The Mad Monk of Gidleigh (14 page)

They had reached the top of Gidleigh now, and the road curved towards the castle and church. There Piers caught sight of Elias once more. The old peasant had a nervous expression on his face, and Piers could see him glancing from side to side as though anticipating an attack from some quarter. Then his eye lighted on Osbert, and his attention focused.

Piers saw his expression, and when he looked at Osbert, he could see why Elias was staring so hard. Poor Osbert looked devastated. He looked desperate to conceal his tears and misery as though such sentiments were unmanly, sniffing and wiping at his eyes with a hand that was quick and cursory, as though he was pretending that there were no tears there, that he was too strong to weep for a girl, as though he was simply scratching at an irritation. It was unnecessary. Everyone in the vill knew that he had adored Mary. Most men had, especially those who were marriageable. Osbert must have dreamed of owning her, Piers thought, and they would have made a pleasing couple, her so slim and attractive, him bold and strong and tall. Yes, they’d have made a handsome pair.

The sadness assailed him again and Piers’s mind turned to other things. He would have to stop with Elias and take a moment to speak to him, but the little band swept on, and it would have seemed disrespectful to the memory of Mary if he had tried to collar the older peasant.

He would have to talk to him later, Piers thought to himself as he followed the weeping Huward into the church itself. At the door he turned back, but instead of staring at Elias, his gaze went to Osbert. Osbert met his look for a moment, but then the young man turned and walked slowly back towards the mill.

It was much later that Ben walked into the house and spat at the floor when he realised there was no meal waiting. His parents were too taken up with grief to worry about mundane things like food. He wasn’t, though. He was starving. Hadn’t eaten since late morning.

He’d been supposed to go out and help Osbert with the hedging on Huward’s fields after the inquest, but he couldn’t be bothered. It wasn’t as though his father would punish him, not if he kept his head low, and he didn’t want to stand in a cold field, feet freezing to the soil, helping Osbert to cut part-way through branches until they could be bent back, fixing them in place by hooking them under stakes. They didn’t have to be enormously strongly held, because it was the ditch and high turf wall that held the animals in their pasture, but it was good to tidy up the hedges at the top, if only because it was a useful source of firewood.

No, hacking at a blackthorn hedge was not Ben’s idea of fun. Instead he’d gone to an ale-house on the Chagford road and drunk himself into a merry state as soon as the inquest was over. Not that the mood was going to last if he didn’t quickly find something to eat.

‘Come back, then, have you?’

‘Osbert! What are
you
doing, sneaking in like that? You should–’

‘You should hold your tongue, you should. I’ve been working while you’ve been out drinking again, haven’t you? While your sister was being taken to church, too – dead.’

‘Leave it, Osbert. I used up my grief when I heard she was dead.’

‘You managed to make it last a whole day?’

‘Very funny. I suppose you’ll keep it going for a good long while, won’t you? You’ll make up for any lack on my part.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You couldn’t keep your eyes off her, could you? Always fancied her arse. Did you ever get a chance to feel her up?’

‘No, Ben, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have if I’d been given the chance, either. Because it’s not right that a man should do that to a woman outside of marriage.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, Os. If you want a woman,’ Ben continued, eyes open wide in innocence, ‘why don’t you go to see Anna at Jordan’s ale-house? I could give you a recommendation there. She’s very good. The way she wriggles her backside is–’

‘Be silent, you dunghill worm. You can treat me with contempt if you like, but on this day, when your sister’s being taken to her grave, the least you can do is go there to witness it. Why do you stand here chewing at my ears when you should be with your mother?’

‘Oh, by Christ’s passion! Give me strength to cope with a big man’s big heart. What good will it do Mary for me to be there? I grieved enough for her the day she died. There are other folk in church who’ll say prayers for her. Who knows, maybe even I shall sometime soon.’

‘You loved her before. Why do you hate her so much now?’

‘I didn’t love her. I never loved her. It’s different for you, you wanted her body: that lovely scut and her breasts like two great bladders waiting to be squeezed. And she’d have liked it too. It’s a shame you missed your chance. Losing her to a cleric! God’s blood, I wouldn’t have thought he had the life in his bone to satisfy her.’

Osbert had kept his patience, but he could feel it draining. ‘I respected your sister, that’s all,’ he said quietly. ‘And you should revere her now all you have is a memory.’

‘Ah, yes, a memory. Sad, you don’t even have that, do you? But I forgot! You did see her, didn’t you? I was there. I saw you follow her down to the stream when she went to bathe last summer. I was intrigued to see why you were walking so quietly down that path.’

‘I wasn’t walking quietly!’ Osbert spat. ‘You make this up. You imagine the worst you could do yourself, then think others might copy you.’

Ben continued as though Osbert hadn’t spoken. ‘I went after you, and I tiptoed, just like you did. You turned into the wood, and when you came to the river, where she was lying naked in the water, I saw you. I saw you fiddling with your tarse…’

‘I didn’t, you liar!’

‘All over the sight of my naked sister. Naughty, naughty Os.’

Unable to control his anger, Osbert leaped to catch Ben, but the smaller man slipped aside. Osbert felt a tingling in his arm as his momentum carried him onwards. When he stopped, he turned to catch at Ben again, but then he saw Ben had come around behind him, and now he stood with a dagger held ready, his head low in a fighting stance, eyes wary, alert to any movement.

‘Try that again, and you’ll get worse, Os,’ he said, pointing at a long cut on Osbert’s arm that dripped blood. ‘And you shouldn’t fear, anyway. I won’t say anything. I know you adored my sister, you even went to watch her in the river naked, and I saw what effect that had on you, but I won’t tell anyone. Why should I? I never liked her anyway. Bitch. It’s better that she’s gone. Especially since she seems to have been playing the whore herself. Think about it. You’re better off without her!’

‘She told me, you know!’ Osbert spat. ‘I know all about you.’

‘What?’ Ben demanded, waving his knife nearer Osbert, sweeping it back and forth.

‘You accuse me of lust, but it was you who tried to take her,’ Osbert spat.

The knife darted forward and Osbert had to slip to one side to avoid it.

‘You’re lying! She swore she wouldn’t… I didn’t touch her!’

Osbert laughed mirthlessly. ‘She swore she wouldn’t talk? She did. I know what you tried,
boy
!’

‘I didn’t try anything.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t the monk killed her, eh? Maybe he just found her and thought…’ Osbert’s mouth fell open at the thought. ‘Did
you
kill her?’

‘Me? Why should I do a thing like that, eh?’

‘To silence her! To stop her telling people how you tried to make her sleep with you!’

‘No, and you’re mad to think it.’

‘You haven’t liked her since then, have you?’

‘It was the priest killed her. You’re just mad with jealousy of
him
. That’s why you’re making up this tale. You’re mad!’

Ben chuckled low in his throat. It sounded almost like a snarl. Then he cautiously stepped backwards, and sidled out through the door.

Osbert’s anger had left him now, and in its place was an emptiness. He should have defended her. He should have fought Ben for that foul assertion. As if any man could think that beautiful Mary was in any way a whore. If he heard Ben insulting her memory again, he’d kill him. Yes, and take the consequences.

Osbert remembered what he had said and shivered. The thought that Ben might go about spreading that story to others was fearful. He couldn’t deny it was true. That time, when he’d first seen her nude, it had snared his heart. She was so perfect, so beautiful. Small, but large-hipped and large-breasted, perfect.

If people realised just how badly Os had desired her, they might think he could have killed her after raping her. Ben would enjoy telling tales, spreading rumours. There was no point in it; it couldn’t do anything to benefit Ben, or anyone else, but it would cause pain and shame. Ben was right about one thing: Os didn’t want others to hear that tale. They would think that he wasn’t enough of a man to take Mary. That was shameful. Nearly as shameful as their thinking that he had taken her against her will.

There could only be one purpose for Ben to spread the story, and that was to cause hurt. That was one thing at which the miller’s son excelled.

Ben was bitter, but at least he had punctured the thick ox’s self-satisfaction. How did he hear about that… Mary must have told him about it. No one else knew. Only him and her – yet Os knew. Mary must have said something, the cow!

There was nothing shameful about it. He was a young man, and she was a woman. He only wanted her to lie with him, so he could know what it was like. He did love her, after all, and all his friends had tupped girls in the vill. He had thought she would be willing, that she’d look on it as a great compliment. It wasn’t as if it was rare for a brother and sister. He’d have agreed if
she
had asked
him
.

If only she had agreed, he wouldn’t have hated her so much then. But she not only rejected him, she laughed at him. Made him feel stupid, small – nothing. She laughed at him, as though he had no manhood for her to consider, and that made him angry. He had caught her, made her hiss with pain as he pushed her to her knees, and then he hit her, to teach her to laugh at him. That was why he had grown to hate her, to loathe the sight of her. If he could, he would have killed her. Except there was always that little place in his heart which watched her with the jealous eye of a lover. A lover whose adoration could never be consummated. That was why he refused to honour her in death, even though part of him felt desolate that she was gone.

Flora was no better. He had never tried to sleep with her, but she was fearful of him – probably because Mary had warned her. If she had told Os, who else might she not have told? Shit! The bitch should have kept her mouth shut! There was no telling what trouble she could have brought to Ben.

Os had wanted her. He had watched her with his great bovine eyes whenever she passed nearby, almost drooling with delight. When she spoke to him kindly, he all but fell over at her feet like a puppy. Pathetic arse. He should have taken her. That’s what a real man would have done.

Suddenly Ben had a vision of another man, the sort who would have taken her without compunction: Esmon, Sir Ralph’s son.

‘Esmon,’ he muttered thoughtfully. ‘You were up there the day she was killed, weren’t you?’

He hadn’t been with Elias quite all the time out in the field. Elias had gone to empty his bladder twice, and once Ben had gone himself, and that was the time when he had seen his sister alone there by the gate. Only a short time later, he had seen Esmon riding nearby as well. Everyone was off hunting down the wayward cleric, and yet if Ben was to mention that sighting, many in the vill would immediately think that the Lord of the Manor’s own son should be questioned.

Ben gave a shrug. He didn’t miss his sister – not really. She hadn’t cared about him, so he wasn’t going to waste his feelings on her. She was nothing to him. She had rejected him, while opening her legs for that damned priest. Fine. And the priest killed her.

It was interesting to think of Esmon being there, though…

As twilight came, Baldwin had reached the road that led north to Eggesford, but after a few moments’ thought, he took the road that led almost due east in preference. Ahead of him, a lowering hulk in the far distance, was the great mound of Cosdon, the first of the huge hills of Dartmoor. To continue further was pointless. He had tested his initial conviction that Mark was running straight to the Bishop and found it persuasive. There was no need to carry on west. The priest must already have passed by here.

‘You want to go on, Sir Baldwin?’

The speaker was Godwen, one of Crediton’s two Constables. He was a small-boned and sharp-featured man with black hair and bright blue eyes in a narrow but attractive face. Women loved him, although many were jealous of his high cheekbones and slender nose. His eyes in particular were startling. They were the colour of cornflowers on a summer’s day, and when he turned them full onto a target, especially with his attention concentrated so that he scarcely blinked, Baldwin thought that they would be quite as hypnotic as a cat’s. Together with his gentle manner, soulful expression and tenor voice, let alone his quick and assured movements, he must have his choice of women in the town, especially with the expensive clothes he always sported.

‘I’m happy to carry on if you want, Sir Baldwin.’

This bass rumble came from the second Constable, Thomas, a larger, slower man, with a heavy, square head and a jaw that could have broken moorstone. His eyes were narrow slits that glittered darkly as he spoke, especially when he caught sight of Godwen. There was a perpetual antipathy between the two. Even in clothing they could not have been more different: Thomas wore cast-offs from his father that were so well darned that there was little of the original colour or thread of the original.

Baldwin sighed to himself. ‘We shall turn back now. All the other men have had time to search out the smaller bartons. If we head back along the road down here,’ he pointed, ‘to Coleford, we should begin to meet up with some of them. Then we can make our way back to Crediton if there is no news.’