“None!” the man blustered. “None needed to, when you butted into a fight that was none of your-” The sentence choked off in a rattle of pain as Matt hit a nerve center.“Nay, no more! I’ll tell! The man who paid me was-” Then, suddenly, his eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the ground. The crowd cheered, and half a dozen men surged in to lift Matt up on their shoulders. Matt held on, their clamor ringing in his ears while he let the sudden numbness within him fade. When they set him down inside the tavern and thrust a mug into his hand, he faked laughter and sipped a little, nodding thanks for their shouted compliments, then started a drinking song. In a few minutes the men were all swinging their tankards in time to the music and bawling the chorus, leaving Matt free to welter in morose remorse. Why? Well, the peasant who burst in the door said it best. “He is dead!”
The whole room went instantly silent. Matt froze. Then Forla asked, in a trembling voice, “Who?”
“Simnel,” the man cried, and Forla burst into tears, wailing, “Oh, my love! To have found you so late, and lost you so soon!”
“Be still, woman!” her husband snarled as he staggered in the door. His face was a mass of bruises, and blood trickled from a cut on one cheek, but he lurched toward her, lips drawing back in a snarl. She saw him coming and screamed. Then a man in a fur-collared velvet robe strode in the door. A gold chain held a medallion over his breast, and his gray hair and lined face made him look all the more stern as he pointed at Perkin and shouted, “Seize him!”
A dozen men leaped to obey with shouts of glee. “Who is this guy?” Matt muttered to Pascal. “The local reeve, by the look of him,” the youth answered. “Someone with more sense than blood lust must have gone to fetch him.”
The reeve stepped over to the biggest table in the room and sat himself down majestically. “The court is now convened! Who will serve as jury?”
There was an instant clamor of eager willingness, and hands waved to volunteer. “You, you, you…” The reeve picked his jury by pointing at them one by one, until he had twelve good men and true. Well, twelve men, anyway. Out of the corner of his eye Matt noticed Forla edging toward the door, then slipping out. The reeve may not have known how the case was going to come out, but she sure did. On the other hand, the reeve probably had made up his mind before the trial, to judge by the way he ran it. “Perkin, husband of Forla!” he snapped, pointing at the cuckolded husband. “You are charged with the killing of Simnel, of your own village!”
“He had cuckolded me!” Perkin cried. “He had bedded my wife!”
“Then you admit to killing him?”
“I had every right!”
“Did you kill him? Yes or no!”
“Yes!” Perkin shouted. “As I would kill any man who laid a hand upon her! Do you tell me I am wrong?”
“Do you tell him he is wrong?” the reeve demanded of the jury. The twelve men put their heads together for a quick, muttered conference, then turned back to the judge. The tallest said, “He was right to kill Simnel. It was adultery.”
“The killing was justified!” The reeve slapped his hand on the table. “Set him free!”
The men holding Perkin stepped back, letting go, and the cuckolded husband stood looking about him, rubbing his arms where they had gripped him, looking dazed. Then fire lit his eye and he demanded, “Where is she? Where is my faithless wife? Where is Forla?”
The whole room went silent. Then the men began to mutter to one another, concerned but excited, and the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Where is she?” Perkin shouted. “They can’t think it’s right to let him kill her, too!” Matt protested.
‘“I think not,” said Pascal, “but they shall not mind if he beats her sorely.” He was very pale. “Where is she?” Perkin bellowed at the women. “You know, do you not? Tell me where!”
They rocked in the blast of his rage, but the stoutest woman said, with determination, “We know not where she is fled-but fled she has, and the more fool she if she has not!”
Perkin snarled and raised a hand, but the reeve thundered, “Nay! This one is not yours to abuse!”
Perkin cast an uneasy glance at him, then turned and bolted out into the night, bellowing, “Forla! Where are you, Forla? You may as well come forth, for I shall find you soon or late!”
“Come on,” Matt said urgently, and led Pascal toward the door. But a matron stopped him with a hand on his arm to say, “Do not fear for Forla, minstrel. You are a good man, and no doubt seek to save her, as you sought to save Simnel-but you need not. Where she has gone, no man can follow.”
Matt wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but it did reassure him. “Thanks. I need to be going anyway, though. Good night, goodwife.”
She flushed. “Good woman, rather! Though I was a good wife indeed, till my husband fled.” Then anxiety creased her face. “Do not follow Perkin-for he is maddened now and might strike you down without knowing what he did!”
“I’ll stay out of his way,” Matt promised. He patted her hand. “By the way, what do you think the jury would have decided if it had been the other way around-if Simnel had killed Perkin? If the adulterer had killed the husband?”
“Simnel would have been outlawed,” she said grimly, “with his life forfeit to anyone who wished to kill him, for revenge or for pleasure, or for any reason at all.”
Pascal blanched dead white. The woman noticed and scowled at him. “Are you an adulterer, too?”
“Not yet,” Pascal answered, “and I think not ever-now.”
As they slipped out the door, Matt said, “Wise decision, if running away with Panegyra, or even officially kidnapping her, would give her fiancé grounds to kill you out of hand, and the local reeve and jury would virtually ignore it.”
“It does seem the wisest course,” Pascal agreed. “Do you think they would do that to me even if we eloped before she married him?”
“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Matt assured him. “In fact, even without having done anything, I think we’d better go, and go fast!”
Pascal glanced at him in surprise, saw the grimness there, and hurried down the path toward the main road with him. As they came out onto the highway, Pascal asked, “Shall we not wait for our fellow travelers?”
“Yes,” Matt said, “five miles down the road. Then we’ll let them catch up.”
“Why the haste to go so quickly now?”
“Because that man I fought is dead,” Matt said, “and I don’t want to be around when the locals discover it.”
Pascal’s eyes went wide and frightened. Then he turned away, paying serious attention to making speed. “They will be after you with the reeve and all his men!”
“I don’t think so,” Matt said. “I don’t think any of them will even recognize him-I’m pretty sure he’s from out of town.”
“Why?” Pascal was getting very used to staring. “Because he was a professional assassin-I could tell by his style.”
“Oh! Then you killed him because if you did not, he would have killed you!”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“I didn’t kill him at all,” Matt explained. “I forced him to tell me who had hired him to kill me-but before he could talk, he died.”
“Sorcery!” Pascal gasped. “That was my guess, too. You might want to find a different traveling companion, Pascal. Almost anybody would be safer.”
The young man didn’t answer for several minutes; he only hurried along, watching the road and keeping pace with Matt. When he did speak, it was only to say, “I must think over my future again.”
“Yes,” Matt agreed. “That might be wise.”