“This is the Keeper of the King’s Peace – and this is the Constable. I am the Bailiff of Lydford,” said Simon reasonably. “Are you Oatway?”
The bill lowered a little, but the man’s eyes still flitted over them in obvious doubt. “What if I am?”
“We need to ask you some questions. Did you know there’s been a murder?”
“No,” he said, and the surprise was plainly clear. His arm dropped down to his side, until the tool dangled, forgotten. “Who?”
“Agatha Kyteler.”
“ Her?“ He hawked and spat, as if the name offended him. ”Good!“
“Did you see her yesterday?” Simon asked.
“Yesterday?” He considered. “No. No, I don’t think so…”
“Do you live alone?”
“No, my wife is here too.” He added more softly, with a hint of sadness, “We have no children.”
“Did your wife see her yesterday, do you know?” Simon persisted.
Oatway glanced down at his bill, then sighed deeply and brought it down sharply on to a log. It stayed there, gripped by its own slashing cut. “You’d better come and ask her,” he said.
When he motioned, the three men dropped from their horses and followed him back to the front of the house, tying their mounts to the rail beside his log store.
Inside they found the cottage filthy, the atmosphere rancid from animal dung. Smoke hung in the rafters waiting to drift out through the thatch from the large hearth in the centre of the floor. Entering, they had to step down. Like many older properties, to save the valuable animal dung, the floor of the house was built on a lope. As the winter proceeded, the level of the floor at the lower, byre end, would rise. When spring finally arrived, the manure could be taken out and spread over the fields and the floor level would drop once more.
Now, after some months of bad weather, the room stank, and Simon could see that the faeces were almost at the level of the door. He tried to shut his nostrils to the stench, but found it difficult. To his satisfaction, he saw that Baldwin seemed to notice the smell more than him, although Tanner appeared impervious.
Mrs. Oatway was a broad, strong-looking woman of about her husband’s age. She stood staring at them with a scowl of distrust as they trooped into her house, her hand gripping the large wooden spoon with which she had been stirring at the iron pot as if it was a weapon. Although her hair still had its native darkness, without the greying of her husband, her features were wrinkled with age and troubles. She looked as quick and sharp as a martin, shrewd and devious. And probably malicious too, from the look of her thin bloodless lips.
After quickly introducing themselves, Baldwin suggested that they should walk outside to talk, but she demurred. “I’ve got food to prepare. We can talk in here.”
Grinning at the knight’s obvious discomfort, Simon said, “We are trying to find out whether anybody saw Agatha Kyteler yesterday. Did you?”
“Her!” A sneer curled her lip. “I don’t look for her. Why do I care for her, the old…”
“You disliked her after the affair with your chickens, didn’t you?” said Simon flatly, feeling as he spoke that the words were superfluous, but wanting to cut off her flow of invective. It worked. She stopped and glowered at him.
“Well? What if I do?”
“Did. She’s dead. We’re trying to find out why. Why did you hate her so much?“
The shock was plain on her face, her mouth opening and shutting, and then she turned to her husband and stared at him. “Is this true? Eh?”
He shrugged as Simon said, “Answer the question, woman. Why did you hate her?”
Sighing, and after some grumbling, she told them of her suspicions about Agatha Kyteler’s dog.
“Did you see her dog do it?” asked Baldwin, wincing and coughing.
“See it? No, but it was her dog, all right. We followed the feathers, didn’t we?” She turned for verification to her husband, who nodded vaguely.
Simon considered. “Did you see her yesterday?”
“I…” She paused, her glower deepening.
“Good. When?”
“Middle of the afternoon.”
“Why?” sighed Simon, and stared at her in silence.
“It was that dog again,” she said at last, reluctantly.
“Her dog? What did it do?”
“It attacked my chickens again. Took another one. What was I supposed to do? Wait ‘til it had killed them all? I went to tell her to keep the dog tied up. I told her if I saw it on our land again, we’d kill it.”
“What did she say?”
“Her!” Her lips curled again in scorn. “Nothing, of course! She said it wasn’t her dog. Said it was in the house with her all day. Well that was a lie.”‘
“You saw her dog, then?”
“No, but the feathers went her way again. It must have been her dog.”
Shrugging, Simon glanced at Baldwin, who coughed.
“Very well,” he said reasonably; “did you see anyone else there?”
Her face wrinkled with the effort of recollection. “Yes. Yes, while I was on my way there, Sarah Cottey and Jennie Miller were talking near the house. And some other woman was in the trees – I don’t know who – when I left.”
“What did she look like?” asked Baldwin.
“Look like? Oh, I don’t know. Dressed well. Slim woman. Fairly tall and young, I’d say. Had a long cloak on, with fur on the hood.”
“A grey cloak?” Baldwin’s face wore a frown when Simon shot a glance at him.
“Yes, it was grey, I think.”
“You saw no men?”
“No.”
After checking where Jennie Miller lived, they walked out with relief to the open air. Even the extreme cold of the gathering darkness was preferable to the stench inside. The husband followed them, standing and inhaling deeply on his doorstep as he watched them mount their horses. Baldwin whirled his horse, and was about to ride off when he seemed struck by a sudden thought.
“Oatway. Why was your wife so sure that Kyteler’s dog attacked your chickens?”
He stared up at the grave knight, then quickly glanced behind to the open doorway. Moving a little away from it, to stand closer to Baldwin, he said, “Because she thinks old Kyteler got her dog to come here.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Kyteler never liked my wife. My wife thinks she got the dog to come and kill our chickens, one by one.”
Simon felt the hair begin to rise on his scalp as the stooping man stared up at the knight, his voice dropping as if nervous of being overheard – not by his wife, but by someone else. “Kyteler was clever with animals. She always knew how to help hurt ones. And she could make potions for people too. She knew how to make potions, medicines and such. There’s only one sort knows about that kind of thing.” His eyes held Baldwin’s with a fearful conviction. “She was a witch!”
It had not taken the Bourc long to light his little fire from one of the bundles on the pack horse, and he was soon sitting and warming himself. Munching on a hunk of bread, he watched the man until he saw a finger twitch and eyebrow flicker, and then he stood and contemplated the supine figure for a moment before walking over and kicking it. “Wake up! You have questions to answer!”
The man was thick-set and swarthy like a seaman. On hearing the Bourc’s voice, he looked around blearily, his eyes unfocused and slowly blinking above the scuffed and bloody chin, until they caught sight of his captor and suddenly widened.
“I see you recognise me,” said the Gascon affably, squatting nearby. Pulling out his long-bladed dagger, he toyed with the hilt for a moment, then studied his prisoner with a smile. When he spoke, his voice was low and reasonable. “Why were you trying to ambush me?”
Brown eyes narrowed and flitted around the landscape.
