‘I’ll cut my shafts out, for a start, if I can. And I’ll bury the bodies. You run back to the house for me and fetch Jamison and Wilbur … and Christian as well. Tell them to bring shovels.’
Thomas looked thoughtfully at the horses. He’d hit one of them and it made him wince to see the animal standing and cropping at the grass with a shaft high in its neck. The whites of its eyes were showing. The horse knew it had been hurt and the great flanks shuddered in pain, rippling along the brown flesh. Thomas shook his head. He could hide the bodies of men, but horses were a different matter entirely. For a moment, he was tempted to fetch a butcher to the spot, but it would take half a dozen boys and two or three carts to carry away the meat. The baron would be bound to hear of it eventually. Horses were valuable and Thomas doubted there was a market in France that could take six trained mounts without news getting back to unwelcome ears.
‘God, I don’t know what to do, Rowan. I can hide them in the stables, but if the baron comes searching, it’ll look like guilt. He’ll have me up before the magistrate, and that man is too close a friend of his to listen to a word I have to say.’
Thomas stood and thought for what seemed an age as the breeze grew stronger and grey clouds swelled over their heads. Rain began to fall in heavy drops and the wounded horse shuddered and trotted some way off down the hill.
‘Catch that one for me, would you, lad? I don’t want it wandering back to its stable, looking to be fed. Go gentle and you won’t spook it. We’ll put them in the old barn tonight. I know one man who might find a way out of this, if I can reach him. Derry Brewer might just keep my neck out of a noose.’
He watched relief come into Rowan’s face before the boy went jogging down the hill, calling softly to the wandering horse. It raised its head and looked at him with ears pricked, then went right back to cropping the turf, unconcerned. The boy had a way with horses that made Thomas proud.
‘How did I get myself into this?’ Thomas murmured.
He suspected Baron Strange wasn’t even a real noble, at least that was the rumour. There was something about a title fallen into disuse and a distaff branch of the family, but Thomas had never been able to pin down the details of the claim. Either way, Strange was not going to ignore the wilful murder of six of his soldiers, no matter whose land they’d been on or what mischief they’d been up to. The dispute between the adjacent landholdings had been simmering for months, ever since the baron’s men had fenced off a pasture rightfully belonging to Thomas. That was how he saw it, at least. The baron’s men told a different tale.
It had been small beer at first, with his servants and those of the baron coming to blows whenever they met in town. A month before, it had taken a bad turn when one of Thomas’s men had been blinded in one eye. Some of the man’s friends had gone out for revenge that night and burned one of the baron’s barns, as well as killing some Welsh sheep in the fields. Thomas had raised welts on their backs for that, but it had grown into undeclared war from that night. He’d told his men never to travel alone — and then he’d spotted tracks leading through his land and done exactly what he’d warned them against. He cursed himself for a fool.
Rowan came back leading two of the horses and patting their necks.
‘These are big, strong boys,’ Rowan said. ‘Could we keep one, maybe?’
‘Not a chance. I can’t be found with them. A night or two is risk enough as it is. I’ll wait for you to come back with the lads. We might get done before dark, if the rain doesn’t get much worse.’
A thought struck him and he looked up.
‘Why were you coming out anyway? You knew I’d be away till dusk.’
‘Oh! There’s a meeting in the town tonight. Something about the French. Mum sent me to let you know, so you don’t miss it. She said it was important.’
‘Christ!’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘How am I supposed to get back for that and clear this carrion at the same time? God, some days, I swear …’
‘You could hobble the horses or tie their reins together. I can fetch Jamison and Wilbur and Christian. I can bury the bodies with them as well, while you go to the meeting.’
Thomas looked at his son, seeing how much a man he’d become in the last year. He smiled despite his irritation, feeling pride enough to banish the black clouds overhead.
‘Right, you do that. If you see anyone else on horseback, run like the devil is after you, all right? If the baron’s men come looking for their lost mates, I don’t want you caught. Is that clear?’
‘’Course it is.’ Rowan still looked a little pale after what he had witnessed, but he was determined not to wilt in front of his father. He watched while Thomas gathered the leather wrap for his bow and loped off along the road to the town.
The rain fell harder, battering down as Rowan stood there on the exposed hill. The droplets seemed to roar across the open land and he looked around unhappily, realizing he was alone with half a dozen dead men. He began to gather in the horses, trying not to look at the pale, staring faces slowly sinking into the bracken as it bent under their weight.
The hall smelled of damp wool, the air thick with it. In more normal times, it was the trading place for dozens of landowners. There, they brought sacks of oily fleeces to be judged and teased apart by experts from London and Paris before prices were set each shearing season. The bleating sheep were God’s gift to farmers, the wool they produced as valuable as meat, and there was even cheese from ewe’s milk, though that last was only popular in parts of the French south. The last flurry of orders had been completed a month before, at the beginning of summer. Perhaps because they had gold in their pockets, the men who had come were in bullish mood, their anger and dismay clear. In the twilight, they had dragged wooden benches into place that usually had their purpose making enclosures for the sales. The discussion was already loud when Thomas entered quietly at the back, a fresh shirt feeling stiff and itchy over the day’s sweat.
He knew every man there, though some better than others. The one who called himself Baron Strange was addressing the rest as Thomas murmured a greeting to a neighbour and accepted a seat near the front. He felt the baron’s gaze on him as he settled himself, but Thomas merely sat and listened for a time, gauging the temper of the room. He could feel fresh sweat starting on his skin at the growing heat in the wool hall. There were as many bodies packed in there as on a market day and he shifted uncomfortably. He hated the press of men and always had. It was one of the joys of his life that he could walk free and alone in the hills of his own land.
‘If anyone has better information, let them come forward with it,’ the baron was saying.
Thomas raised his head, feeling the man’s gaze leave him. Baron Strange had oiled his hair again, he noted, making a black slick of shining curls to frame a face weathered by sun and wind. The baron looked the part, at least, whether his claim to nobility was real or not. Thomas could see the hump of muscle on the man’s neck and right shoulder shift as he gestured, the legacy of decades wielding a heavy sword. Baron Strange was not weak of body and his arrogance was clear enough. Even so, Thomas had always sensed the man was a cracked bell, ringing a note that felt false. If they lived through the crisis, he vowed to pay for a search of the archives in London. He’d heard there was talk of founding a college of arms there, with all the family records brought to one place from around the entire country. It would be costly, but Thomas wanted to know if Strange was bluffing better men or really had a claim to his title. It gave Strange influence in their gathering of expatriates and explained why the baron stood to address the group, and why they listened to him.
‘In normal times,’ Strange went on, ‘I employ a few men to pass information to me in exchange for a little coin. They’ve all fallen silent in Anjou. The last I heard was that the French king himself was riding through the Loire valley. We’ve all seen the evicted families come through Maine! Now these black-coat English clerks are in every town hereabouts, telling us to pack up and move. I tell you, we’ve been bought and sold by our own lords.’