‘No. If we were to ride around the north side of the moor, you’d be right,’ the coroner agreed. ‘But I didn’t intend that.’
‘Which way do you want to go, then, Sir Roger?’
‘Over the middle.’
Baldwin considered this. ‘You do realise how quickly the mist can come down?’
‘I have been on the moors and lived to tell the tale when that happened to me,’ Coroner Roger said lightly. ‘No, I merely wish to see the place where this death happened before we go to Tavistock and hear what people think we wish to hear.’
Baldwin nodded, but he was not content. Even when they had mounted their horses and he could see that the sky was almost devoid of clouds, that the top of the nearby hill was smooth and an apparently easy ride, and that the ground underfoot was dry and not at all boggy, he still felt a nagging anxiety.
‘Come on, Sir Baldwin. Courage!’
They had left the inn, and were riding down the main street, past all the houses in their burgage plots on either side, and then turned right at the bottom of the road, heading for the great hill Baldwin had seen before.
‘I am not fearful,’ he said stiffly. ‘Yet I swore to my wife that I would avoid spending too much time on the moors. Every time I visit, there is death and murder.’
‘Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’
Baldwin grunted. He could not put his feelings into words. He was aware of a curious awe about the-moors which bordered on the superstitious; probably, he told himself, because his wife’s attitude had coloured his own. Earlier this year, before the double disasters of the tournament at Oakhampton and then the murders at Sticklepath, he would have scoffed at the idea that the moors could themselves be unlucky or fated, but now he was growing to feel if not a fear, certainly a degree of apprehension.
‘How do you know where we are to go?’ he asked. ‘I thought you only knew that the body was over towards Tavistock.’
‘It is. It’s down near Fox Tor. I know that way a little – there was a knife-fight there some years ago and a man died, and I had to go there to hold the inquest. It was one of my first cases, so of course I recall it well.’ Cheerfully, he related the tale of a man who had come to the area with a friend, both seeking to become miners, but then one day they argued, and one stabbed the other.
Baldwin listened with only half an ear. They had followed the narrow lane for some hundreds of yards, with the land rising steeply on their left, while on their right there was an area of pasture with a small stream beyond, chuckling merrily. Their track took them right, down a dip and up the other side, and here Baldwin realised that they were climbing the hill.
From a distance it had looked immense, like a great bowl which God Himself had inverted on the horizon, and Baldwin was glad that the daunting sight of it was concealed by the thick woods that grew here at its base. In among some of them pastures had been cut, and the woods were receding as the men from the borough cut their winter logs and coppiced and cleared, but there were enough trees to hide the vast bulk.
They wound upwards, and then took a left fork. ‘No point climbing to the top,’ the coroner muttered as he led the way. ‘This is the peat-cutters’ track.’
The track led between two walls, both of which had bushes and trees growing in them and reaching high overhead, creating a tunnel of verdure. At their feet, it was metalled with rocks of moorstone which had sunk to an even level, so that packhorses could pass up here even in the worst of the winter weather, and Baldwin was glad of it because at the side of the trail was a trickle of water. If there were no stones, this would soon become another quagmire.
The way climbed, but more shallowly, and at last they were out into the open, leaving the trees behind.
Baldwin took a deep breath. The last time he had been up on the moors he had seen another death, and it had touched his soul with sadness. That was partly why he was growing to detest the moors, because he could only ever associate them with death and murder. Not that this visit would make him any more content, with another murdered man at the end of the journey.
Here, though, it was hard to view the surrounding landscape With anything but awe and delight. The ground dropped away to their left, while on their right was the steeper rise to the summit, the side of the hill scattered with a thick clitter of stones. A tough climb on foot.
Coroner Roger took him on, past a strange little triple row of standing stones. ‘God knows what they’re doing here!’ and on to a lower hill. From here, he pointed south. ‘All this land is the King’s. He must have magnificent hunts over here, eh?’
Baldwin could not help but agree. As they trotted on, he marvelled at the odd, soft beauty of the place. It was as though the only people alive were he and the coroner. No noise of axe or pick reached their ears, and no house could be seen. There was only the endlessly rolling little hills, mostly smothered in a bright mantle of purple heather.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the Coroner said, smiling at the sight of Baldwin’s face.
‘Very!’ Baldwin twisted in his saddle to take it all in. Some hills were surmounted by great hunks of stone, while others were smooth, shallow ripples in the grass and heather. Here and there a stream cut through a hillside, casting a sharper shadow like a gash in the
