A Man's Word (The King's Hounds series)

by Martin Jensen

  I was still angry at Winston. His apparent belief that he didn’t need to inconvenience himself by investigating the murders was one thing, even though he had been the one who told Delwyn that we would clear up both killings if we could. But the fact that he apparently thought he could just leave his share of the work to his woman, that was quite another matter.

  I realized one good thing, though, as I squeezed my way toward the wool merchant’s stall: my nose was on the right trail, while Alfilda had to go on a wild goose chase that wasn’t going to lead her anywhere.

  Brigit acted as if she didn’t see me when I took up position behind the circle of customers around the stall. Her bony, hard-bargaining husband fawned and sweated, handed over woolen shirts and hats for customers to examine, and obsequiously fluttered his eyelids over his watery eyes as the customers grabbed for shillings from the leather pouches on their belts.

  I pushed my way up to the cloth-covered countertop, which rested on two frail trestles. I reached over it and caught Brigit’s arm. She glared at me as I pulled her to me, but I didn’t care. She could see as well as I could that her tedious, decrepit husband only had eyes for his business.

  “Let go of me,” she hissed, but she was quiet when I responded by tightening my grasp.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come last night,” I said, loosening my grip, although I didn’t quite let go. “I promise I’ll come tonight.”

  She twisted herself free and opened her mouth to tell me off—I could tell this much from her eyes—but just then her husband turned to look at us and she dutifully averted her gaze. I picked up a roll of cloth, let it fall again so that it unrolled, and then leaned forward as she reached out to tidy up the cloth.

  “Expect me.”

  She kept her eyes on the cloth, but the quick nod that followed my words was enough for me, and as I left the stall, my anger dissipated.

  I roamed through the marketplace until I spotted an ale stand, and took a seat on a long bench across from three farmers. They had obviously had a good day, judging from their rosy cheeks and slurred, drawling voices.

  Once my tumbler was half-empty, I realized I had no idea how I was going to set about my task.

  If one of the victims’ relatives had brought a case to court like Arnulf’s, the reeve or his man Stigand could give me a name to work with, but as things stood now I was sure it would be darned near impossible for me to find a single person who had swallowed the shame and injustice.

  Farmers stick together like pea straw. I knew that from my time back home on my father’s estate. If they divulge secrets to a nobleman, sooner or later doing so will come back to bite them. And in a case like this they were, if anything, even more predisposed to keep their mouths shut.

  No man wants a reputation for not having sought revenge when he should have. Unless he’s like Arnulf. But there are a lot of reasons why a crime might go unavenged.

  If this case had been about a farmer, I probably would have been able to get someone to talk—there’s always someone who has a thorn in his side about his neighbor and would be glad to blab his secrets. But Darwyn presumably wronged a bunch of people, which meant that they all had a reason to keep quiet: if one blabbed about his neighbor’s shame, he would be revealing his own as well.

  I sat and listened to the farmers’ drunken talk. Then I stayed for a while after they had left—one of them clearly having trouble walking and needing to be helped away by the other two—and evening fell as I tried in vain to come up with a way to get someone to tell me just one name of one ravished farm wench. I was so preoccupied, I was shocked to look up and notice that the rumble of the market had quieted down and night had settled over the town.

  I stood up and slipped quietly down the now-deserted market aisles past the wool merchant’s stall, where that whittled-down dotard was lying under one of the countertops on top of a bag of wool. His emaciated chest moved up and down beneath the blanket he had pulled all the way up to the tip of his nose, and I gave him a friendly nod that he didn’t respond to since he was already asleep.

  Not so, his wife. She was quite awake and complained that I—as she put it—had trespassed against her right in front of her husband.

  I was in no mood to be reprimanded. I just asked her if she wanted me to leave, but I could tell from the look in her eyes that that was a dangerous question and that I might not want to hear her answer. So before her tongue got going, I put my lips to hers and my hands on her breasts, and although she protested against my open mouth, I caressed her in silence, and she eventually quieted down. She showed me yet again that she knew how to use her mouth for things other than talking.

  24

  I woke up rested and relaxed. The woman next to me breathed peacefully. She was lying on her back with a little trail of dried spit coming from the corner of her mouth. Her hair was damp. Her breasts, rising and falling, roused me, but as I pulled her to me and inhaled her sweet, titillating scent, she put her hand on my chest and pushed me away.

  I was stronger. I grasped her arms and slid my tongue over her nipples, but she slipped free, moved a knee up between my thighs and whispered that if I kept going, she would jab it up into my nuts with enough force that I wouldn’t think about sex the rest of the day.

  Reluctantly, I got up, found my pants and tunic and put them on, and tightened my belt around my waist. My sword moved easily in its sheath as I pulled it halfway out to test before slipping out the door with a brief, “See you.”

  I had noticed doors leading into other rooms on my way up the stairs. Now I heard a man clear his throat and say good-bye to a woman I couldn’t see, but judging from the voice that responded to him, she couldn’t have been much older than Brigit.

  I quietly walked down the narrow staircase behind the man, whose footfalls were heavy. I glanced in a half-open door and confirmed what the voice had told me. A girl of about twenty sat upright in the bed. She looked good, with large breasts and raven-black hair cascading down over milk-white shoulders.

  There was no response to my admiring gaze. The woman just stretched like a cat in the sunshine, and then crawled back under the covers before I was past the door, which she didn’t bother to close.

  The front door had shut again behind the man and when I pushed it, I found to my surprise that it was stuck. So I put my shoulder against it, put some weight into it, and when it finally budged, I tumbled out onto the street.

  I proceeded into the alleyway, where I tripped over an outstretched leg, and hit the ground with a groan. I rolled forward and to the left, righting myself. I grasped the hilt of my sword as soon as I was up again and jumped forward, my weapon ready.

  An attacker will expect his victim to withdraw in order to figure out how many people he’s facing and who they are. Harding had taught me to do the unexpected in situations like this: Hurl myself forward toward my opponent. Take advantage of his surprise and thereby gain the upper hand in the situation.

  My opponent, however, was no greenhorn. As soon as he tripped me, he followed my movement forward and to the left and now stood ready, with the tip of his sword resting against me.

  Then, recognizing each other, we both lowered our weapons.

  “You’re awfully untrusting. Are you being plagued by dwarves or something?”

  Stigand grinned at me.

  “Didn’t you ever learn that if you tiptoe after a man who’s on his way from enjoying another man’s woman, he will be sure to strike first?”

  He sheathed his sword, and then I sheathed mine.

  So I wasn’t the only one who understood how to attend to a married woman.

  But in this I turned out to be wrong, he informed me on our way to an ale tent, where we agreed to get a bite to eat. The wench I had seen him leave was not married, just betrothed to one of the reeve’s spearmen, who, Stigand confided to me with a wry grin, never understood why he was assigned to night-watch duty far more often than his colleagues.

  “I don’t think he suspects anyt
hing, but when I heard footsteps upstairs, it still worried me. I figured I’d better strike first,” Stigand said and nodded to a wench with tousled hair that she should set the porridge bowl in front of us. She returned to bring us two tankards of warm ale.

  The porridge was rich and full of honey, the malted ale hot and strong, and while the sun burned away the morning fog, turning it into little tufts around the clusters of buildings, we ate our fill and stretched out our legs comfortably at the same time. We raised our tankards into the air and nodded again to the serving wench, who had been watching us without smiling and now grumpily obeyed our demand for more ale.

  As we ate and drank, an idea occurred to me. “Has the reeve encountered any obvious suspects?” I asked.

  “Suspects?” Stigand’s eyebrows crawled well up his forehead.

  “Perhaps you don’t remember,” I chided. “We found a body.”

  “Oh, that.” He said it as if he constantly ran into murdered farmers—which, now that I thought about it, maybe he did.

  “My master and I promised to solve the mysteries of the two murders. But maybe you don’t remember that either?” I blew on the ale, which was just slightly too hot.

  He laughed—deep laughter in that broad chest.

  “Yeah, I remember. So does the reeve.”

  He scrutinized me and I commented, “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”

  “A manuscript illuminator and his man ride through England, thinking they can hide that they are the king’s hounds. Isn’t that what people called you in Oxford?”

  I nodded, half-annoyed. Only half, because neither of us had really believed we could hide our identities. There aren’t that many illuminators in the country, and Reeve Turstan was an important man. He was both rich and powerful, and had surely been present at the meeting in Oxford when we had revealed a murderer and thereby freed Cnut from the charge of having had the victim assassinated.

  “And if we are?” I asked.

  “Not if,” he said, grinning openly.

  “Well, no,” I said with a shrug. “Since we are.”

  “Turstan doesn’t think there’s any reason for his men to spend time clearing up the murders if the king’s own hounds are at his disposal.”

  This, of course, was flattering news.

  “But he promised . . .” I began.

  Stigand stopped me with a shake of his head, and said, “He didn’t promise.”

  Which was true, I realized when I thought it over. Of course Turstan was worried that men were being stabbed to death in his town, but it was only truly a concern if murders kept happening and the marketplace was deemed unsafe.

  On the other hand, revealing the murderer was not his problem, so he was free to leave that work to us. Once we had the man, Delwyn would be able to avenge himself and then men would hear that peace had been reestablished in Turstan’s territory.

  I hid a grin at the thought that Winston hadn’t realized this any more than I had. He had thought we would stumble over Turstan’s men if we followed the tracks left by Darwyn’s murderer. Winston often thought more cleverly and effectively than other men, but in this case not so much.

  I leaned back and held up my hands to gesture that I’d gotten the message and would drop the subject.

  “Tell me about Delwyn,” I said, succeeding in surprising Stigand. His eyes narrowed and took on a sharp look. Then he shrugged.

  “There’s not much point in that. I can tell you the same things as everyone else.”

  He raised his tankard and drank, snorted over the warm ale, and then wiped his mouth and beard.

  “Delwyn owns land all over the place in East Anglia,” he said.

  I recalled Arnulf telling us that, so I nodded. “A powerful thane.”

  Stigand gave me an odd look and said, “Uncommonly rich, and powerful enough that very few go up against him. But he’s fair.”

  “So fair that he let his son perjure himself,” I scoffed.

  “Nonsense.” Stigand shook his head haughtily. “Darwyn was a big womanizer, but unlike you or me, who only lie with other men’s women when they very willingly spread their legs for us, he liked them to resist. Rape was his game and he took amusement in deriding the men who didn’t dare stand up to him. Delwyn certainly didn’t look kindly on his son’s proclivities, but as long as no one objected, the father couldn’t do anything.”

  “Couldn’t? Wouldn’t is more like it,” I said with a snort.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Stigand, waving dismissively with his hand. “Noblemen take what they want, and Delwyn certainly has a bit of that. I called him fair, and you weren’t so sure. But you see that when this farmer finally got up the courage and brought the man’s son to court, the father forced the boy to show up. For his part, Darwyn had been toying with the idea of paying a call on Arnulf with a sword and a torch, but Delwyn forbade him.”

  “So he wanted the boy to pay for what he’d done.” How odd that Delwyn should consider Arnulf to be a brave man, who gave the nobleman an excuse to teach his son a lesson.

  “Delwyn told Turstan that the fine should be collected from the estate his son had inherited from his mother,” Stigand said.

  “And yet he allowed his son to go free by perjuring himself.”

  “He did? You know what they said to each other after the court case?” Stigand asked.

  I shook my head and said, “No, do you?”

  “No. The two of them went off to speak in private, but I know what happened to Bardolf.”

  “Bardolf?”

  “The other lad who swore with Darwyn.”

  I remembered him. “What happened?”

  “Bardolf was here because he was Delwyn’s hostage in a conflict with a thane from north of the River Humber. Delwyn had the boy’s right hand chopped off for his perjury at the Hundred Court and then he sent the hand to the boy’s relatives with a messenger to say that whatever they wanted in order to resolve their dispute, he would pay it.”

  I gasped. Stigand looked up in surprise, but I made light of it. I didn’t have time to explain to him that the last time Winston and I had solved a murder, back in Brixworth, the victim had been a perjurer whose right hand had been chopped off.

  “So he let the friend pay for his son’s crime.”

  “And no one knows what Delwyn told his son,” Stigand concluded, leaning back.

  I remembered what Sigurd had said about Delwyn wanting to pay the difference in Arnulf’s especially high bride price. Maybe he really was a fair man.

  Maybe so fair that he was willing for his son to be murdered to wash away the shame the boy’s perjury had brought on the family?

  25

  After Stigand and I parted, I headed to the tavern, where I found Winston and Alfilda. Winston somewhat acidulously informed me that he expected me to show up at the beginning of the day. I reminded him crossly that the day before he had instructed Alfilda and me to each follow our own trail while he went to sit on his flat ass, ogling at coins being struck.

  “And?” Winston said. I was too angry to sit with them.

  “And so I’m following the trail I want to follow,” I told him.

  “Maybe so.” He slurped up a glob of honey. “But you work for me, and I expect you to be here when I need you.”

  I glared at him resentfully and grumbled, “Need me?”

  “Need you, yes. You have to go back to the village.”

  My throat tightened with indignation, and my voice failed me. I turned my back to him and took a few deep breaths before turning around again so that I could see them both.

  “To the village? My trail does not lead to the village,” I protested. I filled them in on all that I’d learned that morning about Darwyn’s argument with his father and about Bardolf’s punishment.

  “Nevertheless,” Winston said, “you have to go back to the village.”

  He looked at Alfilda, and then she began. “I tried to talk to the farmers we were with yesterday.”

  I was st
ill so angry that at first I missed the import of her words. Then it dawned on me.

  “Tried?” I repeated.

  Alfilda nodded. “None of them had much desire to talk to me,” she said.

  “For any particular reason?” I asked.

  A fleeting smile crossed her lips. “At first I thought they were afraid of being revealed as the murderer.” Her smile goaded me. I accepted her challenge.

  “But unless they were all in on the crime, that doesn’t make any sense,” I pointed out.

  “My thinking as well,” she said. “So there must be some other reason that they don’t want to talk to me.”

  And that reason was obvious. I’m sure she noticed the glint of schadenfreude in my eye. So much for her desire to follow the farmers’ trail.

  I had no doubt that every single one of those farmers trusted their womenfolk to make decisions about running their households. They probably involved their women back home in any decisions they made about running their farms as well. But it was a big jump from that to speaking freely with an unknown woman about murder and legal matters.

  “You should have directed them to Winston or me,” I said.

  “Or some other man, yes,” Alfilda said, her smile now gone. “That would have been one way to handle it. I chose another.”

  I gave her a questioning look.

  “I went to see Gertrude and Rowena.” She paused, waiting. I looked over at Winston, who had pushed his porridge bowl away.

  “And you got something out of that?”

  “I’d say so. You remember what Gertrude said when you asked who wanted Arnulf dead?”

  “That there were lots of people.”

  “Not exactly.” Her eyes seemed to tease me, and I thought about it for a long time.

  “She said, If only I could list them for you. So there were a lot of them.”

  “Maybe. What I got out of her yesterday was that she can’t list them.”