This roadway was rutted and muddy, which didn’t help. It was as though the land itself was trying to hamper his escape. At least Hoppon had been so incompetent in the way that he’d tried to slow Osbert’s progress that his impact had been minuscule. Hopefully no one else knew that he might come this way. With luck, he could rent a cart at Jacobstowe, for it would be impossible to carry the box any distance. It was far too heavy, and the square sides made it a difficult object to transport on the shoulders. Perhaps, he wondered, he could sling it from a pole, if he could find some rope. Set a pole like a yoke about his neck? No, the damn thing was simply too heavy. He needed a cart of some sort.
Blessed relief! At last he could see the buildings of Jacobstowe. He would see if he could find some means of transport there, and hopefully soon be on his way in more comfort. Even if there was nothing to be had, surely there would be a smith or wheelwright who could mend the barrow.
He shoved with renewed vigour at the handles, and slowly made his way up into the vill itself, where he cast about him with eager wariness, trying to make sure that he was safe and that no one had made any apparent gestures, pointing at him, or hurrying away at the sight of him. There was nothing. Nothing at all. As he pushed his ungainly barrow down the road into the vill, he felt the anxiety sloughing away like dried mud from a waxed cloak, and he began to walk more upright, like a man who was at ease in the company of others. He even nodded to a man who made the sign of the cross at him.
This was easy. He ought to have got hold of such garb before, if this was how people looked at a monk. It was much easier than any other form of concealment. He would have to keep this by, just in case he might have a need of it in the future. It was good and thick, too. Be useful in the cold weather. Not that he would have to worry about the weather. It wasn’t as if he was going to be stuck in the misery of mud and soggy leaves again, like when he was living rough with Sir Robert.
Shame Sir Robert was dead. In his own way he had been a good man. Still, the bastard had never compensated him for the ruin done to his face. One shilling. Twelve lousy pennies. That was all his dedication had been worth.
As he entered the main street, he reflected that it was all for the good anyway. The bastard would have been a problem before long. As soon as people started saying that the money had definitely been there, Sir Robert would have started thinking. There’d never been anything wrong with his brain, after all. No, and the man would have soon begun to wonder whether even his oldest companion might be worth questioning in more detail. Osbert would have. He wouldn’t have waited so long, neither. He would have had a man like himself stretched over a table and beaten until he admitted where the money had been hidden, and the man would have been very fortunate if that was all that had happened to him.
The road opened out here in the vill. There was a broad area in the midst of the houses, which had been churned into mud by the passage of carts and horses. To the north end of the vill there was a marvellous sound, a ringing noise, like bells. A smith, he told himself, and threw himself forward.
But as he moved, he heard the noises he had been dreading for all the last miles. A roar, a bellowed shout, and the blast of a horn.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jacobstowe
It was Sir Richard who saw him first. ‘There! There, in the monk’s sacking! That’s the bastard!’
Simon had been staring at the ground, wondering whether they had been led astray by some malevolent spirit who had persuaded them to follow a will-o’-the-wisp trail rather than the murderer’s, and he glanced up with shock to hear the coroner’s bellow. ‘It’s him!’ he cried, seeing the man thrust at his barrow with more urgency, and grabbed his horn, giving the three blasts that warned others of felons being pursued. Then he was spurring his mount to greater efforts, leaning down, willing the beast to be first in this race. He wanted the man’s blood on his sword.
Faster and faster along the road they flew. Mud and dirt sprayed up on all sides, and Simon was liberally splashed when Baldwin’s mount went through a broad puddle, and then they were up the last little rise and entered the vill at the canter.
There was no sign of the man at first, but Simon could see the marks in the filth of the road, turning to the right, heading east of north. He shouted and pointed, pulling his horse round in a tight turn. The poor creature slipped, his hoofs throwing up huge clods of mud and foulness, and Simon thought he was about to lose his seat and tumble to the ground, but then the horse gave a convulsive push with both hind legs, and Simon felt the surge of power at his backside, then they were hurtling dangerously along a narrow little lane. There was a turning, and this time he wasn’t so lucky. He felt the horse start to slide, and had only just time to kick both feet from the stirrups as the world seemed to swerve around him. For a heart-stopping moment he appeared to be suspended in mid-air, with all the time in the world to notice Osbert further down the road staring back over his shoulder, to see Baldwin reaching out in a futile attempt to save him before Simon could hit the ground; and then the sudden acceleration of the mud and grasses as they rushed upwards to meet him.
The landing was not so much painful as simply numbing. It was as though his entire body was jarred, with each and every bone dislocating and resetting itself. All he could do for a moment was remain still, wondering when the pain would begin to affect him. It was not easy to tell. There was such a sensation of shock that such a thing could have happened, that he was sure there would be an overwhelming agony in all parts of his body at any moment.
‘Simon, are you all right, my friend?’
Gradually easing himself up, Simon took stock. ‘Yes,’ he said with some surprise. ‘I think I am.’
‘Then mount, man! We’ll lose him else!’
Simon shook his head. He felt as though he had been woolgathering for an hour or more, and when he looked about him, the others were all with him still, each of them looking more concerned about his welfare than they were at the thought that the felon could escape. ‘Get after him, then!’ he shouted.
His horse, God be praised, had survived the fall. There was a slight lameness in the front right leg, but nothing serious, he thought, gently handling it. Perhaps it was a strain. If so, a ride might help it to heal.
He climbed into his saddle again and followed after the others as they trotted along the road. But soon it became obvious that they had made an error. The track continued for some few yards and then stopped. There they found a barrow. But it was empty, and there was no sign of Osbert.
He had thrown them! They had thought he was stupid enough to just run out into the open country, but he wasn’t so dull witted. He wasn’t some gull ready to swallow any garbage slipped to him. He’d deliberately let the barrow run on and left it under a hedge, before grabbing his money and clutching its massive weight to his chest.
Crouched over, his back complaining at the unnatural gait, he ran as fast as he could, through a hole in a hedge, and from there back the way he had come.
The chest was a terrible weight. The mass of coins inside the box meant that it was all he could do to manage a restricted hobble. It was like clutching a man’s weight concentrated into metal and wood of only some two feet by one and one. But although a pound in money weighed less than a pound of silver, the thing was unbearably massive. He would have to throw it aside soon, if he couldn’t …