The Sticklepath Strangler

by Michael Jecks

  The coroner studied him. It was always worse when men denied their guilt. If the reeve was to fight the matter, it would be a lengthy case, and ultimately he would probably submit or confess. Men always did eventually.

  Reeve Alexander saw his expression in the dim light of the room, and sighed. There was no defence against the killing of the purveyor. Drogo certainly wouldn’t protect him. No one would. The truth didn’t matter to anyone. Everybody demanded justice, he sneered to himself, but most people wouldn’t recognise it if it came up and smacked them on the jaw. Justice was always flawed. The only thing that mattered was that justice could be witnessed – and that meant that he could go hang. It was ironic, really. He had been willing to sacrifice Thomas for the same reason. The man would have been a good suspect. He fitted the vill’s prejudice perfectly: arresting him for the murders would be so much easier than trying to arrest someone who was from the vill itself.

  Damn those hounds! They were making enough noise to raise the dead, he thought inconsequentially.

  ‘Alexander, I would speak with you for a moment.’

  Baldwin’s firm and displeased voice broke into his thoughts and when he looked up he found himself being studied not only by Baldwin and his dog, but also by Simon and Nicole in the doorway.

  Sir Laurence clearly thought that the interruption was intended to release his prisoner, and he moved to the wall, his war hammer in his hand. Immediately Aylmer growled deep in his throat.

  Baldwin called to the dog, but his eyes went to Alexander, then to the coroner. ‘It would appear that we are breaking into a meeting. I apologise for that. Roger, would you mind if I spoke to the reeve for a moment?’

  Coroner Roger grinned and pointed his staff at Sir Laurence, introducing him.

  On hearing that Baldwin was a keeper, the other knight relaxed visibly. ‘I am glad to meet you, Sir Baldwin. How may I serve you?’

  ‘I came here to demand the release of this woman’s husband,’ Baldwin said, snapping his fingers to his dog.

  ‘I can’t just release him. He attacked his brother with a staff and tried to kill him,’ Alexander objected.

  ‘Ivo confesses to taunting Thomas in an attempt to have him gaoled. He wanted Nicole here for his own.’

  Alexander waited for the knight to expose the bribe Ivo had given him, and was relieved that Ivo had apparently not mentioned it. ‘He has no money to free himself.’

  ‘How much would it cost?’

  ‘At least six pennies to keep the Peace and swear to present himself in court.’

  ‘I shall pay it for him. Now order his release.’

  ‘I can’t until the money…’

  ‘Do you suggest that I would offer money and then renege?’ Baldwin asked silkily.

  Alexander shrugged and shouted for a servant. When a thin, fearful-looking man appeared, the reeve snapped at him to set Thomas free and bring him to the hall.

  They were all silent as they waited. Nicole stood with her head averted from all the men in the room, nervously clasping her hands before her breast like a woman who was herself condemned and awaiting the arrival of the rope, but when her man appeared, drawn and anxious, she gave a short sob and flung herself at him.

  ‘You have Sir Baldwin to thank for your freedom, Thomas. Now piss off and leave us in peace. I’ll want you to appear before the next court, but until then, keep out of my sight,’ Alexander rasped.

  ‘No! Wait,’ Baldwin commanded. ‘I want an end to this. Thomas, you fought with your brother today?’

  ‘I didn’t want to, but he made me, insulting me and my wife until I saw red. I couldn’t help it. You know me, Reeve. I’ve never got into fights before, have I? I’m not the sort to resort to my fists after a drink. Drogo and his foresters are often quarrelling with other men in the tavern, and Samson always used to brawl, but nobody has ever suggested that I was violent, have they?’

  ‘Why should your brother want to provoke you into fighting?’ Roger asked.

  ‘He wants my wife. If he could have me hanged, he could take her,’ Thomas explained.

  ‘Your own brother would do that?’

  ‘He’s wanted Nicole since the day he met her.’

  Baldwin said, ‘Thomas, I think your brother will leave you alone now. You have broken his head and he has confessed to us. Perhaps you have knocked some sense into him. Anyway, he has gone.’

  ‘I never want to see him again.’

  The couple made as if to leave, but Baldwin’s soft voice stopped them.

  ‘One last thing. Thomas, you have been accused of murder, and you have been gaoled because of a fight which was not your fault. Why? What have you done to deserve this?’

  ‘Ask him,’ Thomas said disdainfully, jerking his head at the reeve. ‘He’s been hunting me down for no reason.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘You tried to have me arrested – twice now. And why? Just because I wasn’t bom here in Sticklepath. The men of my own vill have had me thrown into gaol, they would have had me accused of murder and hanged, just to protect their friends here. They hate me not because I am a danger, but merely to serve their own interests. Why, Reeve, eh? What have I ever done to you?’ There were tears in his eyes now, tears of frustration and incomprehension.

  It was Simon who answered, speaking with the weary air of a man who has witnessed injustice before. ‘That’s just the point, Thomas. You are an outsider. You didn’t merit protection, not in his eyes, because you weren’t a friend he’d grown up with.’

  ‘Is this true?’ Baldwin demanded, facing Alexander. ‘You sought this man’s imprisonment to protect your vill?’

  ‘And what better motivation could there be? It would have proved that we don’t tolerate murderers here, it would have explained things neatly! And without staining the character of the people and the vill itself. Thomas is a stranger here. A foreigner.’

  ‘Oh yes, and I came from the north, didn’t I?’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Baldwin asked.

  Simon sighed. ‘Everyone knows that only bad luck comes from the north.’

  ‘Oh!’ Baldwin sneered. ‘More superstition.’

  The reeve said, ‘Who else could I arrest? There was no one in Sticklepath who could do such a terrible thing as killing the girls and eating them.’

  Vin heard his words and could not help but glance at Drogo. The forester had been in the area with every fresh body discovered, and he never seemed to suffer from hunger, not even at the height of the famine. As the thought occurred Drogo’s cold eyes met his, and Vincent looked away. Drogo made a bad enemy.

  There had been silence after Alexander’s words, but now Nicole ducked her head and spoke to Baldwin with her head lowered as though fearful, her eyes avoiding the knight’s.

  ‘Sir, there is one man I have heard who might have been guilty. The reeve himself.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Alexander said, his voice growing in volume as the anger flared in his breast. He felt as though his chest must burst with rage. ‘You accuse me?’

  ‘Speak!’ Baldwin said.

  ‘It was Ivo who told me. He said that he had a hold over the reeve because of something he had seen many years ago – that the reeve had killed a man, and Ivo had seen him.’

  ‘That’s a lie! I didn’t kill the purveyor!’

  ‘That’s not what Ivo said,’ Nicole said firmly. ‘You passed the blame to my poor Thomas to protect yourself.’

  ‘How did you hear of his guilt?’ the coroner asked her.

  ‘Ivo told me that if I would leave my husband, he would see to it that the reeve would not support Thomas but would declare our marriage annulled.’

  ‘The reeve doesn’t have that power,’ Simon grunted.

  ‘That may not prevent an arrogant shit like Ivo from telling it to the woman he hankers after,’ Coroner Roger pointed out. ‘Many a man will promise the target of his affections that black is white if it gives him an opportunity to lie with her.’

  Sir Laurence said,
‘Wonderful! Reeve, you are a man of enterprise and determination! To throw all suspicion onto other men so swiftly, that is the act of a genius.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I have never killed any man,’ Reeve Alexander said woodenly. The fight was gone. He knew now that he was dead. There was no one to protect him. ‘And I didn’t kill the girls.’

  ‘I don’t care about the girls, whoever they may be. No, I need only concern myself with the body of Ansel. Where did you bury him? Won’t talk? Never mind. We shall find him.’

  ‘Oh, all right!’ Alexander sighed and allowed his head to fall into his hands a moment, collecting his thoughts, before speaking through his fingers. As he spoke, he lifted his head a little way, so that he could meet Baldwin’s gaze. All the time he was aware of Drogo behind him, listening carefully.

  Before he could rally his thoughts, he saw Baldwin eyeing him with a contemplative expression while he fiddled with the thong tying his purse.

  ‘This can wait until the morning, can’t it?’ Drogo said gruffly. Baldwin looked into his eyes as he pulled out the splinter of arrow and threw it onto the table in front of Alexander. There was a sudden silence in the room, and Baldwin watched Drogo’s eyes go blank with shock.

  The forester knew that his own fate was sealed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Peter atte Moor was uncomfortable in his bed. Although he was exhausted after the last two nights of patrolling his bailiwick, watching and listening for any sign of trouble, sleep evaded him.

  Once he had been a cheerful, tolerant man, but all that had changed one afternoon. One moment’s passion, and his life had been infected, his soul branded, and now all he could do was seek out evil and destroy it. He must fine felons and see them hanged. It was his vocation, it was his only road to salvation. It was his penance.

  The others couldn’t understand. Peter had been born and bred here, like Drogo and Adam, but they had lived most of their time down in the vill, not up on the moors like him. He knew how capricious the moors could be. They could tempt a man to go and investigate them, and then, once he was miles from safety, they would strike; a mist would come down, so swiftly that he had no time to take his bearings, and so thick that he couldn’t see two paces in front of him – and then the wandering soul would be led to a mire from which there could be no escape.

  Peter had been tempted once – they all were, every now and again – but his temptation had caused his destruction.

  It was a girl. He saw her up at the extreme end of his bailiwick, where a stream had been dammed to create a large pool. Massive rocks behind were drizzled with water which cascaded gently down, making the rocks glow in the sunshine as though they were made of glass. It was a beautiful place. Peter had always adored it, and seeing the girl there made him feel as though it had been blighted. This was his own private hollow, and she had ruined it for him.

  She clambered from the pool, stood on the edge, and jumped straight back in. Tall, with long, pale limbs, and thick brown hair that looked almost black now it was wet, she was utterly beautiful, breathtakingly so. Peter had felt his heart thunder in his chest like a caged lion.

  He had gone down to her, his eyes feasting on her as she climbed once more from the pool, shaking her head free of water, self-absorbed and unaware of his presence. There was a rushing in his ears. This girl had appeared from nowhere, as though she was a gift from God, an angel dropped into his bailiwick. When he reached her, there was a strange feeling in his head, as though he was more than half drunk, and there was a weirdness about everything. He could hear nothing. Certainly she must have protested, must have asked him to leave her, for he knew she struck at him and opened her mouth as though to scream, but he couldn’t remember anything about it. He didn’t hear her. It was as though his hearing was cut off. All he was aware of was a high-pitched whistling noise in his ears, which overwhelmed all other sounds.

  It didn’t take long. Afterwards, he knew he was defiled and so was his hollow. She had been a virgin, that was obvious as he surveyed her immature, weeping form on the grass before him, and, realising what he had done, he was sick. The noise in his ears had gone, his lust had flown, and he was left appalled and terrified. A small, frightened man who had lost his life’s direction in a moment of passion.

  Later, he heard that her body had been found by a lay brother from the convent. The girl had been a novice nun, and it was thought that she had slipped on a rock and knocked her head, falling unconscious and drowning. For all he knew it was true: he hadn’t killed her, and he felt sorrow that she had died. He prayed it hadn’t been suicide. He wanted to confess his sin to the parson, but somehow didn’t feel he could. The rape of the novice was a crime which must wait to be confessed until he lay on his deathbed, begging Absolution before dying.

  God’s punishment was dreadful. For his sins, his family were to pay with their lives. Within a year his wife died, leaving him to bring up their daughter Denise alone. And then she too died, murdered in the cruellest way. Never again could he know contentment. Now his only comfort was walking about his bailiwick; guilt his constant companion. He couldn’t even enjoy a whore! Not after Exeter.

  Peter had ravished a Bride of Christ, and he must suffer the weight of God’s displeasure. All he could do to win favour from God was seek out other felons and make them pay for their sins. But although he found pleasure in seeing them destroyed, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

  He turned restlessly. His body, his very soul, ached with exhaustion, but when he closed his eyes, his brain refused to shut off. And then he realised why – it was the noise from the blasted hounds of Samson.

  He almost prayed that he might be finally punished and released from this hell. Death would be a reward he could embrace with thanks.

  * * *

  Baldwin stood staring at Drogo for a moment, then he looked down at Alexander. ‘Remember that, Reeve?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a tinker’s fart for all this,’ Sir Laurence said. ‘All that matters is that this man is accused of the murder of Ansel de Flocsenham. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicole said. ‘He told me that he had control over the reeve because he saw the reeve burying the purveyor’s body. The reeve had killed him, and Ivo swore not to tell anyone, but the reeve obeyed his whims, he said.’

  ‘Well, Alexander?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Jesus Christ! All right,’ Alexander sighed. ‘Yes, Ivo Bel found me out on the Oakhampton road with a shovel. Next day the purveyor was missing, and yes, I had hidden him. But I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Was he stabbed?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘No. Strangled.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, good Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Laurence said. ‘Let’s have the whole story, eh? From the beginning.’

  Alexander ignored him and spoke to the coroner. ‘It was the beginning of the famine. Ansel had been the purveyor for years. He’d got Meg with pup two years before, but when the famine was really hurting, he arrived just when the harvest had failed, looking like a drowned kitten, bedraggled and soaked. I recall it was a Wednesday when he rode into the vill, and the rain was pouring down. It did every day that summer, or so it seemed, and the summer after. The weather didn’t settle down until this year.’

  Baldwin grunted. ‘You reckon this year is settled?’ he said, as he remembered warm, balmy days in the Mediterranean.

  Alexander wasn’t listening. ‘He demanded a vast amount of grain, although he knew full well that we couldn’t supply it, for he could see how poor our store was. I didn’t realise what he was up to at first, I thought he simply didn’t understand. My Christ, I even took him to the ovens to show him how poor the grain was, how water-sodden it was, and he nodded and said he understood.’

  The bastard! He’d just stood there with that supercilious smile, agreeing that the harvest had been shite, and then he’d put his boot in, saying that the King still needed to feed his army, and it was the duty of all loyal subjects to supply his wants. As if the King
could give a fig for the people of Sticklepath! Edward was too interested in his boyfriends to care about a vill collapsing and the people dying.

  ‘I explained, I reasoned, I pleaded and I begged. Christ! I all but crawled on my knees to him, but the purveyor didn’t want to understand. I can see him right now. As I spoke, the shutters came across his eyes.

  ‘I told him: “Ansel, if you do this we’ll starve.”

  ‘He said, “That is a great shame”

  ‘“Look at the people here, you’re sentencing them to death, man! Can’t you see that?”

  ‘“All I want is the grain, Reeve. And you must supply it.”

  ‘He was stiff and matter-of-fact, glancing casually at the people labouring out in the quagmire that had once been a field. He didn’t give a damn.

  ‘“Ansel, please!” I said. “This is me – Alex – you’re talking to. Look at me! The folk here are already suffering from scurvy and starvation; you can see it in their faces, you can see the way the kids are becoming listless. We had two children die last month. Both of my sons are weak. Do you want to execute the whole vill?”

  ‘“I’ve got nothing to do with it. If you’re hungry, you should improve your husbandry.”

  ‘“Come on, Ansel! There’s nothing to eat. You take our food and we’ll die. And not just the folk here, either.”

  ‘“What do you mean?”

  ‘I said, “It won’t only be the people of the vill who will suffer, it’s going to affect the folks in the assarts and all about here.”

  ‘“You threaten me?”

  ‘“I’m not threatening anyone! I’m telling you the facts, man. If you starve the vill, Meg and Emma will starve with the rest of us.”

  ‘And that was when Ansel’s face altered. His eyes lost their concentration and he looked quite blank for a moment. And then he roared with laughter.

  ‘“So you are trying to threaten me? Oh Alex, I am sorry, but if you think you can save a mouth or two, go ahead and starve them. She was only ever a comfortable bed for me. Why do you think I never stayed at her assart when I came past here? No, you can starve her or kill her any way you wish, and you can drown her whelp at the same time. It will save me the embarrassment of having to explain them to my wife.”