The Elixir of Death Read online

  Hilda was pressed to take food and drink and afterwards offered to nurse the new baby, a job she remembered well from her days in Holcombe, where she had three younger brothers and a sister. With the other women clustered around, even though one was still plucking a pair of ducks, she explained all that she knew about the death of her husband and went on to tell them of the murder of the lord of Shillingford and the attack on his son and steward, which seemed to the coroner to be connected with the deaths of Thorgils and his crew.

  The women were round eyed with wonder at these tales of mayhem from the world outside, which on top of the shipmen's killing and the murder of old Joel from Burgh Island gave them more to gossip about than for years past. Like the old man at St Anne's Chapel, they were concerned at an unaccompanied woman moving around the countryside, but Hilda impressed on them that she felt it her bounden duty to find out all she could about the death of her husband.

  She said the same to William Vado and his reeve when they returned late in the afternoon. When he discovered that she was a friend and indeed now almost a business partner of Sir John de Wolfe and one of the Exeter portreeves, he became deferential and sympathetic.

  'Tomorrow, we will take you to where the vessel was beached and also to where your unfortunate husband was found,' he promised. 'Also you may see the church where his body lay in dignified rest for a time. No doubt our Father Walter will speak to you to reassure you on that point.'

  That night, Hilda was given one of the best mattresses, one stuffed with goose feathers rather than straw or ferns. She bedded down with the women and children in the side room, Martha and William Vado taking the other small chamber where the new baby slept in an old box alongside them.

  The following morning she followed the itinerary that the bailiff had suggested, calling at the church for a prayer and a rather short, stiff interview with the parish priest, who seemed unimpressed by her pilgrimage to the scenes of her husband's demise. Then William found her a pony, which she sat on easily with just a sack for a saddle, and they went down to the beach opposite Burgh Island to view the resting place of the Mary and the place where Thorgils and his men had been found. She looked up at the now deserted cell on top of the island and was told that Joel had been laid to rest in the churchyard at Ringmore, where he had spent the last two decades of his life.

  'The parson revealed that he had been a Knight of the Templars,' said William Vado. 'But no one seemed to know anything of his family, and we thought he would have preferred to be laid to rest among us.'

  Hilda realised that she had learned nothing at all of any use to her from these well-meaning people, mainly because they had nothing to tell her. What now exercised her mind was the shadowy image of three black-robed monks, who seemed to have appeared too many times for it to be coincidence. They had been seen on the track up from the other beach near Ringmore, then at St Anne's Chapel and once again far away near Shillingford. True, it seemed at their first appearance that there were four, rather than three, but she felt that these appearances might have some significance.

  Now this single-minded woman wanted to pursue their last sighting in this area, which seemed to be down the road from the chapel, according to the poor vision of the old custodian. She needed to get away from Ringmore now and with a twinge of conscience at her deception, decided to fabricate a means of leaving her most recent hosts.

  'I am meeting another group of pilgrims at St Anne's Chapel,' she lied. 'I met them in church at Salcombe some days ago and they said they would be returning from Tavistock to take ship at Salcombe again, passing the chapel hopefully around noon.'

  The Vado family insisted on filling her with food before she left, and the bailiff sent his older sister and Osbert, his reeve, as chaperone and escort on the short journey up to the chapel. They wanted to stay with her to see her safely reunited with her mythical pilgrims, but she managed to dissuade them by saying that she would remain in the chapel in prayer for her husband and his men until the travellers arrived. Thankfully, the bandy old man did not blurt out his ignorance of any pilgrims due to arrive and, with expressions of genuine good feeling, the pair from Ringmore said farewell and left for home.

  After they had vanished around a bend in the track, Ivo de Brun, the scarecrow that cared for the little chapel, gave Hilda a conspiratorial leer.

  'I think, my lady, that you have other things in mind.'

  She sighed and nodded. 'I have indeed! I have sworn not to rest until the murderers of my husband have been brought to justice. I need to follow every suggestion that might lead the law officers to them.'

  'I told you that the crowner has already been here on that mission,' the old man pointed out. 'He went down to Bigbury, but I doubt he learned anything useful.'

  'I know Sir John well,' she answered. 'He has told me of the monks you saw and he tried to discover more, but to no avail. Yet the itching of my thumbs tells me that some mystery attaches to those men.'

  The custodian shrugged his pitifully thin shoulders. 'Go you then to Bigbury, lady. It is but a mile or so down the road, so I doubt any harm can befall you in that distance. Then return here and wait for more travellers who can see you safely back to Salcombe, for the roads are no place for a solitary woman, especially at this time of year. It threatens snow again today.'

  The sky had a pink-tinged greyness that confirmed his forecast, but at least the cutting east wind had abated. Hilda pulled her pilgrim's cloak more firmly around her and thanked the old man before setting off down the other branch of the junction. She trudged along the narrow track, the ground firm where the mud had dried. On either side were scattered bushes and low trees almost devoid of leaves. There was no cultivated land here, and beyond the irregular tracts of heathland the edge of the forest stood in mottled shades of black and brown. There were no travellers on this path, and the only life she saw was a slinking red fox and a pair of circling buzzards. More used to the mild bustle of Dawlish, for a while she had the fancy that all humanity had perished and she was alone in a world deserted by all but the animals and birds.

  It seemed a long mile, but eventually she came into the small hamlet, a dozen crofts and tofts around a church, a blacksmith's hut and a cottage with a drooping bush above the door, the universal sign of a tavern. Behind the village, a band of strip-fields ran up to the edge of the dark forest, which loomed oppressively into the distance, where it dipped down towards the valley of the Avon.

  Though hammering came from the open front of the smithy, there was almost no one in sight, other than an old woman sitting on a tree stump outside her tumbledown cottage, spinning wool from a distaff under her arm on to a spindle hanging from one gnarled hand. She looked up curiously as Hilda approached, the sight of a solitary woman being unusual in these parts, even if she was wearing the garb of a pilgrim.

  'Are you lost, good girl?' the crone asked, her bright eyes taking in every detail of the new arrival's appearance. 'There's nothing down this road other than the river and the sea.'

  'I thought I could get back to Aveton, mother,' answered Hilda, putting on her strongest rural accent, honed in her own village of Holcombe.

  'You can, if the tide is out,' replied the dame. 'Though you'll be hard pressed to walk there before nightfall.'

  'Can I find some food and drink here, mother?' she replied. 'I have some pennies and that looks like an alehouse.'

  'Madge will give you something there, no doubt. But a fair woman like you should not be walking the roads alone, especially these days.'

  Something in the spinner's voice made Hilda take notice.

  'What is happening these days to give you concern, mother?' she asked.

  The old woman's brows came together and she looked somehow furtive.

  'Strange things are going on in the forest hereabouts,' she muttered. 'Ghostly figures seen at night, food and livestock vanishing. Voices calling in the woods ... I fear for our souls in this vill.'

  Hilda felt a frisson of unease shiver up her spin
e. 'Have you seen three or four Benedictines come through here at any time lately?' she asked.

  The aged woman shook her head. 'I hear that some king's officer came asking the same question not long ago. But we've seen no monks here, only ghostly shapes in white robes in the woods, according to our sexton.'

  Hilda thanked the lady and moved on to the alehouse, where the buxom widow Madge told her much the same story after she had given her a plain but wholesome meal for a ha'penny.

  'The village men are fond of their drink, but so they have been these many years,' she explained. 'Yet it's only in the last few weeks that they have been telling these tales about strange goings-on in the forest.'

  Hilda had given a cautious version of her own story, of the widow seeking answers about her husband's murder. The ale-wife, a widow herself, had responded with sympathy, though she too was surprised and curious about an attractive woman wandering the byroads alone.

  'What do you think is the explanation for these visions?' asked Hilda, as she sat at the only table and ate fat bacon, eggs and beans, with fresh bread washed down with cider.

  Madge, her ample bottom overflowing a stool near by, lifted her hands in supplication.

  'Who knows such things? Even allowing for the romancing of some of our menfolk with too much ale in them, something unusual is happening in the forest. Months ago, men sent by the manor-lord went into the woods on the other side from the village and stayed there a week or more. We heard distant hammering, but no one was allowed near - not that anyone wished to prowl, given the villains and outlaws that sometimes infest the forest.'

  'Is there anything deep in the woods? Buildings or suchlike?' asked Hilda.

  'Only ruins, those of an ancient castle and next to it what was once a priory in the old days. I've never seen them myself, I keep clear of such places, but my father spoke of these derelict remains. He used to go in there poaching, I must admit. Men are too afeared these days - one lad a month ago was beaten up and almost killed by some rough fellows in there.'

  At that point, the landlady went off to pour a quart of ale for a ploughman, who seemed to have come in mainly to ogle this handsome woman who had descended upon their village. Left alone with her trencher of food, Hilda thought about what the two village women had told her about the surrounding forest and became convinced that something was going on in there that was connected with these crimes. Her feelings were mainly based on what John de Wolfe had told her about this whole area ... the murder of the shipmen, the warnings from Winchester about a new Prince John rising, the possibility of Moorish involvement and, not least, the appearance in several sites of these hooded monks. To such an intelligent and determined woman as Hilda of Dawlish, this was a challenge that could not be ignored. If there was someone hidden away in those woods, then surely a circumspect reconnoitre might be well worth the effort?

  'Can you give me a corner to sleep in tonight, good-wife?' she asked, when Madge had finished serving the nosy villein. 'I need to be at St Anne's Chapel tomorrow to meet my pilgrim friends and return to Salcombe,' she said, manipulating the truth again.

  They agreed on a palliasse alongside Madge's own in the lean-to behind the inn, as well as another meal that evening. Then Hilda announced that she was going for a walk to familiarise herself with the village, while daylight lasted, it now being early afternoon. The ale-wife looked troubled at this and urged her not to stray too far.

  'Certainly don't go into the forest,' she declared. 'And be sure to be back well before dark!'

  Hilda demurely agreed, put on her cloak and, once out of sight of the tavern, made straight for the edge of the forest. The lonely atmosphere of deep woodland held no terrors for her, a country girl who had spent well over half her life around Holcombe. She found a deer path and, by a combination of natural instinct and observation of the motion of the drifting grey clouds above the trees, aimed her feet directly away from the village, towards where she gathered the old ruins lay.

  After the better part of an hour, she began to wonder whether she was doing the most foolish thing in her whole life, blundering about an unknown forest on the strength of a couple of drunken yokels' fantasies about ghosts. She eventually stopped and began debating whether she should turn around and go back. Then she heard a horse neigh in the distance and wondered if she had come almost right through the trees and reached the other side of the forest. The next thing she noticed was through her nose, rather than her ears. A waft of woodsmoke reached her nostrils, and carefully she walked ahead again, tracking down the smell until she could see a thin line of grey smoke wavering in the wind. It seemed to be coming from the ground itself, and when she delicately trod towards it, saw that it was indeed rising from the centre of a larger thicket of brambles.

  That was the last she saw for some time, as suddenly an oat-sack was thrown over her head from behind. Rough hands pinned her arms to her side, dragging her off her feet and carrying her bodily away, her cries of distress muffled by the smelly hessian of the dirty sack.

  During the week that followed, life for John de Wolfe went on much the same as usual - at least, much the same as since he had moved out of Martin's Lane and taken up residence with his mistress Nesta. He was by turns happy and uneasy, then content and irritated. Life had changed radically, even though the people he was with were the same and the orbit of his life still revolved mostly within the same quarter of a mile.

  He sat now at his table in the Bush, warmed by the same fire and drinking the same good ale brewed by the woman he loved, yet he could no longer slump by his own hearth, stroking the head of his old hound until it was time for a leisurely amble down to the Bush. He leaned now against the door-post of the inn's cook shed, watching Nesta and her girls preparing food for hungry customers, yet he could no longer perch on Mary's little stool in her kitchen, cadging hot pastries and gossiping about the day's events.

  Passionate nights in Nesta's warm bed were a delight, and he certainly did not miss the barren mattress in Matilda's solar. But even up in the little room in the Bush's loft, he felt it was somehow unseemly for Gwyn or a castle man-at-arms to come tapping on Nesta's door when there was some midnight emergency, rather than being woken by Mary climbing the solar steps. In short, the familiar routines of the past couple of years had become so ingrained that this abrupt change to a different set of routines had unsettled him. He realised this well enough himself, but was powerless to shake off the mood of unease. John even daydreamed about giving up this split lifestyle and running off with Nesta to live in Wales or Cornwall, making a fresh start. But the practicalities were insuperable. There was his obligation to the King to continue as coroner, as well as Nesta's attachment to her beloved Bush, which gave her both an intense interest in life as well as a fair living.

  The cold light of every morning saw him back in his chamber in the castle gatehouse, and the familiar round of duties drove any decisions about the future direction of his life into the background once again. John called briefly at his house in Martin's Lane every day, choosing early afternoon when he knew Matilda would either be snoring in her bed during an afternoon siesta or on her knees in St Olave's church. He went there to check that Mary had sufficient money to meet domestic expenses and to replenish the cash in his chest in the solar for Matilda's benefit, even though she had an income of her own from her father, dispensed by Richard de Revelle. John's earnings came from his venture with Hugh de Relaga, which was increasing in value as the months went by, thanks to the boom in Exeter's economy.

  On calling at the house almost a week after he had moved out, he learned from Mary that on this particular day he need not have timed his visit to avoid his wife, as she had had just departed again with her brother to his manor at Revelstoke, taking Lucille with her.

  'She didn't say when she was expecting to come back,' added Mary, severely. 'So you just carry on back to your hideout until you come to your senses!'

  Any other cook-maid would have received a whipping from their master for
such forthright criticism, but given their past history, John knew that Mary was trying to be helpful- and deep down, he suspected that she was right.

  Hilda was a very intelligent woman and she rapidly decided that her best chance of survival was to play the part of a simple peasant who would be no danger to anyone. It soon became clear that she had not been captured by common outlaws who were intent on robbery and rape. After she was thrust inside the coarse sack, a rope was tied over it around her waist, effectively pinning her arms. Then she was half dragged, half carried a short distance before being thrown to the ground, a heavy foot planted on her back preventing her from getting up.

  Two gruff voices began debating her fate, using English with a coarse local accent. At that moment, she determined to speak only in that language and pretend to be ignorant of the French that someone else now began using, this time in far more refined tones.

  The upshot of the discussion was that the two Saxons, Alfred and Ulf, had found a woman wandering within a few hundred paces of the camp and had brought her back with them. The two guards spoke abysmal French, but their master now replied in passable English.

  'Take that damned sack off and let's have a look at her.'

  The rope was loosened and the hessian bag hoisted over her head. Hilda found herself lying in long grass inside some kind of ruin, with remnants of old masonry and a few dilapidated shacks. A tall and rather handsome man was standing over her, as the two burly ruffians displayed her much as though they had brought in a deer from the hunt.

  'Who are you, woman? And why were you spying on this place?' demanded Raymond de Blois in French.

  She looked blankly up at him, pretending not to understand. The younger oaf repeated the question in English, ogling the blonde as he realised for the first time that she was attractive, even though she was almost old enough to be his mother.

  Hilda rapidly improvised her story. Haltingly and fearfully, she claimed to be a pilgrim who had come to St Anne's well to pray and collect holy water to treat her mother's advancing blindness. She was staying in the village while she waited for her fellow pilgrims to return the next day, but had got lost in the woods while out looking for mushrooms. Ulf called her a silly cow for expecting to find mushrooms this late in the year, but did not seem to find this a significant flaw in her story. Raymond de Blois studied her dishevelled appearance, and her plain rural clothing and accepted that she was some pathetic Saxon, of no danger to their mission.