XLII
INSIDE, THE HOUSE reeked of damp and smoke. It was a neat house, well-cared-for. But for the track of muddy footprints going in and out of the front door, one would hardly know anything had happened.
As they followed the muddy trail to the stairs, that impression began to change. At the foot of them, Isaac stopped. He turned, his face suddenly very pale. “Forgive me,” he said. “I do not wish to go up there...”
Gisburne patted the man’s shoulder, and sent him on his way. Then knight and squire turned to climb the steps into darkness.
THE WHOLE INTERIOR of the room was blackened. A choking haze hung in the air, thick with the smell of burnt meat. Water dripped from the ceiling and formed dark pools on the floor, mixing with some other greasy substance, now beginning to solidify in grey lumps. Fat from the body. Nothing remained of the mattress or the hangings about the walls and bed. The fire had been fierce – but the charred beams and posts had not fully caught before the neighbours had got to them. Gisburne supposed it was at least one reason to be thankful for days of English damp and rain.
On the bed – or rather, collapsed within it, huddled on the floor inside what was left of the frame – was a body. Its head was smashed, the rest burned almost beyond recognition. The right hand had been taken, the arm now a smoking stump. The left hand was drawn into a claw, but in horrid contrast to the rest, the gold rings on its fingers shone as bright as ever.
“This is what comes of playing with fire,” said Galfrid.
But as he stared at the body, Gisburne wondered at the words. Like Galfrid, he had at first assumed that the fire was accidental – or, at least, a consequence of the Red Hand’s attack. Now, he was not so sure.
“Why was Ranulph burned after he was dead?” he said. Galfrid looked again. “His head was smashed, he fell upon the bed, then he was burned. Why?”
Galfrid looked around for further clues, and shrugged. “Perhaps the bed was afire before the Red Hand struck the fatal blow.”
“Perhaps,” said Gisburne. He moved around the bed. It was built into the fabric of the room, its head part of the wall, the corners at its foot formed by stout posts between floor and ceiling. About one of these, he now saw, was wrapped a thick chain, which in turn was attached to a low wooden chest bound around with iron. The lock had been hammered – no, not merely hammered, but beaten out of shape. Yet it had not yielded. As if out of frustration, one end of the casket had also been battered. The iron bands were scored and warped, the wood split and flattened. Still it had refused to give up its secrets. Gisburne was in no doubt that this was also the work of the Red Hand’s hammer.
“He tried to break this open,” said Gisburne. “Tried and failed.”
“Robbery?” said Galfrid, casting his eyes over the chest. “That’s something new. Perhaps he has something in common with Hood after all.”
“Clearly it contains something of value to him.” Gisburne poked the chain with his toe. “Or he believed it did.”
“Gold? Silver?”
“Something he sorely wanted... How many blows do you think he delivered before giving up? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Thirty at least,” said Galfrid.
Gisburne turned and looked at his squire. “Would you stand there and deliver thirty blows to a chest in a room that was on fire? Less than a yard from the blaze?”
Galfrid looked at the destroyed bed, at the blackened chest, then back at Gisburne.
“This was no accident,” said Gisburne. “I think when he failed to get what he wanted from this chest he deliberately set the place afire – perhaps to destroy this box and what it contained.”
“Why destroy something of value?” said Galfrid. “To stop someone else having it?”
“Or seeing it,” said Gisburne. “You remember Ranulph was the record keeper on the Irish expedition?” He lifted the corner of the chest with his foot and let it fall back on the boards. “It’s not silver or gold in here...”
Gisburne and Galfrid looked at each other, both knowing what the other was thinking. “Get back down there,” Gisburne said. “Tell Isaac we’ll need this chest. And tell him to light a fire in the back yard. A big one, that will make as much smoke as possible – enough to keep the Red Hand convinced that this house is burning to the ground.” Galfrid nodded and hurried back down the stairs.
Gisburne turned back to the body with a grim sense of victory. The Red Hand had eluded him today – but now they had the chest and whatever secret it contained, and the Red Hand did not know it. He allowed himself a smile as his eyes roved over the blackened corpse.
Then he saw it – the thing that had been staring him in the face from the moment they had entered the room – and his jaw dropped.
GALFRID FOUND ISAAC sitting on the step outside. He had vomited, and his limbs were shaking – the shock starting to bite. But at least some of his colour had returned.
A large crowd had now gathered before the house – some of them concerned neighbours, but many simply curious. Of Elazar, there was now no sign. Galfrid ignored them all, and, squatting beside Isaac, explained what had to be done in slow and measured tones: the need to remove the chest, the importance of securing the house until they could do so, the building of the fire. Isaac nodded steadily as he spoke. Galfrid sensed he would feel better for having something to do.
Eventually Isaac stood, smoothed his tunic and, with renewed vigour, looked about for friends and neighbours to help him put the plan into action. As he did so, something within the crowd caught his eye. Galfrid saw his expression change again – to shock, and then deep despair. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, then, with clenched fists, turned and moved swiftly away.
Galfrid followed the direction of his gaze. At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. But then, within the throng, he noted a hooded man clutching a bag of newly bought provisions to his chest. What marked him out was his expression. It mirrored Isaac’s precisely – as if he, too, had just lost someone in the fire. But instead of pushing forward to find out more, he turned and hurried away. Galfrid watched until he had disappeared completely into the crowd.
“Let’s go.” Gisburne’s voice snapped him out of his reverie. His master had emerged from the house, and was now looking about with a new sense of purpose. He noted Isaac talking animatedly with three men by the gate, then turned again, scanning the crowd.
“Hamon?”
As if by magic, Hamon appeared with their horses
“Sire?”
As Galfrid took the horses from the boy, Gisburne spoke to him in urgent, hushed tones. “The man who we entered the house with,” he said. “You see him? Don’t let him see you’re looking. His name is Isaac. Put a lad on him. I want to know everywhere he goes.”
Hamon nodded, and was off.
“You’re having Isaac followed,” said Galfrid. “Why?”
“All in good time,” said Gisburne. “We must find a blacksmith.” He thought for a moment. “Two blacksmiths... I want that chest brought to our lodgings and opened before the killer realises his attempt failed.”
“Failed?” Galfrid was bemused by Gisburne’s choice of words. “Ranulph Le Fort lies dead up there!” He tried to put aside thoughts of Dickon, of how Gisburne’s obsession had made him neglect the search for the man who was now murdered. Neither he nor his raging indigestion could face that.
“But he’s not dead,” said Gisburne.
“What?” Galfrid gaped at him. “You saw that roasted lump. It’s as dead as my lunch.”
“Yes,” said Gisburne. “But that is not Ranulph Le Fort.”
XLIII
Eastchepe
15 June, 1193
“CHECK EVERYTHING – NO matter how trivial it may seem,” said Gisburne. “The answer may lie in a single figure. A single name...”
Galfrid gazed across the room and felt his heart sink. The contents of the newly opened chest were spread over every inch of floor. Gisburne’s deduction had been correct. It did
not contain treasure – at least, not of the conventional kind. Indeed, if there was anything of value amongst the piles of documents, it was proving hard to find. In addition to records of tax, copies of charters and accounts of legal proceedings, there were letters, lists, bills of sale and purchase, maps, scraps of poetry, random parts of the Gospels, descriptions of animals and plants and what appeared to be an Arab treatise on warfare. A proportion of these documents also related to the Irish expedition, and it was these that they had first endeavoured to separate out, and which now occupied the space immediately between them. One was a less ostentatious copy of the Milford Roll. Ranulph, it seemed, had kept everything.
And yet, where was Ranulph himself?
“We have heard that Ranulph Le Fort had two fingers missing from his left hand,” Gisburne had explained as they had ridden away from Jewen Street. “The burnt body in the room did not. Unless he had managed to grow them again, it could not be Ranulph.”
“But Isaac said...”
“Isaac is simply protecting his friend,” Gisburne had said. “He wants everyone to believe Ranulph killed. What better disguise than death? No one hunts a dead man.”
As to the mystery of the charred corpse, both had hoped the chest might furnish something of worth. Clearly, its contents were thought to be dangerous by the killer. But why? It seemed to offer no clues – only more questions.
GISBURNE HAD BEEN testy prior to the chest’s arrival. He had paced the room, trying to rid himself of energy that Galfrid knew no amount of pacing would dissipate. What his master needed was to get himself on a horse, to put both it and himself through their paces with lance and sword for a day, to collapse exhausted into a bath and then sleep for a full night. But for now, this room was his prison cell.
The one thing that had dragged him from it during the tense wait was the Widow Fleet. The moment Galfrid heard her shrill tones from the back yard, he feared the worst. In an attempt to calm the situation, he had discretely closed the back shutter against it, even though he suspected Widow Fleet’s voice could penetrate eight feet of stone. At any rate, it was too late.
“What in God’s name is going on now?” thundered Gisburne.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Galfrid. “Looks like the Widow’s got into another argument with Osekin about that pig of his.” Galfrid had spoken as dismissively as possible, but no sooner had he said it than Gisburne was storming down the stairs. He followed hard upon his master’s heels, swearing under his breath.
Osekin, it transpired, had heard of Widow Fleet’s new whitewash and set about painting his own back wall. To Widow Fleet, who only that morning had headed off another attempt by Osekin’s pig to decimate her vegetable patch, this was the last straw.
“You shouldn’t be whitewashing your walls!” she howled at her neighbour as Gisburne entered the yard. “You should be mending this excuse for a fence!” And, glaring at the rooting pig, she gave the rickety structure a sound kick. “Oh, tell him, please, Sir Guy!” she pleaded.
Osekin looked upon Gisburne approaching, and for reasons best known to himself saw in him a kindred spirit. “Ah!” he said with a genial smile. “I was just explaining to the Widow Fleet how it is in the nature of the animal...”
“Is this your pig?” demanded Gisburne, pointing at the creature.
“Yes, but...”
Gisburne grabbed the whitewash brush, slapped a white cross upon the pig’s dark, bristly back, then plopped the brush back in the pail, splashing the paint down Osekin’s left leg in the process.
“Hoi – what’s that all about?” said Osekin.
“So I have something to aim at,” said Gisburne.
“Aim...?” Osekin went as pale as his new walls.
Gisburne took a step closer. “I don’t care about fences, or whitewash, or whether this pig is yours or someone else’s or has had itself elected Pope. But next time I see that pig in this yard, I’ll hang it up and use it for target practice.” He turned from the shocked Osekin as if to go, then suddenly turned on him again. “And if you trouble Widow Fleet with this one more time, I’ll shove its head up your arse. Then I’ll shove your head up its arse. Clear?” And with that, he turned and stalked off.
“He’s a bit off pigs at the moment,” said Galfrid.
Widow Fleet had beamed, gazing after the departing Gisburne as if he were her personal hero.
“LOOK AT THIS...” said Galfrid. It had been sitting in front of them for the best part of an hour, a scrappily written record of some aspect of Ranulph’s finances. Galfrid could make little of it, except that those finances were far from healthy. But the parchment upon which they were written was a fine one, and when Galfrid finally thought to turn it over, it revealed an older and far more significant text – one that connected directly with the story related by de Rosseley. He passed it to Gisburne.
It was an order from John that money be paid to Ranulph in compensation for the loss of two of his fingers during a fight with a chieftain named Faelan Ua Dubhghail. It was mentioned that Faelan died during the fight, leaving a wife and two sons: his heir Ailin, aged twenty-four summers and Niall, aged thirteen. Out of this estate was to be paid compensation to Ranulph of six hundred deniers or one good war horse. The attack was described as unprovoked and to have been undertaken ‘in a manner most sly.’ But nowhere was it suggested why Ua Dubhghail wished to risk everything by killing one of John’s men that night.
“This must be in my father’s hand,” said Gisburne. “Ranulph could not write immediately after the attack.” He held it out to Galfrid. “Would that he had written a little more clearly. Can you make out the wife’s name?”
Galfrid could not, except that it began with an L.
Gisburne sighed. “The key must lie within this document,” he said “It’s the one thing that seems to connect with what we know so far.”
“Could our killer be one of those two boys? The younger would be a man now.”
“If so,” said Gisburne, “then we have before us the Red Hand’s true name.”
“If he suspected the existence of such a document, that alone would be reason enough for him to wish it destroyed,” said Galfrid.
Gisburne stared hard at the page, as if daring it to speak further to him. “But we cannot know for sure. And what could do we do with this information even if we knew? How does this help us?” He flung it down in exasperation, his hopes dashed. “The document confirms one thing, at least,” he said at length, and turned to his squire. “Ranulph Le Fort did indeed have two fingers missing from his left hand.”
“So whose body was it in the burnt house?”
Gisburne placed the tips of his fingers together and rubbed the forefingers against the bridge of his nose. “I have been thinking on that... We know that Ranulph was often in debt. Yet the body had gold rings on its fingers – not a sign of a man in need. More like... a merchant displaying his wealth.” He looked up. “I believe we may have found Thomas of Baylesford.”
Gisburne stood, and turned about the room, paying little attention to the documents that crumpled beneath his feet. “We know the two men had been friends – that Thomas had gone into hiding, apparently aware that his life was under threat. Perhaps aware that Ranulph’s was, too. I believe Thomas went to find Ranulph. Perhaps to warn him. Perhaps thinking there would be safety in numbers. But if Thomas could find him, then the Red Hand could too. And he did. Unfortunately for Thomas, it was he who was alone in that room the day the Red Hand came to call.”
In the space of a minute, Galfrid’s entire world had shifted. He had of late been guilty of indignation at Gisburne’s failure to find Ranulph. Now, it seemed it was instead Baylesford who had perished, and who had done so because he had realised he was being sought – not only by the Red Hand, but by Galfrid too.
“The question is,” said Gisburne, “what became of Ranulph?”
And all at once, it came to Galfrid. “I think I saw him...” he said. And he told Gisburne of the man in the crowd who
se look had so puzzled him. To this he added one detail, that until now had seemed of little significance. “At the time, believing Ranulph dead, I thought nothing of it. Just a curiosity. But the hand with which he clutched his wares – his left – it had fingers missing.”
“You saw him clearly?” asked Gisburne.
“Clear as day.”
“You would recognise him?”
“I believe so.”
Gisburne smiled. “We are getting somewhere. At last. Nine days, Galfrid. Nine days until Hood’s execution... In that time we must find Ranulph and make our final preparations. He is now the only one left who knows what really happened in Ireland. But we have a couple of advantages, at least. The Red Hand is injured, and he does not know we have the contents of the chest. If we can only fathom what they mean...”
“We have two more,” said Galfrid. “The killer thinks Ranulph already dead. And we have this...” he held up the armour plate. He had meant this as a positive gesture – one of defiance. But at the sight of the blue-black scale, Gisburne’s face fell.
Instinctively, Galfrid understood: it reminded his master of the impossibility of the task ahead – of the moment when he knew he must face him for the final time.
XLIV
Hamstede Heath
16 June, 1193
THE NOTE SAID simply Hamstede Heath. Noon, in Galfrid’s hand. It did not specify which part of Hamstede Heath nor for what purpose. He had found it pinned to his coat when he woke up that morning, and his squire gone. But why was he now communicating with him via scraps of parchment?
It was good to get out of the city – to leave behind its spreading madness. As the ever-present press of humanity was left behind and gave way to trees and heathland, he felt a pleasant calm descend – of a kind he had not felt in weeks. The space widened out into a broad meadow edged with trees, punctuated only by the rotting stumps of a trio of felled oaks, and a new concern took over. How was he ever to find Galfrid in this vast expanse?
Hunter of Sherwood: The Red Hand Page 36