A Dreadful Penance (A Stephen Attebrook mystery Book 3) Read online

  A Dreadful Penance

  Jason Vail

  A DREADFUL PENANCE

  Copyright 2012, by Jason Vail

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Hawk Publishing book.

  Cover illustration copyright Shutterstock Images LLC and Nomad_Soul

  ISBN-13: 978-1470083342

  ISBN-10: 1470083345

  Hawk Publishing

  Tallahassee, FL 32312

  A Dreadful Penance

  NOVEMBER 1262

  Chapter 1

  “I tell you, war’s coming,” growled Sir Geoffrey Randall, the coroner of Herefordshire, losing his patience. “I can feel it.”

  “That’s your gout acting up, Geoff,” shouted one of the knights further down the dinner table.

  “My gout’s fine, I’ll have you know,” Sir Geoff snapped. “Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is gathering an army. I heard it again this morning.”

  “Did that red-haired girl at the Wobbly Kettle whisper it in your ear?” the knight shouted back.

  Sir Geoff scowled. Such sharp talk could often lead to trouble, but he and the knight had known each other since they were children, and had wrestled and fought together many times. So the scowl was not because he was angry, but because he could not overcome doubt.

  “No,” he said, “I got it in the Beast’s Market at Galdeford Gate.”

  “What? The Welsh have sent out criers to spread the news?”

  “From a drover,” Sir Geoff said.

  “What do drovers know?” replied Guy de Corsham, the sheriff.

  “He came in from Powys with a herd of cattle for sale,” Sir Geoff said. “He said that Llywelyn had called the muster.”

  “Just talk,” someone said.

  “So what?” one of the others said. “Barefoot rabble, the lot of them.”

  “You weren’t here six years ago when Llywelyn came out of the hills the last time,” Sir Geoff said. “Barefoot many may be and a rabble, but a dangerous rabble.”

  “It’s the wrong season for fighting,” yet another said. “No one goes to war in November. The rains turn the roads to mud if it doesn’t snow first. You can’t move an army over muddy roads.”

  “It has been quiet on the border, I’ll give you that,” Corsham said. “Damned quiet. Too quiet.”

  “Exactly,” Sir Geoff said. “Our Prince of Wales can only be planning trouble.” Ordinarily, the end of the threshing in late October and early November brought a season of raid and counter raid. Yet no word of any such raids had reached the ears about the table.

  There were snorts at the reference to Llywelyn as Prince of Wales. Wales in the best of times was an ungovernable land, split into many little powers that warred with each other as much as with the English. That disunity was one of the main reasons that England had been able to subdue much of south Wales. But the north remained untamed, and now this Llywelyn had arisen and brought enough unity to the north that he had the temerity to call himself prince of all the Welsh. And he was not weak. He had taken back the Four Cantreds in north Wales, land held by the English, and he had greater ambitions than the independence of Gwynedd and Powys.

  “Perhaps,” Sir Geoff said, “they have all gone to the muster.”

  “We’ll know there’s trouble afoot when Mortimer calls a muster,” said another of the knights at the table. The reference was to Roger Mortimer, the most powerful of the border lords. His seat lay at the great Wigmore castle only nine miles away from where they sat in the great hall of Ludlow castle.

  “You’ll know there’s trouble afoot when the Welsh are burning down your hayricks and firing your barns,” Sir Geoff said.

  But the talk moved on, as dinner table talk always does, meandering from subject to subject at whim and chance.

  Down at the end of the table, Stephen Attebrook, the deputy coroner, glanced toward the clerk at his side, Gilbert Wistwode. Stephen rated space at the table because he was a knight and Sir Geoff’s subordinate; Gilbert because he was Sir Geoff’s clerk. The occasion for the dinner was the sheriff’s and Sir Geoff’s attendance at the area’s hundred court. Their presence was mostly for ceremony. The sheriff made the rounds of all the hundred courts in the county twice a year to formally accept presentments in cases that required a referral to the king’s justices, and informally to keep his finger on the pulse of things. And this sheriff was new. He had been appointed only last spring, so he had a lot of pulses to check. This part of England was pretty solid for King Henry, but there were still those who supported the rebellious barons who looked for leadership to Simon de Montfort, the man who had forced the king to accept the Provisions of Oxford which limited his powers. These men had to be detected and watched, for although the king had thrown off the provisions, he was weak and the reformers were gathering strength for another go.

  “You know,” Gilbert said softly so that only Stephen could hear, “I wondered why it was so easy to get there and back unmolested.” Just a month ago, Gilbert had undertaken a dangerous journey deep into Wales on Stephen’s behalf to deliver his son to a Welsh cousin for safekeeping.

  Stephen frowned, alarmed that his boy, Christopher, was not so safe after all. When armies marched, no one nearby was safe, even if the army was your own. He had a great deal of experience in this, having just returned from nine years of fighting in Spain.

  “They’re far from the border,” Gilbert hastened to add, reading Stephen’s expression. “Trouble won’t find them there.”

  “I need to get him back,” Stephen said.

  “I suppose so,” Gilbert said. “You’ll be going alone?”

  Stephen smiled. “Ah, yes. You’ll be busy. The latrine needs to be burned out again.”

  “It could use a dose of flame,” Gilbert said, eyes shifting back and forth as he recalled a secret sunk in that latrine: the body of a man who had come to kill Stephen and been killed himself instead. Gilbert was a bald, stout man unused to fighting and riding. The prospect of a ride of any distance filled Gilbert with dismay, and the notion of a ride into darkest Wales, which had bandits behind every bush, was less attractive now than it had been a month ago.

  Stephen sighed. “I guess I’ll have to take Harry.”

  “He does not ride well either,” Gilbert said.

  “He rides better than you,” Stephen said. In fact, Harry, a legless beggar who lived in the stables of the Broken Shield Inn, did not ride at all as far as either of them knew. He clumped around on a flat piece of wood with rockers on the bottom and thick leather gloves to protect his hands.

  “That is unkind.”

  “To compare him with you, I know.”

  “I shall remember this, I really shall.”

  “And do what? Put lice in my bed? There are already more there than can inhabit it comfortably.”

  “Our beds are not lousy,” Gilbert said a bit too loud, for eyes turned in his direction. Gilbert, or rather his wife Edith, was the proprietor of one of the best inns in Ludlow, the Broken Shield, where Stephen currently lived in a drafty, cramped room at the top floor normally reserved for servants or storage. Stephen didn’t mind too much, since he had the room to himself, a luxury not often available to the inhabitants of inns, and it was free.

  Servants appeared with bowls of water and towels for the men at table to wash their hands, signifying that dinner was over.

  When the tables had been cleared away and stacked in another room, court resumed in the hall. Stephen had no more to do with the proceedings in the afternoon than he had in the morning. His role was to stand behind Sir Geoff’s chair
; not that Sir Geoff had that much to do himself. His work had been done in the morning, and now he and the sheriff merely observed while the hundred bailiff and the hundred jury took care of matters.

  It wasn’t long before Stephen’s feet began to ache again, especially his bad one, which a Moorish axe had shortened atop a castle wall in Spain. It seemed the afternoon would never end, filled with a continuing procession of little cases — disputes about fights; the theft of some chickens; despoliation by pigs allowed onto someone’s property causing a devastating loss of turnips; a freeman plowing up a villein’s field strips for his own use; the carrying off of someone’s firewood; a man beating his wife too severely in the opinion of the neighbors and the bailiff; a woman beating her husband over the head with a bucket. The stuff of everyday life in the country, familiar and comfortable. Stephen might have listened more attentively but the pain was too distracting.

  At last the end came, and the bailiff rose and adjourned the court. The crowd lingered, for this court, like any court, was an opportunity to socialize.

  Stephen should have stayed. It had been a long time since he had been home and he had a lot of catching up to do with people in the region. But his thoughts were on a distant child and getting the weight off his feet, a massage for his bad foot to take out the kinks, and a pot of ale by the fire in the Broken Shield.

  He spotted Gilbert in conversation with a wealthy peasant who had complained about someone damming his stream. Stephen had hoped for company on the walk back, but clearly it was not to be. He said good bye to Sir Geoff, who had acquired a pewter cup of wine. Sir Geoff nodded in response as he sniffed the wine with an appraising air, barely looking up.

  The cramped inner bailey of Ludlow castle smelled of rain, wet stone and damp wool, and when Stephen passed into the vast outer bailey, the aroma changed to horse manure from the big paddock to the right. Stephen was so used to the smell he hardly noticed it. And his attention was on the sky, for the gray cloud cover of the last few weeks, which had brought constant if light rain, had broken open to reveal a sky that remarkably was still blue. The last afternoon sun took advantage of the change of weather to throw down a golden cloak of light.

  Stephen sniffed the air. “I believe it’s getting warmer,” he said to himself as he went through the gate into the town. People said that the winters were colder than when he was a small child, and they had not been looking forward to this one, since the harvest had been short and food was expected to be scarce. Perhaps this warm snap would grow and last, and the winter would not be a hardship after all.

  Abreast of Mill Street, he passed the Wattepas house, where the journeymen and apprentice goldsmiths were hard at work, visible through the open windows. The formidable Mistress Wattepas was in the door and returned his greeting with a polite nod, not that she held any warmth for him after that business a few months ago with her former maid.

  Stephen paused at the top of Broad Street. The town looked so fresh and fine, bathed in the afternoon’s golden light. Up and down both High Street and Broad, all the shutters were open as if it were summer and he could see people moving within, going about their business.

  He had been a child at a fortified manor to the northwest, and he could remember when the Welsh came raiding: the mournful clanging of the alarm bell at the arrival of the messenger; the sudden panic at the sound of it; the rushing about; the manor’s folk streaming in from the village with only the goods they could carry, possessions dropped along the way leaving a trail of litter to mark the refugees’ passage; his mother and Tim the blacksmith fumbling to dress his father in mail, dropping the coif in their haste and fumbling with the ties; his father’s fierce expression as he waited impatiently; then father stalking out of the house, resplendent in mail from head to foot, blue-and-white shield on his back and helmet under his arm; the women and men and boys without arms in the hall, a pall of anxiety as thick as porridge in the air; how he had slipped out a window and run to the top of the embankment to peer through the gaps in the palisade, hoping for a glimpse of the enemy. Father had caught him there, but for a change had said nothing at his disobedience. The Welsh had not come to Hafton during his childhood, but they had seen smoke columns in the distance that marked the lands the raiders had visited.

  If the Welsh were gathering an army, more would be lost than some cattle, a few hayricks and part of the harvest. Stephen thought about the savage Welsh swarming over the walls and sacking Ludlow: of fires burning everywhere, people running and screaming, men dragged into the street to be butchered, women and girls to be raped, all the goods of all the houses strewn about like so much wreckage. He had seen such things more than once and had done his share of pillaging — it was the best way for a poor soldier to gain wealth, after all. He did not wish such a fate on peaceful Ludlow and the people he knew, or on anyone else. He hoped Sir Geoff was wrong.

  At last he reached Bell Lane and turned in. The Broken Shield sat only a few long strides down a lane so narrow that he practically had to flatten himself against a building wall to get out of the way of an ox cart headed toward Broad Street.

  He entered the inn, mindful to wipe his feet on the mat so as not to invoke the wrath of Edith Wistwode or her daughter Jennie, who were demons to anyone who dared to dirty the inn’s floor. It was made of wood and very costly, one of the few such floors in town.

  It was early enough that no one had taken his favorite spot between the fire and the stairs. He settled onto a bench as Nan, one of the maid servants, deposited a clay cup of ale on the table.

  The best way to get into Wales without being noticed was to stay off the roads, he thought as he sipped the ale and stared out the window. He had never snuck into Wales before, but he had slipped into Grenada a time or two. It couldn’t be much different. He began to think about how he would do it and what he would take with him.

  Stephen had his boot off and was massaging the stump of his bad foot when the Shield’s door banged open and Gilbert hurried over, leaving dirty footprints on the floor.

  Stephen had time to note the grim expression on his face. Gilbert said in the grave tone that he employed only when announcing a death: “Sir Geoff needs you right away.”

  “Ah, Stephen, there you are,” Sir Geoff said as Stephen and Gilbert slipped into the room. “I wondered where you had got to.”

  They were in the lower chamber of one of the west towers overlooking the River Teme. Stephen looked about for a dead man, but all the bodies in the room were on their feet and quite alive.

  “Stephen,” Sir Geoff went on, “may I present Prior Hugh.”

  Prior Hugh sat on a cushioned chair opposite Sir Geoff, both of them by the fire where they could enjoy the best of the heat from the single fireplace cut into the walls. It was hard to gauge his height, but he seemed a small man. He had the sharp face of a clerk, handsome despite the clefts on either side of his mouth. The austerity of the face, however, was offset by dark eyes that seemed as though they could glow with warmth but now were filled with anxiety and concern, and unruly hair tinged with gray that, although it appeared an attempt had been made to tame it with a comb, fell in thick ringlets from the bare tonsure at the dome of his skull.

  He wore the habit of an Augustinian monk, and he was not the only one so dressed in the room. Two other monks stood by the slit window overlooking the Teme. But they evidently were not important enough to rate an introduction.

  “Your honor,” Stephen said, “a pleasure.”

  Hugh nodded, but did not look Stephen in the eye and did not seem the least glad to meet him.

  “Stephen is my deputy,” Sir Geoff said.

  “How fortunate,” said Hugh.

  “He will provide you will all the assistance you require.”

  “I had hoped for . . .” Hugh let his words die.

  “For what?”

  “Well, that you might come yourself.”

  “I am in no condition to undertake such a journey. And besides, what would be the point?
It’s outside my jurisdiction. I cannot leave the county.”

  “It isn’t far.”

  “It is farther than I am prepared to go.”

  “Of course,” Hugh said politely, accepting the rebuff.

  “He has a habit for getting into trouble, but has proven himself adept at finding things out, it seems.” Sir Geoff squinted at Stephen. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  “But our priory!” Hugh said, giving way to agitation. “This matter could destroy us!”

  “What matter?” Stephen asked.

  Sir Geoff fixed him with a glare. “One of Prior Hugh’s monks has been murdered and he wants to find out who is responsible.”

  “He died in bed,” Gilbert said as he warmed himself by the fire after the monks had withdrawn.

  Sir Geoff glowered as if a secret had been improvidently revealed, although the matter was certainly not a secret between them.

  “That’s what one of the brothers told me,” Gilbert hastened to add. “I don’t know about you, but I hope to die in bed myself, although rather more gently.” He shuddered. “A cut throat, a most unpleasant way to go.”

  “Better that than hanging,” Sir Geoff said, with the aristocrat’s aversion to the rope.

  “I can’t go,” Stephen said from the other side of the room, far from the fire, where the cold of autumn seeped from the stone walls.

  “What do you mean you can’t go?” Sir Geoff said.

  “I have other business.”

  “What other business?”

  “A family matter.”

  “I am family, damn it,” Sir Geoff said. He was, in fact, a distance cousin by marriage to his third wife. Everyone who lived in this part of the county seemed to be related somehow or other. “And I’m ordering you to go.”