Nicholas was sitting on a bale of hay, playing dice with a groom, and he looked up as she stood over him, pouring his wine.
He was edgy, as he should be after coming back to this place so far from civilisation. Although he had his men about him, he was anxious lest he should be discovered. Surely it was only luck so far that had saved him from discovery by Anney, but if that situation should change, he knew he was in danger unless his master should protect him.
Like many, Nicholas was a man of simple desires and urges. He was lonely and a little afraid, and at such times he turned to comfort from a woman, but the nearest tavern he dared use was a long way from here. It would be madness to try the one near Anney’s home. He might still be recognised.
Looking up, he noticed that Petronilla, although she wore an air of bored sulkiness, from this angle bending over him, looked intensely desirable. She was frowning with concentration, ringlets of hair framing her pretty face. She had behaved quite coolly towards him since he arrived with Thomas, but he was sure that was only a front, after what he’d seen. He met her eye and gave her a broad, wolfish smile, his hand cupping her breast.
‘Little maid, would you like to earn a silver piece?’
The sound of the jug smashing, the hissed curse and patter of feet made Hugh start. Godfrey had been resting at the door with a quart of ale, and the two men stared as Petronilla hurtled past, her cap awry, hair flying loose, tunic lifted to allow her to run, face red as a russet cloth. The men watched her shoot through the door and out of sight.
‘What happened to her?’ Godfrey asked with bemusement.
Hugh scowled as he caught sight of Nicholas standing in the doorway to the stable. ‘I reckon he tried his luck.’
Godfrey nodded slowly, keeping his face fixed on Nicholas. ‘He’d better be careful or his luck might run out.’
The trail led them straight up the hill. Every few yards Baldwin peered in among the ferns and furze at either side, looking for footprints, hoofprints, anything. Each time he had to shake his head with bafflement and carry on.
There was still only the one track, travelling in one direction. That was an easy inference: all the plants had been pushed or dragged over one way, down towards the road. Baldwin was puzzled. He would have expected to find a wide, trampled space where the boy had been caught and murdered; he would also have expected whoever had gone down here one way to have scurried back up again after the deed, but there was no sign of footprints, demonstrating that the killer, or killers, had kept concealed by crawling away after leaving the body at the roadside, and after a suitable pause had taken to their heels. The lack of any such evidence made him resolve to search the vegetation at the roadside again once they had completed this search.
Even as he cast about them, he could feel his aggravation growing.
‘Simon, can you remember when the last rains fell?’
‘Feeling a bit damp?’ Simon laughed.
‘Damp! My tunic is soaked from the hips down, my hose are wet through, and I am growing quite cold – and all this in the bright sunlight! Why hasn’t the sun dried all these blasted plants?’
It wasn’t only the damp that was getting on his nerves; he was also being assaulted by prickles from the gorse-bushes, which were penetrating his hose and shirt. The spines of these moorland shrubs appeared able to stab through even coarse material, and he muttered a curse against them as Simon spoke.
‘The sun hardly reaches here; the top of the hill keeps all of this side in the shade at this time of year – and I expect you didn’t notice it, you being recently wedded, but last night there was a heavy shower of rain.’
Baldwin ignored the comment; there were too many opportunities for coarse jokes at his expense now he was married, and the bailiff tried not to miss a single one. To change the subject, Baldwin pointed ahead with his chin. ‘Will this hill never end? It feels as if we have been climbing for miles.’
‘That,’ said Simon, puffing as he stopped at Baldwin’s side, ‘is the trouble with the moors. Whichever direction you wish to take, you tend to have to go uphill.’
Baldwin gave a dry chuckle and set off once more. Now they were walking up the edge of a small valley. Below them, mostly hidden by the ubiquitous gorse and ferns, they could hear a fast-flowing stream. In the valley there were a few stunted trees, but here on the moors all was low-growing and dull, apart from the sweet, almond-smelling, bright yellow gorse. The hillside rose up before them, menacing in its height. Baldwin glanced behind them and whistled. The scene was spectacular, with a view over many miles. Southwards he could see more hills rising one after the other in succession, their flanks unspoiled by towns or villages, only a few stone walls and enclosures marking the smooth green plains. East the land was lower, and he could see gaps in the trees where farmsteads and bartons lay. Their smoke rose up calmly in the clear air.
‘It is very peaceful here,’ he murmured.
‘It looks it, doesn’t it?’ Simon said glumly, sitting down on a lump of moorstone. ‘Trouble is, that’s just an illusion. The miners over the other side of this hill cause enough grief for me, God Himself only knows. Then the farmers are always coming to blows with everyone else, especially with the tin miners when the buggers move streams and leave whole areas completely dry while flooding others. Miners come and cut peat – well, they have the right to it, so that they can smelt their ore – but they always have to take chunks from prime pasture to upset the farmers, don’t they?’
‘Stop your moaning, and let’s carry on.’
Simon eyed his friend surreptitiously as they climbed. The knight was still deeply troubled by what he viewed as his lapse, not that Simon looked at it in the same light. To the bailiff it was as plain as the nose on his face that occasionally boys would die. His own lad was not that long in his grave. It was possible that Herbert had died, as Baldwin suspected, because of a jealous adult seeking an inheritance, and if that was Herbert’s fate, they had a duty to avenge him, but that was an end to the matter.
But Baldwin appeared to take this murder as a personal challenge, as if he were engaged in a private feud with the killer.
The bailiff knew his friend too well. Baldwin was inflexibly determined to see justice prevail. He had suffered at the hands of bigots and knew how it felt to be persecuted for no reason. It was because of this that he could be stubborn, pig-headed even, in his pursuit of criminals. Simon hoped that marriage would erode some of this obduracy, but it was a little much to expect that Baldwin would be cured so soon.
This case had gripped Baldwin more forcibly than previous ones. It was something to do with the knight’s fervent desire for an heir of his own, Simon felt. The bailiff himself had much the same urge, although in his case, having buried one boy already, he was more committed to ensuring that his daughter was able to produce the family and grandchildren he and Margaret desired. In Baldwin’s case there were no children.
Baldwin was losing heart. He still hoped to find some physical proof that the boy had been dragged down here – or some proof that a man had subsequently run back up here, trying to keep hidden from the road… but he was beginning to feel the first twinges of doubt. Could he be, literally, on the wrong track?
What was more, it was several days since poor Herbert’s death, and with the rain which had fallen since then, there was no real likelihood of finding traces or clear evidence.
The track they were following was like a scar in the vegetation, circumventing the gorse, but going straight on through ferns. The direction of the path made little sense to Baldwin. It never appeared to take a straight line, like that made by a man walking, but rather it took an odd, curving route, broader than a sheep or a man.