When he had finally ground to a halt, the small group stood silent for a moment, as if aware that a silent challenge had been issued, although none of them was sure who had offered it or why. It was Baldwin who broke the quiet, speaking slowly and ruminatively.
“Very well. So the fire was first seen by you at some time after midnight, would you say?”
“Yes,” said the hunter slowly, obviously thinking. “Yes, I think it must have been. I’d been setting traps, down over at the edge of the moors, and I’d put out twenty. I hadn’t left until dark, so it must have been after midnight before I came back.”
The knight considered, staring at the ground by his feet. “So you came back… which direction would you have come back from?”
Pointing up the road, away from the village, Black said, “There. From the moors, like I said.”
“So who did you go to first of all? To raise the alarm, I mean. Who did you go to first?”
Black jerked his chin in the same direction, towards the moors. “Roger Ulton. I came round the lane and saw the fire up here – well there seemed no point coming all the way down to the village and then getting someone to fetch him later. His house was nearest, so I went back to it and knocked him up.”
“And what then?” The calm eyes were fixed firmly on the hunter’s face.
“Then? I came into the village, of course. I banged on the doors and woke up all the men, got them to help me put the fire out.”
The bailiff nodded. The men would have hurried to help, keen to smother the flames before the winds could carry the sparks over to their own houses and put their properties at risk. Baldwin seemed to agree as well, turning and looking at the building that lay, still smoking, so near, with his arms crossed over his chest. As if he had been dismissed, Black looked from one to the other before slowly strolling off, walking over to chat with a little knot of villagers.
Baldwin sighed and kicked at a stone near his foot. “Sad, isn’t it. A man at home and very probably asleep. To die like that! God! I hope he didn’t suffer too much.” He sighed, feeling strangely sorry at the death of this man, someone he had never met. Shrugging, he thought it must be because it was such an apparently senseless death. There was no honour or glory to be gained from such an end, and it was a mean and horrible finish. Thinking back, he considered the other black burned corpses he had seen and sighed again, recollecting the twisted and tortured figures, the way that they always seemed to have been fighting death, struggling to live. It was not the way he wanted to die.
“Yes, well, I’m sure he’ll be happy where he’s gone now, anyway,” said Simon reverently. “May his soul rest in peace.”
He was surprised to see a cynical twitch to the knight’s eyebrow as he shot a quick glance at the bailiff, as if he wanted to express doubt, and the realisation shocked the bailiff. This might be a secular man, a warrior, but that was no excuse for blasphemy! Staring back at the knight, he was astonished to see a grimace of self-deprecating embarrassment, as though he knew that his thoughts had been picked up by Simon and wanted to apologise. He seemed to give a small shrug, with a grin, as if to say, “Sorry, but I am a knight – what do you expect?”
Peter Clifford did not seem to have noticed their silent communication. “So, then, Baldwin, I suppose you’ll want to take the best of the man’s beasts?”
“Eh?” He turned, evidently confused.
“The beast. Your heriot. You own this land; he was your villein. You have the choice of his best beast, just as I have the choice of the next best for the mortuary. Why? Didn’t you know about the death taxes?”
The knight stood, staring at the priest with absolute amazement on his face. “His cattle survived?” he said at last.
“Yes, of course they did. They’re all over at the common now – the villagers rounded them up once they had seen to the fire.”
Turning back to the burnt remains, Baldwin said, “I will be interested to have a look around the house when it has cooled enough,” and without saying more he walked away to talk to his servant.
Simon watched him go, and as he gazed after the knight he wondered what Baldwin meant by that comment. Then, drawing his eyes away, he could not help a sudden shudder, as if of quick, chill fear, and his face was troubled as he turned back to the smoking ruins. Why did he have the feeling that the knight was suspicious about this apparent accident?
Chapter Four
It was another two hours before they felt happy about entering the blackened and still warm shell. Black led the way, a small team of local men following, all with cloths tied round their mouths against the dust, and Simon, the priest and the knight waiting by the doorway, where they could watch the men inside.
The body was easy to find. It had not been hit by the heavy oaken beam that had fallen from the roof, but still lay on the remains of the palliasse that had been the man’s bed, over near the far wall. At first Simon could see little – the haze from the heat distorted the view, small grey clouds of smoke rose here and there from the embers, and the beam itself with its accretions of burned waste obstructed the scene with its solid mass, seemingly unaffected by the flames that had destroyed the house around it, Amongst all this mess and desolation, Black’s small group walked with confidence, along the length of the beam, to duck underneath where its end was still supported by the wall, and walk back along it until opposite the door where the simple mattress lay.
Simon could hear the muttering as they came close to it, a curse of disgust, a call for assistance. He could not help thinking how foolish this all seemed. The walls over to his right had collapsed, were now simply a pile of rubble. The men had no need to enter by this door, by this old gap in the wall that had been constructed decades before. Why did they go in here? Was it a politeness? Was it a sign of respect for the corpse that they should only use the door that his guests would have, as if in so doing they were receiving his approval? Or was it simply force of habit that they should go in where they knew there to be an entrance, as if their minds could not quite accept the fact that the whole house had been changed?
Beside him Baldwin stood, chewing on his moustache and frowning. When he threw him a glance, Simon was surprised to see that the knight’s eyes were not, like his own and Clifford’s, following the men inside, but were staring fixedly at the massive doorway at the other end of the house, the doorway for the oxen.
He seemed perplexed by something, Simon thought. Noticing his look, Baldwin grinned shamefacedly. “I always seem to look for a difficulty. It must be part of my nature,” he said, and turned away to watch the party inside. But Simon could not help noticing that every now and again his eyes would drift back to that large doorway, as if dragged unwillingly.
The men seemed to take an age to fetch the body out. They rolled it onto an old blanket, then with one man at each corner they hefted it and began to weave their circuitous way back to the entrance. They had to try to keep the blanket taut in order that the cloth did not touch the hot embers all around, and the force necessary was evidently great, making the men bend away from their load and each other as they struggled over the rubble and mess, stumbling and tripping as they went. They had difficulties when they had to bend under the beam, at last reaching some mutual arrangement whereby one man went through – was it Black? – then another, each man at his corner crouching individually and making his way under before standing and waiting for his companions. Then, at last, they were making their way back to the doorway, and the others stood back to give them room as they made their way out, dropping the blanket with its unwholesome contents with irreverent haste as they grasped at the cloths covering their mouths, tearing them off so that they could breath the sweet air again, away from the stench and dust inside. The body rolled from the covering to lie on its back a foot or two from the waiting men.