‘Why would you want to? You hardly knew the man.’
‘He was a good man, though. We both know that. He served this vill well in his time, and it seems wrong to me that there is no official party here to watch over him as he lies in his own chapel.’
‘That young priest should be here with him,’ Perkin said bitterly.
‘This will be a terrible shock to him, I expect,’ Adcock said.
‘You think so?’
Shocked by his tone, Adcock looked up sharply. ‘You mean the priest had something to do with this man’s death?’
‘He was old. He had nothing more to live for, I believe. He’d done all he could.’
Adcock grimaced and shifted uneasily. His cods still felt as though they’d been broken. ‘What is happening here? I hoped for a period of quiet to get the land sown so that we could win the best harvest ever — and all I have found is death and despair.’
‘It’s a hard life, and this is a hard vill,’ Perkin said. ‘But you’ll be all right.’
Adcock had a sudden vision of his Hilda, the sun was behind her so he could see her whole form, the smile on her face still brighter than the sun itself … and he knew that he would never dare to bring her here to this manor. Better that they should live apart than that she should come and be leered at by the men under Sir Geoffrey. They were little more than brutes, all of them.
‘Nicholas le Poter was all but killed by Sir Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘Whipped just because he took the piss out of a messenger from Sir Odo.’
Perkin looked at him. ‘He was no friend to us who live here. If Sir Geoffrey took the skin off his back, not many of us would care.’
‘You didn’t see what happened to him,’ Adcock said, thinking again of that terrible kick that had all but emasculated Adcock himself. In reality that was a part of the reason for his being here: to be safe from any further attack from Sir Geoffrey. The other part was despair. He had sealed Nicholas le Poter’s death warrant when he told Sir Geoffrey that le Poter had suggested the draining of the mire, and the knowledge was destroying him.
‘I’ve seen what’s happened to others often enough,’ Perkin grunted.
‘Where is the young priest? He should be here too.’
‘He’s run away.’ Perkin looked at him and sighed. ‘The damned fool. It’s going to cost him his neck.’
Jeanne was already asleep when Baldwin walked into his room. Simon and Edgar were still in the inn’s main hall, drinking without speaking for the most part, although now and again Edgar would murmur a word or two about life at Crediton.
Emma was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. Baldwin gave a quick frown, wondering where she could have got to. He hadn’t seen her since Sir Odo had left, when he was sure she had been at the bar, talking and joking with a small clique of drinkers. One man had stood glowering at Baldwin — oh yes, David, the man who had led them to the mire where Lady Lucy had been found. He had some reason for disliking Baldwin and Simon, he supposed.
Emma would probably annoy someone else through the night with her snoring or her moaning and complaining. Baldwin could hope so, anyway. Certainly he would sleep all the better without her in the room … urged on by the temptations of the devil, he began to move a chest across the doorway to prevent her entering. Only the sudden change in Jeanne’s breathing stopped him. He realised that he might wake her now by dragging the chest, and if he didn’t, the blasted maid certainly would when she found the door barred against her. She’d be likely to pound on it and wake the entire house. Finally, as he was removing his sword and tunic, Baldwin started to chuckle to himself. In his haste to ban Emma, he hadn’t noticed that the door opened outwards. Pulling the chest before it would achieve nothing.
It was a sign of how tired he was, he told himself as he sank onto the bed as gently as possible so as not to waken Jeanne.
His wound was giving him some grief again. That damned bolt from behind had so nearly killed him, it seemed perverse now to complain about the pain, yet he could not help himself. It was a constant grumbling ache at the best of times. Now, with his whole body exhausted after the ride here and the efforts he had expended since arriving, it was more of a pernicious anguish.
The thought that they were likely never to bring a murderer to book for the crimes committed against Hugh was a sore grief. Yet Baldwin was not sure that there was any possibility of seeing justice brought to bear against the Despenser’s man down here. And he was growing to agree with all those with whom he had spoken that surely it was Sir Geoffrey who had the urge to remove Hugh, who had the opportunity, and who had been about the place that day. As for his allegation that another could have killed Lady Lucy and dropped her body in the mire — Baldwin was in two minds. It was unlikely that a man would have dropped the body in the mire to throw suspicion on Sir Geoffrey unless he knew that the mire was soon to be drained. Who could have known that in advance? Clearly the sergeant of the manor would have known. Perhaps Baldwin should speak to him. Then again, would Sir Geoffrey have allowed the mire to be emptied if he knew that the lady’s body lay within?
As he lay back, the questions circled in his mind, but he could get no nearer an answer. All he was growing convinced of was that Sir Geoffrey would be enormously difficult to bring to justice.
Baldwin wondered how Simon would cope with that. It was a dreadful conclusion to reach, but if the culprit was Sir Geoffrey, the man was practically unassailable. Lord Despenser would protect his own.
It was a deeply unsatisfying conclusion, but he could see no alternative. He only prayed that Simon would not be irrational. He would speak to Edgar in the morning. If it looked as though Simon was going to burst out into righteous indignation and assault Sir Geoffrey, Edgar and he would have to prevent him by force.
There was no point having Simon getting himself killed as well.
Humphrey eyed the glowing tip of the blackened stick in Hugh’s hand. It approached him with the relentlessness of a viper slowly stalking a mouse, and Humphrey felt like a mouse as he sat absolutely still, the warmth from the glowing point beginning to make him sweat.
‘I have no patience with liars,’ Hugh said quietly. ‘Speak.’
‘I know nothing! Nothing. But I saw Matthew the priest at Iddesleigh, and he told me that your wife was once a nun, that she had taken her vows when she was too young, and had fled here.’
‘So?’ Hugh demanded.
‘I am the same. I was a monk, from the little priory of Otterton.’
‘I know it,’ John said, nodding to himself as he stirred the pot. ‘A pleasant little place, but draughty rooms for guests.’
‘I was sent there when I was a lad. My father thought I was wayward and too clever for his household. My older brothers were to have the estate and the glory, and all I had was the Church. So I went to the priory and began my novitiate. I soon realised that it was a harsh, cruel life. I couldn’t live under the rules there. It was too much. But when I spoke to the prior, who was generally a decent old soul, he told me that I’d taken the vows and that was an end to it. So I ran away.’
‘And that was all?’ John asked.
‘It’s all I will say.’
Hugh took the stick away, studied the point, and then began to blow on it. ‘What of my wife? You warned me to look after her.’
‘All I meant was that the priest knew of her, knew of her secret. Good God, man, don’t you understand? I am a runaway too. If they drag me back, I’ll die! I couldn’t do that, not return. They’d humiliate me, make me lie on the threshold of the door to the church before each service, keep me locked in the gaol all the rest of the time, and only feed me on rank water and hard bread …’ He was weeping now. ‘Sweet Jesu, I saw one man they brought back. He looked as though he was near to death, and we were made to step on his poor body each time we entered and left the church. He lost his mind, man! Became no better than an animal!’