Painted in Blood Read online

  ‘It is a desert. It is dead.’

  ‘Nonsense. It is Dean Moor,’ I said, and whistled my horse into a trot. With a pleading look, Letice set off after me.

  It was as if I were riding through my own dreams. Here were the hills I saw when I closed my eyes at night. The tumbled grey rocks with their orange blazes of lichen, the mossy, grassy, sheep-dung tang of the air, the hunched, wind-crippled blackthorn trees – all this I knew as well as the lines on the palm of my hand. The swelling joy returned ten-fold, until I thought it would burst my skull apart like a flower bud. We crossed the Aune, just a brook here, so close to its source, on the granite slabs of the tinners’ bridge. This was the river I had swum in as a boy, where I had tickled the quick, leopard-flanked trout from under rocks. This was the river that ran past my home. I looked downstream to where the valley lost itself in the piled domes of White Barrow and Gripper’s Hill and Dockwell Ridge. Beyond, under Black Tor, where the river ran over golden sheets of granite and dived down ravines whose sides were the knotted roots of oaks that were old when Brutus came to Totnes-town, was my parents’ house. And further, the little village of Auneford, and the church where they lay. The hills shut all of it off from me, a curtain wall half as high as the sky, and I found myself glad of that. So I did not linger there, but let a prayer fall into the stream and rode on.

  The track we followed had been made by the monks of Buckfast and Tavistock and Buckland as a safe way across the moors a long time ago. My father ran his sheep up here, and many times I had sat upon a rock, watching the flock idle around me, and observed the folk coming and going upon the pathway. I saw an abbot once, and a knight and his lady. But mostly I saw tinners and pack-trains of tin on their way to Ashburton or Lydford, and most often I saw no one at all. Today we were alone, and as we came up onto the High Moor I sensed that Letice was as uncomfortable as I was at home. The middle of Dartmoor is a vast, wet plain that gives birth to many rivers: the Dart, the Aune, the Erme, and a score more of them. It is an odd place where the shadows of the clouds moving overhead can sometimes be the only thing that tells the traveller he has not stepped over the threshold of some place where time has no power. But time does pass upon the High Moor, and if night catches you there unawares, you will find it quite as sinister as you could ever imagine.

  ‘There,’ I said to Letice, pointing to the south. ‘That’s the sea.’

  Beyond the hazy billow of the South Hams a crescent of pure blue gleamed. There was something she would recognise, I knew, and indeed she took a deep breath and loosened her shoulders.

  ‘Is it far?’ she asked.

  ‘Lydford? Yes, it’s far. We will be there as the sun is setting. If you don’t fall into a quagmire, that is.’

  ‘What the fuck is a quagmire?’

  ‘Keep to the path and you won’t find out.’

  Ahead of us, smoke rose from a dozen blowing houses as tinners smelted the ore they had streamed from the bed of the Erme. We rode past, and a couple of tinners knee-deep in the stream straightened up and waved. Then we struck out across the wastes of Great Gnat’s Head to Nun’s Cross. I pointed out the dun plateau of Fox Tor Mire to our right.

  ‘That is a quagmire,’ I said. ‘If we strayed in there, we would never come out again.’

  ‘Your affection for this place is …’ Letice shook her head. ‘I have heard you rattle on about your precious moors a thousand times. I expected the Hanging Gardens of bloody Babylon, not this vile desolation.’ She wrinkled her nose, for we were passing the melting corpse of a pack-horse, and the bones of sheep and ponies that the winter had killed were scattered far and wide.

  I tried to change her mind all the way across Hessary Tor, showing her the beauty of the little brooks as they hurried, all green and golden, across their beds of pillowy stones. The larks, how they sang as they rose up around us! The blossom of the rowan trees, the call of the ouzel birds. The great stretch of the sky overhead, the freedom all about us, as if we were little ships passing across an inland sea. Look, there: the fields and woods of Cornwall, and the cuckoos calling. But my words made no impression on her, and at last I gave up. Letice was a child of the city, and the wildness of the moors must have been quite terrifying for her. I tried to sympathise, but found I could not, so I decided to keep all the moor’s wonders for myself.

  Leaving the monks’ path behind us we turned north, stopped for luncheon on Hessary Tor, and then set out again. We had made good time, and we would be at Earl Richard’s gate well before sundown. Great Mis Tor rose to our left as I led us north down one brook and up another, until we came to a well-worn track that cut across our path. I allowed myself a small sigh of relief, for what I had not told Letice was that I had never been north of Nun’s Cross, and for the last couple of hours had been steering us by hearsay and by the faintly remembered words of old moorsmen I had known as a boy. In any case, by luck or by judgement we had found the Lychway, and it would take us to Lydford.

  This Lychway is the road by which any man, woman or child who dies in one of the moorland farmhouses is carried to their rest, for the whole moor lies in the parish of Lydford, and the Church will not allow any moor-dweller to be buried in any other churchyard. I did not think that this information would have a happy effect on Letice, so I kept quiet about it. It was a good track, though: much scored by cart-wheels but straight and level. We were riding along easily, and as our faces were now towards the green lands and away from the emptiness of the High Moor, Letice suddenly grew much more cheerful. When a pair of riders appeared in the distance, she brightened even more.

  ‘Look, Patch,’ she called, ‘horsemen! So we cannot be too far …’

  ‘From polite company? I told you we were not,’ I said, a little grumpily. We rode on, and through the heat-shimmer the two horsemen became three.

  ‘Who are these folk?’ I was talking to myself.

  ‘Not your sheep-shaggers and tin-grubbers, at any rate,’ said Letice, sounding almost cheerful. ‘We must be getting close to the earl.’

  As we drew closer, Letice was proved right. The three were plainly gentlemen, or knights, rather, for even from a distance I could see that they wore emblazoned surcoats, and swords knocked against their legs. Their faces had just formed out of the haze when they reined in and spread themselves across the path. They did not look like cut-purses, so I led us on. The three leaned together for a moment, and pulled out their swords. With an oath I tugged on my reins and grabbed the bridle of Letice’s horse.

  ‘Christ’s blood!’ I yelled. ‘Turn! Turn!’

  But it was too late. Letice was a competent rider but her horse was a stolid beast who merely grew confused at our tuggings and shouts. He set his feet and bared his teeth. Letice was pulling at her sword, her hand tangled in her sleeve. Letting go of the bridle I drew my own sword and kicked hard at my mount. She was a livelier animal than her companion, and did what my hands and heels commanded, plunging forward with a clatter of stones. Too late: the three men were upon us. Remembering something my riding instructor, my dead friend Horst the German, had taught me, I pulled back and up on the reins with all my strength. The horse stopped with a shriek and reared just as the first horseman came up. I threw myself sideways, hauling on the reins, and my horse, tottering on her hind legs, fell sideways against the other’s mount, knocking it off balance. Thank Christ, my horse found her feet, and the other, deflected, hurtled off to the side, her rider screaming commands in vain.

  I kicked my beast into motion again just as the other two men reached me, wheeling her across the path. One horse baulked, seeing the stamping hooves of mine, but the other kept on. The man had mistimed his sword-stroke, I saw, and I easily leaned back out of its arc, heaving my own blade over my left shoulder for a back-handed cut. My arm was already straightening, sinews thrumming, when the man’s face came into focus. His eyes were wide with amazement or horror, mouth open. But all at once I saw that his hair was fine and there was hardly a beard on his chin, and his pink chee
ks were marred by pimples. With a desperate yell I turned my wrist at the last second so that the flat of my sword caught him across the right ear. He dropped to the path with a ripe thud as I followed through with my stroke. With another shout I halted the steel point a hand’s breadth from the other man’s throat. He had let his sword arm drop as he tried to control his horse, and now he found he could not raise it, for it was a long-sword, and a touch too heavy for him, for like his companion he was little more than a boy.

  ‘Yield!’ I screamed. Then, mastering my voice as well as I could: ‘I am bearing urgent letters for the Earl of Cornwall, and this lady is a Crusader’s widow under the earl’s protection!’

  The third rider had stopped his horse a hundred paces off into the heather and was cantering back to his friends’ aid. He must have heard my words, for he slowed and walked up alongside. To my shock he was laughing.

  ‘Lady?’ he cried. ‘Have we frightened a lady, my lads?’

  ‘Shut up, Gervais,’ hissed the boy at the point of my sword. He still held his own blade, and I told him to put it away. He did, and after a hard look at Gervais, I turned my attention to the lad on the ground, who was crawling gingerly away from the skittish hooves that surrounded him. He did not look badly hurt, although his nose was bloody and dripping.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ I asked in my court voice.

  ‘Your pardon, sir,’ said Gervais, the only one of this sorry trio to have a working tongue in his head. ‘We came up to pass the time, and to look for robbers. ’Tis said the moor is infested with them.’

  ‘No such thing,’ I said, offended by this more, almost, than by what had just happened. ‘The tinners prevent any such nonsense. Who are you? You are not from these parts.’

  ‘We do beg your most earnest pardon, sir. I am Gervais Bolam, this is Edmund of Wykham, and my friend in the dust is William Maynet. We are knights in the service of our lord Richard, Earl of Cornwall and staying, at the moment, in Lydford Castle. Which does get rather dull,’ he added, as if this were excuse enough.

  ‘Dull?’ Letice had finally found her voice. ‘You young rogues,’ she shrilled, and the icy rage of Lady Agnes drove the roses from Gervais’ cheeks.

  ‘This is Lady Agnes de Wharram, young sirs. Widow of a brave crusading knight. Should she be used thus? For shame – and you are knights at that!’ I raged, but everything was becoming clear. Three bored knights waiting for a battle that kept being postponed, cooped up far from home. They had been out looking for sport, and found us.

  William Maynet had struggled to his feet and was rubbing his arse, wincing. ‘We are most awfully sorry, sir,’ he said, as if I had caught him pulling carrots from my garden. ‘We had been hearing tales of a foul villain who haunts these moors, and we fancied … our fancies ran away with us, sir. Unless you are the Gurt Dog, that is?’ He was jesting. But I flinched for a moment. No, this child could not know what he was speaking of.

  ‘You have been listening to ghost stories,’ I said, wearily. ‘The Gurt Dog is the Devil’s hound, who chases lost souls across the moor. A huge black dog with flaming eyes. If you see him you will likely be dead by morning. I can assure you that we are not hounds, and further, I would counsel you not to meddle in the affairs of the Devil. But the folk in these parts say that the Wisht Hound, as they call him, hunts away over there by Whistman’s Wood.’ I turned and pointed to the south-west. ‘Why don’t you try your luck. I will escort this lady to your lord, and be assured I will tell him all about you.’

  ‘We are heartily sorry, sir,’ piped up Edmund. ‘But, Christ’s guts, you made a good account of yourself! Please let us escort you back to Lydford. It will be dark soon, and we would dearly like to make amends. Wouldn’t we, lads?’

  They would, and indeed they were all so young and so cheerful that, despite that they would quite happily have killed us both for a prank, I found myself softening a little. Letice’s mouth was a white line, but I could tell that rage was changing to exasperation in her eyes, so I nodded, coldly. The boys fell in around us, William looking a bit stiff in his saddle and Edmund somewhat hangdog – but by no means as penitent as I would have wished.

  ‘So, you are bound for the war in Poitou?’ I asked him. ‘If you plan to face the knights of France, you would do well to practise your skills. I am no horseman, and no swordsman either, and yet …’

  ‘Nonsense, sir! You are indeed. By the by, we were out for sport,’ said Gervais. ‘Had we been in the lists or on the field, it might have gone ill for you. And Our Lord is to be thanked it did not,’ he added, hastily. But I understood. These boys had played at war since they could crawl, and fighting was their work, their love and their sport. They would have killed us for fun and thought no more about it. It was the Frankish way. I had seen their fellows swagger through a thousand towns, lording it over the Greeks in Constantinople, kicking beggars on the docks at Jaffa. These three lads had the whole world spread out before them. They were the cream of England. And God help us.

  It was not unpleasant, to tell the truth. The boys chattered amongst themselves and made the politest of conversation with me. Letice they gawped at as if she were some image of the Virgin carved out of ivory, but no doubt their brain-boxes were seething with the confused, energetic and fleshy desires of the young and spotty. Lydford was further than I had thought, and the shadows were very long on the ground as we began the climb down into the gorge of the river Lyd. By the time we had crossed the granite bridge, coaxed our tired horses up the far slope and passed through the village to the gates of the castle, the sun had dropped below Bodmin Moor and the castle seemed, for a moment, to be nothing more than a great cloud, like those that boil up over the land in the failing days of August. Then the light changed, and we had arrived.

  Chapter Nine

  Lydford Castle is a dour, four-square bastion of cut stone staring down the challenge of the ancient stones of the moor. It is man’s attempt to take all the wildness, all the ugly, terrible splendour of those hills and squeeze it into a form his feeble mind can understand. It is a fortress and more particularly a gaol feared by the tinners and moorsmen, for the moor has its own laws and those that break them do not find mercy. We had seen the hanged corpses at Ashburton, but that was nothing to what a man might see at Lydford on hanging day. There was no welcome for us from its gateway. Our companions hailed the men-at-arms who guarded the door, we all dismounted and went in.

  The castle was no friendlier inside. Some attempt had been made to pretty the walls with hangings, but there is little one can do to cheer up a prison. The earl’s steward, a Londoner in court dress who looked as out of place inside the castle as he would have done in a tinner’s hut, met us with evident relief, for plainly he was suffering from the same malady that had afflicted Letice as we crossed the hills. He heard my story with polite interest, and bowed his head respectfully as Letice told hers. A bed would be arranged for each of us, of course – dry, warm, a rarity in this barbarous place! – and hot food sent. The earl would see us in the morning, but first we should rest ourselves. I was crestfallen, for I wanted to get my business done right away. As we had journeyed that day I had decided to award myself a few days to roam the moors on my own before I took ship for France, and I was suddenly very keen to start. If we were to be caught up in protocol, we might be here for a while. A prison, indeed. My shoulders drooped.

  ‘Albin, who are these people?’ It was a very clear voice that rang like a bell of the finest bronze, not loud, but like the insistent pulse of a bell’s chiming the words filled the room. There is no mistaking the voice of royalty once you have heard it, and I dropped onto one knee at once and pressed my hand to my heart. From moorsman back to courtier at the snap of a finger – dear God, my training had prepared me for moments such as these, but my head was swimming. Albin was explaining matters, and then the voice bid us rise, and I took my first look at Richard of Cornwall.

  He was quite tall, and very fair. His hair was long and curled in the f
ashion of the day, but his beard was fuller than most courtly men preferred, and golden. He wore a tunic of dark blue velvet on which golden leopards twined through crimson vines. His eyes were blue and his lips were red and finely curved, like a woman’s. But there was nothing else effete about this man. He stood like a soldier, feet apart, fists on hips, ready.

  ‘You have come all the way from Venice to see me,’ he said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world: be sought out in one’s prison-castle at the edge of nowhere by emissaries from the other end of Christendom. And of course for such as the Earl of Cornwall it was nothing, a commonplace.

  ‘I have words for you alone, my lord, from a man you know well,’ I told him. ‘Jean de Sol, of the company of the Cormaran, sends humble greetings.’

  ‘How very nice!’ Richard chimed. ‘Would you care to deliver them now, and then we can dine together? I think that would be the best idea, don’t you? And this dear lady is the widow of young de Wharram, so Albin tells me. I was not aware that he had died, but at least, madam, you may take comfort in the knowledge that his soul rests in Paradise. He was returning from the Holy Land, was he not?’

  ‘He was, my lord,’ said Letice, or rather Agnes de Wharram, for Agnes had reappeared, a little hoarse from having been silent since she had left London.

  ‘Exactly. A Crusader – and a Crusader’s widow. You are fortunate, madam – not in your loss, but in your family’s gain. We will talk at dinner, if that suits you.’

  Of course it did, and Letice followed a maid-in-waiting off to her quarters. Richard gave some curt instructions to Albin, and beckoned to me.

  ‘We won’t stand on ceremony, if you don’t mind, Messer Petrus. This place is a bloody gaol, and I would much rather have jollier surroundings in which to receive guests.’

  ‘The moor is a barbarous place, my lord,’ I agreed, tactfully.