by Ken Follett
There was a moment of quiet. Sam drained the cup. Caris was thinking, as no doubt Philippa and Merthin were too, about the passage of time, and how it can change an innocent, beloved baby into a man who commits murder.
In the silence, they heard voices.
It sounded like several men at the kitchen door.
Sam looked around him like a trapped bear. One door led to the kitchen, the other outside to the front of the house. He dashed to the front door, flung it open, and ran out. Without pausing he headed down toward the river.
A moment later Em opened the door from the kitchen, and Mungo Constable came into the dining hall, with four deputies crowding behind him, all carrying wooden clubs.
Merthin pointed at the front door. "He just left."
"After him, lads," said Mungo, and they all ran through the room and out the door.
Caris stood up and hurried outside, and the others followed her.
The house was built on a low, rocky bluff only three or four feet high. The river flowed rapidly past the foot of the little cliff. To the left, Merthin's graceful bridge spanned the water; to the right was a muddy beach. Across the river, trees were coming into leaf in the old plague graveyard. Pokey little suburban hovels had grown up like weeds either side of the cemetery.
Sam could have turned left or right, and Caris saw with a feeling of despair that he had made the wrong choice. He had gone right, which led nowhere. She saw him running along the foreshore, his boots leaving big impressions in the mud. The constables were chasing him like dogs after a hare. She felt sorry for Sam, as she always felt sorry for the hare. It was nothing to do with justice, merely that he was the quarry.
Seeing he had nowhere to go, he waded into the water.
Mungo had stayed on the paved footpath at the front of the house, and now he turned in the opposite direction, to the left, and ran toward the bridge.
Two of the deputies dropped their clubs, pulled off their boots, got out of their coats, and jumped into the water in their undershirts. The other two stood on the shoreline, presumably unable to swim, or perhaps unwilling to jump into the water on a cold day. The two swimmers struck out after Sam.
Sam was strong, but his heavy winter coat was now sodden and dragging him down. Caris watched with horrid fascination as the deputies gained on him.
There was a shout from the other direction. Mungo had reached the bridge and was running across, and he had stopped to beckon the two nonswimming deputies to follow him. They acknowledged his signal and ran after him. He continued across the bridge.
Sam reached the far shore just before the swimmers caught up with him. He gained his footing and staggered through the shallows, shaking his head, water running from his clothing. He turned and saw a deputy almost on him. The man stumbled, bending forward inadvertently, and Sam swiftly kicked him in the face with a heavy waterlogged boot. The deputy cried out and fell back.
The second deputy was more cautious. He approached Sam then stopped, still out of reach. Sam turned and ran forward, coming out of the water onto the turf of the plague graveyard; but the deputy followed him. Sam stopped again, and the deputy stopped. Sam realized he was being toyed with. He gave a roar of anger and rushed at his tormentor. The deputy ran back, but he had the river behind him. He ran into the shallows, but the water slowed him, and Sam was able to catch him.
Sam grabbed the man by the shoulders, turned him, and head-butted him. On the far side of the river, Caris heard a crack as the poor man's nose broke. Sam tossed him aside and he fell, spurting blood into the river water.
Sam turned again for the shore--but Mungo was waiting for him. Now Sam was lower down the slope of the foreshore and hampered by the water. Mungo rushed at him, stopped, let him come forward, then raised his heavy wooden club. He feinted, Sam dodged, then Mungo struck, hitting Sam on the top of his head.
It looked a dreadful blow, and Caris herself gasped with shock as if she had been hit. Sam roared with pain and reflexively put his hands over his head. Mungo, experienced in fighting with strong young men, hit him again with the club, this time in his unprotected ribs. Sam fell into the water. The two deputies who had run across the bridge now arrived on the scene. Both jumped on Sam, holding him down in the shallows. The two he had wounded took their revenge, kicking and punching him savagely while their colleagues held him down. When there was no fight left in him, they at last let up and dragged him out of the water.
Mungo swiftly tied Sam's hands behind his back. Then the constables marched the fugitive back toward the town.
"How awful," said Caris. "Poor Gwenda."
83
The town of Shiring had a carnival air during sessions of the county court. All the inns around the square were busy, their parlors crowded with men and women dressed in their best clothes, all shouting for drinks and food. The town naturally took the opportunity to hold a market, and the square itself was so closely packed with stalls that it took half an hour to move a couple of hundred yards. As well as the legitimate stallholders there were dozens of strolling entrepreneurs: bakers with trays of buns, a busking fiddle player, maimed and blind beggars, prostitutes showing their breasts, a dancing bear, a preaching friar.
Earl Ralph was one of the few people who could cross the square quickly. He rode with three knights ahead of him and a handful of servants behind, and his entourage went through the melee like a plowshare, turning the crowd aside by the force of their momentum and their carelessness for the safety of people in their way.
They rode on up the hill to the sheriff's castle. In the courtyard they wheeled with a flourish and dismounted. The servants immediately began shouting for hostlers and porters. Ralph liked people to know he had arrived.
He was tense. The son of his old enemy was about to be tried for murder. He was on the brink of the sweetest revenge imaginable, but some part of him feared it might not happen. He was so on edge that he felt slightly ashamed: he would not have wanted his knights to know how much this meant to him. He was careful to conceal, even from Alan Fernhill, how eager he was that Sam should hang. He was afraid something would go wrong at the last minute. No one knew better than he how the machinery of justice could fail: after all, he himself had escaped hanging twice.
He would sit on the judge's bench during the trial, as was his right, and do his best to make sure there was no upset.
He handed his reins to a groom and looked around. The castle was not a military fortification. It was more like a tavern with a courtyard, though strongly built and well guarded. The sheriff of Shiring could live here safe from the vengeful relatives of the people he arrested. There were basement dungeons in which to keep prisoners, and guest apartments where visiting judges could stay unmolested.
Sheriff Bernard showed Ralph to his room. The sheriff was the king's representative in the county, responsible for collecting taxes as well as administering justice. The post was lucrative, the salary usefully supplemented by gifts, bribes, and percentages skimmed off the top of fines and forfeited bail money. The relationship between earl and sheriff could be fractious: the earl ranked higher, but the sheriff's judicial power was independent. Bernard, a rich wool merchant of about Ralph's age, treated Ralph with an uneasy mixture of camaraderie and deference.
Philippa was waiting for Ralph in the apartment set aside for them. Her long gray hair was tied up in an elaborate headdress, and she wore an expensive coat in drab shades of gray and brown. Her haughty manner had once made her a proud beauty, but now she just looked like a grumpy old woman. She might have been his mother.
He greeted his sons, Gerry and Roley. He was not sure how to deal with children, and he had never seen much of his own: as babies they had been cared for by women, of course, and now they were at the monks' school. He addressed them somewhat as if they were squires in his service, giving them orders at one moment and joshing them in a friendly way the next. He would find them easier to talk to when they were older. It did not seem to matter: they regarded him as a her
o whatever he did.
"Tomorrow you shall sit on the judge's bench in the courtroom," he said. "I want you to see how justice is done."
Gerry, the elder, said: "Can we look around the market this afternoon?"
"Yes--get Dickie to go with you." Dickie was one of the Earlscastle servants. "Here, take some money to spend." He gave them each a handful of silver pennies.
The boys went out. Ralph sat down across the room from Philippa. He never touched her, and tried always to keep his distance so that it would not happen by accident. He felt sure that she dressed and acted like an old woman to make sure he was not attracted to her. She also went to church every day.
It was a strange relationship for two people who had once conceived a child together, but they had been stuck in it for years and it would never change. At least it left him free to fondle servant girls and tumble tavern wenches.
However, they had to talk about the children. Philippa had strong views and, over the years, Ralph had realized it was easier to discuss things with her, rather than make unilateral decisions and then have a fight when she disagreed.
Now Ralph said: "Gerald is old enough to be a squire."
Philippa said: "I agree."
"Good!" said Ralph, surprised--he had expected an argument.
"I've already spoken to David Monmouth about him," she added.
That explained her willingness. She was one jump ahead. "I see," he said, playing for time.
"David agrees, and suggests we send him as soon as he is fourteen."
Gerry was only just thirteen. Philippa was in fact postponing Gerry's departure by almost a year. But this was not Ralph's main worry. David, earl of Monmouth, was married to Philippa's daughter, Odila. "Being a squire is supposed to turn a boy into a man," Ralph said. "But Gerry will get too easy a ride with David. His stepsister is fond of him--she'll probably protect him. He could have it too soft." After a moment's reflection, he added: "I expect that's why you want him to go there."
She did not deny it, but said: "I thought you would be glad to strengthen your alliance with the earl of Monmouth."
She had a point. David was Ralph's most important ally in the nobility. Placing Gerry in the Monmouth household would create another bond between the two earls. David might become fond of the boy. In later years, perhaps David's sons would be squires at Earlscastle. Such family connections were priceless. "Will you undertake to make sure the boy isn't mollycoddled there?" Ralph said.
"Of course."
"Well, all right then."
"Good. I'm glad that's settled." Philippa stood up.
But Ralph was not finished. "Now what about Roley? He could go too, so that they would be together."
Philippa did not like this idea at all, Ralph could tell, but she was too clever to contradict him flatly. "Roley's a bit young," she said, as if thinking it over. "And he hasn't properly learned his letters yet."
"Letters aren't as important to a nobleman as learning to fight. After all, he is second in line to the earldom. If anything should happen to Gerry..."
"Which God forbid."
"Amen."
"All the same, I think he should wait until he's fourteen."
"I don't know. Roley's always been a bit womanish. Sometimes he reminds me of my brother, Merthin." He saw a flash of fear in her eyes. She was afraid of letting her baby go, he guessed. He was tempted to insist, just to torture her. But ten was young for a squire. "We'll see," he said noncommittally. "He'll have to be toughened up sooner or later."
"All in good time," said Philippa.
The judge, Sir Lewis Abingdon, was not a local man, but a London lawyer from the king's court, sent on tour to try serious cases in county courts. He was a beefy type with a pink face and a fair beard. He was also ten years younger than Ralph.
Ralph told himself he should not be surprised. He was now forty-four. Half his own generation had been wiped out by the plague. Nevertheless, he continued to be startled by distinguished and powerful men who were younger than he.
They waited, with Gerry and Roley, in a side chamber at the Court House Inn, while the jury assembled and the prisoners were brought down from the castle. It turned out that Sir Lewis had been at Crecy, as a young squire, though Ralph did not recall him. He treated Ralph with wary courtesy.
Ralph tried subtly to probe the judge, and find out how tough he was. "The Statute of Laborers is difficult to enforce, we find," he said. "When peasants see a way to make money, they lose all respect for the law."
"For every runaway who is working for an illegal wage, there is an employer who is paying it," the judge said.
"Exactly! The nuns of Kingsbridge Priory have never obeyed the statute."
"Difficult to prosecute nuns."
"I don't see why."
Sir Lewis changed the subject. "You have a special interest in this morning's proceedings?" he asked. He had probably been told that it was unusual for Ralph to exercise his right to sit beside the judge.
"The murderer is a serf of mine," Ralph admitted. "But the main reason I'm here is to give these boys a look at how justice works. One of them is likely to be the earl when I give up the ghost. They can watch the hangings tomorrow, too. The sooner they get used to seeing men die, the better."
Lewis nodded agreement. "The sons of the nobility cannot afford to be softhearted."
They heard the clerk of the court bang his gavel, and the hubbub from the next room died down. Ralph's anxiety was not allayed: Sir Lewis's conversation had not told him much. Perhaps that in itself was revealing: it might mean he was not easily influenced.
The judge opened the door and stood aside for the earl to go first.
At the near end of the room, two large wooden chairs were set on a dais. Next to them was a low bench. A murmur of interest arose from the crowd as Gerry and Roley sat on the bench. The people were always fascinated to see the children who would grow into their overlords. But more than that, Ralph thought, there was a look of innocence about the two prepubescent boys that was strikingly out of place in a court whose business was violence, theft, and dishonesty. They looked like lambs in a pigpen.
Ralph sat in one of the two chairs and thought of the day, twenty-two years ago, when he had stood in this very courtroom as a criminal accused of rape--a ludicrous charge to bring against a lord when the so-called victim was one of his own serfs. Philippa had been behind that malicious prosecution. Well, he had made her suffer for it.
At that trial, Ralph had fought his way out of the room as soon as the jury pronounced him guilty, and then had been pardoned when he joined the king's army and went to France. Sam was not going to escape: he had no weapon, and his ankles were chained. And the French wars seemed to have petered out, so there were no more free pardons.
Ralph studied Sam as the indictment was read. He had Wulfric's build, not Gwenda's: he was a tall lad, broad across the shoulders. He might have made a useful man-at-arms if he had been more nobly born. He did not really look like Wulfric, though something about the cast of his features rang a bell. Like so many accused men, he wore an expression of superficial defiance overlaying fear. That's just how I felt, Ralph thought.
Nathan Reeve was the first witness. He was the father of the dead man but, more importantly, he testified that Sam was a serf of Earl Ralph's and had not been given leave to go to Oldchurch. He said he had sent his son Jonno to follow Gwenda in the hope of tracking down the runaway. He was not likeable, but his grief was clearly genuine. Ralph was pleased: it was damning testimony.
Sam's mother was standing next to him, the top of her head level with her son's shoulder. Gwenda was not beautiful: her dark eyes were set close to a beaky nose, and her forehead and chin both receded sharply, giving her the look of a determined rodent. Yet there was something strongly sexual about her, even in middle age. It was more than twenty years since Ralph had lain with her, but he remembered her as if it were yesterday. They had done it in a room at the Bell in Kingsbridge, and he had made her kne
el up on the bed. He could picture it now, and the memory of her compact body excited him. She had a lot of dark hair, he recollected.
Suddenly she met his eye. She held his gaze and seemed to sense what he was thinking. On that bed she had been indifferent and motionless, to begin with, accepting his thrusts passively because he had coerced her; but, at the end, something strange had come over her, and almost against her own will she had moved in rhythm with him. She must have remembered the same thing, for an expression of shame came over her plain face, and she looked quickly away.
Next to her was another young man, presumably the second son. This one was more like her, small and wiry, with a crafty look about him. He met Ralph's gaze with a stare of intense concentration, as if he was curious what went on in the mind of an earl, and thought he might find the answer in Ralph's face.
But Ralph was most interested in the father. He had hated Wulfric since their fight at the Fleece Fair of 1337. He touched his broken nose reflexively. Several other men had wounded him in later years, but none had hurt his pride so badly. However, Ralph's revenge on Wulfric had been terrible. I deprived him of his birthright for a decade, Ralph thought. I lay with his wife. I gave him that scar across his cheek when he tried to stop me escaping from this very courtroom. I dragged him home when he tried to run away. And now I'm going to hang his son.
Wulfric was heavier than he used to be, but he carried it well. He had a salt-and-pepper beard that did not grow over the long scar of the sword wound Ralph had given him. His face was lined and weatherbeaten. Where Gwenda looked angry, Wulfric was grief-stricken. As the peasants of Oldchurch testified that Sam had killed Jonno with an oak spade, Gwenda's eyes flashed defiance, whereas Wulfric's broad forehead creased in anguish.
The foreman of the jury asked whether Sam had been in fear for his life.
Ralph was displeased. The question implied an excuse for the killer.
A thin peasant with one eye responded. "He wasn't in fear of the bailiff, no. I think he was ascared of his mother, though." The crowd tittered.
The foreman asked whether Jonno had provoked the attack, another question that bothered Ralph by indicating sympathy for Sam.