Nicholas was a little older than his master. Short, with a leather jack stretched tightly over his broad shoulders and a face marked heavily with the pox, he looked more a man-at-arms than a bottler, which was the case. He had been a soldier for a period, until his master had taken him on as a servant, and ever since he had served Thomas loyally. He glanced at his master curiously from shrewd brown eyes.
‘Tomorrow we leave for my brother’s house in Dartmoor. Pack clothing and essentials for four weeks,’ Thomas instructed self-importantly.
‘Your brother’s? But I thought you and he hated each other,’ Nick said, his spirits falling. In his mind’s eye he could see the moors again – cold, bleak lands in which a man could die without anyone realising.
‘Ah, but my brother, the skinflint with the heart of frozen lead, has died, Nicholas. That means we may have a solution to our problems – for a nice, fat, juicy inheritance may well be flying our way. Now make haste and pack, and with any luck when we return it’ll be with my brother’s money in our purses.’
Chapter Three
Godfrey swore under his breath and let the point of his rebated sword drop an inch or two. ‘I said hold your hand here, at the belly.’
His student, a sulky youth brought up in Italy, sneered at him: ‘It’s hardly an elegant posture, is it? My teacher in Venice told me to hold my arm out behind because it balances the body. It puts the attacker at a disadvantage, too, because he can’t see so much of the body to hit.’
‘Really? Show me, then. I’m not too old to learn.’
Godfrey returned to the outside guard, his sword hand well out to his right, blade angled upwards, so that he was peering just under the middle of the blade at his opponent, while he held his left hand out flat, low before his belly. The young man, little more than a boy, smirked happily, danced on the balls of his feet for a moment or two to ease his calves, then sprang into his imitation of the outside guard, his arm held out behind him.
It was a pose Godfrey had seen often enough with those who had stayed a while on the continent. There men preferred to look fashionable rather than fight effectively. Godfrey’s attitude was entirely pragmatic and English: if he was forced into a fight, he had one aim, and that was to win! If his left hand was dangling out behind his body, it might well give some benefit in terms of balance, but that advantage was outweighed by the fact that it left his whole left side unprotected. While he concentrated on the lad before him, Godfrey decided how to teach this simple lesson.
There was a flash. Godfrey saw the attack not so much in the movement of the blade itself, but in the sudden narrowing of the lad’s eyes as he moved his sword arm, lunging forwards with his whole body. Godfrey gave an inward sigh as he saw his pupil shift foot, hand and body in one united movement, and brought his own blade down to block it easily. He made no other move, unsure whether the stabbing manoeuvre could be a part of a feint, but his attacker pulled back, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead, and Godfrey had to suppress a groan. He had hoped that there might be a second blow concealed beneath the obvious one.
When the second stamp, lunge, stab came, Godfrey blocked the sword, then stepped quickly to his left, grabbing his opponent’s sword arm as he went. He put his foot on the boy’s forward boot and pulled. The lad was already off-balance, and this dragged him over. As he fell, Godfrey held his blade at his belly.
‘That’s not fair! You shouldn’t hold a man’s arm!’ the student spluttered angrily once he had managed to rise to a sitting position.
Godfrey hauled him up by his shirt and held him close, staring into the suddenly scared face while the point of his blunted sword tickled the boy’s throat. ‘You think an outlaw could give a bollock about what’s fair or not?’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You reckon a drawlatch would think, “Oh, I mustn’t kick the poor master in the coddes because he’s got a sword, and it wouldn’t be fair”?’ He dropped the mincing tone he had adopted and shook his pupil with contempt. ‘If you want to stay alive, assume your enemy will be devious and unfair – and make sure you’re nastier than him. Now pick up your sword and try again.’
They had three more bouts. In the second, Godfrey scornfully knocked the lad’s sword aside and grabbed his shirt, kicking away his legs and shoving him over. Next his student tried a half-decent left attack followed by a right slash that almost surprised Godfrey, but he blocked both, knocked the fellow’s arm and spun him around before drawing his sword along the length of his opponent’s back and kicking him down. Their last combat involved a short flurry of blades, a hit, then a second and a third, before Godfrey had come close enough to punch the boy, not too hard, on the jaw while his blade pressed unrelentingly on his belly.
It was while he was wiping his face with his shirt that he heard the door shut, and turned to see his newest client standing in the doorway, a faint smile on his face as he perused the scene. On the floor before Godfrey, his student was gazing up with fury in his eyes while he felt his jaw, but Godfrey also saw the beginnings of respect. He kicked his opponent’s sword away before reaching down and helping him to his feet. ‘Right! You’ve tried your Venetian ways, and you’ll agree there’s merit in mine. Next week we’ll practise techniques which won’t look elegant, but which’ll save your life.’
‘Not next week, Godfrey.’
The master of arms glanced at his client. He was leaning on the wall, a broad grin on his face.
‘No, next week you will come with me to a little manor out on the moors, where we will visit the house of an old friend of mine. A squire who has, very sadly, died. You will be my guard.’
It was three days later that Simon Puttock and Sir Baldwin Furnshill made their journey to the little village of Throwleigh. They had left the knight’s home in Cadbury early in the morning, and after taking two halts to rest their horses and take refreshment from their wineskins, they had not made particularly good time, but were at least reasonably fresh as they breasted a hill and could at last see Dartmoor ahead through the trees.
For Simon, as they jogged slowly down the muddy, rutted track, it was a return to his new home. As one of the bailiffs to the Warden of the Stannaries he had been living at Lydford for five years now, riding out over the wild lands to settle arguments or arrest criminals. Seeing the bleak landscape ahead was almost welcome. At the sight of the awesome bulk of Cosdon Hill to their right, Simon felt his heart give a leap before their view was obliterated once more and the travellers had to duck beneath another spread of low beech branches.
Baldwin couldn’t feel the same pleasure. To him the landscape of Dartmoor was barren, infertile. It was as if a race of giants had fought a pitched battle here and blasted the whole area until nothing remained, not even a tree. To him it felt threatening and unwholesome.
It wasn’t only the moors, either. Even here, in the lush woodland immediately north there were very few people; wherever Baldwin saw evidence of habitation, it looked long deserted. Every so often he would notice a weed-strewn track leading into the trees, proof of a long-disused assart, where someone had hacked down trees to build his cabin or to feed his fires. These woods had been cleared for coppices and farming; men had burned out the roots of old trees, gradually beating back the frontier of the woodland until enough bare soil existed to graze a cow. This was the way the land had been brought to heel over decades – but now the land had won.
The assarts looked as if they had lain deserted for ages. Since the appalling famines of 1315 and 1316, many of the smaller farms and homesteads even this far west had been evacuated, and where men had once worked, burning and sawing, now the brambles and nettles had taken over. Wherever the trees allowed a sprinkle of sun to strike the ground, the ubiquitous foxglove had colonised and erased almost all evidence of man’s occupation.
It all suited his mood, for Sir Baldwin Furnshill, the Keeper of the King’s Peace in Crediton, was joining his friend to witness the funeral of Squire Roger of Throwleigh, representing the Sheriff, who had been called away
to meet the King’s procurers, while Simon was there to represent the Warden himself.
The knight, a tall man in his middle forties with the build of a swordsman, broad-shouldered with a heavily muscled right arm and still slim-waisted, rode easily, as befitted someone who had travelled extensively. His face was keen and sharp, with a neatly trimmed beard of the same dark colour as his hair, but his features had been marked with pain over the years: lines lay etched deeply into his forehead and at either side of his mouth.
His companion, a close friend, was more than ten years younger, yet did not look it. Simon Puttock’s hair was richly peppered with grey, and his figure was beginning to run to fat.
‘You are putting on weight, Simon.’
‘Bollocks!’
Baldwin gave him a look of haughty disdain.
‘If you want to distract yourself, think again about your fiancee,’ Simon laughed. ‘Don’t try getting at me.’
‘It is a shame that Squire Roger chose this moment to die,’ Baldwin admitted.
‘Why, because it’s only a short while to your wedding, you mean? Ah, I’m sure he’d be sorry to have dragged you from your home when you’re in the middle of the preparations.’
That was why Simon had been with his friend. Simon’s wife was helping Lady Jeanne, Baldwin’s fiancee, to prepare for their wedding, and Simon had been diverting Baldwin, trying to keep his mind from the myriad details of the celebration – and preventing the knight from getting in Jeanne’s and Margaret’s way. For once it was a relief to Simon that his daughter was not with him, for Edith had elected to stay at Lydford with a friend rather than make the gruelling journey to Furnshill. If she had also been there, Simon was sure she would have been under the feet of the bride-to-be at every opportunity.
‘You think I have any say about the arrangements?’ Baldwin protested. ‘God’s bones! I had thought that Jeanne would have had little time to organise me, especially now she’s lost her maidservants.’ It was a never-ending source of pleasure to him that she had, too, he reflected secretly. Jeanne’s ‘maid’ had been a large, coarse, brutal figure, an ungainly, peevish, froward woman who put the fear of God – or the Devil – into all she met – especially Baldwin. He shuddered at the memory. ‘But no! What with inviting the guests and telling me where they must sleep, and Edgar taking over all the other preparations…’
He stopped himself. The delight he was giving his friend was almost painful to observe, and he had no desire to increase Simon’s pleasure. It was curiously unsettling to reflect on the matter, too. Soon his whole life would be altered, he knew. The absence of his servant, Edgar, was a proof of that. Formerly Edgar had never let the knight out of his sight, and yet where was he now? Baldwin and he had been together for many years; Edgar had served as his man-at-arms when they were both warriors, and without him Baldwin felt strangely naked.
But Edgar refused to let anyone else take over the supervision of the wedding. In any case, while the bailiff was at his side, Baldwin was content. It would be a very hardy outlaw who would dare attack a knight and a sturdy fighter like Simon, especially seeing the quality of their weapons. Baldwin touched the hilt of his new riding sword with a feeling of smugness.
It was short, the blade only twenty-one inches long, but it was made of the most beautiful, bright, peacock-blue steel he had ever seen, with grey steel quillons that curved gently from the leather-covered hilt, and a pommel that balanced the whole weapon perfectly. When he first picked it up, it felt almost alive in his hand.
Sir Baldwin had bought it only a month before, and it was so much lighter than his old war sword that he hardly felt it at his hip, but that wasn’t the only reason why he was already so fond of it; he liked the writing – and the motif on the reverse. Baldwin had found a good jeweller who had used a burin to carve the four letters carefully into the long fuller of the blade, filling each with silver wire and hammering it tight: BOAC. They stood for Beati Omnipotensque Angeli Christi – Blessed and Omnipotent are the Angels of Christ. But on the other side of the blade was a simple sign: the cross of the Knights Templar, his old Order.
Baldwin felt his mood lighten as the trackway narrowed, went into a dip. Soon they were out from under the trees and paused at a ford. The two men rested their horses again, letting the beasts dip their heads thankfully into the brackish brown water that ran from the moors.
‘Not far now,’ Simon commented as his horse puffed and snorted, shaking its mane, before stooping for more.
Baldwin patted his rounsey’s neck. ‘You knew the squire, didn’t you?’
‘A little. I had some dealings with him. The usual petty stuff: he had his villeins run away and declare themselves miners. And miners dammed his streams and diverted his water for their leats. Didn’t you know him?’
‘Yes,’ said Baldwin. He had a recollection of a heavy-set man with a red face and hoarse, bellowing laugh. ‘He was invited to the wedding with his wife. Poor devil!’
‘He had a good life,’ Simon said disinterestedly. ‘Fought many battles, won his lord’s thanks and respect – and a pleasant estate.’
‘True.’ The knight knew as well as any that the easiest way for a man-at-arms to make money was to capture an enemy knight or lord and sell him. Squire Roger had been thoroughly successful at this, taking prisoners of such importance that he had been able to sell them, for a share in their profits, to his King. Without the cost of keeping them, but with a significant share of their worth, he had become wealthy. ‘He always struck me as a generous, capable man,’ Baldwin continued. ‘How did you find him?’
Simon considered a moment. ‘A gentleman: always courteous, keen to avoid disputes. It’s not often you meet someone like him. His wife was much the same – bright and intelligent. She and my wife got on well.’
‘I suppose the funeral will be in the village?’ Baldwin asked, his mind moving on to the sombre event they must witness the next day.
‘Yes. The church lies west of the hamlet. It’s a lovely place, the Church of St Mary the Virgin, very peaceful. His body will rest there happily enough.’
Baldwin nodded, and they clattered along together.
‘I believe the priest was the squire’s own man,’ Baldwin observed as he kicked his horse on. ‘Doesn’t he live at the hall?’
‘Yes, I think so. The squire employed him as a tutor. I can’t imagine too many priests who would be prepared to come to a quiet backwater like this.’
‘Godforsaken little vill would be nearer the mark, wouldn’t it?’ Baldwin said lightly. ‘Still, some like the desolation.’
‘Some of us do, yes,’ Simon chuckled. ‘But you don’t have to search for motives here, Baldwin. There’s nothing suspicious about Roger’s death.’
‘No,’ Baldwin agreed, grinning. He and Simon had investigated many murders together, but he had no concerns about the sudden death of the squire. There was no suggestion of violence: he’d simply fallen dead from his horse. It was sad, but there was not much to regret in a swift and painless death.
The only issue that could cause difficulties was the will, but Baldwin felt sure that a man like Squire Throwleigh would have ensured all was in order. No doubt his wife would control the estate until the heir was of age.
A slow smile broke out over his features as he considered that word ‘wife’. It was a curious title. A woman who was prepared to become the possession of another. Not that Baldwin would ever think of his Jeanne as a chattel. She was too precious to him.
‘Are you thinking of her again?’
‘Well? What of it?’
‘Nothing, Baldwin,’ Simon laughed, ‘but try to keep your feelings away from your face, all right? Don’t forget we’re here to witness a burial. If you keep that inane grin on your face, Roger’s widow will be within her rights to have you flogged around the churchyard!’
Baldwin hurriedly brought his mind back to the present. There was one topic which he knew Simon would treat seriously.
‘What is the name
of the heir?’
‘Herbert. He’ll inherit his third.’
‘Until his mother does the decent thing,’ Baldwin observed.
‘That’ll be a long time,’ Simon said shortly.
‘She won’t give her son her share?’
‘Not for some time. The boy’s only five or six – I expect she’ll stay and protect it, and him, until he is old enough to look after himself.’
Baldwin nodded. A man’s will divided his possessions into three, after paying off debts. One third, the dower, would go to his wife; a second third would go to good causes so that his soul would be well received; only the last of the three parts would go to his heir. In cases where the heir was too young to look after himself, his mother would remain at home and act as guardian, but normally she would leave as soon as her son was old enough to fend for himself, retiring to a convent, or taking the vows and living as a recluse in a small property and not interfering in her son’s life, giving him her dower to protect the estate, and living on whatever portion her son chose to send to her.
As the knight mused, their road took them due east. Here they were sheltered under great trees forming an avenue. It was like the road up to Cadbury, and Baldwin found himself comparing this remote manor to his own lush demesne. Looking about him, he felt that if he possessed so barren a site he would feel guilty asking a woman to marry him. He could never have brought Jeanne here. It would be cruel to ask a woman to live so far from a city or civilised people. The thought made his face twist in a sardonic grin, for Jeanne’s old home wasn’t far from here.
It led Baldwin to wonder how the squire’s heir would survive. Lads of that age were resilient, he knew, but losing a father was a traumatic experience at any age. He could still recall the feeling of emptiness when his own father had died, even though he was almost a man by then, being eleven years old. His mother had died five years before, giving birth to his fourth brother who, like the third, had not survived a single year. Now Baldwin could hardly remember what she looked like. All he was sure of was her auburn hair. At least the squire’s lad still has his mother, he thought.
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