The body was wrapped in a winding-sheet which was brown and stained, as though it had already lain some months in a grave. At the head Simon could see the blood still leaking from the scalp wound.
Simon felt sad on behalf of the dead man. To his eye it was disrespectful to put the miller in his grave in this way: hastily, without preparation, wrapped in a soiled shroud, the priest drunk. He watched sombrely as men picked up the corpse and set it down in the grave. One of them placed some large rocks at either side of Samson for the lid to rest on. He may not have a proper coffin, but at least his body wouldn’t be crushed. He would have some dignity in death. The boards were passed down and set over the body and then, while the priest intoned more doggerel and flailed about with his sprig, dashing water into the grave but over many of the congregation as well, the two men began to shovel soil back into the hole.
It was a grim scene, made still more bleak and unpleasant by the cross in the middle of the cemetery, which appeared to have chosen this moment to droop. The cross arm had slipped from the horizontal, and as Simon looked at it, he could see that the wood was rotted by the wind and rain which lashed at the vill.
He felt a sudden unpleasant sensation. The sight was one of utter melancholy, and seeing the men up to their shins in wet soil, women wailing, the priest quivering and looking ready to puke, the crooked cross standing out above them all, Simon felt a trickle of ice run down his spine. He shivered, filled with foreboding.
Somehow he felt sure that this was not an end, that even the formal inquest tomorrow would not bring his visit to Sticklepath to a close, and depression overwhelmed him.
The party at the side of the grave watched as the diggers finished their work and stood back, one of them with his shovel over his shoulder, the other leaning on his. The two wailing women covered their faces. Slowly, in dribs and drabs, the crowd began to move away, only a few remaining to console the widow and daughter. Soon even this last remnant started to make their way to the mill, whose wheel could still be heard rumbling like far-distant thunder.
That last picture would remain with him: the mourners helping each other through the mud towards the machine which had caused their loss. And that sound of thunder grumbling far away.
Drogo yawned, leaned against the oak and scratched at his ear. There was a bite there from the midges last night, and it itched like the devil.
He was tired, so very tired. The long sleepless nights, the constant fear that the Coroner might notice something amiss – all had taken their toll. All those children. Denise, Aline, and Mary, the disobedient little brats.
Leaving the tree, he slumped down and picked up his skin. It was made from a kid goat, stitched into the form of an animal, and it held a few pints of water, enough to permit a man to survive even if he got lost out on the moors. Not that Drogo was worried about survival.
He had often thought about death but never before had it seemed so appealing. Now he looked upon it as a long rest. There had been times, especially during the famine, when he had done everything he could to survive, but what was the point? His woman was dead, and with her, all love had shrivelled. There was nothing left for anyone else. He had once had a daughter, but she was dead now, and all he felt for other men was an intense, burning jealousy that they should still have what he missed so badly, so desperately. The death of his little Isabelle was a terrible agony, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. While he lived, that pain would be there.
He hated the others, men whose daughters were still alive. Sweet, pretty things, who could cuddle up to their father, snuggle beneath the blankets on a cold winter’s evening. None of them truly understood. All thought they did, but none of them could.
Staring out over the bleak wasteland that was the valley from Cosdon to Steeperton, over the Taw Marsh, he felt his face twist once more into his habitual grimace. Now he only had his son. He couldn’t lose him too. He wouldn’t.
But questioning from strong men like the Coroner could scare people, especially feeble cretins like the Parson. He was terrified, a drunk, because he had led the vill to murder Athelhard. If he hadn’t told them Meg’s story, they wouldn’t have killed her brother.
Drogo sniffed, sipped more water, then shouldered his skin. He must speak to that moron Gervase, and the sooner the better, before he could blab to anyone.
After the funeral Simon walked up the steep pathway to the hole in the wall where the skull had been found, and stared at it for a few moments, peering inside. Now that Aline’s body had been removed, he could see that there were still scraps of material, some red, some brown-stained, some almost black, lying on the floor of the grave.
It was a nasty, mean little hole in which to secrete a poor young girl. How someone could seek to end a life was incomprehensible, but then to stuff the child’s body into this grave was another act of cruelty that Simon could never hope to understand.
Another short life ended unnecessarily. Only one day in this place and already he had learned of five deaths, if he included the Purveyor’s, Samson’s he had been close enough almost to witness, the poor fellow. The idea of being mashed up in his machine was somehow repulsive, almost an act of betrayal. There was something obscene about a machine which was designed to serve men crushing the life from one of them.
Looking up, he realised that it was almost midday. No wonder his belly felt empty. Glad to be leaving the road, he bent his steps towards the inn. He found Baldwin sitting with his wife on a bench.
‘Simon, sit with us and drink to the warm weather!’ Baldwin exclaimed, bellowing for ale.
‘It’s good to feel the sun on your face again, isn’t it?’ Simon agreed.
‘Where have you been? Sir Roger and I went to question the peasants to find out whether any of them remembered the Purveyor, or whether they could shed light on this girl Denise’s death. We looked for you, but you had gone.’
‘I went to watch the funerals, then looked at the hole again.’ He frowned. ‘There are scraps of cloth still in there. Some looked different from her winding-sheet.’
‘Oh?’ Baldwin was interested. That was something he had missed. ‘The Coroner’s gone to speak to people in South Zeal to see whether they know anything of the Purveyor, so I doubt we’ll see him again today.’
‘I assume you learned nothing new?’
‘If we wish to find out anything, it must be without the help of the local population.’ Baldwin grimaced. ‘There seems to be nothing that any of them can tell us.’
‘If Houndestail is right about the Purveyor dying, that would explain them keeping quiet,’ Simon said. He recalled his conversation with the two girls. ‘There is one who might know something: the Warrener, Serlo. He lives up on the moor, according to the girl Joan.’
The innkeeper arrived as he spoke, depositing a large jug of ale before him, and Simon asked him, ‘Where does Serlo Warrener live?’
‘Up on the side of the moor behind the vill,’ William said. ‘But it’s a good climb up the hill.’
‘We can manage, I am sure,’ Simon said.
‘Tell me, Taverner,’ Baldwin said. ‘What do you know of vampires?’
‘Me?’ The man shook his head vigorously. ‘Nothing! I don’t know nothing about them. You ask the others about them.’
He hurried away, and Baldwin smiled at Simon. ‘Everyone is so helpful here,’ he murmured. ‘What would he say were I to ask about the curse, do you think?’