by Max Gilbert
When Bane did not come, Straccan flung back the door and went to find him. 'In the yard, Master,' said Cammo. And there, in the yard, was a stranger, his string of laden dejected ponies straggling in through the gate and around the inner courtyard. A pack-driver, talking to Bane; Bane turning to Straccan, holding out a roll of parchment.
Straccan unrolled it. A few lines of writing and a soft curl of hair, so fine it fluffed up instantly and the wind took it, scattering bright hairs in the mud.
She is unhurt. You will find Saint Thomas his finger. Send it to the Jew Eleazar, at Nottingham. When I know he has it, she will be returned to you.
He seized the pack-man's baggy jerkin and heaved him forward. 'Who gave you this?'
'A m-m-man at LL-Lincoln.'
'What manner of man?'
'Oh, a f-f-fine lor-lor-lord, on a f-fine b-b-black ha-ha-horse.'
Outside the convent wall where the great old apple tree overhung the road, Straccan searched the ground not knowing what he hoped to find. It had rained since Gilla's abduction, but he found hoof marks in the soft earth beside the road. Someone had dismounted, tied the horse to a bush and waited. The marks of a man's feet were plain enough beneath the wall. There he had stepped back to catch the child, and there the footprints were deep, deep with the added weight as he caught her.
A clump of ancient holly grew about fifty yards along the road. Behind that he found the hoof marks of two more horses, the dung of one and something strange. A small circle of fieldstones had been made on the ground; in it were some wet feathers, palely stained with rain-washed blood, the blackened and half-burned skull of a bird and the remains of charred twigs and leaves. He crumbled one of the leaves –some herb, by its smell--valerian maybe, he thought. It seemed too much of a coincidence to think that the stone ring was not associated with Cilia's abductors. But what was it? They hadn't just been cooking a meal there. Poking about in the holly, he came upon some rat-gnawed remains which seemed to be the headless body of a small white hen. He had no idea what to make of it.
They'd been seen at Salterhill, ten miles from Holystone. A very beautiful young man, said the giggling girl who remembered him vividly. 'Fair as a prince in hauberk and leather bonnet.'
While she eyed the questioners hopefully, her young brother butted in. 'He had a helmet laced to his saddle bow and a little girl asleep in his arms. There was an older man, wrapped in his cloak and two black men with him, archers-- Ow!' Earning a cuff from his sister and a silver penny from Straccan.
After that they could find no trace.
'I'll waste no more time like this,' said Straccan. 'Fair man or none, this is to do with that Pluvis and his master, Gregory. Gregory sent word that he'd not got his relic. I sent back that his man had paid for it, taken it and gone, and it was no more business of mine. Now my Gilla is stolen away and there's that message to find the relic and send it to Nottingham. But we know that Pluvis is dead, at this place called –what is it? Shawl. He was there, and the relic was with him. We'll go there!'
Chapter 11
The crossroads at the forest's edge near Shawl was a peaceful spot, birds singing in the trees, bees droning in the clover, the view into the gentle valley below bright and fair. In the centre of the crossroads was an ancient weathered lichen-crusted grey stone. There Straccan leaned, holding his bay's reins, and Bane sat forward in the saddle of his scrawny grey. It looked to be some two miles or so to the village and manor of Shawl below. A few threads of smoke stood straight up above the thatched roofs. Distant small dots moved in the field-strips, and to their right where the forest's edge curved down the hill and most nearly approached the village about half a mile from the outlying huts, two children followed a small herd of pigs trotting purposefully to their foraging.
A man had been torn apart here by wolves or perhaps demons. If they hadn't known that, they'd have eaten their bread and cheese there, but decided instead to ride into Shawl to break their fast. The church or the manor, Straccan wondered, where to ask first? The church was nearer; he'd tackle the priest.
But Father Osric lay abed, solidly unconscious, snoring wetly, and by the pot-house reek of his foetid hovel which leaned against the church wall, he'd be less than conversational when he did wake. A few very small children played in the spaces between the huts, but as soon as horses were heard an old man, kipper-coloured, swathed in ragged wadmal and limping cruelly on a bandaged foot, shot out from a doorway and hauled and herded every infant inside. He planted himself stick in hand, in his open door, glaring at them.
'Good morning,' said Straccan. 'Is your lord in his house?'
'Sir's away.' 'Where will I find the reeve?'
'Reeve's at Sir's.' He jerked a thumb along the road to where the manor roof could be seen over its surrounding trees.
Straccan rode on but Bane dismounted and picked up his horse's right forefoot, examining the shoe. 'Where's your smith?' he asked.
'Forge. Down by river.' The thumb indicated the opposite direction. Bane turned and led his grey that way, kicking aside a bunch of thin yapping limping curs that sought to follow. 'The body, Sir? It was horrible. I've never seen anything like it. I don't want to talk about it; it brings it all back!'
'Torn apart, I was told,' said Straccan implacably. 'But was it eaten?'
'Eaten? I suppose so,' said the reeve. 'That's what wolves do, isn't it? A foot was missing and, er, innards.'
'Were there teeth marks? Were there bites, man?'
'For God's sake, Sir, I didn't peer that closely at him! He was torn apart; wild beasts do that, what else could do that?' 'For my part I'd settle for wolves,' said Straccan, 'but there's talk of demons.'
'Demons?' The reeve crossed himself several times rapidly. He looked pale and sick, and sweat sprang out on his forehead and chin. 'Let's have no talk of demons and such, Sir, please! I'll have no hope at all of getting any work out of anyone if they think the forest is full of demons!'
Straccan stared at the wall hanging--shabby, stained, and rat-nibbled along its bottom. It depicted lovers in a woodland glade. The woman had golden hair in disarray under a red veil and reminded him quite painfully of the vivid dreams that had continued to plague his nights since he met the Lady Julitta; dreams that clogged his memory and worried him by day. He rubbed his tired eyes.
'Tell me what happened,' he said.
'No one knows what happened,' whined the reeve. 'He went to bed and next morning he was found up there!'
'Who found him?'
'Forester.'
'What did he do?'
'Came and got me out of bed. I had a look, then I went to tell Sir Guy.'
'Got him out of bed, did you?'
'Well, no. Sir Guy sleeps heavy. No need to upset him. The man was dead.'
'So when did you tell him?'
'After he'd broke his fast.'
'Then the body was lying up there for what, several hours, after you saw it?'
Tor a while, yes.'
'And anyone might have searched its pockets.'
'No one was about.'
'The forester. What happened to him?'
'He went back into the forest. King's man. I can't tell him to go, stay, whatever.'
'And when your lord had seen the body?'
'He sent for Father Osric.'
'What did he do?'
'Nothing. Said it was too late to do anything. Puked in the bushes.'
Straccan sighed. This didn't seem to be getting anywhere. But Pluvis and the relic must lead to Gregory, and Gregory had Gilla. Thin as the thread was, he must follow it. It was all he had. 'What then?'
'Sir Guy went back home, sent men with a litter. They took the body into the stable, put it in an empty stall. Sir Guy, Father Osric and me, and Sir Roger--'
'Who's he?'
'The lord's son. He was to travel to the wedding with his father.' 'What wedding?'
'It was his wedding day, Sir Roger's! They wanted to be off before noon to fetch the bride. They're all away now, vis
iting her manors. So this nasty business was doubly unwelcome, coming then, with all to do. Sir Guy was as angry as ever I've seen him! Sir Roger wasn't best pleased either. They sent me to the inn to see the dead man's servants. One of them was still asleep, the other was just up and out back pissing in the cabbages. I asked him where his master was and he said upstairs. I went up and looked in the room. There was his pack beside his bolster and his cloak over the foot of the bed, and the bed had been slept in, and he wasn't there. And he wouldn't've been, would he, seeing he was dead.' Sir Guy had questioned the two men-at-arms, the innkeeper, his wife, the scullion and the grubby serving woman, and no one had seen or heard a thing. The man had gone upstairs to bed, and then somehow out to his death.
'So in the end, to save trouble and fuss, the lord and Father Osric decided on wolves,' said the reeve. 'And he was buried over by the hazel wood, away from the ditch where we're stowing everyone else. You know, until they can have proper burial, when there's no more Interdict.'
And that should have been that, except that two days later the grave was found open, empty, and the remains were once again at the crossroads.
'What?' said Straccan, startled. He shivered slightly; it was damp and very cold in the hall.
'They dug him up,' said the reeve patiently. 'They dug him up, they carted him back up there, and they dumped him by the stone, right where he'd been in the first place.'
'Who did?'
'Oh, the villagers, the buggers. I don't know who, I don't know which actual ones, but I know and they know and Sir Guy knows, and Father Osric, we all know! They think it was demons killed him, so they won't let him lie in earth anywhere at all.'
'What did you do then?'
'Father Osric tried to make them see reason. He preached to them out in the churchyard and they listened like sheep, and then sexton took and buried him again. And the very next morning, there he was, gone.'
'Back at the crossroads?'
'Yes. And none the sweeter.'
'Then what?'
'Sir Guy ordered a party to take what was left into the forest and bury it somewhere. Father Osric said that wasn't right, but Sir Guy said he'd had enough, and he didn't want to hear any more about it, ever'
The smith was more than willing to give his waiting customer the creeps while he dealt with the grey horse's shoe. With a dreadful relish, he described the corpse, the mutiliations in detail, and speculated righteously on the probable sinful causes of the stranger's ghastly end.
'I elped carry im down to the stable,' he said. 'All the bits. It was orrible. I seen dead men a-plenty, but never such a mess as that.' 'I suppose you have trouble with wolves every year, so near to the forest,' said Bane.
'Wolves? Well, now and then, if winter's ard. Then the lord sends is unters out. Goes imself sometimes, if e feels like it. Five shillin fer a wolf, you know, that's what the king pays! Five ole shillin! But that wasn't wolves. I seen what they do. I seen what they leave of sheep, and once when I was a boy they got an old woman. What they do ain't the same. There's demons in the forest!' He looked hard at Bane to see if he was convinced. Bane looked suitably concerned. He paid the smith and went and sat on a bench outside the alehouse to wait for Straccan.
Chapter 12
'Any one of them could have taken the relic,' Straccan said, trying to ignore the buzzing in his ears and the tiptoeing approaches of a headache. 'The forester, the reeve, Father Osric, Sir Guy—but not his son—Sir Roger apparently didn't even see the corpse. The reeve seems unlikely, too squeamish by half, and the only thing that bothered Sir Guy was that they would be late for the wedding. Father Osric seems too much a drunken sot for any sort of enterprise. Which leaves--'
'The forester,' said Bane with his mouth full of dinner.
'Aye, the forester. So where do we find him?'
They found him at home, at his ease and with his feet up, peacefully sewing rabbit-skins together to make a winter vest. His neat sturdy well-thatched hut was tucked away in a clearing just off one of the main forest paths. The door stood open and some hens scratched and crooned just outside where a scattering of crumbs and scraps had been thrown for them. The man looked up at their approach but did not move as Straccan dismounted giving his reins to Bane. As he did so he felt a spasm of nausea and the headache began to tread more heavily. Not now, God, please, he muttered, and aloud said, 'Good day,' through the open door. 'Sir.' The man laid his needlework down, one hand coming to rest negligently on the hilt of the businesslike knife at his belt. His face was as brown and seamed as bark, with a great dark ugly scar on the right cheek. His rolled-up sleeves showed arms welted with scars. An old soldier.
'I am Sir Richard Straccan,' said the knight, at which the man stood up—he knew his manners—but kept a hand on his hilt, for he knew his way around as well.
'What can I do for you, Sir?'
Straccan's headache was getting hard to ignore, and the sunlight was too bright for comfort. 'I need information,' he said. Til pay for it.'
'Folks usually do, Sir,' said the man easily. 'A time-honoured custom. Won't you come inside?' He hooked a stool forward with one foot, and waited until Straccan sat before himself sitting down. 'There was a man killed here a while ago. You found his body. At the crossroads.'
'Oh, that. Friend of yours?'
'No. Tell me how you came to find him.'
'I was patrolling that way. I do random night patrols, so they never know where I might pop up. When I got to the crossroads, there he was.'
'Did you hear or see anything else? Wolves? Men?'
'No.'
'How did the body lie? All in a heap or scattered?'
Tn a heap.'
'Did you touch it? Move it at all?'
'I kicked over the bit his head was attached to. To see who it was.'
'Did you know him?'
'No.'
'What about the clothes?'
'What about them?'
'He was dressed, not naked?'
'Yes.'
'What had he on?'
'One boot –there was only one foot, we never found the other his leggings, tunic. All torn. Nothing worth the saving.' 'Nothing else at all? Not even a saint's medal round his neck?' Straccan had to force his mind to think, his tongue to utter. He was feeling very ill now; there was no doubt his crusader's legacy, the ague--Saladin's Revenge, they called it—had chosen today to lay him low.
'No.'
'No jerkin? No belt?'
'No.' The man half-turned to swing his stewpot off the fire and set it in the hearth. Turning back, he looked hard at Straccan. 'You look sick, Sir. Shall I call your servant?'
'Did you find anything on him, man? I'm not here to inform on you. I've nothing to do with the king, or his justices, or the law.'
'What might it be you're looking for, Sir?'
'He stole something from me. It might have been round his neck. A little metal case about this big.' He showed a gap of two inches or so between finger and thumb and saw the uneasy shift of the forester's eyes.
'He had nothing round his neck. God smite me else,' said the man.