He made for the ford, leaving the highway by the hospital of Saint Giles, and took the field path along the waterside, leaving the partially ploughed slope high on his left-hand side. Beyond the headland that bordered the new ploughland a gentle slope of woodland began above the water meadows, and in a cleared space within this belt of trees the manor of Longner stood, well clear of any flooding. The low undercroft was cut back into the slope, and stone steps led steeply up to the hall door of the living floor above. A groom was crossing the yard from the stable as Hugh rode in at the open gateway, and came blithely to take his bridle and ask his business with the master.
Eudo Blount had heard the voices below, and came out to his hall door to see who his visitor might be. He was already well acquainted with the sheriff of the shire, and greeted him warmly, for he was a young man cheerful and open by nature, a year established now in his lordship, and comfortable in his relationship with his own people and the ordered world around him. The burial of his father, seven months past now, and the heroic manner of his death, though a grief, had also served to ground and fortify the mutual trust and respect the new young lord enjoyed with his tenants and servants. The simplest villein holding a patch of Blount land felt a share in the pride due to Martel’s chosen few who had covered the king’s retreat from Wilton, and died in the battle. Young Eudo was barely twenty-three years old, and inexperienced, untravelled, as firmly bound to this soil as any villein in his holding, a big, homely, fair-skinned fellow with a shock of thick brown hair. The right management of a potentially prosperous manor, somewhat depleted in his grandfather’s time, would be an absorbing joy to him, and he would make a good job of it, and leave it to his eventual heir richer than he had inherited it from his father. At this stage, Hugh recalled, this young man was only three months married, and the gloss of fulfilment was new and shiny upon him.
‘I’m on an errand that can hardly be good news to you,’ said Hugh without preamble,’though no reason it should cause you any trouble, either. The abbey put in its plough team this morning in the Potter’s Field.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ said Eudo serenely. ‘My man Robin saw them come. I’ll be glad to see it productive, though it’s no business of mine now.’
‘We’re none of us overjoyed at the first crop it’s produced,’ said Hugh bluntly. “The plough has turned up a body from under the headland. We have a dead woman in the mortuary chapel at the abbeyor her bones, at least.’
The young man had halted in the act of pouring wine for his visitor, so abruptly that the pitcher shook and spilled red over his hand. He turned upon Hugh round, blue, astonished eyes, and stared open-mouthed.
‘A dead woman? What, buried there? Bones, you sayhow long dead then? And who can it be?’
‘Who’s to know that? Bones is all we have, but a woman it is. Or was once. Dead perhaps as long as five years, so I’m advised, but no longer, and perhaps much less. Have you ever seen strangers there, or anything happening to make a man take notice? I know you had no need to keep a watch on the place, it has been Haughmond’s business for the past year, but since it’s so close, some of your men may have noted if there were intruders about. You’ve no inkling of anything untoward?’
Eudo shook his head vehemently. ‘I haven’t been up there since my father, God rest him, gave the field to the priory. They tell me there have been vagabonds lying up there in the cottage now and then, during the fair or overnight last winter if they were travelling, but who or what I don’t know. There was no harm ever reported or threatened, that I know of. This comes very strangely to me.’
‘To all of us,’ Hugh agreed ruefully, and took the offered cup. It was growing dim in the hall, and there was a fire already laid. Outside the open door the light showed faintly blue with mist, shot through with the faded gold of sunset. ‘You never heard of any woman going astray from her home in these parts, these last few years?’
‘No, none. My people live all around, they would have known, and it would have come to my ears soon enough. Or to my father’s, in his time. He had a good hold on everything that went on here, they brought everything to him, knowing he would not willingly let any man of his miscarry.’
‘I know that for truth,’ said Hugh heartily. ‘But you’ll not have forgotten, there was one woman who walked out of her house and went away without a word. And from that very croft.’
Eudo was staring at him again in open disbelief, great-eyed, even breaking into a broad grim at the very idea.
‘Ruald’s woman? You can’t mean it! Everyone knew about her going, that was no secret. And do you truly mean it could be so recent? But even if it could, and this poor wench bones already, that’s folly! Generys took herself off with another man, and small blame to her, when she found that if he was free to follow his bent, she was still bound. We would have seen to it that she would not want, but that was not enough for her. Widows can wed again, but she was no widow. You can’t surely believe, in good earnest, that this is Generys you have in the mortuary?’
‘I am at a total loss,’ Hugh admitted. ‘But the place and the time and the way they tore themselves apart must make a man wonder. As yet there are but the few of us know of this, but in a little while it must out, and then you’ll hear what every tongue will be whispering. Better if you should make enquiry among your own men for me, see if any of them has noted furtive things going on about that field, or doubtful fellows lurking in the cottage. Especially if any had women with them. If we can find some way of putting a name to the woman we shall be a long stride on the way.’
It seemed that Eudo had come to terms with the reality of death by this time, and was taking it seriously, though not as a factor which could or should be allowed to disturb the tenor of his own ordered existence. He sat thoughtfully gazing at Hugh over the wine cups, and considering the widening implications. ‘You think this woman was done to death secretly? Could Ruald be in any real danger of such a suspicion? I cannot believe ill of him. Certainly I will ask among my fellows, and send you word if I find out anything of note. But had there been anything, surely it would have found its way to me before.’
‘Nevertheless, do that service. A trifle that a man might let slip out of his mind lightly, in the ordinary way, could come to have a weighty meaning once there’s a death in the matter. I’ll be putting together all I can about Ruald’s end of it, and asking questions of many a one besides. He has seen what we found,’ said Hugh sombrely, ‘and could not say yes or no to her, and no blame to him, for it would be hard indeed for any man, if he lived with her many years, to recognise her face now.’
‘He cannot have harmed his wife,’ Eudo avowed sturdily. ‘He was already in the cloister, had been for three or four weeks, maybe more, while she was still there in the croft, before she went away. This is some other poor soul who fell foul of footpads, or some such scum, and was knifed or stabbed to death for the clothes she wore.’
‘Hardly that,’ said Hugh wryly. ‘She was clothed decently, laid out straight, and her hands folded on her breast over a little rough cross, cut from a hedge. As for the manner of her death, there’s no mark on her, no bone broken. There may have been a knife. Who’s to tell, now? But she was buried with some care and respect. That’s the strangeness of it.’
Eudo shook his head, frowning, over this growing wonder. ‘As a priest might?’ he hazarded doubtfully. ‘If he found her dead? But then he would have cried it aloud, and had her taken to church, surely.’