Most, when a child died, had to shrug and try to produce a replacement. There was little point in worrying unduly about the ones who died, not when so many remained, needing help to survive.

But Simon had pinned all his hopes on the boy. After so many years of waiting for a child who could live more than a few weeks or days, for all their children apart from Edith and Peterkin had died very young, there was the double agony of knowing that his heir too was gone. Simon must have a son to allow his family to continue, and Baldwin could all too easily comprehend the agony of knowing that there was nobody to carry on the name. He had the same pain himself.

“My lord! Bishop!” The door was flung open, and now Roger burst in, wild-eyed and panting.

“Calm yourself, lad!” Stapledon ordered, staring at his young rector. “What in the Lord’s name is the matter?”

“Is…is it my husband?” Margaret stuttered, paling with a quick intuition. “What is it? Where is he?”

“Your husband?”

Baldwin shook his head. “Simon went out to walk off his meal, that is all. What have you seen?”

“Sir, I don’t know-but I’m sure something’s going on in the alley by the jail. There’s noise like a lot of men talking low. I really think you should send someone to investigate.”

“Why?” asked Baldwin. “Maybe it was a party on their way home from a tavern.”

“No, sir. They weren’t walking, they were keeping quiet, like men planning a riot.” Roger told them about the sounds near the alley’s entrance, and Baldwin’s face hardened.

“Bishop, I think I should check on this. There’s no way to tell, of course, but we have heard today that some of the mercenaries might be plotting to remove their captain. If they are, I do not want them to kill him here in Crediton.”

“No, of course not,” Stapledon patted Margaret’s hand. “See? It’s nothing to do with your husband.”

She smiled wanly, and looked away, but not before Baldwin had seen the fear in her eyes. “Edgar? Get Hugh. I think he’s asleep in the buttery again. And tell Peter where we’re going. Ask him for two of his men, just in case we need help, and tell them to bring weapons. Then come back here.” As soon as he finished Edgar disappeared, and they heard a sleepy voice complaining at being woken. “You, Roger. You must come with us and show us where you heard this noise.”

It was the faint awareness that something was not right which propelled him on. He had no doubt that his friend was able to protect himself: Simon Puttock, he knew, was a capable man in a fight. Baldwin had seen the proof of that often enough-usually the knight felt it was his task to control his friend when Simon became too heated, for the latter was apt to lose his temper, much like the red-headed men from the north whom Baldwin looked on as mad. The bailiff was a staunch ally in a fight, but he had been gone for a long time, and Baldwin felt the same trepidation that agonized Margaret.

It took little time to get to the alley, and Roger pointed at it with his stick. He could see that the tall knight was concerned, and his very silence indicated how perturbed he was at the disappearance of his friend.

Baldwin stared frowning into the alley, and then marched in without a word. The others followed him in silence, only to halt. Some little distance away they could hear the muffled sound of crying, which suddenly rose and was cut off.

Rollo was petrified with terror as his crying and weeping faded to a mumble. He stood, staring down at the two bodies, pawing at his mother, avoiding contact with the man who had fallen by her side. The stranger was unknown, and his mother had always told him to be cautious with people he did not know.

She had been lying for a long time, but no matter how often he prodded and nudged her, she would not wake. Rollo had seen others who had died, but he refused to accept the possibility that his mother could have. She would never have left him alone.

The alley was dark, but he was used to that. He and his mother had never had a home, and he was accustomed to sleeping outside with her, taking what meager protection from the elements they could by hanging up her cloak from a nail on a wall to form a makeshift tent and huddling together beneath it in the worst of weathers. More commonly he would find himself left alone in a room while his mother spoke to a man in a separate chamber. He had often jealously watched the children of townsfolk as they played and shouted. Rollo would never know such pleasures, because his mother had done something wrong.

He could not comprehend what it was that they were being punished for. They were both somehow guilty of a great crime, and it made them have to live apart from the other people of the town, constantly in fear. Rollo was six. If he had been the son of a merchant, he would be learning the trade he had been born to, or discovering the skills of a knight if his father had earned enough money and had an eye to the future. At the very least he could expect to be accepted into a farming community. But he and his mother were forced to beg and avoid others in case they were considered a nuisance.

And now his mother had fallen asleep, with this stranger beside her, and the other man had gone.

The sound of stealthy footsteps made him look up warily. He knew he must keep away from the men of the town-his mother had said so. She had always warned him to avoid the people who lived there, not that he had needed to be told. He had always known he was different. People looked at him, when they noticed him, with distaste, a kind of loathing. They scared him. He knew he was safe with his mother, but he was unsure of everyone else in Crediton-though he had no idea why.

Cautious, quiet noises approached slowly, and the boy’s eyes widened.

The man, the odd one with the giggle who had embraced his mother and then knocked this man down, he had moved slowly. Rollo had seen him. As the fallen man had reached out to him, the giggling one had hit him, and the nice one had fallen. Rollo had seen the face of the odd one, and it had scared him, He did not want to see him again. Turning, he stared round with wild fear. The walls crowded in on him, dark and fore-boding, but there was a hole at the base of one-the escape route for the rats that lived inside.

It took him but a moment to leap across the ground and lie down, wriggling round and shoving himself inside. A moment later a nervous group of men from neighboring houses appeared at the entrance.

Later, Baldwin peered in, his hand on his sword. He was perplexed-he could see little in the deeper darkness of the side-alley, and decided to investigate. Motioning to the others to stay, he carefully walked in. Without looking, he knew Edgar was close behind him. Edgar hardly ever left his master unprotected, always taking his place behind and to Baldwin’s left where he could protect the knight from a sudden assault. It had been so now for more years than Baldwin wanted to remember, ever since their time together in the Knights Templar, when Edgar had been his man-at-arms, and there was no one Baldwin would have preferred to have beside him in a fight.

The light from the stars gave a silver sheen to the trodden dirt of the alley. This was a poor area, and the town would not spend good money on cobbles for the people who lived here. There would be no point when none of the residents could afford a horse, let alone a cart. Rubbish lay around: old staves from barrels piled into a mound for firewood, tatters and rags of cloth too worn and threadbare to be of use, a mess of bones and reeds from a hall, and odds and ends of leather tossed aside from one of the tanners’ works.

Edgar wrinkled his nose in elegant distaste. “It astonishes me that people can live in such squalor.”

Glancing down at something he had stepped on, Baldwin nodded. It was a dead rat. There was more scuffling ahead, from a hole under a building, and the knight irritably wondered why people didn’t destroy the creatures-they caused such damage to houses and stores, chewing through sacks of grain and ruining the valuable food saved through the summer months. They should not be left to run free, doing harm wherever they went. He was tempted to go to the hole and shove his sword in, to see how many of the vile creatures were inside.

“Master!”

Edgar’s hissed exclamation made Baldwin whirl round, and he quickly forgot the rats. Running to the two slumped bodies, he crouched by them. He frowned at the skinny, gray-clad woman, and sighed. Feeling for a pulse, he bit his lip. He could recognize her now, the poor woman who had begged alms from Sir Hector. “Who did this to you?” he murmured. “Was it another man you had begged from? Another man who wanted revenge for some imagined slight? A man who had waited for a woman to meet him, and who then took his frustration out on you? You lived in miserable poverty, and you have died in it.”

“What, sir?”

Baldwin shook himself out of his reverie and moved on to the next figure. “God’s blood! Simon, what were you doing in here? And why,” his eyes moved to the woman beside him, “were you here with her?”

Вы читаете Crediton Killings
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату