small battle at the very entrance to her hall, she was close to collapse.
Stephen saw the vacuity of her expression and walked to her side. He touched the cross at his waist, his face filled with compassion, then reached out towards her, but his hand hovered a few inches from her shoulder, as if he did not dare interrupt her thoughts.
Simon felt that in that simple, humble gesture, Stephen had given him more of an insight into his character than all the sermons he had heard the cleric give or the conversations he had held with the man. The priest might appear cold and unfeeling, even perhaps cruel sometimes, but he was still a man, and perhaps, Simon thought, watching him from the corner of his eye, perhaps he was a man with the same desires as any other, no matter what his oaths implied. For there was a hint of reverence in his way of standing there next to his mistress, like a knight who has been overwhelmed by the beauty of a lady.
Lady Katharine looked up at last, noticing the silence that had gradually fallen all about her. Seeing Godfrey at its centre, ready to make some sort of announcement, she gave a small frown and waved her hand. ‘Do you wish to speak, Master Godfrey? Please go ahead.’
‘If you are sure, Madam,’ he said, and shot a look at Thomas.
‘I doubt whether there is anything you could say which would surprise me. Is it about Thomas trying to make me sell off parts of my land?’
The merchant was sitting upright now, and had fixed him with a piercing – no, Godfrey amended, a threatening stare – but one in which the fear of personal discovery was all too evident. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ Thomas said gruffly.
‘On the day your son died, my Lady, this man arranged to meet my master. Sir James demanded that I should be present, in case of any risk to himself, and I thus overheard their entire discussion. I think Sir James has already told you the general tenor of what they discussed.’
She nodded, with a contemptuous glance in her brother-in-law’s direction. ‘Yes. Thomas demanded money in order to persuade me to sell parts of my land to van Relenghes. My brother-in-law was prepared to sell his nephew’s birthright for his own gain.’
‘That’s right, my Lady,’ Godfrey acknowledged, and lowered his head. ‘And I confess that I held my tongue about it, and for that I beg your pardon. There were two reasons, my Lady: first was the consideration that I was paid by my master, and for a man like me that consideration must carry weight; but second was my belief that something odd was being planned by my master. If I were to leave his service I could not have discovered what he intended.’
‘Which was?’ Simon interrupted.
‘Nothing more than the ravishing of Squire Roger’s wife.’
There was a shocked intake of breath from the gathering. Simon was quiet with anger. ‘You mean this?’
‘Oh yes, sir. James van Relenghes is a conceited fool who believes that no woman can reject his advances. You see, he wanted revenge on the squire. My master once captured a hostage and ransomed him, allowing him to go free. The prisoner was a French Duke, and the squire – your husband, my Lady – heard of this and forced the Fleming to repay all the money he had won. All hostages of rank were to have been sold to the King in order that he could ransom them himself, and he paid a reasonable rate, but van Relenghes was greedy. He wanted the lot. Squire Roger got the money and gave the Fleming some time to escape before he told the King – thus in van Relenghes’s mind Squire Roger cost him a king’s ransom and his career.’
‘So he was motivated by revenge?’ Simon said.
‘Yes, sir. The Fleming hated the squire, and wanted to mete out punishment on his wife and child. Well, I think he thought the best way to ruin the Lady Katharine was to show she was guilty of infamy, taking another man soon after her husband’s death. And he thought he could make her take him. I don’t think he wanted to merely damage her reputation. No, I reckon he thought that by showing her to be unfaithful to her husband’s memory, he could also hint that she was adulterous during the squire’s life, that he was cuckolded. That way the Fleming would get back at the man he really hated.’
‘And you chose to keep this secret?’
‘I remained at his side all the time to ensure my Lady was safe. Perhaps I was wrong, but if I had told of the scheme, my master must have found out that someone had spoken. It would not be hard to guess that I had opened my mouth. And I thought it better to remain with him, to see what else he would attempt. Especially since I had my own debt of honour to repay. I used to fight with the squire – oh, many years ago. So did another man with whom I have spoken.’ He saw no reason to say that the man who had given him much of his information was Thomas’s own servant, Nicholas.
Lady Katharine gave him another nod, slower this time.
‘And now, my Lady, allow me to make amends to you for my secrecy. Here and now, I accuse your brother- in-law of murdering Herbert, your son.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘You’ve been here all the time?’
In the stable, Nicholas winced as Anney wiped some of the blood from his nose. ‘Yes,’ he mumbled, his voice nasal and thick with pain. ‘I couldn’t go and see you, though, could I? What would you have done?’
‘Probably hit you, you bastard,’ she said evenly. It was true: she would have been happy to hit him if he was standing – but not now, not like this. Nicholas was a picture of dejection, sitting on the stool with his head tilted back so the blood wouldn’t flow down his shirt any more and would have an opportunity to clot. ‘I don’t think I’d have managed to get you so well as this, though.’
Nicholas wheezed through his open mouth. There was a dull ache between his eyes, and he had a desperate urge to scratch his ruined nose, but he daren’t touch it, not yet. ‘I’ll get the sod back for doing this.’
‘You think so? After he put four of your friends down and then you as well, you really think you’d have a chance against him?’ She patted away another dribble of blood from the tender, shattered skin, and felt him flinch as her damp cloth touched him, but not as much as when she said, ‘What happened to your wife?’
‘What of her? She left me.’
‘Left you?’
He curled his lip. ‘She got upset when she found me in bed with a strumpet.’
Anney leaned back and surveyed him. There was truth in his face; he wasn’t of a temper to lie, not now, and Anney, for the first time in the ten years since he had been taken from her, realised how lucky her escape had been. Nicholas was no more than a brute who would drink himself into oblivion whenever he had an opportunity, then beat his wife for any one of a number of imagined slights, and turn to a pox-ridden whore at the first opportunity to prove his virility.
It was hard to believe that she had spent so long pining after him, wishing he hadn’t been taken back to his first, legal wife. But he was still the father of her children, and Anney was content to look after his wounds because he was also the only man who had ever held her heart. And although she had no wish to discuss the affair with him, it gave her some comfort to know that the father of her dead boy was with her.
The boy whose death had been caused by that spoilt brat Herbert.
‘Eh? What’s that? You say you think I… The man’s mad!’ Thomas spluttered, puce in the face.
Godfrey ignored him and went on with his statement. ‘My evidence is this, Lady: he and his servant left us because he saw your maid Petronilla approaching and didn’t want to be overheard by her, or so he said. She came ambling idly along, and my master, who thought she might be able to give him information about you, tried to hold her up and talk. I had no wish to listen to his flattery and lies, so I took my horse a few yards away and left them to it.
‘Then there was a cry up on the hill, away near the top. When I looked up, I saw the priest thrashing about him with a stick at the furze, shouting out in the most unholy fashion about boys generally, but your son, and his friend Alan in particular. I had no idea why at the time, but I heard the priest shout something about slings. Now I think I understand why.’
Simon moved a little, so he could glance at the priest.
Stephen did not look up, but kept his head bowed as if in prayer, and the bailiff was convinced he was hiding
