Lucifer's Harvest by Mel Starr

Author:Mel Starr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Fiction
Published: 2016-08-18T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Before questioning Osbert and John I had released Alfred, William, and Uctred. I sent Arthur to fetch them, desiring their presence when I again called upon Sir John Trillowe. Arthur did not soon return. He found William and Uctred, along with many others, watching the work of the Cornish miners to undermine the wall of Limoges. There was little to see. The shed of heavy planks protected the opening of the mine, so nothing of the excavation was visible.

French crossbowmen stood at the crenels, eager to send a bolt toward any man who ventured too close to the wall. Welsh longbowmen watched, but after loosing a few shafts in days past toward the French atop the town wall, had given up the sport as a waste of arrows.

The day after the shed was built the French dropped great stones upon its roof. One penetrated the planks with a splintering crash. So sawyers busied themselves at a pit and next night, when ’twas dark, another layer of planks was fixed atop the shed. Crossbowmen heard the work below them, and tried to interfere, but their shafts went astray in the night and I had no work to repair any wounds.

Soil and rock which the miners removed from under the wall could not be hauled away in the day. Those who did the work must leave the protection of the shed, but were near enough to the wall that a skilled crossbowman could put a bolt through a man or beast hauling a cartload of soil.

Arthur found Uctred and William shouting insults at crossbowmen who peered through the crenels. The Frenchmen returned the taunts, remarking, no doubt, upon the ancestry of the English soldiers. This exercise was futile, for the French understood few of the English barbs, and the English soldiers understood little French.

Alfred was not to be found, so we four returned to Sir John’s tent, each one assuming a determined mien.

“Never,” Sir John shouted when I told him that I wished to examine Sir Simon’s corpse. “You have slain him. What more do you wish to do to him?”

“Reckon you’ll need to call upon Prince Edward again,” Arthur said.

Sir John looked from me to Arthur and back again. Sir John did not want me near Sir Simon’s corpse. But neither did he wish to incur the prince’s displeasure. If I reported to the prince that Sir John would not cooperate, the royal wrath might be unpredictable. Arthur sensed this, and knew that Sir John would also understand the possible threat. Arthur has wit as well as brawn.

I said no more, but stood squarely before Sir John and waited, as if I was certain that he would reconsider. He did.

“There’s a chapel along that road,” he said, turning to glance over his shoulder. “Father Richard is there, making ready the funeral mass. Tell him I grant you permission to … to examine my son.”

It would be easy to dislike Sir John. Many men did. He had used his position as sheriff of Oxford for corrupt purposes, and had accused me unjustly of murder.

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