A Moorland Hanging by Michael Jecks

three of them, and they set on my husband. He’s there now, in his cot. Three against one! Where’s the victory in that, eh? The cowards hit him and kicked him while he was on the ground, beating him with cudgels just because he refused to leave the moors. But where else can we go, sir? We have no family to protect us, we’re just poor people, and we cannot leave and find somewhere else to live.”
    “You do not come from around here, then?” Baldwin asked gently, and her gaze immediately moved to him. She hesitated, nervous of saying too much. “No, sir. We come from the north.”
    “Where from? Why did you come all the way down here, to this miserable place?”
    Unaccountably she began to snivel again. “Sir, it’s hard, but there has been nowhere to earn a crust—the famine affected richer people than us. We had to go somewhere when we could no longer get food, and when we heard about the mining down here, it seemed a chance to build our lives again.”
    Simon glanced at Baldwin, then back at the woman. “We can protect you on the way to your house, and perhaps help your man. But you must tell us who did this to him.”
    The fear returned to her eyes. “If I tell you they’ll come back.”
    “If you tell us, we can see that they never come back,” he said reassuringly.
    “How can I depend on that? What if you’re wrong? They may burn us out, or kill us both!”
    “Sarah, calm yourself. I am the bailiff. They will not dare to attack you if they hear you’re under my protection.”
    “I don’t know…I must speak to my husband.”
    “Very well, I won’t force you. But think on it. We may be able to help you—after all, the last thing we need down here is mob-rule.”
    “You already have that, bailiff,” she said sadly, and turned away.
    While she waited outside Bruther’s hut with Hugh and Edgar, Simon and Baldwin entered the little dwelling. A balk of timber in the center supported the roof, while a burned patch and twigs nearby showed where the miner had kept his fire. A simple stool formed the only furniture. The man’s sad collection of belongings lay on a large moorstone block which jutted from the wall in place of a table: a cloak, a hood, a small knife, a half-loaf of bread, a paunched rabbit. A thin and worn sleeping mat lay rolled up on the floor beside it.
    Baldwin picked up the dead rabbit and weighed it in his hand. “This can only be a day old. In this heat it would hardly last much longer. If he caught this, surely he would not have committed suicide shortly after?”
    “Why—do you think he might have killed himself?” Simon asked sharply.
    The knight sighed. “No, but suicide would explain why his hands had not been bound. Then there’s the second mark…”
    “What second mark?”
    Baldwin explained while Simon listened intently. “It more or less proves it must have been murder,” the knight said, tossing the rabbit aside.
    “It’s not very honorable, is it?” Simon mused.
    “Stepping up behind a man and throttling him. Not the kind of behavior you’d expect out here. Usually if there’s a fight it’s with daggers or fists. This…it’s sickening.”
    “Yes. As you say, it is hardly chivalrous. But then, there are many miners on the moors, and I doubt whether any of them have noble blood. In any case, there is not much reason here to kill a man, if they killed him to rob.”
    “Could they have taken something from him?”
    “From a villein? Maybe he had a purse on him, but he hadn’t been living here for a year yet. He can’t have earned that much. No, I doubt whether the purpose was robbery. Besides, since when have robbers hanged their victims?”
    There was nothing more for them to learn here. They went outside and mounted their horses. Baldwin offered Mrs. Smalhobbe a ride with Edgar, but she refused. It wasn’t far to her house and she would be happier to walk. “So would I,” Hugh muttered fiercely when he saw that Simon was within hearing, but his