Sir Peregrine swore at the sight. ‘Look at them! They’re supposed to be keeping a close watch on the damned house, not chatting about the ales they drank in the tavern last night. Worse than an old gossip from the market, those two!’
Baldwin smiled, but as he did so he saw both watchmen spin and stare at the house. A moment later, while the one was hobbled, trying to put his tarse back under his tunic, and the other was grabbing for the polearm he had dropped, Baldwin and his companions were sprinting along the roadway to the source of that scream.
Mazeline felt the table at the back of her thighs and had to stop. She wanted to get to the window, to call for help, but there was no hope now, with Jordan standing before her, as insouciant as ever.
‘Who were you expecting? Anyone?’
‘I was waiting for you, husband, but with the men outside, I thought that you’d be caught.’
‘I’m not so stupid that two watchmen like them can catch me out. I came in through the garden. From the castle’s gardens over our wall — it’s perfectly easy,’ he said, smiling. ‘Get me some ale, and meat. I am starved.’
She nodded and walked out to the buttery. The window was open, and she felt the breeze from the passageway, but then, as she entered the room, she felt the chamber start to spin about her, and as her nostrils caught the tang of salt on the air, the sweet, heavy odour that made her think of butchery and the slaughterhouse, she saw the body of the bottler with the head completely stove in and the brains spread over the floor.
It was the smell of blood and the sight of the corpse that made her start to faint, and it was the sensation of damp tackiness on her hands as she pitched forward that made her start to scream and scream …
Chapter Twenty-Six
Baldwin was at the door a moment behind Simon, and the two men thrust at it with their shoulders, but could achieve nothing against the solid timbers. Simon grabbed the polearm from one guard and thrust the point of it between the door and the lock, shoving hard. There was a cracking of timber, and Sir Peregrine took the other billhook and brought it down at the gap between the door and jamb, making it shudder.
As he brought it down again, Simon felt the door move. ‘Push!’ he yelled, and rammed his shoulder against it again. There was a definite shifting. The knight hammered with the bill’s butt and Baldwin and Simon threw themselves against the wood until there was a loud splintering crash and the door gave before them.
Simon fell inside, and Sir Peregrine leaped over him, while Baldwin more delicately stepped round him, his sword already out, his left arm down and before his belly in the defensive posture Simon had seen him adopt so often. Then Simon too was up.
‘He’s not here!’ Sir Peregrine called from the hall. He reappeared in the passageway.
‘His wife is here, though,’ Baldwin said from the buttery. He was crouched at her side. ‘Help me lift her up. I don’t think there’s any point worrying about the other poor devil.’
Betsy sat shivering with her hands cupping the mazer of burned wine Ralph had given her. He’d have to distil some more at this rate, he told himself morosely.
‘What happened to her?’ he asked.
‘It was him. Jordan. He came here last night with Reg as usual, and they had some sort of a row, and then Reg went off in a rare mood. I’ve never seen him look so grim. Don’t ask me what it was about, but Jordan was telling Reg he had to do something, and Reg was saying he wouldn’t. When he left the place, Jordan sort of laughed, and then he asked me for Mags, because he said she’d refused some punter the other day. I don’t know anything about that. Still, he said he wanted her for the night, and she seemed scared, but not overly, you know? I thought he was going to demand a good service from her just to make her pay for not doing what she’d been supposed to last week, that was all. And then this morning, I heard her crying, and I thought, Well, he’s hit her or something, and that’ll not make him any money for a while, because she’ll be too hurt and bruised to work, and I didn’t want to go in myself, because with his temper, if I’d interrupted him, God knows what he could do to me, so I left them … and when I came back, I found Mags like this …’
Ralph nodded understandingly. The cries and weeping from the room were still loud, even at the far end of the corridor. ‘She’s past worrying, Betsy. She’s gone to a better place than this, you can be sure. What happened to Jordan?’
‘He was already gone when I went in there and found her. He just expects us to clear up her body and throw it away, I suppose.’
‘You’ll have to call the Coroner to view her, Betsy,’ he said gently.
‘What can I do?’ she sobbed. ‘What’s a tart’s death to him? He won’t care that we’ll be thrown on the street.’
‘Why should that happen?’
‘You know why! Jordan owns this place. If he’s caught, we’ll be thrown out, and if he isn’t, we’ll still be thrown out. Can’t we hide her …’ She caught sight of his expression and was still.
‘Send for the Coroner and I’ll see what I can do to help you.’
‘You? What can you do to help us!’
Ralph smiled enigmatically. Even Coroners needed a leech sometimes, after all. Especially when the piles were biting.
Jordan ran over the grass with his mind in a torment. Again his hearing had gone peculiar, and he shook his head as he ran, a frown of pain twisting his features as the high whistling screeched through his head.
The high red sandstone walls of the castle stared down at him, and he gazed up at it bitterly. That building was the symbol of the Coroner’s power — of all official power in the city. Without it, he would have been able to continue his work happily, but no, that sodomite of a sergeant had decided to take an interest in his activities, and as a result he was brought to this low pass.
Perhaps he could recover his position. He had only killed the bottler when the fool stirred awake. It was Jordan’s own buttery, in Christ’s name. He could say he’d been expecting it to be empty, and finding a man in there he’d assumed the fellow was a thief. His wife would support him. She always did.
This morning had been good, though. Aah! She had behaved impeccably all night, the worry always in her face even as she simulated her moaning and lustful panting for him. Yes, she’d known what she was about. A good whore, that.
But Anne had been too, and Jordan had learned that there were more ways than one to enjoy a whore. He’d had fun with her today. First with his bare hands, almost killing her, and then the knife. It was as satisfying as the sex. Better than anything he’d known with his wife. Sweet Jesus, if those two hadn’t been at the front of his house, he could have tried the same with Mazeline. She’d have been good for that.
Yes, as she went out to the buttery to fetch him his ale, he had thought of pulling out his knife again, and perhaps taking it to her clothes first, stripping her naked, just as she had been when Jane was conceived in her womb … Jane, where was Jane?
The whistling and whirring was deafening now and he looked about him wildly. He could do nothing without his little girl. He loved her, he adored her, and she was all his. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. Where was she?
The noise grew until he was deafened. In his vision he thought he saw the bodies of the two whores, the bodies of Mick and his bottler, all laughing, mocking him. He had killed them as though he was all-powerful and could kill with impunity, but now they knew that they could conceal his daughter from him. They couldn’t. No, not them. Mazeline must have taken her away. Where? Where?
In an instant the sounds were gone and his face cleared. He knew exactly where Jane would be — surely at Mazeline’s cousins’ house. He could go there and rescue her. And then he would have to lie low somewhere until he could escape the city with her. Looking up at the bright sun, he changed his mind. He was exhausted after the excitement and thrills of the previous night. Better, surely, to go and hide somewhere now in the quiet, while it was daylight, and then come out again at night.