Hugh’s dour features visibly darkened. ‘Has that henchman tried to muck about with you again?’ he asked Petronilla.
She gave a sour laugh. ‘No – since I’ve kept well out of his way.’
Stephen looked serious. ‘You mustn’t do anything against him, Hugh. You’ll only get yourself into trouble. Leave him alone, but tell me if he tries something again so that I may rescue this poor girl.’
Hugh nodded. In silence he refilled his jugs and left the buttery to rejoin the guests in the hall.
But Stephen sat a while longer, holding Petronilla’s hand in his own and staring at the ground as if on it were written the answers to all his confusions.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In his home at Throwleigh, Jordan sat quietly in the corner of the room, his dark eyes never leaving the rocking form of his mother.
Christiana sat before the little fire, her daughter Molly cuddled on her lap, her figure casting a terrible, crone-shaped shadow against the far wall. It looked like a witch, swaying from side to side as she cast a spell of doom on them, waiting to leap upon the family and bring disaster to them all.
And the disaster had happened. There was no protection for a family that had no means of support, and if his father was thought to have killed Herbert, he was guilty of treason. Jordan wasn’t sure, but he thought his father could be burned alive for that. It was as vile an act as could be envisaged: it was still more wicked than ‘petty treason’, the murder by a wife of her spouse. Everyone knew that Edmund’s manumission, his formal release from serfdom, had been revoked by Lady Katharine, and it followed that everyone would believe that he had killed her son in revenge. He could expect no mercy.
Jordan felt the sobs rising in his throat once more, and sniffed hard to quell them, wrapping himself tighter in his blanket. The fire was low, but they had little wood left to burn, and it was very chill at this time of night. It was normal for Jordan to shiver himself to sleep throughout the winter and well into spring, and if it was too cold even for that, he would climb into the bed with his parents and sister. Now, with the house silent in the absence of his father, he wanted to cuddle up with his mother. He felt a hole in his very soul at the sight of her misery, and longed to ease her fear, and make things better – but he didn’t have the words. Somehow he knew that only another adult could do that.
He was hungry, but dared make no demand for food. There was none to be had, and asking for it would only set his mother off again into another frenzy of rage at her useless husband.
And it was all because his father had been arrested for running over Master Herbert, Jordan knew. His father – arrested, and for something Jordan knew he couldn’t have done. Fortunately, he and his friend had the thing that could demonstrate the priest’s guilt, and now he decided that there was no time to lose. He must go with Alan to see the knight, the man everyone said was so clever.
A shiver of fear upset his resolve. It was one thing to want to protect his father, to rescue him from prison, but to speak to a knight? When he was a lowly serf? It had been a shock for their family, to become slaves once more, but Jordan had speedily adapted to his new position. If anything, it had made his friendship with Alan even stronger – for now he was on the same footing as the older boy.
Jordan’s spirit quailed within him at the thought of speaking to a knight – and a Keeper of the King’s Peace at that. This Sir Baldwin was the most powerful person the boy had ever heard of, even superior to his old master, Squire Roger. Would he listen to a boy with a story such as his?
Baldwin and Jeanne joined the bailiff and his wife. They took their stand at some distance from the fire, nearer the trestles which were now being cleared of food.
Jeanne was struck by the change which had come over her husband. The quiet, introspective man she had married had gone, and in his place was this implacable stranger who had but one aim – to avenge the death of the young Master of Throwleigh. She had seen Baldwin at his work several times already, at Tavistock and in Crediton, but never before had he appeared to be so fired with grim determination.
He drank his pot off now, and held it out to Edgar to refill. ‘This wine is good.’
‘I am glad you like it, Sir Baldwin. It is from my last shipment from Bordeaux.’ Thomas had appeared as if from nowhere, and stood now at Baldwin’s elbow.
The knight nodded. ‘From Bordeaux? That is where the Fleming says he came from.’
‘Him?’ Thomas snorted. He was feeling more himself now, and he gave van Relenghes a cold stare. ‘I’d be surprised. He has more the look of a wandering mercenary than a soldier.’
A manservant dropped a bowl, which shattered, and Thomas gave a roar of anger, striding over to the man and slapping him on the face.
Baldwin and his wife exchanged a glance. ‘He is not quite so calm as he would like us to think,’ said Baldwin, and before Jeanne could respond, she saw his eyes light on the Fleming and his guard once more. ‘Simon, we haven’t managed to get that fellow Godfrey alone, and yet he is a prime witness as well,’ he went on.
‘Who, the weapons master? He’s said all he’s likely to, surely?’
‘I wonder. What if we could get him away from his employer?’
‘You’d need a polearm to separate the two of them,’ Simon joked.
‘Why, though?’ Jeanne asked suddenly. ‘I mean, why should the Fleming need to have a guard with him all the time even while he’s here, safe in a hall? On a journey any man of sense will have a guard, particularly now with so many outlaws on all the highways, but why in here? Even Thomas has left all his men out in the stables.’
Baldwin looked down at her proudly. He loved his wife for her beauty and abilities, but never had he felt such an attraction purely for the value of her common-sense. ‘My love, you have hit the nail perfectly.’
‘But what is the answer?’
Simon drained his own pot. ‘That’s simple. A man only has such a guard when he’s in danger, and the fact that he has Godfrey with him all the time is certain proof that he does not feel safe here in the hall.’
‘No friend of the squire’s would come to harm here,’ Jeanne protested.
‘No,’ her husband agreed, ‘and there is another explanation which Simon has missed, but…’ Before he could say more, his attention was drawn to the little huddled figure near the fireplace, Lady Katharine.
She slowly rose to her feet, and Baldwin saw her close her eyes as if in prayer. Her veil had been raised so she could drink, and now she dropped it back over her face. With a cautious precision that proved her consumption of wine had been considerably higher than usual, she stepped away from the roaring fire towards a cooler seat.
At her side moved her faithful retainers: Daniel and the maidservant Anney. Then Lady Katharine stumbled, and Baldwin saw two things that intrigued him.
The first was that Daniel instantly reached out and took her arm, gripping it carefully above the elbow. She rested her other hand on his for a moment, looking up into his face with gratitude, before gently extricating herself and sitting.
The second and equally interesting part of the tableau was Anney’s reaction to her mistress’s near-fall. The woman made absolutely no move to save her lady from falling. It was as if she had no interest in whether her mistress hurt herself or not.
Anney watched the people in the room dully. There was no pleasure in being here. It was hard enough to be away from her son, and the Lord God Himself only knew what Alan would get up to tonight without her there to keep him under control. She didn’t need the extra responsibility of looking after her lady while she received these men. Especially at this, the occasion of Herbert’s funeral.
Anney glanced at her mistress and was unnerved to see that Lady Katharine was watching her.
Are you thinking of Tom, Anney?‘
Anney nodded shortly. What else would she be thinking of, she wondered angrily, with all these fine, noble people here to celebrate the little life of Master Herbert? And yet what was Herbert but a useless fool, a boy who had let her own child die?
Perhaps a little of her bitterness of spirit transmitted itself to Lady Katharine, because she blinked again, quickly, as though about to break into tears, and looked away.
That day was all too clear in Anney’s memory: she supposed it always would be. The morning had been
