Hangman Blind (15 page)

B
URTHRED HAD SCARCELY
set foot outside the castle walls since the day he was born and, being ignorant of the purpose of their journey, was as delighted as a sprite to be taken along to keep an eye on the hounds. Hildegard thought they would relish the exercise and perhaps afford some protection against robbers. She let the boy dance on ahead with Bermonda and Duchess while she and Edberg rode side by side on two horses Ulf had had saddled up for them.

After casting about in the groves of winter woodland that lay beyond the edge of the demesne, they found the hoof prints of a pony separating from the rest of the busy traffic of horses and carts that had churned up the mud along the road between Hutton and York. Edberg at once hoisted the child on to the pommel in front of him and they struck out across the wastes in pursuit. He said he knew of an assart deep in the forest and guessed the midwife must be making for that. They proceeded briskly on beyond Hutton lands into the valley known as Heldale.

It was a narrow defile that cut between chalk hills and was thickly wooded, a haven for outlaws. Hildegard imagined the midwife setting out alone through such terrain and wondered about her thoughts in such an isolated place. She also considered the knife she might be carrying and her skill in its use.

As if drawing attention to the loneliness, somewhere through the blanket of trees they could hear the waters of a beck gathering in volume as they rode along. After the deluge of the last two days the streams and ditches were brimming with flood water. The horses were constantly splashing up to their girths through the puddles that lay across the path. At worst they were forced to scramble to higher ground in order to pass at all. The riders bent low under the densely growing trees, their hoods constantly tugged off by low branches, cloaks ripped by the thorns of trailing bramble and eglantine. Lower down, the surface of the beck carried a scum of yellow foam. To Hildegard the branches being dragged downstream looked like the raised arms of children caught in the flood. It made her cast a glance at Burthred, but he was holding on to the mane of Edberg’s mount with a look of rapt joy at being out in the wild. The swirling waters crept inch by inch up the bank sides as they rode along.

‘We’ll follow yon stream as far as the assart. Hopefully we’ll be lucky there. If not, the track leads on to the mill,’ said Edberg when they paused for a moment to take their bearings at the top of a muddy slope. ‘Then it’s down towards Driffield across disputed country.’

‘Disputed? How so?’

‘The old lord of the manor died childless in his bed a year since, and his wife long dead. What’s left of his kin can’t settle things between them. With nobody to hold the whip, folk are running wild.’

‘By that I suppose you mean we should beware of other travellers?’

Edberg made no reply but kept his face set towards their destination and his eyes keen.

The branches of oak and ash and beech were leafless now, spreading skeletal arms overhead, but the rowan and the evergreen holly were covered in scarlet berries. The only sign of the track was the occasional paler underside of broken leaves. From the right came a constant roar of the unseen river forced between the banks.

After half an hour they came to a clearing. They could make out the shape of a slant-roof dwelling on the other side. Woodsmoke drifted its incense their way, reminding them of stoked fires and hot pottage.

‘Can we depend on the help of the folk in there, I wonder?’

‘You read my mind, sister,’ said Edberg. ‘These are folk I know nothing of, being beyond the bounds of Lord Roger’s demesne. It’s many years since I’ve been this way. But who can turn away those in search of a midwife?’

They approached the building. A roughly thatched roof sloped low to the ground. A cur tied to a stake in its shadow set up a racket to announce them but almost at once, scenting strangers, gave a whine and tried to flatten itself into nothing against the wall. Bermonda growled, but not with animosity, rather as a speculative greeting, but Hildegard told Burthred to get down and take charge, just to be on the safe side. No point in antagonising the inhabitants before they’d even opened the door.

Edberg slid out of the saddle and strode over.

‘Who’s there?’ called a cracked voice from within before he’d even raised his hand to the latch.

‘Edberg of Hutton. Open up.’

Grumbling accompanied the sounds of somebody shuffling through straw. The door was inched open a crack and a grey head thrust itself into the space, followed by the blade of an efficient-looking knife. ‘What?’

‘Trust us, we mean well. We seek a midwife and were told she came this way.’

‘Midwife, is it?’ The door was opened a further inch and an old man peered out. Hildegard got down from her horse and, noticing the nun’s habit under her riding cloak, the man shook his head, obviously imagining some foolish girl bringing the two of them out on the road like this. He chuckled. ‘The same old dance, but you’re doubly out of luck, sister.’ The knife disappeared and he opened the door a little wider. He was leaning on a stick. Behind him was an unlit rush lamp on a hook and behind that the sense of an empty barn.

Hildegard asked, ‘Why are we out of luck, then, sir? Is she not here?’

‘She’s been. She’s gone,’ he told her. And more helpfully, ‘Gone down Driffield way.’

‘What was she doing here?’ she asked, prompted by curiosity. ‘It’ll be a miracle for the abbey records if it’s been you in need of her services.’

He wasn’t offended. ‘Kin, me,’ he told her. ‘Sees me whenever she’s in the district. She’s a good girl.’

‘Girl?’ asked Edberg. He turned to Hildegard. ‘I thought she was—?’

‘The midwife we want is the one who’s been in the job for forty years, or so she claims.’

‘That’s my Bertha. How old you reckon I am?’ Judging them harmless, he suddenly seemed set for a spell of conversation.

But Edberg clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Not a day over twenty-one, sir. But as you know, time waits for no man and we must be off. Shut that door firmly and stay safe.’

‘And you take a care not to freeze your bollocks off, my master. There’s snow on the way, you mark my words. Good luck to you. And I can tell you,’ he called out as they turned away, ‘she left just before midday on that little pony that never troubles itself to more than a trot. You’ll catch her easy.’

Again they set out, but this time with more optimism, for their horses could easily outpace a pony. The tantalising aroma of cooking was left behind, and to take their minds off it Hildegard broke pieces of bread and cheese into lumps and handed them round as they rode along. Burthred was nodding with sleep, despite his excitement at being out in the wilds with his hounds and on a real horse with one of the most powerful masters in his small world, and Edberg wrapped his cloak round the child and rode ahead as if bearing a talisman against danger.

‘It’s strange she hasn’t tried to cover her traces,’ remarked Hildegard after they had gone some way along the track ‘Is the woman not afraid?’

Edberg grunted as if everything was strange and nothing existed that was not a cause for perplexity. They rode without further comment, the only sound the roaring of the flood as the beck filled and widened behind the net of trees.

Hildegard sank deep into her own thoughts. It was true there were outlaws and herds of wild boar and wolves and all other manner of perils in the wildwood, but she was aware that she had been more afraid at the castle, expecting at any moment to come face to face with her attacker. For one thing, I am not alone here, she thought. Edberg was one of Ulf’s trusted men and would be staunch in a fight should they chance on outlaws. There were also, to be hoped, the saints and the Blessed Virgin, who would surely aid them in their quest and bring the perpetrator of this horrible crime to light.

What troubled her most was the fact that the midwife had taken so little care to conceal her flight. Surely she would have warned her father not to be so forthcoming about her movements if she had had something to hide? The thought struck Hildegard that she had lost her belief in the midwife as a murderess. She had made such a poor attempt to cover her tracks. It didn’t suggest guilt. All the time they were out looking for her the real killer was at large. Fear spidered up and down her spine.

Edberg’s silence encouraged the dark shiftings of her thoughts. He hardly opened his mouth, even when the track broadened sufficiently for them to be able to ride side by side. He seemed content to keep his own counsel and for her to keep hers. As her escort through the forest he could not be faulted, but so enigmatic was he, it prompted her to wonder whether he was guardian or guard.

It was late afternoon. After a few miles they began to notice a change in the air. Spurring their horses down the track, they began to scent something like burning timber. Curious, they increased their pace to a gallop. Smoke began to catch at their throats. They started to cough. They had to pull the corners of their cloaks over their mouths and take muffled breaths. The horses tossed their heads and began to roll their eyes. Even before they burst through the trees on to the riverbank, the crackle and roar of a fire could be heard. Then heat hit them like a blast from a furnace.

Edberg pulled his horse to are a ring halt and pointed. The massive shape of the wooden building on the bank of the river was ablaze. The great wheel flamed in the heart of the fire like the wheel of St Catherine herself.

Clinging to the mane of her plunging horse, Hildegard’s thoughts flew at once to the fate of the miller and his household. She shouted above the roar of falling timbers, ‘Can you see anyone, Edberg?’

He tried to urge his horse forward but like her own mount it was rearing and flattening its ears and, with eyes rolling, refused to go anywhere near the flames.

‘We’ll never get inside!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘There’s nothing we can do!’

‘We have to do something!’ The thatch crackled as she spoke and then the planked walls bulged outwards from the pressure of the heat inside and, with a soft boom, burst asunder as they watched. A stray gust of wind fanned the flames, sending sparks glittering up into the trees, lighting everything in the glade with an unearthly glow.

‘Them flames are higher than the oaks!’ exclaimed Burthred, dazzled out of his silence. ‘No hope for any folks inside that!’

Hildegard’s prayers flew to the miller and his household, but before she could do more she gave a shout of alarm as Edberg jumped from his saddle and ran desperately towards the burning mill, as if to find a way inside. ‘Edberg! No!’ she shouted.

The heat of the flames beat him back again and again until at last he was forced to retreat. He came to stand beside her, his clothes reeking of smoke. ‘Poor devils,’ he panted. ‘What a way to die. Pray God the saints have mercy on them.’

‘Maybe they got out in time.’

‘Aye, maybe.’ He looked unconvinced. ‘But where are they, then? I don’t see ’em.’ His smoke-blackened face was grim. She felt Burthred slip his hand into her own. Under the sound of the roaring flames and the thundering of water through the sluice there was an uncanny absence. And certainly no sign of a midwife.

‘We should get on to Driffield and tell the folk there what’s happened,’ she suggested. Edberg nodded in agreement but before he could get back on his horse a sound in the undergrowth made them turn.

Edberg pointed to a movement in the bushes. ‘There’s an animal of some sort.’

‘It’ll be a wild boar,’ piped Burthred, drawing back.

The sound came again. The shrubs were turned to tumult as a creature lurched into view, fighting as if to free itself from some bond.

It was a pony, bristle-maned, pied.

Hildegard slipped down and went over to it and Burthred, jostling at her heels, followed eagerly, reaching out with an air of professional confidence to run his small hands down the pony’s neck. By the time Edberg came up, it was snuffling for treats in the boy’s tunic.

‘Look, sir, the old woodsman told us the midwife was riding a pony and now here he is, and all alone, the poor little brute.’ Burthred rubbed the pony’s muzzle and it snickered with pleasure.

Hildegard turned to Edberg. ‘The child’s right. So it looks as if she made it as far as this.’

‘Aye, but now where might she be? Surely she’d show herself if she could?’ He cast a glance towards the mill. The fire scorched all the grass around and sent burnt leaves spiralling to earth.

‘Assuming it’s her pony,’ Hildegard replied cautiously, ‘she must have been inside visiting the miller and his wife when the fire broke out. But,’ Hildegard continued the thought, ‘why would she tether her pony under the trees, out of sight?’

‘Why not stable it with the other horses?’ Edberg agreed.

‘Unless, of course, she was on some secret woman’s errand, to one of the servants.’

‘That’s a possibility.’ He smiled thinly. ‘In which case she’s got short change for her efforts.’

The boy tugged at Hildegard’s cloak. He had the pony’s head-rope held tightly in one hand as if he would never let it go. ‘May I ask a question, my lady?’

‘You may.’

‘If the poor woman is gone to heaven in those hell flames, Mary preserve us, might I care for her creature here until we get to our destination? And,’ he added, before she could reply, ‘it would not be stealing to my way of thinking, merely borrowing.’

This was the longest speech Hildegard had ever heard from him. She was surprised by the sharpness of his reasoning. After a moment she said, ‘I see nothing to prevent you riding him to safety. It would be a service to its owner, and if she has perished in the flames then it makes no difference who rides her pony.’ She hesitated. ‘My only doubt is that she’s in hiding somewhere and hoping to ride on when she feels it safe to do so.’

‘In hiding?’ Edberg turned to her. ‘Why would she be in hiding unless she’d fired the mill herself?’ His words trailed away.

Hildegard frowned. ‘That’s a wild supposition. Maybe she came on the scene as unwittingly as we did?’ She sighed. ‘But that doesn’t make sense either because from what her father told us, she would have reached the mill some time before the blaze erupted, so in that case why didn’t she ride on to get help at once?’