‘No.’
‘She was buried wrapped in that material. Is that how her body was discovered?’
‘As I said, we didn’t uncover all of her,’ the Reeve said. ‘When those wenches Joan and Emma tugged at the scrap of cloth, visible where the wall had crumbled, the skull fell out. There didn’t seem any point in trying to get at the rest of the body without an official being present, and I didn’t want it to be disturbed by wild animals, so we took the head to protect it and left the rest.’
‘Who was the First Finder?’ the Coroner called, and Miles Houndestail stepped forward. He answered Coroner Roger’s questions clearly, telling how he had seen the two girls as they discovered the skull, how he had returned to the vill with Joan, and raised the Hue and Cry, contacting the Reeve and the nearest four houses as the law required. He had insisted that the Reeve should send for the Coroner.
Belston himself was silent. Of the two villagers, Baldwin considered that the Reeve looked even more depressed than Swetricus. The latter had lost his daughter, true, but now at least he knew what had happened to her. The Reeve, on the other hand, was responsible for the fines which would be imposed. And they would hurt his pocket considerably.
Yet there was another point. ‘I have heard talk of cannibalism,’ Sir Baldwin said strongly, and the watching crowd gasped. ‘Could this poor child not merely have been raped and then silenced?’
The Reeve turned to the Coroner as though Baldwin had not spoken. ‘Everyone was hungry. You remember the famine. It was just natural to assume the worst.’
Liar, Baldwin thought. ‘May I take a look?’ he asked.
Receiving the assent of the Coroner, he sprang lightly into the makeshift grave, where he crouched and studied the ground upon which the girl had lain. There were more pieces of material at the foot, and he saw a fresh piece of bone. Picking it up, he weighed it in his hand a moment, reflecting as he peered about him. In all cases where there was the possibility of murder having been done, he liked to see the bodies because, as he so often told Simon, the body of a dead person could tell the inquirer so much. Sometimes it was the type of wound which might have killed the victim, sometimes the position of the body, or the marks of blood. There was often something which the intelligent researcher could learn. Rarely, however, was the evidence so prominent as this. He bent and picked up a slender loop of leather, much decayed and soiled, but recognisable.
‘A thong,’ he said, holding it up, ‘such as a traveller might use to bind a tunic or tie a roll to a saddle.’
‘We have travellers coming past here all the time,’ Alexander said dismissively. ‘I have no doubt this evil murderer killed her on a whim as he passed through the vill.’
‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said. It was a possibility, he knew. Except… ‘Did no one notice that the field had been dug up?’
‘Eh? Oh, when she was buried, you mean? No. This wall is often collapsing. It did so two or three years before Aline disappeared. This last time, we dug back into this ground a couple of feet, built the wall, then infilled. It’s worked until now.’
‘I expect it is the steepness of the lane,’ Baldwin acknowledged. ‘So whoever buried her so shallowly must have done so shortly after the wall was rebuilt, or you would have found her. Someone came up here, either with her already dead, or walked here with her. He could dig down and bury her, and then cover her without anyone noticing…’
‘Yes,’ Alexander agreed. His face had eased slightly, as though glad to find that there was a simple explanation.
‘… probably,’ Baldwin finished. He passed the thong to Coroner Roger and climbed out of the hole. ‘I am still surprised that a grave wasn’t noticed. You can always see where a body has been interred in a cemetery.’
‘I don’t know. I expect it was just some tranter or tinker,’ the Reeve said, and there was almost a note of hope in his voice. ‘Perhaps no one came here for a while afterwards.’
‘A traveller who didn’t know this area – some tranter or pilgrim who was unused to building walls?’ Baldwin mused. ‘Does it sound credible to you? Some fellow who wasn’t aware that the wall had only recently fallen, who didn’t know that the soil would be easy to dig up – does it seem likely that they would choose this spot? Surely this was done by someone who lived here, someone who knew about this wall falling, someone who could come here at night and bury her.’
‘How long would it have taken a man to bury her?’ the Reeve wondered.
‘The same time for a local man as for a traveller,’ Baldwin said drily, ‘but a local man would have known where to lay his hands on a shovel. A traveller probably would not.’
Alexander looked devastated. ‘This is terrible!’
‘And a man who had friends to help him might bury the girl still faster.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I said.’
‘No one here could do such a thing,’ he choked.
‘Really?’ Baldwin looked at him steadily. ‘Tell me, Reeve, what is all this talk of cannibalism?’
Alexander felt as though the ground was moving beneath his feet. ‘I–I… Well, what else could it be?’
‘Almost anything!’ Baldwin snapped, allowing a little of his impatience to show. ‘I would have said it could have been rape, anger, perhaps even an accident that someone was afraid to admit. The very last thing I would have thought of would be cannibalism. This body has no flesh on it: any evidence disappeared long ago, so why did your mind turn to it, Reeve?’
Alexander opened his mouth but no sound came. He frowned at the body, then down at his feet before looking towards Swetricus and the villagers as though seeking advice or reassurance. ‘I…’ He broke off helplessly, and it was Miles Houndestail who answered for him. Coroner Roger beckoned him forward and he stood at the Reeve’s side.
‘Because they had already had one,’ he stated firmly.
‘One what?’ the Reeve demanded irritably.
‘A case of cannibalism.’
Peter could only hold his face still with an effort. He had never cared for that kid Aline, but he had known her dad Swetricus for years.
Swet and he had worked together in the fields as children, and when they grew older, they married within a few months of each other, before both losing their wives during the famine. The only difference was, Swet still had his family.
Peter tried to keep his bitterness at bay, but it was hard, so hard. His wife had died, and then Denise was gone. Ever after he suffered from the torments of loneliness, but Swet still had his other three girls. Aline and his wife might have died, but Swet hardly needed them, did he? His life was unchanged, and he could go and enjoy the use of other women. Peter couldn’t. Somehow they never attracted him, or if they did, as with the whore he’d bought in Exeter two years ago, he could not manage the act.
At the time, he had been ashamed at first. She was just some cheap slattern from a tavern, and she’d taken him to a room at the rear, where a worn and malodorous palliasse showed that she shared the place with other girls.
He had grabbed her, his blood inflamed by ale, and she had responded eagerly, thrusting her hips at his while she slobbered over his face, whining like a bitch on heat, moaning and pleading that he should satisfy her. He wanted to, God in Heaven, how he wanted to.
The light was poor, and with the ale coursing through his veins, he almost imagined her to be his wife when they married: young, slender and supple. He closed his eyes as he kissed her, and he was once more a young man and she his twelve-year-old sweetheart.
But then the whore had shoved her hand at his cods, speaking quietly and filthily about what she wanted him to do for her, what she would do for him, and as she spoke, his vision slipped away, along with his erection. She wanted him, badly – or so she kept telling him – but he couldn’t do anything.