Drogo le Criur turned and stared as Jeanne entered the inn. He saw Baldwin wander off westwards and frowned after him, chewing his lip.
‘What’s the matter, Drogo?’ the fair young man asked him timidly.
‘Shut up, will you, Vin,’ he said sharply. It was difficult to concentrate. Drogo knew nothing at all about this Keeper. Fleetingly he wondered whether Baldwin was as corrupt as other men in official positions, but he knew he couldn’t count on it. Bribing a King’s Officer was a risky business.
The Coroner was the same. Drogo had met him briefly when he came to the vill earlier, a big, powerful man with the glowering mien that showed he was used to finding liars wherever he looked. With him was another fellow, tall and rangy, with an open expression that hinted at integrity. He, Drogo heard, was one of the Tavistock Abbot’s men, a Stannary Bailiff charged with maintaining the law among the tin miners on the moors.
Three officials, all important men, none of them known to Drogo for corruption. He was convinced that he would be found out, and the thought made his belly turn to liquid. If the identity of his son’s mother was discovered, he knew his life would be in danger; if the truth of his involvement seven years ago in the death of Royal Purveyor Ansel de Hocsenham became known, he would be executed. No doubt about that. The King couldn’t allow someone who had offended his authority to live. Drogo would be hanged, his chattels forfeit to the Crown, his body left hanging to be picked at by crows and ravens. Not alone: he’d take Reeve Alexander with him.
The Purveyor would never have died if the King hadn’t decided to send him here. A Purveyor was only a spy, a thief, a bent, niggardly whoreson dog’s shit who would take the food from a starving family’s mouth without caring, and Ansel de Hocsenham was one of the worst. Always looking to see how he could enrich himself, and to hell with anyone else. He would have seen the whole population die. Bastard! Drogo knew the importance of power to control people, for without that power, people would run amok. Any King’s Officer knew how vital it was to keep the King’s Peace. Still, if Ansel hadn’t died, Sticklepath would be a shadow now, a place filled with ghosts and nothing more. Drogo had been to Hound Tor, and had seen how a vill could be destroyed.
Hound Tor was a ghost-town all right. The famine had ruined the place; gradually families had given up, leaving their dwellings and taking their few remaining animals with them as they made their way down into the valleys seeking better soil in which to grow their crops, and better pastures for their cattle and the few sheep which had survived the successive murrains.
The place was desolate now. Only two years before he visited it, seven families had lived there, and their noise and chatter, the contented sounds of their animals, created a healthy row. The stream, dammed further up the hill, provided all their water, and the hillside was enough for their meagre crops of rye and oats.
That was then. When Drogo went that last time, just after the floods had washed away the crops for the second year, the place was empty. Two dogs scavenged among the weeds that grew in the Reeve’s old house, searching for scraps, but the people were gone. As Drogo walked between the houses, looking in at the little ovens used to try to dry the sodden grain, he had encountered only bats and the odd rat. The roofs were sagging, the hurdles and fencing on the point of collapse. It was a depressing experience.
If that evil bastard had succeeded, Sticklepath would have ended the same way. It was one thing to take from a community in a time of plenty, but to try to steal from people when they had insufficient to tide them over to the next harvest was unforgivable.
At least the Purveyor’s body had never been found. They had hidden it well enough up on the hill. Not like those little bitches killed over the last few years. Drogo had heard the complaints of the parents, their grief as the bodies were discovered, but he had no sympathy for them. His own little lass Isabelle had died during the famine, and he didn’t remember anyone giving him much support. After his wife’s death, he had not married again – it would have been an insult to his dead woman – so he had never sired another daughter. At least the fathers who mourned their children hadn’t been forced to watch them starve to death.
‘Drogo? You all right?’
It was Adam Thorne who spoke, a short, wiry man with the dark hair and features of a moorman. He was one of Drogo’s oldest serving men. He had been a Forester for nine years now, and knew the moor like the back of his own hairy hands. His shambling limp tired him quickly, the pain from the badly mended leg a constant reminder of the cart which had run over it. Drogo had only seen him lose his temper once. Adam had picked up a farmer who was twice his weight and punched him twice in the face while the man was in the air, before hurling him through a door into the street. Drogo had made a mental note on the spot never to upset Adam.
At Adam’s side was Peter atte Moor, who stood eyeing his leader anxiously. Slim, with ferret-like features, the man had never got over the death of Denise, his young daughter. Pale, with bright eyes, he always looked feverish. The only time he looked contented was when he saw felons paying for their crimes. There had been a hanging last year, and Drogo saw him lose his haunted look. Instead he became calm, serene, almost like a man in a sleep. As the condemned man’s body twitched and jerked, Peter relaxed, as though the sight was soothing.
‘I’m fine. Fine. I just don’t like having strangers in my vill,’ Drogo said.
‘Do you think they’ll be here for long?’ asked Vincent. ‘I’d have thought they’d soon go.’
Vincent Yunghe had the expression of a dog desperately eager to please, Drogo thought contemptuously. The youngest of the Foresters, Vin was only in the group because Jack Yunghe had asked Drogo to look after him when he was dying. Vin’s mother was long dead by then, and Jack had been desperate to see his son under the protection of his old friend Drogo, but although Jack died pleased to know that his son was under the wing of a powerful Forester, he had not realised how much Drogo loathed the lad.
Vin was weakly and insipid, a pathetic fool. Drogo detested him – and yet was bound to him. It was a bloody nuisance.
Drogo hawked and spat. ‘There isn’t the Keeper born who can scare me. Nor Coroner, neither.’
‘What, even if they find out about the Pur–’
He got no further. Drogo thrust him back against a wall, his fists gripping handfuls of the young man’s tunic. ‘So you think they might find something out, eh? I reckon they’d only do that if someone told them. Now who’d do a stupid thing like that, Vin?’
As he released Vin with a snort, Drogo noticed the faint twitch at Peter’s cheek, and knew that if he gave the order, Peter would punch, kick, stab or batter puny Vincent to death.
‘Now you listen to me, lad,’ Drogo hissed. ‘You forget everything you’ve heard about deaths in this vill. If I learn that someone has been blabbing to the Coroner or his friends, I’ll come and find you, and when I do, I’ll tear out your entrails with my bare hands and feed them to the dogs! Got that?’
‘Y-yes.’
‘That goes for you others as well. If anyone opens their trap, I’ll make sure they suffer.’
‘I wouldn’t tell, Drogo,’ Vin whispered. ‘I’m your man, you know that.’
‘You?’ Drogo sneered. ‘You serve me from fear, and that’s good. Don’t lose that fear, boy, because if you do, I’ll ruin you.’
Adam Thorne watched without interest. As Drogo turned away, Vin stood with his head hanging. ‘Better get a move on, boy,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘You don’t want to upset the man.’
There was spirit in Vin’s retort. ‘Don’t call me boy!’
Even with his misshapen leg, Adam was taller than Vin and now he pulled the lad up until Vincent’s resentful face was on a level with his own. Adam wore a faint smile, as though he was amused by some joke that only he could understand.