Simon was feeling quite faint now — and that was his excuse later. He should have been able to disarm the Galician without killing him, but at the moment, all he could think of was that knife and stopping it from hurting him. His reactions were too slow; he still felt queasy after all the running, on top of his earlier fainting fit. As Domingo charged towards him again, he lifted his sword.
Domingo felt the steel slip into his breast with a sense of disbelief. There was no pain, just a curious slithering sensation, but when he looked down, he saw that the sword was buried in his chest. He opened his mouth, tottered, and then lifted his knife to dash Simon to the floor, pushing himself onwards, using the full force of his weight and malice to try to crush Simon.
All Simon could see was the insanely grinning features of Domingo advancing. It was a scene from hell, with the mad face approaching and the wet red knife held wickedly high overhead. Simon felt himself being pushed back, until there was nothing but the timbers of the garderobe behind him and beneath him; and then he heard a great cracking and wrenching, and felt himself freefall, that smiling face above him like a devil’s, pulling him down to hell.
‘How is he?’ Baldwin demanded as soon as Munio returned.
‘Not good. I think it is the heat. It can sometimes affect a man who is not used to our weather, yes? He was very exhausted.’
‘Exhausted!’ Baldwin repeated. All he could remember was that foul stench.
They were in Munio’s house, a long, low building with a garden that was planted with more plants than Baldwin could possibly name. The whole place seemed verdant, and filled with vibrant colours — rich purples, reds, yellows and everywhere green.
The house itself was white-painted with simple shutters on each window and a small stable for Munio’s two horses, to whom Baldwin had already introduced himself. The knight always liked to investigate the horseflesh wherever he went, but it was scarcely worth the bother in Munio’s household, he saw. One plain and rather old rounsey and a skittish young mare made up the total complement. Munio was not poor, but neither was he wealthy.
When Simon had set off after the felon, Baldwin had been helping to disarm one of Domingo’s men, and had not noticed his friend’s sudden disappearance. Later, when he and Munio wondered why Simon had not come to help interrogate the members of the band, Baldwin was only just in time to hear of the accident, and then he had bolted after the messenger to go and supervise Simon’s rescue.
It had been one of the most repulsive tasks Baldwin had ever witnessed. The two men had fallen through the floor of the garderobe, toppling together some fifteen feet into the relative softness of the heaped sewage underneath. It was fortunate that the toilet did not fall straight into a stream, as so many did, for then Simon must surely have drowned. As it was, he fell backwards into the muck, Domingo on top of him, embedding Simon’s sword deep within his torso. The robber was already dead when Baldwin arrived; the knight had thought Simon was as well.
It was a terrible shock. Baldwin had known many comrades die, and he would have said, had he been asked, that he was all but inured to loss. True, he would not have felt that way about his wife, nor his daughter, but he would have thought that losing the companionship of a man was something he had been long seasoned against fearing. The idea that a man’s death could bring him up so sharply had not occurred to him. Yet here it was. His hand grasped his sword hilt as though to keep his grip on reality, but all he could see was the terrible future, of returning to England without his best friend, of telling Simon’s wife and family that he was dead. He could imagine all too easily the appalled horror in Meg’s eyes.
He wanted to fall to his knees and beg for his life, to demand that God return him, to say that God had made an error, and that Simon should recover; he wanted to deny what he knew had happened. His best friend was dead.
Yes, he felt the odd emptiness in his throat, the heat at his eyeballs, the utter despair that hammered over his soul. Simon had been his first acquaintance on returning to Devon, his closest confidant. It was Simon who had recommended him for the new post of Keeper of the King’s Peace, who had involved him in his most interesting cases. And now all that was over.
Baldwin could not help it. He covered his face in a hand and wept silently, while men hauled the revolting mess of Domingo’s corpse from Simon’s body. He wept while the men curled their lips, averting their heads; he wept while one fetched a bucket and threw it over Simon’s face; he wept while men reluctantly grabbed Simon’s clothing and dragged him from the wrecked box. He wept while Simon choked and spluttered as a second bucket of water was emptied over him. He was still weeping when his eyes opened, and he saw Simon weakly trying to flick away the ordure that had so besmottered his face and hands. Sir Baldwin was still weeping as he jumped forward, his joy leavened with a natural unwillingness to touch Simon in his present state.
If, for Baldwin, Simon’s recovery was a delight that was all but unhoped for, to Simon it was nothing more than a hideous nightmare, worse than his drifting off into insensibility beforehand. That had been terrifying, feeling the world, as it seemed, cracking about him as he was forced down, down, down by the demonically grinning Domingo. He had genuinely thought that the devil had captured his soul. That was one thing, but coming to, lying in a box filled to overflowing with sewage, was enough to make him freeze in a blind panic, his fingers clenching rigidly, all his muscles tensing as his mind refused to accept what his nostrils were telling him. He closed his eyes just before the second bucket hit him.
That was when he found his voice again, although he had no wish to open his mouth. He started mumbling and swearing, but revulsion soon made him shout to be pulled free. Baldwin berated the men standing around, kicking two to make them pull Simon out, but even then refused to hear of Simon standing. Simon was desperate to get up, as though movement itself could clean him of the filth in which he was smothered, but he was forced to lie back on the broken remains of an old door rescued from a building nearby. Once there, Simon passed out again, thankfully just before more men arrived and carried him to Munio’s house.
‘He will be well,’ Munio said.
Baldwin nodded, but he felt empty. Simon was his closest friend, probably the only man living who knew quite so much about Baldwin and his past, other than Edgar, Baldwin’s steward. Seeing him so weakened made Baldwin realise how vulnerable a man could be. Loneliness was a terrible thing, he realised. To live alone, with all one’s friends dead or gone, that must be the worst possible penalty God could impose.
It was the punishment which had been meted out to Matthew. The poor man was without any companions. Even the beggars in the streets were apart from him — although whether that was because they disdained him, or because he ignored them was a moot point. His pride would make it difficult for him to accept that he was a part of their fraternity.
A man like him, a noble knight, brought so low. And then to be murdered by some inconsequential peasant in an alleyway. Why should a common churl attack a beggar? It was inexplicable, or it was simple. Either a man had taken a sudden dislike to Matthew’s face — Baldwin had seen that before — or it was a long-held grudge.
‘I forgot to tell you before,’ Munio said. ‘I had Guillem ask at the house of the money men. Musciatto confirmed that they had given Parceval money. He is wealthy in his own right.’
‘So as one door opens, it is slammed in our face,’ Baldwin muttered.
‘So it would seem. So there is nothing to suggest that Parceval had anything to do with the murder. He didn’t get that money from Joana’s purse. Now I have heard from the gatemen. The southern gatekeeper remembered this man Dom Afonso. He left the city yesterday, with an English knight and his squire.’