‘God knows what he’s up to there, but I want to see where this track goes,’ he said, and ducking low, they made their way back over the brow of the hill before the wailing priest could see them.
Chapter Seventeen
The two men had finally gone. Jordan squirmed along until he reached the lip of the cliff, from where he could look down on the plateau. Stephen had rolled over in the foetal position now, hands covering his face while he gave great shuddering sobs.
Feeling a tug at his heel, Jordan carefully pushed himself away and returned to Alan.
‘Is he still searching for it?’ Alan asked urgently.
‘No, he’s just blubbering,’ Jordan said with contempt.
‘That’s good. We’d better get back then. The monk won’t know we’ve got it, and we can keep it hidden until we want to use it.’
‘But how can we use it?’
‘We’ll see. Maybe we won’t need to. But if we do, and we show it, and say where we got it from, they’ll realise what he did.’
Jordan glanced back doubtfully as Alan began to ascend the shallow incline. Stephen was a priest, a man who was supposed to be beyond any misbehaviour. He was appointed by God, supposed to be perfect and good. And yet Alan was right – they had seen through his front. Jordan had been taught that a man like Stephen was above any evil act, but that must have been wrong.
The man should have been incapable of sin, but Jordan and Alan had witnessed it.
Simon was dismayed when he looked up and saw how the clouds had gathered. ‘Baldwin, we have to get back.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s going to rain.’
‘Simon, if you think I’m going to run back to the manor because of a slight drizzle, you are mistaken. Those clouds hardly look as if they could fill a small bucket.’
‘You remain, then. I am going to get back to the house.’
Baldwin gave him a blank stare. ‘But why?’
‘You don’t know the moors like I do. We’re here with no cloaks or jacks. When that rain hits us, we’ll be soaked in moments.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’
Now Baldwin regretted his rashness. ‘I am sorry, Simon. I thought you were simply picking on a pretext to go back. I had no idea how this rain could get through to the skin.’
Simon grunted, mopping his forehead with the hem of his tunic, then wringing it out again. They had made for home as soon as the downpour had set in in earnest, but by then, as the bailiff knew, it was too late. This Dartmoor rain had a curiously pervasive quality: it appeared only a thin mizzle yet it swiftly permeated all their clothing. The drops were flying almost horizontally. The only compensation for the bailiff was the expression of horrified disgust on Sir Baldwin’s face as he felt the drips slithering down his skin.
The wind blew from behind them, but it whirled and howled in their ears, and Simon had to speak loudly for Baldwin to hear him. ‘If we keep to the riverbank, we’ll soon make it down to the road, and then all we have to do is turn right to follow it back to the manor.’
The knight nodded, and the two set off again, slithering in the black, peaty mud. Baldwin looked down with dismay. The track was a quagmire now, and every step he took thrust his ankle under the surface. His feet were wallowing in the stuff. He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the wind, and it was here that he fell.
He was some feet behind his friend; he placed his boot on what looked like a solid enough rock, but when he put his weight on it, it slid away. Suddenly he was off-balance and toppling backwards; he put out both hands, but his right thumb caught awkwardly on another stone, and the nail was ripped off.
At first he didn’t notice. He sat, his backside throbbing where it had connected with another lump of rock, staring bleakly ahead, swearing quietly but with feeling. Then he stood up, furious with himself for his clumsiness, trying to brush off the worst of the mud and assorted plants, and generally besmearing the whole of his tunic. Glancing at the stone on which he had landed he was about to kick at it when he stopped dead.
The rock stood out in the peaty mud all about, but near where he had fallen there was a clear smudge next to the track, roughly circular in shape. It appeared to connect Simon and Baldwin’s path to another trail, a narrower one this time, that curled away up the hill. Baldwin gave it little attention, thinking it was merely a sheep-path. However, he noticed a cord sticking up from the mud, and he prodded at it with a foot. He suddenly realised it was a piece of leather, and knelt down to pull it free. Then, frowning, he studied the ground round about at closer quarters.
Simon returned, puffing and blowing up the hill on realising his friend had disappeared.
‘Don’t you think it’s time we got back to a cup of wine and a warm fire? What are you up to now?’ he demanded irascibly. But then a look of concern came to his face. Baldwin followed the direction of his eyes and swore when he saw the blood dripping from his thumbnail.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Simon, this is where the boy was killed!’
The bailiff stared down, then back at his friend. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’
‘Look,’ said Baldwin, pointing carefully at the smeared patch of mud. ‘I think this is where the boy must have been killed. He crawled up here, for some reason, but someone met him and brought a stone down on his head. Perhaps the stone I just fell over was the very one that killed him.’
‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit over-imaginative?’ Simon asked disbelievingly. ‘There’s nothing to show he ever came near here.’
‘We followed the track all the way from the road, so it is fair to reason that he might have come this way,’ Baldwin said. ‘But this is what makes me believe he was here. See this?’ He held out what he had found: two narrow thongs tied to a stout patch of leather.
‘A sling?’ Simon said doubtfully.
‘A typical boy’s toy,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘I’d be prepared to gamble that he had it in his hand and let it fall when he was struck.’
‘Farfetched!’ Simon scoffed.
‘Perhaps. But let’s consider it as a possibility.’
‘You say he crawled here. Why should he do that?’
‘Perhaps he was playing up here, pretending to be a hunter or a man-at-arms.’
‘Oh, really?’ Simon asked sarcastically. ‘And on what do you base that? It looks like a sheep-track to me.’
‘Oh, Simon! Look at the way it curves round – when have you ever seen a sheep wander like that? Sheep go to great efforts to follow the contours of the hills they traverse, while this is descending steadily, down from that ledge…’
‘You want to follow it, don’t you?’ Simon sighed. He glanced up at the sky. The rain had slowed now to a gentle drizzle, and the bailiff reminded himself that he was unlikely to get any wetter. He gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘Oh, Christ’s bones! Very well! Come on, then.‘
‘Shove the bastard in the storeroom!’ Thomas said as he drew his mount to a halt in the court. He watched his grooms lead the dejected figure of Edmund away before he dropped from his horse, feeling that he had at least shown he could make decisions, which was more than that damned fool from Furnshill.
He left his horse standing and walked towards the stables. Nicholas stood in the dark a short way from the door.
‘Well?’ Thomas demanded.
‘The Fleming went inside a while back, sir. I’ve not seen him since.’ Nicholas forbore to mention his attempt at finding solace. Petronilla was unlikely to complain – she was only a servant. Not that his master would mind overmuch. The wench had better make up her mind to be more friendly in future. After all, Nicholas was his master’s trusted steward and, now Thomas owned the Throwleigh demesne, if Petronilla wanted to keep her job she would have to look after Nicholas too.