by Alys Clare
‘Aye. Forest People, Wild People, folks refer to them by both names.’
‘And you know for sure that these Wild People were in the forest the night before last?’
‘Aye. It’s June, see. They come here in June.’ He frowned. ‘Leastways, they sometimes do. They have done in the past, anyhow.’
‘I see.’ It seemed, Helewise thought, slim evidence on which to convict this unknown, hitherto unsuspected group of people who, apparently, were wont to camp at certain times of the year, almost on the Abbey’s doorstep. ‘And – forgive me, Sheriff, if I seem to be questioning your actions, only what with the murder being so close, and—’
‘And what with you finding him, Sister,’ the sheriff interrupted her. ‘Aye, I understand.’ A patronising smile stretched the moist lips. ‘You go on and ask me,’ he said earnestly, ‘anything I can tell you, to set your mind at rest so you and the good sisters can lie easy in your beds at night, I will!’
‘How kind,’ Helewise murmured. ‘As I was saying, Sheriff, you’ve been up into the forest, I take it? You’ve found evidence that these Wild People have been there recently?’
‘Well, I…’ Again, the frown. More like a scowl, really, Helewise thought, deciding that, frown or scowl, it probably meant that Harry Pelham was about to tell her a lie. Or, at least, try to get away with a fudging of the truth. ‘There’s not much point in looking for signs of the Wild People, see, Sister. They’re cunning and canny, and they don’t go about cutting down trees or hacking off branches to make shelters. They’re more, like, open-air folk. They live under the trees, under the sky. They’ve been there forever, they have, carrying on in their strange ways. Old even when the Romans came, some say.’ Remembering the point he was making, he repeated. ‘No use looking for evidence. None at all. Although, of course, I sent some of my men up there anyway.’
‘Of course.’ A likely story! ‘And they found nothing.’ It was a statement, not a question.
Harry Pelham grinned. ‘No. Like I said.’
Helewise carefully put her hands together, resting her chin on the tips of her fingers. ‘What we have, then, Sheriff, is a dead poacher, whom, despite any evidence, you are quite sure was killed by these Wild People. Who, since you have not managed to locate them, cannot be questioned.’ She shot him a direct look, and felt a totally unworthy pleasure in seeing him flinch slightly. ‘Therefore you have no proof of their guilt, other than your own conviction.’
Harry Pelham rallied quickly. Giving her his most threatening scowl, he said, ‘My conviction’s quite enough for me!’ As if even he realised the flimsiness of that, he added, ‘Anyway, you tell me who else could have done it! Go on, tell me!’
‘Not knowing anything of the man or his background, naturally, I can’t,’ Helewise said mildly. ‘But, surely, that is your job, Sheriff? To discover how and where the man lived, if he had any enemies, if anyone would be likely to gain from his death?’
‘Ha!’ the sheriff cried, punching the air as if to say, got you there! ‘I know who he was. He was Hamm Robinson, like I said. He has a wife – poor meagre little woman she is, Hamm bullied and beat her within an inch of her life, the good Lord alone knows why she didn’t make off in the night – and, as for what he did, he was a poacher.’ He pointed a grubby finger at the Abbess. ‘Told you that, too.’ He exhaled a big sigh, and said, ‘If you ask me, the world’s well rid of him.’
‘Perhaps so!’ Helewise cried. ‘But he was a man, Sheriff! A living, breathing man, until someone threw a spear at him and killed him. Is he not as entitled to justice as any other man?’
Harry Pelham, she was certain, almost said, ‘No.’ That, she thought, would have been the truth. Instead, the fleshy, greasy face took on its patronising look once more. ‘Like I keep telling you, Sister,’ he said, ‘I’d do what you want and go and accuse the Wild People if I could. Arrest them, bring them to trial, hang a few, if it was in my power! But how can I if they’ve gone?’ He chuckled. ‘Even I can’t arrest a man if he’s not there, now can I, Sister?’
There was, Helewise thought, little point in pursuing it any more. She couldn’t make the sheriff do anything he didn’t want to; clearly, he was far beyond being shamed into action by anything she said.
She let the tense silence continue a little longer. Then, rising to her feet, said, ‘Very well, Sheriff. But, please, do let me know if your enquiries arrive at any sort of satisfactory conclusion.’
Realising he was being dismissed – which, judging from his expression, he didn’t much like – Sheriff Pelham stood up. The Abbess opened the door, and he trudged out.
‘You may reclaim your weapons at the gate,’ Helewise told him. ‘Sister Ursel will have taken good care of them. I wish you good day, Sheriff.’
He muttered something in reply. It could have been ‘Good day’, but it could equally well have been something far less polite.
* * *
When she was quite certain he had gone, Helewise left her room and crossed the courtyard to the infirmary, where she begged Sister Euphemia to part with some of her precious lavender-scented incense. Despite her efforts to think charitably of the sheriff, still Helewise felt a very strong desire to fumigate her room of his presence.
* * *
Later that day, she went back up the track to the forest.
It was, she had discovered, very difficult to leave the matter there. A man had been brutally murdered right by the Abbey, and she had all but stepped on his body. It appeared there was no chance of his killer ever being brought to justice, and Helewise could see no way to alter that.
I must, she thought, striding up towards the trees, have one more try myself. Take one more look. See if I can find some clue that the sheriff and his men overlooked, and, the dear Lord knows, surely that wouldn’t be hard.
She found the place where the body had lain. There were still bloodstains on the grass. She walked a few paces on into the forest, and thought she could detect trodden-down undergrowth where the dead man’s running feet had passed. But what of the killer? Had he run in the dead man’s tracks? He must have stood still to throw the spear … She wandered on under the deep shade of the trees, not really knowing what she was looking for.
Some time later, she gave up the search. It was, she realised, quite hopeless.
She went back to the place where the man had fallen. There was some flattened grass a few paces off; she went to look.
There, amid the brilliant green, lay the spear.
Someone – Sheriff Pelham? – must have wrested it out of the dead man’s back and thrown it away. Its head and the first few inches of its shaft were still sticky with blood.
Helewise bent down and picked it up.
Carefully she wiped it on the fresh young grass, feeling, as she did so, an illogical but very strong urge to apologise for this act of desecration.
Then, when it was as clean as she could make it, she had a good look. The tip of the spear was made of flint.
Flint?
Helewise had lived for most of her life close to the South Downs, and she knew all about flint. One of her brothers had amused himself on a wet afternoon by making a flint knife, and had discovered that knapping wasn’t as easy as one might think.
But whoever had made this spearhead was a master in the craft. The point was exactly symmetrical, and shaped most beautifully. Like an elegant leaf. The knapped edges were perfect.
And the point was as sharp as any knife.
Helewise – who had learned her lesson over testing the sharpness of worked edges – tried the spearpoint on a patch of dandelions. It seared through the leaves and stems as if they hadn’t been there.
A flint spearhead, she mused. Why flint, in this age of fine metalwork? Did it mean that wretched sheriff was right, and this murder was the work of some band of primitive forest-dwelling people, who lived not in the present day but in the manner of their distant stone-working ancestors?
The idea sent an atavistic shiver of dread down Helewise’s spine.
And here I am, she thought, not ten paces from the forest.
She turned and hurried back towards the Abbey.
But, disconcerted or not, still she took the spear with her. Even if this did appear to be the end of the matter, it seemed a good idea not to throw away evidence.
* * *
Back in her room, she found that the lavender incense had failed to burn properly, and the air still stank of the sheriff. In addition, the various tensions of the day had produced the beginnings of a headache.
And, to cap it all, it was Friday. Which meant it was carp for supper.
With quiet vehemence, Helewise muttered, ‘I hate carp.’
Chapter Three
Josse d’Acquin put his strong hands under his small nephew’s arms and, glancing back towards the house to make sure his sister-in-law wasn’t watching, hoisted the boy up on to the broad back of his horse.
‘Gee-up!’ cried the boy, his voice shrill with excitement. ‘Gee-up, horsey!’
Josse quickly stilled the sharp little heels digging into the horse’s flanks; Horace was a good, strong mount, normally even tempered, but you never knew how even the calmest animal might react to such unexpected provocation.
‘Hush, Auguste my lad,’ Josse said. ‘I’ve told you before, gee-up isn’t the thing to say.’
‘What is the thing to say, Uncle Josse?’ piped the boy. ‘I keep forgetting.’
‘Well, you can go hup! if you must,’ Josse allowed. ‘But horses, as I’ve explained, respond to your legs, your hands and your voice, so you don’t use any of them without thinking about it.’
‘And your bum, Uncle Josse! You said you had to use your bum, for sitting down hard with!’ The child was squirming with mirth, loving the unaccustomed freedom of being with his lenient uncle. Being allowed to say ‘bum’ twice and get away with it.
‘Indeed I did.’ Josse grinned. ‘Sit down hard in the saddle, I said, let old Horace here know you’re on board.’
‘I want to go without you holding on!’ Auguste cried. ‘Please, Uncle Josse!’
‘Certainly not!’ Josse took an even firmer grip on the rein. ‘Your dear mother would flay me alive if she knew I’d so much as put you on the horse,’ he muttered.
‘What’s flay, Uncle Josse?’ Auguste had sharper ears than Josse had realised.
‘Oh – er – nothing. Now, Auguste, laddie, once round the courtyard, then—’
‘Josse!’ shrieked a woman’s voice. ‘Josse, what do you think you’re doing! Oh, careful! Be careful!’
Running out of the house and across the yard as she spoke, Theophania d’Acquin, wife of Josse’s youngest brother, Acelin, looked furious. Mother not only to the six-year-old Auguste, but to his younger sister and his baby brother, Theophania’s protective maternal urges were easily aroused. Particularly by Josse, and virtually any contact he had with her children.
‘The lad’s fine!’ Josse protested, trying to control Horace; largely untroubled by having a small boy on his back, even if the child were kicking and yelling, the horse was reacting to the shrieking woman. ‘Shut up, Theophania!’ Josse shouted, hanging on the reins in an effort to keep Horace’s heavy head down. ‘Can’t you see you’re unsettling him?’
‘Well!’ cried Theophania. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’
Josse, preoccupied with supporting Auguste’s weight – the child had evidently decided that on the back of Uncle Josse’s horse was no place to be, not with Maman racing across the courtyard in full battle cry – and, at the same time, holding Horace, muttered under his breath.
Again, he had underestimated a six-year-old’s acuteness of hearing. Just as Theophania, bristling with righteous anger, swept her child from Josse’s shoulder, Auguste asked innocently, ‘Uncle Josse, what’s salope?’
* * *
There was, quite naturally, music to face.
That evening, when Theophania had gone grumbling upstairs to see to the baby, Josse sat down with his brothers and his other sisters-in-law, aware that the assembled company was not entirely pleased with him.
Hell and damnation, he thought, reaching for more wine, whose house is this? I’m the eldest brother, I can do what I like in my own home!
But that, of course, was the problem. And Josse was fair-minded enough to appreciate it. Acquin, both the large fortified manor house itself and the wide estates, belonged legally to Josse: he was the heir, he had inherited both property and title on the death of his father, Geoffroi d’Acquin, fifteen years ago.
But Josse had always known he was not destined to be a country landowner. He had no skills with the land, nor with animals, other than horses; no interest in organising his tenants and his peasantry into working for the good of all who depended on Acquin. His brothers, Yves, Patrice, Honoré and Acelin, were the ones who loved and understood the land.
Josse, anyway, had left home as soon as he could after coming into his inheritance. He’d been away before, apprenticed as page, as were so many eldest sons, to another knight’s household, to learn a very different profession from agriculture. He’d even spent a couple of years living in England with his mother’s kin, where his maternal grandfather, Herbert of Lewes, had given him a hearty welcome, apparently having got over the shock of his beloved Ida having left home to marry a Frenchman. When he was old enough, Josse had become a squire. And, in time, won his spurs.
When he was but a youth, he’d ridden with King Richard himself, not that he’d been King then. But he was now.
Through the generosity of the new King Richard, Josse had a manor house in England. Or he would have, when the builders finished. And God alone knew when that would be.
In the meantime, while Josse tried to be patient with delay after delay, he was back living at home. In what was legally his home, but in which, as he was all too well aware, he was now more of a guest.
And, at times like this, not a very welcome one.
He flung himself down on a stout wooden bench, feeling both angry and embarrassed.
‘I was doing the lad no harm!’ he protested, drinking down a huge mouthful of wine.
‘Maybe you weren’t,’ said his sister-in-law Marie, Yves’s wife. ‘But that isn’t the point. Theophania asked you not to let Auguste ride your horse, and you took no notice.’
‘The lad’s too mollycoddled!’ Josse cried. ‘He only gets to ride that tiddly pony of his, which is no challenge whatsoever to a red-blooded lad! And there are too many women here – he needs a bit of masculine company.’
‘He has that, in plenty!’ Acelin said, clearly affronted. ‘He has me, and he has his uncles Yves, Patrice and Honoré. In addition, there are Yves’s boys, Luke, Jean-Yves and Robert, and, when he has grown bigger and stronger, soon Honoré’s little boy will be a playmate too. Enough male company there, surely, Josse, even for you.’
‘That’s as maybe.’ Josse had the unpleasant feeling that he was not only outnumbered, but also being out-argued. ‘All the same, he’d be well used to riding a big horse by now if he’d had the upbringing I had, let me tell you!’
‘You were still here when you were six, galloping about on a pony not much larger than Auguste’s, and making a thorough nuisance of yourself,’ Yves said pedantically. ‘You didn’t go off to be Sir Guy’s page until you were seven.’
‘Yes I did!’
‘Didn’t!’
‘Did!’
‘Oh, stop it!’ Marie shouted. ‘Really, Josse, what is it about you, that you make sensible grown men act like small boys again?’
‘They’re my brothers,’ Josse muttered.
‘Oh, that explains it.’ There was a definite note of sarcasm in Marie’s voice. But she did, nevertheless, give Josse a smile; she had always been fond of him.
‘Josse should not have called Theophania a— called her what he did,’ his brother Honoré said piously. ‘It was very rude. And very inaccurate.’
Acelin, furious all over again at the insult to his wife, made a choking sound.
&n
bsp; ‘Sorry,’ Josse said quickly, before Acelin could get going on a renewed bout of self-righteous indignation. ‘It just slipped out.’
‘What did you call her, Josse?’ Marie whispered, while the two youngest brothers were nodding and agreeing about Josse’s lack of respect. ‘Acelin wouldn’t tell me, and Theophania threatened to go into hysterics when I asked her.’
‘I’m afraid I called her a bitch,’ Josse admitted. ‘I’m very ashamed of myself, Marie. I’m thinking of going to market and buying her a pretty fairing – some ribbons, a bolt of fine cloth – to make amends.’
‘She’d probably much rather you just left her son alone,’ Marie remarked shrewdly. ‘Although, me, I tend to agree with you. There’s a little too much petticoat government round here, when you’re away.’
‘You’re the senior wife,’ Josse said. ‘And surely Agnès would support you, even if Pascale didn’t.’ Agnès was married to Patrice, and Pascale was wife to Honoré; mother of a sickly child, Pascale was usually too preoccupied with caring for him to enter into family arguments. ‘Can’t you improve things?’
‘Hmm.’ Marie looked thoughtful. ‘Possibly. Only you know what Theophania’s like. When she’s crossed, she gets one of her sick heads.’ She paused to bite off a thread; round and placid with advancing pregnancy – a state that suited her well, Josse reflected – Marie was sewing some small garment made of fine linen. ‘And when Theophania has a sick head, we all suffer,’ she concluded. ‘The whole household.’
‘Quite.’ No wonder I don’t fit in here, Josse thought sadly. My four brothers and this sensible woman, the eldest of my sisters-in-law, all let themselves be led by the nose by the least sound person in the house. All for the sake of a quiet life!
‘Where’s Theophania now?’ he asked presently.
‘Feeding the baby,’ Marie said.
‘But I thought she’d have engaged—’ He broke off. It was Theophania’s business, after all.
‘You thought she would have engaged a wet nurse?’ Marie looked at him. ‘Ah, no peasant woman’s milk is good enough, not for the child of Theophania.’