Michael, JECKS - The Tournament of Blood

A flash of blue gleamed to his right and he turned in time to see a kingfisher dart up to a branch, a streak of silver gripped in its beak. Sir Edmund admired the silken beauty of the creature, thinking that he should catch and kill one, and use the feathers for decoration on his hat. Idly he wondered how he could trap one. Probably easiest would be to pay some peasant to spread birdlime on branches along this stretch of river.

It was while he mused on the feasibility of capturing and killing the bird that he noticed the rooks squabbling. His attention was caught by the pair as they hopped down and pecked among the tall fronds of ferns that lined the bank farther away. At first he watched without interest, but then a grim conviction began to form in Sir Edmund’s mind and he slowly made his way to them,

The sight that met his eyes when he pulled the foliage aside and first saw the blindly staring face was in some ways a relief.

At least it wasn’t Andrew, he thought with a sigh.

Simon squatted before the body. After the shock of seeing his daughter with Squire William, it was another shock to see Sachevyll’s ruined body.

Seeing the damage done by the birds’ pecking, he winced uncomfortably. At least the body was fresh, thank Christ, and hadn’t started to reek, but it was still revolting to see how the birds had gone straight for the man’s eyes. Simon pulled a face and sent a watchman to find Sir Baldwin and the Coroner.

Sir Peregrine was first on the scene and he stopped, staring down with an expression more of anger than shock. ‘What the hell is happening here? Good God, is everyone gone mad?’

‘So it seems,’ Simon said.

‘Who would want to do this?’

‘I don’t know. I hardly knew the fellow. In fact, he was an unholy pest, and I daresay there are several other people who’d say the same.’

Baldwin and Roger arrived together, shoving people from their path as they hurried to them.

Coroner Roger peered over Baldwin’s shoulder. ‘Who is it? Oh, in the name of the Virgin! Sachevyll!’

‘Simon’, Sir Peregrine said, ‘was just saying he never had much time for the poor fellow.’

‘I said many people didn’t,’ Simon protested.

‘Be easy, Bailiff,’ Sir Peregrine said, with his hands up in surrender. ‘I didn’t accuse you of anything. Be easy.’

‘I just don’t like dead bodies before my midday meal,’ Simon grunted. He took a couple of paces back while Sir Baldwin approached the body.

‘Just like the other two,’ Baldwin muttered to himself. He surveyed Hal’s corpse before snapping, ‘Who found him?’

‘Me – Sir Edmund of Gloucester.’

Baldwin nodded. Hal had been beaten about the head. Blood had seeped from the thick clots congealing at his temple and across his nose. Baldwin turned to Sir Edmund and found himself looking up into a dark, almost saturnine face. ‘He was lying here as he is now?’

‘My squire is missing. I was looking for him. I saw rooks fighting here and saw him. I haven’t touched him.’

‘Did you know him?’ Sir Roger asked. His voice was harsher now as he assumed his responsibility as Coroner for the King.

‘Only by sight.’

‘Where from? Here?’

‘No, I didn’t see him here in Oakhampton. I last saw him in a small tournament in the north, where he helped make the grounds. That’s what he was known for. He was an expert on the pageantry of tournaments and often got recommended to different lords whenever they were thinking of holding their own events.’

‘Did he have any enemies?’ Baldwin asked Sir Edmund.

The knight shook his head. How should I know? I never spoke to him – he was merely someone who was often about, and I saw his stages several times in the last three years.’

‘We know who wanted him dead, don’t we?’ Mark Tyler said. He had approached the men while they spoke in quiet tones. ‘It was you, Bailiff, wasn’t it? You hated poor old Hal, didn’t you – purely because he accused you of killing Wymond. And maybe he was right! Did you have to silence him because he knew you were truly guilty of his oldest friend’s death?’

Margaret and Edith returned to the stand where they had watched the disaster so that Simon would know where to find them. Edith wanted to go after William, but Margaret pointed out with acid sweetness that running to him now while her father was absent was not the way to endear herself or her lover to him.

Such sarcasm was foreign to Margaret, but she was exhausted from weeks of broken sleep, waking to the mewling of her youngest child, stirring and fitting him to her breast as quietly as she could, so as not to wake Simon at her side. To learn of Edith’s love for this boy Squire William was a great disappointment. Margaret had hoped that she could trust her daughter, but in a few hours Edith had found this fellow and declared her adoration.

Although Edith didn’t want to, Margaret insisted that they should go back to the stand. As she pointed out, Simon would expect to find them there when he finished whatever it was he had been called away to. Baldwin had been asked to join him a short while later. For some reason, Margaret felt a strange anxiety in her heart, a weakly fluttering, as though a butterfly was trapped beneath her ribs.

‘Please, God, don’t let it be another murder,’ she murmured fervently. There had been too many deaths already.

Standing and watching the other competitors was at least a diversion from her fears. Several riders tilted at each other and soon Margaret could set her mind to trying to work out the best way, first, to persuade Edith out of her infatuation, or, second, to ensure that Simon grew to accept her decision should Edith prove to be obdurate.

‘Mistress, I think we should go,’ Hugh muttered, watching a messenger scurrying to speak to Lord Hugh at the stand. He had come from the river bank, from the place to which Simon had been called, and Hugh was worried. Margaret was surprised, but gradually she became aware of a subtle alteration in the noise of the crowds about them. The roar of partisan support for one competitor or another had dwindled to a mutter, and angry faces were turned in their direction; they were watching her . Then she felt the blood chill in her veins when she caught someone saying loudly, ‘There’s been another murder.’

Hearing a nearby voice hissing, ‘That’s his wife, too, that stuck-up bitch over there,’ the skin on her back crawled. The malicious whispering continued. Wherever she cast her glance, all went silent as men caught her eye, but all the time she heard conversations continuing out of earshot, and she could feel a sick tingling in her belly: the beginnings of fear.

Like many others, she had seen crowds turn wild before now. Simon was only too happy to point out that the English are an unruly lot – the worst, he usually added with a perverse pride, being the Devonians. They were ever-disputatious, determined and hardy in a fight. Perhaps it came from having to defend their lands from two sea-coasts, or maybe it was true as the stories said, that the Devonshire men were the last ancestors of the men of Troy. Certainly their behaviour when drunk or roiled was vicious to the point of madness. They would hold their ground against the King’s own host if they were roused.

She caught Hugh’s eye. He nodded, clasping his stout staff more strongly, and then turned and forced his way through the people towards the gate. One man stood in his path, but Hugh shifted his grip on the staff and glowered, saying, ‘She’s got nothing to do with any murder; she’s only a man’s wife, all right?’ and the fellow stood aside.

Margaret had grabbed Edith’s hand, and now she held on to it for dear life. Hugh, she saw, had made it to the gate that led to the steps at the back, and then she was almost there herself. She thrust Edith forward, and was about to follow when she stumbled, a loose plank or board tripping her. Instantly Hugh was with her, his staff held one-handed, but ready.