The Dragons of Archenfield (Domesday Series Book 3)

by Edward Marston

  His annoyance was markedly increased when he saw the cavalcade. The presence of Golde made him seethe. When Ralph introduced himself and his companions, the sheriff’s gaze never left the woman for more than a split second. For her part, Golde maintained a dignified silence; head up, eyes downcast.

  Idwal pushed forward shamelessly to claim attention.

  “I will help you solve this murder, my lord sheriff.”

  “Will you, indeed?” said Ilbert, wincing at the sound of yet another Welsh voice. “What makes you think that?”

  “I am an advocate for my nation.”

  “We have too many of those at work already.”

  “Show me the place where the crime occurred.”

  “I am too busy pursuing my own enquiries,” said the sheriff, testily. “I have no time to waste on the burblings of a wandering scholar like yourself.”

  Idwal blenched. “I am neither burbler nor wandering scholar,” he said in a querulous voice. “Herewald, Bishop of Llandaff sent me on a mission throughout Wales.”

  “Then attend to it.”

  “I am needed here first.”

  “Not by me, Archdeacon. I want no interfering churchmen getting under my feet. This is unholy work. Avoid.”

  The sheriffs abrupt manner threw Canon Hubert and Brother Simon into a quandary. Delighted to see Idwal being rebuffed so sternly, they were yet witnessing open disrespect of a man of God. The Church of Wales was, in their opinion, a lower order of creation than that in which they had been called to serve, but it still merited the courtesy of a kind word. Torn between applauding and upbraiding the surly sheriff, Canon Hubert managed no more than a bout of meaningless spluttering.

  Golde was next to take up the questioning.

  “Has anyone been arrested for the murder?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you know who the killers were?”

  “We believe so.”

  “Do you know why they chose Warnod as their target?”

  The sheriff was blunt “I can no more answer that question than tell why you should ask it. Do you not have work enough in Hereford brewing your ale that you should ride about the countryside to interrupt my work?”

  “That is too harsh a reply for a man,” said Ralph, tartly. “Let alone for a lady who has asked her question politely. We realise that you are jaded by your obvious failure to make any progress with your investigation, my lord sheriff, but you should not take out your frustrations on an innocent party such as our delightful guest here.”

  Golde thanked him with a smile, but Ilbert fumed.

  Canon Hubert tried to mollify him somewhat. Nudging his donkey forward, he spoke on behalf of the whole commission.

  “My lord sheriff,” he said. “You will wonder, no doubt, why fourteen sane people who could find a better lodging in Hereford are instead riding all the way to Archenfield.”

  “It baffles me,” said Ilbert.

  “Warnod brought us here. He is one of the main pillars that holds up our work. Take him away and it collapses.”

  “Then you are standing in the ruins, Canon Hubert.

  ” “Ruins can be rebuilt—your own cathedral is a case in point.” Hubert was precise. “We need to know everything we can about the deceased— his character, his possessions, his way of life. Most of all, we need to know who killed him and for what reason. Our deliberations cannot proceed without this crucial information.”

  “Does Golde form part of the commission?” said Ilbert with heavy sarcasm. “Or is she merely here to provide ale?”

  “That remark is very unbecoming,” scolded Ralph. “The lady is here at my personal invitation. Offend her with your boorish comments and you offend me.”

  Ilbert bit back a rejoinder as he met the unyielding gaze of Ralph Delchard. He decided that nothing would be served by antagonising the commissioners. It was in his interest to satisfy their demands and send them swiftly on their way. With a visible effort, therefore, he set aside his personal feelings and sounded a note of appeasement.

  “I beg the lady's pardon,” he said with rough courtesy. “Her appearance in such company as this took me by surprise and robbed me of my manners. It was unworthy of me.”

  “Thank you, my lord sheriff,” said Golde.

  She was poised and he was relaxed, but the look that passed between them was full of unresolved tensions. Ralph wondered what Golde had done to ruffle the sheriff.

  “May we now ride on to Llanwarne?” she suggested.

  “Yes,” urged Idwal. “My countrymen have need of my peculiar gifts. I have to vindicate the red dragon.”

  “If you know how to tame it,” said Ilbert, grudgingly, “you may yet be welcome in Archenfield.”

  “Ergyng.”

  “Call it what you will.”

  “No man alive could stop me.”

  Ralph was eager to press on. “Shall we set forward?”

  “Hold there,” said Gervase. “Can we not make better use of our numbers here? The sheriff does not want all fourteen of us treading on his tail. While some ride on to view the place where Warnod died, others might strike off west to find the holdings that are the cause of the dispute. That way we get fuller value out of the daylight hours remaining.”

  “Sage advice,” agreed Ralph. “I'll on to Llanwarne with one party, Gervase. Take four of my men and anyone else who wishes to go with you. Survey those controversial acres that Richard Orbec is so determined to keep and Maurice Damville is so willing to cede on impulse.”

  The sheriffs ears pricked up. “Damville giving in to Orbec?” he said in disbelief. “Can this be true?”

  “I will explain as we ride along,” said Ralph. He turned to Canon Hubert and Brother Simon. “The road forks here. Archdeacon Idwal and Golde will accompany me. Which route will you choose?”

  The choice was made for them. Hubert seized the chance to pluck out the Welsh thorn in his flesh, while Simon was able to rid himself of the alarming proximity of a beautiful woman. They elected to ride with Gervase. He was more amenable company in every respect.

  Ilbert the Sheriff led the way south at a trot with Ralph Delchard beside him. Though the talk was of Richard Orbec and Maurice Damville, another person kept wafting her way into Ralph's mind. Golde was at once behind him and before his eyes. The journey from Hereford had enabled him to become more closely acquainted with her and there had been a deepening affection on both sides. Ilbert Malvoisin complicated the relationship between the two of them. Ralph sensed a rival.

  Gervase Bret, meanwhile, veered off to the west with his six companions. The sheriff had given them directions and they rode at a brisk trot. The landscape was breathtaking. They passed through undulating countryside with wooded slopes, rich pastures, golden cornfields, and plentiful streams that trickled playfully along. When they paused to water their horses at one of those streams, they looked around to admire the scenery.

  Gervase was particularly struck by the copse of silver birches on a rise ahead of them. With the sun hitting them directly, their trunks gleamed like so many soldiers massed for a battle. He did not realise that some of those armoured figures were not made of wood.

  Activity was brisk at the castle. Maurice Damville had returned to Ewyas Harold and was inspecting progress on the walls of the bailey. Fearing severe punishment if they were deemed to be slacking, his slaves laboured with frenetic commitment. Masons had reinforced the battlements with slabs of stone dressed to shape, but rougher boulders were now being winched up or brought by hand. They were being piled at strategic points along the battlements.

  Damville strutted along with Huegon beside him.

  “We will need more skins of oil,” he said.

  “Order has already been given, my lord.”

  “Braziers, too,” added Damville. “Hot coals and boiling oil are worthy accomplices. See that fuel is provided.”

  “The storehouse is full,” said Huegon, pointing to one of the timber buildings in the courtyard below. “The castle
is well-supplied with all our needs. Food, wine, water, hay for the horses, and fuel for the braziers.”

  “There is only one thing missing, Huegon.”

  “My lord?”

  “Women!” Damville laughed. “Fuel for my bed!”

  “Ewyas Harold may not be the ideal place for the fairer sex at this moment,” said Huegon, tactfully. “Ladies have their function, it is true, but they must take their turn behind more pressing matters.”

  “A fair, fat wench is a pressing matter in herself.”

  “There will be ample time for sport.”

  “One name will head all the others.”

  “One name?”

  “Aelgar.”

  “The Lady of the Brewhouse.”

  “She is more than that, Huegon,” said Damville with a wistful smile. “Aelgar is an English rose in full bloom. My hand itches to snap her stem. Have you ever seen such fine eyes, such full lips, such a trim shape? I tell you this girl has bewitched me. I could almost believe I was in love.”

  “Hereford lies a long way off yet, my lord.”

  Damville accepted the covert reproach in his steward's gaze. Huegon was, as usual, correct. In the short term, the pleasures of the chase had to be forsaken. They could be enjoyed at a later date. To postpone a delight was to intensify its quality. Damville was content.

  His mind swung back to more immediate problems.

  “Did we handle the royal commissioners aright?”

  “We did what was needful, my lord.”

  “It grieved me to give Orbec that land gratis.”

  “What is given can as easily be taken back.”

  Damville chuckled. “I'll have the whole of his demesne in my grasp. His house I'd destroy, but I'll let his chapel stand as a privy.” He looked down over the battlement. “If only Richard Orbec were at my door right now.”

  “He way well be so in due course.”

  “I will be ready for him, Huegon.”

  Grunting noises made Maurice Damville turn. Two slaves were struggling to carry a large boulder between them. They dropped it onto a waiting pile then hurried off. Damville swooped on the missile and picked it up without effort. Heaving the jagged stone over the battlement, he let out a wild cry of triumph.

  “Richard Orbec!”

  With an awesome thud, the boulder sank deep into the ground.

  The messenger was waiting for him as he came out of the tiny chapel. Richard Orbec was bareheaded and wore only a tunic. His mind was still exercised by the febrile thoughts with which he had wrestled before the altar. It took him a few seconds to collect himself.

  “Well?” he said.

  “They are heading this way, my lord.”

  “The whole commission?”

  “Three only,” said the man. “Their leader rode off towards Llanwarne with the sheriff, taking four of his men-at-arms with him. The others escort the three who travel towards your demesne.”

  “What speed do they make?”

  “Slow but steady. An hour will get them here.”

  “They must be stopped,” said Orbec, decisively. “When they sit behind a table in Hereford, commissioners with a royal warrant have some power. It turns to vapour when they dare to encroach on my property. A show of force will teach them their place. Have twenty men armed and ready to ride.”

  “Yes, my lord. How will I deploy them?”

  “I'll lead them myself,” said Orbec. “If I speak directly to these interlopers, they will more readily understand the danger that they court.” He glanced guiltily back at the chapel, then moved quickly away. “Fetch my sword and armour! We leave immediately!”

  They were shocked when they saw the scene of devastation. Warnod's house had been reduced to ashes. Only a few charred timbers remained to show where he had once lived with his doomed family. Golde let out a gasp of horror and brought her hands up to her mouth. Idwal sighed with compassion. Even Ralph Delchard was initially jarred. He walked around the perimeter of the house.

  “What could one man do to deserve all this?” he said.

  “The blameless often suffer the most in this world,” observed Idwal, darkly. “Thank heaven his suffering is over!”

  “There were no witnesses, my lord sheriff?”

  “None that will come forward,” said Ilbert.

  “An inferno like this? Think of the noise, the light.”

  “Everyone was struck deaf and blind.”

  “By fear.”

  “Or by agreement,” said the sheriff. “I begin to wonder if they were all part of the conspiracy. The Welsh will always protect their own.”

  “I deny your accusation with every breath in my body!” said Idwal, quivering with indignation. “Do not tie this crime around the necks of my compatriots when you do not have a shred of evidence to do so.”

  “You forget the red dragon,” argued Ilbert.

  “That is something I will never forget!” affirmed the archdeacon. “But you have no proof that this emblem carved in the ground was put there by a Welshman. It could just as easily have been hacked out of the earth by a Saxon, Norman, or Breton. The shape of a dragon is not unknown to them.”

  “Idwal has a point,” agreed Ralph, pensively.

  “Remember the servants,” said Ilbert. “Elfig and Hywel. One beaten, one spared. One now dead, one alive. One scourged for his nationality, one saved by it.”

  “He was not saved for long,” said Ralph, “if reports that we hear are true. This young servant is your most valuable witness. What has he vouchsafed?”

  “Nothing beyond the fact that he was bound and gagged.”

  “Did you not question him with sufficient vigour?”

  “I used every threat I could to loosen his tongue.”

  “To no avail?”

  “Hywel is beyond us, my lord. He speaks only Welsh.”

  “Then he is not beyond me,” said Idwal, confidently. “Where is the lad? Let me speak with him at once.”

  “He was severely wounded by the attack upon him.”

  “Then I will medicine his injuries while we talk.”

  Ralph Delchard encouraged the idea. The softer arts of a Welsh archdeacon might succeed where the rough questioning of a Norman sheriff had failed. When Ilbert finally accepted this, they mounted their horses and rode off towards the village itself. Hywel was being cared for in a fetid hovel that belonged to his uncle. Idwal and Ralph were admitted to the dwelling. The former was at home in the mean surroundings, but the latter coughed as the stench hit his throat.

  Hywel lay on a makeshift bed of straw. He was a sturdy youth with dark hair and a tufted beard, both still clotted with blood. One eye was hideously swollen, the other was ringed with a black bruise. A fresh scar had baptised his forehead and there were scratches all over his face. His tunic had been torn to expose gashes and bruises all over his body. One of his hands was swollen to twice its normal size, but it was his right leg which had suffered the worst damage. Broken in two parts, it was bound tightly with strips of cloth to a wooden splint.

  When the youth tried to move, he was clearly in agony.

  “Rest, rest, Hywel,” soothed the archdeacon in Welsh. “We have not come to hurt you. I am Idwal of Llandaff. When I passed through here two days ago, your body was sound and your mind untroubled. What miseries have befallen you since!”

  Hywel said nothing. He glanced resentfully at Ralph.

  “He comes as a friend,” reassured Idwal, inspecting the injuries as he talked. “Who set this leg for you?”

  “The priest,” mumbled the youth.

  “He has done his work well,” noted the other. “Mark that, Hywel. The Church repairs what men break asunder.” He clicked tongue. “But he might have bathed your wounds with more thoroughness. Bring water!”

  An old woman, who had been huddling with alarm in a corner, got up and scurried out. Idwal continued to soothe the patient with soft words before offering up a prayer for him. When the old woman came in with an earthenware pot, he to
ok it from her and used the hem of his own garment to dip in the water. Squeezing it out, he knelt beside Hywel and bathed his face and hair with gentle strokes. Ralph did not understand a word, but he was intrigued by the way that Idwal was slowly winning the confidence of the wounded servant.

  “Tell me what happened, Hywel.”

  “I have told my story many times.”

  “Tell it once more to me,” coaxed Idwal. “Men came to the house and bound you. Is that not true? Did you chance to get a close look at any of them?”

  “They took me from behind, when I was chopping wood.”

  “You are a strong lad. Did you not struggle?”

  “There were too many of them.”

  “Did you not cry out for help?”

  “They gagged me and blindfolded my eyes.”

  “Then you were still able to hear their voices.”

  “No,” said Hywel, recalling memories that were branded into his young mind. “They said nothing. All I heard was poor Elfig's screams as they beat him. And the crackle of the flames much later.”

  “How much later?”

  “An hour or two at least. I cannot be sure.”

  “What else did you hear?”

  Hywel shuddered. “Their shouts and jeers as the house burned down. But they were too far away for me to pick out their voices.”

  “How were you released?”

  “By my kinsman. He was roused by the noise.”

  “And what did you see when you were untied?”

  “The house in flames and ten men riding off.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “The red dragon. Alive!”

  Idwal attended to the wounds for a few minutes and translated what he had so far heard for Ralph's benefit. The latter suggested the next question and the archdeacon rendered it back into his own language.

  “Where had Warnod been when he returned home?”

  “To Hereford.”

  “Why?”

  “He did not say.”

  “What sort of mood was he in when he left Llanwarne?”

  “Happy.”