Michael JECKS - The Crediton Killings

The two men disappeared through the doorway, and their watcher smiled again. His mind was clear once more, just as it had been the night before when he felt the knife slip so smoothly into her body; it was like pushing the weapon into an oiled leather scabbard – one especially shaped to take the thick single-edged blade. The way that his brain had suddenly been so calm, the thoughts so crystal-bright, had surprised him at first, but then he’d realized it was because he was so clever. It was impossible that the others would discover him.

A slow grin spread over his face. And now they were off to seek the man who had robbed the captain. They were bound to find suspects: only men who had something to hide would join a mercenary band.

Yes, he thought. There should be plenty of suspicious characters in a band like that. It was good to keep the King’s man busy.

“Hugh, would you please stop that!” Edgar usually displayed the tolerance of an older brother toward a younger in his dealings with Simon’s servant, but when the man had pulled his dagger out of its scabbard for the seventh time and scrutinized its edge as if suspicious that it had developed a fault, his temper began to fray. When Simon’s servant was not studying his blade, he was whistling – a hollow, deathly sound that reminded Edgar of the wind in the branches of trees over a churchyard at the dead of night. Even when the man was sitting, his fingers would keep drumming on any convenient surface near to hand. “What is it?” he asked irritably. “Can’t you just be quiet?”

“No,” Hugh scowled. “I’m not used to guarding a dead body.” His face reflected his mood. It was not only that he was missing Peter Clifford’s hospitality, which had lived up to expectation in the excellence of his ale and the fullness of his board; Hugh had grown up on the moors, a little to the south in the old forest of Dartmoor, and his superstitious soul cringed at having to share a room with a murdered woman. The only thing that could make it worse, from his point of view, would be if she was a suicide, but even a murder victim was full of terrors. He had stayed awake all night less from a sense of duty than from a terror of the Devil coming to take an unshriven soul. Hugh might not be learned, but he knew what the priests said: if a man or woman were to die without having been given the chance to confess their sins, they could not be buried on hallowed ground. They could not go to Heaven, they belonged to the Devil, and all night Hugh had fretted, thinking that every sound he heard was Old Nick coming to take her away. Now, in the warm sunlight of a fresh morning, he had a feeling of anticlimax.

“You’re a farmer’s son. Surely you’ve had to sit up with a corpse before.”

Hugh stared at him for a moment. “Of course I have! But I’ve never been told by my master to guard a room with a corpse in it, in case some mad bugger comes in trying to move things around.” He stood and went to the chest again, looking down at Sarra where she lay on the floor.

His master and Baldwin had covered her with a bolt of cloth they had found in the chest, thus her face was hidden, but she held a fascination for Hugh. It was sad to see her dead. He was used to death in all its forms, from starvation during the appalling famines of 1315 and 1316, to those killed by swords and axes during the attacks of the trail bastons four years ago, but this little figure, whose hair tumbled silkily from beneath the cloth, seemed still more sad than all those.

“God’s blood! Will you sit down and stop fidgeting! You’re making me twitchy.”

Hugh grunted and wandered to a convenient chest. Sitting, he rested a hand on another nearby and unconsciously began knocking out a rapid percussion. Edgar had opened his mouth to snap at him, when there was a tap at the door. Muttering with irritation, Edgar pulled it open.

Outside stood an old soldier. “My master has told me to fetch him some clothing.” Edgar said nothing, but held the door tightly. The man glanced past him to the body and shook his head sadly. “Poor lass.”

Rather than have the man stare through the door all morning, Edgar opened it wide. “Be quick. And touch nothing from the open chest.”

He wandered in, going from one chest to another. Hugh saw how his eyes moved to the figure on the floor occasionally. There was no fear or horror, merely a kind of disinterested acceptance, as if it was too commonplace a sight to justify particular curiosity. This piqued Hugh. He had been quite proud of enduring the vigil by the corpse, and felt that others should be awed by the courage of two men who dared to defy ghosts and ghouls alike by sitting up with a murdered body.

Sir Hector’s man walked toward him and gestured. “I’ve got to open that one, too.”

Hugh rose, disgruntled, and waited while he rifled through the chest for oddments, selecting a short cloak and decorative belt with an enamelled buckle.

No sooner had he left than Simon and Baldwin arrived with Roger. To Hugh’s disgust, neither asked how his night had been – they simply strode in and lifted the cloth from the body, so that Baldwin could study it more closely. Almost immediately his attention was drawn to Sarra’s head.

Sucking his teeth, Simon moved to the tiny window and peered out. Wagons and carts passed by, interspersed with riders on horseback. People hurried by on foot. It was a busy street, and he fell to wondering again whether someone could have stood passing items out to an accomplice hidden behind a wagon. Leaning forward, he meditatively touched the frame. There was certainly enough space for a man to wriggle through if he was small enough – and if the shutters had been opened first.

Baldwin asked Edgar to help him; together, they rolled the body gently over onto its side. Over Sarra’s left ear was a lump, and a crusting of blood. It looked much like Cole’s wound, with one difference: hers was more like the result of a glancing blow which had scraped the skin and caused bleeding. She must have been alive when struck, for she bled, he thought. That explained a little of the mystery about her: she was alive but unconscious when gagged and bound. The next question, he knew, was why she had been stabbed. He studied her, then walked to the chest and looked at her outline. Where Simon had pulled the cloth aside, he carefully laid it back in place. There, where her head had lain, was a small patch of brownish black. So she was definitely alive when she was placed in the chest; dead people did not bleed, he knew. So she had been killed later.

Sighing, he rose. Simon had finished staring out of the window, and now left the room. Baldwin paused, then knelt and, using his dagger, cut off a large swatch of the material of her tunic. Stuffing it in his purse, he followed his friend into Sir Hector’s room, and stood gazing round with an introspective air while Simon peered out of the window. Roger trailed in after them.

Outside, in the yard, Simon could see several men sitting at a table and drinking, laughing and joking in the shade of an old elm tree, while others worked on their weapons. Some were polishing helmets and shields until, when they caught the sun, they were painful to look at. Two men were fletching, expertly winding string round arrows to hold the feathers in place, and another was running a stone over his sword to give it an edge.

Behind him he could hear Baldwin muttering to himself, but his attention was caught by the scene in the yard. It was rare to see men-of-war in a place like this, going about their business with a casual unconcern that made it seem normal. If they had been farmers cleaning tools and preparing for a day’s work, the sight could not have been more tranquil. As if to emphasize this, the inn’s hens scratched and stepped all round, their jerky motion an odd contrast to the smoothness of the armorer with his weapon. The stone sweeping along the sword’s blade gave a rhythmic background to the setting, like a man scything wheat. Cloths buffing shields to a mirror-like finish added an air of domesticity which tended to confirm the impression of rustic calm.