Michael JECKS - Crediton Killings

Edgar wrinkled his nose in elegant distaste. “It astonishes me that people can live in such squalor.”

Glancing down at something he had stepped on, Baldwin nodded. It was a dead rat. There was more scuffling ahead, from a hole under a building, and the knight irritably wondered why people didn’t destroy the creatures – they caused such damage to houses and stores, chewing through sacks of grain and ruining the valuable food saved through the summer months. They should not be left to run free, doing harm wherever they went. He was tempted to go to the hole and shove his sword in, to see how many of the vile creatures were inside.

“Master!”

Edgar’s hissed exclamation made Baldwin whirl round, and he quickly forgot the rats. Running to the two slumped bodies, he crouched by them. He frowned at the skinny, gray-clad woman, and sighed. Feeling for a pulse, he bit his lip. He could recognize her now, the poor woman who had begged alms from Sir Hector. “Who did this to you?” he murmured. “Was it another man you had begged from? Another man who wanted revenge for some imagined slight? A man who had waited for a woman to meet him, and who then took his frustration out on you? You lived in miserable poverty, and you have died in it.”

“What, sir?”

Baldwin shook himself out of his reverie and moved on to the next figure. “God’s blood! Simon, what were you doing in here? And why,” his eyes moved to the woman beside him, “were you here with her?”

Hugh cursed as he tripped over a loose cobble. They were carrying Simon on a ladder filched from a yard nearby, and although it made a good stretcher, it was heavy – and the supports, formed from the two halves of a tree trunk which had the rungs hammered and pegged into its flats, were sharp and uncomfortable to hold. A man carried each corner, and Baldwin strode alongside, his gaze flitting to Simon every now and again.

The woman had been left with one of Peter’s men as a guard. She was past help; and they would send others to collect her body, but Simon still breathed, and Baldwin wanted him back at Peter’s house as quickly as possible.

For his part, Hugh had become aware how much his master meant to him; he was surprised by the strength of his emotions, seeing Simon lying flat on the ladder, an arm dangling at one side.

It was not the fear of unemployment. That was a concern for any man, but Hugh knew he could make his own living, even if it meant returning to his old village and eking out a life with relations, catching rabbits and game for his food and sleeping in a barn. There was always a place for him to live. That was not what made him silent, his eyes fixed on the still form before him, trying to avoid stumbling and tripping as he devoted himself to his master’s safe delivery at the priest’s house; it was the realization that the bailiff was more of a friend than a lord. For the first time, the servant understood that without Simon his existence would lose purpose. His being revolved around Simon and Simon’s family, and without the man, there was nothing.

Just then, Edgar faltered, missing his step on a loose cobble, and made the ladder pitch. Hugh barely managed to restrain an impatient curse at the man for being so clumsy. They were all feeling the weight.

Seeing his white face, Baldwin walked over to him and patted his shoulder. “He will be all right, Hugh,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “He’s strong, and he’ll soon mend.”

“But what’s the matter with him?” Hugh burst out. “He’s breathing, but he won’t wake. Was he stabbed, like that woman?”

“I don’t think so. He’s unconscious, so he must have been hit by someone.”

“Who?”

Baldwin gave him a tired smile. “When we have found out who murdered Sarra, and that poor woman there tonight, I think we’ll be nearer answering that.” They were at Peter’s gate now. “Someone must have hated the poor wretch to kill her and dump her there like that… but who? Who could have hated a beggar so much?”

Simon came to wakefulness only slowly, like a child woken after too little sleep, resentful and fractious. His head felt as if it had been scraped along the ground on one side and bumped over a series of cobbles, and his neck hurt as horribly as the time when he was a boy and had been playing at jousting with a friend. He had fallen off his horse, and the sharp crackle, like lightning exploding at the base of his skull as his head was jerked back in the fall, had shortly afterward led to the same kind of sore, red-hot sensation.

For a moment he enjoyed the comfort of the bed with his eyes shut. For some reason he knew that the pleasure would not last, but he had to force his mind back to think what was wrong, and when he remembered, his eyes snapped open. The woman, lying, her son staring, and then – nothing. Someone had hit him; must have knocked him out. Who?

His anger rose steadily. Somebody had attacked him – him – a bailiff! Had dared to strike him. Whoever had done that would dare anything.

“Are you well?”

He glanced to his side, and there he saw his wife. Margaret sat with her head resting against the back of her chair. She looked exhausted. Her head felt too heavy to lift, her neck too weak to support it after spending the whole night with her husband, hoping and praying that he would recover. Everyone knew how dangerous head wounds could be. Sometimes they looked little more than slight bumps, yet the victim could suddenly begin to have fits, and then might die. Simon’s wound was only a minor scrape apparently, but he had been so deeply asleep she had wondered whether he might ever waken again.

At the first break of dawn, he had begun to mutter in his sleep, calling for her, Margaret, and then for his son. Peterkin’s name was repeated over and over again, and if she was fanciful, she might have said he sounded ever more desperate, as though he was trying to call his son back from danger – or from the dead.

Then the mutters had changed. He still used Peterkin’s name, but had started to call out: “Get away! Boy, come here. You’ll be safe here, come to me. No! Come away from her!”

Baldwin had told her about the woman in the alley, so Margaret had immediately understood that Simon was dreaming about the corpse. For the rest, she had no idea what he was saying as he flung his head from side to side and moaned. To calm him and stop him from hurting himself, she had lain beside him and put her arms round him, cuddling him as she had once cuddled his son, and weeping as he wept.

“How did I get here?”

“The men found you.”

“And…”

“She’s dead.”

“Not her – her boy! Did they find her son?”

“Son – what son?”

“Fetch Baldwin.” Then, as she lurched to her feet, fatigue thinning her features and drawing her skin tight, he gave her a weak smile. “You’ve been here with me all night, Meg, haven’t you? I don’t deserve you. When you’ve found Baldwin, go and get some sleep. I love you.”

His smile was enough to take away much of her sleepiness. She hurried to the hall, where she found Baldwin already up and talking to Peter Clifford. As soon as they heard Simon was awake, they went in to see him.

Baldwin was surprised to see that his friend looked quite refreshed. He would have anticipated heightened color, a feverish gleam in Simon’s eyes and pale, waxy skin. Instead he found a bailiff who was to all intents the same as the day before. “How do you feel?”

“Irritable. And stupid to have been such easy prey.”

“It can happen. Even the best knight has been known to have been attacked.”

“This was different,” Simon explained what he could remember. “Where did the boy go?” he fretted. “That’s what I want to know. Did the murderer catch him too?”