She was waiting for him. Look at her: not so much waiting as positively inviting. Villeneuve’s eyes relished her face as he imagined pushing apart those soft lips. But the lips weren’t his target. Oh no. Much lower down. Which would he do? Take her by surprise? Or enjoy the thrill of the chase, see her eyes flare, see her run from him, falling as he caught her and watch her face contort as he took her? Some men said women liked force. Like it or not, that was what she was going to get. He thought with his fist or his pizzle, did he? Well, as he slipped from his horse, he knew just what he was thinking with today.
No one up at the castle took much notice when Villeneuve was late for the evening meal. It wasn’t the first time, probably wouldn’t be the last. Not unless Simon chose to make a real example of him. Yes, this time he must. The man’s swaggering insolence set a bad example to men all too ready to follow it. As for his fornication, the Lady Rosamunde, who would be joining Simon as soon as the living quarters were ready for feminine company, would demand an end to that. She’d been ready to embrace a contemplative life when her father had preferred a more earthly union for her, and she brought to Simon’s circle an air of delicacy and refinement he could see was sadly lacking now. Tomorrow morning, then, Villeneuve would be flogged and sent on his way. If Simon himself still found it impossible to get his tongue around the agglomeration of alien diphthongs these Saxons insisted on calling a language, many of his men had devised a rough lingua franca which enabled them to communicate. Another interpreter they would surely need, but they could make shift – wasn’t that the term he’d heard Beom using? – until the replacement arrived. Tomorrow. So be it.
How dare the wretched man disobey a direct order? There was no sign of him at the time Simon had appointed. When asked, his colleagues shuffled awkwardly. Perhaps he was dealing with a thick, mead-filled head? For whatever reason, he hadn’t appeared in the chapel, nor had he broken his fast with the others, either in the hall or in the guardroom, where he was wont to boast of the previous night’s amorous adventures. It wasn’t the first time his servant had to admit that his master had not returned at all – perhaps he had found a congenial bed to wait in till curfew was lifted. Rutting when he should have been begging his lord for mercy? Simon slammed his fist into his palm with anger. When noon had come and gone, however, he despatched search parties. A Norman – even one intent on dalliance – did not go far without armour, but all Villeneuve had taken, his servant admitted, were his helm and his hauberk.
‘Has his horse returned yet?’ Simon demanded. Perhaps he was being unjust. The man might simply have taken a toss and be lying unconscious.
The answer was negative. But that was inconclusive, too: a foot in a rabbit hole could injure a horse as well as a man. More ominously, the ability of the Saxons to spirit away a valuable horse was legendary.
The search parties returned with nothing to report.
‘No tracks? No signs of a scuffle?’ he demanded. ‘Did the dogs pick up no scent?’
‘Only the smell of pigs, my lord. That young woman’s let the damned animals range the whole forest.’
‘Come, the man couldn’t have vanished into thin air! Have you questioned the villagers?’
‘Villeneuve was the only man who could talk to them,’ came the predictable reply.
Simon knew what Villeneuve’s counsel would have been. It was standard, if illegal, policy. They kill one of ours, we kill as many of theirs as we can lay hands on. But what was the point of such measures if those punished didn’t know what they were being punished for? A baser thought struck him. Mass executions would delay the building of his private quarters, and the Lady Rosamunde was joining him on the understanding that the nearest he could achieve to civilisation was awaiting her. Damn Villeneuve: an irritation in life, and now irritation in what was almost certainly death.
There must be some in the team of workmen who spoke French well enough to assist him in the interrogations he knew he must carry out. He summoned Luc, his clerk of works, a man, like himself, of middle years.
‘It’s hard to tell, my lord. There’s plenty that understand without wanting to let on, if you see what I mean. Sullen, some of them. But there’s one that’s grown into a sort of foreman -thickset man, early twenties. Listens more than he talks, it’s true. But there’s a look about his eyes, if you know what I mean – like a good alert dog.’
‘And he speaks French?’
Luc shook his head. ‘I don’t say that. I do say he’ll understand enough to find someone who does or just to get the whisper going round that you’re going to torch the village if they don’t come up with news of Villeneuve. That’ll bring some action.’
‘I don’t like making threats I can’t fulfil,’ Simon said, almost to himself.
The clerk looked at him. ‘Ah, you’re the sort that’d rather build up than pull down! And…’
‘Go on, man.’
To his astonishment, Luc blushed. ‘I’ve – well, I’ve got my own reasons why I don’t want the village destroyed.’
‘The usual?’ he asked tolerantly.
‘She’s what they call a comely wench, my lord.’
‘So you can speak their tongue?’
‘Who said anything about speaking, my lord? But we’ve got one on the way, and to my mind – well, isn’t conquest by the cock kinder than conquest by the sword?’
‘So it’s a political bedding, is it?’ Simon laughed. ‘Go and fetch your foreman, Luc, and we’ll see if we older ones can achieve what the younger ones can’t.’
Within a few minutes a familiar figure bent a polite but not obsequious head. Beom. So that was the foreman. Simon wasn’t surprised. Beom listened with an air of calm dignity, but, as Luc had predicted, gave little away. Little – apart, perhaps, from a tiny frisson of – of fear?
Surely not. Within the tiniest of moments, his face was phlegmatic again. Nodding, he listened to Simon, raising a hand to his ear when he wanted a phrase repeated.
‘You know this knight of mine?’ Simon asked at last.
Beom’s features assumed a sneer, and he mimed the big-balls swagger of a man set on sexual conquest. Oh yes: He knew him, all right.
‘And does he have enemies?’
Beom’s disbelieving shrug would have put a Norman’s to shame it was so expansive. Such a man undoubtedly had enemies. Beom even managed an ironic smile, pointing to the scar left by Villeneuve’s whip.
‘Did you kill him?’
Eyes meeting his lord’s, Beom shook his head.
‘Do you know the man who did?’
The same response.
‘Tomorrow morning I shall question every man in the village, and you will tell me their answers. If the murderer confesses, I shall spare the rest of the village.’
Beom nodded. Simon waved him away. But he stood his ground, and for the first time spoke. He had to repeat what he said several times before Simon could understand him. At last it seemed to make sense: ‘Have you found this man’s body yet?’
Simon decided to treat the man honestly. He shook his head.
Was it relief that flashed across Beom’s face? Ah, a man like him would know the law, wouldn’t he? Wherever a Norman body was found, the nearest village would find itself paying a punitive fine.