The Stallions of Woodstock (Domesday Series Book 6) Read online

  Embedded in the middle of his back was a dagger.

  Chapter One

  They could not believe that it was still afternoon. It was more like the dead of night. The sky was so dark and menacing that it seemed as if it would drop down at any moment like a gigantic blanket to smother them in its unforgiving blackness and wipe out all memory of their existence. It was the worst possible time to be caught in open country. Ralph Delchard was leading the cavalcade at a brisk pace but there was no way that they could outrun the storm that was coming.

  ‘How far is the next village?’ asked Golde.

  ‘Too far,’ said Ralph, glancing up at the swirling clouds. ‘We are going to get wet, I fear. Thoroughly and horribly wet.’

  ‘Is there nowhere to shelter?’

  ‘None that I see, my love.’

  The first rumble of thunder set off a flurry of neighing among the horses. Their eyes rolled in alarm and their ears twitched apprehensively. When forked lightning suddenly ripped open the sky and caught them in the devastating brilliance of its glare, the animals were even more disturbed. Two bucked violently, a third tried to bolt and all had to be brought under control by their riders.

  There were nineteen in the party. Behind Ralph and Golde were Gervase Bret, Maurice Pagnal, a new commissioner, and Brother Columbanus, their scribe. Ten of Ralph's knights rode in pairs with four from Maurice's personal retinue bringing up the rear. The escort was there to provide safety on the journey to Oxford and visible testament to the importance of the visitors once they reached it, but the soldiers had no wish to ride into the town like so many drowned men on horseback. When Ralph increased his speed, they responded willingly.

  There were no first warning drops of rain. The deluge was instantaneous. Stinging sheets of water fell out of the heavens, drenching them within seconds and turning the track over which they rode into a squelching quagmire. They splashed their way on until a stand of trees came into view. There was some cover under the branches but danger, too, from the lightning as it dazzled murderously again directly overhead. Spurning the dubious protection of the trees, Ralph took them round a bend and down a gentle slope. It was only then that hope beckoned.

  The hamlet nestled in a hollow less than a quarter of a mile away. It was only a small cluster of mean houses but it held a promise of welcome hospitality to the travellers at that moment. With their spirits lifted, they quickened their pace even more and tried to ignore the driving rain and the capricious wind which had sprung up to torment them. Shelter was their sole concern. Relief was at hand.

  As they got closer to the hamlet, however, they realised that it was a cruel illusion. Glimpsed through the downpour, it had looked like a dry haven in the midst of a roaring tempest. They now saw that it was a crumbling ruin, long deserted by its inhabitants and inconsiderately left to fend for itself against the depredations of time and sustained assaults from inclement weather.

  Golde sighed with disappointment and resigned herself to a continued soaking but Ralph spied some comfort. Bringing the bedraggled column to a halt, he took a quick inventory of the settlement. Thatch on the hovels had perished or been burned but there was still a vestigial roof over the small barn, and, though many walls had started to tumble, enough remained to provide a modicum of defence against the storm.

  Ralph barked a series of peremptory orders and jabbed at the buildings with his finger. Riders dismounted, horses were tethered, cover was sought. An arm around her shoulders, Ralph conducted Golde into the barn. When they were joined by Gervase and the grumbling Maurice, there was barely enough of the roof left to shield them all. Brother Columbanus stood in the open a few yards away with a benign smile of acceptance on his cherubic features. His tonsure glistened and raindrops ran freely from his nose, chin and ears.

  ‘Come in under the roof,’ invited Gervase.

  ‘I am happy enough where I am,’ said the monk.

  ‘You will be soaked to the skin.’

  ‘It will refresh me, Gervase. Rain is a gift from God and He does not mean us to flee from it in terror. It is something to be savoured.’ He turned his face upward. ‘We should offer a prayer of thanks for this blessing.’

  ‘The fellow is mad!’ exclaimed Ralph.

  ‘Or downright stupid,’ said Maurice. ‘Look at the fool!’

  ‘Come over here, Brother Columbanus,’ urged Golde, moving closer to the barn wall. ‘We have made room for you.’

  ‘There is no need,’ the monk assured her, closing his eyes as the water cascaded off his face. ‘This rain brings joy. It will enrich the soil and stimulate new growth. It is all part of Nature's pattern. Even the thunder and lightning are sent by God for a purpose.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ralph. ‘To frighten the horses.’

  ‘To signal His displeasure, my lord. We should take note of God's rebuke and strive to mend our ways.’

  ‘We would rather strive to keep dry.’

  ‘And so must you,’ added Gervase.

  Darting out into the rain, he took the monk by the arm and pulled him back under the roof. Brother Columbanus did not resist. He was a short, stocky man in his thirties with an unassailable buoyancy. While others might complain about the setbacks on their journey, Columbanus somehow managed to view them in a kindly and uncensorious light. Gervase liked him but Ralph was irritated by the monk's unrelenting optimism.

  The other new member of the commission took a more sceptical view of the world. Maurice Pagnal looked out at the storm and shook his head in bewilderment.

  ‘What on earth am I doing here?’ he wondered.

  ‘Serving the King,’ said Ralph.

  ‘How can I serve anyone in weather such as this?’

  ‘You are grown soft, Maurice. Have you so soon forgotten? We came to this country as soldiers, ready to fight in wind, rain, sleet or snow to achieve victory over our enemies. When did we let the weather get the upper hand over us?’

  ‘Never, Ralph,’ said the other with a chuckle. ‘I recall a time in Yorkshire when we battled in a hailstorm. But my soldiering did not end here in England like yours. I saw service in Sicily and beyond. A helm and hauberk are rough companions in the baking heat. The sun roasted us like chickens on a spit.’

  Maurice Pagnal was a grizzled warrior, a wiry man with a craggy face, who had spent most of his adult life in one army or another and had finally retired to his honour in Dorset. He had been asked to join the commissioners when Canon Hubert, their appointed colleague, was indisposed and, for all his protests, Maurice was a willing member of a team sent out to enforce the King's writ. Ralph found his cheerful gruffness infinitely preferable to the pomposity of the canon but Gervase was reserving his judgement on their new fellow. Maurice was a little too rough-hewn for him.

  Deprived of the pleasure of attacking them on the open road, the storm intensified its fury, rattling the rafters with a fierce wind and blowing the rain vengefully in at them. Thunder and lightning tortured the horses afresh, and they grew ever more restless. Dispersed throughout the hovels, the soldiers found what cover they could. The hamlet was a poor refuge but it saved them from the worst of the wild afternoon.

  Ralph moved his head to avoid a drip through the roof.

  ‘What a dreadful place in which to lodge!’ he said.

  ‘I fear that you must take some blame for that,’ observed Gervase softly.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Indirectly.’

  ‘I have never been near this God-forsaken spot before.’

  ‘I think you have, Ralph,’ said Gervase. ‘Did you not tell me that Duke William led his invading army west along the Thames and crossed the river at Wallingford?’

  ‘Why, so we did,’ recalled Maurice. ‘Cutting down everyone who stood in our way. Laying waste. You and I were comrades-in-arms, Ralph. We did our share of destruction.’

  ‘Perhaps we did,’ admitted Ralph, uneasy about a topic of conversation which would unsettle his Saxon wife. ‘But I do not see why we should drag up such memories
now. That is all in the distant past.’

  ‘Not to us,’ said Golde quietly.

  Gervase took in the hamlet with a sweep of his arm.

  ‘Here stands the evidence. Wallingford is no more than a mile or two away. This place must have been raided and its inhabitants killed or driven out. We shall find many such places in Oxfordshire, I believe.’

  Golde nodded. ‘And in my own county of Herefordshire.’

  ‘War is war,’ said Maurice dismissively. ‘Resistance had to be put down and that is what we did. It needs no apology.’ His face crinkled into a smile. ‘And there were benefits to you as well, Golde. If you take the long view. Thanks to the ambition of Duke William, as he then was, you are now married to a Norman lord with fine estates in Hampshire. In some sense, you are a true beneficiary of the Conquest.’

  ‘In some sense,’ she confessed. ‘But not all.’

  Ralph shifted his feet. ‘Enough of this idle banter.’

  ‘Gervase has made a fair point,’ said Brother Columbanus seriously. ‘You and my lord Maurice were part of an army which left a trail of destruction across England. I sincerely hope that both of you did penance for the sins you committed during that time.’

  ‘What sins?’ said Maurice defiantly. ‘We committed no sins, Brother Columbanus. We merely obeyed orders.’

  ‘You cannot shuffle off responsibility like that.’

  ‘We can do as we wish.’

  ‘Bishop Ermenfrid imposed a series of penances,’ said the monk with disarming mildness. ‘Slaughter on such a scale could not be ignored by the Church. That would be a sin in itself. Anyone who killed a man in the great battle of Hastings, for instance, was required to do penance for one year for each man he slew. Anyone who wounded a man …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Ralph. ‘We know all this and do not need your recitation. Why talk of things which happened twenty years ago when we have enough to preoccupy us in the present?’

  ‘Past and present meet in this hamlet,’ said Gervase.

  Ralph grew testy. ‘If it is the only way to shut you up, I will concede your argument. Because a Norman army may – just may, mark you – have once marched through this place, we now have nowhere properly to shelter. If Maurice and I and the rest of us had had the sense to spare this hamlet, we would all be warm and dry at this moment in one of these dwellings. Will that content you, Gervase?’

  ‘Admirably!’

  Ralph's outburst broke the tension and they all laughed aloud at the absurdity of his words. He hugged Golde to him and she squeezed his arm affectionately. Marriage to a Saxon woman had made him see his earlier years in England in a different light and he did not like to reflect on them. Gervase was pleased with the way that Brother Columbanus had supported him but unsurprised by Maurice's blunt attitude. All shades of opinion were covered by the makeshift roof.

  The five of them shook with inexplicable mirth. Huddled in corners or tucked hard against walls, the rest of the party looked on in blank amazement. What could anyone find to laugh at in the middle of a pelting storm?

  Ralph's arm was still around his wife's shoulders.

  ‘Your mantle is sodden, my love,’ he noted. ‘We really need a fire to get ourselves dry.’

  ‘The sun will do that office in time,’ said Columbanus, searching the clouds. ‘It will not be long before it peeps through at us again, I fancy.’

  Another rumble of thunder seemed to undermine this prediction but there was no lightning this time and the rain was slowly easing. The wind began to lose its bite. The horses were gradually calming down.

  ‘I will be glad to get to Oxford,’ said Maurice.

  ‘So will I, my lord,’ agreed Gervase, ‘but I doubt if they will be as glad to see us.’

  ‘Nobody likes tax-gatherers.’

  ‘We are much more than that, Maurice,’ corrected Ralph with a touch of pride. ‘We are royal commissioners, empowered to investigate a number of irregularities in the returns from this county. Our task is to root out fraud and felony as well as to assign taxes to their rightful place. It is crucial work but it will not win us many friends.’

  ‘What sort of town is Oxford?’ asked Golde.

  ‘A dull one, I hope,’ said Maurice with a yawn. ‘Dull and dreary. I am so desperately tired of excitement. From what I can judge, our work should be completed in less than a week. Then I can ride back home to Dorset where I belong.’

  ‘Do not count on that,’ said Ralph.

  ‘But everything seems so straightforward.’

  ‘It always does. But it never is.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Ralph Delchard grimaced and heaved a deep sigh.

  ‘Experience, my friend,’ he said. ‘Bitter experience.’

  Hours later, Bertrand Gamberell was still seething with rage.

  ‘The villain must be caught!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘He will be,’ said Robert d'Oilly.

  ‘It was foul murder.’

  ‘The crime will be answered, Bertrand.’

  ‘I will tear him to pieces with my bare hands!’

  ‘That would be a ruinous folly on your part.’

  ‘But he killed one of my men.’

  ‘I know,’ said the other, ‘and I appreciate how you must feel. But do not let anger outweigh common sense. You will not cancel out one murder by committing another. It might assuage your ire but it will also bring you within the compass of the law. Leave this matter in my hands, Bertrand. I will deal with the assassin when he is apprehended.’

  ‘If he is,’ said Gamberell sourly.

  Robert d'Oilly bristled. ‘Do you question my ability and my strength of purpose?’

  ‘No, my lord sheriff.’

  ‘Do you presume to teach me my office?’

  ‘No, my lord sheriff.’

  ‘Then let us hear no more of your complaints.’

  Bertrand Gamberell bit back a reply and lapsed into a brooding silence. The two men were riding side by side on their way to Oxford. Behind them was the rough cart on which the dead man lay, his body covered by some sacking, blood still seeping from his wound. Six of the sheriff's knights were in attendance and at the rear of the party, still shocked by the murder of his companion, Gamberell's other soldier pulled Hyperion along on a lead-rein.

  Death enforced a slow pace and a sombre atmosphere. No words were spoken for the best part of a mile. Gamberell was fuming inwardly. To lose the race anyway would have been a severe blow to his self-esteem: to be cheated of victory by such vile means was quite unendurable. His mind was a hissing cauldron of retribution. Yet he did not wish to offend the sheriff. Robert d'Oilly was a big, solid man with the broad shoulders and rugged features of a veteran soldier. He held sway over the whole county and was merciless with anyone who sought to question his authority.

  It was the sheriff who finally broke the silence.

  ‘His name was Walter Payne, you say?’

  ‘Yes, my lord sheriff.’

  ‘What manner of man was he?’

  ‘The best in my service,’ said Gamberell sadly. ‘Walter was brave, honest and loyal. A fine horseman, too. He knew how to coax the best out of Hyperion.’

  ‘Hyperion?’

  ‘My stallion. He has never been beaten in a race.’

  ‘Until today.’

  ‘Until today,’ repeated the other grimly. ‘Someone will be forced to pay for this outrage.’

  ‘Have you any notion who that person might be?’

  ‘None, my lord sheriff.’

  ‘Did Walter have any enemies?’

  ‘I'm sure he did but we do not need to search among them. We must look elsewhere. Walter's misfortune was to be in the saddle today. He was killed in order to stop Hyperion from winning the race. The assassin was really striking at me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hatred? Envy? Malice? Who can tell?’

  ‘We will root out the truth of this, Bertrand.’

  ‘I hope so, and speedily.’
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  ‘All that is needful has been done,’ said d'Oilly firmly. ‘My men searched the scene of the crime for clues and they are now combing the forest of Woodstock itself.’

  ‘A man could hide for ever in there and elude capture.’

  ‘We will flush him out. And then …’

  ‘I'll hang him from the tallest tree.’

  ‘No, Bertrand. He will stand trial in a proper manner. If his guilt be proved, he will not escape the direst sentence.’ His voice darkened. ‘Nor will you, if you attempt to take the law into your own hands. That is no idle threat but a stern warning. I will brook no meddling. Is that understood?’

  Gamberell held back another heated rejoinder. Nothing would be gained by alienating the one man in the county who might be able to track down the assassin. He gave a reluctant nod of consent. The solemn procession moved on. Hyperion let out a long neigh of sorrow by way of an epitaph on his rider.

  It was late evening by the time the commissioners reached their destination and Oxford was largely in shadow. That did not dismay them. They were not in the mood for sightseeing. With their bodies weary from the long ride and their apparel damp from the thunderstorm, their main priorities were food, rest and an opportunity to change into fresh clothing. All else could wait until a fitter time.

  The only building which they were able to appraise to any degree was the one which opened its huge studded gates to them. Even in hazy silhouette, Oxford Castle was an imposing structure. Like other Norman fortresses which had appeared in such giddy profusion all over England, it followed the standard motte and bailey design, but it differed from most castles in two significant respects. It was built of stone and it was not set up on a commanding height to give it prospect and natural defensive qualities.

  Robert d'Oilly, its first constable, had spent over fifteen years constructing and extending Oxford Castle. It stood at the west end of the town and guarded the river approaches with chilling effectiveness. Those in its massive keep or behind its high, forbidding walls were not simply well protected. Their castle was a declaration of Norman intent to maintain their supremacy over the Saxon population of the area. When they looked up at the four-storeyed tower of the church of St George's-in-the-Castle, the citizens of Oxford were not reassured by the presence of religion within a military compound. The fortress was to them a symbol of oppression and – as some of the bolder spirits in the community had discovered – a hideous place of imprisonment.