Michael JECKS - Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

Baldwin shook his head, and turned back to his plate, but after a while he stopped chewing and frowned slightly.

Jeanne noticed his altered mood. ‘What is it, my love? Is the food not to your taste?’

‘The food is wonderful,’ he lied smilingly. ‘It is only my appetite. I am replete.’

In truth, Baldwin had recalled the face of Lady Katharine of Throwleigh, and it was the vision of the weeping woman which had destroyed his appetite. And yet, as he reminded himself, there were no suspicious circumstances. The father had died naturally, the son had been run down. And that was that.

Wasn’t it?

The next day dawned clear and sunny, a perfect spring morning.

Simon stared from his window in the guest room. From here he could see over a swathe of southern Devonshire almost to the sea. The sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky, and the scene was perfectly framed by the lines of trees at either side. His wife was still asleep, and the bailiff dressed and walked down to the hall. Here he found the servants at work clearing the mess of the night before, sweeping around the odd recumbent figure slumped on the table or lying amid the soiled rushes.

The bailiff nodded happily to Edgar. It was some surprise, after the amount he had drunk the previous day, but his head and guts felt fine. He had only a minor pain in his head and the feeling that a walk outside would be kinder to those who breathed the same air as him.

He stepped into the buttery and filled a wineskin, rut-tutting as he surveyed the slumped figure of Wat, snoring gently at the side of one of Baldwin’s great barrels of ale, a happy smile on his face. Slipping the thong over his neck, Simon walked out to the southern-facing wall. An old tree-trunk stood there, on which Baldwin’s men split logs, and he sat on it, taking a good swallow of wine, then leaning back and gazing over the view with a contented sigh.

Thus it was that Simon saw the messenger before anyone else.

‘He sent this man to ride through the night?’ Baldwin exclaimed.

Simon nodded. The stableman was the same who had been sent with news of Herbert’s death, a bedraggled, exhausted lad of almost eighteen. ‘Daniel must have thought it was important.’

‘Of course,’ said Baldwin, peering at the messenger once more. His words had been few, the meaning clear. ‘Daniel thinks his master, the boy Herbert, was murdered, and asks that you go to the manor to investigate.’

‘I have to go,’ Simon said heavily. ‘Although I’m not sure what this Daniel thinks I can do…’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘You’ve just got married. You can’t go to an enquiry on the day after your wedding!’

‘Be damned to that!’ Baldwin declared hotly. The sense of languorous fatigue with which he had awoken, the thrill of seeing his wife’s face at his side, now pricked at his conscience, as if he was himself guilty of complicity in the child’s death. ‘I always had the conviction that the boy had been murdered, but I allowed myself to be gulled by that avaricious bastard Thomas. Well, I’ll not make the same mistake again!’

‘Baldwin, we don’t know that he wasn’t killed by accident.’

The knight carried on as if he had not heard his friend. ‘How could I have been so stupid? I must have been born a cretin! All right, the boy was run down – but how often does that happen?’

‘My friend,’ Simon said calmingly, ‘we don’t know that he was murdered, all we know is that Daniel thinks he might have been. That isn’t reason enough for you to desert your wife. You stay here, and I’ll go and look into it. Boys and men get run down and killed every day of the week.’

‘Rubbish, Simon! Those who get run over are drunk, or fall accidentally. They die outside alehouses, or just outside their own doors. But young Herbert died out on the moors – and he wasn’t drunk. He would have jumped from the path of a wagon.’

‘Pure supposition!’

‘Logic!’

‘Baldwin, you cannot leave your wife the day after your wedding; it’s not right.’

‘Leave me? What makes you think he would be leaving me, Bailiff?’

Simon’s heart sank. He had wanted to keep this from Lady Jeanne, but now there was no way to conceal it. ‘I am truly sorry, Lady, I wouldn’t want to be cause of dispute between you and your husband. I shall leave you so he can explain.’

Jeanne lifted her eyebrow, then gave a low chuckle. ‘Bailiff, if you think that I don’t realise what’s going on here, you have no understanding of the loudness of your voice.’

‘But you asked…’ Simon stammered.

‘Why you thought he would be leaving me here. Of course he won’t. I will be joining you both to see Lady Katharine and help soothe the poor woman.’

The two men set off long before the sun had reached its zenith, this time with their wives and servants in their train. The exhausted messenger was remounted on one of Baldwin’s own stallions, but even so they made slow progress.

Wat had been told to pack a few clothes and join them. Although his head hurt horribly and his stomach felt like a seething cauldron of acid, he was nothing loath: this was an adventure. He had never gone further than Cadbury before, except once when he had travelled to Crediton, and his father had never been so far as Dartmoor, so this would be a feather in Wat’s hat. What’s more, he would be avoiding the hard work that was about to start: the planting of the Lenten seeds, the barley and oats, rye and vetches, upon which the manor depended, and with which he would have been expected to help. If their visit lasted long enough, he might even be absent for some of the long, dull days sitting out for hours on end with his pouch of pebbles and slingshot, ready to frighten off any birds or rabbits that tried to steal from the manor’s fields.

Baldwin kept an eye on the lad, conscious of his responsibility. Wat pattered along cheerily enough at his side, but the knight was concerned that he shouldn’t overtire himself. Baldwin was riding his favourite rounsey, a good, steady bay which could eat up the miles comfortably, while Jeanne followed, chatting quietly with Simon’s wife, on her new Arab. Simon was on his ageing hackney, Margaret on a palfrey which ambled along gently.

‘I still can’t believe that Herbert was murdered,’ Simon said now. ‘Sure, it’s a pity the lad died, but these things happen.’

‘You make it sound like a simple accident. Daniel suspects the same as me, yet you speak as calmly as if you saw it happen.’

‘Well, I almost feel as if I did. I’ve seen so many similar deaths: drunken workers who’ve fallen into the road; infants and toddlers who strayed – remember, the boy was only five years old. You’ve seen them just as I have. And often the driver of the cart doesn’t dare stop and report the accident. At the least they might be faced with the expense of a heavy fine, while if they ride on as if nothing had happened, they may remain safe.

‘And there’s another thing, Baldwin,’ the bailiff added. ‘The victim in this case was the son of the squire, and was himself the heir. Who’d dare admit he’d run down his own master?’

‘Yes, that much is true,’ Baldwin agreed, but even as he pronounced the last word, Simon saw his mind was racing along a new track.

‘Now what is it?’

‘Hmm? Oh, I am sorry, I was merely considering the implications of what you had said. That the driver of the cart could be one of the manor’s own villeins.’

That reflection made the knight quiet for the rest of their journey.

Jeanne studied Throwleigh Manor as they approached, and couldn’t restrain a shudder. It was so grey, too exposed and rugged, merely a space in which people could exist, not somewhere she could ever consider as a home. Dropping from her horse, she put her hand through Baldwin’s arm. She was aware of a feeling of gloom sinking into her spirit, as if the buildings were sucking the pleasure of her marriage out of her. Daniel the steward appeared at the door and walked down to greet them. He went first to Simon, and thanked him fulsomely for making the journey again. Then: ‘Ladies, perhaps I could show you into the hall to meet Lady Katharine, while I speak to your husbands?’