The house was quiet, and for a moment he was aware of a fear that Hugh might have executed their captive, but as soon as he entered, he saw Hugh scowling ferociously at the man as he ate voraciously from a bowl of the soup left over from the night before. John saw that Hugh had untied his arms and legs, and was relieved. He had been concerned that the man could lose all feeling in them if they were bound tightly for too long.
Humphrey glanced up as he entered, and in his eyes there was a little fear, but then his attention went to the doorway behind John, and as it became apparent that there was no one outside his brow cleared and he met John’s eye with gratitude.
‘So you sought to torture the poor fellow with your cooking?’ John tried jovially.
Hugh set his head to one side. ‘You made it. I just heated it.’
‘I think I have good news for you. There is a Keeper of the King’s Peace here, and a Bailiff Puttock. They say that they were called here to seek your murderer.’
Hugh gazed up at him with hope filling his soul. ‘Sir Baldwin and my master? They’re here?’
‘And actively hunting down the murderer, yes.’
It made Hugh glad, but it was also an anticlimax. He felt as though the responsibility for finding Constance’s murderer was taken from him, and that was a relief … and a curse as well. She was his wife, her murderer was his enemy. It would be easy to rest now, to allow Sir Baldwin and Simon to find the killer, but Hugh had to do it. It was a matter of honour.
‘Are you well?’ John asked.
‘I’m fine. Be all right in a while. Leave me.’
John nodded, understanding his confusion, and went to Humphrey. He glanced at the man’s wrists, where the thongs had cut into the flesh. It was fortunate that Hugh had removed them when they had, or else this man could have lost his hands.
There was no longer any point in keeping him captive. He had admitted to his crime, and although it was shocking, it was not so rare. When so many men worked for the Church, occasionally anger would flare and a man would die. Jealousy or rage could consume an entire community. Yes, John could sympathise with this man.
‘What would you do, Humphrey?’ he asked. ‘Stay here, or move on to another place where you’ll have to scrape a living again?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remain at the chapel now, so I suppose I’ll have to wander again,’ Humphrey said mournfully.
‘You can keep moving, I suppose, but it would make for no life,’ John guessed.
Humphrey shook at the memory. The nights he had spent on the run … Once he had been lying under a hedge, mournfully reminding himself of his miserable fall, when he had noticed a shrew or a mouse in the stubble of the field not far from him. He watched, entranced, while the little figure scraped and muzzled about the ground searching for gleanings. Every so often it would rise to its hind legs and sniff the air as though convinced that there was someone watching it, but not sure who or where.
And then Humphrey all but leapt from his skin as a silent, pale, wraithlike figure swooped down and took it. He could have died in that moment, the way his heart thundered in his breast. It was so sudden, so terrifying!
The barn owl took off again, effortlessly rising through the cool night’s air, and he watched it go with genuine terror, expecting a similar shape to appear at any moment and haul him away to hell.
There were very few nights when he had managed to make use of a rick, hayloft or barn. After a month he was rancid and exhausted. His bones ached, his feet were worn, and he was close to collapse. That was when he had arrived in Hatherleigh and seen Isaac for the first time.
‘There may be a better way,’ John said. ‘Perhaps we could persuade the bishop to give you a trial at the chapel?’
‘He will give me a trial,’ Humphrey said bitterly.
‘It is possible with the support of a local magnate and other priests in the area that you may receive a happier hearing than you might expect,’ John said. ‘It is worth trying, I should think. Better than living as a felon for the rest of your days.’
‘Perhaps.’
John turned his attention back to Hugh. The morose figure was cross-legged on the floor near the fire. ‘Have you eaten yet?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
John crouched at his feet and fixed him with a firm eye. ‘If you want revenge and justice, my friend, you will need to keep your strength up. Now eat, while I tell you what I saw and heard in Iddesleigh this day!’
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was a long, scrubby plain, with furze bushes sticking up here and there, a stunted tree, and rocks all about as always. The soil was good, but here on the moor there was only pasture. ‘No plough would cut into this without breaking in the first yard,’ Baldwin muttered, looking about him.
Perkin had taken them along the track past Hugh’s house, and out the other side to the moor, and then led them across the rough ground to the top of the ridge from where they could look down into the stream.
‘This is the way I came, you see. They expected us all on the plain there, because then we could have rushed them in a solid mass. But if we’d done that, they could have encircled us and done us great damage. So instead we sent a number of our men up that way, while Beorn and I came up here. It was out of the way, but we thought that the change of direction would confuse them. It looked as if it was going to work, too.’
‘What happened?’
Perkin walked a little way along the ridge until he found a mess of mud. ‘That’s where we came up. Our feet churned the soil. Then I came over here, and I was running at my fastest to reach their goal over there.’ He pointed. ‘That’s when I saw Walter and Ailward. Both of them were down here. Walter jumped up and went for me, and that was that.’
‘So you were knocked to the ground where?’ Baldwin asked.
Perkin shrugged, but then he slowly grinned. ‘There, on that blasted rock. See this scrape on my arm?’ he asked, pulling up his sleeve. ‘That rock there gave me that. Christ, but it hurt! Felt as if a rat had nibbled all down my forearm.’
‘Where was Ailward?’
Perkin closed his eyes and turned his head a little, as though orientating his mind with the reality of the landscape. ‘Over here,’ he said. ‘And when I came back here, this was where he lay, too.’
‘It’s only a half mile from Hugh’s house, if that,’ Simon muttered.
‘Yes. And I think that this could be giving us a stronger clue about his death than we have had so far,’ Baldwin said. ‘What do you think the two men were doing up here, Perkin?’
He looked away, over the rolling lands to his home. It was there, over at Monkleigh, a low, thatched house like all the others. It was not much, but it was all that he had ever known, and suddenly he found himself wondering whether he would be able to remain there for much longer. The only witness to murder was not in a strong position.
‘I thought that there was a body here. Where Ailward stood. I only caught a glimpse, and that while I was in the air, but I could swear that there was colour at his feet, like a body wearing a tunic. And I thought that I saw redness, a deep redness, like blood.’
‘Did you not tell anyone?’ Baldwin asked disbelievingly.
‘What, at the time? No — my brain was partly addled, my arm was in great pain, and the only memory I have is of stumbling back down that hillside there to get to the tavern and try to forget the pain in my head. But all through that afternoon, my conviction grew that I was right, and there was a body at Ailward’s feet.’
‘You said you wouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Baldwin reminded him.
‘That’s right. Ailward tried to be a friend and companion, but his frustration and despair gnawed at him. He should have been a great knight with a destrier and all that, but instead he was a serf here. The best serf Sir Geoffrey could have hoped for, it’s true, but still a serf to his mind, and a serf is only a pale reminder of a real man, sir. Isn’t that what knights say?’