Smothering the feeling, he carried on, over the thin bracken and ferns that lay under the snow at the edge and into the woods. He was faintly surprised how thin the snow was even after only quite a short ride. Above the trees were leafless, and he could see through the apparently lifeless branches to the sky above, but still the ground had little more than a thin crust of snow, a mere few inches.
On the floor he could see that several animals had passed by, their prints firm and clear on the white carpet: birds, animals running purposefully in a line – twice he saw the marks of deer, with the distinctive twin crescents of their hooves. All stood out distinctly on the thin surface, and when Simon saw the attentive gaze of the hunter, seeming to notice and catalogue them all in his mind, the bailiff relaxed. There was obviously no point in trying to see the tracks before Mark Rush. The man was clearly more than capable. Sighing, Simon lapsed into a private reverie.
What was Margaret doing? Probably ordering Hugh to help her with her work! He must surely be fully recovered by now, and Margaret was good at getting him to work, using the right amount of acid and sweetness in her voice to persuade him. He smiled fondly. She always did know how to get her men to do what she wanted.
That was the kind of woman Baldwin needed, he felt sure. One who could not just excite the senses, but one who would always keep him on his toes, one who could keep his interest going. Above all, one who was intelligent. Simon was sure that the knight would need a woman who could discuss matters with him, not a pretty ornament.
The thought led him down a new and different track. What about Mrs.. Trevellyn? She certainly seemed to have attracted Baldwin. Simon’s lips twitched in remembered humour at the way the knight had turned in his seat to gaze back at the house as they left the day before. Yes, he had been interested!
And there was no denying her beauty, the bailiff reflected. Of course, he was more than happy with his own wife, but denying the beauty of another would be stupid and, in the light of his own devotion to Margaret, pointless. He could cheerfully confirm that he was happier with the warm and summery fair looks of his wife than he could be with the cool and wintry attraction of the brunette from France, with her calculating, green eyes, cold and deep as the sea. They were nothing like the merry, bright blue cornflower of his wife’s. But still, he could appreciate her slender and willowy figure, with the long legs and tiny waist. And her flat belly, below the rich, ripe splendour of her breast, promising warmth and comfort. Yes, there was much to admire there. But was she intelligent enough for his friend?
Then suddenly the smile froze on his face as his thoughts carried on to the inevitable question: if she was clever enough, if she was capable, and if she had taken Greencliff as her lover, could she have persuaded him to kill her husband for her?
Deep in his musings, Simon nearly rode into the stationary horse of the hunter in front. Looking up, he was surprised to see that the man wore an amused grin. Thinking his humour was at his absent-mindedness, the bailiff was about to snap a quick retort when he saw that Mark Rush was pointing down at the ground.
“There he goes!”
Staring down in complete surprise – for he had not truly expected this troop to find anything – Simon saw the footprints. As the other two riders approached, he and Rush dropped down and studied them, crouching by the side of the spoor.
The hunter reached out with a tentative hand to softly trace the nearest print, then Simon saw his eyes narrow as he glanced back to their right, the direction where the man should have come from. Seemingly satisfied, he turned and gazed the opposite way, then ruminatively down at the prints once more.
“Well?” asked Simon.
Mark Rush sniffed hard, then snorted, hawked and spat. “This is too easy. He’s not trying to hide.” His brow wrinkled. “I wonder why not.”
Shrugging, Simon gave a gesture of indifference. “What does it matter? We’ll find out when we’ve caught him.”
“Yes,” said the hunter, then grunted as he rose, a knee clicking as he moved. “Right, well I suppose we’d better get on after him. These prints’re from yesterday from the look of them, they’re worn. See that?” He pointed at a small round hole beside the trail. Glancing at it, Simon saw it repeated beside the footprints. “That’s a walking stick. See how it hits the ground in time with his left foot, although he holds it in his right hand? He’s carrying a stick, so we’d better be careful. Don’t want him braining us.”
They mounted, then sent one of the men back to the inn. Before he left, Simon looked up at the sky. “How long have we been in the woods, do you think, Rush?”
Squinting at the sky, the hunter seemed to consider. “Maybe two, maybe three hours?”
“I think so too. You!” This to the waiting messenger. “Get to the inn as quickly as you can, but then go on to Sir Baldwin – understand? Tell him too, and ask if he can send a couple more men, just in case we do have to fight to catch him.”
“No need to worry about that, sir,” said Mark Rush, indicating his bow with a jerk of his thumb.
“I’d prefer to take him alive. Rush. We’ll avoid any unnecessary violence.”
“Yes. I’ll avoid unnecessary violence, but I’ll use any that is necessary,” he said meaningfully.
The three rode on in file now. There was no real need for a hunter to follow this trail. If the man had wanted to leave an invitation his path could not have been more easy to detect. It straggled on, winding unnecessarily round shrubs and saplings, sometimes seeming to halt, both feet placed together, and then starting out afresh. Once or twice Simon felt sure that the man must have stumbled or tripped. At one point there was a definite mark where he had fallen, and the outline of his body remained, his hands making deep prints in the snow, looking strangely sad, as if they were all that remained of him.
Simon shivered. It was curious, but he felt a kind of sympathy with this man, for no reason he could fathom. Perhaps it was merely empathy for the hunted creature? He had felt that once before, when, as a boy, he had watched a deer at bay, the hounds snapping at it, the animal’s eyes rolling in his terror, knowing that he was about to die. Then, when the huntsmen had egged on the dogs, and the deer had fallen, legs flailing uselessly, beneath the pack, Simon had felt the same sadness. It was not for the hunt itself, but for the inevitability of the end. For that buck it had been death at the teeth of the hounds. For Harold Greencliff it would be the slow strangling as he was hauled up the gibbet by the rope around his neck.
With a shrug, he concentrated on the trail again. Had the boy given any compassion to the witch? Or to the man he murdered? The bailiff doubted it.
It was getting close to dark when the man at the back of the troop called out, and Baldwin had been getting short-tempered long before that.
Their ride had been slow and painstaking, searching carefully along the lane, with Edgar on one side and the knight on the other, both looking for tracks that could have been left by the farmer, but they found nothing. Baldwin had even insisted on going into the sheep’s pasture to see whether they could find a trail there leading into the woods, but the sheep had trampled the whole area and scraped at the surface to get at the grass underneath so effectively that there was nothing that the two men could find.
Carrying on, they had slowly worked their way along the lane, up to the Trevellyn house and beyond, and Baldwin had managed to throw it only the most cursory of glances, preventing himself from staring and searching for the extraordinary beauty of Angelina Trevellyn. It was not purely his willpower that stopped him. It was the raised eyebrow and sardonic smile on Edgar’s face when he happened to catch the servant’s eye.