Michael JECKS - The Leper's Return

“Sometimes, Baldwin, you can be too suspicious! I am quite sure she wanted to help the poor victims of St. Lawrence’s, that’s all. And why shouldn’t she? If she is a true believer, she should want to use her money to save as many souls as she can.”

“No doubt you are right, Peter,” Baldwin said soothingly. He had upset the priest, he saw, and spoke more carefully now to mollify him. “Tell me, I have also heard of Edmund Quivil’s woman, young Mary. Is it true that she is working there to help your leper master?”

“Yes, it’s so. She too has a strong conviction and faith. I would be glad if more people in this town demonstrated half the goodness of those two young women.” His face darkened. “And I would be glad if some of those who try to smear the girl could do something useful themselves rather than slandering her.”

Baldwin’s eyebrows rose in his astonishment. “I am sorry, Peter, I didn’t mean…”

“Not you! It’s the others. Some people will go about casting slurs on those who don’t deserve it. Young Mary Cordwainer has been insulted in the street by some who should know better. I even heard this morning that someone has been saying she is only going there for – well, saving Your Lordship’s presence – for the gratification of her passionate desires.”

Baldwin had to cough to stifle his laughter. It was novel to hear Peter Clifford speaking in so refined a manner. Baldwin knew that two weeks ago he had berated a drunken farmer in language the knight had only before heard on a Cinq Ports trader, because the poor fellow had dropped a cask of the priest’s Bordeaux wine. Then a thought struck him. “Who did you hear speaking of this?”

“The smith, Jack, out on the Exeter road. Could you talk to him and get him to stop making such comments?”

“I think so. At the least we should go and see why he passes such gossip on,” said Baldwin.

The smithy was a low, one-story shed at the eastern edge of the town, set some way back from the traffic. It was a convenient site, Baldwin knew. This road was the busiest one west of Exeter, and the smith had the custom not only of all the farmers and peasants in the town, but also all the passing travellers who might need a wheel remade, or a horse shod.

There was a large yard before the smithy, and when Baldwin, Simon and Edgar arrived, the place was alive with the ringing of steel. As was usual, the doors were thrown wide – even in midwinter the smith was often too hot to have them closed – and the three men could see a sweating figure hammering at a bolt of glowing metal. Baldwin strode to the door and entered, the other two behind him. The percussion of the metal being struck with the hammer, the ringing of the anvil, was an awful cacophony. It made Baldwin feel as if his head was being pounded, and he was tempted to cover his ears with his hands.

The smith turned, and beyond a curt nod expressed no surprise that someone had walked in. Shoving the still-glowing metal into a barrel, he scratched at his chest. Steam rose while the water spat and crackled angrily. Wiping an arm over his brow, Jack looked at them enquiringly before drinking from a huge jar of ale.

To Simon he looked like any other smith. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he made up for his lack of height by his breadth. His torso was almost as well developed as that of a man-at-arms, and was almost hairless. At either side of the bib of his heavy leather apron there were a number of welts and scars, evidence of mistakes or errors in his trade, and he had lost two fingers of his left hand.

But it was the man’s face that caught the bailiffs attention. He had a low, sloping forehead which made him look as if he was thrusting his head forward aggressively, with heavy brows, a thick nose and small, widely spaced eyes.

All of this the knight took in at a glance, but there was something else that Baldwin noted, and that was that the smith avoided meeting his eye. There were few traits that Baldwin had learned over the years to distrust, but this was one. “Are you Jack?”

“Yes,” he grunted, lowering the drink for a moment, then replacing it. When it was emptied, he set it down near a small barrel and stood with his arms akimbo. “Well? Is it a horse, or a cart or what?”

“It’s to find out why you have been saying villainous things about a girl in the town.”

“What do you mean?”

Baldwin watched him as he took a step closer. The smith’s eyes were focused somewhere around the knight’s left ear. “I hear you have alleged that a girl who spends her time trying to ease the pain of people afflicted with leprosy is herself no more than a harlot.”

“Whoever said that was a liar. Who says it? Eh? Who accuses me?”

This was addressed to Baldwin’s right ear. Apparently emotion caused his attention to wander. The knight moved to meet the man’s eye, but it moved with him, and Baldwin gave up the attempt.

“You were overheard by priests. They have told me what you said. What I would like to know is, what evidence do you have for your allegation?”

“I don’t need any proof.”

“You do, because without it, your comments are vile slanders. And you could be forced into court for that. Do you have any proof?”

The smith’s interest had moved on to the cobbles at his feet. He stood perusing them for several minutes, before giving a short shake of his head.

“What was it you said about her? That she was a wanton?”

“You know so much, why ask me?” His tone was sulky, and now a boot scraped its way over a patch of dust, sweeping it away, then moving it all back again. From his behavior, Baldwin would have assumed him to be a young apprentice, not a smith of some twenty-eight summers.

“Jack, why did you say such things about her?”

“She’s only young. It’s not right for her to be up there, not with that lot.” He spat accurately out through the doors. The forge was cooling without attention, and he cast it a lackluster glance before going to the doors and pulling them to.

“You must say nothing more about them, Jack. If you do, I can have you amerced for slander. You understand me? I can have you fined for telling people villainous things; things which you know are untrue.”

“I don’t know they’re untrue. What if it’s right?”

“If there is any truth in it, you show me the proof, all right? For Christ’s sake, man, think what you are doing!” Baldwin let the sea of his frustration break through the dam of his self-control. “There she is, trying to help mitigate the worst pain those poor devils are suffering, and while she’s there doing God only knows what to help soothe the agony of their disease, here you are inciting people against her! It must stop.”

The smith walked to his barrel and refilled his mug. Adopting an air of unconcern, he met the stare of Baldwin’s right shoulder. “Is that all?”

“No! What were you doing up at Godfrey’s house on the night he was murdered?”

“What? I was only there for a while…”

“When did you get there?”

“I was there late afternoon. There was a mare had lost a shoe, and I had to…”

Simon cut him off. “How long did it take?”

“All I had to do was nail it back on, it was hardly anything…”

“Did you come straight back here?” Baldwin shot.

“No! No, I went into Putthe’s buttery.”

“Why?”

“To take a drink with him. It’s not illegal!”

“How long for?”

“I don’t know. It was after dark, that’s all I…”

“How many ales did you drink?” Baldwin rasped.

“I don’t know – ask Putthe, he can tell you.”

Simon gave Baldwin a scarcely perceptible glance, with a faint shrug.

The knight fixed his eye on the smith again. “So you say you went to the hall in the late afternoon, made a new shoe…”