I heard a moaning then, and a thrashing sound, a drumming noise as if someone was kicking with his boots at an empty barrel. I stared into the gloom and tried to discern anything, but it was impossible to see in the darkness. The dog was up in the far corner, barking again. Reluctantly, I set a foot cautiously on the uppermost rung of the ladder, and gradually lowered myself into the chamber. ‘Raphe?’
The drumming on the barrel grew louder. Humfrie waited at the entrance while I hesitantly made my way towards the sound and found three large barrels standing in a corner. The dog was scrabbling at them, trying to dig around them, apparently. The noise of drumming came from behind them, and when I rolled the nearest out of the way, I found a huddled figure behind it.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I could make him out. Raphe was bound hand and foot, with a rope that was attached to a ring in the wall. A gag had been forced in his mouth, tied in place by a thong that went about his head twice.
It was tempting to laugh at his predicament, but I was concerned that Arch and Hamon could return at any time. Hamon would not be happy after being clubbed. I drew my knife and began to saw at the ropes binding him. In short order, I had him freed, and he pulled the gag from his mouth and spat repeatedly to clear his mouth of the flavour while Hector leapt at his face, slobbering in a repellent fashion.
‘I’ve been here hours,’ Raphe said with disgust. ‘They didn’t even give me a drink of water.’
‘Yes, they are horrible people,’ I agreed affably, and then I cuffed him about the head. ‘Do you want to wait here for them to come back and cut your ballocks off? Then stop moaning and let’s get home!’
For once he was abashed. ‘Yes, sir.’
And it sounded as if, just this once, he intended to give me respect.
Back at my house, I threw open the door. Raphe and Humfrie slipped inside with Hector, and Humfrie locked the door behind us. Then I politely asked Raphe to follow me upstairs. ‘Look at this,’ I said, pushing him into my money room where the chest lay wide still. ‘What do you have to say about that?’
‘You’ve been robbed!’
‘You think so?’ I said sarcastically. Humfrie had joined us and stood at the door now. His silence and fixed posture seemed to make Raphe still more anxious. ‘And who could have done that, eh?’
Raphe was gazing into the chest with an expression of bemusement. Now, his face hardened and the lad I had grown to know returned. Gone was all gratitude for his rescue, and in its place a sullen resentment.
‘You saying I did it?’
‘You? No! Why would I think that? Who could possibly think you would be guilty, eh? No, I want to know where my money is, that’s all. Do you have any idea who could have taken my money?’
‘I thought you only came to rescue me because I meant something to you, but, no, it was just because you thought I might know where your money was.’
That was when I lost my calm exterior and displayed some of my inner emotions. ‘Of course I care about the money, you blockhead! How do you think we can stay here without money?’ I bellowed.
He gaped at that. ‘You can always get more, can’t you?’
‘I could sell your skin, I suppose!’ I rasped. I grabbed his shirt, thinking to beat him, but he surprised me by knocking my hand away.
‘No! You won’t hit me, master! You should think about whom you trust.’
‘What, like you?’
‘Yes. I’ve taken nothing of yours.’
‘So, who could have taken all my money?’
He pulled a face. ‘Whom have you trusted?’
I drew myself to my full height. ‘I trust no one.’
‘No? What about your woman?’
‘What?’ I laughed. ‘You expect me to believe that a lovely young creature like little Cat could have done this? You reckon she could have picked these locks? She left my bed without waking me, came in here to rob me, then went back to my bed?’
‘Not without help. There was a man with her. He picked the locks, ran downstairs, and he had a cart back out there in the street. When she could, she threw the money from the window. I saw him there, catching the bags and putting them on the cart under some hay. I was in the kitchen and saw him, so I went out and followed him to where he put the money, and watched him unload his cart and lock it up before trundling off. That’s why I was up so early this morning with Hector.’
‘Seriously?’ Humfrie said.
‘Yes. Master Jack had slept with her, and this morning her man came here and knocked Jack into the middle of next week, and while he was out, the man came in and picked the locks. I saw him.’
I restrained the impulse to grab him and kiss his spotty face or lank, greasy hair. ‘Show me where he took my money,’ I said.
He was reluctant, but finally assented on promise of a reward, and led me through the streets up near to North Gate. Here there was a row of lock-up chambers set into the wall itself, each arched. They were mere shallow scrapings in the wall with a door to close them, like deep, brick-built cupboards. Above them was the wall’s walkway, and someone had thought to set these cupboard-shaped chambers for storage. No doubt someone was making good money from renting them. A man should never underestimate the ability of a Londoner to make money.
Raphe took me to one that had three bolts and a massive padlock on each to stop the bolt moving. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.
Now, I have never been a great one for the mastery of locks, but I knew several men who were very capable with such work. I turned and looked at Humfrie. He shrugged and stepped to the locks. Picking one up, he studied it with a quizzical look on his face, and then took a metal spike from his belt. He inserted the fine end into the lock and felt about with a frown on his face. There was a click, and his face eased. He moved to the next.
In the space of only a few minutes, the door was open, and each of us was clasping a money-bag to our chests. I had bound two together, resting over my shoulder, and we began to make our way home again. ‘Humfrie,’ I said. ‘There has to be a safer place to store this money than in my house.’
He frowned. ‘I might know somewhere,’ he said.
It was the middle of the afternoon when I finally managed to make my way to the stables with Humfrie, feeling wary and anxious, keeping a suspicious eye open for Arch or Hamon. I knew that Sir Richard would have left hours before, probably growling about the unreliability of modern youths and complaining bitterly all the way to St Botolph’s.
When I thought of beating Hamon over the head with my pistol’s butt, a cold sweat broke out over me. I didn’t like to think of meeting Hamon again in a dark alleyway. His snippers would soon go to work, I feared, and the thought, were I not riding on a pony at that moment, would have made me cross my legs protectively. What with Henry’s knife at my nadgers the night before and the thought of Hamon’s snippers, all of my limbs and appendages felt threatened. I knew Hamon could be very dangerous on a good day, and I had a distinct feeling that any day I saw him again would be a very bad day indeed for me.
Later, when we were on our mounts and jogging along, I had the opportunity to think of my day’s work so far. At least I had a feeling that at last things were going my way. My head ached, but the worst of the pain was receding from my chin. Now it was focused on the lump at the back of my head.
It seemed clear enough that Cat had robbed me. That was hurtful. I had been besotted with her, and to learn that she was lifting her skirts merely so that she could distract me was most upsetting. It was probably why Henry had arrived at my door, knocking me down, so that he could enter the house while I was unconscious, and then picking the locks. And when he was done, he slipped out while Cat was professionally nursing me. And she had been very gentle and professional, I admitted, with a smile on my face. With a memory like that, it was hard not to smile.
But Henry’s face would keep intruding. He was a bully, of course, and I had already seen that Cat was scared of him. Mayhap, just as with Dorothy, Ca
t had been forced to do his bidding with the threat of a thrashing if she refused? Dorothy had won that horrible black eye, and Cat was no doubt similarly harmed, or threatened with the same dire injuries, were she to refuse his demands. In Dorothy’s case, it was a matter of the favours she offered in bed, perhaps, while in Cat’s it was a case of betraying me, her lover, so that her husband could rob me blind. As he had.
‘What are you grinning about?’ Humfrie asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Must have been a good “nothing” for you to wear that smirk.’
‘I was just thinking.’
‘About the woman, I suppose?’
‘I’m just astonished that she could have organized to have me beaten and robbed. She was so … so …’
‘Aye, well. There’s nothing to say she was involved willingly. What if the accomplice was watching where she went? He followed her without her knowing. Then, late at night, he knocks on your door, and you open it. She knew nothing about him being there. He knocked you down and hurried upstairs, picked the locks and made her help him get the money out.’
‘She could be innocent, you mean?’
‘Well, bearing in mind the sort of wench she is, I couldn’t put it stronger than that, but yes, she might be.’
That was a thought to bring a grin back to my face. After all, I had my money back, and it was secured in a place Humfrie considered safe, and if he was right, it would be possible to renew relations with Cat later. All felt good.
Were it not for Raphe, I would now be in a dire circumstance that did not bear thinking of. He had proved himself, as, in a way, had Hector, by telling us where Raphe was being held.
And then the smile was wiped from my face. Because London also held an angry Hamon who would snip me apart, piece by piece, if he were to get the chance. That was an alarming thought.
So, instead of sitting in my house and waiting for them, here I was, riding for St Botolph’s, where at least I knew Sir Richard was able to help protect me. As long as he would.
The inn was almost empty when I arrived. Humfrie took our mounts round to the back, and as I walked to the inn’s door, I saw young Ben, who was playing with a hoop and trying to get it to move along the road, but every time he set it down, it stuck to the mud and wouldn’t roll, but instead toppled over. He was staring at it disconsolately when I dismounted.
‘Hello, Ben,’ I said.
‘Oh, hello.’
‘Where is everyone?’
‘They’re all out at the millpond. They say that they’re going to find the miller’s daughter.’
‘Oh?’ I was about to lead my pony to the rear of the inn and the stables, but there was something in his serious expression that made me hesitate. ‘You don’t think they will?’
‘No, she’s not there.’
‘Where is she, then?’
He looked up at me. ‘Wherever she wants to be. I’ve seen her. She looked scary, all white like a ghost, with blood all down her front. She was so scared and upset.’
‘When was this?’
‘On the evening of the day they say she was killed. The night before we found my father. I saw her walking down the street there,’ he said, pointing. ‘It was terrible. I haven’t barely slept since then.’
I have never seen a ghost myself, but the lad’s expression told me all I needed to know about the horror. Blood all down her front, and her winding sheet smothered in her gore. ‘I think that would have scared me, too,’ I said. ‘So you think they’re looking in the wrong place?’
‘If she could come here, she might be anywhere,’ he said, logically enough.
‘Well, seeing a ghost doesn’t mean that her body is moving, too. It’s a picture of her, I believe, just as though someone had picked up a painting of her and moved that along the road. But her body is almost certainly up near the mill. It would be too much like hard work to bring her all the way down here, wouldn’t it? Just think of the weight of a woman’s body like that. No one would carry it too far.’
Except they might, I thought to myself. If she was a slim little thing, and he was a hulking great miller, well used to lifting sacks of grain and flour, it might be nothing to him to throw her over his shoulder and trudge away for mile after mile. If he could have lifted Sir Richard’s brother all the way to the road, why not a much lighter figure?
I bade Ben farewell and deposited the pony with a particularly scruffy version of a groom. I decided to go at once to the mill and see how the search was progressing.
The grim atmosphere of lowering malevolence which I had noticed the previous time I had gone to the mill with Sir Richard was considerably lessened by the sound of shouting and hallooing in the woods as the local peasants rattled about the place. In all honesty, it is sometimes hard to understand these lower folk. What, I ask, was the point of their bellows? They were not calling to an injured person, but to a dead one. There was clearly little possibility of her responding to their cries, unless she was, as poor young Ben suggested, actually walking abroad as a wraith.
The last time I had walked down this track, I recalled, I had thought I had seen a figure behind me, moving through the trees. I glanced over my shoulder. No, there was no one there. It would be ridiculous to think that the woman’s shade might try to hunt me down. What had I done to her?
But the thought of a woman clad in a winding sheet that was all besmottered with her own gore suddenly made me keen to move a little faster through the woods. I picked up my pace and started to trot towards the mill.
Sir Richard was standing in a patch of grass some tens of yards from the mill itself. He held a length of stick in his hand, from which he had cut all the twigs, and was using it to point at specific areas that he wanted searched. All about him were peasants from the area. I could see Dorothy’s two older boys, and even the innkeeper was out near the mill’s leat, prodding half-heartedly with a stake into the water and mud. I made my way to the knight. I had left Humfrie at the inn to make his own enquiries. I did not think I was in danger from Arch and Hamon at the mill with so many other men searching for the miller’s daughter’s body.
‘You finally deign to grace us with yer presence, eh?’ the Coroner called when he saw me.
‘My apologies. I have had some troubles today.’
‘Oh, some troubles, eh? I don’t suppose they include wanderin’ back to yer house to take a tumble with the maid?’
‘No,’ I said coolly. ‘They included rescuing my servant, who was threatened with death, discovering my house had been burgled and apprehending the men responsible.’
He gazed at me blankly. ‘Eh?’
‘Oh, and recovering my money, as well. Still, I am sorry to have been delayed,’ I said smoothly. ‘Have you found her yet?’
‘No.’
‘It occurred to me that the woman was probably not terribly heavy,’ I said, and explained my thinking: that the miller was strong enough to carry the maiden to the road or the village.
Sir Richard nodded. ‘I don’t know. I just feel it in me water that she’s here somewhere. There’s something that feels unpleasant down here, if ye see what I mean.’
‘It’s cold and grim, right enough,’ I said. I shivered. The place did feel as if it was saturated in ghosts. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there were hundreds of bodies buried here.’
‘Aye, well, so far there’s been nothing,’ Sir Richard said with a slash of his stick at a wayward stalk of grass that displeased him. ‘I don’t understand it. The girl’s got to be here somewhere. He must have killed her, from the look of the blood in that chamber. Besides, no one has seen her since Father Peter was murdered.’
‘No one but Ben,’ I said without thinking.
‘Eh?’
‘Oh, he thought he saw her. Probably dreaming, though,’ I explained.
He didn’t look convinced. ‘He said he saw her in the roadway, you reckon?’
‘In a winding sheet and blood all over her,’ I agreed. ‘Like I said, it
was a little boy’s nightmare, I dare say. The fellow ate too much cheese or drank more of the inn’s ale than he should have.’
‘Might be worth havin’ a word with him,’ Sir Richard said. He looked at me with that suspicious expression I had first noticed at the inquest. ‘Is that all he said? What was she doing?’
‘I don’t know – he said she was walking along the road, I think.’
‘Alone? He didn’t mention her father, or anyone else? Perhaps her father was chasing her, before he caught her and killed her?’ Sir Richard said. ‘He could have been there, somewhere. I’ll need to speak to the lad and make sure there’s nothing more he can tell us.’
‘Why, do you think he might be able to dream where she is now?’ I laughed. It was easy to be humorous down here, with the knight looking so serious. It made me feel rather superior. I had come a long way from being a pickpocket only a few short months ago. I was proud of my new position. The status that I was granted and the sense of importance that I had earned from my job with Master Blount conspired to give me a feeling of superiority. Which was earned, after all.
‘Sir Richard!’
It was Roger of Ilford. The man was ill-clad for a search of this nature. He was at the farther edge of the woods, and Sir Richard and I made our way to him. ‘Well?’ the Coroner asked.
‘There is a track here, as though a body could have been dragged through the undergrowth?’
Sir Richard nodded, bending and peering along the line of broken twigs and scuffed earth. ‘You could be right.’
Before he could encourage others to join in searching at this spot, there was a scream, and then laughter.
Sir Richard stood, glowering. ‘This is no laughing matter!’
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