The sun was past its zenith, sweeping slowly across a sky that was, for once, almost miraculously free from clouds. Its brightness lit up the scenery with a soft splendour. In front of them at the other side of the road was the sewer, but beyond it was the stream with the flat stone slabs of the clapper bridge crossing both, and over the ridge were the strips.
They seemed almost to have been created to assist the inn by giving it a pleasant aspect. It was as if they were radiating out with the inn building at their centre, and their colours – soft red from the earth, white-yellow from the older crops, green from the grass – seemed to emphasise the rural nature of the scene. Beyond, the trees took over again. The great oaks and beeches, elms and sycamores dominated the whole area, lurking with indifferent ease at the edge of the habitation. How long, Simon wondered, how long before these trees are removed and the strips expand further into the forest? How long before new assarts are developed to push the trees back so that these poor people can have more lands for fields, so that they can have more food and not be so dependent on so little? But, looking at the ring of trunks, he wondered whether they could ever be pushed farther back. They seemed too substantial, too massive for puny humans to destroy.
Against his will, Black had agreed to join them, and he sat now in between Simon and the priest, while Baldwin had a stool, sitting in front of them. Edgar stood a short distance away as usual, his eyes flitting over the men with his master.
“It’s really very simple,” Baldwin was saying. “We simply speak to the people who were here yesterday and try to see who might have had a reason to kill this… this Brewer.”
“But there are loads of people here, sir,” Simon protested. “You don’t mean to speak to them all, do you?”
“Yes.” His voice was uncompromising. “We must. If I’m right, a man has been killed. The very least we owe him is to find out why he was killed. Black?” The hunter started at being addressed. “Black. Do you have any idea why someone should kill this man? Is there anyone in the village who hated him enough to kill him?”
“Not that I know of. No, this has always been a quiet hamlet. It seems unbelievable that Brewer should have been murdered.”
Baldwin took a long swallow of his beer and carefully set his pot down on the ground beside him before leaning forward, his hands clasped and dangling between his parted legs, his eyes fixed on Black. “Tell me about the other people in the village. How many families are there?”
“Oh, seven. Seven families in seven houses. Of course, there are some adult sons in a couple of them. Thomas has two sons old enough to have their own places now, so has Ulric.”
“I see. Well, tell me about this man Brewer. What was he like?”
Black shot a glance at the priest, who murmured gently, “Don’t worry, my son. Just tell the truth.”
“He was not liked.”
“Why?” asked the knight.
“Well, he had several acres. He had eight oxen. That made the other farmers jealous. And there was always the rumour that he had more money in his chest, hidden. It seemed unfair. Everyone here works hard for their living, working their strips, borrowing whatever they need from their neighbours and working on the manor’s lands when it’s time, but Brewer, he seemed to be able to survive on his own. He paid the bailiff so he never had to work on the lord’s land. And he kept buying more land. He kept taking more from the forest. The lord – that is your brother, Sir Baldwin – let him keep taking over new assarts. He could afford to take on the land in the woods and pay for men to go and clear it, so all the time his money was increasing. All the time he was getting more land and increasing his crops. It made people jealous.” As if he suddenly realised how long a speech he had made, he subsided, glaring at his boots.
He was rescued by the innkeeper arriving with their food. On a heavy wooden tray were earthenware bowls, one for each of them. In the bottom of the bowls was a thick slab of bread, and a heavy stew bad been ladled over the top.
After a few minutes, Baldwin frowned at Black again as a thought hit him. “What about the man’s son? You mentioned a boy in Exeter.”
The hunter sniffed, scooping another spoonful of stew into his mouth with every sign of pleasure. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he belched. “My wife might know something about him. She’s lived here all her life.”
After their meal, Peter announced that he would have to leave them. He had his church work to attend to, he said, although Simon did wonder whether this was mainly for show and the priest was thinking that the affair was simply a wild-goose chase.
Simon was not sure how to treat the knight’s allegation. It seemed too unlikely, somehow, that one of the peaceable villeins from Blackway could have committed murder. It was far more likely that, as they had first thought, the man had died in his sleep. But could Sir Baldwin be right? Could the man have been killed first and then dropped onto his palliasse, so that any others coming later would assume that he had been killed by the thick smoke of his homely pyre? It was possible, he had to agree, but was it likely? Somehow it did not seem so. But the knight was full of nervous energy at the mere thought.
He had bolted down his food, eager once more to be off, and when his companions completed their meals at a more relaxed pace, possibly, although unintentionally, indicating their doubts about his theory, he seemed almost to panic, so intense was his desire to get on with what he termed “our investigation‘. Simon was amazed by the difference in the man. When they had first met, so few days ago, at Bickleigh, he had seemed reserved and aloof, tolerant it was true, but aware of his station and noble birth. Now he seemed keen and eager to meet with all the villeins and cottars, the most humble of the serfs of the hamlet, purely to satisfy his curiosity about the death of a man he had never even met. And even the death itself seemed unremarkable to all save him. Was that it? Simon wondered. Was it simply that having proposed what seemed at first sight to be a preposterous concept he now wanted to try to justify it to the others? Or did he need to justify it to himself?
Baldwin Furnshill knew that he did not. He had been ill for months, first with a physical ailment, and, more recently, with a brain fever of alarming proportions, but he knew that neither had any effect on his thinking about the death of the old man in his house. Of course he was aware of the scepticism of the others – he would have been surprised if they had not displayed any, for it did seem very strange that there should have been such a crime in so quiet a part of the land. He could think of many places where death and murder would have been less surprising -London, Bristol, Oxford, and hundreds of towns and villages in between – but here?
And why an old, harmless man who was close to the end of his life anyway? What was the point?
He was still mulling it over when they came to Black’s house at the northernmost edge of the village, over at the west of the road. Although smaller than the other houses in Blackway, it was one of the newest. It was a more solid-looking place, all of cob, but with a strong timber frame that showed around the door and the windows. Baldwin raised a half-amused, half-suspicious eyebrow at the sight of the wood, wondering whether to make a comment, but decided against it. He looked at Black with renewed interest, though. If this hunter was prepared to break the forest laws and steal the king’s wood, he could be a useful man to know for the future. After all, taking the wood could result in a noose at one of the verderer’s courts. Then another thought struck him. If this man was unafraid of the king’s displeasure, would he care about killing a neighbour? Putting the idea to one side, he bowed to the hunter’s wife as she came to the door.