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  Baldwin had to cough to stifle his laughter. It was novel to hear Peter Clifford speaking in so refined a manner. Baldwin knew that two weeks ago he had berated a drunken farmer in language the knight had only before heard on a Cinq Ports trader, because the poor fellow had dropped a cask of the priest’s Bordeaux wine. Then a thought struck him. “Who did you hear speaking of this?”

  “The smith, Jack, out on the Exeter road. Could you talk to him and get him to stop making such comments?”

  “I think so. At the least we should go and see why he passes such gossip on,” said Baldwin.

  The smithy was a low, one-story shed at the eastern edge of the town, set some way back from the traffic. It was a convenient site, Baldwin knew. This road was the busiest one west of Exeter, and the smith had the custom not only of all the farmers and peasants in the town, but also all the passing travellers who might need a wheel remade, or a horse shod.

  There was a large yard before the smithy, and when Baldwin, Simon and Edgar arrived, the place was alive with the ringing of steel. As was usual, the doors were thrown wide—even in midwinter the smith was often too hot to have them closed—and the three men could see a sweating figure hammering at a bolt of glowing metal. Baldwin strode to the door and entered, the other two behind him. The percussion of the metal being struck with the hammer, the ringing of the anvil, was an awful cacophony. It made Baldwin feel as if his head was being pounded, and he was tempted to cover his ears with his hands.

  The smith turned, and beyond a curt nod expressed no surprise that someone had walked in. Shoving the still-glowing metal into a barrel, he scratched at his chest. Steam rose while the water spat and crackled angrily. Wiping an arm over his brow, Jack looked at them enquiringly before drinking from a huge jar of ale.

  To Simon he looked like any other smith. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he made up for his lack of height by his breadth. His torso was almost as well developed as that of a man-at-arms, and was almost hairless. At either side of the bib of his heavy leather apron there were a number of welts and scars, evidence of mistakes or errors in his trade, and he had lost two fingers of his left hand.

  But it was the man’s face that caught the bailiffs attention. He had a low, sloping forehead which made him look as if he was thrusting his head forward aggressively, with heavy brows, a thick nose and small, widely spaced eyes.

  All of this the knight took in at a glance, but there was something else that Baldwin noted, and that was that the smith avoided meeting his eye. There were few traits that Baldwin had learned over the years to distrust, but this was one. “Are you Jack?”

  “Yes,” he grunted, lowering the drink for a moment, then replacing it. When it was emptied, he set it down near a small barrel and stood with his arms akimbo. “Well? Is it a horse, or a cart or what?”

  “It’s to find out why you have been saying villainous things about a girl in the town.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Baldwin watched him as he took a step closer. The smith’s eyes were focused somewhere around the knight’s left ear. “I hear you have alleged that a girl who spends her time trying to ease the pain of people afflicted with leprosy is herself no more than a harlot.”

  “Whoever said that was a liar. Who says it? Eh? Who accuses me?”

  This was addressed to Baldwin’s right ear. Apparently emotion caused his attention to wander. The knight moved to meet the man’s eye, but it moved with him, and Baldwin gave up the attempt.

  “You were overheard by priests. They have told me what you said. What I would like to know is, what evidence do you have for your allegation?”

  “I don’t need any proof.”

  “You do, because without it, your comments are vile slanders. And you could be forced into court for that. Do you have any proof?”

  The smith’s interest had moved on to the cobbles at his feet. He stood perusing them for several minutes, before giving a short shake of his head.

  “What was it you said about her? That she was a wanton?”

  “You know so much, why ask me?” His tone was sulky, and now a boot scraped its way over a patch of dust, sweeping it away, then moving it all back again. From his behavior, Baldwin would have assumed him to be a young apprentice, not a smith of some twenty-eight summers.

  “Jack, why did you say such things about her?”

  “She’s only young. It’s not right for her to be up there, not with that lot.” He spat accurately out through the doors. The forge was cooling without attention, and he cast it a lackluster glance before going to the doors and pulling them to.

  “You must say nothing more about them, Jack. If you do, I can have you amerced for slander. You understand me? I can have you fined for telling people villainous things; things which you know are untrue.”

  “I don’t know they’re untrue. What if it’s right?”

  “If there is any truth in it, you show me the proof, all right? For Christ’s sake, man, think what you are doing!” Baldwin let the sea of his frustration break through the dam of his self-control. “There she is, trying to help mitigate the worst pain those poor devils are suffering, and while she’s there doing God only knows what to help soothe the agony of their disease, here you are inciting people against her! It must stop.”

  The smith walked to his barrel and refilled his mug. Adopting an air of unconcern, he met the stare of Baldwin’s right shoulder. “Is that all?”

  “No! What were you doing up at Godfrey’s house on the night he was murdered?”

  “What? I was only there for a while…”

  “When did you get there?”

  “I was there late afternoon. There was a mare had lost a shoe, and I had to—”

  Simon cut him off. “How long did it take?”

  “All I had to do was nail it back on, it was hardly anything…”

  “Did you come straight back here?” Baldwin shot.

  “No! No, I went into Putthe’s buttery.”

  “Why?”

  “To take a drink with him. It’s not illegal!”

  “How long for?”

  “I don’t know. It was after dark, that’s all I—”

  “How many ales did you drink?” Baldwin rasped.

  “I don’t know—ask Putthe, he can tell you.”

  Simon gave Baldwin a scarcely perceptible glance, with a faint shrug.

  The knight fixed his eye on the smith again. “So you say you went to the hall in the late afternoon, made a new shoe…”

  “No, all I did was refit the old one.”

  “So you nailed it back on, went through to the buttery—was it dark by then?”

  “Oh, no. It was a good hour before nightfall.”

  “And in the buttery you drank quarts of ale with Putthe. Did he leave you alone while he got on with his duties?”

  “No, he said there was nothing for him to do.”

  “But you didn’t leave until night?”

  “That’s right. I can remember it quite clearly: it was so black outside I tripped over a loose cobble in the road, and I thought to myself, If this was daylight, I’d not have missed that.”

  “And you left Putthe asleep?” Simon interrupted again. “Did you hear a man shouting? A scream, anything like that?”

  “No, sir. If I had, I’d have gone back immediately. No, if I’d thought poor Master Godfrey would be dead so soon after I was drinking his health with him and—”

  “He was with you in the buttery?” Baldwin asked. “For how long?”

  “Not long. He walked in before checking his fencing. Looked surprised to see me there, but he had a drop of ale with me and Putthe before he went out.”

  “Did you see anyone else in there? Did Mistress Cecily come in?”

  “No, sir. No one ‘cepting the master himself.”

  “Which way did you come home?”

  “Along the main road, through the town, past the church, and down the hill to here.”

  “Did you see anyone e
lse on your way?”

  “No, sir, it was empty. But it was quite late.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us about that night? Anything you feel could help us find the murderer?”

  For the first time the smith let his eyes fleetingly meet the knight’s, and Baldwin saw he was debating whether to mention something, seeking reassurance from the Keeper before raising it. “Yes?”

  “It’s nothing, I daresay, but as I left the place, I could have sworn I heard voices in the hall itself. A man and a girl.”

  “Did she scream, or cry out in some way?”

  “You asked me that,” Jack said peevishly. “I told you, no one screamed or anything while I was there, but I was fairly sure I heard these two voices. Just talking low, almost whispering. There was one thing, though: the girl sounded sad, I reckon. Really sad.”

  15

  Riding from the little smithy, Baldwin turned to Simon and held out his hands in a gesture of bafflement. “So what do you make of all this? I tell you now, I feel that the more people I speak to, the more confusing it becomes.”

  Simon tilted his head on one side. “You know as well as I do that often these crimes are utterly incomprehensible until you have all the facts laid out, and then the whole picture locks together. At least we know the people who were present, which means we can isolate who might have had a motive to crush Godfrey’s skull.”

  “I suppose so, but I wish I knew who the two were in Godfrey’s garden.”

  “If John was telling the truth and wasn’t simply confused by seeing two bushes in the dark, you mean?” Simon chuckled. “Come on, Baldwin, don’t look so glum! You’re on your way to meet your Lady.”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  Simon laughed. They made their way into the outer fringe of the town, then on up to the church. Here they were about to turn right to head up to the north, when the bailiff saw Cecily’s maid at her gate. “Baldwin?”

  Following his friend’s gaze, the knight gave a low whistle.

  At the entrance to Godfrey’s house, hidden from the road by the wall, and only visible from this angle because the gate was ajar, Alison stood laughing and chatting to John of Irelaunde. As Baldwin watched, he saw John tweak a curl from her wimple and chuck her under the chin.

  “That bloody Irishman,” Simon grumbled. “Look at him!”

  “He certainly appears to take his pleasures where he can,” Baldwin chuckled. “Ah, and who’s this?”

  Riding toward them was William. He smiled broadly to them, and jogged off back the way they had come. The knight stared after him. “I wonder where he’s off to?”

  Jack wiped his hands on his heavy leather apron, and stood contemplating the view bitterly. The questioning by the Keeper had unsettled him. The smith was a man of few words normally, and now he felt as if he had been forced into giving away too much—something he could regret later. Jack was all too well aware of the risks of telling law officers too much. It often led to a man being arrested and hanged.

  There was a scuttling noise near the forge, and he turned to see his cat lying, tail twitching, watching a large rat scrabbling for a crumb. Jack let out a curse, and swung his boot at the cat, who, realizing her master was not of a mind to scratch her ears, flattened them against her skull before pelting off to a dark corner where she judged she should be safe enough.

  Jack turned back and supped ale, disconsolately studying the sweep of the river. He was still standing there, his great mug in his fist, when he was hailed.

  Entering his yard was a cheerful-looking man on a decent palfrey. “Smith? Can you make me a shoe? My fellow here has cast one.”

  Jack looked up into William’s face and grunted.

  “I’m very glad to find you here,” said William with feeling, falling from his saddle and strolling to a bench while Jack set to pumping the bellows. The guard held his hands to the fire, a small frown creasing his brow. He had also seen John and the maid in the road, and it had interested him a great deal. He decided he would have to tell his master as soon as he returned to Coffyn’s house. For now, though, he had another task to perform.

  He grinned up at the smith. “Smiths always hear all the gossip before anyone else. But I suppose you need a tale in exchange, yes? Have you heard what the lepers are up to?”

  Baldwin walked into his hall and threw his gloves onto the table. Margaret was there, sitting at the fire as she unpicked stitches from a tapestry. When Simon walked in, she stood to greet him, and he glanced down at her work.

  “But you never make mistakes with your needlework!”

  “Sometimes even the best seamstress must have a bad day,” she said. “How has yours been?”

  Baldwin bellowed for Wat and sank down into his chair. His boots were too tight, and after wearing them all day, his feet felt as if they had swollen so much he would never be able to get them off. “Where is that blasted lad? WAT!”

  “Don’t shout at him, Baldwin,” Margaret said urgently. “You’re not the only one to have had a bad day.”

  Baldwin and Simon exchanged a glance as the boy came in, snivelling. Immediately behind him was Emma.

  To the knight she looked as threatening as a war-horse pawing at the ground, and he flinched as he felt her eyes flit over him, registering his mud-bespattered hose and tunic, the hair lying lankly where he had been wearing his hat, and his booted feet.

  “That dog of yours,” she stated firmly, “ought to be killed.”

  Emma was disgruntled. This place was so far from anywhere important, she was seriously alarmed her mistress might choose to marry the knight and move here permanently. Here! So far from any decent town or city.

  It had been bad enough when she had been told she was to join Jeanne when her charge was wedded the first time, to Ralph of Liddinstone. That was very hard, when she was so fond of the shops of Bordeaux, the little pie shops and sweetmeat stalls where she could purchase whatever she wanted while escorting Jeanne around, but she had accepted that it was necessary for her mistress to be married, and had finally agreed to stay with her.

  But for little Jeanne to consider coming to a benighted spot like this was intolerable! The road—hah, it was what passed for a road here, at any rate—was little more than a quagmire. At the moment it was frozen into reddish muddy ruts, each of which threatened to snap the bones of a horse’s leg, but the nearest town was miles away, either northward up to Tiverton, or south to Crediton or Exeter. There was literally nothing in between, just a few hamlets filled with grubby peasants and their ragamuffin brats. How could poor Jeanne consider living in a place like this?

  Crediton wasn’t so bad, she’d grudgingly agreed that yesterday when Jeanne had asked. But that was when they had only just entered the town, and soon Emma’s attitude had changed. In its favor, at least Crediton had some cobbles, and there were walkways so that ladies and gentlemen did not have to trail their finery in the filth of the sewer, or in the horse dung that lay all over…or in the feces from dogs and cats, goats and sheep, steers and heifers. In real towns, she had reminded her mistress scathingly, such wastes were found only in the market area where butchers and tanners plied their trade, but Crediton was such a one-road place that the animals got everywhere.

  This farm, where the “noble” knight lived, was hardly good reason to want to live here. Emma could only gaze around her with scorn. There were no fine paintings on the walls, no elaborate carvings; it was just somewhere where a wealthy peasant wouldn’t have looked out of place. She glanced around the hall. A large table for Sir Baldwin and his guests lay at the far end, and the rest of the rush-strewn floor held other benches and tables—for the most part trestles that could easily be cleared away. There was no grace or elegance about it whatever.

  And then there was the dog.

  “Killed?” Baldwin repeated with horror. “But why? Uther’s always so gentle.”

  “Gentle? I suppose you think when the monster knocks you flat on your back and stands slavering at your throat,
he’s being playful?” Emma’s lip curled into a sneer. Her logic was unanswerable, she knew. She had always had a detestation for dogs of all sorts. Their slavish obedience, their fawning displays of affection and the filth they would eat, made her stomach churn. As if that wasn’t enough, she had a horror of the huge teeth. They looked too much like those of a wolf. “That dog should be killed,” she said again, with emphasis on the last word.

  “But my dear woman, I really must say that I think Uther was only—”

  “Why you should think my mistress would consider living in a hovel running with flea-bitten, mangy runts like that, I don’t know. As if it wasn’t enough that she should be killed by your hounds while she’s asleep, I expect she’ll scarcely get any rest, what with the fleas and other things. A fine place! The only way to get this household fit for a lady like her is to have the dogs out where they belong, in their kennels.”

  With that, having confirmed that Baldwin’s face was as shocked as she had hoped, Emma rotated her massive bulk and steered a course through the door and out.

  Baldwin passed a hand weakly over his forehead. “Is it true that she really has gone?” he asked. “I swear, if I’d had a javelin here, I would have hurled it at her, whatever the consequences!”

  “Don’t worry, Baldwin,” Margaret said sympathetically. “I’m sure she’s not as bad as all that once you get to know her. Maybe it’s just that she’s some way from home and feels a little uncertain.”

  “I rather think she has too many certainties for my liking,” Baldwin pointed out acidly. “And what in the name of God has got into you, Wat my lad?”

  For answer, the boy began to weep, and covered his face with his hands.

  “God’s Blood!” muttered the knight. “I really believe this household has gone mad in the last day. Wat, calm yourself—and if you can’t, go out to the buttery and fill yourself with strong ale. Ah! Hugh—what the hell has been going on in here? What’s the matter with him?”