‘Will you arrest the farmer?’ Margaret asked.
Baldwin shook his head. ‘There is no evidence that he was responsible for anything. Daniel pointed us to him – but then Stephen pointed me towards Lady Katharine, and Thomas had as clear a motive as Edmund.’
Suddenly his voice hardened. ‘Enough! I will stop being directed by events. So far I have been blown by other people’s winds of fancy – no more! Now I shall do what I should have done in the beginning, and investigate this damned affair properly. Simon, let’s go and see where the body was found.’
Chapter Fifteen
It was Thomas who volunteered to take them to the spot. He was standing near the door with Stephen when Baldwin asked for a guide, and promised to lead them straight there.
‘We won’t need mounts – it’s only a short walk from here,’ he said importantly. ‘Do you wish to go now?’
Simon glanced at Baldwin. ‘There’s no point in delay. The Evensong of the Dead is not for hours. We might as well see the place immediately’
Baldwin reflected on that as they walked northwards from the manor. The Evensong for the Dead, the Placebo, was the first half of the funeral service, and after it there would be a vigil held over the body. Next morning the Dirige would be sung, and after that they would return to the graveyard so that Herbert could be buried next to the squire. Father and son had only been separated for a few days.
Some quarter of a mile north of the manor, Thomas stopped and the other two halted behind him. They were in a typical, desolate part of the moor. The hill rose up on their left, and the land fell away to a small wood on their right; the road was narrow, only wide enough for smaller carts and wagons, and was holed and rutted, the peaty soil beneath soft and treacherous.
‘When it rains, you know all about it up here,’ Thomas commented.
Simon nodded grimly. ‘It’s a hard moor. If it’s wet, you run the risk of bogs and mires, or a badly sprained ankle because of the mud. In the summer, the grass covers huge holes in the ground where the water has drained away and taken the soil with it. You can be riding over what looks like solid ground, only to fall into a massive pit. Usually it’s only two or three feet in depth, but sometimes it can be worse.’
Baldwin eyed the landscape sourly. In the main it was heather and gorse, the stuff they called ‘furze’ here, which stood a mere foot and a half tall. Every now and again he could see twisted, stunted trees, or tall bushes. None was more than ten feet tall, giving the area an eerie, unpleasant feel.
‘I wish you joy of your inheritance, Thomas,’ he said, ‘but I confess to a desire to see more trees.’
‘Hah! Ignore this blasted, wind-scoured view, Sir Baldwin, and turn the other way. Look! Down in that valley is Throwleigh itself, and that little vill is worth pounds each year, even now after five years of poor harvest. The only trouble here was always my brother’s softness with the villeins. What they need is a firm hand. Once they realise I know what I’m about, they’ll knuckle under!’
Simon disregarded his boast. As bailiff he knew many of the landlords on the moors, and he was aware that Squire Roger had not been an easy touch. In addition, the squire was ever polite, and greatly more courteous than his younger brother -and Simon was quietly confident that he would never have uttered so disloyal a comment about Thomas.
To Baldwin’s faint surprise the land beneath them looked good. A small stream trickled by at their feet, its passage cheerful even out here. Below them the trees rose higher, protected from the fiercest blasts of the wind by their position at the foot of the great hill. Over their tops the knight could see thin wisps of smoke rising from the vill beyond. Men would be tending their coppices, setting aside the larger branches and boughs to dry, some to be burned to warm their homes over winter, others to be hewn into planks; women would be going about their business, grinding the last of their grains from last year’s harvest into flour to make their hard, dry bread, then planting and weeding in their vegetable gardens; their children all out in the fields throwing stones at the pigeons and other birds which would try to steal their grain before it could throw out the tiniest shoot.
And Herbert would never see it again, he thought, his mood sombre again. ‘His body was where?’ he demanded.
‘Here.’
The knight set off quickly, and Simon had to hurry to keep up with his friend.
There was nothing to show that a child had died here: any sign of where his body had lain had been obliterated by traffic over the last few days. Simon stared down at the mud and peat at his feet, shaking his head again. It was appalling that the boy should have been murdered and left where he had fallen. He was about to comment on this when he saw that Baldwin was not even glancing at the roadway.
They had come round a bend at the top of a slight rise. The hill on their left was steep, and the road formed a terrace, having eaten into the hillside. It had created a bank some three feet above road level, at the top of which was a thick mass of ferns. Baldwin’s attention was divided: he kept peering through the ferns, then over to the verge at the other side of the road, his features sharp with speculation.
‘The wagon would have come from there, Sir Baldwin,’ Thomas said, pointing helpfully back down the road.
‘Yes, but the child wouldn’t. Herbert must have come from the bank there.’
Simon followed his pointing finger and realised the knight was considering a long track which had been gouged through the foliage. ‘What is it?’
‘If someone were to drag a body through the ferns, it would leave a long trail in the vegetation just like that, would it not?’ Baldwin said. ‘Broken fronds of fern, snapped stems of foxgloves, and even the occasional gorse bush has been overwhelmed!’
Thomas threw him a confused look. ‘So?’
‘So the child was murdered up there, and dragged all the way here, even hauled through gorse – not the kind of plant anyone would willingly crawl over.’
‘But the lad was killed here, Sir Baldwin.’
‘You think so?’
‘Of course!’ Thomas declared irritably. ‘How else could the farmer have done it? I know where Daniel took you this morning. Edmund saw poor Herbert here in the road, decided to take his revenge, jumped on the boy, beat him to death, and then thrust his body under his cart to make it look like an accident.’
Baldwin considered him silently for a long time. Then: ‘I had never expected you to be so imaginative, Master Thomas. What makes you think the farmer would behave in so foolish a manner?’
‘He was seen here – Daniel told you!’
The knight clambered up the bank and crouched, searching the ground. ‘He was indeed seen on this road. It is a busy route apparently – and that is what makes me believe that Edmund couldn’t have committed this crime.’ He stood suddenly, cutting off Thomas’s shocked interruption. ‘Look, the man wouldn’t be mad enough to kill the child out in the open here, would he? He may be poor, but he doesn’t strike me as mad. What if a rider should have come upon him in the act?’
‘Well, then, that’s why those tracks were left: he dragged Herbert up the bank, killed him there, and then threw his body back down,’ Thomas hazarded.
Baldwin smiled. ‘Almost, but if someone were to come across his wagon left here untended, they would suspect something was wrong. Why on earth should he take so great a risk?’
‘Maybe he was overcome with anger, Baldwin,’ Simon pointed out while his friend subjected the surrounding vegetation to a careful study. ‘After all, we know he had reason enough to loathe the squire’s family. Isn’t it possible he saw the boy and became enraged? Here was the son of the woman who was bringing him back to villein status, the son of the man who’d decided to throw him from his home, enjoying a walk in the sunshine, not a care in the world. Edmund might have simply snapped. Or perhaps he accidentally hit the boy and knocked him down and injured him? He might have jumped down from the cart to see how he was, and then, realising it was Herbert, decided to finish him off. Then he got back on his wagon, and rode over him properly to make it look like an accident?’