Sword of shadows, p.15
Sword of Shadows, page 15
‘A horse for your female servant? Things must be done differently in London. Very well. Get one at the stables below.’
Crispin bowed to the constable who was not paying attention. Before he ventured forth, Crispin paused. ‘If I may ask, how is it that you came to Tintagel, Sir Regis?’
‘Must have angered some nobleman somewhere.’ He rubbed at his shoulder, rolled it. ‘I don’t know. A man with few prospects must make due. I’m my father’s third son and he had nothing to leave to me but a few coins and bolts of cloth. When this was offered, I took it, thinking that by my obedience I might find some compensation down the road. That never came, and I’ve been stuck here ever since. Six years.’
‘I take it the pay—’
‘The pay stinks. There are few opportunities for a man like me.’
‘I suppose … Master Teague’s doings might have intrigued you. Perhaps you thought to, er, confiscate some of the spoils—’
When Regis jerked from his chair, the blow to Crispin’s jaw came in an explosion of stars and white pain, and he fell just as hard as if he had not been bracing for it.
He was on his arse, blinking as he looked up at the man rubbing his knuckles. ‘Try it again, Guest. Call me a thief and see what next I mete out.’
Carefully rubbing his jaw, Crispin rose and kept well back from Regis. ‘No, my lord, I don’t think I will.’
‘Good. Then get the hell out of my sight.’
He picked himself up, brushed down his coat, and left to stand outside with the horses.
It wasn’t long until Kat and Jack joined him.
‘Your servant, eh?’ she said with a twisted mouth.
‘I knew that would be the first thing you said. Come along. We’re to get you a horse in the outer ward.’
She seemed surprised and it had the advantage of shutting her up. He helped her up behind him and they rode through across the land-bridge and under the gatehouse to the stables. He found the porter there who helped him find the tack and together they saddled Kat a gray mare called Chesten.
They all trotted through the courtyard – he noticed Kat kept her face well hidden by her hood – and they left the castle precincts, finding themselves at last on the open road toward the town.
‘I think this is where we need to divide our strengths,’ said Crispin. ‘I have already talked to those parties that have an association with Roger Bennet in the village, but I think it wiser if I go to the village in the forest.’
‘I don’t like that, sir,’ said Jack. ‘By all accounts, it’s a dangerous place. I don’t care if the chaplain calls them Christian. That’s not what the others say.’
‘It is more dangerous, but they will likely talk to me instead of you.’
‘But sir! Why not go together?’
‘We are spending too much time. We don’t know why Thomas was killed and God knows who might be next. No, you go into Treknow, and I will go to … what did the chaplain call it? Prasgwig.’ The uncomfortable name stumbled on his tongue.
‘And what shall I do?’ asked Kat.
Crispin and Jack stared at her. Crispin had completely forgotten about her. And he certainly didn’t want to bring her with him to the outer village.
‘Shall I go with Jack?’
Jack made some gesture at his throat. Clearly, he did not want her with him. Crispin felt the same. That meant …
‘I suppose you should come with me.’
‘But surely I can question people,’ said Kat. ‘It’s not as if I can’t learn their secrets like you can.’
Jack made some sort of sound in his throat.
As much as Crispin might wish to have her do that – divide et impera from three directions – he still couldn’t bring himself to trust her completely.
‘No. You’ll come with me.’
‘Now, Crispin—’
‘Mistress Pyke, if you question every decision I make, then maybe it’s best I leave you behind, trussed up in the constable’s lodgings, where I will be sure you make no mischief.’
Slowly and deliberately, she folded the front of her hood back away from her face, but kept it snug against her cheeks. ‘Whatever you say, Crispin.’
Jack gave him a wide-eyed look before he turned his horse and headed over the rutted lane toward Treknow.
She watched Jack ride and turned her face back toward Crispin, a smile curling the edges of her lips.
He cleared his throat, kicked the horse’s flanks, and said, ‘Follow me. And for God’s sake, when we get there, keep your mouth shut.’
‘Yes, Crispin,’ she said again in that servile manner he could not trust.
They traveled first to the inn in Treknow. Kat waited with the horses while Crispin poked his head in. He couldn’t hope that Kenver Treeve was still there waiting for him … but there he was. He offered the man a small pouch of coins, and by the look on his face, he didn’t seem to have expected that amount. But he fetched his horse and soon joined them in the courtyard.
‘It’s a long way, Master Guest,’ he said, first eyeing Kat and then turning toward the road that snaked over the countryside. ‘There is a track into the forest but it soon dwindles. It’s like a faery tale, them ones you always hear about when travelers are confounded along their way.’
Crispin never held much store for those superstitious tales … but the idea of it – this village hidden in the depth of the woods and those living there pagans – gave him pause.
‘Is it dangerous, Master Treeve?’
‘Well … it isn’t altogether safe.’
They all fell silent and traveled quietly enough at first. It was a long way to the woods. They reached the outskirts of the forest, and Kat began to hum a tune and then to softly sing. At any other time, he might have enjoyed listening to her melodious voice, but not when he wanted to enter a dangerous village by stealth.
But it was Treeve who spoke. ‘Wench, be quiet. These are rough men ahead of us.’
Crispin glanced back at her but by her demeanor he could tell that she wasn’t taking it at all seriously.
‘Master Treeve, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I am a babe straight from the womb. I have traveled far and dealt with men worse than these.’
‘I’ve no doubt of that,’ Treeve muttered. ‘But just now, if you can humor us, lass?’
Her tittering laughter frightened a bird from a high branch. But she did keep silent at last.
The road narrowed, the forest seemed to close in and darken, and soon the road became no bigger than a deer path. If Treeve had not kept leading them further, he would have assumed they had lost their way.
The trees grew denser, and when they came to a bend in the road, Crispin pulled his mount up short.
Three men stood in their path, wearing rough tunics and aiming their taut bows and sharp arrows at him and his company.
‘Where do you go?’ asked the man to Crispin’s left in a rough, Cornish accent. The full-bearded men all wore thick wool tunics and fur on their calves cross-gartered with leather thongs. Crispin had never seen the like. It was something from an old tapestry or painted on a church wall. Something from another time.
‘I’m looking for a village in the wood. I am investigating a murder at the castle and need to talk to the gentle folk here.’
‘And who be you?’ he said, pulling back the bowstring just that much.
‘I am Crispin Guest. I am called the Tracker of London. I investigate crimes.’
Though he kept his aim on Crispin, his eyes flicked toward his companions. ‘From London, you say?’
‘Yes. I merely come to speak with your villagers to ask if they have—’
‘We don’t speak to outsiders.’
Crispin bowed from his perch. ‘I understand … and respect that. But a murder has been committed.’
‘And you naturally blame us.’
‘It concerns a woman in your midst. Someone named Eseld?’
The man turned his head to look at his companions this time, even lowering his bow slightly. When he turned toward Crispin again he gritted his teeth. ‘What has this to do with her?’
‘I will not know until I speak with her. Will you allow us to pass?’
The men conferred silently, only exchanging looks. The other two seemed to defer to the man who spoke to Crispin. He lowered his bow but the others kept theirs aimed. ‘I will let you pass, Crispin Guest, but only so far. You will come to speak to our elder.’
Crispin didn’t know what he expected, but once they’d cleared the trees he beheld a strange village. The people looked poorer than their brethren in Treknow, but still as industrious, bringing in a harvest on carts from the vast expanse of hilly farmland he saw beyond the village and the trees. The houses curved up the lane and the settlement looked to be almost as big as Treknow.
The villagers seemed to be decorating their huts with oak boughs and sheaves of wheat.
But as they cleared the forest, the villagers stopped in their tracks. Men with boughs in hand froze, staring. Even a stray dog that stood in the middle of the road halted and glared at them.
Crispin was struck by their clothes that were of a fashion that seemed to speak of another era, with houses more like huts, round with peaked roofs like a pavilion tent. There was a long house further up the lane with stone foundations. It all seemed so … primitive. Alien. Perhaps the rumors were right, that they were pagans. And just as the thought tickled at the back of his head, he saw something like a straw mannikin, some ten feet tall, standing on their village green. He’d seen harvest festivals before where a similar corn doll was made and burned. He supposed they were up to the same thing. But the thought suddenly made him shiver, of Julius Caesar’s words on the druidae.
He glanced back at Kat. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea bringing her.
The villagers were still staring at them. They approached an old man sitting in a braided willow chair near a flaming brazier. He sagged in his age, staring into the fire with folds and pouches under his eyes, while small children sat around him on the ground. The children wore simple tunics, the boys with loose hose, cross-gartered at their calves.
The bowmen had lowered their bows at last and Crispin halted his horse.
‘This is our village elder, Branok Trethewey of the village Prasgwig. My lord, this man calls himself Crispin Guest of London.’
The old man slowly raised his head and fastened his milky eyes on Crispin. His hair was white and long, braided at his temples, and his grizzled beard, just as white as his hair, fell to his chest. He looked Crispin over, didn’t bother with Treeve, and hitched himself up in his creaking chair.
He cleared his throat with a gurgle, a cough, and finally spit on the ground. ‘And what is a “Crispin Guest”?’ he said in a rumbling, uneven voice.
Crispin bowed again. ‘I am known as the Tracker of London.’
‘This is far from London.’
‘Indeed it is. I am hired to solve crimes. But in this instance, I was hired as a guard to my employer who has work at Tintagel. There was a murder there. Two murders. And now I find myself at my normal task of investigating.’
No one moved.
‘If this happened at Tintagel,’ asked the old man, ‘why do you come here?’
‘One of the murdered men was said to have … er … an acquaintance here in your village. Her name is Eseld.’
The old man raised his head to look around. ‘Eseld? Is she here?’
Crispin had noticed how the crowd had gathered around them, noticed that they had converged behind them, cutting off any avenue of escape. He clutched tight to the horse’s reins.
But now a woman in a simple dress came forth, a small child balanced on her hip. Her dark hair was plaited to one long braid, hanging down her back, and she sported the leavings of a bruise to her left eye, just yellowing. She bowed to the old man.
Branok Trethewey gestured toward Crispin. ‘This sowsnek will speak to you.’
A few young men stepped forward, and argued with the old man in a foreign tongue. Several older men – each face carved in lines of age and dirt, with heavy dark beards, unkempt, untrimmed – dashed forward and interceded in their rough, barking language.
Silenced by the older men, the young men stepped back into the crowd, chastened, while the older men gathered nearer the elder like a fortress.
Trethewey turned his sagging eyes toward Crispin. ‘It is not our way to allow sowsnek men to speak to our women. Our youth are strong in their traditions. While our older men’ – he gestured toward his shield wall – ‘wish to protect the word of their elder.’ He folded his hands in his lap again. ‘Eseld Gloyn, speak to the sowsnek.’
The woman glared at Crispin, her mouth fastened into a firm, immovable line. She lowered the child and pushed him toward another woman in the crowd, who took him up in her arms.
‘Are you Eseld?’
She kept her mouth barred and only nodded.
‘Are you acquainted with a man from the castle called Roger Bennet?’
She nodded again. She held her arms stiff at her sides and her hands fashioned into tight fists.
‘He was murdered three days ago.’ He watched her face for any indication of emotion. There was none. ‘How did you know him?’
She slowly turned to Trethewey and spoke to him in what Crispin assumed was Cornish. He argued back at her in the same tongue, and she shouted, waving a fist. But when Trethewey rose unsteadily from his willow throne, she lowered her head, shaking it slightly from side to side.
Crispin couldn’t help but survey the villagers, but their whispers ceased as abruptly as they had begun. ‘Demoiselle, I ask again. How did you know Roger Bennet?’
‘Must I answer this emete?’ she hissed.
The old man nodded.
She lifted her chin and brazenly assessed Crispin down the ridge of her nose. ‘I knew him. Ask my husband how I knew him. He were my lover. And a better one than the man who calls himself my gour.’ She spit. ‘I’m only sorry he’s dead.’
The crowd erupted with calls and jeers, and there was a man roaring his displeasure from the back of the throng. Her husband, no doubt. What curious people, Crispin considered.
Crispin waited for the sounds to die down before he asked, ‘When was the last time you saw him?’
She lifted her shoulder to him with indifference. ‘A sennight. Maybe more.’
‘And … what of your husband? Has he seen him of late?’
A burly man pushed his way forward. To her credit, the woman never flinched when he got right up to her, his shadow hovering over the woman like a Fury. ‘I’m her husband, Jory Gloyn. And I never seen the scoundrel marghek. If I had, I would have cleaved him in two.’
‘Interesting,’ said Crispin, stalking closer. ‘Or perhaps coshed him in the head?’
‘Aye! I would have. Had I ever seen him.’
‘Can anyone vouchsafe for your whereabouts Monday last? Did anyone see you go to the castle?’
He didn’t answer at first, sweeping his eyes over Crispin’s company … when they settled on Kat. ‘What’s she doing here?’
Crispin whipped his head toward Kat, and with an exasperated rasp asked, ‘Why did you not say you have been here before?’
She shrugged. ‘You didn’t ask me.’
SIXTEEN
Jack rode into Treknow, passed it, and headed up the curve of the road toward the Penhall farm. He tied the horse to a post near the front door and knocked. A servant answered and bid him wait. Jack looked around at the manor house. It was nothing special. Just a larger version of where he and Master Crispin lived, but with a bigger great room below, several doors that must have led off to a kitchen, buttery, and pantry, and a wider staircase leading to a gallery of doors. The place was dingy and unkempt. It was a small village and the Penhalls must have made more with their dairy sales but did not come from nobility.
The man himself, Jowan Penhall, came down the steps. He wore a working man’s clothes – a rough-spun tunic and simple chaperon hood. No necklaces, no rings, no ornaments at all, save for a simple dagger sheathed on his belt. Jack was certain that he worked right alongside what servants he had out with the cows, just as his daughter did. He admired that, for a man could become slothful and arrogant when he did not get his hands dirty in his own business.
‘Master Tucker? Why have you returned? We are a mournful household.’
‘Aye, sir, that I know. But … there were questions I was unable to ask last time. And now that the tidings are not so raw, I thought I could talk at length to you and your daughter.’
‘I don’t know that my daughter could be disposed …’
‘Oh, but sir, she may have information that she doesn’t know is useful. But we may speak first.’
‘Well, it shall have to be on the run, for I must get to the work.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Jack struggled, even with his long legs, to keep up with the man hastening through his house and out to a back entry. They came out to a wide yard with grass and large patches of mud and dung. Jack steered himself around those as best he could. Jowan Penhall didn’t seem bothered by plowing through with his boots.
‘Master Penhall, it’s been three days since Roger Bennet was killed. Do you recall the last time you saw him?’
‘I don’t know. I have been busy here.’
‘Then … when last was it that he came to the farm?’
‘I can’t be certain. He sometimes came and went before I ever heard he was here. He wanted to be alone with my daughter. Entirely inappropriate, but he was a knight, used to different ways.’
They came to a small storehouse where one woman was stirring a heavy iron kettle and another was pulling a wooden fork through the sluggish mixture in a big bowl. There were small wooden cylindrical forms – no bigger than two hands together – with an open-weave linen lying in them. Jack realized that they must be for cheese-making. Penhall inspected what the workers were doing.
‘What are we making today?’ he asked of the woman at the kettle.
‘Spermyse,’ said the woman. Her starched white veil was folded away from a face shiny from steam. ‘We gathered the herbs early this morning.’
