To his friends he was an object of amusement. They looked on him with affectionate sympathy, knowing he was a slave to his wife’s will. Ham was no dullard — it was just that his opportunities had been too fleeting, his disasters too numerous and overwhelming. At every point, when he had thought that he could make a good profit either the money didn’t materialise, or it was soon lost in taxes or some other expense.
Just like this time.
Agatha couldn’t help being disappointed by him. She herself was strong-willed, and if she had been born a man, her indomitable spirit would have won her an empire. As it was, she was a woman whose husband could not provide her with the life she craved.
He climbed down from his cart and hitched up the front of his tunic to piss at a tree — like a dog, he thought.
At first, when they had been newly wedded, he had wallowed in the happiness of his life with her. They could not help but be merry and cheerful in each other’s company. But gradually they slipped into this grim, passionless existence. It was after Alice went off to Warwick. The bitch was always dropping sarcastic little comments about Ham when she deigned to return to her old home, wearing jewellery to impress and incite avarice. She resented him because before Ham married Agatha, she was Agatha’s closest friend. And now Agatha resented him because she felt he had let her down: he should have made more of himself, like Alice’s husband.
Ach, it wasn’t only her. He too was jealous. Other couples had big families, while he and Agatha must needs survive with Jen. Their daughter was an angel, but there was no denying that Agatha and he could have done with a boy, to keep crows from the crops, to dig the vegetable garden, to take a hand mending the fence about the pigs. But they would have no more children. She appeared barren, or felt she was, and rejected him whenever he tried to. . She didn’t want him near her. That was an end to it.
It was not the life he would have picked.
Anyway, returning home wasn’t safe. That vill, so placid in the evening’s murk, could be teeming with men searching for him.
Oh well, even if he was captured the next day, it would be good to see Jen. And even Agatha, he admitted. Wearily, he walked back to the cart and took hold of the reins. He’d have to lead the old brute down the hill. It was steep here, and he must go cautiously.
All those miles north and east, only to turn about and return, and all for no payment. He was exhausted, mind and body. The way had been hazardous, never more so than when he had met Dolwyn.
He mused on the lethal nature of the fellow all the way down the hill. Dolwyn was the sort of man who would draw a knife and argue later. Ham was glad he had put so many miles between them. But a nagging doubt did remain, even as he led his old horse along the main roadway towards Willersey. He wished he had taken the final step and actually killed the man. He suddenly recalled what he had said to Dolwyn. He had mentioned his home, hadn’t he? And his own name, of course. There were many here who would be able to point him out to a stranger. A chill ran through him.
That was daft, he chided himself. Dolwyn would not want to walk all the way here to find him. Ham had nothing to make such a journey worthwhile. He was only a poor villein, when all was said and done.
It was almost full dark now. He had planned on getting to his home, and bracing himself to listen to a torrent of Agatha’s complaints, but now he stopped in the road, and stared ahead, to where his wife would be readying herself for her bed.
The vill was serene. Houses lay dotted about, encircled with wraiths of smoke. It was a clear evening, and the ponds reflected the setting sun and the salmon-coloured sky. A dog barked, and he was sure that he recognised his own brute’s voice. It would be typical of the old fellow to recognise the sound of his cart’s wheels even from such a distance, Ham thought with a grin to himself.
Darkness enveloped the world like a blanket as he listened to the lowing of cows, the occasional call of an owl, the lone bark of his dog.
This was his home, and it was strange to him. He was filled with trepidation and sadness, and he dared not go down into the vill. Perhaps he should stay out here tonight, and face his wife tomorrow.
All would seem better in daylight, he told himself. He looked about him, then led the horse to the side of the road. Here there was a narrow clearing, where he unharnessed the horse, set the cart down, then hobbled the horse with leather straps before wrapping himself in a blanket and sitting with his back to a tree. He drew his hat over his eyes, and his hood over his face, and settled to sleep.
It was already dark when Dolwyn approached the vill. He stepped quietly, because a man who has once strayed onto the wrong side of the law knows all about the dangers of being found at night. After curfew, any man would be at pains to explain why he was wandering about near people’s homes. There was no criminal so loathed as a robber of houses after dark.
He heard some horses, and stepped into the shadows behind a large beech tree. The moon was not full, but there were no clouds, and the area looked to him as bright as daylight. No people. He heard a creaking, as of leather, and turned to eye the space between the trees, but there was nothing he could see, even in this light. Carefully, he took one step, then another, and gradually made his way forward, anxious at every point that he might stumble or break a twig and alert someone nearby.
Men walking about at night were always liable to be slain, for only outlaws wandered the country in darkness. And Dolwyn did not want to be stabbed as he sought Ham.
He would find out what this creaking was, but then settle and have a sleep.
The crackle of twigs made Ham half-open his eyes for a moment, but the evening was chill, and although he was usually a light sleeper, tonight, after so many long journeys, he was too weary to get up and investigate. Besides, as he told himself, the sound was probably just the horse moving. He often raised one hoof, then set it down again, crunching the twigs beneath the shoe.
Another crackle. Then another.
The brute must be unsettled to keep shifting so. As he listened, caught in the twilight world between wakefulness and dreaming, it occurred to Ham that the noise was regular; it could be someone moving stealthily through the darkness, attempting to approach without alerting a dozing carter.
That last crunch was close, he thought. He opened his eyes and sat up, blearily staring about him, and saw the. .
‘Hey!’ he called as he took in the scene: someone was at his cart. And then. . he felt the blow on his head. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded angrily, and would have climbed to his feet, were it not for the strange ponderousness of his legs. He rolled slightly, and felt the second blow strike, and this time he was stunned, falling back.
‘No!’ he said quietly, looking up. ‘Please, I-’
All he could see was that hideous axe, dripping with blood, and suddenly he realised that he was about to die. This was no dream, no mare sent to terrify, but the solid, terrible truth. His death was here.
He tried to open his mouth to plead, but there was no strength in his muscles or his voice. He tried to crawl away, but only succeeded in exposing his pate once more, and the axe slammed into the top of his skull, hammering his face into the twigs and dirt of the ground. He felt the teeth of his upper jaw snap on a pebble, the agony at the back of his jawbone as both hinges dislocated with the force of the blow, then the ripping horror of his skull’s bones as they opened out, exposing his brain to the cool night air — but that was all.