The Huntsman's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 3)

by Ann Swinfen

  Lady Edith ignored him, but Dunstable bowed to Sir Henry and assured him that he would see to the matter. As he hurried out of the hall, Lady Edith began calling for the lawyer, whose name, it appeared, was Sir Thomas Baverstoke.

  ‘Do you think we may leave?’ Edmond whispered. ‘At home they will be frantic with worry, wondering what has become of us.’

  I nodded. ‘There is no more we can do here. We shall be needed for the inquest, but let the man’s household take matters in hand now. I wonder why she has sent for the lawyer.’

  Edmond shrugged. ‘Somewhat soon to be thinking about the will, would you not say?’ He gave a sardonic smile.

  ‘I should be glad to go,’ I said, starting to ease my way, crab-like, out from behind the table. Somehow the press of people had thrust it back almost to the wall, with Edmond and me trapped behind it. Sir Henry saw what we were about.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, attempting (without much success) to heave the table away from the wall. With Mordon’s weight on it, it was too heavy for him. ‘Get you home. I was to stay here this night in any case. I can answer any of their questions. Did you not say you hoped to save what you could of your oats, Edmond? Let you carry on with your harvest. The coroner cannot be here by tomorrow. Best use the time to advantage.’

  Frustrated by our attempt to escape around the edge of the table, Edmond and I were forced to crawl underneath, emerged in time to hear the lawyer saying, ‘I will see to it at once, my lady.’

  Sir Henry was no longer by the table, but striding across to the lawyer. ‘What is this devil’s scheme, sir? You have no right in law. You, of all men, should know that.’

  ‘When there is convincing evidence of a man’s guilt,’ the lawyer said smoothly, ‘it is quite in order to secure his person. Moreover, with the lord of this manor now deceased, and no male heirs, the rights of infangenthef and outfangenthef fall to his widow. She has given orders that the felon Alan Wodville is to be seized and held in confinement, awaiting the decision of the coroner’s court and his appearance before the court of this manor. He is clearly the culprit and cannot be permitted to remain at large, since he is likely to take to his heels and flee.’

  I gasped. ‘Surely they cannot do that? The arrow could have been fired by any one of dozens of people. Mordon had already made a great many enemies. Why single out one man?’

  Sir Henry nodded. ‘You overstep the mark, sir. We will await the coroner. Besides, the rights of infangenthef and outfangenthef’ have become debatable of late. And they cannot be asserted by the widow until heritage of the manor is confirmed. Moreover, the crime was committed within the royal forest and not within the fee of this manor.’

  As a substantial landowner, Sir Henry presided over his own manor court and knew his law, but the man Baverstoke ignored him and began issuing orders to the manor servants to make haste at once into the village and seize the person of Alan Wodville.

  ‘If he is not at home, search the village until you find him. Let no man attempt to conceal him from the law.’

  ‘At this hour, maister,’ one of the servants objected, ‘all the village will be abed.’ He was a local man, and looked far from happy about obeying Baverstoke’s orders.

  ‘Then rouse them out of their beds,’ the lawyer snapped. ‘This is a case of murder. We cannot allow the murderer to escape.’

  There was some muttering at his words, prejudging the killer without any evidence other than a public quarrel. The gathering began to shift and divide into separate groups – the outsiders and Mordon’s household gathering about Lady Edith and the lawyer, the local people drifting down toward our end of the hall and forming an uneasy group around Sir Henry. However, there was nothing we could do to intervene when the lawyer despatched half a dozen servants to hunt out Alan. I saw that he had thought better of sending any local men.

  ‘Best you go home,’ Sir Henry said to us quietly when they had left. ‘I will send you word in the morning of what has happened here. I do not like the way matters are proceeding. I shall stay until the coroner arrives.’

  He looked across at the body of Mordon, lying once more on his back.

  ‘There seems little care for the murdered man,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Rather more for fixing the guilt, unproven, on Alan Wodville. Mordon has not even been decently disposed.’

  ‘Aye.’ Sir Henry pursed his lips in distaste. ‘I will see that he is laid out in the manor chapel. Get you away now.’

  We slipped out of the house and went to retrieve our horses from the stables. They, at least, had been given more care than Mordon – unsaddled, rubbed down, and provided with a feed of oats. By the time we were on our way down the lane to the village, the moon had risen and we could see well enough.

  There was a commotion in the village outside Alan’s house. He was held between two men, swearing furiously. Beth stood in the doorway, weeping, while Rob tugged helplessly at the arm of one of the men who was starting to drag Alan away in the direction of the manor. Pale faces peered from behind half open shutters in the houses on either side and across the street.

  ‘Do not lose heart, Alan!’ I shouted across the noise, augmented now by the barking of village dogs. ‘We will not let you be wrongly convicted.’

  ‘I never touched the bastard!’ Alan shouted back, then was silenced when one of the men struck him across the face.

  Chapter Seven

  Edmond and I returned to an anxious household at the farm. The children had been sent off to bed, but once we had settled the horses, we found all the adults gathered in the kitchen, where Susanna was heating some soup over the fire, and Margaret was treating the injury to Giles’s head.

  ‘Did you find him?’ Jordain demanded. Clearly Giles had told them all that he knew.

  ‘We found him,’ Edmond said grimly, sinking down on to a stool by the fire and starting to ease off his riding boots with a groan. Hilda knelt on the floor beside him to help.

  ‘Ill news, then,’ Margaret said, glancing across at me as she stoppered her jar of woundwort salve.

  I passed a hand wearily over my face and sat down opposite Edmond. I was too weary even to trouble with my boots, but when she had removed her father’s, Hilda began to unlace mine.

  ‘Aye, ill news indeed,’ I said. ‘We found Master Mordon dead, and already growing cold.’

  Susanna stopped ladling the soup into bowls. ‘He fell from his horse, then? Struck his head or broke his neck?’

  ‘Nay.’ I shook my head. ‘Dead of an arrow in his back. At least, there was no arrow, but Sir Henry swears that it is an arrow wound. It was withdrawn after the killing, tearing the flesh further.’

  Beatrice clamped her hand to her mouth and shivered.

  ‘An accident, do you suppose?’ Philip said, taking her other hand in his and raising it to his lips. She gave him a shaky smile.

  ‘It could have been,’ Edmond said, ‘and the bowman made off with the arrow for fear he might be known by it.’

  ‘But surely,’ Jordain said, ‘tricked out as Mordon was, in crimson and purple and yellow, no one could have mistaken him for a deer. More like an African parrot.’

  ‘Just my thought,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Hilda.’

  I wriggled my stiff toes. One was poking through my hose.

  ‘Surely it cannot have been an accident,’ I said, ‘unless Mordon rode across someone’s shot at the wrong moment.’

  ‘The party at the manor have decided that it was deliberate murder,’ Edmond said, ‘and have fixed on Alan Wodville as the murderer. Between them, Lady Edith and that lawyer have claimed the right to seize and imprison Alan. He was being arrested as we came through the village.’

  ‘Sir Henry tried to stop them,’ I said. ‘Swore they were acting illegally, but they ignored him. However, Sir Henry remains at the manor tonight and will keep a sharp eye on whatever they are about.’

  ‘But why should Alan–?’ Susanna began, then stopped.

  ‘Where is Elga?’ Edmond asked.

&nb
sp; Two of the maids were slicing bread and setting out the remains of the hunt food on the table, but there was no sign of Elga.

  ‘I sent her to bed with the children,’ Susanna said. ‘She is still much distressed.’

  Edmond nodded. ‘Certainly everyone at the hunt saw Alan shouting at Mordon about his attack on the girl, and swearing at him for his lewd ways, but why should he kill him?’

  ‘There are others with as much cause,’ she said. ‘Mark Grantham, for one, ever since Mordon made a claim on him as one of his villeins, because of that new land of his. There are others in the village in dispute with him. Lads severely punished for trapping conies on their own land. He has even tried to claim villein service from Geoffrey Carter and Bertred Godsmith, who are both free men, and their families before them for generations. And there are all the other matters – the higher tolls at the manor mill, the ban on gleaning.’

  ‘For that matter,’ Edmond said with a grim smile, ‘you might say the same of me, for he has robbed me of my mill stream and most of my day labourers.’

  He did not mention his debt to Mordon, and the monstrous rate of interest.

  ‘Again, hardly a reason for murder,’ I said, ‘but rest easy, cousin. You were never out of sight of me, Sir Henry, and Giles here, until long after the man was dead.’

  ‘So that absolves the three of you as well,’ he said. ‘But what of Philip and James and Guy? They were somewhere in that mad throng crashing through the wood.’

  Guy looked momentarily alarmed. ‘Sir, I had not even met the man! Nor had Master Olney.’

  ‘That leaves me under suspicion, then,’ James said.

  ‘Never fear, son.’ Edmond got up and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I spoke in jest. Shall we eat this soup? I for one have the hunger of a wolf. How many hours is it since the hunt breakfast?’

  ‘Too many,’ Susanna said. ‘Come, sit. We have bread left from this morning, and some of the pasties. And I had set aside a tart of the early plums for this evening. Fetch the cream, Hilda.’

  As we ate our welcome supper, we turned over again the little that was clear about the killing of Gilbert Mordon, but could make no more sense of it. Had the killing been deliberate murder? Or no more than an unfortunate accident? If it had been an accident, it was not unreasonable that the man who had shot the arrow, finding Mordon dead, should have been seized with panic, removed the arrow, and kept his lips sealed. The fear which had surrounded Mordon in life would not necessarily disappear with his death.

  ‘If that was the way of it,’ I said, ‘then the killer must have been alone when it happened, or with none but trusted friends nearby.’

  ‘Aye, but if that was the way of it,’ Giles said, ‘would he continue to keep his lips sealed, if an innocent man is accused of murder?’

  ‘It cannot have been Alan,’ I said, thumping the table in frustration. ‘I am certain he would never have been out of sight of the hunt servants and the dog handlers, even if none of the other hunters had kept pace with him.’

  ‘There you put your finger on the crucial point, Nicholas,’ Jordain said. ‘Accident or deliberate killing, it must have happened by stealth and Alan is the one man who could never have been alone this entire day.’

  We were all late abed that night, but must be up betimes the next morning, to see what might be salvaged of the oat harvest. A day’s work on the farm had been lost on Friday, while we had been absent at the hunt. Now but one day remained before the Sabbath’s enforced leisure. The weather continued to look changeable, so every minute in the field counted toward the stores for winter.

  Before I went down to break my fast, I took out Emma’s letter and read it again. She was surely teasing, when she spoke of working for me as a scrivener – was she not? I could not employ a woman. Yet there was a certain irony about it. Confined as a novice to Godstow Abbey, she had the freedom to use her talents as scrivener and artist, however much she resented what she saw as her imprisonment there. Now, restored to her rightful place as her grandfather’s heir to a substantial manor, she found herself imprisoned quite otherwise, by the bonds of propriety and convention. She might, certainly, write and illuminate books for her own pleasure, but she could not become a professional scrivener. I was an official librarius licensed by the university of Oxford. I must observe the rules. Indeed, I did not know that there actually existed a rule against employing women as scriveners. It had probably never occurred to anyway that such an unlikely thing would ever be thought of.

  Tomorrow, after Mass, since there would be no field work, I would write an answer to Emma’s letter. Geoffrey Carter would be off on his rounds next week, which would take him to Oxford in a few days’ time. He could carry my letter to Mistress Farringdon.

  A day’s grace for the field of oats had not been entirely wasted. A fair amount of the flattened stalks had straightened again, at least partially, plenty to occupy us for the whole of the day. It was slow work, for whole areas had been twisted together by the storm, so that we could not move across the field in an orderly row, but must each struggle to disentangle a clump at a time, working close with sickles instead of the long-handled scythes. It was irritating and tedious, and to cap all, every insect on the farm seemed to have moved into the thick clusters of stems. Before long my forearms were covered with scratches and bites, and the more determined insects were biting through my hose.

  Where patches of oats still lay on the ground, Susanna and the other women worked their way even more slowly through them, lifting the fallen stems and salvaging what they could. If the grain they recovered was damp, it would need to be spread out on trays of loosely woven withies to dry in the barn. My mother had come to help again, though I hoped she would allow herself to rest from time to time, for it was tiring, back-breaking toil. Even the children were set to gathering the heads which had been scattered on the ground. Anything that could be saved, would be, even if it must be used at once to stop it rotting.

  As we walked back to the farm at the end of the day, Edmond heaved a sigh.

  ‘Not all lost, it seems. I have had better crops of oats, but we should have just enough to see us through the winter, without having to buy in. We could never have saved what we have, without you and your friends, Nicholas. If the rain holds off, we should finish the oats on Monday or Tuesday. Then there is nothing more but the beans and peas, and the women can harvest those, while the lads and I turn the beasts on to the stubble, before the autumn ploughing. I hope my new team will prove worth the cost and the worry they have brought me.’

  He turned to Jordain and grinned. ‘A far cry from your usual daily labour in Oxford, I am thinking, this field work has been.’

  Jordain laughed. ‘I think it has done us good. We spend too long crouched over our books or disputing the finer points of philosophy in Latin. It has reminded me of my youth. And look at that lad! Such a change in him!’

  Stephen was ahead of us, swinging along swiftly with just one crutch. I had not noticed before, but he seemed to have discarded the other altogether. He was laughing at something Thomas had said, his face tipped up to the older boy. Jordain was right. His face was flushed a healthy colour and his eyes were bright. I thought he had even gained a little weight, with the field work and the good farm food. I suspected that at home in Oxford he led a very restricted life.

  Edmond’s mention of his new team of oxen reminded me of the nefarious bargain he had been tricked into, over the repayment of the loan to Gilbert Mordon. The man had not only robbed him of his mill stream. With a sudden sickening lurch of my heart, I realised that my cousin had as good a reason as any man to wish Mordon dead, if it meant he would be set free from his debt. Yet he had been within my own sight for the whole of the time when Mordon must have been killed. Sir Henry and Giles could also swear to it, should Edmond’s name ever arise, as one who would not be sorry to see an end to the man.

  The women had gone ahead of us to prepare the evening meal, for as usual on these harvest days we had eaten s
paringly at midday, taking our main meal, for a change, when the day’s toil was done. Elga had been in the field today amongst the other women. She looked pale, but otherwise worked as hard as any. Thanks to Alan, no serious harm had come to her, beyond a severe fright.

  As we reached the yard, to be greeted with yelps of joy by Rowan, who had been confined, once again, to the barn, a horseman rode in from the lane. Sir Henry.

  He dismounted and handed his horse’s reins to James, who ran to his assistance.

  ‘Thank ’ee, lad,’ he said.

  ‘You have news for us, Sir Henry?’ Edmond strode across, and bowed a welcome.

  ‘Little enough. The coroner has been sent for, but it’s not known for sure where he is at present. Gilbert Mordon has been laid out in the chapel at the manor, but cannot be coffined until the coroner has seen him, so let us pray it will not be long. The worst of the heat is over, but ’tis still summer, and he should be buried soon.’

  ‘What of Alan Wodville?’ I said. ‘Have they carried out their threat of imprisoning him?’

  ‘They have, but dare not do more, for I have said that I will report them to the sheriff if any harm comes to him. The Lady Edith and the lawyer Baverstock are very hot to have him accused, found guilty, and hanged without delay, but I and one or two others from the county will make sure nothing untoward occurs before the coroner holds the inquest. No one is making any attempt to find the real culprit, for I do not believe it was the huntsman.’

  ‘Nor do we,’ I said, as we walked toward the house, followed by Philip, while the rest of the harvesters went to wash at the well. ‘It is certain that Alan was always in company the whole day, never on his own. Even if we did not know the man’s character, that he’s no murderer by stealth, he would simply never have had the opportunity.’

  ‘So also I have maintained to them,’ Sir Henry said, ‘till I ran out of breath. I could have saved it, for all the good it did. They are bent on accusing the huntsman.’