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the death of hisfriend and mentor, Abbot Robert. Even now the memory was depressing. Strange to think how close a man could grow to his master.
    With uncanny timing, his own servant’s whining voice intruded on his thoughts. ‘Is it much farther, Bailiff?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Many miles?’
    ‘Boy, be quiet! It is a long way, and the more you chatter, the longer it feels. Enjoy the views and the air, and hold your
tongue.’
    If it weren’t for Rob trailing along with him, he would have been enjoying this perfect morning. As it was, he was constantly
aware of the lad behind him, muttering and complaining under his breath as he stumbled along after Simon, the reins of the
packhorse in his hands. Rob was little more than a lad, only some thirteen summers or so, but as hard and devious as only
the illegitimate son of a sailor could be. He was sharp-eyed, with dark eyes set close together in a narrow, weaselly face. His accustomed expression of suspicious distrust reminded Simon of a small ferret who was forever seeking the next rabbit. He was clad in a simple tunic, a leather jerkin and a cowl, and barefooted like so many who live near the ships. Boots cost
money, and when sailors disdained such wastefulness, many of their children had to learn to do without too.
    In the middle of the summer the journey was an easy one. In winter even a man like the obnoxious Stephen could make the distance
safely by keeping to the larger roads, but only slowly. Stephen had apparently taken two days to cover the thirty or more
miles between Tavistock and Dartmouth. Simon was disinclined to take his time. He was keen to learn the reason for being called
back, and still more so to seehis wife. That was why he avoided the lower roads that encircled the moorland, and in preference made his way along the muddied
trackways until he reached the open heights, and then took his way north and west until he met up with the Abbots’ Way, the
great path marked by enormous stone crosses that guided a man safely across some of the most treacherous parts of the moors.
    This was land where a man could breathe, Simon thought as he stopped his mount to wait for Rob to catch up and gazed about
him. From this hill, he could see nothing but rolling countryside on all sides. He had joined the Abbots’ Way near Ter Hill,
and westwards he could see the first of the three crosses that showed the safe route past the Aune Head’s mire. The path here
wandered north of that, then curved to avoid the Fox Tor mire a short distance farther on. The bogs were deadly, and all too
often the ghostly shrieks and wails of animals who had blundered into a mire would be heard as the terrible muddy waters gradually
enfolded them and smothered them. No matter how often Simon crossed and recrossed the moors, he would never get used to those
cries. They sounded like tortured souls screaming out from hell.
    But Simon adored this landscape just as much as any lord would love his deer park. For Simon it was the picture of a modern
working environment, with the smoke rising from the miners’ camps, great trenches dug to show where the peat was being harvested,
and rubble all about where great hunks of moorstone had been dug up and roughly cut to size. All over the moors people worked
the land. It might not be so fertile as some of the valleys nearby, but to Simon these open, rolling hills were as near perfection
as anywhere in the country.
    Not that he would ever admit to such thoughts in front ofhis old friend Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, of course. Baldwin would merely scoff at such views.
    ‘Where’s the nearest inn?’ Rob demanded, gazing about him with unconcealed disgust.
    ‘Probably about ten miles west.’
    ‘Christ’s ballocks, what a privy!’
    Simon clenched his jaw and dismounted. He would lead his old horse for a while to rest him.
    They had left Dartmouth as the sun rose. The night before, Simon had introduced his clerk to the new Keeper of the Port, and
told Rob about his