‘Don’t answer me back, wench!’ the steward snapped. Then, almost to himself, ‘Where are those damned stablemen?’
Hugh ignored the men as they stamped and bellowed, but when two grooms arrived, he leaned on his fork and listened. There was a quick bustle, horses were brought, saddled and made ready, and then with a shouting of orders, Thomas, Daniel and two others rode off furiously, heading towards the vill.
‘What’s their trouble?’ asked Petronilla, returning to the yard once the men had disappeared.
‘They think they’ve found the lad’s murderer,’ said Hugh conversationally.
She shot him a look. ‘“Think”? You don’t sound convinced.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Why?’
Hugh bent back to his task. ‘Because it’s easy for someone to guess who might have done something like this, and easy to arrest someone who’s poor. Until I hear my master say he thinks it was this man, I won’t worry about it.’
James van Relenghes saw them talking. He had heard the clatter of hooves and had walked back to the road in time to see Daniel and Thomas with their men disappearing on the road to Throwleigh, their horses throwing up large clouds of dust and sods of turf as they sped over the verge rather than take the longer way on the road. Their destination was obvious.
Van Relenghes was content with the turn events were taking. He strolled back to the house and nodded to Hugh. Seeing the girl loitering about, he paused. Like Hugh, he admired her face, the way the sun shone golden in her hair where it had drifted from her cap, the sheer happiness in her smile as Hugh made some comment. Van Relenghes wandered over and asked her politely, if a little shortly, whether she could fetch him a large pot of wine. He would wait for it in the hall, he said, and waited pointedly until she flounced off to the buttery.
The hall was empty when he entered, and he drew a chair up to the fire, sitting before it while he waited for the girl to return.
She had looked very attractive out there, he reflected. Of course the widow was infinitely more desirable, with her money and her aura of elegance and… and her sheer independence, modulated with the vulnerability which her bereavements had conferred upon her. Her self-possession made her incredibly attractive to van Relenghes. He had known wealthy widows in other countries – quite a number – but this one would be even more enjoyable. Others had been easier, it was true, but the very lack of a challenge had made those victories less complete somehow, less perfect.
With Lady Katharine, her self-possession would make her surrender all the more delightful, he reckoned, and smiled to himself. Her composure would make her eventual submission sweeter still. The certainty of his success was in no doubt, for van Relenghes knew that his tall, dark good looks were magnetic to women. The fact had been proved to him time and time again. No, he entertained no doubts of his abilities to entice Widow Throwleigh into his bed. It would take time, but eventually he would be able to enjoy ruining her.
But for now there was little opportunity, not at the earliest until she had put her brat into his grave, and had given him time to rot. Not until she had recovered a little from that misery and the weak, womanly failing of grieving for her man, could he hope to be able to win her affection.
As he arrived at this conclusion, Petronilla came in and poured his drink. He was so deep in thought he hardly noticed.
He was reflecting happily that now his revenge was almost complete. The squire was dead, his heir likewise, and once he had ruined Squire Roger’s widow, James van Relenghes’s curse would be fulfilled.
Petronilla left him, turning at the door and pulling a face at his back. She didn’t like having to obey the whim of a foreigner; especially when they didn’t even bother to acknowledge her when she put herself out to serve them.
Outside Hugh was still clearing her rushes, and she was about to go to him when Nicholas sauntered out from the stables. He glanced casually up and down the yard, and then smiled at her.
Petronilla wasn’t in a mood to be polite to strangers, but at least this one was another servant, like herself. When Nicholas pulled a sad grimace and made a dumbshow of drinking, winking to her, she at first tutted to herself, but then tossed her head and flung her arms up dramatically before returning to the buttery and fetching a fresh pair of jugs, carrying them on a tray out to the stable.
Nicholas was sitting on a bale of hay, playing dice with a groom, and he looked up as she stood over him, pouring his wine.
He was edgy, as he should be after coming back to this place so far from civilisation. Although he had his men about him, he was anxious lest he should be discovered. Surely it was only luck so far that had saved him from discovery by Anney, but if that situation should change, he knew he was in danger unless his master should protect him.
Like many, Nicholas was a man of simple desires and urges. He was lonely and a little afraid, and at such times he turned to comfort from a woman, but the nearest tavern he dared use was a long way from here. It would be madness to try the one near Anney’s home. He might still be recognised.
Looking up, he noticed that Petronilla, although she wore an air of bored sulkiness, from this angle bending over him, looked intensely desirable. She was frowning with concentration, ringlets of hair framing her pretty face. She had behaved quite coolly towards him since he arrived with Thomas, but he was sure that was only a front, after what he’d seen. He met her eye and gave her a broad, wolfish smile, his hand cupping her breast.
‘Little maid, would you like to earn a silver piece?’
The sound of the jug smashing, the hissed curse and patter of feet made Hugh start. Godfrey had been resting at the door with a quart of ale, and the two men stared as Petronilla hurtled past, her cap awry, hair flying loose, tunic lifted to allow her to run, face red as a russet cloth. The men watched her shoot through the door and out of sight.
‘What happened to her?’ Godfrey asked with bemusement.
Hugh scowled as he caught sight of Nicholas standing in the doorway to the stable. ‘I reckon he tried his luck.’
Godfrey nodded slowly, keeping his face fixed on Nicholas. ‘He’d better be careful or his luck might run out.’
The trail led them straight up the hill. Every few yards Baldwin peered in among the ferns and furze at either side, looking for footprints, hoofprints, anything. Each time he had to shake his head with bafflement and carry on.
There was still only the one track, travelling in one direction. That was an easy inference: all the plants had been pushed or dragged over one way, down towards the road. Baldwin was puzzled. He would have expected to find a wide, trampled space where the boy had been caught and murdered; he would also have expected whoever had gone down here one way to have scurried back up again after the deed, but there was no sign of footprints, demonstrating that the killer, or killers, had kept concealed by crawling away after leaving the body at the roadside, and after a suitable pause had taken to their heels. The lack of any such evidence made him resolve to search the vegetation at the roadside again once they had completed this search.
Even as he cast about them, he could feel his aggravation growing.
‘Simon, can you remember when the last rains fell?’
‘Feeling a bit damp?’ Simon laughed.
‘Damp! My tunic is soaked from the hips down, my hose are wet through, and I am growing quite cold – and all this in the bright sunlight! Why hasn’t the sun dried all these blasted plants?’
It wasn’t only the damp that was getting on his nerves; he was also being assaulted by prickles from the gorse-bushes, which were penetrating his hose and shirt. The spines of these moorland shrubs appeared able to stab through even coarse material, and he muttered a curse against them as Simon spoke.
‘The sun hardly reaches here; the top of the hill keeps all of this side in the shade at this time of year – and I expect you didn’t notice it, you being recently wedded, but last night there was a heavy shower of rain.’