‘He is so accused?’ Annicia asked softly. ‘And where is the corpse? I had not heard that there was one.’
‘I believe I know where it is.’
‘But I fear I do not understand,’ she said with a smile that failed to conceal her cold determination. ‘Do you mean to tell me that my son is to be accused of killing a man when there is no body, no proof of the wounds that killed him, no presentment of Englishry, nothing? I had thought that no body meant no case.’
Baldwin smiled, and once more she was reminded of a reptile: like a snake, he appeared not to blink. ‘We shall find the body, madam. And when we do, your son will be arrested on my order as Keeper of the King’s Peace.’
She was about to answer, when there came a rattling of hooves on the cobbles outside. Immediately there was shouting and roaring, with one voice calling more clearly than all the others: ‘In God’s name, all men here, now! There’s a fire!’
Simon ran to the door and stared out. ‘It’s your husband, madam.’
‘Fire! Fire at the mill! Every man, bring buckets, help to put it out!’
‘I suppose you should go with him,’ she said with a strange inflexion in her voice.
Baldwin looked at her. ‘Yes, my Lady, but while we are gone, you must ensure that the prisoners are sent on their way to meet with the Coroner. You shall do this?’
‘Yes.’ She saw his sceptical expression. ‘I swear it. You disbelieve me?’
‘Not at all, Lady,’ he said courteously. The shouting outside was louder, and he heard horses being gathered. ‘We must go.’
Baldwin and Simon ran down to the court and Simon had to snatch the reins of his mount from one over-enthusiastic man-at-arms who had mounted it already. As the Bailiff took the beast back, Baldwin smiled at the expression of outrage on his face.
Then they were riding out through the gates and he had no more time to think about anything else as he saw the towering column of flame where the mill had lain.
Sir Ralph had left the place sunk in gloom. Gilda’s pain and grief were too hard to bear. Even when he protested, ‘I loved her as well,’ it made no difference. She wanted revenge against someone, anyone, who could have been responsible for the murder of her child.
‘It was that monk, Gilda. He was up there with her. Everyone saw him,’ Sir Ralph said. ‘Why should my lad kill her?’
‘He knew you loved her, didn’t he?’ Gilda was screaming into his face, all rational thought gone as she rose to her feet, lurching towards him, her face streaming with tears. Her terrible desolation made her grasp at any explanation. She hated and feared Esmon, and that convinced her that he was the killer of her daughter. ‘He thought you wanted her for yourself, I expect, so he murdered her, just so that you couldn’t ever learn what he’d done! He killed her to stop you from raping her too! Her! Your own daughter! How does that make you feel, Sir Knight?’
He retreated from her. ‘No, no, Esmon’s not so cruel. He couldn’t have done that,’ but he knew that his protestations were useless. There could be no doubt in any man’s mind that Esmon was perfectly capable of the crime.
‘It wasn’t him,’ he said once more. ‘He wasn’t up there. He couldn’t have been.’ Yet he knew Esmon had been there. He could have ridden past, just as Sir Ralph himself had; he might have seen Mary weeping, just as Sir Ralph had, and could have decided to take her there and then – afterwards breaking her neck. Perhaps it was only a short while after Sir Ralph had been there, a few moments after, while she was still alone.
‘It couldn’t have been him,’ he said more firmly. No. Esmon was a wild boy, certainly, and he was a warrior, but he didn’t murder women for no reason. He wouldn’t have gone to those extremes to conceal his rape of a peasant; a slave.
Yet once Gilda had voiced it, Sir Ralph was haunted by the idea. He had seen his son when the red mist of rage came over him like a veil of blood, when he would snatch at any weapon to hand.
And then Sir Ralph realised that Mary herself might have goaded him. She could have chided him, telling him to leave her, questioning his chivalry. She was capable of that. And then he could have struck at her in a rage, finally breaking her neck to silence her.
Gilda was rocking back and forth, weeping and calling on God to avenge her poor daughter. A part of Sir Ralph wanted to go to her and comfort her, but he was overwhelmed by the loss of Mary, her accusations against Esmon – and his own newly fired doubts about his son.
When he heard a sound at the door and looked up to see Flora, it was a relief. ‘Child, see to your mother. She is uneasy.’ He fiddled with his purse, rooted out a coin and was about to give it to her when he felt a pang of shame. It felt as though he was paying a whore. He thrust the coin into her hand as he left the mill, glad to be leaving such a gloom-filled, wretched hovel. Outside, he grabbed his reins and launched himself into his horse’s saddle, turning and staring back at the house, wondering what had happened to the miller, why Huward had disappeared so precipitately. He clapped spurs to his beast and swept off up the roadway, but soon he slowed to a trot.
Huward knew. If he could, the big man would surely try to take revenge on Sir Ralph. That’s what any man would do – kill the rival who had systematically cuckolded him over many years. It was insane of Annicia to have told him, but when Sir Ralph recalled her pained expression when he admitted Mary was his own child, he could not find it in his heart to blame her. She had been as badly hurt as Huward. So many years, and now all was coming back to destroy him. All he had done, he had done for love – but now all loathed him.
He glanced back at the mill, mouthing a curse at the foolishness of women, but when he saw the smoke and the tongues of fire licking at the building, his anger was forgotten.
Ben watched the knight canter away towards the castle with as much relief as Sir Ralph felt in escaping the place. For Ben it had been a shock to see the knight’s horse out at the front of the mill. He didn’t understand what he could be doing here at first, because Sir Ralph’s visits had grown more infrequent over the years. He remembered the knight dropping in quite often when he was younger, and being sent out to mind the chickens or to fetch water, while his mother entertained him, but in recent times Sir Ralph avoided the place. Ben wondered whether his chat with Elias in the tavern might have reached Sir Ralph’s ears.
‘Well, Mother, and how was the great man today?’ he asked breezily, entering the mill and seeing his mother and Flora at the edge of the hearth.
‘Can’t you be kind for once?’ Flora demanded. ‘She’s upset again.’
‘Yes, well, she’s been upset since dear sainted Mary passed on, hasn’t she?’
‘We’ve all been sad since then.’
‘Except some of us realised that life had to go on,’ he said. ‘There’s no point whingeing about her dying now. It’s too late.’
‘How can you be so callous about our sister? She was your sister too, wasn’t she?’
Ben smiled and walked to the ale barrel.
‘So you have nothing to say?’ Flora shouted. ‘Your sister’s lying in her grave, and you just reach for the next ale, is that it?’
‘Haven’t you told her yet, Mother?’ he said, glancing at Gilda.
She sat huddled within Flora’s arms, but when he spoke, his contempt made her recoil as though he had hit at her.