Janelle appeared to waver. Michael opened his mouth to add more, but then hesitated, and Bartholomew knew the monk was uncertain what else to say. If it had been Deblunville they had found hanging on the gibbet, and his expensive dagger suggested it was, then there were gentler ways of informing Janelle that she was a widow the day after she became a bride than howling across a field that someone had murdered him.
‘Please,’ Michael called. ‘Allow me and my colleague to come a little closer, and we will discuss this rationally. You can see we carry no weapons.’
‘All right, then,’ she conceded after a moment’s thought. ‘But walk slowly, and no tricks! I have archers with arrows aimed at Grosnold, Hamon and Tuddenham. Their lives depend on you being exactly what you say you are.’
‘Let’s go home,’ said Tuddenham, plucking at Grosnold’s chain-mailed sleeve. ‘We came here out of neighbourly concern, and we do not have to play silly games with that harlot.’
‘Just give us a few moments,’ said Michael. ‘Remember that if Deblunville is dead, all your actions now will be reconsidered later, if you become a suspect for his murder. Standing here while we go to talk to her will say more for your innocence than if you leave.’
Tuddenham glanced at Wauncy, who indicated with a shrug of his skeletal shoulders that the logic was sound. With a gusty sigh, the knight waved his hand to indicate that Michael and Bartholomew should move forward. Wisely, he led his nephew some distance away, where the younger man would not be tempted to undertake some rashly conceived rescue mission.
‘Come on, Matt.’
Assuming that no mere physician would dare to disobey the imperious tone of Michael, the University of Cambridge’s Senior Proctor and valued agent of the Bishop of Ely, the monk began to walk toward Janelle, holding his hands above his head. Unhappily, Bartholomew followed, anticipating an arrow slicing through him at every step.
With misgivings that grew with each passing moment, Bartholomew moved closer to the ramparts. Michael was a monk, and even the most lawless of men were usually loath to harm men of God, lest they pay for it in the fires of hell. But Bartholomew – although he had taken minor orders that meant if he committed a crime he would be tried under canon, rather than secular, law – was no priest, and he imagined that Janelle’s archers would not hesitate to kill him if they felt threatened. He swallowed hard, wondering how a pleasant journey to a pretty part of rural Suffolk had ended with him at the mercy of hidden archers and a pregnant woman in peach-coloured satin.
‘That is far enough.’
With relief, Bartholomew stopped short of the first rampart. Closer, Janelle was even more attractive, although she was also older, than his initial impression had suggested. From Tuddenham’s description of her careless pregnancy, he had imagined her to be in or near her teens, like Isilia, and her fair hair and delicate figure had made her appear childlike from a distance. But it was no child that glared down at him from her vantage point. It was a woman in her late twenties with a no-nonsense face and a determined expression in her eyes. He forced himself to look away, knowing it was not wise to admire other men’s wives openly when there were crossbows and arrows trained on him from all directions.
Michael spoke in a low voice, trying to be gentle. ‘I hope you will forgive me mentioning such unpalatable matters, madam, but as we rode past Bond’s Corner yesterday we found a man hanging on the gibbet. My colleague here did all he could to revive him, but it was too late. His neck was broken, and he breathed his last as we gave him absolution.’
‘You are right – that is not the kind of tale I like to hear,’ said Janelle. ‘Who was he? And why have you come here, at considerable risk to yourselves, to tell me about it?’
‘This hanged man was wearing a blue doublet sewn with silver thread, a fresh white shirt and new shoes. He also wore a studded belt, and there was a jewelled dagger at his side.’
‘I wondered what had happened to those,’ came a man’s voice from behind the wall. A moment later, a head poked up next to Janelle’s ankles. ‘I am Roland Deblunville, gentlemen. I assume you believe your hanged man was me?’
Judging from Tuddenham’s agitated pacing, he was not comfortable with the notion of his guests disappearing inside Deblunville’s enclosure. Hamon simply sat on the grass with his head in his hands, while Walter Wauncy leaned over him and whispered bleak words of comfort. Grosnold slouched against the trunk of a tree, his lips moving in agitation as he muttered to himself all the things he would do to Deblunville, if the opportunity came his way. But Tuddenham need not have worried. Bartholomew and Michael were invited only to the small barbican, and not the house, so that Deblunville could speak to them without needlessly exposing himself to his neighbours’ archers.
From all he had heard of Deblunville, Bartholomew had anticipated a great hulking figure with a bristling black beard, missing teeth and plenty of scars. Deblunville, however, was not much taller than his elfin wife; he had a mop of fine, fair hair that flopped boyishly when he walked, and had no scars at all that Bartholomew could see. Only the lines around his eyes and one or two strands of silver in his beard suggested he was no youngster. And he was most definitely not the man who had been hanged on the gibbet.
‘I am sure Tuddenham has explained to you that relations between us are not all they might be,’ said Deblunville, with a spontaneous grin that revealed small, white teeth. ‘And I am also sure that he insists it is all my fault.’
‘Is it?’ asked Michael.
Deblunville gazed at him for a moment, before throwing back his head and laughing. Michael exchanged a furtive glance with Bartholomew, not at all certain what was funny. His wife certainly was not amused: she raised her eyes heavenward and folded her arms, presenting quite a formidable figure for one so slight.
‘I imagine I am totally to blame, Brother,’ said Deblunville, still smiling. ‘According to Tuddenham, I am a wife-killer, rapist and land-thief. However, go to the courts in Ipswich, and you will see documents that show I am the legal owner of the land near the river that Tuddenham says is his. He even built himself a house there – Peche Hall – to try to strengthen his claim. But he will live to regret spending his money, because I will have what is rightfully mine.’
‘Tuddenham said Peche Hall was an ancient house, not one he raised himself,’ said Michael.
Deblunville waved a dismissive hand. ‘There was an old house there, but he pulled it down and built a new one. Peche Hall is a modern mansion – go and see it for yourselves.’
‘But there was an old house there,’ pressed Michael, ‘so he was telling the truth.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Deblunville, leaning against the rampart and chewing on a blade of grass. ‘But take your fine Benedictine robe. If I were to replace all the old material and sew it with new thread, would it be an old garment or a new one? You are intelligent men – you can see that it would be a new one. That is what Tuddenham did with Peche Hall.’
‘No, the issue is not quite so straightforward, my son,’ said Michael patronisingly. ‘And the analogy you posed has room for considerable debate. But we did not come here to argue about houses and land – we are simple scholars and know little of such matters. We came to–’
‘Simple scholars?’ interrupted Deblunville, his blue eyes glittering with merriment. ‘I am sure you will haggle long and hard, and with every ounce as much lawyerly skill as that crafty Walter Wauncy when you negotiate for the living of Grundisburgh’s church.’
‘I am sure Wauncy will appear a mere novice when compared to Brother Michael of Cambridge,’ said Janelle, appraising the monk coolly. Bartholomew was sure she did not intend the remark to be complimentary.