30 - King's Gold (21 page)

He then pulled a knife from his belt and began to cut his meats, shoving each piece into his mouth with gusto. Only when the bread was gone, and his trencher clear of all meats and leaves, did he lean back and take up the third quart of ale, a beatific smile spreading over his face.

‘There now, that feels much better,’ he said. ‘Where’s your master, Hugh? Did you say he was away? What about his wife, eh?’

‘They’re at Exeter. Seeing their daughter and grandson,’ Hugh said.

‘That so, eh? Right. I’ve urgent messages for him. You’d best tell me how to reach him there.’ Sir Richard glanced out through the open window. The sky to the south was darkening, with pink and red and orange clouds standing still as the sun sank to the west, out of sight. ‘Can’t go tonight, though. We’ll have to go in the morning.’

‘I can’t leave here,’ Hugh objected. ‘My master told me to stay and look after the place.’

‘He’ll want you with him, when he hears my news,’ the knight said with certainty.

Mickleton

Alured and the three men guarding Master Matteo di Bardi were conscious of the trees and bushes on either side as they rode up towards the village, and their eyes moved from one possible hiding-place to another.

For a London man, this landscape was alarming. Alured would rather be walking alone and unarmed in a narrow alley in London, than here. Any tree trunk could conceal a bowman, while all the greenery about the ground would be ideal for a determined band of outlaws ready to make an ambush. Alured had heard of many bands which roamed about the kingdom preying on poor travellers, and he had no intention of becoming one of their victims.

It was as they were approaching the village, dusk darkening the countryside around them, and as the men about him were beginning to relax, that they saw the man walking along in front of them.

He looked as though he had spent many days on the road already, and from his scuffed and muddied boots to his worn hat, he was a picture of exhaustion. Alured paid him little heed, but when he heard Matteo give a sharp intake of breath, he hurriedly turned in his saddle. ‘Master?’

‘Dolwyn?’ Matteo was staring at the fellow with a gaping mouth. ‘I thought you must be dead! What have you been doing?’

‘You want me to tell you?’

Matteo threw a look at Alured. ‘No, no, you are right. Master Alured, please take these other men with you to the vill. Find a tavern to rest in. I shall follow on shortly.’

‘I’ll stay,’ Alured said. ‘You could be in danger.’

‘There is none here. You know my man . . . He is my confidential adviser.’

Alured looked from Matteo to the tatty man glaring at him. ‘I remember Dolwyn. I have told you before these other men that I don’t think I should leave you,’ he stated. ‘If you insist, I will go, but I don’t like it. Will he guard you to the town? This is dangerous country.’

‘Just be gone,’ Matteo said wearily. ‘I shall join you at the tavern as soon as I may.’

‘Very good, Master Matteo.’ Alured called to the others, and clucked his horse, urging it onwards. They were soon in the little village, and there Alured busied himself with arranging accommodation and food, but all the while, his attention kept returning to the roadway.

The tavern-keeper lighted candles and told him, ‘I’m supposed to keep the door closed and locked at night.’

‘You will be paid. This door remains open until my master is back.’ Alured held the man’s gaze for a long moment, until the landlord looked away and nodded.

Alured sat up and waited for Matteo to return, sitting on a stool outside the tavern’s door, staring back the way they had come, wondering what on earth Matteo was doing with the man.

Willersey

It was late when Ham steered the cart into the side of the roadway at the top of the enormous hill that spread out east of Broadway, and he sat there for a long while, staring down into the plain. In the gathering gloom, he could make out little twinkles of light where candles had been lighted, and there was a series of columns of smoke rising in the still air. It looked so peaceful.

Down there was his home.

He had thought often enough that it was a prison. It was a place he’d been tied to by land, by custom and by duty. So many times he had thought about breaking free, running away and finding a new life. But it was a dream, that was all. There were bonds that kept him here, especially his love for his daughter.

On occasion he had thought of the death of his wife, with a kind of longing. He could never kill her himself, but the idea of her death was attractive. Agatha was like a leaden weight about his soul, preventing him doing any of the things he wanted. Lonely, without the comfort of a woman’s love, Ham existed in a world of unremitting toil.

To his friends he was an object of amusement. They looked on him with affectionate sympathy, knowing he was a slave to his wife’s will. Ham was no dullard – it was just that his opportunities had been too fleeting, his disasters too numerous and overwhelming. At every point, when he had thought that he could make a good profit either the money didn’t materialise, or it was soon lost in taxes or some other expense.

Just like this time.

Agatha couldn’t help being disappointed by him. She herself was strong-willed, and if she had been born a man, her indomitable spirit would have won her an empire. As it was, she was a woman whose husband could not provide her with the life she craved.

He climbed down from his cart and hitched up the front of his tunic to piss at a tree – like a dog, he thought.

At first, when they had been newly wedded, he had wallowed in the happiness of his life with her. They could not help but be merry and cheerful in each other’s company. But gradually they slipped into this grim, passionless existence. It was after Alice went off to Warwick. The bitch was always dropping sarcastic little comments about Ham when she deigned to return to her old home, wearing jewellery to impress and incite avarice. She resented him because before Ham married Agatha, she was Agatha’s closest friend. And now Agatha resented him because she felt he had let her down: he should have made more of himself, like Alice’s husband.

Ach, it wasn’t only her. He too was jealous. Other couples had big families, while he and Agatha must needs survive with Jen. Their daughter was an angel, but there was no denying that Agatha and he could have done with a boy, to keep crows from the crops, to dig the vegetable garden, to take a hand mending the fence about the pigs. But they would have no more children. She appeared barren, or felt she was, and rejected him whenever he tried to . . . She didn’t want him near her. That was an end to it.

It was not the life he would have picked.

Anyway, returning home wasn’t safe. That vill, so placid in the evening’s murk, could be teeming with men searching for him.

Oh well, even if he was captured the next day, it would be good to see Jen. And even Agatha, he admitted. Wearily, he walked back to the cart and took hold of the reins. He’d have to lead the old brute down the hill. It was steep here, and he must go cautiously.

All those miles north and east, only to turn about and return, and all for no payment. He was exhausted, mind and body. The way had been hazardous, never more so than when he had met Dolwyn.

He mused on the lethal nature of the fellow all the way down the hill. Dolwyn was the sort of man who would draw a knife and argue later. Ham was glad he had put so many miles between them. But a nagging doubt did remain, even as he led his old horse along the main roadway towards Willersey. He wished he had taken the final step and actually killed the man. He suddenly recalled what he had said to Dolwyn. He had mentioned his home, hadn’t he? And his own name, of course. There were many here who would be able to point him out to a stranger. A chill ran through him.

That was daft, he chided himself. Dolwyn would not want to walk all the way here to find him. Ham had nothing to make such a journey worthwhile. He was only a poor villein, when all was said and done.

It was almost full dark now. He had planned on getting to his home, and bracing himself to listen to a torrent of Agatha’s complaints, but now he stopped in the road, and stared ahead, to where his wife would be readying herself for her bed.

The vill was serene. Houses lay dotted about, encircled with wraiths of smoke. It was a clear evening, and the ponds reflected the setting sun and the salmon-coloured sky. A dog barked, and he was sure that he recognised his own brute’s voice. It would be typical of the old fellow to recognise the sound of his cart’s wheels even from such a distance, Ham thought with a grin to himself.

Darkness enveloped the world like a blanket as he listened to the lowing of cows, the occasional call of an owl, the lone bark of his dog.

This was his home, and it was strange to him. He was filled with trepidation and sadness, and he dared not go down into the vill. Perhaps he should stay out here tonight, and face his wife tomorrow.

All would seem better in daylight, he told himself. He looked about him, then led the horse to the side of the road. Here there was a narrow clearing, where he unharnessed the horse, set the cart down, then hobbled the horse with leather straps before wrapping himself in a blanket and sitting with his back to a tree. He drew his hat over his eyes, and his hood over his face, and settled to sleep.

It was already dark when Dolwyn approached the vill. He stepped quietly, because a man who has once strayed onto the wrong side of the law knows all about the dangers of being found at night. After curfew, any man would be at pains to explain why he was wandering about near people’s homes. There was no criminal so loathed as a robber of houses after dark.

He heard some horses, and stepped into the shadows behind a large beech tree. The moon was not full, but there were no clouds, and the area looked to him as bright as daylight. No people. He heard a creaking, as of leather, and turned to eye the space between the trees, but there was nothing he could see, even in this light. Carefully, he took one step, then another, and gradually made his way forward, anxious at every point that he might stumble or break a twig and alert someone nearby.

Men walking about at night were always liable to be slain, for only outlaws wandered the country in darkness. And Dolwyn did not want to be stabbed as he sought Ham.

He would find out what this creaking was, but then settle and have a sleep.

The crackle of twigs made Ham half-open his eyes for a moment, but the evening was chill, and although he was usually a light sleeper, tonight, after so many long journeys, he was too weary to get up and investigate. Besides, as he told himself, the sound was probably just the horse moving. He often raised one hoof, then set it down again, crunching the twigs beneath the shoe.

Another crackle. Then another.

The brute must be unsettled to keep shifting so. As he listened, caught in the twilight world between wakefulness and dreaming, it occurred to Ham that the noise was regular; it could be someone moving stealthily through the darkness, attempting to approach without alerting a dozing carter.

That last crunch was close, he thought. He opened his eyes and sat up, blearily staring about him, and saw the . . .

‘Hey!’ he called as he took in the scene: someone was at his cart. And then . . . he felt the blow on his head. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded angrily, and would have climbed to his feet, were it not for the strange ponderousness of his legs. He rolled slightly, and felt the second blow strike, and this time he was stunned, falling back.

‘No!’ he said quietly, looking up. ‘Please, I—’

All he could see was that hideous axe, dripping with blood, and suddenly he realised that he was about to die. This was no dream, no mare sent to terrify, but the solid, terrible truth. His death was here.

He tried to open his mouth to plead, but there was no strength in his muscles or his voice. He tried to crawl away, but only succeeded in exposing his pate once more, and the axe slammed into the top of his skull, hammering his face into the twigs and dirt of the ground. He felt the teeth of his upper jaw snap on a pebble, the agony at the back of his jawbone as both hinges dislocated with the force of the blow, then the ripping horror of his skull’s bones as they opened out, exposing his brain to the cool night air – but that was all.

His soul was a shiver on the breeze as it left his body and drifted away.

Wednesday, Feast of the Annunciation
²⁸

Exeter

The baby was crying again.

Every time Simon heard that sound, it pulled at his heart. It was so like the cry of his firstborn son, little Peterkin.

The baby boy had been a delight to Simon and his wife when he was born. Small but sturdy, he had been utterly different from their daughter Edith. She was tall, slim and fair, whereas both Simon and his wife Margaret felt sure that Peterkin would be short and dark.

Their dreams ended in disaster when Peterkin was struck down with a fever, and gradually over three days his crying became weaker and weaker as he succumbed. The little fellow’s death had profoundly affected Simon and Margaret, but it was Simon who felt the guilt, because by the end of the third day, he was desperate for the sound to end. It tore at his nerves to hear it, and when the noise ceased he felt a kind of horrible relief.

When their second son was born, it seemed only natural to name him Peter as well. But Simon always quailed at the sound of a child’s crying since it brought Peterkin’s death home to him once again.

This time, though, the crying was the natural demand of a child for his mother and milk. Incredible to think that this was his own grandchild.

Simon passed the little bundle to his daughter, and watched with pride as she untied the laces at the front of her chemise, releasing a breast for the baby.

‘He’s a good pair of lungs,’ Simon observed.

‘Henry is a strong little boy, aren’t you?’ Edith cooed. ‘Father! Get that look off your face.’