‘I think there’s never any reflection intended on you, sir. Only on the poor fool who enters your hall.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. I won’t have them flogged, then, for their discourtesy … not to me, anyway.’
His bantering tone of voice had made Robert realise almost immediately that this man was in reality greatly hurt that some should use his old scars as a means of upsetting new members of the household. It was natural, true, that newcomers should be put in their place by the team which had been there longer, but to make sport of their master’s suffering struck him as cruel in the extreme and he decided on the spot that he would never do so himself. Any men he brought here would be forewarned of Sir Odo’s wounds.
‘You are sure it was that cur’s whelp, Sir Geoffrey?’ Sir Odo asked now.
‘Yes. He and his men were without disguise. They all wore the tunics of their master.’
Sir Odo grunted and turned his eye towards the house again. He sat on his horse like a man who had been born in a saddle, Robert thought, but now the man’s head was sunk deep into his shoulders as though he was exhausted by all this talk of their neighbour. ‘He didn’t think to leave a guard, then?’
‘No, Sir Odo. I suppose he knew we’d come in force if we didn’t come immediately,’ Robert said.
‘Of course. And there was no point in coming in the middle of the night. We had to wait for the day … So! This is just more needling. He doesn’t expect us to give it up without a fight, of course, but he intends to keep on prodding and provoking, and maybe later, he will choose to force us.’
‘He couldn’t do that!’ Robert declared hotly. ‘He must know that Sir John Sully has powerful friends.’
Sir Odo glanced at him, and the scarred side of his face seemed to colour a little, as though his angry thoughts were changing his habitual phlegmatic temperament into a fresh, choleric one. ‘That prickle is a trouble-maker of the worst kind. He makes no assessment of the risks of his actions, he just takes on any challenge like a bull. If his master told him to lay about him round here with a heavy hand, that’s what he would do.’
‘You think his master ordered this?’ Robert faltered. He had not realised the depths of the mire into which he was falling.
‘Do you really think that a man as experienced as Sir Geoffrey would dream of attacking a lord’s lands like this without considering the risks? The fact he went ahead shows that he must have been told to, or he had the idea himself and had it sanctioned.’
‘Surely a knight wouldn’t do something like this,’ Robert said and waved a hand about the desolation that was his home. ‘Not even if his master told him to.’
Sir Odo looked at him for a long moment. ‘That man needs to be told whether or not he should lay a turd in the morning, is what I think. He has a desire to please his master at all times, and no matter who or what stands in the way, he will destroy them if it is his master’s choice. And his master is keen to acquire as much as he can.’
‘He is a man with a long reach,’ Robert said soberly.
‘My lords the Earl of Winchester and his son Hugh Despenser are keen to confirm their authority,’ Sir Odo said obliquely.
Robert nodded without noticing the knight’s quick look. It was only later that he remembered the conversation and understood that Sir Odo wouldn’t abuse the Despensers in front of a man he hardly knew. For all he knew, Robert could be a spy for Earl Hugh. ‘So what should we do?’
Sir Odo snorted and yanked his mount’s head about. ‘There’s nothing to do, apart from warn our master and, through him, Lord de Courtenay. And protect these lands. They are our master’s, and no one will steal them from us, not without suffering a great deal of bloodshed!’
Perkin hadn’t felt remotely satisfied with the result of the inquest, but what else could be expected? The whole of the local jury had been called to the manor’s court, and some smart knight from down Bude way had come up and listened to the evidence, eyeing the body without much enthusiasm while holding a bag of sweet herbs under his nose. The fool looked as if he was staring at a dog’s turd, rather than a man who’d been murdered.
Ailward was beginning to smell a bit by then, mind. It wasn’t just the coroner who thought the odour was too strong. There was that slightly musty, sweet sickliness to it that spoke of the time the body had been stored since its discovery. To protect it — well, no one ever knew how long it’d take for a coroner to arrive in the middle of winter, and the vill had the responsibility of protecting the corpse from all animals, wild and domestic, on pain of a large fine — they had built a stone wall round it, putting a roof of turves over to save the body from the elements, and there was a man or a boy constantly there to watch over him, day and night, until this Sir Edward de Launcelles turned up.
He seemed less pathetic than some, Perkin reckoned. Stood up there in front of all the jury without looking too embarrassed. Some of them, they looked too young to be wearing the knight’s belt and golden spurs. This one at least, for all his apparent smarminess and courtly mannerisms, seemed to have had some experience of life. His face wore two scars which looked like fighting wounds, and he’d lost two fingers from his left hand. Perkin knew that men would often lose fingers there when they were fighting with swords. All too often a man would grab an opponent’s blade for an instant while thrusting his own home, and sometimes a finger or two would be severed.
A gust of wind wafted Ailward’s scent over the jury and Perkin saw a number blench and gag. It was a bloody foul odour, right enough. He wondered what the other would smell like now. It was a week since Lady Lucy of Meeth had disappeared, and the poor woman must surely be dead herself. Strange that no one had seen her. Her steward had been found on the same day that she had been taken, his body left slumped at the side of the road, his sword out of the scabbard and in his hand as though he had tried to defend her, but unsuccessfully. She was gone, though. No man had seen her since. Perkin was sure she had been taken and killed. There were many who could have desired her for her body, but many more about here would have wanted her lands. They were good and fruitful, bringing in several pounds in cash a year.
Perkin felt sick at the thought, but he could not help but recall that his own master, Sir Geoffrey, had ridden out and attacked Robert Crokers’s house on Saturday. Apparently that was because Sir Geoffrey wanted the land for his own master and was prepared to take it at sword’s point … how much easier to take a woman recently widowed and hold a knife to her throat until she agreed to hand over her properties.
If so, it would be this coroner, perhaps, who came to listen to the evidence. Perkin watched him more closely.
At first he thought Sir Edward de Launcelles appeared to be a fair enough man. ‘Where is the First Finder of this body?’
‘Here, sir. I am Perkin from Monkleigh.’
‘Who can vouch for him?’
As three men from the jury gave their names, Perkin found himself being scrutinised closely. The knight had pale eyes that were the colour of the sky on a grim and rain-filled day: grey with a hint of angry amber. He had very prominent cheekbones, which made him look gaunt, as all the men did after the famine, but his lips were very full and red, as though he was feverish, not pale like those of the men and women who had starved. His chin, too, was pointed, with a cleft in it. The beard was obviously hard to shave in that little gully, and there was a vertical band of black hair in it that looked entirely out of place on such a fastidious-seeming man.
‘So you found him?’ The corner was curling his lip at the man’s body before him.
‘I tripped and then I saw the blood.’
So much, there had been. Ailward’s head was smashed like an egg, with loose bits and pieces of skull shifting under the ruined scalp. Perkin felt sick just to remember it.