baldwin a curious look. To his eyes, the knight was acting most peculiarly today, and never more so than now. Simon had never known his friend to give the slightest indication of nerves, especially when it came to his personal safety, so seeing him like this was unsettling, particularly when there was nothing for him to be anxious about. The place was clear.

He looked past Baldwin to Mad Meg’s home. It looked much like any other assart, if more dilapidated and worn. There was a stone-walled cottage with new thatch on the roof sitting in its own clearing. In front was a fire with a trivet and pot standing over it, while chickens strolled and pecked at the dirt, one or two gazing at Aylmer with alarm.

There was nothing for the knight to be worried about, and Simon wondered what could have driven his friend to this state of concern. For there was no doubting Baldwin’s anxiety as he stared at the scene.

‘This is stupid,’ he muttered.

‘What is it, Baldwin?’

‘I… When I walked here the other day, it reminded me of another time,’ he said evasively. ‘Yet now I can see nothing to make me feel panic.’

He didn’t add that there was no sign of the figure he had seen standing at the tree. Instead he took a deep breath and climbed up over the wall, marching to the fire. ‘Hello? Meg? Are you here?’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Serlo!’ Baldwin breathed. ‘We thought to come and ask her a few questions.’

Serlo had been at the edge of the assart. Now he stepped forward to tend the cooking fire. ‘Why can’t you leave her in peace?’

‘Because the priest suggested we should talk to her,’ Simon said.

‘That drunken fool! So what if he does?’

Baldwin walked to Serlo’s side. ‘Have you heard about Emma?’

Serlo paled. ‘Emma? What is it? My Christ! Is she dead?’

‘The same as the others,’ Baldwin said. ‘I am sorry.’

Serlo stood. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

Joan clapped her hands in delight as soon as her father bolted after Ivo, and she felt a cruel thrill to see how close he came to catching her uncle. She hated Ivo. She had heard his taunts, and the viciousness of his words had torn at her.

Her mother would never have done such a thing. It was wicked even to suggest it. Ivo had just said it to be intentionally hurtful. As the men disappeared around the inn, she was tempted to follow and watch, but today it didn’t seem right. Not with Emma dead.

It was hard to believe. Emma was such a part of her whole life, it was impossible to conceive of being without her. In one short year Joan had lost her worst enemy, old Ham when he drowned, and now she had lost her best friend. Poor Emma. Joan hoped she hadn’t been put through much pain. Who could have dropped her in the yard like that?

She walked slowly along the road. It would have been fun to see her father pound Ivo into the ground, but not today. She was perpetually on the brink of tears, ready to weep at a moment’s notice. Serlo would want to hear from her, and she was tempted to go on up to the warrens to talk to him, because he always listened and treated the girls like adults, not silly children, but the thought of climbing all the way up to his hut was daunting on her own.

Sitting on a rock at the side of the road, she felt the trickling of tears again. Poor Emma. She’d been a good friend.

There was a pattering of feet, then harsh shouts, and a curious, nasal voice bellowing. Looking up, she saw Ivo, a bloody rag held to his nose, while two men laughed at his side. Behind was her father, walking stiffly with William Taverner and Swetricus beside him. The little procession passed over the roadway and went into the Reeve’s house. Intrigued, Joan stood up and crossed the road. She was just in time to hear her father shouting something, then the low rumble of Alexander’s voice.

‘Stick him in the cellar and lock him in. Don’t let the murderous bastard escape.’

Jeanne’s nagging fear hadn’t left her, and hearing that Emma had died didn’t help. She had tried to busy herself with the mundane tasks of feeding and changing Richalda, helping Petronilla remove the bedclothes and beat the sheets and rugs outside to remove as many bedbugs and lice as possible. Returning to the room, they set down the bedclothes and carried out the palliasse itself to be beaten. When that was done, they found that a dog with an incessant scratch had taken up residence in their blankets, and Petronilla had to kick the thing from the room so that they could take the blankets back outside to beat them again.

It wasn’t easy for Jeanne to concentrate. She could sense a breathlessness in her that didn’t come from the air outside. Rather it seemed to come from within her, a heaviness of spirit. She was convinced that there was some evil at work in the vill, and she looked down at her baby with a feeling of doom.

She had to get out of the chamber, so she took a walk to the tavern’s hall. Edgar had returned after witnessing a small fight, he said, and he followed in her wake, ordering wine for her and standing nearby while she drank it.

The place was deserted. Earlier, men had come in for thin ale to keep them going through the morning, but now all were out in the fields, and none would return until the sun had sunk low in the sky. Jeanne’s mood was not improved by the oppressive silence about her. Smoke from the damp logs in the fire made the place dingy and unwholesome, and she felt her spirits fall still further.

This melancholy was a new experience for her. Even when she was younger and had been married to that jealous bully of a husband, Sir Ralph de Liddinstone, who had taken to insulting her before his friends and servants and then beating her because she could not bear him children, she had not felt this bad. She had been strong, and his treatment of her only raised in her a reciprocal contempt, then hatred. When he died she had felt some guilt, as though the strength of her own loathing could have contributed to his death, but that soon faded when she met Baldwin at Tavistock Abbey.

There were some ridiculous women who talked of love at first sight. Jeanne was not prepared to believe in such nonsense, for she was a modern woman, and knew that for all the chivalrous ideals, very few men or women behaved chastely, and the best excuse for drunken lechery was instant love. Jeanne was happier to call lust by its own name, but for all that when she had first met Sir Baldwin there had been something, a mutual attraction, as though both knew of the other’s sufferings in the previous few years, she with her abhorrent husband, he with the persecution that followed on from the end of the Templars. She had felt as though she had at last met a man who could understand her.

It was this which made his cynicism about her impressions of danger all the more hurtful. She knew all too well that he was a resolutely logical man, but she would have hoped that he might have listened to her a little more closely.