by C. B. Hanley
‘Why would they do that?’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t know, don’t care. But it means I’ve spent an hour when I could have been doing something else.’ Then the frown left his face as he looked her up and down in a manner she didn’t much like. ‘Still, all the better for seeing you come out to meet me.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t –’
He stepped closer. ‘I thought you were being all friendly the other day at the mill. Seems I was right, eh?’
Alys looked about her, wishing she could see the right path. But of course, wherever she went, he would know these woods much better than she did.
He was close to her now, close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath in the cold afternoon. He put out a hand to touch her arm, and instinctively she slapped it away.
‘Now then!’ He threw up both hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘No need for that. We’re only being friendly, aren’t we? Like you wanted?’ He reached for her again, this time gripping her arm quite firmly and stepping even closer. ‘I know what you came here for.’
Alys stumbled back, unfortunately straight into the trunk of a tree. ‘Take your hands off me. You know I’m married to Edwin.’
Young Robin laughed. ‘Oh, Edwin? Fine sort of a man he is. I bet he doesn’t treat you the way you want, does he?’ He had one hard arm either side of her, leaning on the tree trunk, trapping her. ‘Besides, married girls are the best. No accusations of taking their virginity, no proof anything was done, and no trouble if anything results, ’cause they already have a husband, and it must be his. You don’t think half the brats in Conisbrough aren’t calling the wrong man “father”?’
The longer he kept talking, the more chance there was that someone else would come along, but now he stopped and turned his head to look and listen. Alys could hear only the sounds she didn’t want: birds calling, the faint rustlings of small woodland creatures in the undergrowth, and a breeze moving the lighter branches around and above them. They were completely alone.
He leaned in, so their bodies were touching, and breathed in her ear as he spoke. ‘Besides, Edwin’s not here now, is he?’
Chapter Seven
Edwin needed to get away from all these people so he could think. Home was no good, and neither was the church; they might follow him there. And besides, the village didn’t feel such a welcoming place all of a sudden.
He made his way up to the castle, with the idea of sitting up in his favourite embrasure on the wall, but by the time he reached the inner ward it was spitting with rain: cold, hard drops that fell with intent and promised to get worse.
From the bustle outside the armoury he could see that Sir Roger was organising a group of men to go out on a patrol, and intending to join them himself, so that meant that the keep would be empty. He was waved in by the man on the outer steps and soon he was sitting in the cold and dark of the council chamber. This time he didn’t light a candle; instead he pushed a stool against the wall, wrapped his cloak more tightly about him, sat down and tried to sink into himself.
After what was probably about an hour, maybe a little more, he was no further on. Someone had struck Ivo a blow which had killed him. The weapon had been Denis’s hammer, but the killer might or might not have been Denis. After the deed was done, Barty had moved the hammer. At some point someone had smeared fingers in the blood on Ivo’s head, but there was no telling when or who. Edwin had known all this already, and he’d gained nothing except a stiff neck and freezing feet, for the questions were still the same. Lots of people had wished Ivo ill, but who would want to take that far enough to kill him? Where had he been during the afternoon? And why had he left the castle to visit the village in the middle of the night?
Edwin sighed as he stood, flexing his legs and stamping his feet to try to get a bit of life into them. The one thing he was relatively sure of was that this was a crime of the here and now – nobody in Conisbrough had known Ivo before he arrived during the summer, so the answer was unlikely to lie in a secret buried deep in his past. No, he’d upset someone more recently.
That did give him a new thought, and Edwin was down the stairs, through both wards and out of the main gate before he really noticed either where he was or that it was still raining. He was stopped short by a deep voice, and looked up to see that he had narrowly avoided walking straight into Aelfrith, who was on his way up to the castle. Edwin started to apologise for his inattention but had barely opened his mouth before he slipped on a patch of mud on the steep slope. He would have landed flat on his back in the dirt were it not for Aelfrith’s quick reactions; he shot out one arm and grabbed a fistful of Edwin’s tunic, holding him upright until he’d regained his balance.
Edwin planted his feet carefully. ‘My thanks.’
‘You’re welcome. Been in the ward, have you? Crispin there?’
‘Yes, I’ve … I mean no … I mean, sorry, I didn’t notice whether he was there or not. But he normally is, isn’t he?’
‘Ah well, if he’s not then I’ll wait for him.’ Aelfrith hefted the sack he was carrying, slung over one shoulder. ‘He’s mended some of my tools so I’ve come to collect them. Some beans and a jar of ale in here for him in return, and Mother’s mended his hood.’
Edwin enquired about his mother’s health.
‘She’s a little better, thank you.’ His voice turned softer. ‘However ill she is, she makes the best of it, still running the house and helping me out. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
Edwin murmured something polite but non-committal.
Aelfrith began to move on. ‘Anyway, best get on. Other things to do in the village while I’m here, after I’ve seen Crispin. Don’t fall on your way back down – one of those holes is quite deep, and you don’t want to dirty such fine clothes.’
‘No, I don’t think my wife would be very happy …’ Thinking of Alys reminded him of something and he hailed Aelfrith’s departing back. ‘When you’ve finished your business here today, come and eat with us before you set off home.’
Aelfrith’s smile was cheerful through the rain as he turned. ‘That’s very kind, thank you.’
‘I’ll ask Alys if we can have it early, so you don’t have to walk all the way home in the dark.’
‘Ah, that’s all right – been walking that road all my life, so I could do it with my eyes closed. But Mother’ll worry if I’m too late back, so that’d be grand.’ He waved and began striding up towards the outer gatehouse.
Good. Right, Edwin would go home to tell Alys about their guest, and then he’d set out to discover where Ivo had been on the afternoon before his death. Someone must have seen him. And Alys had said she’d keep her eyes and ears open while she was about her chores in the village, hadn’t she? Maybe there was something she could tell him.
Alys shivered as she entered the village. She had to get home, had to get there without anyone noticing, had to wash the blood off before anyone saw …
Fortunately, the village was all but deserted; the rain had started again, so anyone not in the fields was indoors. She had her shawl pulled over her head, and could hide to a certain extent behind the bundle of sticks. Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone in Conisbrough liked her well enough to stop and chat.
She made it to the cottage. Once the door was safely shut behind her she allowed herself to lean against it, knees weak. But there was little time – she didn’t know where Edwin was but he might appear at any moment – and she had to tidy herself up and think up a plausible story in case questions were asked, as they surely would be once Young Robin made his appearance in the village.
She poured water into a bowl and began to wash. As she scrubbed at her shaking hands, she thought more about the incident, and the more she considered it, the angrier she became. Who did he think he was? And honestly, did he think she’d been brought up in England’s second largest city for nothing? Did he think she hadn’t been fending off unwanted attention in the street since she was ten years old? Did he, in short,
think she was a helpless village girl, to be pawed around by some yokel just because he felt like it?
She looked at her hands. Most of the blood had been his, so the damage wasn’t too bad. But as she’d hurried away – leaving him groaning on the floor and unsure whether to clutch at his broken nose or the agony between his legs – she’d banged the back of her left hand against a tree and scraped her knuckles. It wasn’t serious, but such things could get swollen and nasty, so she rubbed at it with cloth and water to get the bits of bark out.
She had nearly finished when the door banged open, causing her to jump almost off the floor. Her heart was still pounding from the shock as Edwin advanced towards her.
His expression turned to one of concern. ‘You’ve hurt yourself?’
She held out her hand, willing it not to tremble. ‘It’s nothing – I just scraped it while I was out getting the wood.’ She hoped he wouldn’t look too closely at the bowl of reddened water and the blood-soaked cloths tucked behind it; Young Robin’s nose had bled brightly and copiously when she’d slammed the heel of her hand into it, and there was far too much here to have come from a simple barked knuckle.
Once he’d examined her hand, though, and found it just as she said, he didn’t enquire too closely. He lifted it to his lips with a smile, but at his touch she jerked it back. After a moment’s pause she made a feeble excuse about it still not being clean, and wrapped a strip of cloth around it.
She needed to change the subject. ‘So. What have you been doing this morning?’
He said something about the castle, but she wasn’t really listening, just nodding as she thought to herself how she should be behaving.
‘And so I asked him to come round and eat with us later.’
For one awful moment she thought he meant … but no, he’d mentioned another name.
‘Aelfrith?’
Edwin looked confused. ‘Yes. Didn’t you ask me to do that, next time I saw him?’
She had to concentrate. ‘Yes, yes, of course I did.’ She forced a smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘And I wondered if we could eat a little earlier than usual? So he’s not too late setting out on the road back?’
‘Of course.’ She wasn’t really taking this in, except that she knew this had given her an opportunity to get him out the house so she could be alone. ‘Off you go, then, and I’ll start preparing. You’ll be back before sunset?’
He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, and she forced herself not to flinch. ‘Yes. I’m off to try and find out what Ivo was doing that afternoon, but I’ll find Aelfrith in good time and bring him.’
Alys watched him out the door and then her knees gave way and she collapsed on to a stool. Tears sprang into her eyes and she wiped them away with shaking hands. Stop that! She had to compose herself, had to think. Firstly, she and Young Robin lived in the same village, and they would do for probably the rest of their lives. She must steel herself to face him again, to see him almost every day.
Secondly, and perhaps of greater immediate importance, he was at some point today going to appear in the village with a broken and bloodied nose, and everyone was going to ask him what had happened. Her best hope was that he would be too embarrassed to say that he had been thumped by a girl, and that he would make up some kind of excuse, hopefully something more convincing than she had just managed.
But what if he didn’t? What if he accused her of assault? What would happen to her then? She would be up before the manor court, her reputation in tatters, to say nothing of what it would do to Edwin’s prospects. Would the earl want to have in his service a man whose wife had been convicted of a violent act? And what – what – would Edwin think of it himself?
That set her off into sobs again. He must not know. He mustn’t find out what Young Robin had tried to do. He’d either get angry and cause trouble, or he would just look at her in disgust, and she couldn’t stand the thought of that.
The sound of a burning twig falling in the hearth roused her. The fire was almost out, and she had work to do. She would have to rely on Young Robin’s male pride for the moment – he had plenty of it, at least – and hope for the best. Right now, she needed to work.
The bundle of sticks she had brought back with her were dry on the inside – they had been on the ground for some while so they weren’t green – but they were wet from the rain so wouldn’t be of any immediate use. She untied them and spread them out around the hearth to dry out, before scooping up the last pieces from the old stack to build up the fire. She checked on the barley as it was soaking in the pot, went through a list in her head of the herbs and flavourings she had available, checked to see what was left of the fresh pork and offal, and thanked the Lord that she had baked only yesterday. And dealing with that hen might give her an opportunity to work out some of her frustrations … but first things first. She squared her shoulders and stood looking at the door. She would leave the house; she would walk down the street with her head held high. Everything would be fine.
With a deep breath, she set out to find Rosa.
Edwin was wet. Mud had soaked through his boots, water had soaked through his hose, his hair was plastered down on to his head, and he could feel drips running down his back.
This was all natural for the time of year, of course, and indeed he gave thanks that it wasn’t worse, for the cloak had kept some of the rain off. It was now sodden and heavy as he made his way back to the village, but it was a luxury that not many other men had. Indeed, several of the villagers had either stared jealously at it or made outright comments as he had been questioning them.
He sighed as he sloshed through the puddles – his feet were so wet by now that there was not much point in trying to pick his way round them – feeling the water well up between his toes as he plodded and thought. It had all been for nothing, for not one man he had spoken to had known where Ivo had gone on the afternoon before his death. Either that, or someone knew and wasn’t telling. The reeve in particular had seemed very evasive, but perhaps he was just busy.
Edwin hadn’t needed to be very alert to sense hostility, as that was quite open in most of the faces that confronted him. Why was he persisting in questioning them, when they already had the culprit locked up? Didn’t he trust them? Did he value the word of a foreigner over their own? Was he not, in short, one of them any more? This is where the sneering references to his cloak had come in, and as he’d trudged to the furthest field to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone, he’d almost taken it off. But that would be silly – injuring himself just because of what others thought. What matter was it to him that they were jealous? Why should he care?
It was not quite dusk as he entered the village, but he was tired and wet and he’d had enough. He could see Aelfrith; he was standing under the lean-to shelter that was Robin’s workshop, chatting and looking out at the rain. Edwin thought of Alys’s comment: Nobody calls it gossiping when it’s men.
He assumed that Aelfrith had finished whatever business he was about, so he waved and made his way over. Robin was just tidying up for the day before it got dark – or, rather, he was talking to Aelfrith while his sons tidied up around him, encouraged by the occasional back-handed slap or clip round the ear when they came within reach. Little Barty wasn’t among them, and Edwin hoped he was inside by the fire with his sisters in this weather. The winter coughs would start soon and the young, as well as the old, could be carried off.
They all stood to watch as Gyrth came down the street with his herd. There was no panic today; he selected one pig and penned it safely at the house next to Robin’s, and then passed by and did the same with two more at the cottage on the other side.
Once the noise and smell had receded, Robin spoke. ‘Out and about today, is it?’ He nodded at Edwin’s sodden clothing.
‘Yes.’ Edwin was too tired and fed up to elaborate, or to listen to a harangue on why he shouldn’t be bothering about it, but fortunately neither of the others seemed interested in questioning him.
Edwin followed his pointing finger and saw the long, neatly squared-off pieces stacked up against the cottage wall, where they would stay dry.
‘Not the beams for yon house, then?’ Aelfrith’s rumbling voice was curious as he looked across the green. ‘Will that still be finished, now he’s dead?’
Robin shrugged. ‘No idea. Nothing to do with me, that – they’re doing their own beams.’
‘Good thing not everyone wants stone, or you’d be out of business! Anyway, I suppose there’ll be another bailiff soon, so happen he’ll live there.’
‘Oh aye, there’s always a bailiff.’ Robin didn’t look too enthused. ‘With their rules about fairs and bread ovens.’
Edwin was cold, damp and hungry, and he didn’t want to listen to any more moaning – not today, at any rate. ‘Are you ready, Aelfrith? Alys said she’d have the meal ready before dark.’
Robin looked from one to the other in surprise.
‘Sounds good.’ Aelfrith picked up a clanking bag. ‘Good cook, is she?’
Edwin extolled the virtues of his wife’s culinary skills as he pulled up his hood. Robin started to say something about a loom, but Aelfrith didn’t answer, so Edwin bade the carpenter a good evening and stepped out into the rain.
As soon as he opened the cottage door, Edwin’s mood lightened. It was warm and inviting, and the smell was heavenly. He was a little surprised to see Rosa there as well as Alys and Hal, but Alys cast him a look that he interpreted as warning him not to say anything, so he didn’t. He shrugged off his cloak and laid it over the kist, reminding himself again that he really should get round to driving a peg into the wall, and moved to the fire.