‘Will you remain there long?’ my hostess persisted, obviously still uneasy. ‘My menfolk will be back from Exeter tomorrow. They’d always come to your assistance if you needed them. You’d only have to send me word.’
I thanked her, laughing, and took both her hands in mine.
‘Mistress Fettiplace, I mean to be careful, but God bless you for your concern. As for how long I shall stay there, a day, perhaps two at the very most, is the limit of my expectations. The monks, if I recollect rightly, have a small hostelry on the island where I can sleep. At the end of that time, if I’ve not already discovered where Beric Gifford is hiding, I shall go on to Valletort Manor and see what I can find out there.’
When we parted, she reached up and shyly kissed my cheek.
‘My lad’s about your age,’ she said. She patted my shoulder. ‘Look after yourself and don’t try anything foolish. Do you hear me, now?’
‘I hear you,’ I grinned, returning the kiss. ‘I promise you I’ll try to take care.’
With this she had to be content, and stood at the door of her cottage to wave me off.
It was still some while to noon, and I had the rest of the day before me; a beautiful October day, warm and sunny, but with a little breeze that fanned my cheeks and made walking easy and pleasant. The path that I had chosen was like its fellows on that peninsula of land between the rivers Erme and Avon; sometimes it led across open heath and at others plunged deep into dense patches of woodland; sometimes it led me uphill and at others, down. In several places, the track almost disappeared amongst great tangles of undergrowth, where long, snaking briars coiled around my legs as though loath to let me pass; and now and then, the trees drew back to leave a grassy space, their branches arching overhead, their trunks forming a circle like the pillars of some pagan temple. Little sunlight penetrated to these clearings, but on a fine day they were filled with a greenish, bronze-tinted, subaqueous gloom.
It was in one of these circles that I sat down to rest and eat the apple that Anne Fettiplace had insisted I take with me for the journey.
‘You’ll need something to sustain you,’ she had said. ‘You can’t be sure when you’ll get your next meal.’
So, blessing her thoughtfulness, I sat on a fallen log and bit into its bitter-sweet crispness. I was tired, for, by my reckoning, I had walked more than three miles by then and the going had been rough. The log was at the foot of a tree, and, when I had finished my apple and thrown away the core, I leant back against the bark, closing my eyes for a moment, letting my thoughts drift, dreaming of Adela and home …
I must have fallen asleep, for I was suddenly jerked awake by a violent bodily convulsion, and found myself possessed by an inexplicable sense of dread. I was sweating, but at the same time shivering with cold. I started to my feet, reaching for my cudgel, which I had propped against the tree-trunk, convinced that someone was in the clearing with me. But when I glanced around, there was no one to be seen. At first, I refused to accept the evidence of my eyes, and grasping my stick firmly in my hand, with two strides I was in the centre of the clearing, where I spun round and round on my heel, shouting, ‘I know you’re there! Come out from wherever you’re hiding and show me your face!’
But nothing happened. There was neither sign nor sound of movement; no blurring on the edge of my vision to suggest that someone was trying to creep away unnoticed; no sudden snapping of a twig nor rustle of the last year’s leaves that lay rotting beneath the roots of ancient, wind-blasted oak and beech. Finally, persuaded that I had been mistaken and that I had been awakened by possibly nothing more sinister than my head falling forward on to my chest, I lowered my cudgel and took a deep breath. The sense of dread had abated. I had ceased both to sweat and to shiver, although my skin was still cold and clammy to the touch, and a lingering sense of uneasiness continued to hold me in its grip.
Leaving my pack beneath a bush and screwing up my courage, I decided to investigate the margins of the clearing. Taking as my starting point the coast-bound track that I was travelling, I prowled cautiously among the thick belt of trees and undergrowth that surrounded the circle of stunted grass. All was silent as the grave, and by the look of the ground no one had passed this way for several days. But halfway round, I suddenly came across yet another track, leading away from the clearing in a westerly direction; although this was more the ghost of a newly created trail, made simply by the trampling down of ferns and saplings.
On impulse, I followed it, my not inconsiderable weight cutting a deeper defile through the brushwood and leaving a more clearly defined pathway in my wake. I had not gone far, however, when I emerged into a small glade where the trees grew less densely, and where a little sunlight filtered through the foliage, shedding warmth and light into an otherwise desolate spot. But I had barely registered this fact before my eyes were caught and held by the sight of a crude tent, made by pegging down the lower branches of a tree and swathing them with a length of tarred cloth.
Cautiously, I advanced towards it, calling out, ‘Is anyone there?’ and, at the same time, raising my cudgel ready to defend myself, should the need arise. But there was no answer to my challenge and indeed, I already had the feeling that the tent was empty and that there was no one else about. Just to make sure, however, I bent down and peered inside, then, on hands and knees, crawled through the opening. It was dark within and smelled of rotting vegetation, and the grass was extremely wet. It must once have been used as a shelter of some sort, but all signs of habitation were gone. Not so much as a frond of bracken or a wisp of straw indicated that there might once have been a mattress to lie on.
I wriggled out again into the dappled sunshine, glancing around for anything else that I might have missed. But there was nothing, except for a more clearly defined continuation of the track on the opposite side of the little glade, wending its way down behind the makeshift tent and losing itself amongst the crowding trees.
Having come so far, I felt I had no choice but to discover its final destination. So, treading softly in order to make as little noise as possible, I pushed on through the undergrowth where last year’s leaves still festered, where toadstools and puffballs sprouted between the roots of trees, and where saplings turned pale and sickly for want of light and air. I only hoped that I would eventually be able to find my way back again to the original clearing, and offered up a brief prayer for guidance when the time came.
By now, the ground was going rapidly downhill, and suddenly shelved away, bringing me up short on the edge of a steep ravine. Swags of ivy and other trailing plants poured down the rock face, while young trees clung on desperately by fragile roots, embedded precariously in the shallow soil. And some twenty feet below me on the valley floor, nestling in the lee of this miniature cliff, was a solid, granite-built house, surrounded by its outbuildings. Even as I watched, I saw a foreshortened Katherine Glover emerge from one of these to cross a cobbled courtyard and enter another.
Quite by chance, I had stumbled across Valletort Manor.
* * *
Quietly, almost stealthily, I made my way back up the slope and moved out of sight of the house as quickly as possible. Mistress Glover had not seen me; she had not glanced up and had obviously had no presentiment that she was being observed.
I found no difficulty in following the track back to the little glade where the tree-tent was, and reflected that the path to and from Valletort Manor must have been more frequently trodden than its counterpart on the other side, the track that led to the clearing. Whether this had any particular significance or not, I was uncertain, for I could not imagine that the crude makeshift shelter had ever been used by Beric Gifford. It was far too close to the house, and would easily have been found by the Sheriff’s men during one of their many searches of the manor and its environs.