As the two from Canterbury passed by, though, Simon saw John, the younger guard, grin and sneer at them, as though the death of one little man so far from anywhere was amusing. It chilled Simon’s blood.
Chapter Twelve
Jack watched the knight and bailiff with the body as he rode on past them. It was plain enough that the bailiff was less than comfortable in the presence of the corpse, but that the knight was relishing his task. He was a sick kind of fellow, in Jack’s eye.
He had known a felon in France when he was first there, a short, ill-favoured man, marked with the pox, and who had a cast in his eye that made him appear still more foul. This man, Guillaume, took inordinate delight in torturing men slowly to learn whether they had more money or treasure hidden about them, or nearby. His favourite method was to slice open a man’s foot, and fill it with butter before setting it over a fire to roast. The screams of those who suffered under his care Jack could still hear in his dreams.
However, there was at least good reason for that: the men all wanted to learn where wealth could have been secreted. No, it was the other damage inflicted which set Jack’s belly roiling: once his victim had died, little Guillaume would set about mutilating the body for fun. Once he had emulated the Scottish leader, Wallace, and flayed a man so that he could use the skin as a sword-belt. It hadn’t worked, though. The leather was poorly tanned, and soon rotted.
Those days were black indeed. At the time Jack had been certain that his life would end soon enough. The effect of the famine and the death of all his family had served to destroy his faith in the world and in God. God couldn’t care for men if he could seek to destroy them in this manner. The loss of the Holy Land at the time of his birth showed that God had grown to despise His creation. Why else would He have given the Holy Land to pagans? No, God had decided that it was time to end the world, that was what Jack had believed back in those grim days, and Jack was content to watch it happen. He had little enough to live for. All he sought was a means of feeding himself each day, and without work, often the only way meant capturing a man and making him give up all he owned. He would die, but at least Jack and the others would live for a little longer.
Until he met his Anne-Marie. He had truly felt that with her, he could at last find some peace. The famine appeared to have ended, the cattle and the sheep began to wax fat on the grasses, and the people who had survived suddenly found that there was a superfluity of food for all. Men like Jack could return to little villages where their labour was desired and work for the good of others again, and in time perhaps forget that in harsher times they had been prepared to throw away their humanity and lower themselves to the level of beasts. But no matter how hard they tried, they would always find that the nightmares would return to them in sleep, and they would be forced to relive their past crimes and confront their victims once more.
At least his old companion, Guillaume, was dead. Jack had seen his head removed. But this knight could have been his student, pulling and shoving at the body with enthusiasm. From this distance, it looked as though he was enjoying the exercise.
Jack turned to the road ahead with his belly feeling uncomfortably hot, as though the acid was boiling and about to rise into his throat. He would watch out for this knight, too.
As he turned away, he noticed John was staring at him fixedly.
Jack truly did not like that man.
Baldwin set the man back down. ‘This is very curious.’
‘What?’ Simon demanded waspishly. Watching his friend pulling the corpse about like that was deeply unpleasant. He kept expecting a decomposing arm to be pulled from the sack of pus and gas that was the torso.
‘There is no obvious mark on his head or throat. Nothing that could have killed him.’
‘So?’
‘So, then, the wound must have been inflicted upon his torso to kill him. But in that case, you would expect him to have been marked through his tabard. Yet there is no such damage.’
‘Perhaps it was flying away in the wind? He was shot by an arrow underneath it while he was on a horse, and fell down here.’
‘Where is the arrow?’
‘The killer came here to get it, and in the process he found the man’s purse and other valuables. There! No wound on the tabard, a deadly blow that killed him, and it explains also why there is nothing of value about him.’
‘True enough. But if he was shot, surely the arrow would be broken as he fell,’ Baldwin wondered aloud. He broke off and studied the man’s hands for a moment. ‘Nothing to see there. He has been a man who has used his hands, but who hasn’t?’
‘When I’ve shot a deer, often it has fallen away from the direction of the arrow, as though punched by it,’ Simon tried. ‘The arrow remains uppermost.’
‘Yes. You are probably correct. Yes,’ Baldwin agreed. He strode to a nearby branch which had broken from its tree and lay on the ground nearby. Baldwin eyed it thoughtfully, then picked it up and set it over the body. He took the man’s tabard off, and fixed it to the branch with a leather thong he took from his pack, and then set the makeshift flag over the body, bound to the limb of a nearby ash.
‘That will do it,’ he said. Then he began to cast about him, studying the ground, carefully parting the grasses and weeds at the same time as prodding with a small stick into any deeper patches.
‘Do you think anyone will actually find his murderer?’ Simon said, gazing at the body.
‘The coroner will do his best to make a record, I’ve no doubt. When I found a dead king’s messenger in Exeter, I moved heaven and earth to find his killer and succeeded — but that was in a city. People are close, there. Here, in the wilds, anyone could have done this. That is the great fear of the countryside. A man may commit homicide with impunity, when he would be fearful of doing so in the town. In a town his offence will be more speedily noticed, and the perpetrator can be uncovered. In the countryside, his crimes may never be noticed. Finding this body was more by luck than good judgement. He said he saw something metal, didn’t he? I wonder what that was.’
‘So — what now, Baldwin? Shouldn’t we hurry to get back to the Bishop?’
‘Yes — in a while. But first I want to check about here and ensure that there is no sign of the oil. This fellow has been killed in some manner, but there is something odd about the manner of his death. It is not … right!’
Simon grunted. ‘In what way is it not “right”?’
‘Do not use that tone with me, Simon,’ Baldwin said with a grin. ‘I know that long-suffering pitch too well. But since you ask, it’s as I said earlier; he does not look like a man who has simply fallen here.’
‘The tabard?’
‘That is one thing.’
‘If he fell, and then a dog or hog found him and hauled him along a short way by the leg, his tabard would ruck up, wouldn’t it? There is nothing necessarily suspicious about it.’
‘True,’ Baldwin said thoughtfully. ‘Except then his tabard would have dragged some leaves and twigs and soil under it, surely. There is little evidence of that. And the tabard would have brushed a swathe of the ground clearer, too. There is no sign of that either. No, I think that’s not right.’
‘Then what is your suggestion, Baldwin?’
‘It is almost as though this fellow was killed, and then the tabard thrown over him to show he was the king’s herald. It makes sense, after all. If he got here, he would hardly have ridden all the way from Canterbury with a bloodsoaked tabard, would he? No, he would have taken it off. So I think someone killed him, found the tabard, and then put it over him to show who he was.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve no idea! Perhaps I’m wrong — a man could have come along later, found the body, and wanted to show that it was a man of some position, in case someone else came along who didn’t mind finding the body.’