Simon looked at Baldwin. ‘This would be after Thomas had chased the lad who shot him.’‘
‘Oh, he tried to catch me,’ said Alan dismissively, ‘but I left him far behind. We got to the top of a bit of the hill, and down there by the stream, I saw the Brother. He was standing, staring into the water. Then I spotted Herbert. He was hiding behind a bush, his sling ready, and then he let it fly! He caught the priest right on the arse, and my, didn’t he jump! But when he turned, Herbert hadn’t hidden fast enough, sir, and the priest saw him, and ran after him. Well, I can outrun him, see, but Herbert wasn’t as quick as me. He was caught, and the priest pulled him down and began beating him with his stick, and when he broke that, with his hand.’
To Simon’s ears the boy was slowing in his speech. The bailiff thought at first that it was because he was coming to the end of his tale, but then he realised that Alan had more to say, but didn’t relish the telling.
‘Sir, then I saw the priest cuddle Herbert.’
‘Cuddle him?’ Baldwin narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
Alan’s face had grown pale as he blinked at Baldwin. ‘I know what happens, sir. I’ve seen men from the village with their girls down in the meadows often enough. And at the inn I’ve seen men with women. It’s the same as a stallion covering a mare, or a dog with a bitch. The priest had taken off his shoes and robe, but to do that to Herbert…’
The knight swallowed, nodded, and said harshly, ‘What then, Alan?’
‘Poor Herbert was crying. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I could say to him. Me and Jordan came away, thinking we’d go home. It wasn’t right, sir! Only as we went back up the hill, we heard Herbert give a sort of cry, and I thought he must have fallen. Jordan and me went back, sir, but we couldn’t see either of them. They’d gone. All that was left was this, sir.’
And so saying, he brought out Brother Stephen’s missing shoe.
Simon and Baldwin ordered their horses to be saddled, as well as mounts for Godfrey and Thomas. Simon felt it was only sensible for them to have as many witnesses as possible. While outside Simon told the grooms not to allow Stephen to have a horse. On foot the man wouldn’t be able to get far if he attempted to escape. The bailiff almost wished the cleric would commit suicide before they could return.
He carried the shoe carefully, wrapped up in a cloth and thrust beneath his tunic. He was unhappy about this journey – it seemed to him as though he was participating in a peculiarly unwholesome enquiry, and it was one he would be glad to finish. Simon had been raised in the shadow of the growing Crediton Canonical church as it was being built, and he had an awe for men of the cloth. He rarely allowed it to alter his feelings towards clerics as men – he didn’t like some, while others he counted as particular friends, such as Peter Clifford, Dean of Crediton – and yet he could not help but revere them because of their unique position as God’s own representatives.
And now, he mused, as they trotted gently off towards the stream where the footprints lay, here he was trying to confirm the guilt of a priest, a man who was supposed to be their spiritual leader.
Baldwin’s thoughts ran along the same lines, but he was less concerned with proving the cleric’s guilt, and more with his own feelings. He was aware of a growing sense of the rightness of the matter as everything pointed more and more steadily towards the priest. It was almost as if he wanted the priest to be guilty of the murder, and that, he felt instinctively, was wrong.
He thought about his feelings for some while. It all stemmed from his treatment while he was a Templar, he knew, and that experience of injustice had influenced all his life from that point. He had trusted in the Pope and the Church, and both had betrayed him, the first from motives of personal greed, the second from an unthinking allegiance, assuming that whatever the Pontiff might decide had the force of a decision from God.
But Baldwin now had a great doubt. He had been prepared to accept every piece of evidence as pointing to the guilt of the cleric because he had wanted it to. It would satisfy his own desire for a personal form of revenge: visiting justice on one priest as the surrogate of the Church itself. And yet what if, by so doing, he was duplicating the injustice? A bitter irony, that: in trying to avenge the unfairness of his own treatment, he might himself be guilty of prejudice against another innocent party.
To reassure himself, he enumerated the indications of guilt to himself. There were many signs, from all that the witnesses had said. Anney, Godfrey, van Relenghes and Thomas had all seen the priest up on the hill. There was no doubt of his presence, and he did not deny being there. He admitted to grabbing Alan, and clearly he was already angry at that stage.
It would hardly be surprising if, on being used as a target once more, he should really lose his temper.
But enough to engage in the homosexual rape – of a young child? Such things were not unknown, Baldwin knew that well enough. There had been cases in Cyprus, where the Eastern ways held some sway, and it had been hinted at within the Templars. Sometimes particular knights would disappear from preceptories; likewise priests were often suspected. Baldwin sourly accepted that he could all too easily believe it of the slender, feminine cleric.
The boy’s death would surely have been accidental; perhaps the priest was as horrified as anyone else would have been when Herbert fell dead. Maybe that was it, the knight thought: Stephen swung a blow, not with the intention of killing, but with the aim of showing his anger. When he realised the boy was dead, he didn’t know what to do.
What then? Of course he dragged the body down towards the road, and dropped it over the edge of the bank… after the fishman’s cart had passed, but before Edmund came by.
Baldwin scratched at his beard. It seemed a little curious to him, but that was the evidence so far. There were the footprints, of course, and they showed that the priest must have been furious: not many men would have run up the hill with one foot bare. He must have been almost mad with anger.
No, there was definitely something wrong. Baldwin sucked at his moustache, his forehead creased with effort as he considered, but for the life of him he could not see where the chain of evidence, so strongly forged, could break down.
Wat was pleased to see Petronilla when she wandered into the buttery, glancing about her, picking up an earthenware jug with a man’s face moulded to its front, and a glazed drinking horn, then filling the jug from the wine barrel. The two boys had been left in the hall with Hugh and Edgar, and Wat was lonely. Petronilla was fun – she treated him like an adult, unlike the others.
‘How is the Fleming?’ Wat asked.
Petronilla sighed, shaking her head. ‘He’s very quiet, but he’ll live. The cut went deep, though, and he’ll be in a lot of pain for some time to come.’ She ran a hand over her brow, tucking a few hairs under her cap, feeling her exhaustion. Van Relenghes was deeply shocked by his attack. She had a shrewd suspicion that for all his tales of warfare and the life of a soldier, he had never been in danger of his life before, and being gripped and stabbed by Nicholas had terrified him. That, she thought, was why he had collapsed after the first slashing cut, not because he was so badly hurt, but because he was so petrified.
‘Where is everyone?’ she asked. ‘I heard them riding off.’
‘They’ve gone back to see where the boy was found,’ Wat said off-handedly.
‘Why? They’ve been there before, haven’t they? That day when they got so wet.’