“Such as what? The motivation of a knight should be for glory, by fighting honorably to defend the poor and weak. Perhaps the same could be achieved by a smaller number of men better versed in the ways of warfare, and for less cost. Look at the war in Scotland. Will we win it? I have no idea, but I do know this: almost none of our men are warriors. There are wellborn knights in the King’s entourage, but most of the rest are lowly archers and foot soldiers. It is on them that the main fighting will fall – and how many of them are trained in anything other than the scythe and the plow? These few under Sir Hector could be worth three hundred ordinary peasants.”
Simon listened to the discussion in silence. He had no wish to join in and talk about things of which he knew little, for he did not want to display his ignorance about wars and fighting. All he knew about was fighting gangs of outlaws and keeping miners away from the locals on the moors – and neither matched the experiences of a man like Baldwin, who had spent his youth fighting Saracens.
Something else made him hold his tongue. There was a niggling feeling of unease at the back of his mind, a sense that something was wrong, and he was aware of a growing anxiety.
At the end of the meal, once the warmed water had been brought for all to wash away the grease and sauces from fingers, he excused himself and walked out to the road, pleading an overfull stomach.
The sun had sunk behind the far hill, and the street was almost deserted. Buildings rose all round like the high sides of the Teign Valley, rugged and misshapen like moorstone cliffs. All the shops were blank and dead- looking, the houses had their shutters over the windows to keep out the unhealthy night air, and the only light came from louvres and trap doors in the roofs, all opened to let out the smoke from the cooking fires.
There was a curious air of expectancy. He heard a door slam, a shout of laughter and giggling, a dog bark echoing down a street, a man cursing, and the sound of revelry from a tavern. All were the normal marks of a night in a large town. A chicken murmured to itself on the other side of a wall as he passed, grumbling at being disturbed, and a lamb bleated sleepily, but over all these usual, unremarkable sounds, Simon thought there was a stillness, as if the whole town was waiting for something to happen.
Near the jail, Simon paused and watched the inn. There was a gust of raucous humor from the hall, and the bailiff felt sorry for those who lived close by. They would surely regret living so near to an alehouse, he felt, when the guests were as rowdy as these soldiers. He was tempted for a moment to join them and lose himself in drinking with men who had no fear for the future, who lived merely for the present, but he stayed outside, staring wistfully at the glimmer which showed through the closed shutters.
A gentle lowing from the shambles, and a bleating, brought him back to the present. There was no point in his joining the soldiers. They were not of his kind. If he were to go in, there would be silence followed swiftly by a general turning of backs. He was a bailiff, a man used to giving commands, but he had no authority over such as these. They were free men, free of the restraint that others might feel on seeing him. Anyway, he knew that shaking off his black mood would not be helped by going into a crowded room full of cheerful drinkers. His was a mood for which alcohol could provide no cure.
With a wry grimace he accepted that he also might not be safe alone with Sir Hector’s singing and swearing force.
Simon started off toward the western end of town, but his steps faltered as he passed the entrance to the alley where he had seen the woman in gray. Something about it made him pause and frown.
It gaped like the maw of an evil creature, long and noisome as a dragon’s gullet. But like prey beguiled by a tempting bait, he found himself lingering. The alley was a twisting black tunnel, in which sound was altered and the senses dulled. Here lived the poorer people of the town: those who could not afford the cosseted lifestyle of the merchants and priests farther out from the center. The tradesmen had their own rooms over or behind their shops, the smiths and carpenters above their workshops, but here, in the reeking corridor between tightly packed houses, were the families of the others who made the town what it was: tanners and curers; weavers and dyers; cooks and servants for the merchants’ houses – all lived thrown together in as few short feet as possible for warmth and defense. The smell of unwashed bodies, urine, rotting flesh and vegetation from the sewer mingled with that of roasting meat and stews to form a stench which assaulted his nostrils and made him curl his lip in revulsion.
Then he froze, peering intently. There had been a scuffle and muted cry. It was not the swift skitter of a frightened rat, but a kind of shuffling and slithering. Nervously wetting his lips, he stepped in to the alley.
In the dead interior, the sound of his footsteps changed. Rather than the solid, confident ringing of his boots on the cobbles near the market, now his feet sloshed and slapped in the puddles left by people emptying bowls and bedpans. At this time of night those who lived in the alley were all in their beds, and Simon could see nobody. All he was aware of was the light above, where the moon and stars stood out with precise clarity in the deep blue-black sky, compared with the grayness of the buildings on either side.
The steps approached. He could see no one clearly yet, huddled as he was in the doorway, uncomfortable where the drips from the washing overhead had spattered against him until they formed a rivulet down his back. Now in the doorway, at least he was away from that irritation.
There was a slowness in the footsteps which annoyed him. He almost wanted to shout at the man, tell him to come along faster and stop tormenting him. His nerves were already drawn as tight as the hemp of a hangman’s noose when the body was hanging. This slow, methodical sound was increasing his tension, as if he was listening not with his ears alone but with his entire body. The noise slammed into his chest and belly like blows.
And then he had passed. The hidden watcher let his breath out in relief. Soon he could escape, run away to the town and lose himself, while this fool stumbled onward along the alley.
But the unearthly wailing stopped him. It began as a low moan, a cry of indescribable suffering, which rose in gusts only to fall again, then rising and falling with increasing regularity, until it formed a steady cadence, now rising to a shriek, now falling to a disbelieving shuddering of horror.
Simon stopped dead in his tracks. The noise had put an end even to the quiet sounds in the alley, and the whole area was still, as if the very buildings were listening to the misery in the voice with hushed sympathy.
Then his legs propelled him forward. His hand snatched at his sword and tugged it loose, then swept it out as he pounded up to a slight bend in the path, feeling the blood rush in his head, his belly hollow with sudden fear, his scalp itching with icy foreboding.
The corner came, and then he was past it, and nobody had sprung out to attack him. Carrying on, the wail rose to a shriek – but now was behind him. He skidded to a halt, turned, pelted back, and saw the thin, darker hole: another alley leading from this one. He would have seen it in daylight, but in the darkness, it was all but invisible. Stopping his rush by pushing a hand out before him to cushion his speed against a wall, he caught his breath, then ducked inside.
It was a mean little dead-end. At the far side was a building with a fitful light showing between the cracked and broken shutters, and it was by this meager illumination that he confronted the bleak tragedy.
She was huddled, as if even in death she was trying to take up as little space as possible, and keen to conform to the laws that required the poor and widowed to be unseen and out of the way. At first Simon thought she was simply kneeling and searching for a lost oddment, her arms on the ground, head resting gently between them. But then he saw that her pillow was the feces flung from the upper rooms.
Her child stood beside her, a grubby cherub with spiky hair where the dirt had given it the consistency of wood. His grimy face was all mouth, bawling in his fierce grief, and Simon felt as if his heart would break at the sight of his absolute loss.
He held out his hand, his own face cracking under the massive weight of the little boy’s grief, and he called out something – he would never recall what exactly – and saw the boy turn to him.
And then he saw the little face break in renewed terror. He saw the boy’s mouth widen and heard the dreadful, baying howl.
And then the blow struck, and he fell headlong, clutching vainly at consciousness like a drowning man reaching for a rope lying just out of reach, as the waves of black oblivion rushed forward to engulf him.
14
