‘These are fascinating speculations,’ Baldwin said patiently, ‘but they don’t cover the facts. First, this broad swathe of plants all flattened and pointing towards the road; second, there are no other tracks near here. If the farmer had dragged the child up this way to kill him, I’d expect to see the plants bent over in the other direction. Third, Edmund would hardly find the child here, bundle him up, carry him some distance up the hill there, murder him, and then haul him all the way back here, all the time hoping that no one else would see his cart parked.’
‘Then who did kill my nephew?’ Thomas challenged him.
Baldwin gave a dry smile and pointed to the track. ‘When we find out where those marks come from, we may have a better idea.’
Thomas waved his hand, taking in the whole area. ‘Utter nonsense! Look at that hill, there are numberless trails all over it – but they’re caused by sheep, cattle, horses and other beasts. Just because of a few marks, probably made by a goat, you mean to tell me you’ll ignore the farmer’s guilt?’
His manner made Baldwin’s temper rise. ‘Is it better that I should leap to assuming a man’s innocence or that you should assume his guilt, Thomas? You have suggested a weak story to explain this murder -I find it unconvincing and have told you why’
‘Oh, there’s no reasoning with you! You’ve obviously made up your mind and won’t be swayed. You may find that in Crediton your methods suit very well, Sir Baldwin, but I can assure you that here in the moors we consider action better than prating or foolish theorising. I’ll have the man arrested.’
Baldwin gave a gasp of exasperation, but Thomas had already set off back to the manor, kicking at stones like a petulant child. ‘Oh, the cretinous idiot!’
Simon grinned up at him where he stood on the bank. ‘So what now, Sir Diplomatist?’
‘Now we find out where this trail leads us.’
Godfrey had watched the knight and bailiff walk off with the master of the manor, and when Thomas returned alone, he shrugged himself from the wall where he had been leaning, and moved off to intercept him.
‘Why, Master Thomas, have you mislaid the knight and his friend?’
Thomas gave a sour grimace, spitting, ‘The man’s mad! He prefers to go off on a wild-goose chase rather than arrest the fellow who’s guilty’
It was good to have an audience, and on his way to the stableyard, Thomas fulminated about the foolishness of knights who had no knowledge of the stupidity of farmers and other lazy villeins. In between his curses and dark mutterings, Godfrey came to understand the course of his conversation with Baldwin. Leaving Thomas to fetch men to arrest the farmer, he walked out in front of the house, down to the little wood that lay before it. There, at a short distance from the stream, he found his client.
James van Relenghes had not enjoyed his morning. He had hoped to be able to get Lady Katharine on her own, so that he could press his attention on her. AH the women he had known had tended to enjoy someone with a strange accent paying court to them, as if it were a kind of additional compliment that a foreigner should exhibit interest, and although he dared not be too obvious, he knew he didn’t have overlong to achieve his scheme. The Lady Katharine had shown little delight at his flattery so far, but although that was frustrating, he knew he must make allowances for her position. She’d only recently lost her man and her boy.
Yet it was disappointing that he had failed to even engage her in conversation. Every time he attempted to speak to her, her steward interposed himself. It was most frustrating. James van Relenghes had a specific ambition: he wished to make love to Lady Katharine, to take her, body and soul, and to do so speedily. He couldn’t afford to wait while she overcame her better instincts. He didn’t have time.
This was the problem which nagged at him now, while he spun his knife in his hand and hurled it, flashing in the sunlight, to the mark he had cut in the tree before him. As always, the blade struck where he wished, but weakly, hanging at an angle, the handle drooping towards the ground. He was standing contemplating it when Godfrey arrived.
‘Sir, the knight has figured out that the boy was pulled through the ferns.’
Van Relenghes nodded slowly. ‘How much has he discovered?’
‘He has guessed that someone dragged him along there and dropped him down into the road. That drunken fool Thomas told me – he disagreed with the knight and came back here in a sulk. He’s fetching men, and then he’s off to Throwleigh to arrest the farmer.’
‘Ah, good!’ Van Relenghes rubbed his hands together, smiling thinly. ‘If they arrest him, that should divert attention from anyone else who was on the moor that day.’
Godfrey shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know what you plan, sir, but I’ll not see an innocent man go to the rope. No matter what else, if the farmer looks close to being hanged, I’ll tell the lady about you and Thomas.’
Van Relenghes glanced at him with honest surprise. ‘Would you? But that would mean people asking what you were doing up there. Some might think you yourself could have killed the child.’
‘No matter. I’ll not see the farmer hanged for something he couldn’t have done.’
‘You’ll do as you are told!’
Godfrey beamed. He stood motionless a moment, then his hand flew under his leather jack. When it reappeared, van Relenghes caught a glimpse of a flashing blade. Godfrey flicked it upwards, caught it and cast it in one fluid movement; it whirled past van Relenghes’s ear, scything through the air, and he heard it strike his target a moment later.
‘I’ll not see an innocent Englishman murdered to suit the plans of a foreigner, whether he pays me or no,’ Godfrey said, and now his grin was fixed, like a smile carved on ice. He walked past his master to retrieve his dagger.
Van Relenghes was tempted to reach for his sword – but better judgement prevailed. Godfrey was a master of defence, a man well-used to protecting himself. He had turned his back on van Relenghes, but that did not mean he was unprepared, and after witnessing the lighting speed of his movements, the Fleming wasn’t convinced he could draw and be certain of killing him before Godfrey could reach his knife. And van Relenghes was quite certain that if Godfrey did get to it, he could throw it before he, James, could unsheath his sword.
He did not move, watching as Godfrey grabbed the hilt of his knife, which was pinned securely in the tree, exactly perpendicular, the blade buried over an inch deep in the living wood. The force with which it had struck had knocked van Relenghes’s own dagger loose, and it lay on the ground. Godfrey stooped and picked it up. He twirled it in the air three times, before catching it by the point of the blade, then studied it for a short while before passing it back. ‘A good knife, sir -but not strong enough for fighting,’ he commented. ‘Not for fighting me, anyway’
Van Relenghes watched him walk away, perfectly composed and relaxed, and as the Fleming thrust his dagger back into its sheath, he tried to control the painful thudding of his heart.
In Godfrey’s eyes he had seen, just for a moment, his own death.
Chapter Sixteen
Petronilla brushed the rushes from the hall’s floor, moving them into the screens, and thence out to the stableyard. They had not rotted yet, and with the bones, half-gnawed by the dogs and rats, and the damp patches where dogs and cats had defecated or pissed, they were heavy. It was hard work moving them to the yard, and once there she leaned and rested on her besom, staring drearily at the manure-heap so far away, over at the other side of the stables.