At the sound of the horses, she spun round, and Simon was vaguely sad to see the happiness die from her features as she recognised her visitors. The cries from the children faded too, as if the slight breeze was taking away their pleasure and enjoyment with its gusts. The bailiff urged his horse on with a rueful grin. Such was power, he thought. To bring joy, but also to destroy it. Sighing, he brought his horse to the door, to where Jennie Miller had now risen, the fowl forgotten beside her, wiping her hands on her apron to rid herself of the tiny feathers clinging to the blood on her skin.
It was the knight who greeted her, sitting and watching her gravely from his horse. “Jennie, we have come to speak to you again about the death of Agatha Kyteler. Can we come in?”
At her shrug of apparent indifference, they dropped from their horses and followed her inside. Sitting at the same place, she watched them take their seats and sat back, waiting for them to begin with a slightly nervous mien, as if she was anxious of what they wished to know from her.
“Jennie, we wanted to find out from you anything that could help with these two murders,” Baldwin began, and her eyes swiftly sought his face.
“What do you mean? You already have the killer, don’t you?”
Simon gently interrupted. “You mean Harold Green-cliff?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “You have him held in gaol, don’t you?”
“Yes, but do you think he could have killed them‘
“No!” The answer was categoric.
Baldwin stared at her. “But why? Who else had a chance?”
At this her gaze dropped and she stared at the floor in silence. Simon tried again.
“Jennie, you must tell us anything you know. After all, you wouldn’t want Harold to be sent to trial and executed if he had nothing to do with it, would you?”
She shook her head, but no words came.
“Jennie, it’s obvious you have some idea about this. Why? Who do you think it was?”
She started to speak in a low and halting voice. All the time her eyes remained downcast, and her features anxious. “I knew after I’d spoken to your man at the inn… I would have been better to hold my tongue… It was the drink got to me… But it’s true, I’m sure of that.”
“What…‘ Baldwin started, but Simon cut him off with a short movement of his hand.
“Carry on, Jennie.”
She gave a sigh, a massive effort that looked as though it rose from the very soles of her boots, then looked at Simon and held his eyes. “When I came out of the woods, I was sure who it was I’d seen. I was certain it was Angelina Trevellyn. At the lane, I saw Harold Greencliff. And I know Sarah Cottey saw them too. She’s a good girl, is Sarah. But she has not been able to admit to herself what sort of a boy Harold is.”
“What sort of a boy do you think he is?” asked Baldwin. She ignored him, her eyes staying fixed on the intent bailiff before her.
“You see, Harold and Sarah, they’ve grown up together, been with each other for years, and they’ve always been very fond of each other. But now Sarah wants to marry and settle, she thinks Harold does too, and he doesn’t. He never has, really. He’s always been a boy for enjoying himself, and no girl ever could say no to him, he was always such a good-looking lad…‘As if in answer to an unspoken question in Simon’s eyes, she suddenly reddened and half-turned away in apparent embarrassment, but then faced him once more with an air of defiance, as if she knew her words might shock, but was now careless of effect.
To Simon it looked as though she was almost proud, and he realised with a quick insight how she must feel, working every day to bring up her family, toiling as she tried to help her husband keep the mill profitable so that there would be bread on the table for them. Would it be a surprise if a few kind words from a “good-looking lad” like Greencliff could remind her of a time when she was free of worry and had the opportunity to enjoy the comfort of another man? “And?” he asked softly.
“There are many he has known in the area. Sarah was one. But over the last few months, he has been seeing another woman, one who was not from Wefford. She was married, so he said…‘
“What? Harold Greencliff told you this?” Baldwin cried, leaning forward suddenly.
“Harold?” There was a faint sneer on her face at this. “Oh, no. Harold didn’t tell me. No, but there’s been a few he did tell. Like Stephen de la Forte. He told me.”
“What exactly did he say?” asked Simon gently.
She frowned in concentration. “When was it? Oh, yes.” Her brow cleared a little and she glanced up at Simon quickly, looking as if she wanted to confirm that he was concentrating. “It was at the inn. Maybe… Maybe a month or so ago. He was laughing and joking about his friend, that is, Harold. Harold wasn’t there at the time, and Stephen said that he was out with his new lover. He said that her husband was a fool to be cuckolded like that by Harold, but he said there’s no fool like an old one. Stephen said he wished his friend good luck, and drank a toast to him. Well, as you can imagine, we all wanted to know. We asked him who it was, and at first he refused to answer, but later, when there was only a few of us left, he swore us all to silence, and then told us.”
“He actually said who it was?” asked Simon.
“Well, he hinted. But it was impossible to miss who he was talking about. He said it was a woman he knew, someone married to a man close to him, someone wealthy, living close to the village. It could only be Mrs. Trevellyn.”
“Do you think it was her, then?”
She looked up with a fire of bitterness glinting angrily in her eyes. “Who else? She hated her husband, everyone here knew that. And it’s not surprising either, the way he treated her and his servants. I’m sure she loathed him enough to kill him or to have someone else do it for her. I’m sure it wasn’t Harold.”
“You said,” Baldwin said pensively, “that you saw them at the woods. Did Sarah?”
“Oh yes. She must have done. And she knew what the rumours were about Mrs. Trevellyn and Harold, too. So when we saw her in the trees on the way to the witch’s house, and then him at the roadway, she went quiet. She put the two together. Why else would they be there like that?”
Now it was Simon’s turn to frown. “I don’t understand, do you mean that she was ill and…‘
Jennie Miller gave a sudden harsh laugh. “Ill? It’s no illness to be with child, Bailiff!”
He stared at her open-mouthed. “You… You mean the woman was pregnant? That she… She was to have Harold Greencliffs child? They went to the midwife to get her help with the delivery?” he stammered, but it was Baldwin who answered, with a tired kind of sigh to his voice.
“No, Simon, not like that, anyway. I should have realised. It’s obvious, now I think about it. A midwife can be useful to a woman to help in bringing a child into the world, but she can also sometimes be of help in stopping a child, too. That was why there was yew in Kyteler’s cottage. Yew can be used to make a mixture that will make a pregnant woman lose her child. It forces a miscarriage.”
When he looked at Jennie, she nodded. “Yes. I think that’s why Angelina Trevellyn was at the witch’s house: to lose the child she and Harold had produced.
They were both quiet as they rode away from the mill towards the road, and they had travelled some way before Simon dared to interrupt the knight’s thoughts. When he looked over at Baldwin, he could see that the knight was deeply troubled. The evidence of Jennie Miller had thrown the whole matter into a different light.
“Well, Baldwin?” he asked as they turned into the Cotteys’ lane. “What do you think?”
Looking up, the knight’s face registered a bleak sadness. He felt that the evidence was so overwhelming now that there was certainly good cause to doubt that the boy had confessed honestly. But what teased at his mind was why the boy should have admitted to a crime he had no responsibility for. And whether Angelina Trevellyn could have killed her own husband. It still seemed impossible somehow that such a beautiful woman could be capable of such a deed.