‘What’s your name, boy?’ he growled.
‘Gerard, Sir Bailiff.’
‘Well, Gerard, you must learn that, in future, when you come to the room of a man who has enjoyed your master’s hospitality, you should bring a pot of water or wine.’
He looked about him. This room was the main chamber for respected visitors – the servants and lower classes must sleep in the stables or put in the yard itself – and Simon stretched contentedly in the bed. For once he had been able to sleep alone. Usually when he came to the coinings, he was forced to share his bed.
This morning the chamber was quiet. There had been several guests the night before, but they seemed to have gone already. Most of the beds were already empty; only one still had an occupant, a yellow-faced, rather dissipated pewterer, who lay on his back, breathing in heavily, then puffing out gusts with faint but – now Simon could concentrate – deeply annoying, popping sounds. At the side of his bed was a small pool of vomit. Simon wrinkled his nose.
‘Doesn’t matter what you eat, there are always peas and carrot in it,’ he muttered.
‘Sir, the abbot… I mean… Oh! Sir, I am…’
Stifling a yawn, Simon looked up at the lad. ‘Don’t be flustered, just speak slowly and clearly. My head isn’t all it has been.’
‘Sir, the abbot asked me to call you because Wally has been found dead on the Moors.’
Fast asleep on a bench in the adjoining room, Hugh had a rude awakening when his master first roared in his ear to rouse him, and then booted him off the bench and on to the floor.
Simon stormed from the chamber, and his eruption, and the hasty slapping of Hugh’s boots on the flooring, woke the yellow-faced pewterer in the bed across from Simon. A scrawny man in his early thirties, he yawned, scratching at his thin beard and groin. Then he stood and walked to the window, gazing out through the branches of the tree that grew outside, and then, since all was silent, he returned to his bed and idly thrust a hand beneath the mattress, pulling out a leather satchel. Opening it, he rootled about inside for a moment, but then his face sharpened with the realisation that something was wrong. He emptied his satchel onto the bed, staring down at the contents with shock, his eyes dark with suspicion.
That the man was dead was not in question. Just the smell was enough for Simon’s belly to rebel. He had to swallow hard. Grabbing at the wineskin dangling from his saddle, he took a good gulp to wash away the bile. Hugh, on his pony at Simon’s side, reached for the skin, but Simon irritably slapped his hand away. His servant didn’t need it – or rather, there was a priority of need in which Hugh came a long way below his master.
His guide was Hal Raddych, the stern-looking miner Simon had watched at the coining. Below his hat’s brim and above his bushy beard, his left eye peered out intelligently enough, although his right had a heavy cast that made it confusing to speak to Hal face to face. He was reasonably wealthy, compared with other miners Simon had met, a steady man, honest and reliable, who worked with Hamelin not far away.
As stannary bailiff, Simon had grown to know most of the miners on the moors, and he thought that Hal was as fair-minded a man as could be found. Many weren’t. The harsh life of the miner seemed to forge men who had a certain resilience, a toughness of character which made them more prone to fighting even than the peasants who lived on the fringes of the wasteland. And those bastards were hard enough, Simon reminded himself.
Hal chewed at his inner lip for a moment, then said slowly, ‘Poor old Wally. You know, Sir Bailiff – Walwynus. You must have met him? Used to have his own small claim over there, beyond Misery Tor, down at the Skir Gut. Worked a stream. Had a good year some summers ago, but bugger all since, by all account. Wally tried to keep a smallholding going, and you know how difficult that’s been since the famine. What with the dreadful weather, it’s a miracle anyone can live by farming.’
Simon grunted in acknowledgement, staring at Wally’s remains. The body was curled, foetus-like, into a ball, hands and arms over his head in a posture of defence. Two fingers were missing, which wasn’t out of the ordinary: most miners lost fingers as a matter of course, just as timber workers and carpenters did. It was a natural risk of working with exceptionally sharp, heavy tools. Except in this man’s case, the fingers had gone recently, from the look of the fleshy mess where they had been. There was a balled piece of cloth nearby, clotted with blood, as though it had fallen from his fist as he died.
Simon reluctantly passed the wineskin to Hugh and let himself down from his horse. He had no wish to approach the corpse and inspect its death wounds, but he knew he must do a formal identification if possible. It was a bailiff’s duty. Personally, Simon was happy to leave all the actual handling of the corpse to the coroner and his jury. They were welcome to it, he thought queasily, standing over the body, waving under his nose an apple which he had wisely taken
