24
By the time they trotted into Smyth’s yard, Hugh was becoming desperate. He did not dare stop while the others carried on, for he knew how his slowness annoyed the knight, and was sure that if he stopped to water the roadside Baldwin would refuse to halt, and the three would leave him. Hugh was still too nervous of the idea of Crockern to want to be left far behind while his master and the others disappeared into the distance. So he lurched on painfully, his lips pressed firmly together in mounting anguish as the liquid sloshed painfully in his bladder.
The yard was busy, with servants leading horses out for exercise or cleaning the stable of manure and soiled straw, while others were unloading a wagon of provisions for the kitchen. In the midst of this bustle, Hugh dropped from his horse and tossed the reins to Edgar, who received his mute plea with supercilious amusement, and rushed to the stable wall. After only a few seconds of agony, the relief was intense, and he smiled foolishly at the stones of the wall before him. Looking for his master, he saw the three walking behind George Harang toward the hall. He knew he should go after them but he could not hurry. There was no point, he thought. Simon and the knight were only going inside to ask more questions, and they had not needed his help so far.
Inside the hall, Simon and Baldwin stood in a huddle with Thomas Smyth and stared round sadly.
The room held almost twenty men injured in the morning’s fighting, and Smyth’s servants rushed hither and thither, carrying bowls of water and torn cloth for bandages. His wife was there too, holding a man’s hand and offering words of comfort. She glanced up as Simon entered, wiping at her forehead, but he could see her mind was on the wounded man. A surgeon knelt by another figure, obviously hard-pressed to see to all the slashes and stabs.
While Simon watched in fascinated horror, the surgeon finished inspecting a head wound. The bailiff could not drag his eyes away as the doctor gently pushed a finger into the thickly clotted wound on the scalp. Quickly now, he took the proffered razor and shaved the man’s head. While the assistant held the white-faced tinner by the shoulders, the surgeon crouched by his head with a pair of large forceps. At a signal, the forceps were inserted into the wound and quickly hauled back, now with a fragment of white bone gleaming amid the gore. After a shriek, the wounded man stilled and calmed, panting, with his eyes wide in fear and pain, but now when the surgeon investigated the wound again, he wore a smile. Washing the blood away and cleaning it with egg white, he appeared well pleased, and sutured the skin together carefully, taking a pellet of thick pitch-smelling medicine and smothering it over the wound. Then he rose with a sigh and moved to the next man, a youth of only one or two and twenty, who had the broken shaft of an arrow jutting from his shoulder. He wept openly as the surgeon approached, thick tears of terror falling from his thin and dirty cheeks.
Thomas Smyth watched sadly, but looking up, he caught his wife’s eye. She stiffened, upright, holding his gaze, then flashed him a quick smile before turning her attention back to the figure before her. That brief recognition made his chest tighten in pride. After the drama out at the camp he had known he must explain about Martha Bruther and his dead son before Christine could hear of them from others. Even as the men were being carried indoors he had pulled her to one side.
She had said nothing as he spoke, and he felt his panic rise at the thought of the hurt he was causing her. But then she ducked her head. “It was a long time ago, Thomas. Before I even knew you. And you kept your sadness over his death to yourself to save my feelings?” He could say nothing, mutely staring at her, and after a moment she touched his arm gently. “Come, Husband. We must make sure that no more die like your poor son.”
And now the bailiff and his friend were back to question him again. Smyth rubbed his eye. He was tired after the horrors of the morning, and suddenly sickened.
“Let’s get away from this spectacle,” he muttered, and led them to the door. Simon was pleased to see he stopped often on the way, patting a shoulder or the back of a wounded man, and always having a word or two with his men. He cared for them, Simon saw, and they knew it. As he approached, some even tried to sit upright, as if to show their respect.
Simon was relieved to be out of the room and back in the open air again. The aura of pain and death in the hall was depressing, and he inhaled deeply, strolling behind the tinner, who meandered over to the stream, his head down and hands in his belt. There was a bench overlooking the water, and Thomas Smyth sat here, glowering ahead. Simon and Baldwin stood before him, Edgar waiting a little behind.
It was Simon who broke the silence. Casting a suspicious eye at his friend, which told Baldwin more precisely than any words that the bailiff still had no idea of the direction his thoughts were taking him in, Simon said, “Thomas, we have been to visit Wat Meavy at his farm since we left you at the camp. He has confirmed that he saw John Beauscyr on the night that your son was killed.”
“He saw Beauscyr that night?” The miner’s puzzled glance rose to meet Simon’s firm stare. “I don’t… You mean Beauscyr was there when Peter was murdered? It wasn’t him who killed Peter?”
“No. From what we’ve heard, it wasn’t John.”
The tinner was overwhelmed. He looked away, over the moors to the east. “My God! And I’ve caused the death of my men for… But how can this man Meavy be so sure? Are you saying that…”
Baldwin intervened smoothly. “Thomas, this morning I was very impressed by your method of setting out your defense – the way that you sited the archers compared to the footsoldiers, and forced any frontal attack to concentrate just where you wanted it. Yes, it was masterly.” The tinner stared at the knight in silence. Imperturbably, Baldwin carried on. “If it was not for the second attack over the river, you would surely have carried the day with ease, wouldn’t you? There would have been a great massacre there. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Thomas shrugged. “It was just luck, that’s all. It seemed the best way to put the men.”
“So it was not from your experience as a soldier in the wars with Sir William?”
“He told you?” The astonishment could not have been faked.
Baldwin smiled, his moustache lifting wolfishly. “Why shouldn’t he?”
“Because it only serves to discredit the man,” he said shortly. “Why should he tell you about it? It’s true, I fought in the Welsh wars, and I knew Sir William there. That was part of the reason I came here, because I had heard from his men about tinning, and thought I might as well try it myself.”
Simon was looking from one to the other with confusion, and the knight noticed. Gesturing mildly toward his friend, he said, “Perhaps you should explain. The bailiff was too young to have been involved in the wars.”
“Very well,” said Thomas, throwing a faintly disgusted glance in Simon’s direction as if at the bailiff’s lack of knowledge of recent history. “It was back in the ’80s. King Edward, father to our Edward and much the greater man, called on his lords to help him put down the Welsh once and for all, even offering to pay the troops himself. The Welsh had always been a thorn in his side, and back then, before his son proved so incompetent at Bannockburn, he had the Scots under control and could spend time in bringing the Welsh to his will. My lord joined the army, and I went with him to join with the men under Luke de Tany. I was only twenty then, back in ’82, but strong, and prepared to win some honor from a battle, and I soon became the leader of a small company.”
“Sir William was there too?”
“Oh yes, and like his son Robert he was as arrogant as a young knight can be. I think it was his first war, though he’s been on many a raid since. But he was a knight, and wouldn’t speak to me. I was just there to obey orders and nothing else. We were there under de Tany for ages. I remember we marched in Maytime, early in the month, and had to go to Neston, in the Dee estuary. I was a crossbowman, and I was one of the group put on the fleet of over sixty ships called from the Cinque ports. Many of us bowmen were there on the ships to serve as marines when we arrived in Anglesey. We took the island and built a bridge over the Menai Strait so that we could attack through to Bangor, but then that was it. By the end of September we were ready, but we had to wait until we had an instruction from the King to carry on, for we were to throw the enemy into confusion by diverting his armies just when the King’s own men started a new attack.
“It went well. The King and the Earl of Lincoln moved up the Clwyd Valley, Earl Warenne advanced along the middle Dee, and Reginald de Grey went on from Hope. The Welsh had no chance against such forces, and the whole affair should have been finished quickly, but Archbishop Pecham decided to try to stop the killing. He mediated for some time and held up the attack – a stupid waste of time. It was obvious that the Welsh were merely taking the opportunity to regroup their men for more fighting.
“Meanwhile, we in Anglesey were stuck with nothing to do. It was miserable, with no decent camp and too
