She hurried up to the door and peered inside.

The shutters were half open, swinging on their hinges with a desolate, repetitive sound. In the drizzle of light she noticed more broken pots scattered on the earth floor. No fire brightened the hearth, instead there was a pile of ashes where the logs had been allowed to burn away.

She heard a groan and stepped through the door without knocking. The ferryman was lying stretched out in his chair with his hands to his head.

‘What’s happened?’ She went right up to him and he flinched when he realised he was not alone.

‘It’s only me,’ she reassured. ‘Are you ill?’

‘That black devil,’ he ground out. When he removed his hands from his head she saw that he had been beaten about the face. Both eyes were half-closed. His lips were puffed. His nose bleeding.

‘Who did this?’

‘If I knew I wouldn’t be lying here I’d be using a paddle on him.’ He gave another groan. ‘He was lying in wait for me behind the door. What have I done? I don’t get it. Was he thieving? If so he got precious little and what he got he smashed.’

‘Have you run up against somebody recently?’ she asked, caution in her voice as she wondered if it had anything to do with the help he had given the miners.

‘Telling me to keep my mouth shut,’ he groaned. ‘It’s a warning, he said. Me, I said, what have I got to blab about?’

‘Let me bathe your wounds. At least we have plenty of fresh water.’

She went over to the rain barrel outside the door, dipped a piece of clean cloth in it and returned, opening her scrip as she did so. ‘We’ll soon have you fixed up,’ she said.

There was dread in her heart. It was surely not the guild of pages who had behaved so barbarically, was it? Who else would want him to keep his mouth shut?

**

‘At least your nose isn’t broken as far as I can tell. How does it feel?’

‘Like a bloody great throbbing horn.’

‘Yes, it looks a bit like one at present but if you keep on using the arnica the swelling will go down. Soon you’ll soon be as handsome as ever - and breaking women’s hearts all over again, the angels save us.’

‘The angels must have brought you here, domina.’ His eyelids flickered at the smarting of his wounds as she dabbed at them and he growled, ‘It was the devil brought him.’

‘There now.’ She wrung out the cloth and put it back into her scrip to wash and dry later. ‘And you saw no-one?’

‘I’d been out to my boat. I was only outside there. No, I tell a lie - ’

Not the first, she thought.

‘I’d been down to the bridge to have a look among the wreckage.’

‘You mean where the duc’s esquire was found?’

‘No, closer in. A tree came down in the night and blocked the nearest arch. I found a few bits and pieces nobody wants and piled them on the bank. Then I thought I’d better have a look at my boat where they dragged her up this morning after finishing with her.’

‘The pope’s men, you mean?’

‘Them.’ He sniffed. ‘I was going to clean her up a bit. The devil what attacked me must have sneaked in while I was fetching stuff from the river.’

‘More debris brought down stream you say?’

‘A load of it.’

‘Shall I see it if I walk along there?’

‘Nothing worth seeing now.’

‘This tree?’

‘I’ll get some help to shift it later. We can bring it ashore. Winter logs.’

‘And your attacker got inside your cottage while you were doing this? He had a nerve. Was he looking for something?’ She was clutching at straws.

‘I can’t think what. Anything of value I carry on me - well, I’m being indiscreet now but I suppose I can tell you that, you’re not likely to rob me at knife point, are you!’

He chuckled, then winced as it disturbed the wounds to his face. ‘He was lying in wait for me behind the door,’ he continued ‘First I knew of it was when I felt a crack on my head. I hear him snarl a warning about keeping my mouth shut. I said, what do I know? But I must have blacked out, I don’t remember anything after that. The fire was out when I came round. Then I got up, sat here and then you’re coming in, to my aid and succour, bless you.’

Hildegard looked carefully around the cottage, on the floor, everywhere, but there was nothing to say who had been here. The floor was scuffed with mud. Impossible to read the prints. At least nothing pointed to the pages.

There must be only one other person who wanted the ferryman to keep his mouth shut and he had nothing to do with the miners. It was Taillefer’s murderer. He must think the ferryman had seen something.

Before leaving she asked, ‘That night when the duc’s esquire was murdered, you said you heard angry voices. Are you sure they came from the bridge?’

‘As sure as anything’s sure.’

That was just what the priest of St Nicolas told her too. And Hubert had now confirmed it. The argument. The bell. Lauds. And Montjoie was in lauds because all three Cistercians had seen him. Or had said they had seen him. But the priest might have rung the bell at any time after the voices from the bridge woke him up.

She went back up to the bridge, was nodded onto it by the sentry, walked along as far as the chapel. The priest was inside. This time he was busy swabbing the floor.

‘Please don’t take this amiss, but is it possible you rang the bell for lauds later than usual?’

His milky pale eyes peered myopically into her face. ‘Such a wild night,’ he murmured. ‘I was awake on and off.’

‘You heard voices,’ she prompted, ‘and then you took it to be time for lauds. Could you have been mistaken?’

‘No man is infallible, domina.’

**

Sir John Fitzjohn was standing inside the gatehouse when she walked back up to the palace. It seemed an age since she had seen him raging and ranting over the absconding miners.

Since returning from his manhunt he had kept a low profile. Presumably he had been waiting for instructions from Woodstock about what to do about the proposed barter. He would have to hand something of value to the pope but now his miners had vanished without trace, what did he have?

He was back, however, as visible as ever, his pennant on its long pole held by his standard bearer, his breast plate gleaming with the result of Edmund’s hard work, his fine horse, held by its gilded leather halter, prancing and displaying the high polish on its hooves.

Fitzjohn had chosen to copy the practise of his lord Woodstock and hang the severed tail of an animal on his standard but unlike Woodstock he had not chosen a fox’s red brush but something diplomatically smaller, a rat maybe, tail dangling like a piece of string.

His retinue milled around him. They were apparently waiting for orders.

Edmund emerged from inside the couriers’ office. He strode over, bent his knee to make a flourish then handed his lord a letter. Fitzjohn snatched it without thanks and tore it open.

He scanned it. Evidently the man could read.

Before asking for her own mail if any, Hildegard watched from inside the doorway.

The news he read evidently pleased him. He held the letter aloft. ‘Good news from England, men! The Lord Chief Justiciar is dead!’

A dutiful but weak cheer arose.

Fitzjohn relished the moment. He declaimed aloud from the letter in his hand while Hildegard listened in rising horror:

Justice Tresillian, impeached for treason, was caught disguised as a pilgrim in Westminster- the fool didn’t even have the common sense to run for it - whence he was dragged to the Tower, with his wife and daughters weeping- with such a sotwit for a father who can blame them? - where he was bound hand and foot to a hurdle and dragged through the streets of the City- and listen to this - and when he came to his Calvary and refused to say a word against King Richard or admit his treason he said, “I am not able to die” and they found a magic symbol on a string round his neck and ripped it off and so hanged him, naked, then cut his throat to make sure he was dead.’