Chapter Two

From the hill at Monkleigh, Isaac watched with his rheumy old eyes narrowed against the weather, mumbling his gums while Humphrey held his cloak about his shoulders, trying as best he could to explain what was happening down on the plain.

‘The Monkleigh men are streaming back now. Martin from Iddesleigh has the bladder and is at full pelt. The whole of the Monkleigh team is just behind him, and … and Agnes the fuller’s daughter is there, she’s running at him! Yes, she must capture him … she’s only feet away now, and- Ach! No, he’s slipped round her, a hand in her face, and he’s past. Agnes is down …’

Isaac had been here for over forty years, so Humphrey had heard, and so far as he could tell, it was a miracle that the man was still alive. No man should have to live in so backward a place as this, not without a significant reward for doing so, in Humphrey’s humble opinion. For him, of course, it was different. He was a coadjutor, here to fulfil the offices which were in fact Isaac’s responsibility, but were beyond his capability now. At over sixty years of age, by Humphrey’s reckoning, the poor old man was deaf in one ear, had a terrible limp from the gout, and was blind at more than twenty paces. Plainly Humphrey could give no credence to anything the senile old man next to him might say; after so many years’ passage, it was a blessing that he could remember even his own name. Certainly his estimate of his own age was nothing more than that: a guess.

The game was thrilling, though. For Humphrey, who had seen only one before this, it was exciting to see how the men and women slid and slithered in the mud, their enthusiasm waxing and waning with the fortunes of their sides. He should have liked to have joined them, had he been a little younger, but his post was not that of a mere vill’s priest who must throw himself wholeheartedly into every banal activity; rather it was that of a professional adviser and steward of his master’s resources. Except that his master’s mind was so addled now that Humphrey could scarcely interest the man in any of the issues he raised. It was a wonder that no one else had noticed that Isaac was quite unfitted for his duties until Humphrey arrived, but that was apparently the case.

There were good reasons why no one paid much attention to the decrepitude of the priest. This land was ever filled with enmity. There was the dispute between Sir John Sully’s steward, Sir Odo de Bordeaux, and the repellent brute Sir Geoffrey Servington who managed the neighbouring manor, for a start. It made little sense to Humphrey, and he did not care what lay behind the dispute. All he knew was that there was constant bickering between the two parties, and he could play a useful role in the middle, speaking for one side to the other and vice versa, while maintaining Isaac in his post and helping him to keep up the services at the chapel.

The fighting was not only about land, of course. There was the age-old matter of lordships. Sir John Sully was a vassal of Lord Hugh de Courtenay, who had reportedly been close to joining the Lords of the Marches in their dispute with the king and his detested advisers, the Despensers. It was only good fortune and his innate common sense which had held him back. And a fortunate thing, too. Too many others who had not heeded sounder counsel were even now dangling from gibbets and spikes at the gates to all the great cities in the land, and the little manor next to Lord Hugh’s, which had been owned by the great general Mortimer before he raised an army against the king was now in the hands of the Despensers. While the Despensers were in the ascendant, Lord Hugh could scarce risk upsetting them, but even so he would not give up parcels of land to them willy-nilly, no matter what they threatened.

And threaten they would. It was their preferred means of acquiring lands and fortune. They had already broken many, even snatching up widows and holding them to ransom or, to their eternal disgrace and dishonour, torturing the poor women until they gave up their children’s inheritances. These were evil, dangerous thieves, who could and would attack any man who tried to thwart their ambitions.

While men like the Despensers and their neighbours battled over lands, Humphrey reflected, other men of ambition were left with the potential to take advantage of the situation. There were many about this area with private grudges to settle, and he would not be at all surprised if some of them tried to turn circumstances to their own benefit. Perhaps, in his capacity as coadjutor, he should learn which of the other landowners in the area were seeking to benefit from the disputes.

‘Are you enjoying the game, Father?’

Humphrey turned sharply to find Father Matthew from the church at Iddesleigh standing behind him. There was something about the neighbouring priest which Humphrey had never liked — perhaps it was just that he was suspicious of Humphrey’s lack of formal documentation. Still, there was little the man could do. Isaac was happy with him, and that was all that mattered.

Isaac muttered, ‘It seems very boisterous today. The lads are … mmm … showing more enthusiasm than they do in church!’

Matthew chuckled. ‘It is good to see them letting off steam. And when the pigs are killed, at least this means there’s a use for the bladders. Marvellous animal, the pig. Nothing ever goes to waste. I have a brawn cooling even now. The jelly about it is splendid.’

Isaac pulled a face. ‘If I tried to eat some I’d be unwell for days. I find only a little … mmm … gruel is all I can keep down. Still, Humphrey tries to tempt me with little morsels.’

‘Does he?’ Matthew responded, turning and giving Humphrey his full attention again. Unsettling bastard! To change the subject, Humphrey pointed to a man at the side of the hill.

‘Who’s he?’

‘That grim-faced fellow?’ Matthew said, peering through narrowed eyes. ‘Oh, he’s the man who came here with the woman from Belstone.’

Isaac drew in his breath and shook his head. ‘No good. No good can come of that.’

‘What?’ Humphrey asked. He’d never heard anything about a ‘woman from Belstone’.

Matthew answered him. ‘She came here some two years ago with this man. He comes and goes, for I think he serves a family in Lydford.’

‘She was a nun, and has chosen to deny her vows. She’s evil! Evil!’ Isaac spat. ‘She made her vows, but changed her mind when she grew large with a baby in her belly. They couldn’t keep her in a holy convent, so they threw her out to bounce down here to our door. Now she lives in sin with her man.’

‘Not quite,’ said Matthew more kindly. ‘I married them. She was allowed to leave because she had been unfairly coerced into making her vows when she was too young. Her oaths were not valid.’

‘That is … mmm … no excuse!’ Isaac expostulated, throwing a hand into the air and almost striking Humphrey.

‘It is, Father, it is,’ Humphrey said soothingly. ‘Just think, if a young child was taken into a life of celibacy without the ability to understand it was a lifetime’s commitment. Imagine how he would feel when he grew to maturity and saw his terrible mistake. A fellow who could have been content as a saddlemaker, and a good one at that, for ever chained to a service that made no sense to him.’

‘Garbage!’

‘Humphrey speaks the truth, I’m afraid,’ Matthew said. He did not so much as glance at Humphrey now. Instead he smiled at his old friend. ‘The Pope himself has ruled that men and women who took their vows under a certain age should be allowed to retract their oaths and leave without a stain.’

‘If they have sworn to God, they should see to their service and the service of the souls under their protection, not worry about escape. Escape! To a place like this!’

Perkin grunted as the others entered the tavern and offered him their sympathy, old friends looking down at him with amusement, some wincing to see his wounds, others laughing at them. Only Rannulf stood and surveyed him without comment for a long period, and then said:

‘’Twas your fault. You lost it for us.’

There was an edge of raw fury in his tone which stirred Perkin. He looked up and nodded. ‘I suppose you’d have seen him hiding in the furze there and beaten him?’

‘I’d have broken his head for him,’ Rannulf grated. ‘He was in your way. You could have run through him.’

Perkin shook his head once and looked away. This was the sort of activity Rannulf enjoyed, repeatedly insulting a man until he teased his victim into a fight, and Perkin was having none of it. ‘Go and fetch your ale. I’m not dickering about the details of the game now.’

‘No. Wouldn’t want to tire you now you’ve lost our winning run for us,’ Rannulf sneered. ‘You should have got him when you could.’

‘Ignore him,’ said Beorn.

‘I always do,’ Perkin muttered. His arm was giving him a great deal of pain, and he would prefer to leave the tavern and go to his bed.

Beorn was one of those men whose hair continued down his neck and over his shoulders. When he went without his shirt during harvest, Perkin had seen how the women would watch him with hungry eyes, staring at his muscled legs, his narrow waist, how his hair travelled down to the crease of his buttocks; but Beorn merely shrugged when he was told. He knew who would be available, and the others didn’t interest him. ‘Ach, there was nothing you could do,’ he said.

Perkin grimaced and turned his head away. ‘Rannulf is right, though. I should have guessed someone would be up there. It was obvious they’d have someone who could hold us off. It’s what I’d have done.’

‘How did they know? We’ve never gone that way before.’

‘So?’ cried Perkin bitterly. ‘A good general would make sure he anticipated an attack, and that’s what they did today. That’s why they won. All because of Ailward, too. He shouldn’t have been up there. He distracted me.’ The man who tackled Perkin was surely there to stop the Monkleigh team — but what Ailward was doing up there was a different matter. He hadn’t been with the vill’s men at the start of the game. Well, he couldn’t have been. No one had outstripped Perkin on the run up the hill. ‘Ailward had to have been there before the match started.’

Beorn nodded his agreement. ‘He should have stopped Walter. Walter’s not one of his men.’ There was no need to say more. Walter was one of the Iddesleigh men, a man-at-arms from the Fishleigh estates. Iddesleigh and Fishleigh fellows were as fiercely defensive of their independence as any others. They might be serfs to the lord of the manor of Ash Reigny, but even to him, Sir John Sully, they were a rebellious mob. God’s heaven, everyone knew that. The steward and his bailiff had their work cut out to try to keep the peace on his lands. ‘Maybe he was just nervous of getting into a fight with the men from up there?’

Very likely, Perkin reasoned: whatever happened, that cunning bastard Ailward would want to retain his authority. If he had been bested by the man-at-arms, a fighter used to defending himself, that authority would have been dented.

Not that it explained why he was there in the first place. He should have been down with the vill’s men when the game began.

And then Perkin had a strange feeling. Flashes of colour came back to his mind: the patch of green, then red, before he hit that rock. Odd colours to see up on a moor in winter. They’d all seemed to be about Ailward’s feet. And now in his mind a pattern seemed to be forming out of the colours.

Hugh grunted to himself as he finished his bowl of pottage and set the wooden spoon aside. He tore off a slab of bread and chewed it contentedly. Tired, it was true, but at least he was working on things that mattered. There was still the old hedge to be relaid, of course, but apart from that the little holding was in good condition now.

There was a shout, some angry words, and he tilted his head to one side. It was rare to hear men walking about so late; it was close to dark already. Cautiously he rose, and crossed the floor to the door.

His wife, Constance, was quickly at his side. ‘What is it?’

‘Didn’t you hear them?’

‘It was just a pair of drunks. Leave them. There’s nothing.’

Hugh peered out into the gloom. She was right, surely. What else could it be? He shook his head and wandered back inside. Just as he was about to pull the door shut, he saw a frown on his wife’s face. ‘Eh?’

‘I thought I saw the priest out there with another man … but that’s daft. He wouldn’t be there at this time of night.’

The priest was no concern of his. Hugh peered out again. ‘What of it? So long as they’re not troubling us.’

‘There were some men there earlier,’ she said, her pretty face frowning as she remembered. ‘The sergeant from Monkleigh, and a man-at-arms from Fishleigh …’

‘I doubt it,’ Hugh said. ‘Men from those manors don’t get on together.’ He pulled the door shut. ‘Anyway, whoever is out there,’ he said, thrusting the peg into the latch to lock it and dropping the bar into its slots, ‘they’re welcome to stay there. Me, I’m happy in here by my fire.’

Colours. The wrong colours, the wrong patterns …

Even after they’d finished their drinking and the tavern began to empty, that thought still rankled with Perkin. He was among the last to leave, wincing still with the rawness of his inner forearm, his bruised and painful chin, the tooth that seemed to have a red-hot needle at the root, and he stood in the roadway staring northwards towards the field where their opponents had achieved their victory that day, sucking at the tooth as though he could flush out the pain.

The land was flooded with a clear silver light. It was appealing to return home and fall into his bed, cosy under his skins and blankets, but there was something niggling at him as he gazed towards Iddesleigh, and at last he gave a grunt of resignation. The moonlight was an unmistakable hint, so it seemed to him, that God wanted him to go and investigate this. He turned off the roadway and set off down the hill again.

That scene still stuck in his mind, the colours vivid and fresh. At the time he’d given them no thought. The pain and the fear of losing were enough to wipe them from his mind, and he’d stood and walked away from the place where he’d fallen as soon as his legs had stopped wobbling enough for him to get up.

But now he was sure that there was something else up there, and he’d a suspicion that it was the reason for Ailward’s presence that day.

The climb was hard, and he felt as though he had aged a good few years in the last half-day. It was one thing to have a fancy about seeing something in the middle of a fight like the one today, and another to make his way up here in the dark when his feet were chilled from the frozen earth, his arm was stinging with each thud of his heart, and his mouth felt as if someone had hit him there with a hammer. Quite another thing, he thought, and he hesitated as he reached a furze bush halfway up the hill, in two minds whether to continue up, or abandon the search and get back to his bed. He glanced over his shoulder longingly, thinking of his palliasse only half a mile away, but then he set his jaw and carried on up the hill.

Breasting the ridge, he easily picked out the place where he had fallen, just as he could easily see where Walter had stood before launching himself at him.

Now he stood where he had been knocked down, staring about him. The rock was there, and there was a flat patch of heather beyond it, but that meant nothing. A deer could have lain here.

A deer which had bled.

Perkin had a strange empty feeling in his throat as he frowned at the ground, reaching down to touch the viscous liquid. It was definitely blood: the tinny odour, sickly and sweet, was clinging to his fingers when he brought them to his nose. It was possible that Walter and Ailward had killed a deer, he knew, but it was unlikely. Much more likely that Ailward had. . but why should Ailward harm anyone? Perkin had never seen anything to suggest that the sergeant would hurt another man. It was his way to swagger and bully, but surely not to kill for no reason. Perhaps it was something to do with money.

One thing was certain. Ailward had not been up here because of the game. He had been involved in some other activity when the game had approached him.

The moonlight caught something moving about some three feet from the rock, and Perkin saw a fluttering piece of material. He picked it up and looked at it. It wasn’t a working man’s cloth — this was a fine piece of wool from a rich man’s gown. Or a woman’s.

He’d seen enough. Walter and Ailward had killed someone up here, perhaps to rob him, or to rape her. Perkin had to return to the vill to call for help.

Turning on his heel, he hurried back to the ridge, and it was only when he was over the brow, taking a direct line to the vill, that he stumbled and fell.

‘Pig’s turds!’ he hissed through gritted teeth as his arm stung and flamed. He was surprised it wouldn’t light his way, it seemed to burn so hotly, but then his curses were stilled on his tongue as he saw what had tripped him.

The dead body of Ailward lying among the long grasses.