‘Come on, Alan. We might as well get on with it,’ he said, and took his friend’s free hand, the one that didn’t bear the little parcel.
Edgar found Anney gently bathing Nicholas’s wounds. She agreed to return with him when he said that the bailiff wished to speak to her.
‘Bailiff?’ she asked tentatively, looking about her. Those who met her eye soon glanced away, and she experienced a quickening of her heartbeat. Edgar took her into the hall and led her forward until she was standing before the bailiff and the knight, who studied her in silence a moment. Thomas, who was swiftly becoming drunk, sat on a small stool nearer the fire. Every now and again he lifted his pot and supped noisily, and when the cup was down, his breath snored almost as if he was asleep.
‘Anney, we have heard you were up on the hillside on the day Herbert was murdered,’ Simon said. ‘What were you doing up there?’
‘Who says I was?’
‘Thomas says he saw you there.’
‘Me?’ Anney demanded. ‘What has he accused me of, the devil?’
Her voice was little more than a squeak, and she knew her face must be deathly white. There was no way she could hide her stupefying terror at being examined here, in the room where her husband had been taken from her, the room where her boy’s body had been exposed to the gaze of all those in the village who despised her. This hall had been a place of horror to her for so long, and now it held the threat of the rope. She could almost sense the creaking, swaying gibbet.
She felt a swimming sensation, as though the walls were moving around her. It was so like that time, when she had been called before the old squire, to stand here and be questioned and harassed by officials so that they could formally decide what all knew, that she had been taken in by that ne’er-do-well outside, who had stolen her virginity when he was already wedded to another.
Simon saw her tottering, and hurried over to help her to a bench. ‘Edgar, could you fetch some wine?’
‘No, sir, I’m all right,’ she protested, sitting quietly. ‘I felt a little weak, no more.’ However, Simon passed her the pot when it arrived, and she drank from it thirstily. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Once he had returned to his seat, the bailiff glanced from Thomas to the maid. ‘Thomas says you were also up there on the moors, Anney. Could you tell us what you were doing?’
She lifted her head coolly: her boy needed her. How could Alan survive without a mother? He didn’t even know Nicholas, his father. She met Simon’s serious stare. ‘Yes, sir. I was following the priest.’
Baldwin lifted his head, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Because I knew he was there to satisfy his lusts.’
Many of the onlookers gasped, and the bailiff and his friend exchanged bewildered glances. Simon blinked and asked, ‘What evidence do you have for this?’ He was relieved that the cleric was not present to hear the accusation.
‘I have the evidence of my eyes, sir. What more do I need? You ask others around here, and see what they say!’ she declared hotly.
Baldwin tried to calm her. Her face had been pallid, but now it shone with a feverish glow, and he wasn’t sure of the strength of her mind. ‘Anney, priests take oaths of chastity, but if Stephen of York failed to maintain the high standard expected, I fear he is not alone…’ he said soothingly.
‘What do you think he’s doing, telling people like me that I’m a sinner, when he can satisfy his every carnal whim, eh?’
Baldwin and his friend had no need to look at each other. Both had the same thought: Anney had admitted a misdemeanour in the confessional, probably to carnal knowledge of the bigamist who had fathered her children, before discovering that the priest was guilty of similar lecherous acts. She wanted revenge on a man she thought was a hypocrite; showing that the priest himself was as guilty as she.
‘What did you see on that day?’ Simon asked.
She stared at him, breathing quickly. ‘I’ll tell you what I saw! I saw Stephen grab my son, and beat him with his stick. Alan was lucky, he twisted out of Stephen’s hand and managed to escape – but what happened then, eh? Stephen tried to catch Alan again, running up the hill and searching through the bushes, until he gave up and went back down to the stream. I was about to return to the manor when I heard this dreadful shout, and suddenly the priest appeared, coming up the slope again towards me. But he didn’t see me, his eyes were fixed on the boy.’
‘’Your boy?‘ Simon asked in the sudden hush.
‘Oh, no. Alan was too quick for the priest. No, the boy I saw was Herbert. The poor mite was pelting along as fast as he could, up towards me, with his sling in his hand. He’d only been playing a prank, I think, but the joke fell flat. Brother Stephen wanted his revenge, and he took it…’
‘What sort of prank? We must understand exactly what happened,’ Simon said with a trace of weariness.
‘What do you think? What do boys usually do? Herbert had his sling in his hand and probably fired a bullet from it at the priest’s arse, just in jest – and no more would have been said or done if Stephen was an ordinary man.’
Baldwin leaned back with an exasperated sigh. Anney, you like to hint at things, but please come to the point. You say he’s no ordinary man, but what do you mean by it?‘
She sat up exultantly. ‘You ask me what sort of man he is, and I’ll tell you: he’s a sodomite, a pederast! He likes little boys, he likes to-’
Simon held up his hand and talked over her even as her face became flushed with a fierce kind of joy at relating the accusation she had heard with such horror such a short time ago.
‘Anney, be silent! This is a very serious allegation indeed, you realise? If you are inventing this, if you have no proof, you could be in very grave danger for accusing a man in holy orders. Think, woman! If this is mere villainous gossip, hold your tongue! Don’t force us to record your thoughts if they are based on nothing more than speculation.’
‘Speculation! ’ she spat. ‘Do you think it is speculation when your own son comes home crying because a cleric has beaten him black and blue in the street? Is it guesswork when you witness the man thrashing a five-year-old in his chapel? I saw him – the day the squire died, I saw Stephen beating Herbert in his chapel, before his altar! This priest is evil! He has unnatural lusts, and tries to force the boys of the vill to give themselves to him. He beats them because it satisfies a wicked desire in him!’
There was no doubting the sincerity of her tone. She had leaned forward in her desperate desire to convince, and her eyes met Baldwin’s with an almost frightening intensity.
He didn’t know what to believe. That the woman was quite sure in her own mind that this was true he had no doubt, but that was different from knowing that her apparently wild denunciations were correct. She was picking at the sleeves of her tunic, worrying at the hems, trying to pull a thread free, and when it was, tugging at another. Her face looked careworn, he thought, and her body, although wide and strong-looking, was too thin. In her face the eyes stood out with unnatural brightness, as if all the power of the body were held within them.
It was the face of a woman pursuing her enemy: a man who had threatened her remaining child. She would accuse Brother Stephen of anything to protect her boy. Baldwin hadn’t noticed her singlemindedness before, and he blamed himself for that. The two deaths in Lady Katharine’s family had forced him to concentrate on the poor woman who sat in front of Anney now rather than the maid herself.
He concentrated on Anney, and was not reassured by what he saw. Her eagerness to see the priest ruined before his whole congregation, and her desire to convince Simon and him of the priest’s guilt, were quite hideous.
Seeing his musing stare, she suddenly stood and faced him.