‘No, my Lord Abbot! You can’t believe the strange stories told by this Bailiff!’ Augerus babbled. ‘Are you going to convict me on his word? Please, I beg, let me–’
‘You shall have to live out a penance,’ Abbot Robert said, ignoring his plea. ‘I shall consider it. In the meantime, you shall remain under guard. You can go to the church and begin to pray to God for His forgiveness. When your brother monks are called to the church, you will lie across the doorway so that all can step over you. You, Augerus, are contemptible!’
After eating the food Rudolf brought to him, Joce sat down and talked to the Swiss in a carefully genial manner, waiting for a suitable moment to mention the pewter. If he could, he wanted to learn in which wagon it had been stored, but somehow the foreigner didn’t understand English well enough. Every time Joce tried to direct the conversation back towards the town and tin, or pewter, Rudolf began to speak about the mountains in his homelands, or the freedom which the men of the Forest Cantons enjoyed. Every man free, none a slave.
All the while the carts sat so close. They had the look of being well-filled, their wheels sinking and creating ruts in the path, and Joce longed to go to them, to hurl their contents to the ground, to destroy, to torture or kill, but mainly to find that metal. He must find it! It was his guarantee of free passage and a new life.
As the light faded, and twilight quickly overtook the moors, he watched the travellers carefully. It seemed to him that the folk were avoiding him, other than Rudolf himself, and he sat a little too far from Joce for the Receiver to be able to grab him with any confidence of keeping hold as well as drawing his dagger. He was tempted to try to move closer, but somehow he felt that Rudolf would notice and could consider it to be a threat. In preference, Joce might reach to pull off a boot. A man without a boot, he reasoned, looked ungainly and unthreatening. He could lean forward once the boot was off, as though peering inside it, and then throw it at Rudolf, distracting the man, and while he was catching the boot, or pushing it away, Joce could draw his dagger and put it to Rudolf’s throat. That would give him a chance to demand the pewter, and then he could take a horse and ride off.
But he knew that it was madness. There were so many men here. Any one of them could stop him, could grab at him as he tried to mount a horse, or could wrest the pewter from him. He needed a better plan.
At the sound of horses, Joce saw two of Rudolf’s men stand and stare back the way he had come, west, towards Tavistock, but he kept calm and sat quietly, listening intently. There were only a few riders, that was obvious. The ground didn’t vibrate as it would with ten or more heavy mounts, and the rumble of hooves was dissonant, a broken noise, in which almost every hoof beat could be discerned. Two, maybe three horses, no more, he reasoned.
They took little time to reach the travellers.
‘Who is your leader?’ came a hoarse voice, and Joce felt his belly lurch. Sir Tristram? What was that duplicitous arse doing up here?
Rudolf stood. ‘You are looking for someone?’
‘A man on foot who came past here today, probably late,’ Sir Tristram said. He noticed Joce sitting – now that Rudolf had moved away, Joce was alone. ‘Who are you? Are you with these travellers?’
Joce rose to his feet and faced him. ‘I am the Receiver of Tavistock, Sir Tristram. You remember me?’
Sir Tristram was tempted to snatch his sword from its scabbard and sweep his head from shoulders. ‘Of course I remember you. Have you seen a man coming past here?’
Joce shook his head. ‘No, no one.’
‘That is odd, then isn’t it?’ Sir Tristram said. He spurred his horse forwards. ‘We have had an exciting day today. A young novice, Master Gerard, from the Abbey, was savagely attacked and lies close to death in the Abbey. Then we learned of a girl who was threatened by a man who tried to strangle her, and just now we found my Sergeant dead just a little way from Tavistock, his head taken clean off his shoulders. And the man who did it came this way, first on a horse, then on foot. We came across the horse further back that way. Yet you saw no one.’
‘He must have turned north or south.’
‘Did you know that Jack saw you at the argument we had in the town? He said he recognised you. Said you were the leader of the Armstrongs. He called you Joce the Red-Hand.’
‘He was dreaming,’ Joce laughed.
Coroner Roger smiled blandly, and then pointed to Joce. ‘Your sleeves are stained, man, as is your tunic near your dagger! You are the…’
Before he could finish his words, Joce had moved. He shot across the grass and grasped Anna about the waist, turning with her even as he drew his knife. Instantly he faced the men with the dagger at Anna’s throat. ‘If any one moves, she dies,’ he snarled.
He had forgotten the two crossbows. There was a hideous thump and grating friction at his shoulder. He felt his whole upper body jerk, his arm losing all power in a moment, and the knife flew from his hand even as his shoulder seemed to explode. As Anna staggered and fell to her knees before him, he was only aware of the sudden eruption from his shoulder: his tunic snapped away, ripped and shredded, and there was a violent effusion of blood which sprayed the grass for yards about, a solid mass in its midst. He could see it fly on, a blurred spot in the distance.
A moment later there was a second thud in his spine, and it slammed him down to the earth, where he lay, mouth agape, his remaining good arm scrabbling for purchase in the blood-clogged grass. He tried to speak, to bellow, but no words came. He could feel pain searing his breast like flames: the bolt had shattered in his spine, and fragments of wood and bone had pricked his chest, puncturing his lungs; now the blood was clogging his breath and as he opened his mouth to roar, a fine spray of crimson burst forth, staining the grass anew.
It can’t end like this, he thought. There was more astonishment at this than pain or shock. Of all ends, he had never anticipated this. He shivered, and suddenly he realised that his legs were shaking uncontrollably, quivering against the long grasses, and then the spasms spread upwards, to his groin, then his arms, and suddenly his eyes widened.
And then he was still.
When the Coroner returned to the town, riding on ahead of Sir Tristram, who was bringing Joce Blakemoor’s body back on a sumpter horse, Simon and Baldwin listened with keen interest to his story.
‘So the Swiss men shot him? A kind end to a violent man,’ was Baldwin’s comment.
‘It explains some of the story,’ Simon said.
‘Yes. We know that the acolyte ran away from the Abbey because he couldn’t cope with the pressure and fear. Augerus had made him steal for him, taking whatever he could from the Abbey’s guests, and so he ran away, joining Sir Tristram’s men. He hoped to be able to disappear with them. But I suppose when he saw or heard all of us arriving and questioning Sir Tristram, he panicked and bolted, and somehow Joce caught him and tortured him to learn where the pewter was gone.’
‘Yes,’ said Simon absently, ‘except…’
Baldwin chuckled to himself. ‘Come, there is little enough unexplained! You can be content with the scope of your discoveries.’
Simon smiled, but he was still unhappy at the amount he did not know. The acolyte had somehow found clothing; he had been shaved; he had been helped into the lines of men joining the Host, for he would have been spoken for. Someone must have confirmed his name and details when he applied to Sir Tristram.
And then he suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the pleasant, smiling face of Nob Bakere and his wife Cissy. ‘I think that we may learn a little yet,’ he said.