“She was a married woman?” Simon pressed him, his dark eyes intent. “You are sure of that?”

“Yes. They seemed convinced. And… one of them said she didn’t like the meat she got at home – she preferred steak to bacon.”

Baldwin studied him. As before he was struck with the impression of honesty. “One last thing. We have heard you argued with Sarra. What was that about?”

Cole reddened. “She wanted me to perjure myself. Henry and John had upset her, and she wanted me to swear that they were plotting against Sir Hector.”

“You refused?”

“Of course I did! I’d not seen anything to suggest they’d been planning Sir Hector’s downfall. She wanted me to lie so that she’d find her way back into his favor, and I said no.”

While Tanner put the prisoner back in his cell, the three stood huddled near the open door, staring at the butcher’s shop. The apprentice still sat unperturbably plucking chickens, small clouds of tiny feathers whirling occasionally as the breeze caught them, floating and spinning until they touched the damp soil of the street and stuck, soaking up the mire and becoming part of the road’s surface.

“What do we do now?” Edgar asked.

Simon cocked an eyebrow at him. “We find out where the butcher’s wife has gone, that’s what we do.”

“But how?” Baldwin gazed up the road toward Coleford and the west. “Edgar, you seem to know many of the women in this area. Can you find out where she originally came from?”

His servant cleared his throat. “I suppose so. Mind, Tanner might know more; he comes from that way himself.”

“Ask him, then. Meanwhile, we shall return to Clifford’s house to get our horses. The weather looks good, and it is time we had some exercise,” Simon said.

Tanner did know Mary’s family. They owned a smallholding which they had won from their demesne lord some generations ago when an ancestor had provided some useful service. It was, as Tanner explained it, a mixed blessing, for the others in the locality were still villeins, owing their livelihood to their master, receiving food and guaranteed work in exchange, while the free family sometimes suffered, having no protection or support when the harvest was poor. Many thought they would have fared better if they had remained villeins like their neighbors.

The road climbed a short rise after the town, and Simon enjoyed the ride. His bay rounsey was a good, solid horse, built for covering long distances, and had a pleasant, mild temperament. Baldwin, he noticed, was on his Arab, a beautiful white animal with a high-stepping gait and what to Simon seemed an incredible turn of speed.

As they crested the first hill and dropped down the other side, the sun broke through the clouds. All at once the sky showed clear and blue in the gaps, and the men began to feel the warmth. Here, on the western side of the town, the trees were thick and covered much of the landscape, except to their left where Simon could see the blue-gray mounds of Dartmoor crouching on the horizon. Above it were thick storm-clouds, and from the mistiness the bailiff was sure that it must be raining hard. He never could understand why the moors had their own weather, and today he was glad to be away from it.

As the sun touched the soil and heated it, it gave off a refreshing scent. The smell was of vigorous, healthy earth, rich and loamy, filled with rotted vegetation. It was impossible for Simon not to compare it with the desolate plains where he was bailiff. There the earth was so filled with moorstone and peat that only stunted trees and the poor grasses could survive. This part of Devon was where he had been raised, and here everything seemed full of vitality and energy. Even the very color of the soil was different. On the moors it was almost black, while in other areas, he had been surprised to see how dull and brown it looked, especially during the hot weather, when it appeared anemic.

Here, near Crediton, it was a uniform bright red, hearty and bursting with goodness; plants absolutely thrived on it. No matter whether they were trees, vegetables or herbs, all grew and blossomed with a vitality that was rare in other parts even of England.

After three or four miles, the lane curved round to their left, and started down the long, gently-sloping hill into Coleford. Simon remembered it as a pleasant little vill, with four or five cottages and houses on the busy road from Exeter to Plymouth. Some monks had a place there, too, he recalled, and would offer sustenance to travellers, but today they were not going so far as the vill itself. At the top of the steeper part of the hill, they turned off left to a small hamlet, and here they found Mary Butcher’s sister.

Ellen, who was married to Hal Carpenter, was a happy-looking, chubby woman in her late twenties. As the three men rode along the lane and into her yard, scattering the chickens and making her goat bleat in irritation, she was kneeling by a large stone, kneading dough. Hearing them, she sat back on her haunches, wiping strands of hair back under her cap as she surveyed her guests.

As Simon smiled and dropped from his horse, she stood and smiled back. “Are you lost, sirs? This isn’t the road for Plymouth.”

“No, we are looking for Ellen Carpenter.”

“That’s me,” she said, and gave him a smile so welcoming, he felt as if he had known her for years. “Can I offer you something to drink? I have ale.”

When she had fetched a jug and three wooden cups, they squatted with her round the stone while she continued kneading. Her children, of whom there were five that Simon counted, though they moved around so much there may have been more, peeped round tree trunks at the three important guests.

“You are sister to Mary Butcher, who lives in Crediton?” Simon asked, once the preliminary greetings had been offered and received.

“Yes, sir.”

She had the rosiest complexion, Simon thought, that he had ever seen. Hazel eyes with green flecks sparkled in the sun, and auburn tints in her hair glittered like gold. “Is she here? We would like to speak to her.”

She smiled at him, a little puzzled. “No, Mary’s not here. Why – isn’t she at her home in Crediton?”

“No,” Simon said disconcertedly. “We were told she was here.”

Baldwin asked, “Was she due to visit you here this week?”

“No, not especially. She usually turns up when she feels like it. I don’t know in advance. It’s not so easy to send a message from Crediton to here.”

“She often comes here, then?” Simon asked.

“Oh yes, fairly often. I don’t get to see her over there, mind, as I have all these to look after.” She waved a proprietorial hand at the animals and children all round. “She likes to get away from the smell and noise of the town and back to the country every so often, so she walks out here when she has the time. Her husband doesn’t mind.”

“That’s Adam Butcher?”

“Yes. Adam married her four years ago, just as his business was growing. It was a relief to us, I can say. We were beginning to think she’d never get a husband. She was already twenty-three by then. Now, me, I got wed when I was eighteen – a much better age. I had four children by the time I was twenty-three.”

“We were told she had come here on Tuesday, but you say you haven’t seen her?”

Her eyes became anxious. “You mean she’s disappeared? No one knows where she is?”

“I doubt it,” Baldwin said reassuringly. “I expect the apprentice – it was he who told us she was here – got confused. He did not strike me as being of the brightest. Do not worry. She will have gone to a friend, or maybe another sister?”

“No, sir. I am her only sister,” Ellen said, and her eyes held a haunted look.

“I can see why she would want to come here,” Baldwin continued. “It is a good little estate you have here.”

“Not bad, sir. The beans are good, and the peas did well. Better than last year, anyway. And my husband, he’s a good worker, and he’s often busy with the manor, mending carts and barrels. It keeps us in wheat and barley.”