“You know that you’re all suspected of murder?”

Nodding slowly, Magge said caustically, “Yes. Our master has betrayed us.”

“You are not from these parts?” asked Simon.

“No, I come from the east, from Kent. I have been here for fifteen years, working the mines. I have been loyal to my master all that time.”

“We don’t doubt you, but we must know all that happened on the night Peter Bruther died. We already know that you attacked another miner. Why?”

Sighing, Magge picked up a pebble, then tossed it up and caught it, tossed it up and caught it. He carried on flicking and catching it as he spoke, his eyes on the stone and never meeting the bailiff’s. “It was some days ago now. Thomas Smyth came out and spoke to me, asking me to meet him with these men at Longaford Tor.”

“Was he there alone?”

“George Harang was with him.”

“Does he always go abroad with George?” Simon asked.

The eyes remained on the rising and falling stone. “Yes. George has worked for him for more than seventeen years, or so they say – a little before my time, anyway. Well, he asked us to help him get rid of the miners up on the moors – all the ones who didn’t work for him.”

“Like Henry Smalhobbe and Peter Bruther?”

“Like them,” he agreed, but then caught the stone and stared at Simon. “But he didn’t ask us to do anything to Bruther. He told us to leave him alone.”

“He told you to leave Bruther alone?” repeated Simon sarcastically. “I suppose he wanted to make himself feel good, leaving one man free on the moors while he got rid of all the others.”

The irony of the comment seemed to elude the miner. Still gripping the pebble in his fist he said, “All I know is what I say. He told us to leave Bruther alone. He wanted all the others to be scared off, but not Bruther.”

“Very well. What then?”

“We’d spent some time trying to scare them already, but they’re a strange lot, these squatters and foreigners.” His voice was disdainful. “None of them would go. That was the problem. Thomas wanted them gone, so he told us to beat them. So we did.”

“Henry Smalhobbe. You were there.” It was not a question, and Magge gave a short nod before tossing the stone once more, apparently calmed by the monotonous rhythm of throwing and catching. Simon found it irritating, and longed to snatch the pebble from the man, but intuition made him sit still and silent, waiting for the man to continue. It was not long before his patience was rewarded.

“We were there. I was out on the path, waiting for him, when his wife called from the hut.” He spoke without expression as he described the short ambush, how Smalhobbe had almost caught his attackers but had been betrayed by his wife’s anxious call, how they had wrestled him to the ground and then begun to beat him. “He was game, I’ll say that,” he said at last, his tone meditative. “If we hadn’t been three, if we’d only been two, he might have been able to keep us off. As it was he had little chance; we came at him from all sides.”

Nodding, Simon was half-amused at the grudging respect the miner held for the man he had beaten so viciously. Catching sight of his friend, he was surprised to see an intense concentration, and then realized what had caught Baldwin’s interest. It was strange that Henry Smalhobbe could have displayed such a skill for hunting his attacker. “He fought that well?” he said thoughtfully.

“Yes.” There was no doubt in his mind. “Like a trained man-at-arms.”

“And then you went on to Peter Bruther’s place?”

The bloodshot eyes looked at him with a flare of anger. “No! I told you, we never went there. Thomas told us to leave him alone and we did.”

Beside him, one of the other prisoners, a thin, ill-favored man with sparse gray hair and pale almond eyes, looked up and spoke peevishly. “Why don’t you believe us? Why would we go and kill him? We had no reason to.”

“Shut up, Stephen.” Magge’s terse command, made the other silent, and Baldwin studied him with a frown. That Crocker was a weak and ineffectual man who would obey orders Baldwin did not doubt, but there was a sense of whining injustice about him that indicated he felt genuinely hard done by.

“Very well,” Simon said at last. “So you absolutely deny having anything to do with the murder of Peter Bruther. Did you see anybody else on the moors that day – either before or after your attack on Smalhobbe?”

The stone was caught once more, and remained in his hand while Magge drew his brows down in concentration. “There were a couple of men, I’ve seen them before at the Beauscyrs’ Manor. They went off up to Wistman’s Wood.”

“You saw no others?”

His bloodshot eyes wavered. “No,” he muttered, and Baldwin and Simon could both see he was lying.

“Why would we hurt Bruther, anyway?” Stephen the Crocker’s voice was a miserable wheedle. “Ask Smalhobbe – he could kill! He probably wanted Bruther’s land, and he used to be an outlaw, so…”

“What’s that?” Simon’s head snapped round to stare at the man and he gestured curtly to Harold Magge to be silent. Magge glared at his companion, but held his tongue. “How do you know?”

“I saw him.” There was an underlying satisfaction in Crocker’s voice at the reaction to his words. “He was in a band that robbed a merchant up north, over a year ago. I saw him. That’s where he learned to fight, with a gang of killers.”

When they finally got back to the Manor, they did not have to seek out Sir Ralph. Hardly had they reached the hall and seated themselves before the knight came in.

“Where is everyone?” asked Simon, vaguely waving a hand at the empty room.

“Lady Beauscyr has gone to the solar to rest, and Sir William is out hunting. He was not best pleased with his sons, as you may well imagine. Robert has gone out, and John was down at the stables when last I saw him,” Sir Ralph said with his eyes on Baldwin. It appeared that the northern knight wanted to speak to him alone, but Baldwin was not prepared to permit that. He motioned to a bench, resting his chin in a hand.

“It was only a few days ago, Sir Ralph, that I was telling my friend here about some news I had received from a traveller. He had just come from the north, from the armies protecting Tynemouth, and had some interesting stories to tell about the events up there.”

To Simon it was as if the man suddenly lost all energy. He fell on to the bench and stared at Baldwin with the eyes of a hare frozen to immobility as it watched a hunter creep close.

“He told me of groups of men up there, knights and soldiers who were taking advantage of the Scottish troubles to make their own mischief, robbing and pillaging over a wide area while the King is absorbed with other matters. A disgraceful state.”

“Yes,” Sir Ralph whispered distractedly, but then sat up, as if finding a new source of strength and courage, meeting Baldwin’s serious gaze with resolution.

“I understand that they are called ‘shavaldores,’ and they ride out over the land like soldiers,” Baldwin said, and seeing the tight nod carried on. “And two men led them, Sir Gilbert of Middleton and Sir Walter of Selby. They attacked two cardinals, Luke of Fieschi and John of Offa, who had been sent to negotiate with the Scottish King. They didn’t harm them, did they? But they did take their horses and money and everything else, so it was a grave insult to the Pope. And a slight to the King, of course.”

Now Sir Ralph’s face was as gray as the ashes in the hearth. Simon felt no sympathy. There were too many supposedly honorable men up and down the country who had resorted to violence in the last few years for him to have any feelings other than disgust.

“That was last year, of course – 1317. Since then, all of Sir Gilbert’s neighbors have been persuaded by his actions that he must be stopped. I understand that they were to attack his castle at Mitford. I merely wondered whether you knew of this affair, Sir Ralph? No? There was a knight with Sir Gilbert, too, I recall.” The vagueness of Baldwin’s voice was deceptive; there was no loss of concentration in his eyes as he stared at the man before him. “His name was Sir Ralph, I think. Sir Ralph of Oxham. Have you heard of him, I wonder?” Without giving the other man time to respond, he immediately moved on. “Of course, it doesn’t matter to us down here. It’s irrelevant. If a knight swears fealty to a more powerful knight, he should be honored for keeping to his vows. It is hard to condemn a man for holding to his oath if his master then decides to become, for example, a shavaldore. In any case, we have enough trouble keeping the peace in this county without worrying about the affairs of others many hundreds of miles away. After all, there’s this murder to think about, even if it was only the killing of a villein.”