That morning his wife Jeanne had in jest accused him of watching one of their servants over-closely, and he had denied it angrily — and guiltily. The young servant-girl had reminded him so much of the woman he had met while returning from pilgrimage in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, and the shame of his adultery still poisoned his soul.
It wasn’t his wife’s fault — he knew that. In God’s name, his crime was entirely his own responsibility. No one else could be blamed — certainly not poor Jeanne. Baldwin had been close to death, and when he recovered, he had seduced the woman. She was married, as was he, but they had both been lonely and desperate — she because her man was incapable of giving her children, he because of his brush with mortality. Both had taken comfort in the way that men and women will.
That was Baldwin’s view, after rationalising his behaviour over the weeks, and he was not of a mood to reinvestigate his motives just now, so when Jeanne joked at his apparent interest in the new maid, he had responded with anger sparked by his own shame.
‘What?’ he had shouted. ‘You accuse me of trying to get the wench to lie with me? I’ve been gone all these months, and now I’m home you seek to watch over my every gesture like a gaoler?’
He should have gone to her and comforted her, hugged her and reassured her of his love for her. That was what he would have done before, but today, even as her eyes reflected her shock and hurt, he could not do so. That would be hypocrisy, for he had been comparing the new girl with his lover, and the thoughts of her, with her long dark hair like a raven’s wing enveloping him as she gently moved above him were still too sweet. He couldn’t embrace Jeanne while thinking of another woman.
So she had turned and left the room with pain in her eyes that he should have sought to wipe away, and he, foolish and clumsy in his shame, went out to take comfort in the only way he knew, riding his horse until both had built up a powerful sweat and he had exorcised his guilt for a while. Now he was grooming the mount, swearing to himself under his breath while he wondered how to ease his wife’s feelings of hurt.
The relationship of a man with his mount was much more easy than that of a man with his wife. A woman could be demanding, petulant, irrational. Horses needed food and drink, but beyond that were biddable and easy to understand. How could a man understand a wife? Even Jeanne, the most quickwitted, intelligent and loving woman he had ever met, was still prone to ridiculous comments.
No, that wasn’t fair. Baldwin knew he was just trying to excuse his own behaviour. It was he who was at fault, not Jeanne. And suddenly he had a flare of insight as he brushed at the rounsey’s flank, and his brush was stilled in his hand.
‘Great, merciful heaven,’ he breathed.
When he had first met Jeanne, she was a widow, but she had often remarked that she never missed her first husband, because he was a bully and had lost his affection for Jeanne. He berated her, insulted her before his friends, and had taken to striking her — all because their marriage wasn’t blessed with offspring. Suddenly Baldwin understood that her pain this morning was because she thought that he might grow like her first husband, and with that thought he was about to go to her and apologise, beg forgiveness and plead with her to understand that he adored her still, when the clatter of hooves announced a visitor.
‘Yes, I am Sir Baldwin,’ he repeated testily when the rider held his message a moment longer than necessary.
‘I am sorry, sir. I had expected to find you in your hall at this time,’ the fellow said, eyeing Baldwin’s scruffy old tunic doubtfully.
Baldwin grunted and snatched the letter from him. Just then, a stableboy who had heard the noise, ran out to see who had arrived but slipped in a damp pile of leaves and fell on his rump on the cobbles.
‘Let that be a lesson not to take too much interest in matters which don’t affect you,’ Baldwin said as he slowly read the page. ‘In the meantime, fetch a broom and clear the leaves before a horse falls and breaks a leg.’ He read on. ‘Why does the good Dean ask me to attend on him in Exeter?’
‘It is a murder, Sir Baldwin. A man has been killed.’
‘I see,’ Baldwin said, and he had to make an effort not to show his relief at the offered escape. ‘Well, I shall have to loan you a fresh horse.’
‘This one will be fine to take me back to Exeter in a little while, sir.’
‘Yes, but you’ll need a fresh mount to get to Tavistock, lad.’
Simon Puttock, a tall man of seven and thirty with the dark hair and grey eyes of a Dartmoor man, slammed the door behind him and strode out into the chill air, pausing a moment to stare out over the harbour.
It was a typical Dartmouth morning in late September. The rain was coming in from the sea. He pulled his cloak more closely about his shoulders as he surveyed the ships sheltered in the harbour, the men loading or unloading cargo, the heavy bales of merchandise almost bending them double. Some carried spices, some dyes, others hauled on ropes operating the hoisting spars, lifting heavier goods, the barrels of wine and salt from the King’s French possessions. The port was a thrusting little township with its own charter, and the scurrying men down there at the waterfront proved that the town was thriving financially.
Which was all to the good, because that meant more money for his master, the Abbot of Tavistock.
It was many years since Simon had first joined the Abbot. He had previously worked at the Stannary castle at Lydford, acting as one of the bailiffs who struggled to keep the King’s Peace over his extensive forest of Dartmoor, preventing the tinminers from overrunning every spare field, diverting every stream, thieving whatever they could in order to win more tin from the peaty soil, or simply threatening to use their extensive rights to extort money from peasants and landowners alike. One of their favourite games was to say that they thought they might find tin under a farmer’s best piece of pasture; only desisting when offered a suitable bribe.
Those years had been his happiest ever. He had seen his daughter grow to gracious maturity; he had buried one son, Peterkin, but his wife had conceived and now he had another to carry on his name. Yes, his life at Lydford, while busy and at times taxing, had been very rewarding. Which was why he now suffered like this, he told himself ruefully.
‘God’s Ballocks!’ he muttered, and turned to stride along Upper Street until he came to an alleyway. Here he turned and trod over the slippery cobbles down to Lower Street, and along to the building where he could meet his clerk.
The room where his clerk awaited him was large, and the fire in the middle of the floor was inadequate for its task.
‘Oh, Bailiff! A miserable morning, isn’t it, sir?’
Andrew was a Dartmoor man too, but there was no similarity between them in either looks or temperament. Simon was powerfully built, his frame strong and hardened from regular travelling over the moors. He was only recently returned from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with Baldwin; during which period he had lost much of his excess weight. In contrast, Andrew was chubby. He looked much younger than his sixty-odd summers, and still had the twinkling, innocent eye of a youth, whereas Simon’s expression was more commonly sceptical, having spent so many years listening to disputes and trying to resolve which of two arguing parties was telling the truth.
This clerk was born to write in his ledgers — and how he adored them! It was enough to drive Simon to distraction sometimes, the way that Andrew would smooth and clean each sheet before setting out his reeds methodically. He had been taught and raised as a novice in the Abbey, and his loyalty to Abbot Robert was not in doubt, but Simon wished that he could have had a more worldly-wise clerk instead of this stuffed tunic. He would have liked a man with whom he could dispute, who would have had new ideas and on whom Simon could have tested his own, but Andrew appeared content to be a servant, never offering advice or commenting on Simon’s decisions, merely sitting and scrawling his numbers and letters.