and today he was glad to be away from it.
As the sun touched the soil and heated it, it gave off a refreshing scent. The smell was of vigorous, healthy earth, rich and loamy, filled with rotted vegetation. It was impossible for Simon not to compare it with the desolate plains where he was bailiff. There the earth was so filled with moorstone and peat that only stunted trees and the poor grasses could survive. This part of Devon was where he had been raised, and here everything seemed full of vitality and energy. Even the very color of the soil was different. On the moors it was almost black, while in other areas, he had been surprised to see how dull and brown it looked, especially during the hot weather, when it appeared anemic.
Here, near Crediton, it was a uniform bright red, hearty and bursting with goodness; plants absolutely thrived on it. No matter whether they were trees, vegetables or herbs, all grew and blossomed with a vitality that was rare in other parts even of England.
After three or four miles, the lane curved round to their left, and started down the long, gently-sloping hill into Coleford. Simon remembered it as a pleasant little vill, with four or five cottages and houses on the busy road from Exeter to Plymouth. Some monks had a place there, too, he recalled, and would offer sustenance to travellers, but today they were not going so far as the vill itself. At the top of the steeper part of the hill, they turned off left to a small hamlet, and here they found Mary Butcher’s sister.
Ellen, who was married to Hal Carpenter, was a happy-looking, chubby woman in her late twenties. As the three men rode along the lane and into her yard, scattering the chickens and making her goat bleat in irritation, she was kneeling by a large stone, kneading dough. Hearing them, she sat back on her haunches, wiping strands of hair back under her cap as she surveyed her guests.
As Simon smiled and dropped from his horse, she stood and smiled back. “Are you lost, sirs? This isn’t the road for Plymouth.”
“No, we are looking for Ellen Carpenter.”
“That’s me,” she said, and gave him a smile so welcoming, he felt as if he had known her for years. “Can I offer you something to drink? I have ale.”
When she had fetched a jug and three wooden cups, they squatted with her round the stone while she continued kneading. Her children, of whom there were five that Simon counted, though they moved around so much there may have been more, peeped round tree trunks at the three important guests.
“You are sister to Mary Butcher, who lives in Crediton?” Simon asked, once the preliminary greetings had been offered and received.
“Yes, sir.”
She had the rosiest complexion, Simon thought, that he had ever seen. Hazel eyes with green flecks sparkled in the sun, and auburn tints in her hair glittered like gold. “Is she here? We would like to speak to her.”
She smiled at him, a little puzzled. “No, Mary’s not here. Why-isn’t she at her home in Crediton?”
“No,” Simon said disconcertedly. “We were told she was here.”
Baldwin asked, “Was she due to visit you here this week?”
“No, not especially. She usually turns up when she feels like it. I don’t know in advance. It’s not so easy to send a message from Crediton to here.”
“She often comes here, then?” Simon asked.
“Oh yes, fairly often. I don’t get to see her over there, mind, as I have all these to look after.” She waved a proprietorial hand at the animals and children all round. “She likes to get away from the smell and noise of the town and back to the country every so often, so she walks out here when she has the time. Her husband doesn’t mind.”
“That’s Adam Butcher?”
“Yes. Adam married her four years ago, just as his business was growing. It was a relief to us, I can say. We were beginning to think she’d never get a husband. She was already twenty-three by then. Now, me, I got wed when I was eighteen-a much better age. I had four children by the time I was twenty-three.”
“We were told she had come here on Tuesday, but you say you haven’t seen her?”
Her eyes became anxious. “You mean she’s disappeared? No one knows where she is?”
“I doubt it,” Baldwin said reassuringly. “I expect the apprentice-it was he who told us she was here-got confused. He did not strike me as being of the brightest. Do not worry. She will have gone to a friend, or maybe another sister?”
“No, sir. I am her only sister,” Ellen said, and her eyes held a haunted look.
“I can see why she would want to come here,” Baldwin continued. “It is a good little estate you have here.”
“Not bad, sir. The beans are good, and the peas did well. Better than last year, anyway. And my husband, he’s a good worker, and he’s often busy with the manor, mending carts and barrels. It keeps us in wheat and barley.”
Baldwin nodded. Peas and beans were plentiful at this time of year, and the chickens scratching in the dirt at his feet were all young, most looking only a few months old. They were fresh this year, so she and her husband were surviving well as free people. “Tell me, Ellen, how long has Mary been living in Crediton? Someone told me she was there some five or six years ago, before she married.”
“Yes, sir. She used to work in the cloth trade, weaving and doing some needlework. She stopped all that when she married, of course.”
“Of course. So she was living in town for more than six years?”
“Nearer eight, I should say. Since she was eighteen or nineteen.”
“How did she come to meet Adam?” Baldwin was watching her face intently, Simon noticed, and he wondered what the knight was driving at.
Ellen clearly felt she had no secrets. She gave a loud guffaw. “She didn’t; he came to meet her! The way she tells it, she was walking along the road one day, when he threw out some offal from his shop and spattered her all over. Well, she went mad, and stormed inside, and gave him a piece of her mind, threatening him with all sorts, saying she’d get the Constable on him, and the Keeper of the Peace, and just about threatening him with the posse of the county. She can be hard when roused, can young Mary, but glorious in her rage. Poor old Adam was smitten: never stood a chance. He was infatuated from the first.”
Smiling, Baldwin said, “He is more madly in love with her than she with him, you mean?”
“Oh yes,” she said absently, her mind still on the whirlwind romance and wedding, and then her eyes sharpened, and she gave him a quick look that he could not read.
“Does she love him, do you think?”
She gave this consideration, the smile still playing round her lips, but it had faded, and there was a touch of sadness as she nodded. “A little. But not enough. No, it would have been better if he didn’t love her so much. Then at least there would be some equality in their house. The trouble is, she’s not the sort to be excited by living with a man like him. He adores her, but she was always the sort to bore easily, and that leads to nagging.”
“Is she a nag, then?”
“With poor Adam, yes, though I daresay he’d deny it. He always was a poor fool. I expect he thinks she’s just being precise, and he isn’t. She tells him where to put his things-even his tools in his shop-and he won’t argue. He doesn’t want to upset her.”
“Not a solid foundation for a marriage,” Baldwin observed.
“No, sir. Not at all. But, to be fair, they both seem happy enough.”
“Yes, of course. Tell me, are you good friends with your sister?”
“There is none better. Whenever we have troubles, it is to each other that we turn.”
“Rather than your husbands,” Baldwin guessed conspiratorially.
“Certainly rather than them!” she laughed gaily. “There are some things which only a woman can understand.”
“And some secrets which can only be shared with another woman.”
“Oh, yes!”
“Such as men.”
She was suddenly quite still. Though her hands carried on, carefully turning and kneading the dough, the whole of the rest of her body was unmoving.
Baldwin stared at the ground pensively. “Ellen, have you heard about the company of mercenaries in
