The Sticklepath Strangler

Chapter Twenty

‘This is it,’ Serlo said.

Baldwin and Simon looked about them. There was no dwelling here so far as they could see. They had climbed a little way up the hill from the clearing towards the Cornwall road, higher into the woods, but there appeared to be no house nearby. As Baldwin stared about them, all he could see was trees and a low wall some distance farther up the slope. Aylmer went and sniffed at it.

‘She wouldn’t come to live with me, even though she knew I would have protected her,’ Serlo said gruffly. ‘I think her man gave her enough of a clue about what men would do. Not that it stopped her that once.’

‘You mean her daughter?’ Baldwin asked. He was still gazing about him, trying to see where Meg could be living.

‘Yeah. Poor child. She was a nice little thing, too. Chubby and cuddly, if you know what I mean. Never had an ill word for anyone, even though they shunned her. And why? All because her mother was looked on as mad, and probably a whore to boot.’

‘Her father was a Purveyor, I hear.’

‘That’s right. Ansel, he was named. Evil bastard, he was, too. Took Meg when she was young and hadn’t a clue. But men will take advantage in those circumstances. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.’

‘Where is she?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Sorry, I was forgetting.’ Serlo walked to the wall where Aylmer stood, his head on one side. Where the wall met a tree, there was a thick growth of ivy, and the Warrener pushed it to one side. ‘I’ll fetch her.’

Baldwin could see that the ivy concealed the entrance to what looked like a tunnel.

Simon saw his enquiring gaze. ‘There’s plenty of tin and copper all over the moors. I expect this is the result of some man’s effort to find a new source.’

‘You’re right,’ Serlo said, reappearing. ‘This was a little attempt to see if there might be copper. It failed. So many of the mining attempts always do. This is Meg.’

Behind him, he had pulled a woman. He held her by the forearm, as though she was unwilling to come out into the light, but also as though she was frail and needed his support.

Baldwin smiled at her. ‘Meg? Is that your name?’

She was wearing the same hood, the same grey shreds and tatters, remnants of an ancient robe, as when he had first seen her in the forest. And as her head lifted slightly so that she could glance at him from under her hood, as though it was a defence against him and all other adult men, he saw the wide-set eyes, the round face, the small tip-tilted nose, and realised how ridiculous had been his terror. He held out a hand to her, to the little half-witted mother of the dead Emma.

Nicole was so overcome with misery that she didn’t notice Sir Laurence and the Foresters until they had stopped at Alexander’s house. It was only when Sir Laurence began to roar for a groom to tend his mount that she paid them attention, and seeing them at the Reeve’s door, she hurried away, towards her house.

The first thing was food, she told herself. Her man would need food tonight, and then he’d need more to be able to travel all that way. He was viewed as a felon, so he’d be set in chains and forced to walk the whole way. No one would waste a steed on a man like him, so he’d have to make the best he could of it.

He’d need money to buy things as soon as he arrived: bread, some cheese. A little dried meat. Even the water would cost him dearly in gaol, and he must be able to afford it, or he might starve to death! She couldn’t face the thought of life without him.

‘Oh God in Heaven, how could You do this?’ she murmured so quietly that no one could hear. ‘I suffered for my father’s sake in France, and now I must suffer for my husband’s. You do to my daughter what You once did to me! How much misery should one woman suffer in her life?’

She had picked up her skirts now, and was hurtling headlong towards her house. Mud splashed from her bare feet, and she didn’t care about the dung she stepped in, nor the pools of urine puddled at the side of the road where the oxen had waited for a few moments before being led to their pasture. She was blind to the Coroner as he limped from the tavern’s door. He stood propped with his staff, one hand on a sapling, gazing down the road, and then he happened to glance in her direction. Seeing her coming straight at him, her head bent, he had time only to gape in horror before she pelted straight into him.

‘Oof!’ she exclaimed, and fell back to sit on her rump.

‘Christ’s ballocks!’ the Coroner roared, clutching at his upper belly, where her arm had caught him. Dropping his stick, he stumbled backwards, and his foot caught on a loose stone, wrenching his ankle for a second time. ‘God’s bones! You stupid bitch! Can’t you look where you’re going?’

She gazed at him in horror. In her mind’s eye she saw herself chained alongside her husband as they were led from the vill and into captivity. In her terror she was mute.

‘Well?’ he bellowed roughly, gripping the wall to hoist himself upright. ‘Are you dumb, woman?’

Jeanne had witnessed the scene, and she joined the Coroner, who was trying to reach his prop. She passed it to him, then crouched at Nicole’s side. ‘Are you all right? You fell with quite a thump.’

‘I… I am well, I thank you,’ Nicole stammered, rising and wiping her filthy hands on her apron, then remembering that it was her cleanest apron and her best tunic, she burst into loud, gulping tears.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Coroner Roger sighed. He licked his lips and glanced guiltily at Jeanne.

She saw his look, but she was already helping the other woman. Putting a compassionate arm about her shoulders, she led the weeping peasant into the tavern.

Coroner Roger rubbed at his belly, shaking his head. The damn woman had almost winded him, he thought ruefully. He’d been going to speak to the Parson to see whether he could learn anything useful, not that he held out much hope. Priests were always tricky. Getting information from them was like getting a free meal out of a Winchester innkeeper. Now, however, he’d lost interest. The distance looked too great.

He was standing before the inn rubbing at his ankle, when he heard a cheerful shout from the other side of the road.

‘Coroner Roger, as I live and breathe!’

‘Sir Laurence. It is good to meet with you once again,’ the Coroner said, less heartily. He did not in all honesty like Sir Laurence, because the job of Purveyor offended him: it was simple extortion, to his way of thinking, but he was prepared to accept that the Purveyor’s task was none the less necessary. After all, Roger didn’t much like executioners, but someone had to do the job.

‘I was told that I might find you here,’ Sir Laurence said. He was idly tossing his war hammer in the air and catching it. ‘A man called Houndestail said so. I have brought him back with me.’

Behind him, Coroner Roger could see the anxious features of Alexander in the doorway, peering over the knight’s shoulder. As Sir Laurence spoke, Drogo and his three men pushed past Alexander and stood listening. The Coroner said, ‘You are here to prepare for the coming war?’

‘I think it will have already begun,’ Sir Laurence said easily. ‘No, I am simply collecting food and money to help support the effort.’

‘I see.’

Sir Laurence smiled more broadly and he snuffed the air, taking a deep breath. ‘Smell that? Shit and piss all over this place, isn’t there?’ he said conversationally. ‘It’s a revolting little midden, this. Still, we can’t choose where we have to go, you and I, can we?’

‘No,’ Coroner Roger said. Behind Sir Laurence he could see that Alexander’s face was mottled with rage to hear his precious vill so described. ‘I suppose you have to come this way often enough? The road to Cornwall is paved with good manors, so I am told.’

‘There are plenty of wealthy enough demesnes in among Lord Hugh’s lands,’ the Purveyor agreed. ‘But this is my first trip so far south. Usually I deal with the northern pieces of the shire. There used to be another man down here – Ansel de Hocsenham. I don’t know if you ever met him?’

Coroner Roger saw Drogo and Alexander exchange a glance. It was so fleeting that he could have mistaken it, but he was sure he was right. Ansel de Hocsenham, the man who had sired the girl whose body was found this morning; the man who Miles Houndestail thought had been murdered.

He turned his attention back to Sir Laurence. ‘No, I never met him.’

‘So if he died here, you didn’t investigate his death?’

‘Not so far as I remember, but while there are only two Coroners for the whole of Devon, it’s not surprising. We have fifteen murders a year to cope with, and that doesn’t count all the other sudden deaths I have to investigate or the wrecks I have to inspect.’

‘Wrecks?’

‘A Coroner’s duty is to the King. If a ship is wrecked, the King owns any salvaged goods, so I am expected to rush to the coast at short notice to rescue any casks of wine or fine silks and have them sold for the King’s benefit. It’s not surprising that I didn’t meet your predecessor. When did he die?’

‘No one knows if he is truly dead, but he must be. He disappeared just about the time he was supposed to have arrived here in Sticklepath, oddly enough, but no one seems to know where he went or what happened to him.’

‘Surely nobody would fail to report a dead body, would they?’ Coroner Roger said, and shot a glance over Sir Laurence’s shoulder again. Alexander met the Coroner’s stare with an expression of despair, before turning his back and going into his hall.

If Roger hadn’t seen him, he would never have believed that a man could suddenly appear so broken. Even Drogo looked sympathetic, and soon followed Alexander into the house, his men trailing after them.

The knight smiled lazily and pointed his war hammer at them. ‘You could almost think he had a guilty conscience, couldn’t you?’

‘Surely not a Reeve like him,’ Roger said drily.

Laurence de Bozon chuckled. ‘Could you join me while I speak to him?’

‘My leg, I…’

‘Not right now. Leave us a little while. Let us say, when the sun is dipping below that hill. That should give me time to prepare myself – and leave the Reeve in a state of fright, wondering of which crime I intend to accuse him!’

Jeanne took the woman through the tavern to her own room. There, while Petronilla and Edgar hastily rearranged their clothing, she persuaded Nicole to sit on a bench and sent Edgar (when he had retied his hose) to the buttery for a jug of wine. Petronilla she sent out to walk with the baby, for Richalda was awake now and demanding her mother’s attention.

‘Tell me your name.’

‘I am called Nicole Garde, madame.’

‘You come from France?’ Jeanne asked in that tongue.

Nicole started with delight on hearing her own language again. ‘Yes, but how do you speak it so well?’

‘I was raised in Bordeaux. Where were you from?’

‘A village called Montaillou, near to Pamiers in Arriège.’

‘And how did you come to be here, married to an Englishman?’ Jeanne asked. Edgar returned as she posed the question, and the two women waited while he poured them a cup each, and then quietly left them.

‘Madame, I was the daughter of the local headsman. The executioner. He was a good man to his family, but you know how people hate the headsman.’

‘Yes,’ Jeanne said. It was not only in France that the people loathed the man who represented the ultimate power of the Crown.

‘When my husband Thomas saw me being mistreated, he rescued me and brought me here to live with him. I was nothing loath, for it is a healthful place.’

‘Really?’ Jeanne asked. It said little, she reflected, for Montaillou.

‘But the people here have never accepted me. Nor, I think, do they wish my husband to remain.’ Suddenly her eyes were brimming once more. ‘Oh, madame, the Reeve, he has arrested my Thomas, and he says he will have him taken to Exeter to the gaol, to wait there for the next Justices to try. That could be a year… more. He will die there, and I shall be a widow, all for no reason.’

‘What is he arrested for?’

‘This morning they said he killed the child.’ Nicole dried her eyes on her sleeve. ‘This afternoon they said he tried to kill his brother. It is not true. He hates Ivo, but he is not violent. He is too calm and gentle to harm another, but they say that he will be taken away as soon as they can arrange a guard.’

Jeanne patted her arm comfortingly. ‘Do not fear. My husband will look into it.’

‘What can he do?’

‘He is Keeper of the King’s Peace. The Reeve will not dare to argue with him,’ Jeanne said confidently.

‘Keeper?’ Nicole pouted doubtfully. ‘You think so?’

‘Why do you believe they should want to arrest your husband?’

‘If they can have him arrested, the jury will convict him of murdering those children. You have seen how the people here are scared of strangers. They want to blame us for everything, and they will have Thomas killed, just so that the man who is really guilty isn’t shown up. Why else would they arrest my husband?’

Jeanne shivered. Convicting a man because he was new to an area was a complete travesty of justice. ‘Who is the real killer?’

‘I do not know,’ Nicole said miserably. ‘If I did, I would appeal him before the whole vill and save my husband.’

‘Are you wealthy? Perhaps someone covets your property.’

‘We have very little.’

‘Your only defence is to help show who did kill the girls.’

‘I know nothing of them except Aline – she I knew. The others died before we came here. Ivo said that Denise died long ago, when he was buying provisions during the famine.’

‘What was Aline like?’

Nicole thought a moment, her tears drying now that she was distracted. ‘She was a quiet little thing, but it was the end of the famine, you know? All the children were subdued. They were so hungry all the time. Except, I know that Aline was…’

Her voice trailed off and she shot Jeanne a look from lowered lashes.

‘Well?’ Jeanne asked.

‘Madame, the girl, she was with child.’

‘Are you sure? But I thought she was only eleven years old?’

‘I know. And she did not even have a boyfriend, you know? Her father would not let her walk about the vill on her own.’

‘What of his wife?’

‘She was dead many years ago. I never met her.’

‘How well do you know Swetricus her father?’

‘He is a neighbour, but I had thought that others here were friends and neighbours. I will not call anyone here friend again.’

‘I have not seen any other children. Does he have more?’

‘Yes: Lucy is the eldest, then there was Aline, then Gilda and Katherine, but they rarely come to the vill to play with other girls. They are too shy, I think.’

‘Perhaps,’ Jeanne said, but even as she breathed the word, her mind was considering that the three young girls might wish to avoid others for another reason. So that their secret could not be spoken of.

She had never been touched by her own father, but Jeanne knew only too well that men were capable of molesting their daughters; especially their most beloved daughters.

‘Swetricus,’ she murmured. Could a man murder his own daughter to hide the fact that he had made her pregnant? And could he have killed the other girls as well?

Then she realised something else Nicole had said. ‘Ivo told you about Denise, you say? Ivo was here when she died?’

‘Oh, yes. He is often here, and knew Denise well, so he said.’