Tombland

WE ARRIVED AT TOBY ’S hut half an hour later. For once, the sun had come out. Toby was outside, this time sharpening a large sword with a whetstone. Barak quietly slipped off the cover on the knife on his artificial hand. Lockswood looked up at us, eyes full of hatred – and something more. Madness? The thought came to me, if his reason was going, could he have been the one who betrayed the whereabouts of Miles’s wife? But no, surely, his devotion to the cause of the camp was wholehearted. He rubbed a hand through his curly black hair.

‘What do you two want?’ he snapped. ‘Where’s your boy gentleman? On a horse to London, I expect.’

‘He’s at the end of this road,’ Barak said. ‘Got a sword now, have you?’

‘Yes. Commoners are allowed them in the camp. To gut any gentlemen and courtiers who dare come here.’

I made an effort to be civil. ‘We have not come to fight, Toby.’ I pulled the nit-comb from my pocket. ‘Is this yours? I found it.’

He shook his head, pulling another comb from his pocket. ‘No, I have one.’ He frowned. ‘You haven’t come to see if I’ve lost my comb.’

‘No. Perhaps you remember the days when you helped us try to discover who killed Edith Boleyn and those others. You might be interested to see this.’ I held the wedding ring out to him.

Toby looked at it, and could not hide his curiosity. ‘Good gold, engraved with their names. Where did you get it?’

‘There was a petty thief tried at the Oak this morning for stealing things from people’s huts. This was among them. He confessed to his mitchery, but said he found the ring on the ground near the crossroads. He showed us the spot. He had no reason to lie.’

Toby said incredulously, ‘Just lying in the road?’

‘Yes. Someone must have dropped it.’

Lockswood tossed it back to me. ‘Better find them, then.’ He frowned. ‘That comb was with it, wasn’t it?’

I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘And if I had claimed it as mine, you’d have taken that as evidence I had the ring, too.’

‘Any lawyer would try such a tactic.’

He lifted the sword and said, with deadly quiet, ‘Fuck off, the pair of you. And don’t come back.’

* * *

THE THREE OF US each took a lane and spent the next hour and a half calling at huts. I had in mind what I had said about the possibility of danger, but we were armed, and the likelihood of someone attacking us in this thickly populated area was, I hoped, small. Most people said they had not lost a ring, and those who did claim it could not tell us what was engraved inside. Although the possibility of finding more about Edith and where she had been these last nine years had galvanized me, I was tired by the time the three of us met again back at the crossroads. Barak said gloomily, ‘Whoever dropped it could have taken any of the four lanes, then walked miles, for all we know.’

‘Let’s take the last lane together,’ I said. ‘And then – perhaps tomorrow – we can persuade others to join the search; pay some of the men –’

‘There are eight or nine thousand on Mousehold by my reckoning,’ Barak said. ‘This could be a long job.’

But the answer came sooner than we had expected. At the third circle of huts, its parish banner hanging limp in the still afternoon, several men were re-laying bracken on the roof of a hut, which had been torn down in the storm. One of them, a slim man in his thirties standing on a short ladder, I recognized at once; Peter Bone. And I remembered with a jolt that I had met him coming from Norwich to the camp with a bag of his possessions, near two weeks ago, just when Dorton said he had found the ring. I called out, ‘Peter, may we have a private word?’

Once more he looked as though he would rather avoid a conversation, but stepped down. ‘Excuse me, bors,’ he said to his fellows, who looked at us curiously. He led us into one of the small huts occupied by single people. Everything inside was neat and tidy. The pack I had seen him carrying lay in a corner. We all sat down, Barak and Nicholas on either side of the door.

Nicholas nodded at the pack. ‘I see the seam is coming away there. You should sew it up, or you will lose things.’

‘Like this perhaps.’ I opened my hand, showing him the comb and ring. He looked at us for a moment, eyes wide, then bowed his head and stared down at the mud floor. I said, ‘You know what is engraved on the inside of this ring?’

He spoke in a monotone. ‘Yes. It is Edith Boleyn’s wedding ring.’ He looked up, his narrow face suddenly etched with sorrow. ‘I spent hours searching for it; it must have slipped through that tear in the seam the day I brought my things to the camp.’ He made a sound between a sigh and a groan. ‘Where was it?’

‘A thief found it on the path by the crossroads, probably the day you dropped it. He was tried at the Oak today. I examined the ring and saw the engraving.’