The Merchant of Death

by Paul Doherty

  Led by Raston they all trooped out of the tavern, across the trackway and into the Great Meadow. The path through the snow was fairly easy because of those who had beaten a track down to the mere to recover Vavasour’s corpse. Nevertheless, Kathryn carefully studied the snow on either side of this manmade path.

  ‘You are looking for other footsteps?’ Colum whispered, coming up beside her. He stopped and narrowed his eyes, shielding them with his hand against the glare of the sun. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he murmured. ‘Some bird’s marks.’ He pointed to his right. ‘And some fox prints but nothing else.’

  They climbed the small hill, paused on the brow and stared down at the mere. In the daylight Kathryn could see it must be one of those small but quite treacherous pools or ponds which, in winter, made this countryside so dangerous to cross. It lay at the foot of the hill, three sides of it nothing but clear meadow. On the far side a high bank or vallum rose steeply to another hillock.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ Kathryn murmured as they walked down towards the mere. ‘Raston said he saw someone else on that mere with a lantern but I can’t see how that was possible.’

  ‘The murderer could have walked back in Vavasour’s footsteps.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Raston saw the light and Vavasour walking on the mere but then both the clerk and the light disappeared, which leaves two conclusions. First, the person Vavasour was meeting also drowned when the ice broke. Or, secondly, he or she left the mere by another route. In which case there should be some sign of this.’

  They reached the edge of the mere. Kathryn gazed across at the black, icy water and recalled her father’s warning about such places. She looked over her shoulder at Smithler.

  ‘How deep would you say this was?’

  The landlord blew his lips out. ‘Ten, twelve feet, Mistress.’

  Kathryn gazed on either side. ‘And the width?’

  ‘About sixty yards.’

  ‘Raston,’ she asked. ‘Are you certain about what you saw last night?’

  ‘Before God and his angels, Mistress, I saw the lantern.’ Raston pointed across the mere’s shimmering black water. ‘There was a mist which made the light look eerie but it was definitely a lantern.’

  ‘What do you mean by eerie?’ Colum asked.

  ‘Well, it was like seeing a light out at sea. Or the sun through thick cloud. I glimpsed a glow of fire and a ring of gold around it. It must have been quite a heavy lantern.’

  ‘And it was on the mere?’ Kathryn insisted. ‘Not to the side or at the top of the vallum?’

  The old poacher shook his head. ‘No, Mistress, and I hadn’t drunk a drop of ale. Vavasour must have been within a few yards of the lantern when the ice broke and in he went.’ Raston scratched his unshaven cheek. ‘He shrieked like a rabbit in a noose.’

  Colum began to walk round the edge of the mere, then turned to stare back at the group. All the guests had accompanied them, even the elegant Lady de Murville, but apart from Kathryn, the only person he could trust was Raston.

  Colum pointed at him. ‘You walk round that side of the mere whilst I walk around here.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Raston called.

  ‘Footprints, any sign of someone else crossing the mere from a different point. Mistress Kathryn is standing where Vavasour probably did?’

  The old servant nodded.

  ‘And you, Master Smithler, when you fished poor Vavasour out?’

  ‘We stood here,’ the landlord replied. ‘We used rods and ropes with hooks on the end. It was easy enough. Vavasour was floating just beneath the surface.’

  ‘Did you find anything else, the lantern or some trace of who was holding it?’

  ‘No.’ Smithler shook his head. ‘The lantern would have sunk and be lost in the slime and mud at the bottom.’

  Colum nodded and snapped his fingers for Raston to continue walking. Kathryn watched both of them go. The Great Meadow fell silent except for the raucous cawing of the crows from a small copse a little distance away. At last both Colum and Raston reached the vallum that which bordered the Great Meadow.

  ‘Have you seen anything?’ Colum called across.

  Raston shook his head. ‘Nothing at all, sir! Pure as driven snow. Some fox prints, a hare, perhaps a badger.’

  ‘Anything?’ Colum repeated.

  Again the old servant shook his head and trooped carefully back to join Kathryn and the rest of the guests. Colum climbed onto the bank of the snow-covered vallum, going as closely as possible to the edge of the mere. He then walked slowly back, shaking his head.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No sign of anyone along the edge of the mere or on the vallum.’ Colum pulled a face. ‘I have never seen the like of this,’ he said. ‘Oh, I have heard the stories about will-o’-the-wisps or scouts deliberately misleading the enemy across marshy land during a mist but this is a mystery. Someone walked onto that mere, leaving no trace of how they got there or how they left, and lured Vavasour to his death.’

  ‘And, before you ask again,’ Raston broke in, ‘I saw that lantern. I saw Vavasour drown. I did not see anyone else go on to the mere.’

  Kathryn glanced at the landlord and his guests.

  ‘When Vavasour left, where were you all?’

  ‘I was in the taproom,’ Sir Gervase said. ‘And so was the landlord and his wife.’

  ‘And you, Father Ealdred?’

  ‘He was with us,’ Alan de Murville said. ‘He can vouch for us and we can vouch for him. We heard Vavasour leave and wondered why he was going out on such a cold night.’

  ‘And Standon?’

  ‘He was in the stables,’ Raston replied. ‘Playing dice with his soldiers. They were supposed to be tending the horses.’

  ‘You met Vavasour going out?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the old servant asserted. ‘I had been along the trackway looking for fresh meat.’

  ‘You didn’t come from the meadow?’ Kathryn asked.

  The old man laughed harshly. ‘In winter you don’t catch rabbits in a snow-filled meadow, Mistress. I went into a copse and set my snares amongst the bushes.’

  ‘Must we stay here any longer?’ Lady Margaret de Murville spoke up quickly. ‘Mistress Swinbrooke, my feet are like blocks of ice.’ She gazed around the snow-filled meadow. ‘I never believed in ghosts. Or the vengeance of God taking such a practical form.’ The noblewoman shivered and pulled at her ermine-lined cloak. ‘But now I do.’ She turned and went back up the hill.

  The rest made to follow. Colum looped his arm through Kathryn’s.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think anything, Colum. Old Raston is definitely telling the truth. Why would Vavasour cross such an icy expanse in the dark unless he was meeting someone involved in Sir Reginald’s death?’

  ‘Or Vavasour’s own accomplice?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Whatever, Vavasour was definitely lured to his death.’ She smoothed the hair from her face and rubbed some warmth into her cheeks. ‘But who murdered him is a mystery: no one left that tavern and no one came back.’

  ‘What about Raston?’ Colum asked.

  ‘No.’ Kathryn shook her head. ‘He’s too open, too sincere. He need not have told us what he saw. We face two problems, Colum, or should I say three? Why did Vavasour leave? Whom did he hope to meet? And how did that person lure him onto the mere?’

  ‘Someone who knew the area well?’

  Raston, trudging in front of them, looked back over his shoulder.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

  The rest of the guests stopped as they reached the brow of the hill.

  ‘How many of you knew about the mere?’ Kathryn asked.

  A chorus of assent greeted her words.

  ‘I suppose we all did,’ Alan de Murville added. ‘In summertime it’s a pleasant place to walk, though apparently Vavasour forgot about the mere.’

  Kathryn smiled her th
anks and they all trudged on.

  ‘Lady Murville may be right,’ Kathryn commented. ‘Perhaps it was some hideous ghost!’

  Chapter 9

  Kathryn, Colum and the guests removed their cloaks and dried themselves off in front of the roaring taproom fire. Once again Blanche Smithler, her irate husband beside her, served light refreshments, cups of warm posset and a platter of doucettes.

  ‘You may dismiss the servants,’ Kathryn declared. ‘What I have to say is not for their ears.’

  ‘All this is costing me money,’ Smithler moaned.

  ‘Shut up!’ Colum snapped. ‘The thaw will continue and the King intends to be at Westminster for crown-wearing during the Christmas festivities. A report of all this will be despatched to him and, believe me, Master Smithler, if this matter is not satisfactorily resolved, the King will send others.’ He walked towards the landlord who was wiping his hands nervously on his apron. ‘Have you met His Majesty’s henchman? The puissant, though rather choleric Richard, Duke of Gloucester?’

  ‘The King’s brother?’ Smithler asked.

  ‘Yes, the King’s brother. He will come here with his soldiers. And, I assure you, Gloucester is none too subtle in defending his brother’s prerogative. So, all of you, listen and, on your loyalty, speak the truth.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ Sir Gervase piped up, half rising from his chair as Smithler beat a hasty retreat.

  ‘It’s about lies,’ Kathryn retorted. ‘You, Sir Gervase, Lord and Lady de Murville, Father Ealdred. You all told us lies. You claimed to have come to the Wicker Man because you were travelling hither and thither.’

  The guests stared guiltily back. Lady de Murville’s face became ashen.

  ‘You came here,’ Kathryn continued, ‘because Erpingham summoned you here, didn’t he?’ She drew from her wallet the pieces of paper she had found in Erpingham’s house in St. Alphage’s Lane. ‘Here is a drawing of a wickerman; in the branches are certain initials, all of yours, alongside a date, the beginning of this week. On these other scraps of parchment are mysterious calculations against each of your names.’ Kathryn arranged her cloak over the back of her chair. ‘Now, either you answer my questions or Master Murtagh will issue you each with a subpoena to answer before Star Chamber at Westminster.’

  ‘It’s not . . .’ Father Ealdred began, but he lapsed into silence as Sir Gervase sprang to his feet.

  ‘Let us tell the truth,’ the old knight declared. ‘We have done wrong, Mistress Swinbrooke.’ Sir Gervase went to warm his hands before the fire. ‘Sir Reginald was an evil man and he was a blackmailer. The harvest had not been good, and the civil war between York and Lancaster wreaked terrible damage. Now the King is back in his own and men like Erpingham tour the shires collecting royal dues: arrears of taxes or the reassessment of property.’ He paused as Standon came downstairs and pulled up a stool to sit beside Father Ealdred. ‘Ask Standon here. Erpingham was the most ruthless of royal agents. He played his little games and I was one of his victims. He arrived on my estates and asked to see my bailiff. A tax assessment was to be made but Erpingham seemed as benevolent as some good-hearted friar.’

  Sir Gervase paused and leaned one hand against the hearth piece. He looked older now and, despite the fire, his face had turned a cold grey. ‘Let us assume you were worth forty pounds a year,’ he went on. ‘Erpingham would say “No, let’s call it thirty.”’

  ‘And the assessment would be made at thirty pounds?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Of course. Erpingham would leave and everyone would be delighted.’

  Sir Gervase pursed his thin lips. ‘But then the bastard would return. He was clever with figures. He would claim that, on his first visit, we had not given honest answers but, for a certain amount of silver, he would overlook this and accept the first assessment.’

  ‘Surely,’ Colum interrupted, ‘you could have appealed to the Sheriff or to the King’s Council in London?’

  Gervase laughed sourly. ‘And say what? That the tax collector had given us an assessment which was too low and he was now blackmailing us?’ He shook his head. ‘What proof would we have of that? Erpingham always made sure there were no witnesses about and, as you know, he would claim he only wrote down what he was told.’

  Father Ealdred spoke up. ‘Can’t you see the sheer simplicity of Erpingham’s evil? If we protested, that evil man would accuse us of misleading him on the first occasion and, when he came back to make a second, more thorough investigation, we objected.’

  ‘He was like a spider,’ de Murville said. ‘Once you were caught in his web there was no way out. You became party to his game and he was its master.’ Lord Alan spread his hands. ‘We were caught between a rock and a hard place. If we protested, the Exchequer barons in London would make a thorough reassessment. If we kept quiet, our taxes were low but we had to bribe Erpingham.’

  Kathryn glanced across at Colum. He blew his cheeks out, then brushed some crumbs from his lap.

  ‘It’s true,’ the Irishman declared. ‘Each tax collector is expected to make a little profit, usually a percentage of what he obtains. The Crown turns a blind eye to this, overlooking a small evil, as the lawyers say, to achieve a greater good. According to what Sir Gervase and others say, Erpingham had the best of both worlds. He would blackmail those he collected from, and make up any shortfall by being even more grasping.’

  ‘It was worse than that,’ Father Ealdred interrupted. ‘Erpingham was a born lecher: I think he truly hated women. Sometimes the blackmail would take the form of money or’ – his voice faltered – ‘services rendered.’ He played with a tassel of his gown. ‘What could we do?’ he whispered. ‘Master Murtagh, you are a royal official. How could some poor widow woman act? Admit she’d lain all night with Sir Reginald? Or Sir Gervase, could he confess to being party to theft but was now objecting because he was being blackmailed?’ The priest laughed abruptly. ‘And can you just imagine Sir Reginald before the King’s Council in Star Chamber with that whining little varlet Vavasour beside him? He would prove how hard he worked for the Crown: how much silver he’d collected for the Exchequer and now, because of his just labours, he was being cruelly maligned.’

  ‘He beguiled us,’ Alan de Murville said. ‘We fell into the trap Father Ealdred has described.’ He glanced away, embarrassed, and grasped his wife’s hand. She raised the other to conceal her face.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘He began to make suggestions,’ Lord Alan declared defiantly. ‘About Lady Margaret. About a night of passion.’ The young lord stopped to control his breathing. ‘I could have killed him!’ he rasped hoarsely. ‘Standing in my hall with that piece of dog shit beside him, looking so humble yet enjoying every second of our humiliation.’

  ‘So, why did you come here?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Oh, Sir Reginald liked his games,’ Sir Gervase said, sitting down. ‘He would call it his “accounting period”. Mistress Swinbrooke, we came here to pay our dues and we had little choice but to dance to Erpingham’s tune.’ He glanced sideways at the de Murvilles. ‘Perhaps he had other plans as well. Anyway, we’d all gathered here. No one dared mention anything: a day and a night, we’d hand our silver over and go our separate ways. Erpingham collected his bribes, well away from prying eyes and not during his official tour of duty.’ The old knight sneered. ‘A clever, legal defence if anything ever did go wrong. Only this time it did, the snow came. We became prisoners and Erpingham was murdered.’

  Colum looked at the royal serjeant. ‘Were you party to any of this?’

  The soldier scratched his frightened face. ‘I, I . . .’ he stammered. ‘I have told you my thoughts on Sir Reginald. True, I found it strange that people from whom he collected taxes came to this tavern but my task was to protect Sir Reginald and, more importantly, the taxes he carried. I could see nothing wrong . . .’

  ‘Don’t lie!’ Father Ealdred snarled.

  Standon’s hand fell to his knife hilt.

  �
��What’s this?’ Colum came between them. Standon glared hot-eyed over the Irishman’s shoulder at Father Ealdred.

  ‘Come on, man,’ Colum urged. ‘What is the priest alleging?’

  ‘That Erpingham,’ Standon grated, ‘used to collect taxes from my mother. It was Vavasour’s little joke, there was no truth to it. But’ – he shot a hand out – ‘our priest knows all about poisons. I saw him examining Erpingham’s corpse and whisper, “Too much, too much was used.”’

  ‘Is that true, Father?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Ealdred sighed noisily. ‘For my sins, I know a little about physic and the use of herbs: Erpingham’s corpse turned so blotchy I knew he must have drunk a great deal of the poison.’

  Kathryn nodded, then whispered in Colum’s ear before turning to the landlord.

  ‘I should be grateful, sir, if you could arrange for Erpingham’s chamber to be opened. Would you take Master Murtagh there? You’ll need a hammer, chisel and other tools.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ the landlord asked.

  ‘We have found the reason,’ Kathryn replied, ‘for Erpingham being here. We understand the real hatred between these good people and their wicked tax collector, but the mystery of his murder still remains. To put it bluntly, sir, I want that room properly searched. Master Murtagh will do it.’ She handed Colum the key taken from Vavasour’s purse. ‘And have the dead clerk’s chamber searched as well.’ She stared around. ‘Oh, by the way, where is his corpse?’

  ‘Whilst we were gone,’ Smithler replied, ‘the servants took it to an outhouse. This is a taproom, Mistress Swinbrooke – the corpse stank!’

  Colum, with Smithler trailing behind him, went up the stairs to the first gallery.

  ‘Master Standon,’ Kathryn asked. ‘Perhaps you will be so good as to assist Master Murtagh.’

  The serjeant scurried away, clearly relieved to be free of the tension and anxiety of his companions. Kathryn waited until he was out of the room.

  ‘Do you realise,’ she began softly, ‘that what you have told me could mean a bill of indictment being laid against each and all of you for the murder of Sir Reginald and his clerk Vavasour, not to mention theft of the royal taxes?’ She gestured with her hand at Sir Gervase to keep silent. ‘You had both the motive and the means. And you certainly stood to profit. Can you imagine what the royal Justices might find if they began to search and dug really deep?’ She pointed at the pale-faced Ealdred. ‘You mentioned a widow woman in your village, Father, whom Sir Reginald abused. What is your relationship with that woman?’