felt entirely betrayed.’
‘Oh, I can imagine a man killing when he realised his wife had betrayed him like that,’ Redcliffe said, ‘but not the other deaths. The wife, maybe, while in hot blood, but that case was not a hot-blooded affair. It had been carefully planned. He slew the family with a gang of his henchmen. They were so subtle and careful that they all escaped the city before the hue and cry. It was only when the poor dry-nurse recovered herself enough to raise the alarm that people realised anything had happened.’
He shook his head, frowning slightly. ‘You know, Sir Baldwin, it helped me a little. I had not yet paid off the last of the money I owed him, and God’s body, but I had no reason to feel sympathy for him. Yet I do feel sorry that he died in that way. It was a hideous death. And the Squire was found in his manor near Hanham, denying that he had any part in the murders, the deceitful fellow.’
‘Men will deny their crimes,’ Baldwin said heavily. ‘Even when their lies are tested and proved false.’
‘As happened here,’ Redcliffe said. He glanced at Baldwin, who was turned in his saddle and now gazed over his shoulder at the way behind them. ‘You are worried, Sir Baldwin?’
‘There is one thing that concerns me,’ the knight admitted, turning forward once more.
‘You are worried that those fellows might follow us? I don’t think so. The way that you bested them in the bedchamber was surely enough to persuade them all to relinquish any ambitions against me. Hah! The bearded man would scarcely be able to walk with the prick you gave his side.’
‘No,’ Baldwin said slowly. ‘My thought was that, while you have been enormously lucky so far, and have travelled by curious routes, yet twice you have been discovered and attacked.’
‘I am surely the most unlucky of men.’
‘Or there is a man following you who has pointed you out,’ Baldwin said. ‘Someone so committed to his task that he is prepared to follow you for many leagues to rob you – or to kill you.’
Robert Vyke was woken by a kick to his belly, and he curled into a ball, retching on his empty stomach.
‘Get your arse up, you bladder of piss!’
Forcing himself onto all fours, Vyke managed to lever himself upright, taking tight hold of a metal staple in the wall. The pain in his leg was a fire that seared his soul, and the bruises from last night were sore and throbbing.
‘Let me speak to your Bailiff,’ he managed to croak.
‘Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for good,’ the man snarled. He was a big, bull-bodied fellow, short but incredibly strong, with a face that was red from cider, wearing a four-day beard of coarse black stubble. In his hand he held a short length of thick rope, that hurt like a cudgel when he swung it, as he had last night.
Once more Robert Vyke had good cause to curse his miserable fortune.
He had come here, to the nearest house, as soon as he had found the head. It was his duty and his responsibility to call up the posse to discover the perpetrator of this foul murder as soon as he could. The rule was that first finder must go to all the nearest houses, at least three of them, and announce that a body had been found. Then it was up to the local officers to demand that a Coroner be called, and that the jury gather so that the whole matter could be investigated and all pertinent details noted. All too often men who found bodies would run quickly in the opposite direction to avoid being attached, which meant you had to pay a fine to guarantee that you would come back when the Justices convened their court.
‘All I did was–’
‘You came to the wrong place if you thought you could kill a man like that and get away with it,’ the man spat.
‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Robert said. His belly was a mass of anguish now, both from the beatings he had endured and from the hunger.
‘No one else here could have done it,’ the man said unsympathetically and swung his rope-end.
It caught Robert on the side of his jaw, and he felt blood begin to course down his face as the flesh was slashed open. Wordlessly, he stumbled forward, and almost fell into the hands of the men waiting outside.
Blinking in the sudden sunshine, he tried to grab at something to hold himself upright, but his hand missed the door’s lintel and instead he found himself snatching at thin air. With a cry of despair, he tumbled to the ground again, stifling a scream of agony as his bad leg slammed into a stone.
‘Get up!’ his gaoler said again, poised to kick, but this time a sudden command made him pause.
‘Stop! I know you are as dull-witted as the sheep in the pasture, Halt, but you will not kick that fellow again. It looks as though you’ve been using him for a game of camp-ball as it is, man. Dear God, have you killed him?’
‘I just held him here, sir, until you could come to view him.’
‘You have misused him appallingly. Someone get a bucket of water and wash the poor devil’s face. If you seriously think that this man is a danger, when he has been so badly abused already, you are a bigger fool than I thought.’
‘Coroner, I–’
‘Haven’t fetched the water yet. Get to it, man, or I’ll have you gaoled instead of him. Understood?’
Robert Vyke heard all this, but it was too much of an effort to open his eyes. He remained lying on the ground, his whole soul encompassed by the flames that rose from his wound. He wondered if the pain would cease when the leg finally burned away entirely, or whether the flames of agony would continue up his frame to engulf him.
‘Open your mouth, man. Drink this.’
He did as he was commanded, and a blessed gulp of ale soothed his throat. A second gulp, and his eyes could open again, and take in his surroundings.
There was a circle of faces about him. All scruffy fellows generally, with worn linen shirts and threadbare hosen, apart from the short, tubby clerk with black hair, who stood nearby, an anxious expression in his pale brown eyes. He held a reed in his hands, and was prepared to scribble notes on behalf of Vyke’s rescuer. The latter was a tall, dark-haired man clad in a crimson tunic and heavy brown cloak. He had blue eyes and a perpetual smile on his round, amiable face. He was standing with his legs spaced widely, thumbs stuffed in his war belt, and staring down at Robert.
‘Master, you have suffered a considerable amount in recent days. Did that cretin Halt cut your leg like that?’ he said.
‘No, sir, that was in a pothole.’
‘A hole in the road did that to you?’
‘There was a bent and damaged dagger in the hole, and it caused this cut.’
‘I see,’ the man said, and smiled kindly.
‘It is in my pack. The man Halt took it last night. It’s a good knife, with jewels in the hilt.’
‘Is this true, Halt?’
Reluctantly, the squat man grimaced and went into his hovel to fetch Robert’s belongings. The dagger was separate, and he did not meet Robert’s accusing stare, merely passing it to the Coroner, who turned it over and over with a surprised look about him. ‘This is a valuable knife, masters. The man who lost this would have been seriously discomforted. And you say this was in the hole?’
‘Yes,’ Robert said, and told the story about his falling into the hole and then trying to bend the blade back into a straighter line and finding the body.
‘Where was this head, then, fellow?’
‘In the little shaw over there,’ Robert said. ‘I came here as first finder to report it.’
‘I found him in there, Sir Stephen, and knocked him on the pate to hold him until you could get here,’ Halt said proudly.
‘Yes,’ Robert Vyke said, ‘this fool held me and beat me. He said I must have killed the man myself. I don’t even know who it is!’
‘Halt is a fool of the first order,’ the Coroner said. He turned to Halt and suddenly swung his gloved fist
