Epic Historial Collection (316 page)

At first, Caris had felt jealous of Philippa for having attracted Merthin sexually. Merthin had never tried to pretend that his love for Philippa had been merely superficial. He clearly still cared about her. But Philippa nowadays cut a sad figure. She was forty-nine and looked older, her hair gray and her face lined with disappointment. She lived now for her children. She was a frequent guest of her daughter, Odila, the countess of Monmouth; and when she was not there she often visited Kingsbridge Priory to be close to her sons. She managed to spend very little time at Earlscastle with her husband Ralph.

“I've got to take the boys to Shiring,” she said, explaining her presence here. “Ralph wants them to attend the county court with him. He says it's a necessary part of their education.”

“He's right,” Caris said. Gerry would be the earl, if he lived long enough; and if he did not Roley would inherit the title. So they both needed to be familiar with courts.

Philippa added: “I intended to be in the cathedral for the Easter service, but my charette broke a wheel and I made an overnight stop.”

“Well, now that you're here, let's have dinner,” Caris said.

They went into the dining hall. Caris opened the windows that looked onto the river. Cool, fresh air came in. She wondered what Merthin would do about Lolla. He said nothing, leaving her to stew upstairs, to Caris's relief: a brooding adolescent at the dinner table could bring down everyone's spirits.

They ate mutton boiled with leeks. Merthin poured red wine, and Philippa drank thirstily. She had become fond of wine. Perhaps it was her consolation.

While they were eating, Em came in looking anxious. “There's somebody at the kitchen door to see the mistress,” she said.

Merthin said impatiently: “Well, who is it?”

“He wouldn't mention his name, but he said the mistress would know him.”

“What kind of person?”

“A young man. By his clothes a peasant, not a town dweller.” Em had a snobbish dislike of villagers.

“Well, he sounds harmless. Let him come in.”

A moment later, in walked a tall figure with a hood pulled forward to cover most of his face. When he drew it back, Caris recognized Gwenda's elder son, Sam.

Caris had known him all his life. She had seen him born, had watched his slimy head emerge from the small body of his mother. She had observed him as he grew and changed and became a man. She saw Wulfric in him now, in the way he walked and stood and raised a hand slightly as he was about to speak. She had always suspected that Wulfric was not in fact his father—but, close as she was to Gwenda, she had never mentioned her doubt. Some questions were better left unasked. However, the suspicion had inevitably returned when she heard that Sam was wanted for the murder of Jonno Reeve. For Sam when born had had a look of Ralph.

Now he came up to Caris, lifted his hand in that gesture of Wulfric's, hesitated, then went down on one knee. “Save me, please,” he said.

Caris was horrified. “How can I save you?”

“Hide me. I've been on the run for days. I left Oldchurch in the dark and walked through the night and I've hardly rested since. Just now I tried to buy something to eat in a tavern and someone recognized me, and I had to run.”

He looked so desperate that she felt a surge of compassion. Nevertheless, she said: “But you can't hide here, you're wanted for murder!”

“It was no murder, it was a fight. Jonno struck first. He hit me with a leg iron—look.” Sam touched his face in two places, ear and nose, to indicate two scabbed gashes.

The physician in Caris could not help noting that the injuries were about five days old, and the nose was healing well enough though the ear really needed a stitch. But her main thought was that Sam should not be here. “You have to face justice,” she said.

“They'll take Jonno's side, they're sure to. I ran away from Wigleigh, for higher wages in Outhenby. Jonno was trying to take me back. They'll say he was entitled to chain a runaway.”

“You should have thought of that before you hit him.”

He said accusingly: “You employed runaways at Outhenby, when you were prioress.”

She was stung. “Runaways, yes—killers, no.”

“They will hang me.”

Caris was torn. How could she turn him away?

Merthin spoke. “There are two reasons why you can't hide here, Sam. One is that it's a crime to conceal a fugitive, and I'm not willing to put myself on the wrong side of the law for your sake, fond though I am of your mother. But the second reason is that everyone knows your mother is an old friend of Caris's, and if the Kingsbridge constables are searching for you this is the first place they will look.

“Is it?” Sam said.

He was not very bright, Caris knew—his brother, Davey, had all the brains.

Merthin said: “You could hardly think of a worse place than this to hide.” He softened. “Drink a cup of wine, and take a loaf of bread with you, and get out of town,” he said more kindly. “I'll have to find Mungo Constable and report that you were here, but I can walk slowly.” He poured wine into a wooden cup.

“Thank you.”

“Your only hope is to go far away where you aren't known and start a new life. You're a strong boy, you'll always find work. Go to London and join a ship. And don't get into fights.”

Philippa said suddenly: “I remember your mother…Gwenda?”

Sam nodded.

Philippa turned to Caris. “I met her at Casterham, when William was alive. She came to me about that girl in Wigleigh who had been raped by Ralph.”

“Annet.”

“Yes.” Philippa turned back to Sam. “You must be the baby she had in her arms at the time. Your mother is a good woman. I'm sorry for her sake that you're in trouble.”

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

T
he 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.