‘So you came down here.’
‘Aye, I came here, every day cursing Wally for leading his men to my woman and letting them rape her after her kindness to him. It was only last week that I learned he hadn’t. He had stayed with the men and tried to lead them around her house, but they met a party with Sir Tristram and got separated. By the time Wally met them again, she was dead. They tried to escape by coming south, and Wally dared not confront his companions, for he knew he needed them to survive, the coward, but once they were settled here, he killed Martyn for her murder. They were drunk and Wally couldn’t help but taunt him. When he accused Martyn, the mad Scot went for him, but Wally won the advantage.’
‘He was happy to live with the man out on the moors until then?’ Simon asked doubtfully. ‘Even though he thought the man had murdered the girl?’
‘By then the man Martyn was his only comrade in a terrifying world. Imagine if you were forced to flee to Scotland, Bailiff. Would you question a companion closely, if he was your sole contact with your old world? I think not.’
‘Perhaps. I hope I never suffer such an existence. What of the third man?’ Simon wondered, ‘Did he come here too? Or did he die on the way?’
Peter shrugged. ‘I care not. I hope he is dead and broiling in hell, but if I met him on the street, I would think it my duty to try to, save his soul. I might even shake his hand. Repellent thought.’
Shortly afterwards the bell began to toll, and Peter sighed and gave his farewell, making his way to the church and the last service of the day.
Simon was strangely happy to see him go. He had never heard a bad word about Brother Peter; the almoner was known among the townspeople to be a gentle, intelligent and mild-mannered man, but something about him today made Simon feel cautious. The monk had been interested to hear about the dead man, and if Simon was right and Peter had attempted to distract him, maybe drawing him away from the real killer and instead focusing his attention on the miners, that could indicate some form of complicity or guilt.
It was something that he should ask about, he decided. Turning, he was about to make his way back to the welcoming room and ask for a fresh pot of ale, when he caught sight of a figure standing at the top of the stairs leading to the guest rooms: Sir Tristram.
The knight was staring after the disappearing monk. As though feeling Simon’s eyes upon him, he glanced down, his face empty of any emotion. Without even acknowledging the bailiff, he suddenly turned away, into the guest room, leaving Simon aware of a sense of grim foreboding.
Cissy pushed the last of her customers from the pie-shop and shut up the door, dropping the peg into place on the latch so it couldn’t be lifted, then shooting the bolt.
She was tired. After the coining the previous week, they hadn’t stopped. Sunday, supposedly the day of rest, had been hectic: Emma, Hamelin’s wife, who was always struggling to feed her children, while her man lived out on the moors for seven weeks in every eight trying to make enough money to keep them all, had burst into tears in the street, Joel in her arms and three of her brood hanging on her skirts, and Cissy had pulled her into the parlour, sitting her in one of Nob’s chairs and warming a little spiced wine for her. She had always kept the toys her own son had played with, and now they were a boon. She brought them down from the shelf in their box and the three children fell upon them with squeals of delight. When Nob poked his head about the door, Cissy glared at him until he shamefacedly disappeared, returning to the alehouse he had just left.
‘You sit there, maid. You’ll soon feel better.’
Emma sobbed into her skirts, unable to speak while Cissy clattered about the place, cutting up one of the pies Nob hadn’t sold the previous day and setting the pieces on the box for the boys, then slicing another in two for Emma. She had a bread trencher, and she put the pie on it, filled a large cup with the wine, and held it near Emma until she could smell it.
The girl looked at it, her brown eyes watery. She was not particularly attractive, with her large, rather flat nose, and the almost circular shape of her face, but her heart was good, and Cissy had sympathy for any woman who must raise six children, five of them boys, on her own. Many other women were in the same situation, of course, but that didn’t make it any less tiring. What’s more, poor Emma had lost both her parents and her husband’s during the famine, so there was no family to help her. She had to rely on neighbours and friends with young families, and sometimes such people couldn’t do much.
‘What is it, maid? Things got on top of you?’
‘It’s my little Joel. He’s fading away.’
The mite was only a year old, but scrawny, and hadn’t ever had much of an appetite. Prone to crying, he was probably more than half the reason Emma was always so tired, because his whining wail could be heard all through the night, and Cissy knew that he kept Emma from her sleep.
‘He’s not eating?’ she asked.
‘Oh, he’s eating a bit, but not enough. I don’t know what to do!’
Cissy listened to the girl with a sense of futility. Emma was on the brink of despair. Her husband’s venture was petering out and he was scurrying about trying to find a fresh deposit, but so far there had been no luck. It was maddening, but there
