Simon heaved a sigh of relief at being out of the jail. It was too small, too dark, and he had felt claustrophobic in there. The air might not be any better outside, with the stench from the street worsening as the sun warmed the waste in the sewer, but at least here there was sunlight and the noise of free people rushing about trying to earn a living. It was infinitely better than the atmosphere of the jail.
“We’d better get to the inn and rescue Edgar and Hugh,” Baldwin said, glancing up at the sun. It was rising in the sky: it must be midmorning.
They crossed the street, dodging a horse and cart. To their left, the tripod still stood outside the shop, but the bailiff saw that the butcher had disappeared. Simon happened to glance in through a window, and there he caught a glimpse of the young apprentice. Grasping a massive cleaver, he was hacking at a pig’s carcass dangling from a hook in the wall, splitting it in half down the spine. Every now and then the lad paused to wipe his forehead, clearing the sweat as the flies danced. Simon smiled. He could understand how tiring it must be to lift the massive axe-like tool and swing it in this heat. The apprentice would have several bodies to joint, and if he did not complete his work, his master would surely leave him in no doubt of his incapacity as a trainee. He looked young to be hefting a weapon like that, at maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, and the bailiff could not help glancing at the solemn face of the young rector, wondering whether Roger de Grosse realized how lucky he was.
It was dark in the alley inside the market entrance, which was a comfort after the furnace heat of the street where the shining cobbles seemed hotter than the sun itself. There was no breeze, and even in the shade he could feel the fresh sweat prickling under his armpits and all down his back, but he had to smile. He was calm, with no shadow of fear to darken his brow, and the fact made him proud.
So the bailiff was interested in a butcher’s apprentice? What a keen mind he must have! Either keen or vacant. Better than his friend, though. Sir Baldwin de Furnshill was thought to be quick and intelligent, a cautious but tenacious inquisitor, much more of a threat than the Exeter Coroner who hardly ever bothered to travel to Crediton nowadays; with the teaming hordes of seamen at the docks, he was kept busy enough closer to home. There was no need to journey far to see death in all its forms. This Baldwin, though, was considered clever. The man in the shadows sneered at the idea. Clever! And yet now he was going from the jail back to the inn, no doubt intending to question the captain in his lair, seeing whether he might have any idea why the girl had been killed.
The two men disappeared through the doorway, and their watcher smiled again. His mind was clear once more, just as it had been the night before when he felt the knife slip so smoothly into her body; it was like pushing the weapon into an oiled leather scabbard – one especially shaped to take the thick single-edged blade. The way that his brain had suddenly been so calm, the thoughts so crystal-bright, had surprised him at first, but then he’d realized it was because he was so clever. It was impossible that the others would discover him.
A slow grin spread over his face. And now they were off to seek the man who had robbed the captain. They were bound to find suspects: only men who had something to hide would join a mercenary band.
Yes, he thought. There should be plenty of suspicious characters in a band like that. It was good to keep the King’s man busy.
“Hugh, would you please stop that!” Edgar usually displayed the tolerance of an older brother toward a younger in his dealings with Simon’s servant, but when the man had pulled his dagger out of its scabbard for the seventh time and scrutinized its edge as if suspicious that it had developed a fault, his temper began to fray. When Simon’s servant was not studying his blade, he was whistling – a hollow, deathly sound that reminded Edgar of the wind in the branches of trees over a churchyard at the dead of night. Even when the man was sitting, his fingers would keep drumming on any convenient surface near to hand. “What is it?” he asked irritably. “Can’t you just be quiet?”
“No,” Hugh scowled. “I’m not used to guarding a dead body.” His face reflected his mood. It was not only that he was missing Peter Clifford’s hospitality, which had lived up to expectation in the excellence of his ale and the fullness of his board; Hugh had grown up on the moors, a little to the south in the old forest of Dartmoor, and his superstitious soul cringed at having to share a room with a murdered woman. The only thing that could make it worse, from his point of view, would be if she was a suicide, but even a murder victim was full of terrors. He had stayed awake all night less from a sense of duty than from a terror of the Devil coming to take an unshriven soul. Hugh might not be learned, but he knew what the priests said: if a man or woman were to die without having been given the chance to confess their sins, they could not be buried on hallowed ground. They could not go to Heaven, they belonged to the Devil, and all night Hugh had fretted, thinking that every sound he heard was Old Nick coming to take her away. Now, in the warm sunlight of a fresh morning, he had a feeling of anticlimax.
“You’re a farmer’s son. Surely you’ve had to sit up with a corpse before.”
Hugh stared at him for a moment. “Of course I have! But I’ve never been told by my master to guard a room with a corpse in it, in case some mad bugger comes in trying to move things around.” He stood and went to the chest again, looking down at Sarra where she lay on the floor.
His master and Baldwin had covered her with a bolt of cloth they had found in the chest, thus her face was hidden, but she held a fascination for Hugh. It was sad to see her dead. He was used to death in all its forms, from starvation during the appalling famines of 1315 and 1316, to those killed by swords and axes during the attacks of the trail bastons four years ago, but this little figure, whose hair tumbled silkily from beneath the cloth, seemed still more sad than all those.
“God’s blood! Will you sit down and stop fidgeting! You’re making me twitchy.”
Hugh grunted and wandered to a convenient chest. Sitting, he rested a hand on another nearby and unconsciously began knocking out a rapid percussion. Edgar had opened his mouth to snap at him, when there was a tap at the door. Muttering with irritation, Edgar pulled it open.
Outside stood an old soldier. “My master has told me to fetch him some clothing.” Edgar said nothing, but held the door tightly. The man glanced past him to the body and shook his head sadly. “Poor lass.”
Rather than have the man stare through the door all morning, Edgar opened it wide. “Be quick. And touch nothing from the open chest.”
He wandered in, going from one chest to another. Hugh saw how his eyes moved to the figure on the floor occasionally. There was no fear or horror, merely a kind of disinterested acceptance, as if it was too commonplace a sight to justify particular curiosity. This piqued Hugh. He had been quite proud of enduring the vigil by the corpse, and felt that others should be awed by the courage of two men who dared to defy ghosts and ghouls alike by sitting up with a murdered body.
Sir Hector’s man walked toward him and gestured. “I’ve got to open that one, too.”
Hugh rose, disgruntled, and waited while he rifled through the chest for oddments, selecting a short cloak and decorative belt with an enamelled buckle.
No sooner had he left than Simon and Baldwin arrived with Roger. To Hugh’s disgust, neither asked how his night had been – they simply strode in and lifted the cloth from the body, so that Baldwin could study it more closely. Almost immediately his attention was drawn to Sarra’s head.
Sucking his teeth, Simon moved to the tiny window and peered out. Wagons and carts passed by, interspersed with riders on horseback. People hurried by on foot. It was a busy street, and he fell to wondering again whether someone could have stood passing items out to an accomplice hidden behind a wagon. Leaning forward, he meditatively touched the frame. There was certainly enough space for a man to wriggle through if he was small enough – and if the shutters had been opened first.
Baldwin asked Edgar to help him; together, they rolled the body gently over onto its side. Over Sarra’s left ear was a lump, and a crusting of blood. It looked much like Cole’s wound, with one difference: hers was more like the result of a glancing blow which had scraped the skin and caused bleeding. She must have been alive when struck, for she bled, he thought. That explained a little of the mystery about her: she was alive but unconscious when gagged and bound. The next question, he knew, was why she had been stabbed. He studied her, then walked to the chest and looked at her outline. Where Simon had pulled the cloth aside, he carefully laid it back in place. There, where her head had lain, was a small patch of brownish black. So she was definitely alive when she was placed in the chest; dead people did not bleed, he knew. So she had been killed later.
Sighing, he rose. Simon had finished staring out of the window, and now left the room. Baldwin paused, then knelt and, using his dagger, cut off a large swatch of the material of her tunic. Stuffing it in his purse, he followed his friend into Sir Hector’s room, and stood gazing round with an introspective air while Simon peered out of the
