Baldwin glanced at Simon. ‘That must be up the track, up near the side of the stream.’
‘Yes,’ Godfrey offered. ‘Where the priest had been.’
‘You saw Stephen up there?’ Simon asked.
Van Relenghes interrupted before his guard could answer. ‘Oh, yes. We saw him. We were talking, and as we looked up the hill, there he was, near the brow. When he saw us, he disappeared.
Baldwin was decided at last. Stephen might be a priest with all the privileges his position entailed, but there were too many questions over his movements on the day Herbert died.
‘I think we shall need to speak to this disappearing priest,’ he said.
Their arrival was a sombre event. There were cold meats and salad vegetables laid out on a great trestle in the hall, the leaves slowly wilting in the warmth of the fire, but most people ignored the food, apart from Thomas, who appeared to have a healthy appetite.
Baldwin led his wife to a seat near the fire, taking two pots of wine from his servant and watching the other guests while Petronilla and Hugh served wine and ale to them.
‘Is all well?’ he asked.
Edgar gave him a short nod. ‘Fine.’
‘Where is Wat? He should be helping you.’
‘Wat is asleep.’
‘Wake him.’
‘ Very asleep.’
Baldwin groaned. ‘You didn’t let him near the buttery? Edgar, for the love of Christ, haven’t you learned about him yet? You know how he was at our wedding!’
‘Sir, I was assisting the cook in the kitchen. Wat was with Hugh, and I think he thought it would be amusing to test Wat’s resolve.’
‘God’s blood!’
Jeanne stirred and gave Edgar a warm smile. ‘Thank Hugh, would you? And tell him I shall remember his kindness to my servant boy at the very first opportunity.’
Edgar flashed her a grin and disappeared to serve another.
Jeanne shook her head. ‘I think that man of Simon’s has a rather unkind streak in him. He appears to enjoy ensuring that Wat feels miserable each morning.’
Her husband grunted, but his attention was taken by the priest, who had just entered. Baldwin knew he had stayed with the mourners who had been paid to keep the vigil, and would only now have managed to return.
Stephen of York stood at the doorway, and when he met Baldwin’s eye, instantly looked away and licked his lips. After a moment’s hesitation, he disappeared. Baldwin sipped at his wine. He could swear that the priest was scared of him. And it was clear enough that the man had been out on the hill where young Herbert had been killed.
The knight found himself looking forward to questioning the priest with a keen anticipation.
Petronilla hurried back to the buttery, and seeing Stephen sitting blankly on a stool, fell onto a barrel with a gasp.
‘I couldn’t face speaking to him,’ Stephen said heavily. ‘He knows. I’m sure he knows.’
Her brow wrinkled with worry. ‘They can’t know. No one saw us.’
‘When I hit the boy, he screamed, and that bastard guard of the Fleming’s saw me, I’m convinced of it.’
‘If he was so certain, the bailiff would have arrested us.’
‘It’s the knight I fear. He’s the clever one, the one people say can see inside a man’s soul through his eyes.’
‘Well, you’re safe, anyway, Stephen. All they can do is force you to abjure the realm.’
He flinched at that. It was a hideous thought, having to run from all this. He hadn’t ever dreamed that so soon he might be returning abroad, exiled for life, never to see his birthplace again. That was what abjuring involved: giving the oath to the Coroner at the church’s gate, promising to leave the country by whatever road the Coroner selected, dressed as a penitent carrying a cross, and if an abjurer left the road for any reason whatever, his life was forfeit: he could be beheaded on the spot.
Benefit of clergy meant he wouldn’t be executed, though, and that was something. Petronilla didn’t have the same protection. Stephen patted her hand. ‘Don’t fear. You will be safe enough. Once they have me, they won’t bother with you.’
She gave him an anxious look from the corner of her eye. ‘I have done nothing to make me fear the rope. It’s not that which worries at me. It’s that man Nicholas.’ It hadn’t been possible to tell the priest before, but now she burst out with the sordid story. ‘He grabbed me, here?“ she cried, and her tears glistened as she remembered the scene. ’And now whenever I pass him, he leers at me.‘
Stephen felt a rush of affection for her sweep through him. He took her hand and held it to his breast, and she saw the kindly smile touch his eyes. She bent her head and allowed him to gently kiss her hair. ‘Be easy, child. You shall be safe; I shall see to it.’
‘Safe from who?’ Hugh demanded, marching into the buttery with two empty jugs of wine, and overhearing the priest’s final words. Although he habitually wore a scowl, beneath it Hugh had a generous soul and a soft-natured heart, and he had taken a liking to this poor young girl.
The priest gave him a rather measuring look. ‘My son, there are some men who insist on taking advantage of women, whether the women wish to comply or not.’
Hugh’s dour features visibly darkened. ‘Has that henchman tried to muck about with you again?’ he asked Petronilla.
She gave a sour laugh. ‘No – since I’ve kept well out of his way.’
Stephen looked serious. ‘You mustn’t do anything against him, Hugh. You’ll only get yourself into trouble. Leave him alone, but tell me if he tries something again so that I may rescue this poor girl.’
Hugh nodded. In silence he refilled his jugs and left the buttery to rejoin the guests in the hall.
But Stephen sat a while longer, holding Petronilla’s hand in his own and staring at the ground as if on it were written the answers to all his confusions.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In his home at Throwleigh, Jordan sat quietly in the corner of the room, his dark eyes never leaving the rocking form of his mother.
Christiana sat before the little fire, her daughter Molly cuddled on her lap, her figure casting a terrible, crone-shaped shadow against the far wall. It looked like a witch, swaying from side to side as she cast a spell of doom on them, waiting to leap upon the family and bring disaster to them all.
And the disaster had happened. There was no protection for a family that had no means of support, and if his father was thought to have killed Herbert, he was guilty of treason. Jordan wasn’t sure, but he thought his father could be burned alive for that. It was as vile an act as could be envisaged: it was still more wicked than ‘petty treason’, the murder by a wife of her spouse. Everyone knew that Edmund’s manumission, his formal release from serfdom, had been revoked by Lady Katharine, and it followed that everyone would believe that he had killed her son in revenge. He could expect no mercy.
Jordan felt the sobs rising in his throat once more, and sniffed hard to quell them, wrapping himself tighter in his blanket. The fire was low, but they had little wood left to burn, and it was very chill at this time of night. It was normal for Jordan to shiver himself to sleep throughout the winter and well into spring, and if it was too cold even for that, he would climb into the bed with his parents and sister. Now, with the house silent in the absence of his father, he wanted to cuddle up with his mother. He felt a hole in his very soul at the sight of her misery, and longed to ease her fear, and make things better – but he didn’t have the words. Somehow he knew that only another adult could do that.
He was hungry, but dared make no demand for food. There was none to be had, and asking for it would only set his mother off again into another frenzy of rage at her useless husband.
And it was all because his father had been arrested for running over Master Herbert, Jordan knew. His father – arrested, and for something Jordan knew he couldn’t have done. Fortunately, he and his friend had the thing that could demonstrate the priest’s guilt, and now he decided that there was no time to lose. He must go with Alan to see the knight, the man everyone said was so clever.