Bloodie Bones Read online

  As Dan laid the paper back on the desk, it struck him that, of the three notes, one was odd man out. The note sent to Lord Oldfield threatened ‘blood and fier’. The rector’s note warned him that Bloodie Bones meant to drink his blood. But the scarecrow note had been short and made no specific threats: “Tirants Bwar Bloodie Bones.”

  There was something else. The first note to Lord Oldfield and this one to the rector were written on grubby scraps of old paper, recycled from their original uses – a tavern bill, a ballad, the sort of paper people who did not do much writing were likely to use. Farm labourers and shoemakers had no reason to lay out money on stocks of writing paper. By contrast, the Tirant note from the scarecrow was written on a clean, fresh sheet of paper of better quality: heavy, cream coloured and deckle edged. Bought paper, not re-used. Whoever wrote the Tirant note was someone who did sufficient writing to make the cost of his materials worthwhile. If that was the case, he must get plenty of practice at writing and spelling.

  Had the Tirant note been written by an educated man pretending to be semi-literate? Someone like Travell, for example, the self-taught taproom lawyer who had set himself up as a school teacher? Although Travell did not seem a likely murderer, he was a man with a cause that might make him capable of striking a blow for justice on behalf of people like the Tolleys.

  Was Caleb Witt likely to be a skilled writer? Gamekeepers kept game books; Dan had seen one in Josh Castle’s cottage. The penmanship had looked competent enough, but then Josh was a special case, a boy befriended by a lord who might have been given more schooling than other village lads because of it. Could Witt’s fists wield a pen as well as he?

  Singleton used chalk and slate. Dan doubted Abe would have to pretend to be illiterate. Dunnage spent more time in the fields than the study. He could not see any of them being accomplished writers. Perhaps the handwriting was not disguised after all. It was possible that someone had found or stolen the paper. It was puzzling, though.

  Footsteps overhead reminded him that he ought to leave the rectory. He returned the lamp to the hall table. He had just got outside and pulled the window down when he heard voices in the road. Ayres’s high-pitched tremor: “How many of them were there, do you think, Reverend?”

  The rector and constable passed inside. The light reappeared in the study and danced over to the broken window, where the constable carefully – and uselessly – examined the broken glass. Dan could not get out the way he had come in without being seen. He crept behind the house to the top of the garden and climbed over the garden wall into the graveyard. He was threading his way between the tombs when a figure rose up before him. Girtin’s tale of Bloodie Bones sitting on a gravestone with the blood of a live owl spurting from his jaws flashed into Dan’s mind, then he saw that it was Girtin himself.

  “I wonder what Dan Fielding is doing sneaking about the rectory in the dead of night?”

  “I heard the window smash and came to see what was happening. Did you see who threw the stone?”

  “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”

  “Did you see anyone running away?”

  “I seen you running away.”

  “No one else?”

  “Who else might there be?”

  “You were in the Fox tonight. I think it was that young fool Walter. I wanted to make sure he’d got away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve taken a liking to the boy.”

  Girtin smirked. “To the boy, is it?”

  Dan grinned. “Well…You won’t tell anyone I was here? I don’t want this pinned on me.”

  “Tell on such a generous man as yourself, Mr Fielding?”

  “I will be a generous man, but you must keep this between ourselves. Is that a deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Dan had had to depend on flimsier safeguards than the discretion of a drunk before now. He said goodnight and crept back to his bed.

  Chapter Ten

  On Sunday, when Dan brought in the water from the pump, the blacksmith was shovelling down his breakfast while Mrs Singleton packed cakes and bread into a basket. They were going to a nearby village called Peasedown to spend the day with his older brother. This brother was also a blacksmith, as was their father, though the old man had retired from the active part of the business. Dan had heard the history of the clan from Mrs Singleton, who was looking forward to a day swapping recipes with her sister-in-law and playing with her nieces and nephews.

  “He’s a strange one, that Girtin,” Dan remarked, as if he had just seen him flitting among the graves. “What’s his story?”

  “Girtin?” said Mrs Singleton. “He used to be tenant at Tenner’s Farm. The Doggets have it now. He had two sons, fine, big lads. I remember as how all the girls used to run after them.”

  “Run after them!” Singleton muttered.

  “They met a West Country fish merchant at Bridgwater Fair – must have been ten years gone now – and he told them that if they signed on with him they could make a fortune in just one summer, fishing in Newfoundland. They don’t have much summer there, they say it starts in May – ”

  “June,” said her spouse.

  “ – May and is over by October. Cod.”

  “What do you mean, cod?”

  “Cod. That’s what they fished.”

  “And what difference does that make?”

  “Well, it was cod. Anyway, the boys thought if they could be rich men in so short a time, they’d take him up on it. And they did make a good sum, but in a fortnight they’d spent it all, as young men will, with nothing left for their passage home. The eldest got food and lodging for the winter with a merchant by promising to spend the next summer fishing for him. But he never saw the summer. He died of frostbite hunting in the woods. When he was found he’d been half ate up by wolves.”

  “Don’t be daft. There are no wolves in Newfoundland.”

  Dan thought there were, but did not want to start an argument with Singleton by saying so.

  “His brother,” she went on, “went to America.”

  “Which was against the law. Tell him that!”

  “But on the way – ”

  “How is the man to get a grip on things if you only tell him the half of it?…There’s a law against fishermen from Newfoundland going to fish in America. But the lad never got there. He died of sickness on the ship.”

  Mrs Singleton, as she so often did, continued as if her husband had not spoken. “His mother never got over her grief. She died a year later. Girtin tried to manage on his own, but he turned to drink.”

  “He’d turned to drink long afore that.”

  “And before long he was behind with the rent and the place was falling to rack and ruin. In the end, Lord Oldfield – the old Lord – turned him out.”

  “Phew! They’re a hard lot, the Oldfields,” Dan said.

  “Not the old Lord,” Singleton answered before his wife could. “He gave Girtin plenty of chances and he didn’t hound him to the debtors’ prison, as I have no doubt our present Lord would do. But in the end good land was going to waste. Girtin knows who’s to blame for his plight.”

  “Does he always sleep in the churchyard?”

  “Not always,” Mrs Singleton said. “In a barn or the fields sometimes.”

  Singleton grunted. “Rector Poole would rather he went over to the poorhouse at Stonyton, but Girtin will never wear the pauper’s badge. People give him clothes and food. He gets by…Have you done with your gossiping, woman? We’d better go if we’re to be there before midnight.”

  Dan helped them carry their things to the cart, opened the yard gate, and waved them along the road. That was an interesting detail, he thought as he closed the gate – Girtin’s boys going off to America about the same time Sukie Tolley disappeared.

  He stripped and washed in the wash house, liberally dou
sing himself in the warm water Mrs Singleton had provided in honour of the Sabbath. She had also given him soap and a mirror for shaving. When he had finished he put on one of his new shirts and set off for the heath. At the common he turned in the direction Walter had pointed out yesterday and, after a bit of crossing back and forth, found a grassy track. A curl of smoke above the trees told him there was a cottage at the end of it.

  It stood in a lonely clearing close to a section of Lord Oldfield’s fence, surrounded by a well-tended vegetable and herb garden. The door was ajar. Dan knocked and, when there was no answer, pushed it open and called, “Anyone at home?”

  A few pieces of wooden furniture stood on a clean, flagged floor. Various bits of household paraphernalia hung from hooks on the walls: a warming pan, cooking pots, spoons. Earthenware mugs and plates stood on plain wooden shelves, and dishcloths hung on a line slung across the chimney breast over a small fire of crackling wood. A cupboard held a few pieces of pewter and china. The room was fragrant with the drying leaves hanging in bags and bunches from the rafters.

  It was the kind of house a working man could look forward to coming home to: quiet and well-ordered. Not like his own. Once he had gone through the door to find Caroline trying to set the kitchen on fire, staggering about the room with the hem of her skirts ablaze. She had fought and screamed obscenities at him as he beat out the flames, too drunk to see her danger. Another time it had been his collection of boxing mugs smashed, including his treasured Humphreys v Mendoza 1788. One evening he caught her chattering like a child to a leering stranger, whom Dan sent away with a split lip.

  Then came getting her into bed, and in the morning sickness, suffering and remorse. Except the remorse got less and less, and turned to hatred of him – the Puritan who would not let her have a bit of fun; who took all the sunshine out of life; who had only married her to make her miserable.

  Things had improved since he had taken the house in Russell Street and her mother and Eleanor had come to live with them. Some things. These days it was her mother and sister who put Caroline to bed. She was more manageable with them. When she was not drunk, she spent hours sitting in front of the fire, letting them do all the work of the house around her.

  The sound of a light tread interrupted his memories. Mrs Halling appeared, a bowl in her hands. She had been feeding the hens he had heard squawking behind the house.

  Her hand flew up to tuck in some strands of loose hair. “Good day, Mr Fielding.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by. I came to ask after Kiomi.”

  “Won’t you come in? Can I offer you something? I have some beer.”

  “I’d prefer water.”

  She put the bowl away and poured him a cup from a stone jar. “She is in a great deal of pain. I’ve given her mother an ointment to apply to the burns, which may help. I wish I could persuade Tom Taylor to let Dr Russell look at her eyes.”

  “I suppose he cannot pay for it.”

  “Dr Russell runs a weekly charity clinic. And, given the feeling in the village about the incident, I think it very likely that a subscription could be raised for any special treatment she needed. A cartload of food, blankets and clothing was sent up to the barrow after church.”

  They sat down at opposite sides of the table.

  “Is Walter here?” Dan asked.

  “No. He’s gone out with Abe and some other friends.”

  Dan hoped they were up to nothing worse than a Sabbath game of football or skittles. “Good. I wanted to talk to you about him.”

  “I hope he is in no trouble.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I think he is, or likely to be. He’s sore angry against Lord Oldfield because of what happened to his dog, and he’s behaving foolishly because of it.”

  “If you’d seen him the day he brought Jack home, you’d be angry too.”

  “Though I haven’t been in Barcombe long, I’m already discovering how high-handed Lord Oldfield can be. But the power’s all on His Lordship’s side, and Walter will only bring ruin on himself if he carries on as he is.”

  “Why, what has he done?”

  “I’m sure it was Walter and Abe who broke the rector’s window last night.”

  “And I’m sure you are wrong.”

  “Maybe. But there’s more than window breaking. Do you know where Walter was the night Ford was injured?”

  “He was here, in bed.”

  “He wasn’t. He was in the woods helping himself to Lord Oldfield’s birds.”

  “You are not accusing my boy of having anything to do with that?”

  “It’s not my accusations you need to worry about. He was in the wood the night Josh Castle was killed too.”

  She sprang to her feet. “You go too far, Mr Fielding!”

  “He has already told me, Mrs Halling.”

  “Why would he tell you?”

  Dan hesitated. He did not want to tell her that the reason he knew Walter was in the gang was because he was in it too. In his line of work he often had to allow good people to think ill of him. Usually he accepted it as part of the job, but he did not want Anna Halling to think ill of him. He could not tell her why he was out poaching either. He had been in the business long enough to know it was never safe to reveal his cover.

  “I work at the forge. I see things. I see a lad getting himself into trouble. I’ve been in trouble myself. So I talked to him.”

  “He talked to you and not to me?”

  “I suppose there are some things boys can’t talk to their mothers about.”

  That hurt. She sank back into her seat.

  “He wouldn’t…he has always kept away from those people.”

  “He thinks he’s getting his revenge on Lord Oldfield by joining them. You had no idea?”

  “No, though I thought there was something. He’s been so jumpy lately. And Abe has been hanging around him, which he wouldn’t do if Walter’s father was still alive. Davy worked on the estate, you see. Estate and village don’t mix.”

  “Was he a keeper?”

  “No, a woodsman…but Walter never told you he killed Josh? You can’t think he did that? He knew that Josh didn’t like killing the dog, that he had no choice. Cousins or no, Lord Adam was still the master. Walter knew that.”

  “Cousins? Who?”

  “Lord Adam and Josh.”

  “They were cousins? How?”

  “All I know is that Josh’s father, John Castle, was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

  No wonder Lord Oldfield had taken Josh’s death so hard. They were not just friends, but family – only one lived in a mansion and the other in a cottage in the woods.

  “Josh was a good man. He used to bring me and Walter a bit of rabbit or fish sometimes. He didn’t deserve what happened to him – and it was not my son who killed him.”

  “I don’t think so either, but it doesn’t matter what I think. They’re looking for someone to blame, and if Walter isn’t careful he’ll find it landing on him. He hates Lord Oldfield, and he’s reckless and loud-mouthed. You must stop him, Mrs Halling, before he gets in any deeper.”

  Dan stood and picked up his hat. “I hope I haven’t spoken out of turn.”

  “I’m not sure yet.” She got up to show him out.

  He paused in the doorway. “What happened to his father?”

  “An accident, the day after Lord Adam’s eighteenth birthday. He wanted a play, so they had one of the barns turned into a theatre. Mr West brought some theatre people from London to help, and Lord Adam and his friends acted all the parts. The whole village went to watch, and there was drinking and dancing after. The next day, Davy went to help take the stage and seating down. One of the scaffolds collapsed on top of him. Lord Oldfield felt so bad about it he said we could stay on in the cottage for my lifetime.”

  Dan wondered if there wa
s any doubt that the present Lord Oldfield would honour the agreement, but he did not mention it in case it touched on a source of anxiety. He imagined, though, that being dependent on His Lordship’s whim made Walter’s feelings all the more bitter – and the boy and his mother all the more vulnerable.

  He said “Goodbye” and hurried back to the forge. If Mrs Halling did not know the full story of John Castle’s birth, he knew who would. Disappointingly, the Singletons did not get back until late and he had to go to bed with his questions unanswered.

  Truth to tell, they were not all about Lord Oldfield and Castle. Mrs Halling was the first villager he had met with a good word to say for the head keeper, who had brought rabbits and fish to the little cottage in the wood. ‘Josh’ she had called him, and she knew he had not liked killing the dog. How did she know how he felt? Had he confided in her? Why would he, unless they were close?

  A pretty young widow – a handsome young man – and a jealous, resentful son? Had he only succeeded in finding another motive for Walter to be rid of Castle? Yet Walter – not a boy of great discretion – had not given any hint of an affair between Josh and his mother. She had not given the impression of a woman bereft of her lover either.

  Perhaps he should ask Mrs Singleton about it.

  Or perhaps not.

  It was none of his business who Anna Halling fell for.

  *

  Mrs Singleton was busy assembling the ingredients for the morning’s baking when Dan brought in the pail. Given the chance, she would waste the little time he had with a detailed account of her nephews’ and nieces’ exploits. He pitched in before she could start.

  “I went to see how Tom Taylor’s girl is yesterday.”

  He relayed Mrs Halling’s bulletin while she clucked sympathetically, lamented Tom Taylor’s stubbornness in refusing Dr Russell’s attendance, and sang the doctor’s praises. “Though he’s only been in the village four year.”

  “I heard a funny thing too while I was out,” Dan added. “Daft, more like. That Josh Castle was cousin to Lord Oldfield. As if!”

  “But it’s true,” she said, the gossip-light gleaming in her eye.