by Dan Davis
It was dark when the sheriff and the bishop sat me down at Prior Theobald’s sturdy table. It was one of the few private places in the priory. As I walked in, I heard the bishop arguing that I be taken to the nearest castle or anywhere that had a dungeon or with a sturdy door.
They were sitting to discover my guilt.
The bishop stared across the table with ill-concealed hostility. Bishop Hugh de Nonant was a big man, almost as tall as me and heavily muscled. I had always thought he looked like an ox herder rather than a man of God. But men so filled with ambition have little room in their souls for holiness. And the bishop was about as holy as a turnip.
The sheriff sat to my right, scratching words onto parchment every now and then while we spoke. The prior sat at my left side and said little but I welcomed his familiar presence. Before me was a jug of wine and while we sat I drank my way down the road toward oblivion.
“Where were you when this happened, Richard?” Roger de Lacy was not much older than I was. The sheriff had inherited vast estates across central England. He was Sheriff of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. I had come into my brother’s blood-soaked manor.
“The sheriff asked you a question, boy,” the bishop said, his voice a deep rumble. “Why do you claim you were not at home?”
I sighed and drank.
“Perhaps we should let the man sleep,” the sheriff suggested. He was short but with big bones and a lumpy head. Scabbed pimples and a wispy beard covered his face. His eyes were soft and brown and seemed kind.
“He will speak first,” the bishop said, overruling the sheriff. “Then he may rest.”
“I was in the wood,” I said, which was true. “Shooting Henry’s crossbow.”
“We are informed you often meet with a girl from the village,” the sheriff said, glancing at the prior.
“Martha,” the prior said quietly.
I nodded. How often our secrets turn out to be common knowledge.
I drank down my cup of wine. It roiled in my empty belly. My hands were shaking and the cup rattled on the table as I set it down.
“You have told us it was Earl William de Ferrers who did this… this evil thing. But did you see him do it, Richard? Did you see the murders happen? If so, how did you survive?”
“If your story is true,” the bishop said. “It means you hid like a coward. And if you are lying, well…” He sneered at me. He was trying to scare me but I had looked through the gates of Hell that morning. Still, I had no desire to be executed.
“I saw the merest glimpse of a group of men galloping away,” I said to the sheriff. “I did not see who they were.”
“Ha.” The bishop slapped the table with his meaty hand. “What did I tell you?”
The sheriff ignored him. “Then why say it was Earl William?”
He poured me more wine and I drank before answering. Chucking that dark, sour stuff into my stomach made me sick but I needed it.
“Isabella told me,” I said. “Before she died.”
“A likely story,” the bishop said. “Very convenient, indeed.”
“Convenient?” My voice rose and the bishop’s jowls grew red. I bit back my anger. “Walt and Marge saw the murderers, surely? They came to tell you, prior. What did they see?”
Prior Theobald opened his mouth to answer but the bishop jabbed his finger at him.
“Say not a word,” the bishop said. “This man may be a murderer. Until we decide he is not then he does not get to make demands of us.”
I could not believe they could be so dense. “Why do you not ask Earl William where he and his monsters were last night instead of gathering about me? I swore to bring him to justice. If you lords will not provide it then, by God, I shall take it for myself.”
“A shame you did not take justice this morning,” the bishop said, sneering.
I lurched to my feet, bumping into the table, my chair scraping upon the floor and intending to shout. But my voice cracked as I spoke. “I could not have known what they had done,” I said.
The bishop held my gaze for but a moment before he looked away.
The sheriff stood too and placed a hand on my arm. “William has gone,” the sheriff said. “It is certain that he rode out from Duffield Castle last night. He rode with his six knights, armoured as if for war, so the servants say. He has not returned.”
I felt the anger leech out of me and I sat again. The sheriff poured more wine into my cup.
“He could have gone anywhere,” the bishop said, sulking. “It proves nothing.”
“You were a friend of Earl Robert,” I said to the bishop. “You visited many times. You know what William is like.”
The bishop pursed his lips for a moment. “I do not see what my friendship with the late Earl has to do with this. And I am surprised to hear you of all men speak ill of—”
“I admired Earl Robert,” I said, hearing the wine in my voice. “I was ever grateful that he had taken me away from Ashbury.”
In truth, he scared me from the first day until the day he died. Robert was huge and stern and he beat me with his own hand. Which I suppose was an honour, of sorts.
“I know William,” I said to the sheriff. “I knew him from when I was a child up until he went away to the Holy Land. And the first thing I learned at Duffield Castle was to stay away from William de Ferrers. My first night, in the hall, he coaxed over a cat using some meat. He stroked it. Then he speared it through the chest with a long dagger and tossed it still living into the fire. He did it just to frighten me, I think.” I drank down my cup. My hands would not stop shaking.
“William killed a cat?” the bishop said and scoffed. “Good. Cats are evil. Anyway, boys have been the same since time out of mind.”
“He must have been fifteen or sixteen and almost a man. Old enough to know better.”
“And William went to the Holy Land years ago,” the sheriff said. “And came back because his father was dying?” Despite owning so much land nearby, the sheriff did not yet know our shire.
“No,” the bishop said, shaking his massive head.
“He was in fine health,” I said. “He stuffed himself senseless with a whole mushroom pie in the evening and the next day he was dead.”
“Never a heartier man in all Christendom.” The bishop nodded. “Strong as bull. But you can never trust a mushroom.”
“That was when you returned to Ashbury,” the sheriff said, scratching away on his parchment. “Your brother was lord by then.”
“Me and the other lads were told to leave in the same breath William used to tell us Earl Robert was dead.”
“What other lads got thrown out?” the bishop asked.
“Curzon, Baskerville, Levett,” I said, tallying them on my fingers. “Vipont, Barduff. And the rest.”
The bishop grunted. “Good families.”
“What did you all do to warrant expulsion from William’s service?” the sheriff asked.
“William brought his own knights back from the Holy Land. Proper fighters, he said, not whelps like us. He said he could not afford to keep us as well as them.”
The bishop shrugged. “You boys were his father’s men. Makes sense that a lord would want loyal followers.”
“When I left he said that he would make everything up to me,” I said, taking another drink.
They all exchanged a look that I was too tired to interpret.
“What did you think he meant by it?” the sheriff said.
“I was the strongest knight,” I said. “I believed he intended to take me back into his service once the others were too far away to take it as a slight. I was wrong.”
The bishop shifted his huge bulk forward to peer at me. “Perhaps it was you he was hoping to kill last night?”
I had not considered that. “If that were the case, what reason would he have for slaying every living soul in the house?”
“There is no reason here,” the prior said, his throat dry and raspy with emotion. “Only madness. Madness and evil
. Those men are devils, perhaps, or even Satan himself.”
After a pause, the sheriff continued with his questions. “You returned to Ashbury and yet you sleep in the woods?”
I shifted in my seat and took a drink. “It is a fine summer,” I said. “I made a camp down by the stream. I practice with sword and crossbow by day.”
“And by night you practice with young Martha,” the bishop said, smirking. The prior scowled at him which made the bishop laugh. “Tell me, son. Does her father know you are ruining his daughter?”
The bishop liked to take local girls into his service. Especially the poor ones with no family to protest when he started feeling them up. And worse.
“Martha is a decent girl,” I said. “All she wants is to learn to shoot the crossbow.” We kissed often and fumbled at each other through our clothing. But Martha was too bright to give up her virginity to me.
“Shooting your crossbow right up her, morning, noon and night, I wager.” The bishop chuckled to himself.
The sheriff coughed. “A crossbow is hardly a knight’s weapon.”
“The crossbow intrigues me, is all. After his time in the Holy Land, Henry brought the weapon back from Aragon.”
“Along with his wife,” the bishop added and smirked as if he’d been clever.
“Forgive me,” the sheriff said. “But I hear that you often quarrel with your brother?”
I understood that they believed William and I had committed the crime together. Or at least that I was involved in the massacre in some way.
Everyone had heard that I quarrel often with Henry.
I remembered my father’s voice. You take after your damned mother. Before I had gone to Duffield Castle my father would often shout and batter me about the head. You clumsy oaf. You useless goat turd. Why could you have not been like Henry?
And then there was Isabella.
Isabella was far above his station. She had an astonishing, delicate beauty. She seemed utterly out of place in dusty old Ashbury manor but her family in Aragon had fallen upon hard times. It was enough of a disgrace that she was willing to stoop as low as a poor English knight.
Henry wanted me gone. Wanted me to offer my service to someone, anyone who would take me.
Go to the Holy Land, Richard. By God, there is nothing for you here.
He would fly into a rage at the smallest thing. The servants I was friendly with had told me he had become that way since I returned from Duffield. It was my presence that had made him so volatile.
I did not know what I had done to anger him so and had no desire to stay with him. But I could not bear the thought of being apart from Isabella. So I stayed in the wood all that summer, fretting on an inevitable future apart from her. And yet doing nothing.
“I had no quarrel with Henry,” I said.
They looked at each other, knowing I was lying.
The bishop stared. “Yet your father had a falling out with your brother, many years ago, if I recall?”
My eyes ached. Their pointless questions and prying into my life was more than I could bear. And, after swallowing cup after cup of wine along with my anger, I was drunk and my guts were churning.
“William and his knights did this,” I said to the bishop, the sheriff and the prior. “Those men. You know his men? If you knew them, my lords, you would not be asking me so many questions.”
“Please name and describe them to me. My bailiffs must know exactly who they are looking for,” the sheriff said, ready to write on his parchment. “William is dark of hair and tall, is that correct?”
“Tall as me, if not taller. But he is much older, close to thirty, I think.”
“Thirty and unmarried?” the sheriff asked. “Are all his men unmarried? Are they perhaps sodomites?”
“How dare you,” the bishop growled. “Robert’s son is no sodomite. He has been at war with the heathens for many years, I am sure he will take a wife when he is ready.”
“I meant no offence, my lord.” The sheriff smiled to himself while he scratched away. “Tell me about these knights.”
“Hugh of Havering is William’s closest man,” I said. “He is of an age with William. Fair haired. Men listen when he speaks. Then there is Roger of Tyre. Older but still quick with a blade. Quick of mind and tongue, too. Dark.”
“These men have holdings of their own in Outremer,” the bishop said, muttering. “Odd that they would follow William de Ferrers back here. Unless they have reason to flee.”
“One of the worst is Rollo the Norman” I said, suppressing a shudder. “A vile man who delights in torment. The call him the Beast.”
“I have heard much talk of this one,” the sheriff said, scratching at his parchment. “The Beast Rollo. He is said to look like a bear.”
“A fat bear,” the bishop said, smirking. “But hairier.”
“And there is Ralph the Reaper who I heard boast of murders he had done in Outremer,” I said. “He is supposed to be from some great Saxon family but Hugh of Havering told me he is a tanner’s son. And he has Walter who is a little dark Welshman who is quite mad. He rants always that dead men walk the earth. Men who have risen too early for the Last Judgement. Ugly as sin, has wens on his face and your men could not miss him. And of course Hugo the Giant, you must know of him?”
“The giant, yes,” the sheriff said. “So he’s taller than you?”
I snorted. “Tallest man I have ever seen. Strong, too.”
“It is true,” the bishop said, shaking his head. “I have seen this man.”
“There was never men like them in all Derbyshire until William returned,” I said, my voice growing louder. “And they ride away unpunished. If you know of them then you know it was they and not I who did this thing.”
The sheriff raised his hands. “We have spoken to the surviving servants. I am sure that it was Earl William and his men.”
“His men, yes,” the bishop muttered and allowed himself a single tight nod. “Yet I find it hard to believe that Robert’s boy could stoop to such a thing. The real question is if there was some purpose anyone might have had in committing these acts.”
“We have not been sitting idly.” The sheriff leaned forward. “My men ride in all directions as we speak,” he said. “If Earl William is hiding in Derbyshire I shall lead my bailiffs there and we shall take him. Justice shall be done, I swear.”
“I will go with you,” I said and drained my cup, thinking how much I did not want to face William and his knights. But I had sworn an oath.
The sheriff thought for a moment and nodded. “You are welcome to join us.”
I felt all the aches in my muscles from digging the graves that morning and lifting and carrying body after body. I had worked beyond the limits of my endurance. I could not recall eating. Peering at the dirt and blood under my fingernails I had to close one eye to focus my vision. My head spun and the most important thing I had to do was to get away from all their questions and judgements and simply close my eyes.
“My lords,” I mumbled, heaving myself upright. “I am afraid that I must retire to my wood.”
I watched with interest as the floor lurched up to smash me in the face.
***
Someone slapped me. I was on a low pallet in a small, bare room. It was light outside the high window.
“I’m awake,” I mumbled.
The prior slapped me again.
“I said I’m awake, for the love of God,” I said, grabbing his wrist.
“You purged yourself upon my floor, young man,” Prior Theobald said, yanking his hand back from my grip. He seemed to be considering slapping me a third time.
“Oh, God,” I said and covered my face, remembering all that had happened the day before.
The prior’s tone softened and he placed his hand upon my shoulder. “The sheriff has returned to see you, Richard.” He hesitated. “This is a terrible thing that has happened. All you can do is trust in God. All of us here shall pray for you.”
I lay upo
n my back, hungover and bereft. “Thank you, prior.”
When I was young my father had tried to force me to become a monk. My family supported Tutbury Priory so they would take me, unruly as I was. As the second son I may have one day diluted Henry’s inheritance. I ran away, then fought and screamed when they brought me back. Earl Robert somehow found out about this and took me into his service instead. Me being a monk would have been like forcing a fox to become a chicken. But our father granted everything to Henry anyway. And Henry gave me nothing.
“It breaks my heart to bring this up so soon,” he said. “But your brother had confirmed the Priory’s grants when he became the lord of the manor. Sadly, we are yet to receive any of the promised—”
I sat up and pushed past him. “You shall get your grants, Theobald,” I said, just to shut him up.
“Thank you, Richard,” he said. “My Lord.”
I splashed water over myself. One of the brothers led me to the cloister where the sheriff sat reading upon a bench in the centre of the square. Swifts chirped and swooped above and the sun was painfully bright. Two men attended the sheriff. They took the parchments from him and retired to the shadow of the cloister when I approached.
“Where is the bishop this morning, my lord sheriff?” I asked. My mouth tasted like vomit and my head pounded. Nothing I was not used to, of course. At least it was another fine day.
“Call me Roger,” the sheriff said, smiling. He looked as fresh as a daisy, the bastard. “The bishop has more responsibilities than a mortal man can undertake, he tells me. And he rode away last night claiming to be returning to Coventry. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this morning that the bishop instead rode to Duffield Castle. More of his men have ridden up from the south to join him.”
“Surely he cannot seize the Earl’s castle for himself? Should William be stripped of his lands and title, they are for the king to distribute.”
“The king is sailing for the Holy Land. He may even have already left. It seems as though most men of quality are sailing with him.” The sheriff sighed. “I have half a mind to take the cross myself. Although I wonder if I would have land and position to return to if men like the bishop are staying to carve up England in the king’s absence.”