The berner set his harriers to test the road, egging them on with enthusiastic cries and whistles, and waited while they milled at the crossroads. Simon watched, the tip of his tongue protruding between his lips in his eagerness to see them take off, but then he sighed as dogs began to stop and sit and scratch. All around him, Simon could sense the men relaxing in their seats, letting lances fall a little from the vertical, slumping, one or two chatting. “Looks like we should have gone for the moors instead,” he said to Baldwin with resignation, but before the knight could comment, the berner edged closer.
“Look at her, sir.”
Following his pointing finger, Simon saw a bitch trotting slowly up and down a little distance away from the others. She paused, glancing back at the pack, her head set to one side with a comical expression of doubt, her brow wrinkled.
“She’s just found the trail of a fox or something,” the bailiff said dismissively, and turned to Baldwin.
To his surprise, the knight could barely control his excitement. Baldwin often hunted with his own hounds, and he recognized the signs. The bitch was dubious because of the strength of other scents, and he watched with bated breath. “Master berner?”
“Yes, sir, I reckon so. The bastards came this way,” the man said, after a scathing look at Simon.
The bailiff stared from one to the other. “You can tell from a dog doing that?”
“She’s the best, sir. She’s just making sure, you’ll soon hear.”
All at once there was a sharp yelping from her, which was taken up by the other hounds in the pack as they joined her, urgently setting their noses to the dirt of the road and sounding off as they caught the elusive scent. The barking and howling took on a persuasive quality, and the men all round began shifting in their saddles and gripping their arms more firmly as they saw that the hounds had the trail at last. Suddenly the pack moved.
It was an awesome experience for Simon. He had never before joined a large hunt and seeing the magnificent creatures in full spate was a little like watching the torrent in full flood rushing down the Lydford Gorge. The leader of the pack set up a long baying howl, then went silent with a dread purpose as he began to trot northward, the rest taking up position behind until he was the point of an arrowhead of harriers making off. As younger hounds caught up with him, the leader snapped at them over his shoulder, and hurried his pace. Others increased their speed to keep up, and there was soon an inevitability to their onward rush, which was made menacing by its sudden silence. The harriers were reserving all their strength for the chase and would not sound out again until they had caught their prey and held it at bay.
The berner whipped his mount without another word, his face showing his excitement and when Simon glanced at Baldwin, he saw the same look on the knight’s face. “Come on!”
It was like starting a horse race. Clapping spurs to his rounsey’s flanks, Simon felt the power surge through his horse’s hindquarters as it sprang forward with a sudden explosion of energy, and he had to crouch and grip its flanks with his knees to keep his seat. From behind him he heard the clatter of horseshoes on stone, then a quick scattering of hoofbeats on the densely packed earth of the roadway as riders kicked their mounts and found their own position in the melee, each man thrusting others from his path to make a clear space in which his horse might be able to forge ahead. A horse reared at his side, but the rider remained in control, and forced the animal to twist in mid-air, forelegs flailing, until it was facing the right way, and then he gave it its head.
The discordant, stumbling sound of many horses falteringly finding their pace gradually settled into a rhythmic drumming as they all cantered in unison, and suddenly the sound became a solid thundering. To Simon it was as if the horses were copying the pack. The harriers had formed a solid wedge-shaped group, the leader out in front, while the men behind formed another behind the berner. Baldwin, he saw, was restraining his Arab, which wanted to gallop off. She had the power and speed to overhaul any other mount in the group.
There was an awesome noise: leather squeaked and harnesses jangled as they rushed on, ever faster, the wind hissing and booming in Simon’s ears and all but deafening him, the clap and snap of cloaks as they billowed in the wind like sails, and over all the pounding, unified and terrible in its violent force, of the hooves hammering the ground beneath them. For a short second, the bailiff wondered what he would feel like seeing a chivalry of mounted knights charging toward him, but thrust the idea aside. His concentration was needed merely to stay on his beast.
They began to climb a hill, passing Forches Field where the Abbot kept his gallows, and rode over a short plain. At the far side, the hounds streamed around a loudly cursing farmer on a wagon, who struggled to keep his ox quiet as the harriers darted to either side of him, only to have the following riders gallop past. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Simon saw a man barge into another as they both tried to take the same route, and one fell, arms widespread, into a hedge, his horse continuing on alone, stirrups flying and bouncing by its side as it struggled, wild-eyed, to keep its place among the others.
Now they were on the great plain of Heath Field near Brentor, and the conical rock that gave the village its name stood stark on their right, the church at its summit a comforting sight in the bleak surroundings. Still they thundered on, the harriers as silent and daunting as the Devil’s own wish hounds in their implacable purpose.
Baldwin could not help a smile of contentment as he felt the urgent desire of his Arab to overtake all others in this race. He had been formed for just such exercise, he felt. The hunt was the only way of life for a man, with the blood rushing as fast in the veins as the air past the ears, the thrill of the search for the quarry, and the skill of holding the mount under control all combining to make it a uniquely exciting experience.
Yet the end of the chase would be the capture of two men, he knew. And their capture might shortly after be followed by their death, hanging from the rope at the Abbot’s gibbet. The thoughts circled in his brain, the glorious, hectic delight of the charge; the ghastly end for the quarry.
There were so many lives bound up in this affair: those of Peter and Torre, Avice and Pietro, Antonio, Elias and Jordan. Lybbe was likely to hang for his past offences, and if Pietro was found guilty, as Luke’s evidence suggested, of killing Torre and possibly Peter as well, he would die too.
But Baldwin was niggled by something. There was a clue he had missed, something vital that would shed light on all that he had heard today.
22
A t last there was a ripple of music from the harriers.
“Listen to that!” the berner called excitedly. “We have them now. They can’t escape.”
Baldwin nodded agreement. He had rarely heard hunting hounds give voice so strongly, and when they did, it was a sure sign that their quarry was near at hand.
He looked about him as they raced on. They had taken the northwestern route after Brentor, and now they were passing on the old road under Lydford, toward the moors. The weather here was gloomy, with thick clouds gray and dull overhead. It was hard to believe that in Tavistock the weather was calm and bright with few clouds in a deep blue sky, looking up here and feeling the damp chill in the air.
Baldwin could recognize most of the countryside from his trips to see Simon, and this part was familiar. They were riding at an easy canter to save their horses, and he had time to study the land. Ahead, a little to the right, there was a low hill with small cairns on its summit which Baldwin recognized as White Hill. Just left was Doe Tor, with the great mound of Great Links Tor rising behind. The posse was chasing along a narrow valley with a stream trickling quietly at its base, with Sharp Tor rising before them. Even as he looked, he saw the faint smoke of hoofbeats in the dry dust ahead of them.