Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

Chapter Fifteen

It was Thomas who volunteered to take them to the spot. He was standing near the door with Stephen when Baldwin asked for a guide, and promised to lead them straight there.

‘We won’t need mounts – it’s only a short walk from here,’ he said importantly. ‘Do you wish to go now?’

Simon glanced at Baldwin. ‘There’s no point in delay. The Evensong of the Dead is not for hours. We might as well see the place immediately’

Baldwin reflected on that as they walked northwards from the manor. The Evensong for the Dead, the Placebo, was the first half of the funeral service, and after it there would be a vigil held over the body. Next morning the Dirige would be sung, and after that they would return to the graveyard so that Herbert could be buried next to the squire. Father and son had only been separated for a few days.

Some quarter of a mile north of the manor, Thomas stopped and the other two halted behind him. They were in a typical, desolate part of the moor. The hill rose up on their left, and the land fell away to a small wood on their right; the road was narrow, only wide enough for smaller carts and wagons, and was holed and rutted, the peaty soil beneath soft and treacherous.

‘When it rains, you know all about it up here,’ Thomas commented.

Simon nodded grimly. ‘It’s a hard moor. If it’s wet, you run the risk of bogs and mires, or a badly sprained ankle because of the mud. In the summer, the grass covers huge holes in the ground where the water has drained away and taken the soil with it. You can be riding over what looks like solid ground, only to fall into a massive pit. Usually it’s only two or three feet in depth, but sometimes it can be worse.’

Baldwin eyed the landscape sourly. In the main it was heather and gorse, the stuff they called ‘furze’ here, which stood a mere foot and a half tall. Every now and again he could see twisted, stunted trees, or tall bushes. None was more than ten feet tall, giving the area an eerie, unpleasant feel.

‘I wish you joy of your inheritance, Thomas,’ he said, ‘but I confess to a desire to see more trees.’

‘Hah! Ignore this blasted, wind-scoured view, Sir Baldwin, and turn the other way. Look! Down in that valley is Throwleigh itself, and that little vill is worth pounds each year, even now after five years of poor harvest. The only trouble here was always my brother’s softness with the villeins. What they need is a firm hand. Once they realise I know what I’m about, they’ll knuckle under!’

Simon disregarded his boast. As bailiff he knew many of the landlords on the moors, and he was aware that Squire Roger had not been an easy touch. In addition, the squire was ever polite, and greatly more courteous than his younger brother – and Simon was quietly confident that he would never have uttered so disloyal a comment about Thomas.

To Baldwin’s faint surprise the land beneath them looked good. A small stream trickled by at their feet, its passage cheerful even out here. Below them the trees rose higher, protected from the fiercest blasts of the wind by their position at the foot of the great hill. Over their tops the knight could see thin wisps of smoke rising from the vill beyond. Men would be tending their coppices, setting aside the larger branches and boughs to dry, some to be burned to warm their homes over winter, others to be hewn into planks; women would be going about their business, grinding the last of their grains from last year’s harvest into flour to make their hard, dry bread, then planting and weeding in their vegetable gardens; their children all out in the fields throwing stones at the pigeons and other birds which would try to steal their grain before it could throw out the tiniest shoot.

And Herbert would never see it again, he thought, his mood sombre again. ‘His body was where?’ he demanded.

‘Here.’

The knight set off quickly, and Simon had to hurry to keep up with his friend.

There was nothing to show that a child had died here: any sign of where his body had lain had been obliterated by traffic over the last few days. Simon stared down at the mud and peat at his feet, shaking his head again. It was appalling that the boy should have been murdered and left where he had fallen. He was about to comment on this when he saw that Baldwin was not even glancing at the roadway.

They had come round a bend at the top of a slight rise. The hill on their left was steep, and the road formed a terrace, having eaten into the hillside. It had created a bank some three feet above road level, at the top of which was a thick mass of ferns. Baldwin’s attention was divided: he kept peering through the ferns, then over to the verge at the other side of the road, his features sharp with speculation.

‘The wagon would have come from there, Sir Baldwin,’ Thomas said, pointing helpfully back down the road.

‘Yes, but the child wouldn’t. Herbert must have come from the bank there.’

Simon followed his pointing finger and realised the knight was considering a long track which had been gouged through the foliage. ‘What is it?’

‘If someone were to drag a body through the ferns, it would leave a long trail in the vegetation just like that, would it not?’ Baldwin said. ‘Broken fronds of fern, snapped stems of foxgloves, and even the occasional gorse bush has been overwhelmed!’

Thomas threw him a confused look. ‘So?’

‘So the child was murdered up there, and dragged all the way here, even hauled through gorse – not the kind of plant anyone would willingly crawl over.’

‘But the lad was killed here, Sir Baldwin.’

‘You think so?’

‘Of course!’ Thomas declared irritably. ‘How else could the farmer have done it? I know where Daniel took you this morning. Edmund saw poor Herbert here in the road, decided to take his revenge, jumped on the boy, beat him to death, and then thrust his body under his cart to make it look like an accident.’

Baldwin considered him silently for a long time. Then: ‘I had never expected you to be so imaginative, Master Thomas. What makes you think the farmer would behave in so foolish a manner?’

‘He was seen here – Daniel told you!’

The knight clambered up the bank and crouched, searching the ground. ‘He was indeed seen on this road. It is a busy route apparently – and that is what makes me believe that Edmund couldn’t have committed this crime.’ He stood suddenly, cutting off Thomas’s shocked interruption. ‘Look, the man wouldn’t be mad enough to kill the child out in the open here, would he? He may be poor, but he doesn’t strike me as mad. What if a rider should have come upon him in the act?’

‘Well, then, that’s why those tracks were left: he dragged Herbert up the bank, killed him there, and then threw his body back down,’ Thomas hazarded.

Baldwin smiled. ‘Almost, but if someone were to come across his wagon left here untended, they would suspect something was wrong. Why on earth should he take so great a risk?’

‘Maybe he was overcome with anger, Baldwin,’ Simon pointed out while his friend subjected the surrounding vegetation to a careful study. ‘After all, we know he had reason enough to loathe the squire’s family. Isn’t it possible he saw the boy and became enraged? Here was the son of the woman who was bringing him back to villein status, the son of the man who’d decided to throw him from his home, enjoying a walk in the sunshine, not a care in the world. Edmund might have simply snapped. Or perhaps he accidentally hit the boy and knocked him down and injured him? He might have jumped down from the cart to see how he was, and then, realising it was Herbert, decided to finish him off. Then he got back on his wagon, and rode over him properly to make it look like an accident?’

‘These are fascinating speculations,’ Baldwin said patiently, ‘but they don’t cover the facts. First, this broad swathe of plants all flattened and pointing towards the road; second, there are no other tracks near here. If the farmer had dragged the child up this way to kill him, I’d expect to see the plants bent over in the other direction. Third, Edmund would hardly find the child here, bundle him up, carry him some distance up the hill there, murder him, and then haul him all the way back here, all the time hoping that no one else would see his cart parked.’

‘Then who did kill my nephew?’ Thomas challenged him.

Baldwin gave a dry smile and pointed to the track. ‘When we find out where those marks come from, we may have a better idea.’

Thomas waved his hand, taking in the whole area. ‘Utter nonsense! Look at that hill, there are numberless trails all over it – but they’re caused by sheep, cattle, horses and other beasts. Just because of a few marks, probably made by a goat, you mean to tell me you’ll ignore the farmer’s guilt?’

His manner made Baldwin’s temper rise. ‘Is it better that I should leap to assuming a man’s innocence or that you should assume his guilt, Thomas? You have suggested a weak story to explain this murder – I find it unconvincing and have told you why’

‘Oh, there’s no reasoning with you! You’ve obviously made up your mind and won’t be swayed. You may find that in Crediton your methods suit very well, Sir Baldwin, but I can assure you that here in the moors we consider action better than prating or foolish theorising. I’ll have the man arrested.’

Baldwin gave a gasp of exasperation, but Thomas had already set off back to the manor, kicking at stones like a petulant child. ‘Oh, the cretinous idiot!’

Simon grinned up at him where he stood on the bank. ‘So what now, Sir Diplomatist?’

‘Now we find out where this trail leads us.’

Godfrey had watched the knight and bailiff walk off with the master of the manor, and when Thomas returned alone, he shrugged himself from the wall where he had been leaning, and moved off to intercept him.

‘Why, Master Thomas, have you mislaid the knight and his friend?’

Thomas gave a sour grimace, spitting, ‘The man’s mad! He prefers to go off on a wild-goose chase rather than arrest the fellow who’s guilty’

It was good to have an audience, and on his way to the stableyard, Thomas fulminated about the foolishness of knights who had no knowledge of the stupidity of farmers and other lazy villeins. In between his curses and dark mutterings, Godfrey came to understand the course of his conversation with Baldwin. Leaving Thomas to fetch men to arrest the farmer, he walked out in front of the house, down to the little wood that lay before it. There, at a short distance from the stream, he found his client.

James van Relenghes had not enjoyed his morning. He had hoped to be able to get Lady Katharine on her own, so that he could press his attention on her. All the women he had known had tended to enjoy someone with a strange accent paying court to them, as if it were a kind of additional compliment that a foreigner should exhibit interest, and although he dared not be too obvious, he knew he didn’t have overlong to achieve his scheme. The Lady Katharine had shown little delight at his flattery so far, but although that was frustrating, he knew he must make allowances for her position. She’d only recently lost her man and her boy.

Yet it was disappointing that he had failed to even engage her in conversation. Every time he attempted to speak to her, her steward interposed himself. It was most frustrating. James van Relenghes had a specific ambition: he wished to make love to Lady Katharine, to take her, body and soul, and to do so speedily. He couldn’t afford to wait while she overcame her better instincts. He didn’t have time.

This was the problem which nagged at him now, while he spun his knife in his hand and hurled it, flashing in the sunlight, to the mark he had cut in the tree before him. As always, the blade struck where he wished, but weakly, hanging at an angle, the handle drooping towards the ground. He was standing contemplating it when Godfrey arrived.

‘Sir, the knight has figured out that the boy was pulled through the ferns.’

Van Relenghes nodded slowly. ‘How much has he discovered?’

‘He has guessed that someone dragged him along there and dropped him down into the road. That drunken fool Thomas told me – he disagreed with the knight and came back here in a sulk. He’s fetching men, and then he’s off to Throwleigh to arrest the farmer.’

‘Ah, good!’ Van Relenghes rubbed his hands together, smiling thinly. ‘If they arrest him, that should divert attention from anyone else who was on the moor that day.’

Godfrey shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know what you plan, sir, but I’ll not see an innocent man go to the rope. No matter what else, if the farmer looks close to being hanged, I’ll tell the lady about you and Thomas.’

Van Relenghes glanced at him with honest surprise. ‘Would you? But that would mean people asking what you were doing up there. Some might think you yourself could have killed the child.’

‘No matter. I’ll not see the farmer hanged for something he couldn’t have done.’

‘You’ll do as you are told!’

Godfrey beamed. He stood motionless a moment, then his hand flew under his leather jack. When it reappeared, van Relenghes caught a glimpse of a flashing blade. Godfrey flicked it upwards, caught it and cast it in one fluid movement; it whirled past van Relenghes’s ear, scything through the air, and he heard it strike his target a moment later.

‘I’ll not see an innocent Englishman murdered to suit the plans of a foreigner, whether he pays me or no,’ Godfrey said, and now his grin was fixed, like a smile carved on ice. He walked past his master to retrieve his dagger.

Van Relenghes was tempted to reach for his sword – but better judgement prevailed. Godfrey was a master of defence, a man well-used to protecting himself. He had turned his back on van Relenghes, but that did not mean he was unprepared, and after witnessing the lighting speed of his movements, the Fleming wasn’t convinced he could draw and be certain of killing him before Godfrey could reach his knife. And van Relenghes was quite certain that if Godfrey did get to it, he could throw it before he, James, could unsheath his sword.

He did not move, watching as Godfrey grabbed the hilt of his knife, which was pinned securely in the tree, exactly perpendicular, the blade buried over an inch deep in the living wood. The force with which it had struck had knocked van Relenghes’s own dagger loose, and it lay on the ground. Godfrey stooped and picked it up. He twirled it in the air three times, before catching it by the point of the blade, then studied it for a short while before passing it back. ‘A good knife, sir – but not strong enough for fighting,’ he commented. ‘Not for fighting me, anyway’

Van Relenghes watched him walk away, perfectly composed and relaxed, and as the Fleming thrust his dagger back into its sheath, he tried to control the painful thudding of his heart.

In Godfrey’s eyes he had seen, just for a moment, his own death.