Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

“Er… What did the dog do?”

“It was nothing,” she said happily. “He gave her a fright, that’s all. It would be different if he had attacked.” Jeanne could see Baldwin’s embarrassment, and was touched by his shyness. “Sir? I am pleased to have come here at last.”

“You honor me by being here,” he said.

The stiffness of his words was belied by the pinkness of his cheeks. Jeanne wanted to laugh out loud at his discomfort, but instead asked teasingly, “So have you invited many widows alone to your hall?”

“No!” he exclaimed hotly, and then gave a shamefaced grin. “Jeanne, you are the very first woman who has been in here with me alone. I have never known Edgar to trust me before.”

“He appears most trusting today, sir!”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I am sure it will not last. But tell me, what about you? Is this the first hall in which you have been alone with a dangerous bachelor?”

“Dangerous? How interesting! But yes. My dear maid only rarely permits me the opportunity to commit an indiscretion.”

“How kind of her to risk my safety.”

She laughed then, quietly so as not to attract the attention of their servants or friends. Serious in an instant, she looked him full in the face. “I am sorry I could not come earlier. It feels like more than a year since we last met.”

“I had hoped you would have been able to come before.”

“I know. But it was impossible, what with the problems and the harvest.”

Baldwin nodded. Jeanne de Liddinstone was a tenant of the Abbot of Tavistock, and it was important to her that she should be seen to be no less efficient than any of the others who lived on his lands. She had accepted Baldwin’s offer of a visit early last spring, but since then her estate had suffered from a succession of disasters. Early in the year rain had devastated the young crops, which had then been subject to a freak storm just before harvest, and she had lost her largest barn in a fire. “I hope the good Abbot was able to help you?”

“Abbot Champeaux has done everything he possibly could,” she said. “He’s sent men and provided me with materials for a new barn. But I did have to stay.”

“Yes, of course. And the important thing is, you are here now.”

“I am glad to be.”

And Baldwin felt quite certain, when he looked into her eyes, that she was in earnest. “Perhaps we could…”

“Mistress? Mistress, this man has been keeping me from you! I informed him that you’d need me, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Jeanne turned discreetly, thereby moving herself to a less compromising distance from the knight, who kept the emotion from his face with an effort as Emma lumbered into the room like a belligerent war-horse.

Baldwin kept his mouth shut with difficulty. At that moment the maid was the epitome of everything he loathed. Because of her, his attempts to get closer to Jeanne had all come to naught. All the endearments he had rehearsed in his mind were wasted. He could not understand how Jeanne could have been so careless as to have associated herself with such a monster. With that in mind, he gave the maidservant a cold glare before turning to Jeanne once more, and it was with a feeling of relief that he saw a similar anger glittering in her eyes.

As soon as it was dark, he slipped over the low fence into the Coffyns’ back yard. It wasn’t large, not on the same scale as Godfrey’s, and he had to tread warily to ensure he was unobserved. The moon was a gleam of silver behind the fast-moving clouds, and with the freshening breeze he was confident that there was another storm brewing. It suited his purposes to have the weather deteriorate, for it was hardly likely that any sensible man or woman would be out on such a wild night.

He skirted the garden, keeping to the additional cover offered by the trees and bushes at the boundary, all the time warily watching the house. He could hear voices, and at one point there was the unmistakable sound of a woman sobbing. It made him pause and listen, but he had business of his own, and he shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way.

The wall was a barrier of darkness in the night, seemingly as insubstantial as a shadow, but his native caution served him well. Before approaching it, he slowly dropped to a crouch, and listened intently. There was nothing to be seen, but he trusted to his instincts, and they screamed out to him to be cautious. Something before him was out of place.

It was some minutes before he could see it, but then, as the moon was released from its heavenly captivity for a few moments, and the area was lighted by a sudden white glare, he saw a man leaning against a large tree.

The guard stood silently, his attention apparently fixed on the wall. It seemed that he was prepared to stay there the whole night, and the crouching figure behind him calculated quickly whether there was another route for him to take, but none sprang into his mind. He was about to turn and go back the way he had come, when the guard shifted. With a soft grunt, he turned away from the wall. There was a quiet trickling.

Grinning, and hoping that urinating would take all of his concentration, if only for a moment or two, the trespasser hurried to a section of wall some distance away and silently climbed up. Once there, he lay on top a while, peering back the way he had come. The man by the tree gave a little gasp, settled himself, and leaned back to renew his solitary watch.

Seeing he had noticed nothing, the shadow rolled off the wall into Godfrey’s land. He fell automatically into a crouch, his eyes darting hither and thither, seeking any new dangers, but he could see nothing to cause him alarm, and soon he was stealthily making his way to the window he knew so well. He never saw the second shape drop from the wall behind him and steadfastly follow in his tracks.

But after the murder he wasn’t so foolish as to walk straight up to it as before. There could be a trap waiting for him. He moved slowly from the wall to a great elm, and paused, then on to a holly a little nearer, then up to the shelter offered by a laurel almost at the hall’s wall, each time waiting, listening, and staring on all sides. The danger here was almost tangible, and he wasn’t prepared to put his life at risk for no reason.

At last he was content. He edged forward, until he was at the building, and tiptoed to the window. The shutter was closed, the tapestry drawn, and only a dull glimmer of light escaped. He reached up and scratched softly at the wood of the shutter, making a faint rasp as if a mouse were gnawing.

He had to repeat the signal three times before he heard Cecily call out, “Go and prepare my chamber. And see to it that my bed is properly warmed. I feel frozen to my very marrow.”

For a few moments there was nothing, but then the corner of the tapestry was lifted, and he could see her sweet face. “Thomas, are you there?”

The guard almost jumped out of his skin when William dropped lightly from the wall in front of him. He grabbed for his sword and would have swept it out, if William hadn’t snarled quietly, “Leave that block of metal in its seat if you don’t want me to use it to beat some sense into your thick skull.”

Leaving the astonished guard, William walked pensively back to the hall. He had learned much tonight, and some of it might well be useful in the future, but he wasn’t sure that it was any business of his master, and William had a firm belief in information: when it was useful, it held value. Coffyn had hired William to be the officer of his men and to guard the house, not to be his informer, but he might still be prepared to cough up for something as juicy as this.

William went through to the private solar and knocked. Coffyn was awake still, his angry, unblinking eyes pouchy and red-rimmed from lack of sleep. As usual, his wife was nowhere to be seen. If William hadn’t heard her weeping earlier, he might have wondered whether she was still alive – but he didn’t believe in speculating on matters like that, not where they affected his master.