held his head back and laughed. ‘I don’t think a settlement on the moor would yield a gold treasure. Just shards of used pottery and dry bones. Animal but very possibly also human.’
Alkmene sobered. ‘I do wonder if that poor woman died in the marshes. She must have been desperate that her husband’s brother wanted to force her into setting him free. While she was with child. I guess she had no family who could stand up for her. Maybe they had even warned her when she started the relationship that it might not last.’
‘They could not have stood up for her either way,’ Jake said with a dark look. ‘They were probably common folk, like that authentic shepherd of yours. People you don’t have to take seriously, when you have money and power.’
Alkmene sighed. ‘Are you going to give me that again?’
‘Well, do you ever see yourself ending up in that position? Pregnant and forced to relinquish your claim on the man you love, forced by some family member who doesn’t think you good enough for his brother. Let’s be honest. That was it. They did not care for the question whether those two loved each other or not. They just wanted a wife for their son and brother who was in their league.’
Alkmene studied his profile. ‘Probably, but their opinion does make sense.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Jake said, giving some more gas.
‘Really. Consider. If you are raised a certain way, you have certain expectations hanging upon you. This brother of Silas Norwhich had friends, acquaintances back home who would expect him to present a certain type of wife to them. If the woman was not…in their league, as you put it, she would have been treated with disdain, perhaps not invited to parties, or if she was invited, people would stare at her and whisper. She’d feel outcast, unaccepted, unworthy perhaps.’
‘And what nonsense that would be.’
‘Perhaps, but she would sense it and suffer from it. Could her husband’s love compensate for what she would be missing? Her family at home, her simple life, the lack of pressure on her to be a certain way.’
Alkmene held her hands tightly together, staring ahead where a group of houses appeared with a church tower rising over them. ‘You keep saying my position is easy and privileged. But I have never failed to remember what people expect of me. You can never just do what you want, or your father will hear of it, or the people will talk about it.’
‘Tough,’ Jake said with a ridiculing click of his tongue.
Alkmene gave up for the moment. He obviously didn’t understand what she was trying to explain to him, but dug his teeth, like a terrier, into his prejudice against her class.
The road declined now and dragged them by a sharp angle into a narrow passage between the stone walls of neat little gardens of modest homes, ending in a village square, with a post office dead ahead, beside the church, and the inn with the sign ‘The Hunted Boar’.
The animal in question was pictured pursued by two dogs that snapped at it with large yellowish teeth.
Jake parked the car and got out, stretching his long limbs. Alkmene had to agree the ride had made her as stiff as an ironing board. She was happy they were there at last, even if they seemed to have ended up in a deserted town. Nothing was stirring behind the windows, no lace curtains moving as hands lifted them and curious eyes peeked out at the visitors.
The square itself lay empty, just some dead leaves rustling as the wind from the moors came to move them. It carried a hint of damp earth like a cemetery.
Thinking of the woman who had run in despair and vanished, Alkmene shivered. Jake had rounded the car to stand beside her. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.
‘I am not quite sure. There is a bit of a…sinister feel to this place.’
He laughed. ‘Just a few minutes ago it was all so idyllic and authentic and you’d go out to paint and see excavation sites.’ He leaned over closer to her. ‘I bet that if you did and some animal stuck its head out of a ditch, you’d think it was some dead body coming back to life and you’d run screaming.’
Alkmene sighed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Shall we go in to see if they have rooms?’
Still, she pulled her coat closer around her and didn’t look at the one oak again that was just a dead stump with a few branches clawing at the skies. Why had nobody bothered to cut it down? It had to be ill or something to die like that. It ruined the look of the entire square with its other healthy green oaks.
Jake opened the door into The Hunted Boar for her and she went in.
The place was crammed with people standing closely together, shouting and raising beer glasses. Alkmene barely managed to squeeze past the last of them to reach a reception desk where a woman with reddish hair and large coarse hands was leafing through the ledger.
In front of the room a man with a leather apron stood holding up something that looked suspiciously like…
Bleeding meat.
Alkmene stared, willing her eyes to adjust the scene. Her uncomfortable thoughts must have influenced her vision and changed something perfectly innocent into something grisly.
But no, it actually seemed to stay bleeding meat, which the man slapped onto a table in front of him, wrapped into paper and handed to someone who cheered like some Norse warrior carrying off loot.
‘Meat division,’ Jake Dubois said as if it were self-evident.
‘What?’ she asked, leaning over to him to hear him above the roar.
‘Well, these villagers apparently have a communal herd they tend. Once in a while they slaughter a beast or a few and then everybody comes in and according to their share in the herd or the amount of time they put into it or the pasture the beasts grazed on they all get some share in it. They do the same with cheese in the Swiss Alps.’
Alkmene pulled a face. ‘I think cheese would make it look less disgusting.’
Jake grinned. ‘Still thinking it’s sinister here?’
She straightened up under his tone and approached the woman with the ledger. ‘Good day. We have just come down from London and we’d like some rooms, if they are available.’
The woman looked up. ‘Married are you? Single room, double bed?’
Alkmene leaned back on her heels. ‘I thought I said rooms plural.’
The woman held her gaze unperturbed. ‘Married or not? We don’t encourage liberal behaviour here at our inn. If you are not married, you have to take separate rooms.’
‘We actually want separate rooms,’ Alkmene said.
Jake smiled as he leaned on the counter. ‘We are not married, fortunately.’
The woman looked him over, then shrugged and turned away to study the board that held the keys to several rooms.
‘How do you mean fortunately?’ Alkmene asked Jake
