‘Do you wish to know what he said?’ Baldwin asked Simon. His old friend looked away, towards Edith, but did give a curt nod of the head.
Before leaving, Baldwin had visited the men in the town’s little gaol. In truth, he would have preferred not to have gone to the noisome little chamber. It was filled with the odour of faeces, of damp rocks and earth, and the chill was relentless. One man, when Baldwin looked about him, was very still, and wore the grey sheen of death. He was one of those who had been struck down by the horses, Baldwin recalled. He nodded to Basil, and the watchman with him grabbed the fellow by the shoulder, yanking him to his feet and half dragging him out through the door, while the others glared and snivelled.
‘What do you want with me now?’
Basil had spirit, Baldwin saw. The fellow might be a most unappealing sight, with his right eye ruined, and blood and pus dribbling down his cheek, but for all that, and although he must have been in pain, he stared at Baldwin without apology.
‘Your father is dead. You know that?’
‘Yes. And as soon as I may, I will have the whole matter laid before the king and my lord Despenser,’ Basil spat. ‘And when your own part is explained in these affairs, in the murder of my father, in the ravaging of my manor, the destruction of the stables and sheds, the wanton-’
‘Be silent, viper! I am not here to listen to your feeble threats. Do you think you can intimidate me as you did those poor devils on the roads about here?’
‘You tell me to be silent? You old cretin! You will not be so proud when you are before Sir Hugh le Despenser and trying to explain yourself. You rode into our manor, you-’
‘Released a woman whom you had captured, illegally, and against all the rules of chivalry, fellow. And proved that you had been attacking all who passed near and robbing them of their goods. I think there is not a court in the land that would protect you. No matter how many jurors the good Sir Hugh were to place at the court’s disposal.’
‘He would be able to provide many, you piece of shit,’ Basil blustered, leaning forward. ‘He will buy up all the jurors, and the judge, too, in order to break you.’
‘Even when we show that you robbed the party on its way to the king? You stole the king’s silver when you robbed those men.’
‘We didn’t,’ Basil sneered. ‘Show we did it!’
‘I shall,’ Baldwin said. ‘You killed not only a group of archers, boy; you slaughtered two monks. You will not be set before a court that Sir Hugh can buy up. You will stand accused before a court in Exeter, in the presence of Bishop Walter. And he will have the pleasure of convicting you to die on his own gallows.’
Basil was shocked by that. ‘We didn’t kill two monks! We only found the one. The other one must have made off before we got there, rot his bowels!’
‘Hardly likely,’ Baldwin said.
‘It’s the truth!’
Gradually Basil had told the whole story: how the man Osbert had insinuated himself into the group of travellers, how he had persuaded them to turn north from Oakhampton, to avoid the known danger of Sir Robert’s men, while in reality leading them all into Sir Robert’s trap.
Baldwin repeated the story now as they jogged down a hill near the tiny vill of Sampford Courtenay, and even as they rode, Simon’s attention was taken by the tale. ‘You mean they’d been planning this for some days, then?’
‘They must have been,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Simon, just consider the effort involved. They had to make sure that this man Osbert was ready to join the group at the earliest moment, probably not long after they left Tavistock. He had to have time to get to know them, after all. And probably to start to spread concern about the depredations of his own master. He wanted them to be so fearful of Sir Robert that they would willingly and swiftly agree to his suggestion of an alternative road to Exeter, bypassing Bow completely. They could hardly go south, not with the paucity of roads in that direction; their only path must take them north. And that meant Abbeyford Woods. The rest of Sir Robert’s men knew where he would lead them.’
Mark was frowning. ‘But Anselm, he would know that was a daft idea.’
‘That was, I think, the point,’ Baldwin said caustically. ‘One stranger would be unlikely to swing all behind him. But if there was another there, a man who was viewed as knowledgeable, who was wearing the cloth, that would inevitably help.’
‘You mean he colluded in this? No!’ Mark was emphatic. ‘I will not allow that! To suggest such a slander is a disgrace, Sir Baldwin. You shame yourself more than his cloth and our order when you say such things. Where is your evidence? What proof do you have, eh?’
It was Simon who shook his head sadly. ‘Mark, Baldwin’s right. Look at it sensibly. Sir Robert needed details of the men in the guard. And if Anselm had nothing to do with it, where is he now? What happened to him after the robbery? Why wasn’t he there with all the other bodies?’
Sir Richard rumbled as he considered. ‘So this one-eyed arsehole was there to lead them all astray and he colluded with the renegade monk to get them all up into the woods?’
‘That’s how I read the tale,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Except the money wasn’t there. So someone had taken it already.’
‘Perhaps Anselm himself?’ Sir Richard said.
‘No!’ Mark protested. ‘He wouldn’t take the money and see all those people murdered.’
‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin mused, ‘he aided Osbert in doing that.’
Simon shot a look at Sir Richard. ‘It was a large sum of silver, wasn’t it? More than one man could carry, I’d bet.’
‘Sirs, there is one thing,’ Roger said. He was walking briskly at their side. ‘I saw the camp on the morning after. I am sure that all the people there were deliberately murdered. One man I found had six arrows, and yet someone had stabbed him through the eye to make sure. All were like that, bar the monk himself and one other — a man who was lying further away from the middle of the camp. He was another fighter, I think, and yet he hadn’t been taken down by the attack — he had been stabbed in the back some four or five times.’
Baldwin was nodding. ‘And you think …’
‘That he was a sentry, the first to be killed. If this Osbert was in the camp as you believe then this man was killed so that the money could be removed.’
Simon shook his head. ‘It wasn’t there. I looked most carefully, and there was no sign of it near the camp. I even looked about the woods to see if anything could be learned. So did Mark here. He found a lovely cross, all enamelled. It was Pietro’s, apparently.’
‘I remembered it,’ Mark said. ‘It had been thrown into a bush.’ He drew it from beneath his robes now and displayed it.
Baldwin pursed his lips. ‘I would that I had been able to see the site after the attack. Perhaps I would have noticed something …’
‘We all did our best,’ Simon said coldly. ‘As did Sir Peregrine.’
‘I was not criticising,’ Baldwin said.
Sir Richard had his mind fixed on the money and seemingly did not notice Simon’s petulance. ‘So we think that this Osbert had a heavy hand in the robbery and killings. But the money was already gone? Did the cardinal send it by some other route, and this was a mere distraction to tempt robbers?’
‘No. The money was with this party,’ Simon said. ‘The cardinal would have told us if it had already been safely sent, surely.’
‘How would Sir Robert’s men have known that the party were there already?’ Mark said. ‘Is it possible that some other man than this Osbert killed the sentry and took the money?’
‘He could hardly carry all that money himself,’ Baldwin said. ‘I doubt one man on his own could.’
Simon frowned. ‘The man Hoppon was nearby. He could have helped take it.’