The Sticklepath Strangler

by Michael Jecks

  ‘“You are already married? You can’t be! You told Meg you’d married her!”

  ‘“Oh yes, I did, didn’t I?” he said. “Never mind. She’ll soon forget. She was never very bright, was she?”

  ‘He left me then, still chuckling. It was clear enough what he was after. He wanted the full quantity at a set rate per bushel, which was the same cost as the previous year before the prices all rose. That meant he would pay us between one sixth or one seventh of the actual value of the grain. The vill would never be able to replace it.

  ‘But he knew he could get more elsewhere. It was as plain as the nose on his face that what he really wanted was money. Purveyors always do. They prefer to line their pockets than do the King’s work.

  ‘In the end we settled on three shillings and ten-pence. It was all I could promise to collect in a short time, and he gave me a few days to collect it. He said he would wait at the inn and rest until I found it. Afterwards I heard that he had spent much of his time with poor Meg. She can never have known how he spoke of her, prepared to see her starve, and her child, for his own profit, the bigamous son of a poxed ferret!

  ‘It took me almost a week to cajole, wheedle and threaten the money out of everyone. There were many who had nothing, but some of the locals had a few pennies stashed away, and generally I knew who they were, but it was hard. Very hard. No one had that much. This one man was taking another’s yearly income – more! – in a bribe. Extortion, that’s what it was. Give me all your money, or I’ll take all your food and leave you to starve. What a choice! But what choice do we have? We are serfs, villeins, peasants – call us what you will. Our lives are not our own. I once heard a smartly dressed prior riding through the vill, and when he looked at us all, he overheard a man talking about the cattle we owned, this was before the murrain, of course, when we lost the herd, and this churl, this man of God! Do you know what he said?’

  Alexander was all but spitting now at the memory of that fool on his great horse, fat and smug in his velvets and furs and silks, peering about him disdainfully.

  ‘He said: “These fellows are slaves. All they own is their bellies.”

  ‘“Their bellies”! Well, all we owned then was our hunger, and fear of dying. I had seen my wife die, and my two boys, during the famine. They were all I ever loved, and I wasn’t alone.’

  ‘This is most interesting, but perhaps you could come to the point?’ Sir Laurence yawned.

  Alexander looked at him, his face carefully composed. Sir Laurence was no better than that prior: a knight like him had no sympathy for the sufferings of the poor. If the whole of Sticklepath were to perish, Sir Laurence might utter a few words of polite commiseration to Lord Hugh de Courtenay for the loss of his serfs, but that would be all. Peasants mattered less to him than his hunting dogs.

  The reeve swallowed his frustration. ‘The point is, I got him his money, and he took it and returned to the tavern for the night. Except he didn’t stay there. I went there myself later that evening, only to be told that he had left. I saw Meg the day after, and she was asking where he had gone. She’d been expecting him to turn up at her place the evening before. Poor maid, she was tearful and distressed. He’d cleared off – that was obvious. I didn’t worry myself about it. At least I’d saved the vill from his greed. But that night his body was found lying in the valley leading up to Belstone.’

  Alexander didn’t look over his shoulder. At this moment he knew he held Drogo’s ballocks in his hand. He could almost hear the forester’s tension, like a bowstring ready to snap, but he was damned if he would accept all the responsibility. He wouldn’t be the fall guy for Drogo.

  ‘I knew it was Ansel. He’d been throttled with a thong, a simple strip of hide, and dumped.’

  ‘And?’ Baldwin asked keenly.

  ‘Sir Baldwin, please don’t interrupt his fascinating speech,’ Sir Laurence pleaded.

  Alexander sighed. ‘Yes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d been eaten, too. Not by animals. I mean, dogs and the like had chewed at him and his eyes had been pecked out, but those wounds couldn’t hide the fact that a man had butchered him.

  ‘It was too much to bear. I knew that the result would be more than a straight fine: this could cost the vill very dearly, perhaps even cause us all to starve to death. I’m not joking, Keeper. You remember how bad that famine was?

  ‘So… I had to choose, and as reeve, I chose life for the vill. I deliberately hid the body. I found a shovel and buried him, and I came home and… God! Won’t those damned hounds ever shut up?’

  Baldwin eyed the silent man at the wall. ‘Did anyone help you?’

  ‘Drogo did. It was he and his foresters who found the body,’ Alexander said firmly.

  ‘You fucking—’ Drogo’s forward leap was halted by Baldwin’s bright blue sword, which was suddenly at the exposed gap between his jack and his hose. He could feel the razor-sharp point at his groin.

  ‘Did this purveyor have a purse on him?’ Simon asked. ‘Could the butchery have been to hide a robbery? I’ve known foresters who’ve turned to robbery themselves.’

  ‘Whoever killed him certainly took the purse.’

  ‘This is most intriguing. I have all I need,’ Sir Laurence said, rising.

  ‘Wait, Sir Laurence.’ Coroner Roger smiled politely. ‘I am the coroner, and this witness is helping me to conduct an inquest.’

  ‘Without a jury?’

  ‘That will be organised tomorrow, or perhaps the day after,’ the coroner said happily, knowing that the knight would not want to wait more than a single day.

  ‘I see,’ Sir Laurence said. He gave a faint smile and nodded to the coroner, acknowledging that he had lost, and resettled himself in his seat with a good grace, waving a hand and murmuring, ‘Please continue.’

  Coroner Roger nodded. ‘So you say Drogo was First Finder?’

  ‘Yes. Him and his men. They fetched me.’

  Drogo felt the colour rising to his cheeks. He hated this: he had expected the reeve to mention him, but then it had appeared that Alexander wasn’t going to. Now he knew his fear was plain. His face always reddened at the drop of a hat; it didn’t matter a damn whether he was entirely innocent or not, it was the mixture of embarrassment and irritation that mingled to bring on his flush. Vin’s eyes were on him, too, but he daren’t look at the lad.

  Baldwin asked, ‘Where exactly was the body?’

  ‘Under some furze near the river.’

  To Baldwin, Drogo looked like a man who was losing his temper quickly. ‘What do you say, Drogo?’

  ‘It’s true that I found him. I sent my man to fetch the reeve and stood with the body until he returned, and when he did, I carried the corpse with the reeve and buried it with him.’

  ‘Who was sent?’

  ‘Adam.’

  ‘You confirm this, Adam?’

  ‘Yes. On my oath.’

  Drogo said, ‘The reeve was worried, of course. We both were. I sent Adam and Peter away and fetched a shovel myself. Then I started digging.’

  ‘Where?’

  Alexander smiled without amusement. ‘You remember I told you that the wall kept falling where Aline was found? It is all too common. Probably because of the tree roots there. Anyway, the wall had just been rebuilt. All we had to do was dig down a short way in the soft soil and put the body in.’

  ‘What? Aline was buried in the same grave? That was why you saw different material where Aline had lain, Simon!’ Baldwin realised.

  ‘Yes. Dig a little deeper; you’ll find him.’

  Baldwin looked at him very closely. ‘And then this girl was buried on top of him by someone who knew that Ansel was already there. It was the perfect hiding place for Aline, wasn’t it? Somewhere the reeve himself would have been careful to make sure was never searched. Is that right? You prevented people from searching that place for Aline’s body?’

  ‘Nobody suggested it,’ Alexander said heavily.

  ‘But the person who concealed her t
here must have known about Ansel,’ cried Simon. ‘It’s too improbable that someone could have buried the girl on top of an existing grave without knowing it. The burial right there must have been conducted by someone who had been involved in hiding Ansel. And that means you, Reeve, or you, Forester.’

  Reeve Alexander stared at Drogo for a moment. ‘I swear I did not kill Aline.’

  Drogo’s face was suffused an angry-looking crimson. ‘Are you saying I did? Do you accuse me in front of all these people, Reeve?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t kill her myself, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Well, neither did I! And there were no other people there so far as I recall.’

  ‘Hold, Forester!’ Simon called loudly. For a moment he had thought that the reeve was going to launch himself at Drogo. Clearly Adam thought the same. He had set a hand on his knife hilt as though readying himself to pull it free. Vincent had drawn away. Simon could see that he hadn’t learned the first rule of fighting: never retreat, always go in aggressively; when fists might begin to fly, don’t step back, but go in close.

  Drogo stood clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘I didn’t harm that girl.’

  ‘We already know that Ivo saw the reeve there. Perhaps someone else did too,’ Simon said. ‘And seeing that, later realised that they had a perfect grave. First, who could have hated Ansel enough to kill him?’

  ‘How would you feel about a bent official like him?’ Drogo sneered. ‘He was the dregs, the bastard. I’ve vomited more powerful stuff than him, the pus-filled bag of wind.’

  Baldwin and Simon exchanged a look, and seeing it, Drogo suddenly realised his peril. ‘Of course I didn’t like him, but that’s not the same as murdering him! I knew he was going. Why should I kill him?’

  Simon cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps because you wanted the money? You were alone with the reeve to bury the man, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you had men with you when you found him?’

  ‘Peter and Adam, yes.’

  Simon’s eyes narrowed. ‘What of the other man in your team? Vincent – where were you?’

  Vincent blinked in genuine surprise. ‘Me? I was off at my own bailiwick, I suppose. It’s a long time ago.’

  ‘So you weren’t there with Drogo. The other members of the team were, but not you.’

  ‘So what?’ Adam rasped. He had stepped forward, and now he glowered from one to another. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘This: that Vincent didn’t know where the body was buried; because he wasn’t there. Peter and you were sent away, but you could have been interested enough to return and watch what the reeve and Drogo were doing, couldn’t you? And then later, perhaps, you killed a girl and buried her in the same place.’

  Adam’s mouth moved, but then he shook his head slowly. ‘It could as easily have been the forester here or the reeve who killed the girl and buried her there. Anyway, I didn’t go and watch them. I went to the inn with Peter, and a short while later Vin turned up as well.’

  ‘Did you ask where he’d been?’ Baldwin pressed.

  ‘I had other things on my mind,’ Adam sneered. ‘Christ! Me and Peter had just found a body.’

  ‘Did you tell Vin? Did he leave you? Could he have gone to watch?’ Simon asked with some excitement.

  ‘No, Bailiff. Peter left not long after, though.’

  ‘Perhaps Peter went up there to watch,’ Simon said. ‘He could have sneaked up there and seen the two men digging, and later he might have realised it would be a perfect hiding place for Aline.’

  ‘But what of his own daughter? She was the first girl to be found,’ Reeve Alexander said.

  ‘It is not unknown for a child to be murdered by her father,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Why should he kill Ansel?’

  ‘For the same reason anyone else in the vill could have,’ Simon pointed out. ‘None of you would have been keen to have had a man like him demanding bribes. And Peter was hungry, just like the rest of you. Hatred and hunger are powerful motives.’

  ‘Christ Jesus! Will those hounds never be silent?’ Coroner Roger muttered under his breath.

  Baldwin knew how he felt. The atmosphere was thick, as though there was a thunderstorm on the way, and the hall was charged with emotion and fear. Drogo looked anxious, but then so did all of the vill’s men. Sticklepath was like a place under siege, rather like Acre just before the collapse. Yet there were no armies at the gates, only the ghosts of victims.

  He decided to change tack. Picking up the fragment of arrow, he stood turning it in his hands. There was little which could be learned from so old a weapon. It had been used some six years ago, if the story told by Meg and Serlo was to be believed. Looking up, he saw Drogo’s eyes were on it. ‘Who uses peacock’s feathers in his arrows?’

  ‘I do,’ Drogo admitted.

  ‘Do you recognise this?’

  ‘It could be one of mine. I can’t be certain.’

  ‘This was one of the arrows used to murder Athelhard, Meg’s brother.’

  Drogo bit at his lip.

  ‘You and your foresters helped to kill him, didn’t you?’

  There was silence. Drogo stared down at the arrow with a face that whitened visibly. ‘This is the devil’s own work,’ he muttered, but there was a thick, husky note in his voice.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘Come on, man!’ Coroner Roger rasped. ‘We don’t have all day to stand here like women washing clothes!’

  ‘It was the vampire,’ Reeve Alexander said quietly. ‘Gervase told us that vampires killed people, ate them and drank their blood. The killings all started when Athelhard returned here.’

  ‘Only because of a coincidence!’ Baldwin exploded. ‘You slaughtered him for superstition! The poor man murdered, his sister forced to watch, and all for your intolerable beliefs!’

  ‘It wasn’t just that,’ Drogo said. ‘His sister told the priest that her brother had given her a large portion of meat, of pork, Keeper, only the day before. What would you have thought? We only did what any God-fearing, sane men would do; we struck at him to destroy him.’

  ‘Ansel died before Athelhard arrived, didn’t he?’

  ‘No. Athelhard was just returned when Ansel died,’ the reeve said. ‘And a short time after Denise was found we heard of this meal given to Meg. It was obvious. Athelhard told her he had bought it from a traveller. Would you have believed him?’

  ‘Yes. Until he was appealed in court, and had had a chance to prove his innocence,’ Baldwin said scornfully.

  ‘And had a chance to kill others. You know that these sanguisugae can fly through the air like birds?’ Drogo said. ‘And no lock will hold them out.’

  ‘Nonsense! There are no such things as vampires,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘The Parson told us. If you want a debate with him on the merits of his case, fine. For us, we wanted to prevent any more deaths. Perhaps you’d feel different if your own child stood the risk of dying for your beliefs, Keeper.’

  ‘You tied his sister to a tree to force him to come out.’

  ‘The parson told us he had demons within him. He was possessed. What else could we do? We had to protect ourselves, and that’s what we did. There was no one to advise us. At least we killed him swiftly, which is more than he did with Denise.’

  ‘It was murder!’ Simon declared hotly.

  ‘And what would you have done, Bailiff? Let him carry on? We thought it was just a desperate, starving villager who was responsible at first, when we found Ansel’s corpse, but then, when Peter’s girl turned up, and the priest told us about vampires, we realised it was something worse.’

  ‘But why think it might be Athelhard?’ Baldwin interrupted.

  ‘It seemed so obvious!’ Drogo burst out. ‘We had the shock of Denise’s murder, then we heard that Athelhard had been cooking meat. And Athelhard was a stranger. If anyone had brought evil into the vill, surely it was him!’

  ‘But others
have died since his death, so it wasn’t him,’ Simon pointed out.

  Drogo was silent, but the reeve put his head in his hands again. ‘You are right. I know it, and I regret it. But what else could we have done?’

  ‘And who was the real guilty man?’ Simon asked, and then wondered for the first time whether it might not be a woman. Meg had plenty to avenge, after all.

  Sir Laurence smiled. ‘This is all beyond me. All I know is, I have two men here who appear to be suspects.’

  Sir Roger returned his smile. ‘Yes, you do. But I am the coroner, and when I hold my inquest, I shall decide what to fine them for their misdemeanours as well as amercing them to be present at the next court.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you should have them thrown into gaol,’ Sir Laurence said, his amusement becoming more brittle. He weighed his war hammer in his hand again.

  ‘You think so? I disagree,’ the coroner said cheerfully. ‘And right now, this meeting is concluded. Reeve, don’t try to leave the vill. Forester, get out of here and make sure that you don’t tempt me to regret my actions!’

  * * *

  In his room, Swetricus sat on his stool facing the door, a pole slotted into the handle of a sharpened billhook. It was his only weapon, but it was enough. Or so he prayed.

  Thomas and Nicole had walked here to fetch their daughter, both so taken up with their own relief that Swetricus had not seen fit to remind them that their problems weren’t gone. While Reeve Alexander and Forester Drogo wished to blame someone, Thomas remained the ideal target. He may have survived this accusation, but there would be more.

  His dog was agitated now, walking from one side of the room to the other, sniffing first at one door, then the other, constantly moving, as though to remain still was to die, but Swetricus was sure that it wasn’t only the row from Samson’s hounds.

  ‘What is it, Daddy?’

  ‘Shut up!’ he said gruffly. The girls had no idea about all this. They sat now, huddled on the family’s bed near the fire, which still roared with the faggots Swetricus had thrown on. At this time of night he would usually be there with them, snoring gently, all of them huddled together against the cold, the fire doused for safety, but not tonight. Not with Samson’s hounds howling like the souls in torment the parson had told the vill about when Athelhard was thought to be the vampire.