by Jason Vail
“No,” Harry said through gritted teeth as he let himself down from the cart, “I’ve come for justice after the mean-spirited thing you’ve done.”
“What, me?” the bailiff said. “I was just enforcing the law. You was flouting it. God knows what else you’re up to when our backs are turned. We’ve heard you’ve even been seen speaking with Will Thumper. Bad company, that one.”
“Is Tarbent about?” Stephen butted in before this exchange could go somewhere that it should not.
A bailiff waved at the chamber overhead. “He’s at his books, sir, as usual.”
“More likely at his wine, as usual,” another bailiff said.
“Hush!” the third bailiff said. “He might hear.”
“Oh, yes,” the one who had spoken about wine replied, a finger on his lips. “I forgot.”
“Thanks,” Stephen said, taking the bag of Harry’s savings from the cart. “Come along, Harry.”
He entered the hall and crossed to the stairs at the back which climbed to the first floor. He was several steps up before he realized that Harry was not following. Harry sat at the bottom, contemplating the stairs with some dismay.
“They are rather steep, aren’t they?” Stephen commented, descending to the ground. “I’d forgotten about them.”
“You can’t ask him to come down, can you?” Harry asked.
“It will put him in a foul mood.”
“He’s always in a foul mood.”
“Well, a mood fouler than usual.”
“You could give me some assistance,” Harry said. “Like you did on the way back from the Kettle, on the day it rained.”
There was, fortunately, no one about, so Stephen squatted down to enable Harry to grasp his shoulders. Then he stood up with Harry on his back and climbed the stairs.
The levying of fines was not the town clerk’s role, strictly speaking. His formal job was to record the attainders so that the appropriate manor court — the town being jointly owned by the Genevilles and the Verduns — could impose any fine when it met once a month. But in practice, the clerk was allowed to collect fines for minor offenses and remove the attainder as long as enough of a fine found its way back to the manor, in this instance the Genevilles since the offenses had occurred in their section of Ludlow, with the clerk pocketing a small amount for his expenses.
Thus it was that Stephen and Harry emerged onto High Street with Harry’s savings considerably depleted. At least Harry’s beggar’s license was restored, although he had to endure a lecture from Tarbent about how one could not simultaneously be a businessman and a beggar on Tarbent’s watch; he had to choose one or the other. Surprisingly, Harry had endured this lecture without comment.
Harry was pulling himself onto the bed of the cart, which Mark steadied so that it would not tip over, although the bailiffs called encouragement for him to let go at the most precarious instant, when two of the castle guards hurrying along High Street caught sight of Stephen and shouted his name.
The guards jogged up and paused, out of breath from their haste, to the seated bailiff’s amazement. “Sir Stephen!” one of them burst out. “You must come. We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Stephen’s heart sank. This sort of anxious summons could mean only one thing. “Who’s died now?”
“It’s Simon — Simon Jameson!” the guard cried.
“He’s hanged himself!” cried the other.
“Hanged himself?” Stephen asked. “You’re quite sure?” To be truthful, he would not have been surprised to hear of Jameson’s death, but he supposed it would come another way: such as from infection setting in after Turling’s rough treatment. But hanging? That was a rare thing indeed. He’d only once before seen an instance where a person hanged herself, and the girl had been driven to it by despair at a lover’s betrayal and death.
“We saw him ourselves.”
“Happened last night, had to’ve been.”
“All right, then, let’s go see him,” Stephen said with resignation. The little sense of satisfaction he had experienced at solving Harry’s and Jennie’s problem had been whisked away, even though he wanted to hang onto it for a few moments longer.
When Stephen passed through the castle gate, someone in the crowd around the entrance to the gaol spotted him, and everyone turned in his direction. The jurymen and Gilbert were already there, and it was apparent that they had been waiting for him.
“Where have you been?” Gilbert asked. “I’ve had people looking all over for you.”
“Harry and I had some business to take care of,” Stephen said, aware that Mark, curious as anyone about this event, had followed with Harry and the cart.
Gilbert glanced at Harry. “What sort of business?”
“It’s nothing. A problem with his license. It’s taken care of now.” Before Gilbert could inquire further, in case he had heard about Jennie, Stephen went on, “What happened. Do we know?”
“It seems pretty straightforward. See for yourself.”
Stephen went to the doorway. He hesitated before going in because the stink of shit and piss was so strong that he almost gagged. He swallowed and entered. There were eight men chained to rings imbedded in the walls, some more tattered looking than others. Jameson’s body was to the right. He had looped a belt through the ring securing his neck chain and hung himself from that, even though the ring was no more than four feet or so from the ground. He looked, in fact, as though he had sat down on a chair, which someone had removed. Stephen felt Jameson’s jaw. It was still rigid.
“He died sometime in the middle of the night, a couple of hours before dawn, maybe,” Stephen said.
Gilbert nodded his agreement.
“Did any of you see or hear anything?” Stephen asked the prisoners.
“We didn’t see nor hear nothing,” one of them said.
Stephen wasn’t sure he believed this, but a round of bobbing heads suggested it might take some work to get them to say anything different. “Nobody came in?”
“That door makes a racket,” another prisoner said. “No way you can sleep through that. ‘Sides, nobody comes in here after supper. Ever.”
“So he just hung himself last night and none of you noticed?”
“Nope,” several said at once. “Didn’t see or hear nothing. We was fast asleep.”
“Have him cut down and laid in the yard,” Stephen ordered Gilbert.
Gilbert cut off Jameson’s clothes down to his braises, and he and Stephen went over every visible inch of the dead man’s skin.
After they finished, Gilbert sighed, “No bruises other than the mark left by the belt.”
“Unlikely there was a struggle, then,” Stephen said. “Although he couldn’t have put up much resistant with his hand like that.” Four of the fingers on Jameson’s right hand were crushed, the tips bloody and swollen to the size of small balls, the nails gone from two of them.
Gilbert turned the dead man’s head. He pointed to the base of the skull. “See how the mark rises up from beneath the chin to the rear of the head? That’s consistent with a hanging rather than strangulation. Why would he have taken such a step?” Suicide, while not unheard of, was a rare and terrible thing.
“To save himself from more torture,” Stephen said. “Turling wasn’t done with him, was he?”
“No. He hadn’t got out of Simon all that he wanted.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t the prospect of pain. Perhaps he feared that he would give up Bridget.”
Gilbert looked surprised at this suggestion, for it had not occurred to him. “That could be it,” he mused. “In fact, I think you’re right. He loved her to the end. A pity that she probably does not return the feeling.”
Stephen stood up and looked at the jurymen, who had crowded around to watch the examination. “You’ve seen the body. I assume you’ve already spoken to the prisoners?”
“And to the watch,” said Thomas Tanner, one of the jury.
“All right, then, what’s your
judgment?”
Chapter 20
Harry was still by the doorway to the stable when Stephen brought the stallion out first thing in the morning and tied its halter rope to one of the rings by the door. There would be practice today at the castle, as there was every weekday, and since it was a Thursday they would be working on mounted skills. For the first time since he had left Spain, he would try jousting at the quintain and perhaps some mock combat with staves on horseback. He was looking forward to that.
“What are you still doing here?” Stephen asked as he lifted a fore hoof to pick out the dirt.
“Waiting for my breakfast,” Harry said. “The girl is late. Second day in a row.” He glanced sourly at the house and bent over another carving. It had proved impossible to keep secret the fact of Jennie’s attainder and the cause of it, and Edith had decreed that Jennie was to have nothing to do with Harry in future. Even the fact that he had spent most of his savings to pay her fine did not blunt Edith’s determination. Consequently, Jennie and Harry had not got within fifty feet of one another since the row. “Gilbert says you’re leaving.”
Stephen put down the hoof and started on another. “In a couple of weeks, I think. When things have quieted down and I can fetch Christopher.”
“That stirrup work all right for you, then?”
“Like old times.”
“Nothing holding you back now, I suppose. Prance around a bit on that horse and kiss the right asses, and you’ll get that earldom yet.”
“No, there isn’t, although I doubt there’s an earldom in my future. I’ll settle for a nice, comfortable manor.” Nothing physical kept him here now, that much was true. However, there was still this nagging feeling of having left things undone, of the hunt uncompleted, of crucial pieces distantly perceived but not understood, and of things about to be left behind that, to his surprise, he did not want to part with. It left Stephen dissatisfied and out of sorts.
“Lucky for you,” Harry said.
“I suppose it is.” Stephen resisted the impulse to tell Harry that things could look up for him in future as well. But Harry would not believe him, and he would be right to do so. Nothing could change things for Harry. He had sunk as low as anyone could possibly sink and there would be no rising up for him, ever.
The door to the house opened and one of the serving girls came across the yard with a trencher. She put it on the bench beside him and lingered a moment over the carving in Harry’s hand. “That’s very good,” she said. “Is it the saint?”
“No,” Harry said.
“It looks familiar.”
“It’s nobody you know.”
Since Harry didn’t seem sociable enough to go on, the girl retreated to the house.
“Still at it, eh?” Stephen asked as he finished with the hooves and began currying and brushing the horse.
“It occupies the mind. Say, did you know that the wake’s today?”
“Wake? What wake?” Although as soon as Stephen spoke he knew.
“For Simon Jameson. His brother’s holding a wake this morning at the Pigeon. I hear there’ll be free food and drink.”
“You thinking about going?”
“Nah. No way to get there from Broad Gate. Herb’s going to plant Simon by the Corve, they say. Nice place to be buried, don’t you think? Good view, quiet and near the bowls.”
“Why would being near the bowls matter?” Normally, people wanted to bury their loved ones in consecrated ground, but Simon being a suicide made that impossible.
“Simon loved his bowls. Him and Ormyn used to play at every opportunity.”
Something tickled at the edge of Stephen’s mind, like a name on the tip of his tongue. “Are you sure Simon liked bowls? I thought he went only so he could have a go at Bridget.”
Harry smiled, examining the carving. “That was just a useful byproduct of his obsession. Herb didn’t offer bowls at all until Simon talked him into it.” He held out the carving to Stephen. “Would you mind giving this to Jennie when you see her?”
Stephen took the carving. It was not of the girl in the ice, as Harry had said. It was of Jennie herself. “I’ll be glad to, Harry.”
No one had mentioned Simon’s wake when Stephen was at the castle on Wednesday, and no one mentioned it this morning. But at the close of practice, half the complement shed their arms, and when they were in High Street only then did someone bring up the subject as they were about to part ways with Stephen.
“You’re going?” Stephen asked, surprised to learn the group’s destination.
“Not all of us believe he killed Ormyn,” one of the guards said.
“That bastard, Turling,” another of them muttered.
“You coming or not?” the first guard asked.
“I believe I will,” Stephen said.
“Do you think he killed Ormyn, sir?” the guard asked. “Owing to the fact that I know you’ve made inquiries.”
“No, I don’t think he did.”
“But who was it, then?”
“I wish I knew,” Stephen said, his disquiet and discontent stirring.
Stephen and Gilbert heard the tumult of the crowd even before they reached the corner at Saint Leonard’s chapel and turned onto Linney Lane.
The crowd was much larger than Stephen had expected, and far from somber. It filled the yard so that it seemed anyone anxious to bowl lacked the cleared space for a cast, and spilled into the lane; here and there the pressure of the crowd had collapse the wicker fence lining the road and facilitated the crowd’s expansion. Its mood was boisterous, as if this was a feast day instead of an occasion for mourning.
“Not a bad send off,” Stephen observed.
“They’re local boys. Both grew up here about Linney crossing,” Gilbert said as he stopped short. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why not?” Stephen asked.
“The role I played in Simon’s death. Jameson may hold an extra measure of resentment. So may his friends. I see quite a few of them here, the whole neighborhood, in fact.”
“You fear a beating?”
“Or worse.”
“They’ll have to answer to me.”
“I appreciate your protection — I suppose. Although last time there was trouble, it didn’t save me from a near roasting,” Gilbert said, recalling his escape from Earl Percival FitzAllen’s gaol last autumn, which had been set afire by Welsh attackers while he and Stephen were still inside.
“Last time no part of you was even singed. All you got was a minor fright, and I’ve seen you have those in the yard over stray cats. Come along. I need your eyes and ears, if not that head of yours. There’s something I’ve missed. I don’t know what it is, but if I can’t think of it, perhaps you can.”
“It’s hard to give anything deep thought when you’re in grave danger,” Gilbert muttered, but he did not resist Stephen tug on the sleeve.
Once through the gate and among the crowd, Gilbert relaxed a bit. Perhaps it was the fact he was shorter than most men and therefore didn’t stand out, or that he had put up his hood which made his face hard to see unless he was standing in front of anyone. Although the weather was mild and it was a bit unusual to put up a hood, no one paid him any attention, and they were able to acquire cups of ale without being challenged. A pig had been roasted and there was still some of it left, so they got some chunks of pork, which they supplemented with boiled eggs from a bucket near the head, some cheese, and bread.
“The pork could use some salt,” Gilbert muttered as he chewed.
“It’s free,” Stephen said. “Don’t complain.”
“If it was my pig, I’d have allowed for salt.”
“If Edith would let you. Come on, let’s watch the bowls.” There was a game going on at the farthest pitch.
“I didn’t think you were a fan of bowls.”
“I’m not. Never was any good at the game. My brother, he was the bowler. Always took the prize at the Ludlow fair, or almost always, anyway, before he got
respectable and his wife made him give it up.”
They had not been long at the game when Herbert Jameson mounted a table and called for quiet. He cleared his throat and put his hands on his hips, lips compressed as though he had to nerve himself up to speak to the crowd. “I know that you’d much rather eat and drink — and watch the bowls if you’re not playing — but we all know we’re here for more than just the fun. We’re here to remember my brother, Simon, and to give him the kind of send off that he would have appreciated. Now I know he wouldn’t have appreciated speeches any more than you do, but I must say a few words. I won’t be long, so you can stand still and be quiet until I’m done.
“This has been a bad year for bowls in Ludlow. We’ve lost some of our best bowlers — not only Simon, but Ormyn Yarker and Wace Bursecot — all men cruelly cut down when their best games lay ahead of them. The pitch will never be the same without them, nor the wagering as fierce and hot. How many among you have lost money to those fellows, eh?”
A shout went up, and as it died someone called, “And some of us are still owed money!”
“And if it’s Simon’s debt, I’ll make it good!” Herbert Jameson called. He lifted his cup. “So! To Simon, that poor bastard, and also to Ormyn, and even to Wace, I say, may their stones roll straight and true up above at that great pitch in Heaven!”
“Here! Here!” the crowd shouted in answer, cups raised and then emptied.
“All right, then!” Jameson said. “We’ve still a little pig left, and there are some honey cakes straight from the oven down the street that haven’t had a chance to cool yet! Finish up! There’s a fresh grave that needs filling and we can’t get on with that until the food’s gone.” He hopped from the table.
Gilbert turned toward Stephen whose face was screwed up. Gilbert pounded him on the back, thinking he had a piece of pig caught in his throat, when in fact it was a thought that had almost come clear as Jameson had delivered his speech.
“Are you all right, lad?” Gilbert asked anxiously. “Can you speak?”