The Crediton Killings

12

Walking back, the men were quiet. Baldwin was sunk in gloom, wondering whether he would ever understand what was happening, while his servant was trying to hide his relief at leaving Fletcher’s shop. Hugh meandered behind, as stolidly uncommunicative as usual.

The bailiff shoved his hands into his belt. They were walking up the hill now, and it was harder to push their way through the crowds teeming the roadway. The items on sale changed as they progressed toward the town center. Fish were laid out on trestles, their eyes dull, mouths gaping wide as if still straining for water, while others lay, their colors dim, in barrels alongside. The bakers were next, with loaves and rolls of bread arranged in sweet-smelling piles, ranging from good melchet, made from sieved flour to give it its pale cream color, to less fine cockets, and low-grade brown loaves made from maslin, a wheat and rye mixture for the poorer people. As they approached the shambles where the butchers had their stalls, they came to the cordwainers, with the new shoes on show. Nearby cobblers plied their trade, mending old boots. The smells increased as they came close to the tanners, who took the skins from the butchers and produced rough, dried leather which they sold to the curriers to be smoothed and shaved to an even thickness before oiling it ready for crafting. Gloves, purses, leather bottles and boxes, with patterns carved or painted on them, stood to demonstrate the skills of the craftsmen.

Simon barely gave the goods a glance, ignoring both the stallholders’ cries and the young children trying to attract his attention by dragging on his cloak. The sights and sounds were familiar, and he had no wish to purchase anything.

As they came to the church, his eye lighted on a slim figure waiting at Peter’s door. She turned as the four approached – it was the woman in gray.

Giving money to the poor was an important responsibility of the wealthy, and all rich men tended to provide for those less well-off in the parish. The church had an almoner whose duty it was to see to the well-being of those who could not earn their own living. For, while it was right that those who were too lazy to work should be punished, all accepted that if a man was injured and incapable of looking after himself and his family, or if a man were to die and leave his woman and children without support, it was only right that a Christian community should aid them.

As he watched, the almoner passed the woman some bread and meats. Peter, he knew, had always provided well for beggars. At his table, before food was passed even to guests, bread and other foods were put in a bowl “to serve God first.” The almoner saved it to give to those who had most need. The woman held the gift in her apron, walking round to the site of the new church, and there Simon saw her kneel. Her child appeared from playing near a scaffold, and they ate with no sign of pleasure, only a kind of desperate haste, peering round as if fearing that if they did not consume it as quickly as possible, someone might take it from them.

“Simon, look – our friend,” Baldwin murmured, nodding ahead. Following his gaze, Simon saw the captain.

Sir Hector stood with his back to them, near the entrance to the church. Every now and again he would peer at the inn, then round at the trees, as if measuring the time by the shadows, or searching for someone who could be hiding behind one of the heavy trunks. Simon looked up and down the street. “Is he out here on his own?”

“For a mercenary captain to let himself be separated from all his men shows a distinct lack of foresight,” said Baldwin. “I suppose here in England he feels that it is safe enough. In Gascony or France he would not be so foolhardy, not with all the enemies he has there.”

They continued on their way, and from the corner of his eye, Simon saw the woman walk out of the church with her child. She joined the street a little in front of him and his friend, and as he watched her, she approached Sir Hector, holding out her alms bowl like a supplicant.

“What?” Sir Hector spun as she spoke, scowling ferociously. “Who are you?”

His voice carried clearly over the hustle of the road, but the woman’s response was smothered. To Simon’s surprise, the knight fell back as if stunned, staring with horror. Mouth gaping, he stood transfixed. Suddenly he moved forward, struck her hand with a clenched fist, and shoved her roughly away from him. The bowl left her hand, whirling off against a wall, and clattered to the ground; a man walking by did not see it, and there was a loud crack as he stepped on it by mistake. She gave a shriek, both hands going to her head as she tried to take in this disaster. Simon thought she looked as if she could hardly comprehend such misfortune. He guessed that the bowl was not only her receptacle for gifts when begging, it was probably her sole means of gathering liquid. To lose it was an unbelievable calamity.

She sank to her knees, touching the two pieces of wood with a kind of bewildered despair, her son wailing beside her unheeded. Sir Hector watched her for a moment with a sneer twisting his visage, then turned back to his solitary vigil.

Baldwin pulled out some coins from his purse as he passed her, dropping them into her lap. “Buy a new bowl and some food,” he muttered.

Seeing them, she was too awestruck to thank him, and staggered up, hauling her son with her, to the shelter of the wall. She clutched the coins to her breast, staring at Baldwin with wild eyes before suddenly darting off.

“That was uncharitable, Sir Hector.”

The captain jerked around at the sound of mild reproof in Baldwin’s voice; for a split second Simon thought he was going to hit the Keeper. Evidently Edgar did too, for he hastened to stand by the side of his master.

“Sir Baldwin. You always appear just as I find myself out of spirits.” His tone was bantering, but to Simon he looked as if he was holding himself in with difficulty. The bailiff was not surprised. Beating a beggar was hardly the sort of behavior to enhance a man’s reputation – but then Sir Hector was a mercenary, a breed of man held in low esteem all over the world. It appeared odd that the captain should be ashamed of a brief loss of temper, a trivial incident, compared with some of his previous actions.

“You bought that blue tunic: Sarra wore it when she died. Why did you not tell me you had purchased it?” Baldwin’s face was set and angry. It was not only the beating of the poor woman, he was intensely annoyed at having to find out from the shopkeeper something which the knight could have told him that morning.

“I did not think it was something which concerned you. I still don’t.”

“I do. When did you give it to her?”

“Give it to her? You think I’d waste that much money on a…” Sir Hector’s voice had risen almost to a shout, and his jaw stuck out pugnaciously. His eyes moved from Baldwin to Edgar, who had taken a short step forward, so that if the captain was to attack Baldwin, he would have to expose his side to the servant. Edgar smiled thinly and the mercenary brought himself under control with an effort.

“Sir Hector, you have made me go off on a wild-goose chase when you could have told me the truth this morning. Who was the tunic for, if not for her – and why was Sarra wearing it?”

“I have no idea why she was wearing it. She must have found it in one of my trunks. I told you we’d argued earlier. She was trying to warn me about my best men, and I told her to go… Well, I did not see her again. How she came to wear that tunic, I have no idea.”

“Perhaps she thought you had bought it for her,” Simon suggested.

“Why should she think that?”

“Women do. You had argued, then she saw the new tunic. She might have thought you had bought her a gift to apologize for shouting at her.”

Sir Hector stared in disbelief. “Are you serious? Why should I do that? She was only a…”

“You have given us your opinion of her often enough before,” Baldwin interrupted smoothly. “There is no need for further repetition. When did you buy the tunic?”

“Yesterday, a day after I’d argued with Sarra. I was just about to go out, and I was in a hurry, when she burst in to tell me that Henry was about to foment disorder in the troop. As if he’d dare!” He turned and began to make his way at a slow amble back to the inn, casting around as if casually, but with enough diligence to make Simon think he was alert for a threat. Or was looking for someone.

“Isn’t it possible she was right?” mused Baldwin.

“No,” the captain snapped. “My men are bound to me. Whether they like it or not, they know that I am a man of my word – to them at least! If I was to be deposed, the last person most of them would want in my place would be Henry. He has an annoying habit of taking on new recruits and finding out their secrets, then blackmailing them.”

“You know about that?” Baldwin burst out, aghast.

“Of course I do. All the better for me to know I am protected. While the fool carries on like that, I am secure. The other men all hate him and fear me. He has their secrets bound in his purse, while I own their lives. All the time he does that, he costs me nothing, and yet the others wouldn’t think of supporting him in any kind of coup.”

“They might support another.”

“No. There’s none who would dare to try it. Besides, with Henry and John around, I would be likely to find out soon enough if they did. No, the idea is stupid.”

Frowning, Baldwin kicked a pebble from the path. “What did she actually say?”

“That she’d overheard Henry talking to John or someone and that he was planning to form the band round himself. No, wait a moment, that’s not right. She said Henry told this other person that he would not need to worry about me for long, that he would have his own band – something like that.”

“And then you went to buy the tunic.”

“I went out and saw the tunic, and bought it, and I said it would be collected later.”

“And when you returned?”

“I told one of the men to go and fetch it.”

“And you never saw her alive again, or saw the tunic until it was on her body?”

“That’s right.”

They were at the door to the inn, and Sir Hector stood defiantly as if daring them to enter with him.

“Out of interest, Sir Hector,” asked Simon diffidently, “which man did you ask to collect it?”

“Eh? Wat, I think.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I went out. I had only returned to the hall briefly. I saw Wat and went straight out again.”

“Why? Where were you off to?”

“To see someone.”

“Who?” asked Baldwin.

“Like I said, it is no concern of yours.”

“I think it might be.”

“You are welcome to think what you like.”

“Sir Hector, I am trying to discover who might have murdered the girl, and you are not helping.”

“I didn’t kill her and I didn’t see who did. Telling you whom I was about to meet will not assist you. I can only suggest you speak to someone else and try to find out who killed this Sarra.”

Simon scuffed the dirt of the pavement with the toe of his boot. “One thing seems odd to me.”

“The whole bloody affair seems damned odd to me,” Sir Hector said heavily.

“What I mean is, her old tunic was on the floor of her room, as if she’d kicked it off in her hurry to get changed into the new one. That was why I wondered whether she might have thought it was a present for her. If she had simply seen the tunic in your room and not thought it was for her, she might have tried it on – I suppose she might even have taken it to her room to try on – but she would not have let anyone see her.”

“So what?” Sir Hector glanced at him disdainfully, his lip curled in disgust.

“It occurs to me that she must have walked from her room, over the yard, through the hall, and into your solar. She must have known that someone could have seen her. If she was trying to clandestinely don the tunic, she picked a very public way to do it.”

“So what? Maybe she wanted people to see her in a colorful tunic.”

“I think most women would only behave like that if they thought the tunic was for them in the first place. She didn’t see the need to hide her possession of it; she thought it was hers. That’s why she changed in her room and came back by such an obvious route.”

“God’s blood! If she thought that, why should she bother to go to her room in the first place? Why not simply change where she found it?”

“Absolutely right!” Simon smiled. “That’s the other problem. I would have expected, if she saw it in your room, that she would have tried it on in there. She would not have bothered to go to her room to change. Of course, if she was in her room, and someone told her about the tunic, she would have gone to your room to find it, but even then she would surely have put it on in the solar. There would have been no reason to take it back to her room to don it.”

“So what are you getting at?”

“This, Sir Hector. Since she changed in her room, the only reason I can see for her doing that and then going to the solar is that she thought it was hers. And logically, I think she must have found the tunic in her room, or been given it there.”

Baldwin stared at his friend. “I see what you’re getting at: if she thought it was a present, she would have gone straight to Sir Hector to thank him.”

“It’s how a woman would behave – dressing in the tunic to show how pleased she was with the gift.”

The mercenary glowered from one to the other. “Are you seriously suggesting that she somehow found it in her room and rushed over here to thank me for buying it for her?”

Simon shrugged. “It’s the only explanation I can believe right now. Either she found it there or she was given it there – and was told that you had bought it for her.”

“Who could have said that to her?”

“That we need to find out,” said Baldwin. “In the meantime, you never answered my question: for whom did you purchase the tunic?”

“That’s my business. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

Baldwin noticed how the captain’s gaze kept straying to the road behind him. He was sure that Sir Hector had been waiting for the same woman, whoever it might be, when he had knocked the bowl from the poor beggar’s hand. But there was little he could do to force the man to name her – and for some reason Baldwin had an instinct not to press him. “Very well. But is there anything else you forgot to mention to us this morning?”

The captain’s eyes were gray flints as he snarled, “No!”

As the Keeper of the King’s Peace and his friend left the inn, it was hard for the man watching to restrain his feelings. They had found out about the new dress; that at least should put them further on the correct track, and when he saw their faces, they told him all he wanted to know. The knight, Baldwin, kept glancing over his shoulder, back toward the inn, with his features set into a black scowl of suspicion, while his friend seemed lost in thought, brows fixed into a mask of perplexity.

At last the fruits of his plans were ripening, and would soon be ready to be plucked.

When they had gone, Sir Hector stormed through the hall and into his solar like a bear with a foot in a trap. At the door to his rooms, he pointed to one of his men. “Get me Henry the Hurdle. Bring him to my solar. Now!”

He was seated in front of his cabinet when Henry walked in. The man looked nervous, but that was no surprise to Sir Hector. He would expect any of his men responding to an urgent summons to be anxious.

“Shut the door,” he said, and waved the servant out. Henry did as he was commanded, then, darting looks all round, he sat himself on a trunk.

Sir Hector knew his men well. It was one of the basic rules of being a leader that the men under him should always feel their captain understood them and their needs. At the same time, they had to believe in his infallibility and total power. It was not kindness that had made Sir Hector the commander of warriors, but his willingness to kill ruthlessly all those who threatened him and his authority. Surveying Henry, he was aware that the man might well have thought about toppling him – might possibly even have succeeded. Henry was devious enough, though Sir Hector doubted that his Sergeant was quite clever enough to pull the wool over his eyes completely.

But he was troubled by the thought that even his most trusted man could have plotted against him.

There was nothing unusual in potential disloyalty, for that was the normal way for a mercenary band to select a new commander: he was replaced by another, stronger man, one who could instill more fear in the men beneath. The risk was always there in any group, where malcontents could easily persuade others that a better leader was available. Disaffected employers often tried to foment trouble, considering it advantageous to change commanders in order to renegotiate contracts during the interregnum. Then again, many a mercenary captain had discovered that when he went abroad without the bulk of his men, either the bulk were no longer there on his return, or they ambushed him. Loyalty was a rare commodity for a warrior! And that was what Sarra had alleged, or something similar: that Henry had plotted to oust him and take control himself.

The stupid bitch had brought her end down upon herself, he thought savagely. She had made the allegations in the middle of an inn where Henry had his spies. He was bound to have been informed and warned.

Henry shifted, waiting for his master to speak, and the movement dragged Sir Hector’s attention back to the present. “Wat – is he reliable?”

“As reliable as any old bugger is who’s seen too many battles. I don’t know. He’s certainly always fought well, but he’s been moaning about things for some time…”

“What sort of things?”

Henry scratched his head. He couldn’t see where this was leading, and he did not want to volunteer too much in case he found himself in the firing line. “Oh, about how the group is organized generally. He’s always going on about money and such.”

“Has he complained about you?”

“Me?” Henry decided that a little bluff honesty could do no harm. “No, but he’s never liked me. Not many of the men do, they think I have too much say in things – don’t like me giving orders and disciplining them. That’s nothing new. But I’ve overheard him whingeing to others.”

“Sir Baldwin reckons Wat might have told Sarra to come and see me in that tunic.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“Maybe to make me angry enough to kill her.”

“You’d get that angry just seeing her wearing a tunic?” Henry queried dubiously.

“I had bought it that day for another woman. If I had seen her in it, I might have killed her for polluting it with her filthy body.”

Henry wondered how filthy his master had thought that same body on the night they arrived, but kept his face blank. “I don’t know that Wat could have thought that out, sir. Why should he think you’d get so cross you’d kill for that?”

Sir Hector stared at him unblinking, and Henry had the grace to look away. All of them, over the course of many years, had killed in any number of battles and running fights. Henry himself had been involved in some of the vicious border wars between France and England on the Gascon marches, and none of them were free of the stain of blood spilt while their blood was up. Sir Hector knew that Henry, after the sack of one town, had found two men arguing over a captured woman. With his own rough humor he had hit upon an easy solution to their problem, and, sweeping out his great hand-and-a-half sword, had declared “Half each!” and cut her in two. No, none of them were free of the stain of blood.

“I want you to find out, Henry. Ask around. If he put her up to it, he’s unreliable, and I want him gone. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you… did you plot to remove me, Henry?”

As Sir Hector’s unnerving eyes snapped to his face, Henry felt himself go pale, as if the eyes themselves had stabbed him and let his blood run out onto the rushes. He shook his head silently, but did not trust his voice.

After he had left the room, Sir Hector sat for a long time, deep in thought. They had a long way to go before they were back again in Gascony, where the wars were, and the money was waiting to be plundered, but he was sure now that he must lose Wat before they got there.

And he must also get rid of Henry. He couldn’t be trusted anymore. Sir Hector nodded to himself. He must think of someone else who could take on the responsibilities of Sergeant for the band.