by Ann Swinfen
All of this was taking time, and Giles had dismounted. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back against a tree, with his eyes closed. His horse, after blowing wetly in his face, had begun to crop the grass at the base of the tree.
‘’Tis odd,’ Edmond said, looking about. ‘Where has Mordon gone? Even if he was left a little behind, he should be here by now. That stallion of his is a lusty beast. I’d not have expected him to have failed to arrive, however poorly his master rode him.’
‘Aye, very true. But–’ I remembered the glimpse I had had of something red, over beyond one of the coverts. I told Edmond what I had seen. ‘I thought at the time it was one of the villagers, for it was not a horseman. Too near the ground.’
Edmond shook his head. ‘None of them would wear red, you know that, Nicholas.’
‘Aye, but Mordon would not be on foot,’ I pointed out. ‘Unless . . . perhaps he has had a fall. We’d best go back. He went off at such a pace, there may have been no one near him. And we were so spread out in the wood–’
I rode over to Alan, who was washing his bloodied hands and forearms in a bowl of water one of the servants had brought him.
‘Where is Master Mordon?’ I asked. ‘He is nowhere here. Has he returned to the manor?’
Alan shrugged as he rubbed his hands dry on the sides of his cotte. ‘I haven’t seen him since he called most of the dogs away into the wood. I’ve given it no mind.’
He rolled down his sleeves. ‘My work for him is done, once we have carried the kill back to the manor and returned the dogs to the kennels. After that, I owe him nothing.’ He glanced round defiantly at Lady Edith and the rest of the party from the manor. He had spoken loudly and they had all turned in his direction. ‘He may go hang, for all I care. It is nothing to me.’
He gave me a long penetrating look, which I could not quite fathom. Perhaps he was thinking of his young sister. Then he walked over to his horse and mounted. The cart had been reversed and was starting to trundle back to the manor. Hunters, servants, and villagers began to sort themselves out, riding or walking back in the same direction. The hounds, having devoured their share of the quarry, were buckled once more on to their leads. Their handlers, who had had the most exhausting day, followed after the mounted hunters.
Lady Edith showed no concern at the absence of her husband, but was setting off with Dunstable back to the manor.
I rode over to her.
‘My lady,’ I said, bowing in my saddle. ‘I fear Master Mordon may have suffered an accident. I will ride back into the woods and see whether I can find him.’
She looked me coolly up and down, as if I were some unprepossessing fellow asking for employment in her household and not meeting with favour. She shrugged. ‘If you wish. That horse is near too much for him. By now he has probably been carried into the next county.’
She turned away indifferently and set her horse to follow the others. Her constant shadow Dunstable grinned at me contemptuously. ‘Do not expect to be thanked if you find him,’ he said.
‘A family and household of unspeakable elegance and charm,’ Edmond muttered.
‘Unspeakable, certainly,’ I said. ‘Will you come with me?’
He nodded.
‘And so will I,’ said Sir Henry. ‘If the man has had a fall, it will need more than you, Nicholas, to heave him on to his horse again.’
Giles got, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet. ‘And I,’ he said.
‘You will not,’ I said. ‘You must go straight back along the ride to the clearing where we had our meal and join Jordain and the others. They have seen nothing of the hunt and will be preparing to go home. Go back with them, or Jordain will skin me. Did you not see Guy and Philip amongst the riders here?’
‘Aye.’
‘Then if you are able to speak to them, tell them all to go back to the farm. Edmond and I will come as soon as we may.’
He was reluctant, but his head was clearly still hurting, so he mounted and set off down the ride, at the tail end of the hunt party.
Sir Henry, Edmond, and I turned our horses away from the smooth grassy ride and back into the unkempt area of woodland from which we had emerged.
‘Do you think you will be able to find the place again, Nicholas?’ Sir Henry asked. ‘There is no clear path the way we came.’
I looked about somewhat helplessly, wishing that I possessed one tenth of Alan’s woodcraft.
‘I think we came from over there, did we not? There are a few broken branches.’
‘Aye,’ Sir Henry said, ‘and see, our hoof marks in this patch of softer ground. If we go carefully and keep a sharp watch, we should be able to find our way back.’
It took us a great deal of time.
Parts of the way were clear, where the ground was soft enough to mark our passing, or the leaf litter showed signs of being disturbed, but frequently we lost all trace of the way, or mistook some other riders’ route for our own, and were forced to dismount and cast about. Several times we went quite wrong and had to retreat some distance and try again. The afternoon began to draw toward evening.
‘I recognise that stand of three oaks,’ Edmond said, ‘with the hazel coppice over to the right. We passed this way a while after Giles struck his head.’
We continued to follow the traces of our passing until we reached the place where Giles had received his injury. There was still a fragment of his cap fluttering from the branch.
‘We have gone too far now,’ I said. ‘It was after Giles’s accident that I saw . . . whatever it was I saw. We must turn back.’
It was easy enough to follow the way back again, for by passing twice over the same ground we had begun to mark out a clear path with our horses’ hoof prints.
‘It was over to the left,’ I said, peering in the failing light.
Then at last I saw it.
‘There! Beyond the thicket. Whatever it is, ’tis still there.’
We turned our horses and headed toward the covert, but before we reached it, we heard the jingle of harness off to the right. Mordon’s horse, his reins trailing and his saddle askew, was calmly cropping the tufts of grass that sprang up between the roots of the trees.
‘He must have had a bad fall,’ Edmond whispered, as though finding the horse somehow made a slight suspicion into solid fact.
Sir Henry pointed ahead. ‘You were right, Nicholas.’
Stretched out, face down in the leaf litter, his crimson houppelande dragged upwards to reveal two meaty thighs in their purple hose, was the new lord of Leighton, Master Mordon.
We all stayed, stock still, reluctant to move any nearer.
‘If he has lain here unmoving since you first glimpsed him, Nicholas,’ Edmond said, barely above a whisper, ‘then he is deep out of his wits. Or else–’
‘Or else dead,’ Sir Henry said grimly. He was the first to go forward, with Edmond and me slowly following.
The man lay very still, his arms sprawled awkwardly, his head hidden by the ruin of his yellow capuchon. There was something odd about his position. When a man falls from his horse in woodland, it is usually because he has been swept from the saddle by a branch, in which case he will fall backwards over his horse’s hindquarters and end by lying on his back. Either the blow from the branch or the impact of his head as it meets the ground can send him out of his wits. Or worse. But Mordon was lying face down.
I stepped up close and pulled his houppelande down over his buttocks, in a kind of futile attempt to make him more seemly. That was when I saw it, distinct even in the poor light. A large patch of darker red on the red of his houppelande. In the centre of it, a ragged tear in the cloth. I knelt amongst the leaf litter and touched it. It was wet and sticky.
‘Blood?’ Sir Henry said.
I nodded.
I pulled the houppelande up again. The white shirt beneath was even more widely stained, and like the outer garment was roughly torn. Lifting the shirt, I revealed the man’s skin. There was a great jagged wound in his l
ower back.
With a grunt, Sir Henry lowered himself to kneel on the ground beside me as I tried to find a pulse below Mordon’s ear. There was nothing. His body was still warm, but growing cooler. Sir Henry rested his hands on his thighs and leaned forward, to get a better view of the wound.
‘Arrow,’ he said. ‘Punctured a lung, I’d say. And maybe grazed the heart. He’d not stand a chance.’
‘No arrow here now,’ Edmond said, peering over our shoulders.
‘Nay, that’s why ’tis such a devil of a mess. Whoever shot him retrieved the arrow. Dragged it back out again. Going in, it would have been a clean wound. On the way out, the barbs of the arrowhead would have torn the flesh like this.’
As he explained the wound with such authority, I remembered that in his younger days Sir Henry had fought in the French wars. He would be familiar with every kind of wound. I sat back on my heels.
‘It could have been anyone,’ I said. ‘Almost every one of the hunters was carrying a bow. And most of the villagers as well.’
‘But why remove the arrow?’ Edmond said.
‘Perhaps it was distinctive,’ I said, ‘and could have identified whoever shot it. And whoever it was, he would had been terrified of being discovered.’
‘Accidents will happen at the chase,’ Sir Henry said, getting to his feet with a groan, and briefly grabbing Edmond’s arm for support.
‘I wonder whether it was an accident,’ I muttered. ‘In these bright colours, no one could have mistaken him for a deer.’
‘Unless he rode in front of the quarry just as the arrow was loosed,’ Edmond said, without much conviction.
‘Hmm,’ I said.
‘Time to think of that later. It will be dark soon,’ Sir Henry said. ‘Edmond, can you catch his horse?’
While Edmond went off in pursuit of the stallion, who had moved further away, Sir Henry and I turned Mordon over. His face wore a look of blank surprise.
‘Didn’t see it coming, then,’ Sir Henry said.
‘Nay. Someone came up from behind . . . Everything was in such confusion here in the wood. Could it have been an accident?’
He smiled grimly. ‘What do you think?’
I shook my head. ‘Unlikely.’ I paused. ‘In the short time he has been here, the man has made many enemies.’
‘Well, we must take him back to the manor, and see to it that the coroner is sent for. He will not like it that we move the body, but we cannot leave the poor fellow here in the forest, prey to any beast.
I nodded, thinking how a man of wealth, power, and mighty arrogance can be reduced so swiftly to a poor fellow.
Edmond returned, leading the stallion, who no longer seemed so mettlesome as he had earlier in the day. When I had straightened the saddle and tightened the girth, Edmond and Sir Henry heaved the body upright between them.
‘The girth was slack,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Some groom was careless this morning, in saddling the horse.’
‘Should have checked it himself,’ Sir Henry said dismissively, but I wondered whether there had been more than one scheme afoot to do Master Mordon harm.
‘If you will hold the horse steady, Sir Henry,’ I said, ‘Edmond and I will try to sling him over the saddle.’
With such a heavy man, and a dead weight, it was not a simple task. Edmond and I were both red of face and short of breath by the time we managed to heave Mordon across the saddle on his stomach, his head hanging down on one side of his horse, his feet on the other. As we manoeuvred him into a position where he would be balanced, his hunting horn swung out and hit me on the shoulder. It was crushed out of shape. It must have been beneath him as he fell to the ground. His hunting knife was still in the sheath at his belt – a fancy toy, ornamented with uncut semi-precious stones. Clearly the killing had not been for robbery, for the knife must be worth more than a year’s wages for a labourer. We could not find his whip, but it had probably flown off as he fell and was now hidden amongst the leaf fall. Someone could search for it by daylight.
We set off along the way back to the tree where Giles had been struck, Sir Henry going first.
‘I think I can find the way back to the ride from there,’ he said, ‘but we had best make haste, for it will be full dark soon.’
I came next, leading Mordon’s horse, while Edmond rode alongside him, a hand out to steady the body should it start to slip. Fortunately, Sir Henry’s instincts proved right, and before long we were riding easily along the turfed way which would take us directly back to the manor house. As we neared the edge of the wood, a barn owl flew across our path, perhaps the same one which had startled Mordon’s horse in the morning. I gripped the leading rein tightly, fearing he might shy again, but he plodded on, undisturbed. Perhaps without the harsh hand of his master he was a quieter, steadier horse than he had seemed before.
The lights of the house began to show through the trees, and we came out into the grounds surrounding the manor. We could hear voices and laughter from within, and the sound of a lute being played. The three of us exchanged a glance.
‘It seems the master’s absence has not yet caused much concern,’ Sir Henry said dryly.
‘So it would seem,’ I said.
There was screaming and shouting a-plenty, however, when Edmond and I carried Mordon’s body in through the front door of the manor house, while Sir Henry called for grooms to come and see to the horses. All the London party was gathered in the Great Hall, the oldest part of the house, and a number of the guests from surrounding manors were also there, presumably intending to stay the night in Leighton and return home in the morning. Servants had set up trestle tables and were beginning to lay out an elaborate supper, supervised by Lady Edith, who had donned a gown of white velvet sewn with pearls, over which she wore a cotehardie of cloth of gold, embroidered with exotic birds and flowers, which looked as though they had sprung from the pages of some bestiary, never having been seen on this earth.
I jerked my head toward one of the tables which had not yet been laid, and Edmond and I carried Mordon’s body over to it. Placed on his back, with his limbs carefully arranged, his arms crossed over the swell of his considerable belly, he looked more like a man asleep and less like the sprawling corpse we had found in the wood. The arrow had barely penetrated to the front of his clothes, so for the moment there was no blood to be seen. Edmond dusted away some leaves and fragments of twig which still clung to Mordon’s houppelande.
Up to this moment, Lady Edith had been standing at the far end of the hall, surrounded by her guests, but now she came striding down the room, a look of fury on her face, that such lowly persons as my cousin and I had dared to enter her house uninvited. Sir Henry hurried in front of us, holding out his hands to stop her, but she swept him arrogantly aside and advanced on us, her mouth open to warn us away.
Instead, her eyes fell on her husband, and that was when the screaming began.
Soon the rest were crowding around, women screaming, men shouting, demanding to know whether Mordon was injured or dead. Edmond and I retreated behind the table, leaving it to Sir Henry to answer their questions.
He explained how I had caught a glimpse of red earlier, but had thought nothing of it until Mordon failed to appear, and how the three of us had searched the woods until we had found both man and horse, the man lying on the ground, already dead.
‘A bad fall,’ one of the men said sagely. ‘That horse was too much for him. And crashing through the trees like that, no wonder. He should have stayed with us and followed the ride.’
Several more were nodding their agreement.
‘He fell,’ Sir Henry said, when he could make himself heard, ‘but the fall was not the cause of his death. I believe he was dead, or nearly dead, before ever he fell.’
Lady Edith had ceased screaming and was now weeping copiously on Dunstable’s shoulder, while another woman, perhaps one of her waiting women, put and arm about her.
‘What do you mean, Sir Henry?’ It was the lord of Shipt
on manor. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was shot from behind with an arrow.’
Sir Henry turned and murmured to us, ‘Turn him over lads. Best they know the truth before any more wild speculation.’
With some difficulty, Edmond and I rolled Mordon on to his side. The table was too narrow for us to turn him on to his stomach. The hall was ablaze with torches in sconces along the walls and large free standing candelabra placed here and there about the room. In all this light the large patch of blood on the houppelande could be seen clearly. Even now it had not dried completely but had a dull sheen in the candlelight. There were horrified gasps from the company, and a few whispers of ‘Murder!’.
Lady Edith screamed again and came toward us, as if she was about to accuse us of the foul act.
‘Murdered! Aye, we all know who has murdered him! You all heard him say that he hoped my lord would hang. Well, he had already set his hand to it, and it is he who will hang. That huntsman! It is he who has murdered my lord!’
It took a long time to quieten her. Some of the company agreed that it must be the huntsman who had done this. Everyone had seen the quarrel that morning, and how Alan had rough handled Mordon. It seems some also knew of the earlier quarrel, when Alan had struck Mordon to the ground. Others were more circumspect. Surely the huntsman had been within sight of many for most of the hunt? Even though not many of the hunters had been able to keep pace with him, there were the hunt servants, the dog handlers . . .
‘Churls!’ Lady Edith cried. ‘They would hide the truth, for my lord knew their thieving ways.’
Her hair had come loose and her cheeks were flushed an unhealthy crimson. When her women tried to calm her, she threw them aside, and slapped two of them. Sir Henry tried to calm her.
‘The coroner must be sent for. He will call an inquest, which will decide the truth of the matter. You should not make accusations, my lady, until more is known. May I send one of your men at once? He should go first to Burford, to enquire where the coroner may be found. I think the writ of the Oxford coroners does not run this far. It will be the county coroner we need.’