Sitting once more in the sun outside Simon’s house at Lydford, watching the villeins working the fields behind the village, Baldwin was relaxed and drowsy. It was a more or less satisfactory end to the enquiry, he felt. Sir William had been held by the court, an event which caused some initial disquiet to the burgesses of the village who would never have expected to keep a knight in the chilly and damp cell under the ground. But they had quickly become used to the idea, and now some relished the depths to which the knight had sunk-metaphorically and physically. Fighting between Beauscyr men and the miners had all but stopped. Now the only recorded fighting was the normal fisticuffs outside the inns and an occasional dispute on the moors about who had bounded a particular parcel of land for mining.
Hearing a shrill scream and the thunder of small feet in the screens behind him, Baldwin smiled and groaned, slowly rising to his feet. In a few moments Simon was with him, his daughter clinging to one arm. “Fetch your poor father some wine, Edith,” he said, carefully depositing her on the grass, and giggling, the eight year old ran back into the house. His eyes followed her slight form until she disappeared, then he slumped into his seat with a contented sigh, casting a baleful eye at his friend. “I trust there is a little wine left?”