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

by Ann Swinfen

  Had Alysoun not seen the arrow, it would probably have eventually reached the manor mill, our mill stream having been blocked at the time. There it was likely to have been smashed on the weir or by the turning of the great waterwheel. Of course, none of the present inhabitants of the manor, apart from the few old servants still kept on there, would be familiar with the course of the stream. Throwing the arrow into it had merely been a swift and clever move to divert attention from its owner, and such an action was consistent with taking care to tear the arrow out of the wound. The arrow was, as we had suspected from the start, sufficiently distinctive to reveal its owner at once.

  The arrow had belonged to the Lady Edith. Did that also mean that she had fired it? If someone else had done so, and wished to divert the blame to her, he would have left the arrow in the wound. If someone else had done so, but at her bidding, then, like the lady herself, he would have been anxious to dispose of it as swiftly as he might.

  Was it possible that the Lady Edith had fired the arrow herself? I had seen her set out from the manor fully equipped for the hunt, with both bow and a full quiver of arrows, but had paid no particular attention to either, so I could not say whether the arrows she carried that day were fletched with peacock feathers. All the hunting gear had been laid aside while we partook of the meal, so it was possible someone might have removed one of her arrows then, but if it had been done by stealth, that suggested someone who would have left the arrow in the wound. That possibility should be ignored.

  My arguments were going round and round in my head, leading nowhere.

  I wished I knew how skilful Lady Edith might be with a bow. I should have asked Mistress Walsea. Unless it was a lucky accident, that shot had been a clean one, with force behind it, straight into a lung. Mordon would almost certainly have toppled from his horse, still alive but dying, and lain face down in the leaf litter, as his lungs filled with blood and he gasped his last breath. Had the killer stood over him, watching him die? Had the arrow been torn away while he still lived? To be tossed away with brutal forethought, into the nearby stream.

  I shuddered. I had not allowed myself to think about the killing too vividly before now. From what I had heard and seen of the man Mordon, I had nothing but dislike for how he had lived, yet I could not but pity how he had died.

  A passing cloud blotted out the sun, a silent echo of my own unpleasant musing, as I rode up the lane to the farm. Before all else, I removed Rufus’s bridle and rubbed him down, though our slow progress back to the farm had cooled him and dried the sweat of the earlier gallop. From the threshing barn I could hear the swish and thump of the flails and the short bursts of somewhat breathless conversation. When I entered, the men looked up, but did not cease their labour. A good deal of the straw had been bundled, tied, and stacked to one side of the barn, and Hilda was sweeping the mixed grain and chaff into a heap, ready for winnowing, as soon as there was a good winnowing wind.

  Something about me must have betrayed that I came heavy with news, for Edmond laid down his flail and walked over to the open door, followed by Jordain.

  ‘What is afoot, Nicholas?’ Edmond said.

  Instead of answering at once, I drew both peacock feathers and arrow from my scrip and held them out.

  ‘Alysoun retrieved these from the stream, near the clearing where we took our meal,’ I said. ‘Mistress Walsea has identified the arrow as belonging to the Lady Edith. I believe it bears traces of blood.’

  Jordain took the shaft from my hand and turned it about in the sunlight that flooded through the door, examining the point where the iron head was attached to the wood. He nodded.

  ‘I believe you have the right of it.’ He ran his thumbnail along one of the grooves and examined the fragments of reddish-brown material left clinging to it. ‘In truth, it looks like blood. So this may be the arrow that slew Gilbert Mordon.’ He glanced at the three feathers I gripped between thumb and forefinger. ‘Why have you removed the flights?’

  ‘Not I. It was these peacock feathers which drew Alysoun’s attention. She asked me if she could make them into quills, but of course they have been cut too short. Had it not been for this arrogant flourish of wealth, the arrow would have floated away unregarded. Indeed, there would have been no need to remove it from Mordon’s body. Now thereby hangs a moral tale.’ I gave a wry smile. ‘’Tis no wonder the killer was anxious to rid himself of so distinctive a weapon.’

  ‘He?’ Edmond said. ‘Or she?’

  I shrugged. ‘What do you think? Could a woman have fired that shot? With enough force and accuracy to kill a man? To kill her own husband?’

  Jordain was examining the arrow head more closely than I had done. ‘This is exceptionally sharp, Nicholas. With such wicked barbs. No wonder it tore the wound so badly, as you and Sir Henry have described it.’

  ‘The problem,’ I said, ‘is what to do now.’

  ‘While you were away chasing after the lady,’ Edmond said, ‘Sir Henry sent a message by his serving man. The coroner had summoned Sheriff de Alveton, so it seems, before ever the inquest was held, so certain was he that the huntsman must go to trial. Now that the huntsman has been proved innocent, Facherel finds himself in something of a quandary, for the sheriff is due to arrive this afternoon. Too late, now, to put him off.’

  ‘He cannot hold a trial if there is no prisoner to be tried,’ Jordain said, handing the shaft back to me.

  I looked down at the damning objects in my hands.

  ‘If I take these to him,’ I said slowly, ‘it is clear evidence that Gilbert Mordon was shot with one of Lady Edith’s arrows, but not who drew the bow.’

  ‘If the sheriff believes you.’ Jordain shook his head. ‘Since Lady Edith is a woman of rank and position, it may be convenient not to believe you, to dismiss this arrow as proving nothing.’

  While we had been speaking, Philip had joined us. ‘We should not forget the other death,’ he said. ‘Reginald Le Soten. Surely Lady Edith cannot be held guilty of that. No woman could have strangled him in that manner.’

  On that, we were all agreed.

  I stowed away the parts of the arrow in my scrip. ‘I think this afternoon I will ride over to the manor and show these to Sir Henry. I will also tell him all that Mistress Walsea has told me. It may be better that he should take the arrow to the sheriff. It will not be so readily dismissed, coming from a man of his birth. As for Le Soten, his murder must be linked to that of Mordon. He would have reported all that he knew to the king. Not only about Mordon’s fraud in securing the manor, but the existence of the second, unsigned will. That second will casts even more suspicion on the Lady Edith.’

  ‘However,’ Philip said, ‘even if the arrow belonged to the Lady Edith, you say quite rightly that it cannot be proved that she fired it. It might have been that fellow Dunstable.’

  ‘If so, it was with her knowledge.’ I was sure of that. ‘But if Dunstable shot Mordon, would he not have used one of his own arrows? His arrows, we must assume, are not in any way distinctive. Why should he use one belonging to the lady? From all we can judge, they did not ride to the hunt planning the murder beforehand, though both must have wanted Mordon’s death, before that will could be signed. When chance offered, one of them shot him. At that fatal moment, would Lady Edith have handed an arrow to Dunstable and said, “Shoot him with my arrow, if you love me!” Nay, I think not.’

  From their silence, I saw that they agreed with me, however distasteful the thought of a woman, a lady gently born, killing her husband in cold blood.

  ‘It still leaves no answer to the question of who killed Le Soten,’ Philip said.

  A soft breeze stirred the fragments of chaff about our feet, lifting the golden dust raised by the threshing until it danced about us, shimmering in the sunlight. It seemed a gross insult to the day and the age-old tasks of the farming year to be standing here and talking of violent and cruel death.

  ‘There are two men who are always seen in close company with the Lady Edith,’
I said slowly. ‘John Dunstable, her lover and distant kin of Mordon, and Lawyer Baverstoke – Sir Thomas Baverstoke, as we should remember. From what Le Soten told Sir Henry and me, Baverstoke used to be the man of law for both husband and wife, since he acted for Mordon in the exchange of Leighton Manor for some of the king’s debt. However, Mordon used a different lawyer to draw up the new will, and, according to Le Soten, Baverstoke is more the wife’s lawyer than the husband’s.’

  ‘Either man might have strangled Le Soten,’ Philip said. ‘Dunstable is the younger man, but Baverstoke the more formidable.’

  ‘I wonder whether either has served in the king’s French wars,’ I mused. ‘If Baverstoke holds knightly rank, it cannot be by virtue of being a landowner, else he would not serve others as their man of law. Such lawyers are often younger sons, are they not?’

  ‘You are thinking,’ Jordain said, ‘that he might have been knighted on the battlefield.’

  ‘It is possible. Perhaps, when he was younger, he fought in the king’s army, then returned to a more peaceful life in practising the law. The man must be near fifty.’

  ‘But still strong and vigorous,’ Edmond said. ‘He appears more likely to be a man of his hands than Dunstable. I have seen very little of the younger man, but he strikes me as someone fond of a comfortable life at another’s expense, an idler, unlikely to take action unless driven to it. I would say also that he is less likely than the lady to have shot Mordon. Indeed, she is strong-willed and aggressive, as we have seen in her attempt to have Alan Wodville found guilty. Women are sometimes guilty of murder.’

  Behind us, the rhythmic slap of the flails had gradually died away. We had been speaking quietly, so little of what we had said could have been heard while the threshing continued, but it was clear now that the labourers in the barn had paused in their work with their ears stretched. Edmond shook himself, shedding a scattering of husks from his clothes like a golden waterfall.

  ‘All this speculation will not speed the threshing,’ he said. ‘Go and confer with Sir Henry this afternoon, Nicholas, and discuss all we have said with him. He may be able to cast some fresh light.’

  Philip nodded his agreement. ‘And I think you have the right of it, Nicholas. Best if it is Sir Henry who approaches the sheriff with the evidence of the arrow.’

  ‘I shall be happy to pass everything over to him.’

  I smiled. It would be a relief to shed any responsibility for matters which were no concern of mine. My only interest was in trying to find out the true killer of Gilbert Mordon, since that would lift any last shadow of suspicion from Alan Wodville. How matters arranged themselves afterwards was not my affair. I would return with my family to Oxford and take up my usual life once more. And perhaps – a voice whispered in my head – Emma would come back to Oxford soon.

  After dinner I mounted Rufus and rode slowly over to the manor, my reluctance holding the horse back to a plodding walk. The children had begged for another fishing trip, and James, returned with the two horses from Burford, had agreed happily to take them, continuing his holiday from the tedious labour in the threshing barn.

  ‘Mistress Walsea is safely bestowed, then?’ I asked him.

  He nodded. ‘She stays at the Lamb Inn tonight, and she is in luck. There is a carter leaves for Oxford and Newbury on the morrow. From Newbury she will easily travel to Winchester.’ He smiled. ‘A formidable lady! Had there been no carter, I believe she would have hired a horse and ridden, alone and unescorted.’

  So Mistress Walsea seemed safe from any pursuit from the manor, once her absence was noticed. She was indeed a formidable lady, well worth the king’s trust.

  I would gladly have gone fishing with the others. To tell the truth, I would even have spent the afternoon threshing in preference to going to the manor, but the sooner the evidence of the arrow was handed over to the sheriff, the better. Afterwards, I might regard myself free of the matter. Let others follow what evidence there was, whithersoever it might lead. That is, if the arrow and its ownership would even be recognised as evidence.

  Although we normally walked the short distance to the manor – not more than half a mile – I chose to ride, through some dim notion that I gained more dignity and status by arriving on horseback, rather than ploughing my way up the dusty lane like one of the manor’s villeins. Nevertheless, I took the precaution of riding round to the stableyard without approaching the front of the house. Aelfric, with one of the kennel lads, was returning with a dozen of the lymers after exercising them, and called a groom to take Rufus.

  ‘I shall not be long,’ I told him. ‘Give him a drink, but no need to unsaddle him.’

  Mindful of the necessity for discretion, I entered the house through the back premises, and sent one of the scullions to find Sir Henry.

  ‘Ask him, if he would please to meet me in the orchard,’ I said, and left the house to make my way there. As before, the orchard offered itself as the best place to speak with some privacy, since most of the house faced the opposite way, and one could cast a watchful eye in all directions. I walked to the far end, where I noticed that the early ripening apples were beginning to drop to the ground, as well as the lesser windfalls. I knew every tree in this orchard from stealthy visits in boyhood. There was one tree which bore very early fruit – a small apple of an intense red, almost purple, the size and shape of a large plum. They were exceptionally sweet, though they were poor keepers. I stowed a few in the breast of my shirt for the children, feeling a faint boyish guilt, despite the fact that the orchard was now so ill cared for that a few missing apples would hardly be noticed. I bit into one myself, savouring the sweet remembered juice.

  ‘Stealing apples, are you?’ Sir Henry had come up softly through the long grass.

  I grinned. ‘Sir Yves always looked the other way. I am sure he knew we helped ourselves, but his own children were older, nearly adults when we came foraging. I expect he felt he could spare our small pickings.’

  ‘He was a good man. One of many we lost in the Pestilence.’

  I did not answer, for some memories are too painful to speak of.

  ‘Now what news have you for me?’ he said. ‘I have news of my own for you.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  I thought it best I should learn how matters stood at the manor before I embarked on my own account of all that I had learned in the time since I had seen him the previous day.

  ‘The sheriff is come,’ he said, ‘a little earlier than expected. He has dined, and I persuaded him to allow me to answer his questions today, before the formal trial, so that I may hasten back home. My written testimony may be read at the trial. If ever the sheriff is able to hold a trial. I am eager to be on my way. I came for a day’s hunting and have been here nearly a week.’

  He found a seat on a grassy mound at the end of the orchard. It had once been a turf bench, planted with camomile and other low growing herbs, where ladies might sit and enjoy a pleasant time out of doors, while shaded from too intense sun by the trees. The seat was now overgrown and covered with weeds more than with fragrant herbs, but it was still comfortable, so I joined him.

  ‘Sheriff de Alveton agreed,’ he went on, ‘so his clerk has written down everything that I could tell him. But that is not all that has happened. Every day a new alarm at Leighton Manor. One of Lady Edith’s waiting women has disappeared! It seems she was not on duty yesterday evening, and she is a quiet, self-effacing women, who keeps to herself, so she was not missed until today. As far as we can tell, she was last seen at the inquest. The general belief is that she had some part in Mordon’s death, and has fled to escape justice.’

  I realised suddenly that Sir Henry had left us yesterday before Mistress Walsea sought our help. He could not know that she had been with us and was now in Burford, on her way to Winchester. Nor would he know that she was Le Soten’s cousin.

  ‘Who is urging her guilt?’ I asked, already certain of the answer.

  ‘The Lady Edith, you may be su
re. Her waiting woman, and an intimate of the family. And it seems that Mordon made one of his assaults on her a few months ago, although she was able to withstand him.’

  That, I could well believe.

  ‘Then why should she want to kill him?’ I said. ‘And it makes no sense. She had no opportunity, for she was not one of the hunters, carried no bow. She would have remained behind where we took our meal, like my sister and the other ladies.’

  He shrugged. ‘There is nothing to point the finger at her, save her disappearance before the arrival of the sheriff.’

  ‘Would the name of the lady by any chance be Mistress Alice Walsea?’

  He stared at me. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because she only fled as far as the end of the manor lane, and has been with my family ever since, until a short while ago. She is Le Soten’s cousin, and the king’s other intelligencer.’

  He gave a low whistle, then listened intently as I recounted all that Mistress Walsea had told me about Mordon’s treatment of his wife. I did not yet mention the arrow.

  ‘So that is the way of it. Not another useful scapegoat after all. And the sheriff was about to send out a party of his soldiers to search for her and bring her back for trial. Once again we have a trial with no accused.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I said, taking the arrow shaft and the peacock feathers once more out of my scrip. ‘I think I have found the weapon that killed Gilbert Mordon.’

  I explained how Alysoun had fished the arrow out of the stream near the clearing where we had eaten, drawn to it by the beautiful feathers, which she had detached from the shaft. The traces of what appeared to be blood I pointed out to him, and recounted how I had ridden after Mistress Walsea when she was on her way to Burford.

  ‘She has identified it as an arrow belonging to Lady Edith, without any hesitation. But of course we cannot know who fired it. Whoever it might have be, he – or she – was determined it should not be identified, so threw it in the stream.’