The road led past the Abbey’s orchards and fishponds, and soon they were out of the town itself. At their left lay the midden reeking with the town’s waste, and townspeople were at its edge, hurling rubbish in and retreating swiftly. The noisome stench wafted over the road, and Simon was amused by the reaction of the riders. Some fell silent, a few covering their faces with their hoods, while others resorted to earthy humor, chortling at the disgust of their companions. Simon himself disliked the smell, but was used to it; Baldwin, he saw, curled his lip in disgust – the knight was from the country, and this putrefying stink was never so concentrated where he lived. There human waste was collected in ash to dry and lose its virulence until it could be spread on the fields to help the crops grow.
Baldwin was glad to be past the midden. The country air smelled sweeter beyond it, as if nature had put up an invisible barrier on the distance that man could pollute the atmosphere. Now instead of that malodorous reek, he smelled the fresh-cut grasses in the meadow, the sweet scent of herbs and occasionally the clean fragrance of wild garlic.
They rode on until they had travelled over a mile, and in all that distance the hounds picked up nothing. The berner worked them well and had them circling at either side of the road in case their prey had left it to avoid leaving a trace, but the harriers sniffed for a while, then returned to him, heads cocked on one side in enquiry, tails wagging slowly, and finally Simon had to admit defeat. “Let’s try the Brentor road,” he said.
The berner waved ahead. “There’s a track up there takes us back to Hurdwick. We can pick up the Brentor road there, rather than going all the way back to Tavistock and up.”
Simon nodded, and the berner spurred his horse on, calling to his harriers as he went. The rest of the posse trailed after.
After the events of the last couple of days, Baldwin was relieved to have some physical task to perform. It left his mind free to roam: at first over the things he had heard from the Venetians’ servant, but soon his thoughts turned back to Jeanne.
She was so beautiful, she was daunting. Baldwin was convinced she reciprocated his feelings, but it was hard to imagine why – he was not arrogant enough to lie to himself, and he knew that he was hardly the perfect suitor. He had only a small farm and estate, held under his duties of service to his lord, and even his manner of dress – and here he glanced down at his worn but comfortable tunic with a wry grimace – was an embarrassment, as Margaret had pointed out to him.
The berner led them off to the right at a fork, and they were on a smaller, grassy track that wound between thick hedges and ditches until they came to a crossroads where the berner took the harriers north. This trail soon turned back to the northeast, so that they were heading back almost parallel to their first route from the town. It passed by several small vills and bartons, and when they came to another crossed road, the berner let the dogs circle in case they might find a scent, but again they betrayed no excitement.
“Berner,” Simon called, “is this the Brentor road?”
“No, sir,” the berner called back calmly. “This is the road to Milton Abbot, but I wanted to make sure the buggers hadn’t come here instead of up to Brentor.”
Simon nodded. The berner obviously knew his business, and was checking all the roads which radiated from Tavistock. The abbey town sat in its valley with roads leading to north, east and west, though none south over the moors at the other side of the river, and the berner was working each trail as if it was the worn path of a deer in his search for the Venetians. They set off again to the next road. This was the one which led up the hill toward Brentor.
The berner set his harriers to test the road, egging them on with enthusiastic cries and whistles, and waited while they milled at the crossroads. Simon watched, the tip of his tongue protruding between his lips in his eagerness to see them take off, but then he sighed as dogs began to stop and sit and scratch. All around him, Simon could sense the men relaxing in their seats, letting lances fall a little from the vertical, slumping, one or two chatting. “Looks like we should have gone for the moors instead,” he said to Baldwin with resignation, but before the knight could comment, the berner edged closer.
“Look at her, sir.”
Following his pointing finger, Simon saw a bitch trotting slowly up and down a little distance away from the others. She paused, glancing back at the pack, her head set to one side with a comical expression of doubt, her brow wrinkled.
“She’s just found the trail of a fox or something,” the bailiff said dismissively, and turned to Baldwin.
To his surprise, the knight could barely control his excitement. Baldwin often hunted with his own hounds, and he recognized the signs. The bitch was dubious because of the strength of other scents, and he watched with bated breath. “Master berner?”
“Yes, sir, I reckon so. The bastards came this way,” the man said, after a scathing look at Simon.
The bailiff stared from one to the other. “You can tell from a dog doing that?”
“She’s the best, sir. She’s just making sure, you’ll soon hear.”
All at once there was a sharp yelping from her, which was taken up by the other hounds in the pack as they joined her, urgently setting their noses to the dirt of the road and sounding off as they caught the elusive scent. The barking and howling took on a persuasive quality, and the men all round began shifting in their saddles and gripping their arms more firmly as they saw that the hounds had the trail at last. Suddenly the pack moved.
It was an awesome experience for Simon. He had never before joined a large hunt and seeing the magnificent creatures in full spate was a little like watching the torrent in full flood rushing down the Lydford Gorge. The leader of the pack set up a long baying howl, then went silent with a dread purpose as he began to trot northward, the rest taking up position behind until he was the point of an arrowhead of harriers making off. As younger hounds caught up with him, the leader snapped at them over his shoulder, and hurried his pace. Others increased their speed to keep up, and there was soon an inevitability to their onward rush, which was made menacing by its sudden silence. The harriers were reserving all their strength for the chase and would not sound out again until they had caught their prey and held it at bay.
The berner whipped his mount without another word, his face showing his excitement and when Simon glanced at Baldwin, he saw the same look on the knight’s face. “Come on!”
It was like starting a horse race. Clapping spurs to his rounsey’s flanks, Simon felt the power surge through his horse’s hindquarters as it sprang forward with a sudden explosion of energy, and he had to crouch and grip its flanks with his knees to keep his seat. From behind him he heard the clatter of horseshoes on stone, then a quick scattering of hoofbeats on the densely packed earth of the roadway as riders kicked their mounts and found their own position in the melee, each man thrusting others from his path to make a clear space in which his horse might be able to forge ahead. A horse reared at his side, but the rider remained in control, and forced the animal to twist in mid-air, forelegs flailing, until it was facing the right way, and then he gave it its head.
The discordant, stumbling sound of many horses falteringly finding their pace gradually settled into a rhythmic drumming as they all cantered in unison, and suddenly the sound became a solid thundering. To Simon it was as if the horses were copying the pack. The harriers had formed a solid wedge-shaped group, the leader out in front, while the men behind formed another behind the berner. Baldwin, he saw, was restraining his Arab, which wanted to gallop off. She had the power and speed to overhaul any other mount in the group.
There was an awesome noise: leather squeaked and harnesses jangled as they rushed on, ever faster, the wind hissing and booming in Simon’s ears and all but deafening him, the clap and snap of cloaks as they billowed in the wind like sails, and over all the pounding, unified and terrible in its violent force, of the hooves hammering the ground beneath them. For a short second, the bailiff wondered what he would feel like seeing a chivalry of mounted knights charging toward him, but thrust the idea aside. His concentration was needed merely to stay on his beast.
They began to climb a hill, passing Forches Field where the Abbot kept his gallows, and rode over a short plain. At the far side, the hounds streamed around a loudly cursing farmer on a wagon, who struggled to keep his ox quiet as the harriers darted to either side of him, only to have the following riders gallop past. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Simon saw a man barge into another as they both tried to take the same route, and one fell, arms widespread, into a hedge, his horse continuing on alone, stirrups flying and bouncing by its side as it struggled, wild-eyed, to keep its place among the others.
Now they were on the great plain of Heath Field near Brentor, and the conical rock that gave the village its name stood stark on their right, the church at its summit a comforting sight in the bleak surroundings. Still they thundered on, the harriers as silent and daunting as the Devil’s own wish hounds in their implacable purpose.
