Augerus turned to him and smiled, but there was in his face such a terrible sickly fear that Mark was hard put to return it.
The land was a natural bowl, Baldwin thought as they approached. It was a great depression surrounded by low hills. One miner trailed after them on a pony; ostensibly, as he said, because he was heading into Tavistock himself, but more likely, Baldwin considered, in order to see what the two travellers were doing here.
He was a swarthy fellow dressed in cheap fustian and leather, with grizzled hair, a thin wispy beard, and sharp eyes.
‘That there,’ he said, pointing a grimy finger at a great rounded mass directly ahead of them, ‘that’s Mount Misery, that is. Lots of men have died around the foot of it.’
‘Why is that?’ Baldwin asked. ‘The mire?’
They were following the side of a stream, but now they left it and climbed an incline. The hill to their right was a mass of tumbled rock, the ground to their left a grassy plain with small silvery gleams where water lay or ran.
‘The mire’s further north,’ the miner said, shooting him a look. He stared ahead and said nothing more for some minutes, then, as they breasted a small rise, he squinted ahead. Pointing again, he called, ‘Do you see that cross?’ Baldwin ambled his horse to the man’s side. A short way from their path was a small mass of tumbled rocks, with what looked like a well-made cross standing propped in the middle. ‘What is it?’
‘Childe’s Tomb. ’Tis said Childe was a hunting man, and he was out hunting here in the winter, when the snow began to fall. He knew he had to get home, but all was white. He couldn’t see anything. No sign of the trail, no hills, nothing. That’s what the weather can be like out here.’
Baldwin remembered Belstone in the snow. He nodded slowly. ‘When the snow falls, you had best find yourself beside a fire.’
‘Ah. True enough, Master,’ the miner said emphatically. ‘Childe, he had no fire. Only him and his horse. He couldn’t ride forrard because he didn’t know which way was forrard. He might ride straight into the mire, see? So he went over to a hill and got off his horse, and he killed the horse and disembowelled it, thinking, see, that he’d got shelter and heat all in one, and he climbed inside, away from the bitter wind.’
The coroner lifted his brows enquiringly. ‘And that worked?’
Baldwin motioned towards the cross. ‘Our friend called that a tomb, Coroner.’
‘Aye,’ the miner agreed, seemingly pleased that Baldwin had spotted the weakness of Coroner Roger’s suggestion. ‘Childe was found there days later, still inside his horse, as cold as the snow all about him.’
‘Wouldn’t he have been covered in snow?’ the coroner asked.
‘Maybe the snow had all gone. That was why they could see him.’
‘Oh. So he wasn’t that cold, then. If it was warm enough to drive off the snow, he must surely have…’
Seeing the glower sweeping over the miner’s face, Baldwin interrupted smoothly. ‘And why should the folk have seen fit to bury him here and with such a magnificent tomb? Was he much loved?’
‘’Tis said that he was a rich man, and he left a paper…’ He stole a glance at the coroner. ‘I think it was written on a piece of the horse’s hide, written in blood.’
The coroner gave a loud sniff of derision.
‘’Tis what’s said! Anyhow, this paper said that whosoever found and buried his body could have his lands. So the folks, when they heard, all came to get him. The monks of Tavvie, they got to him first, and they were all set to carry him home, when the people of Plymstock appeared. Childe’s lands were all Plymstock manor, and the folk there didn’t want them to be given to Tavvie, so they stood on the riverbank and threatened to steal the body back. Except the monks, they builded a little bridge and got over further up. And got him home to Tavvie and buried him.’
‘So we can find his tomb in Tavistock?’ the coroner asked.
‘Aye. You’ll find it there.’
‘So why was this tomb erected?’
Baldwin quickly said, ‘They buried him here, obviously, until they realised that the monks of Tavistock could benefit from his testament. Then the monks came and disinterred him and took him back with them as this good miner has said.’
‘He didn’t say…’
‘Perhaps we should simply continue?’ Baldwin said, and as they rode on, he mused, ‘There are so many ways for a man to die out here, so far from family and friends. It is a hard land.’
‘Not hard, Master,’ the miner corrected him. ‘Just unforgiving. You have to be hard yourself to survive out here.’
‘Do you think this dead miner Walwynus was hard enough?’ Baldwin asked curiously.
‘I did think so when he first came here.’
‘How long ago would that have been?’ Baldwin said.
‘Several years ago. He arrived with a friend, but they argued and one attacked the other. Wally lived, Martyn didn’t. Martyn was an arguing, vexatious man, while Wally was no harm to anyone, so it was easy to see that Wally had been innocent. He never fought, normally. Here on the moors you have to fight sometimes, even if you don’t want to. Wally wasn’t that hard. So he’s dead.’
The coroner nodded. ‘I told you I remembered this area, Baldwin, that I’d held an inquest here? It must have been Wally who killed the other fellow. What was the victim’s name?’
‘Martyn Armstrong. He was a vicious bastard, he was. An evil tongue in his mouth, too. There were plenty were glad that Wally got rid of him.’
‘That’s the bugger!’ the coroner cried with satisfaction. ‘Yes, Martyn the Scot, I remember now. The two men had
