‘You’re after the priest’s maid?’ Simon asked in disbelief. ‘I doubt whether she’d risk her position there. If he learns she’s been playing with you, he’ll have her out in an instant.’
‘Why d’you reckon that? She’s not his mare,’ Ivo said confidently. ‘He’s more interested in men.’
‘You mean he is a catamite?’ Baldwin asked with surprise, and then he realised his error of the day before. The man was no womaniser.
Simon had a less understanding attitude to homosexuality and he scowled with revulsion. ‘Are you sure? I thought the child was his.’
‘No. She told me that she was made pregnant by a lover, and the priest gave her sanctuary. She cooks for him and keeps his home warm, but that’s all.’
Baldwin looked about him as they reached the church. ‘Is she here?’
Ivo swept the area with a sharp eye. ‘Nope. Maybe I’ll see if she’s at home. I’ll find you later.’
‘Arrogant puppy,’ Baldwin muttered.
‘Look,’ Simon said, all thoughts of the priest gone. ‘There’s Lady Anne. I wonder what she’s doing here?’
‘Hardly a maternal act, coming to view a pair of boys’ corpses,’ Baldwin said with disgust. She wasn’t alone, however. The whole vill seemed to have turned out.
It was not the bodies of the two poor murdered boys which tempted Lady Anne to join her husband and go to view the inquest, it was the body of Athelina.
Anne was more shocked than she had allowed her husband to know by the death of the other woman. What’s more, she thought she knew who was responsible: a lover who had discarded his mistress for a younger one.
She shivered. The weather was improving, and there were occasional gaps between the clouds, but it was still chilly, giving the place a curious atmosphere of doom. Not, Anne reflected, an unsuitable mood for an inquest of this type.
‘Hear me! I am Sir Jules of Fowey, Coroner for this county, and I call on all who have any knowledge of the deaths of this woman and her children to come forward and answer my inquest.’
His voice was a surprise. When he shouted, the weaselly-looking man had a deep voice with a slight trace of a foreign tongue. Perhaps it was Burgundian. There were several men whom the Lady Anne had met who came to this part of the country from there. It was their interest in trade that first brought them to the ports, usually seeking markets for their strong red wines, and some travelled inland to see whether they could do business with the tin miners.
Sir Jules began in the normal manner, stripping the three bodies and declaring his findings, but once Anne was over the shock of the sight of the two boys’ throats, with the gaping wounds where the knife had slashed, she found the whole matter tedious.
Athelina’s body was more shocking, in some ways. She had throttled herself, the rope bruising her neck, but not breaking her spine. She must, so the Coroner said, have dangled there for days. The marks of nibbling at the feet and hands of the two boys showed that the three had been there long enough for the rats to grow interested. That image, of the dead woman, desolated after her husband’s death and broken by a life of continuous hardship, hanging from a beam and swinging gently for days because no one knew nor cared enough to seek her out, burned itself into the other woman’s imagination. She could all too easily understand Athelina’s state of mind.
All women needed companionship, and Anne had lost her friends and family at the same time because of the awful starvation which had affected everybody in the kingdom, not merely in Cornwall alone. And then, as if by a miracle, she had come here to Cardinham, where the kindness of Nicholas had given her fresh hope. Now she lived in the present and tried to forget the crushing loneliness she had known when she had lost all those closest to her. She was unable to succeed entirely, of course. Losing them had felt like having her soul ripped from her living flesh.
That was why she had sunk to giving herself to another man.
It was fear that drove her to it. Nicholas had been gone such a long time, and she had convinced herself that he had died of a disease, like her father. Panic set in. If her man was dead, she must find another to protect her. So she sought one who could, for a few moments, make her forget this latest loss and who would, she hoped, take her in when she was declared widowed. She had craved the feeling of a man’s arms about her once more. Once only — but it had been enough, as she knew, feeling her belly kick.
Serlo caught her eye, and to her surprise, slipped away from the jury and strode towards her. He was going to speak to her, she realised, and felt her face redden. Nicholas was frowning, wondering what on earth the miller could want with his wife.
‘Lady Anne, I crave a favour,’ Serlo said humbly. ‘It’s my tolls. I’ve-’
‘You’ve been taking gifts instead of tolls, and that’s a crime!’ she snapped, astonished that he should approach her about it. ‘You’ll have to speak to my husband about that, not me.’
‘Oh, but if I do that, I’ll have to speak openly,’ he said insinuatingly. ‘If you get my meaning?’
‘What are you talking about, miller? It’s none of my affair.’
‘Oh, isn’t it though?’ he winked. ‘Athelina was there. She told me. You and him — rutting in the field.’
In that moment Anne thought her heart would stop. She could hear the walls of her secure life crumbling. If her husband should learn that her child was not his, he must grow to loathe her, as any man must detest the woman who hung the cuckold’s horns upon his head.
She looked down at the lifeless, abused body of Athelina. You sold my secret for your security, Athelina? she asked her silently. She should have felt hatred, but she couldn’t.
Only compassion mingled with her own terror at the thought of what this might do to her husband.
Letitia saw Serlo go to Anne, but she was more interested in the whereabouts of her two little nephews. She glanced about behind him for his children, but they weren’t there. Even as Serlo took his place amongst the jury, she searched among the ranks of women to see who was absent, who might be back at the cottage, sitting with the children. Jan was briefly back home with her, leaving Muriel asleep, and Serlo in charge, so she had told her mistress.
Many of the mothers were there, she saw, but for every three or four, there was another who had not come. These were the women who had elected to stay behind to look after their own and perhaps another’s children. Good. Serlo must have left his with one of them, she thought, and turned from him. If she could avoid the sight of him, so much the better.
The Coroner was showing the bodies in a calm, unhurried manner. He held up the bloody knife and displayed the blade to the jury, asking whether anyone recognised it as belonging to Athelina. No one remembered seeing it with her, of course, but then how often did a man take notice of a woman’s little knife? It was just an accoutrement, like a spoon. A spoon was more noticeable, because few peasants could afford to own one, so any spoon was noteworthy, but a knife like this? No. Nobody recognised it.
There was shouting and some children went running past the scene, two pausing to gape at the bodies, before shrugging and haring off after their companions.
Letitia wished that death could be so easily shrugged off by an adult. She felt so sorry for the two, lying there so slack and sad. The boys’ wounds were hideous; blackened and decayed. They demanded her attention all the time, no matter how she tried to look away.
It was preferable to look at Serlo. And there weren’t many things, she told herself, that fell into that category.
Muriel woke with a jerk. She could feel that she was in her bed. She felt warm and cosy and knew that, were she to turn to her left, she’d see the fire. Smoke was rising, and she could hear bubbling, like soup in a pot. Then her nose began to twitch. There was a delicious smell on the air.