A Friar's Bloodfeud: (Knights Templar 20) (16 page)

‘He did not mean to, Father,’ Jeanne said. ‘However, you can see how distraught we are. Is there no help you can give us?’

‘If you wish to learn more about the two manors, perhaps you should ask old Isaac down at Monkleigh chapel. He knows much
more about the history than I do. I’ve not been here all that long, in truth.’

‘What of his body? Is he buried?’ Simon asked.

‘I am sorry … no. We found the remains of his wife and the little boy, too. He was lying in the corner of the room, so
wasn’t quite so badly burned, but the man … his body must have been entirely consumed by the fire.’

Baldwin cocked his head. ‘Entirely? In a small house fire?’

‘It was hardly a “small” fire, Sir Knight. It destroyed the place. It’s possible that there are more bones inside, but I think
it unlikely that they’ll be found.’

‘What of the others?’ Simon asked.

‘As soon as the coroner had completed his inquest, they were buried in my cemetery. Would you like me to show them to you?’

Simon and Baldwin exchanged a glance. Simon said, ‘Yes, please, Father. I would like to say goodbye to them. They came here
seeking peace, and they deserve a kindly word if nothing else.’

Emma sat back and eyed the wooden trenchers as the others walked out, then hurriedly took the choicest leftover scraps and
set them on her own, soaking up the juices with a hunk of bread.

This was a foul little place. There was really nowhere as attractive as Bordeaux, where she and Jeanne had spent so many happy
years when they were young. The climate, the wines, the markets … and here all there was was mud, dirt, smelly and uncouth
peasants who hardly knew how to address a lady, and rain. Always rain. It was a revolting place to live.

Of course she had agreed to come here as soon as her charge was chosen by Sir Ralph. He was a good man. Always respectful,
polite, sensible. Well, until he began to blame Lady Jeanne for their lack of children. Then he changed a lot. But that was
only to be expected. He was a knight, and he wanted an heir. What was a marriage if God didn’t bless the union? The whole
point of marriage was children.

On hearing a little sniff, she looked down at the bundle of clothing beside her. Richalda was asleep, but she kicked even
when dead to the world, and now her little feet began pounding at Emma’s thigh. The woman glanced about her
narrowly, and then put a hand down and started to stroke the mite’s head.

Sir Baldwin was all right, really. Not so bad as a master. His manor was dreadful, with a poky little hall, a piddling solar
and pathetic lands about it, but for all that he had advanced, with Jeanne’s help, and he was a fairly successful officer.
Not that Emma would ever admit to his face that he had any skills or qualities that she could admire. She preferred to keep
her distance from a master. Always.

It would have been good to have children of her own, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. No, better that she concentrated
on Jeanne’s. This one and the one to follow. Who could tell? There may be more later.

Baldwin was a lot better than some she knew of. Some women lived in constant fear of their masters. And she had known a bad
experience, too …

It was more than ten years ago now, when it had happened. He was Jeanne’s uncle, the man who had taken the girl in when she
was orphaned. He had chosen Emma as a maid for her, and took a close interest in both girls. At the time Emma had thought
his concern was purely that of an uncle who sought to ensure that his niece was well cared for, looking to Emma’s behaviour
and training to ensure that Jeanne grew to be a courteous and elegant young lady, a credit to him and the household.

But it wasn’t just that. Emma realised only afterwards that she was not the first. She wouldn’t be the last, in all probability,
either. The maid who looked after his wife was treated the same way, and if anyone were to complain, well, the street was
just beyond the door, and a maid could as easily be on one side of the door as the other. Emma knew
she wouldn’t last ten minutes on the streets. So she assiduously saw to Jeanne’s every need so that Jeanne need never complain
about her, and accepted that each night she might be visited by the lecherous old bastard.

Escape to England, this wet, cold, cheerless part of the realm, was still escape. She detested almost every aspect of the
place – but she wouldn’t seriously want to swap it for Bordeaux, not for all the wine they exported!

Perkin stood back as Beorn jumped down into the trench. They had driven a channel all the way up to within two spade spits
of the bog, and now they needed only a little more work to be able to see the water drain.

‘Go on, you old woman,’ he called to Beorn, and the peasant showed his teeth in a smile, then started to drive his shovel
into the boundary of the bog. Perkin watched with amusement.

The first shovelful hurtled through the air and narrowly missed Perkin, landing with a damp slap only a foot away from him.
‘Hey!’ The second would have hit him in the midriff, had he not leaped backwards. ‘You mad bugger!’

Beorn grinned again, and took two more spadesful, and then climbed from the channel quickly as a filthy-looking black-brown
tide began to breach the remaining wall. It swirled, mud slid aside, and suddenly there was a dark stream trickling through
a narrow fissure of soil. Soon the trickle had washed the fissure into a breach that bubbled with the draining water.

’Tin was up at the front, peering down into the bog. It was a strange sight, he thought. Usually it would be a soggy mass
of matted rushes and grass that looked like a continuation of the pastureland all about, but now, as the level
sank, the top of the bog was gradually starting to lower itself.

There were spots, he saw, where the rushes or grasses remained in place as the water seeped away. As Perkin called a boy and
told him to go and find the sergeant and fetch him here to tell them what to do next, ’Tin stepped forward cautiously, testing
the firmer clumps with his foot. The surface gave, like mud, but was held together with the mat of vegetation. Soon the water
was low enough for the full extent of the bog to be seen as it dropped below the level of the surrounding pasture. Beorn was
in the ditch again, shovelling out the excess mud before it could block the channel and stop the water flowing away, and ’Tin
watched him flinging black mud towards a cursing and laughing Perkin, who rolled balls of mud and hurled them back.

’Tin grinned at the sight, and turned for a last look at the bog’s level. It was slowly falling around him, but in the middle
it seemed to be dropping much faster, as though in there it was more like a pool of water, and not a bog at all. Things were
sticking up from there, and ’Tin peered more closely, repelled and fascinated simultaneously. People had said that there’d
be dead animals, even a few men, probably, because this bog had been here for as long as anyone could remember, and he wondered
what a man who had died many years before might look like. There was a brown twig lying in a grassy hillock, and he grinned
as he imagined it might be a hand, twisted and broken, and cast aside as though this was merely a midden.

Nah! There was hardly likely to be anything here. If anything, some long-dead cow’s carcass or a sheep that had wandered this
way before ’Tin was born. Nothing more recent than them. Wouldn’t be a man, he told himself sadly.
No one had been missing for so many years that the chances of finding a human body down there were remote. It was a shame,
because he’d never had a chance to go to witness a hanging. In the old days, hangings used to happen here on the manor, apparently.
Then executions were made a bit less arbitrary, and instead of being able to hang anyone he wanted, a lord of the manor had
to have the coroner there, make sure everything was legal and stuff …

’Tin was annoyed that he’d missed out on those old days. Men were braver then, not like the present lot. If they’d had a little
courage, they’d have been off to the wars rather than hanging about the vill here. He would. He wanted to join a host and
fight; he’d be good at that. Except his mother would go completely potty if he told her …

Then he frowned and blinked. As the waters receded, they left a lump in the filth at the bottom of the rank pool. He could
see the shape amidst the mud, and where he had seen the twig in the little clump of grasses he now saw that a thin, frail
stick-like wrist connected it to a thicker one, as though they were forearm and upper arm leading to a shoulder …

‘Perkin!
Perkin!
’

There was nothing to show that this was the grave of two people who had been loved. It was a small, almost square hole in
the ground, with soil heaped over it and a few heavy stones piled on top to stop animals from rooting about and digging up
the bones. A spare wooden cross had been made from a couple of lathes lashed together, and this was thrust in at the head.

‘There was no money to pay for the funeral or the mourners,’ the priest said sorrowfully. ‘I used some of my own funds to
do the best I could for them. Of course they’d
only been here a year or so, so there was hardly anyone here who really knew them.’

‘Two years,’ Baldwin corrected him coldly.

Simon heard his voice, but could say nothing. In his breast there was only a great emptiness, and as he stood staring at the
bare little cross he felt it welling up and rising to his throat, threatening to choke him. He daren’t trust his voice. Instead
he made a pretence of clearing his throat, but the action was belied by his having to wipe his eyes.

He had scarcely known this woman. When he first met her, she had been a fearful novice in need of help, and it was to Hugh’s
credit that he had given it. Hugh had taken her away from the convent where she had been so unhappy and brought her here,
and had protected and served her to the best of his ability. Monosyllabic, morose, taciturn Hugh had given up everything for
this woman, and now, because Hugh was dead, this pathetic grave was all that would ever be erected in memory of Constance.
Simon felt another sob start to grip him. It washed over him like a shiver of utter coldness, as though the whole of the winter
was condensed upon his shoulders and spine, and he shuddered with the bone-aching misery of it all.

He had lost Hugh, and Hugh had had life, woman and child stolen from him. In the midst of his intense wretchedness, Simon
felt a rising surge of something else: rage.

If Constance had been unknown to him, perhaps Simon wouldn’t have been so moved to fury, but the sight of her grave, and the
knowledge of what had been done to her and his man, swamped his sense of justice with the desire for vengeance.

He spoke quietly. ‘Have a carpenter put up a proper cross. One with jointed timbers and their names carved on it.’

‘If you are sure,’ Matthew said. ‘Be assured, though, she had all the benefits of a Christian burial, and I prayed with the
mourners all night before burying her.’

‘I am grateful. And let me know how much the mourners cost, and I’ll pay for them.’

‘There is no need …’

‘I want to,’ Simon snapped harshly, eyes blazing as he spun round to confront the priest.

‘The other man has already paid. The man-at-arms.’

She had only once known a man’s love. That was something she still found painful to recall, the memory was so poignant. When
she had been at Jeanne’s uncle’s house for some while, she had met a boy delivering meats to the kitchens, and she had stopped
whatever it was she was doing.

He was slim, but with broad shoulders and thick thighs. His hands were elegant, with long fingers, and they weren’t yet calloused
from work. But it was the face that attracted her. Long, with a slightly pointed chin, it bore a faint beard of reddish-gold,
and a tousled mop of fair hair that begged to be stroked and patted into a neater shape. His eyes were laughing blue, and
his mouth looked as if it was made to kiss a girl. He was perfect to her.

She and he had managed to meet every so often. Back in those days, of course, Emma had been slimmer, but very full-busted,
and she liked to think that she was pretty enough in her own way. Not that many would have argued. Men often pinched her buttocks,
like women prodding and poking at slabs of meat on the counters at the market; and there was the behaviour of her master to
prove her allure.

When she left Bordeaux to come here, she had lost him. Perhaps he was the only man who could have made her
happy for life. Yet at the time she had no thought for that. She was leaving to start a new life in England – a life with
her mistress, but without Jeanne’s uncle. That in itself had been enough to make her happy … and when she’d told poor
Ralph, he had been devastated. Now she could see why, but at the time she was irritated, thinking that he should be glad for
her, for this wonderful opportunity.

His face when she left him that last time was desolate. She was sure now that he must have gone home and wept for a week to
see her go.

Heaving a sigh, she shook her head. There had been other men in her life. There were plenty of them in any household, and
she’d made her use of them when she’d wanted to, but not since Ralph had she known the all-devouring love that a woman needed.
That was something she would never know again.

And a good thing, too! A woman had better things to do than go mooning about after men. There was no point in all that flirting
and circling, like a dog and a bitch sniffing each other. No, better that she should be beyond such diversions. She was an
old maid now, nearly thirty years old. It was best that she should forget any thoughts of love.

Which was why it was so annoying that her thoughts kept bending towards men.

‘What other man?’ Baldwin managed after a few moments.

‘The man-at-arms. Haven’t you seen him?’ Matthew said.

‘No, we have only been here a short while. Was he from one of the local manors?’ It seemed quite possible that the murder
was the result of some dispute between local lords. After all, from all Baldwin knew of Hugh, he would be perfectly capable
of giving insult to a rich and powerful man
– intentionally or not. Burning down a house with the man and his family inside was not the act of a peasant with a grudge,
it was more brutal than that. More the behaviour of a minor war-lord who was bent on removing an annoyance. But that must
mean that Hugh was in the way of someone. Why? What possible obstruction could Hugh be, other than the fact that he was an
obstreperous, froward, stubborn churl to deal with at the best of times?

Although it was no excuse for his murder, it may be that Hugh’s manner and demeanour could hold a clue to the crime, and Baldwin
stored that thought for later.

‘It is quite possible,’ Matthew said with a certain cooling of his manner. ‘Again, I think you should speak to Isaac at the
chapel in Monkleigh. He would know the men-at-arms that way better than I do.’

‘There are many down there?’ Baldwin asked.

‘They don’t show their faces in daylight if they can help it. They live in the manor all higgledy-piggledy, and only seem
to come out at night. As though they are nervous of being seen.’

Baldwin nodded, and now he thought he had a possible group of suspects. He had no doubt that a man-at-arms who was less than
entirely honourable could find Hugh’s mulish behaviour to be intolerable. If he had insulted a man from the manor, that man
might well decide to repay the insult.