“Bailiff? What’s wrong, bailiff?”
Simon could only slowly bring his eyes up from the fire. After the horror in the woods he felt more tired than he had ever been in his life before. The nervous energy and the anger that had kept him going through the woods had drained him, and the horror of the sight in the clearing and his mad rush back to the road had finished the job. Now as he looked up he seemed to the constable to have aged by twenty years since the afternoon; his face was gaunt and pale and his eyes glittered as if he was in a fever, and Tanner crouched quickly beside him, his face full of concern. Simon hardly seemed to notice him. Almost as if he wanted not to see the constable, he turned his gaze back to the fire and stared vacantly into the flames.
“Bailiff? What’s happened?” said the constable in shocked amazement.
“We got here just before dark,” Simon said quietly. “We found it easily enough. David – that’s the monk – he found it quite quickly. The tracks were clear, going off into the woods over there.” He pointed briefly with his chin to the opposite side of the road and returned to his solitary stare, talking softly and calmly while the constable frowned at him in anxious concern. “I told David to wait here for you and I went in alone. I must have been going for over an hour when I found a small clearing. One horse at least had been kept there, there was a fresh pile of shit where it had been tied.”
Simon looked up suddenly and the constable felt the pain in the bailiff’s eyes as they searched his face for a moment before returning to their introspective study of the flames. “The abbot was not far away. I carried on and found him. He had been tied up- tied to a tree. Someone had gathered up a load of twigs and branches and piled them underneath him.” Tanner saw him shudder once, involuntarily, but then his voice continued calmly. “Then set light to them and burned the abbot to death.”
Tanner stared at him steadily. “What? He was burned at the stake?”
“Yes,” said Simon softly, almost wonderingly. “He was burned alive.” Then he winced, his voice strained and harsh with the horror of it. “He must have been screaming when he died. Oh God! Stephen, you should have seen his face! It was dreadful! The flames were not hot enough to burn the top of his body, it was like he was staring at me! It felt like the devil himself was looking at me through his eyes, I could see his face clearly. God! It was awful!”
“But who could do a thing like that? Who would do that to a man of God?” said Tanner with a frown of consideration. Of course, outlaws were known for their brutality, exceeding even the viciousness of the pirates from Normandy, but neither French nor English bands were known here in the heart of Devon. Tanner was older than the bailiff and had served in the wars against the French, so he had witnessed the cruelty that men could show to each other, but even in war he had never heard of a monk being killed in this way, like a heretic. He was puzzled rather than horrified.
But he was worried too – if these two outlaws could do that to an abbot, nobody could be safe until they were caught. He looked up at the other men as they hobbled their horses and came forward to the fire, laughing and joking as they came. Their humour seemed almost sacrilegious after what he had just heard, and he had to bite back a shout at them.
Tanner was a calm and stable man. As a farmer he was used to the changing seasons and the steady march of the years as he watched his animals and plants grow, flourish and eventually die, but he was also used to the cruel and vicious ways of the wild, where the stronger creatures survived and the weaker died. Even so, to him this crime seemed strange in its barbarity. Animals could do that to each other, killing for food or pleasure, but for men to do this seemed curious in his quiet rural hundred. Constables in towns might be more used to cruelty of this type, he reflected. He had seen such acts at time of war when he had been a foot soldier for the king, but he did not expect them here, not during peace. Why should they do this to an abbot? He sighed and looked back at the bailiff, sitting silently absorbed beside him.
“You need to rest, sir. Lie down. I’ll organise a watch and get the men sorted out.”
“Yes,” said Simon heedlessly, nodding slowly. He was gradually losing his feeling of horror under the stolid gaze of the constable and it was slowly being replaced by a distracted confusion, as if he had seen the whole of his world toppled. He had lived here all his life and in that time he had never seen a murdered man – or any man who had died in such an obscene manner. It seemed as though all that he had ever believed and known about the people who lived in the shire had suddenly been destroyed, and that he must reconsider all of his deepest held convictions in the light of this single, shattering event. A tear slowly dribbled from his eye and ran down his cheek, making him start, and he wiped it away angrily.
As if the gesture itself had awoken him, he looked over at Tanner, who was staring in his turn at the flames. “Right. Tomorrow we start the hunt for these killers, whoever they may be. I want them brought to justice,” he said, almost snarling as he felt the disgust and hatred rising again. He was angry, not for the crime alone, not just for the hideous death of the man in the woods. It was for his own heightened sense of vulnerability, for the feeling that the men capable of this act could kill others, and would. They must be destroyed, like mad bears – hunted down and slaughtered with no compunction. “You get one of the men to ride on to Buckland and let them know what has happened here. The rest of us will follow the tracks and see if we can And them.”
“Yes,” said Tanner, startled by the venom in Simon’s voice. “What about the sheriff? Shouldn’t we send someone to Exeter?”
“No. This happened here and it’s our responsibility. We’ll get them. For now, though, I’m going to get some sleep.” He stood slowly in his exhaustion, gazing at the men in faint surprise as if he had only just noticed them, and wandered over to a tree. He sat, leaning against the trunk, pulled his cloak around him and was soon asleep.
Tanner watched him for a while, but then, as a man walked by him with a jug of cider, reached up and caught him by the arm. “There’s been a murder here. Tell the men that we’ll be up at dawn, so they’d better get some sleep.”
The man, an older, stout farmer called Cottey, with the red and rosy cheeks of the cider drinker, stared at him uncomprehendingly. “A murder? Who’s dead?”
“Abbot of Buckland,” said Tanner shortly as he rose. “I’m going to stay on watch. Tell the others to rest or I’ll let one of them do it instead.” A sudden shriek of laughter made him glare round, his voice hissing in his rage. “And tell the daft buggers we’re not on a trip to the fair. The killers could be watching us now.”
He walked over to a tree near Simon’s sleeping body and stared out at the trees, away from the fire, as the men all began to settle, squabbling and bickering mildly as they fought for positions nearest the fire. Soon, apart from the low murmur of conversations, the camp fell quiet and Tanner could hear the night sounds of the forest come back, as if they could bring normality with them.
But he could not lose the sensation of brooding evil. The murder had unsettled him, and he felt too disquieted to rest as he stood and maintained his vigil. All he could think of was that someone was out there, maybe even now watching him from deep in among the trees, someone who had killed the abbot. Whoever could do that was capable of anything.
As he rolled himself up in his cloak and made his first circuit around their camp, he was thinking of his home, where the fire would be roaring now, the flames leaping from the cured oak logs.