The Devil's Acolyte

by Michael Jecks

  ‘I know the area,’ Sir Tristram said and spat. ‘You know the worst problem with them? Those sodomites were the friends of the Scots! They cosseted wounded Scottish and parleyed with the Scottish King! Cowards and traitors the lot of them! If there’s one of that immoral congregation here, keep the arse away from me, or I may throttle the life from the shit!’

  Chapter Twelve

  The rest of the day was quiet for Simon. He preferred to avoid the arrayer, finding peace in solitude. After taking a little lunch, he rode up to the site of the body with his servant, but when he and Hugh arrived, they found that Hal had gone and in his place was a new watchman. Still, it was with relief that Simon saw that the corpse was not being further destroyed by rats or dogs.

  However, he and Hugh were glad to get away from the place. The stench of putrefaction seemed to reach into Simon’s nostrils and lie there, as though it had made his own sinus rot by contact. As he inhaled, he knew that the odour would remain with him for days. It was like pork that had been left out too long: sweet, but unbearably repellent.

  Hugh clearly agreed. His face registered his disgust, and he refused to approach the corpse, remaining on his horse, glaring about him as though daring a felon to try to attack him in the same way that Wally had been.

  Simon could fully understand Hugh’s reluctance. He dropped from his horse, trying to breathe through his mouth and not his nose, but it didn’t help. He stood a few yards away from the body, eyes narrowed, mouth drawn down, and as soon as he was satisfied that nothing had been stolen or altered, he turned away.

  By chance his glance fell on the place where the club had fallen, and he walked to the spot with a frown growing on his features. ‘Where’s the club that was here?’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Don’t know. Weren’t nothing there when I came ’ere.’ The miner was a burly, short, grizzled man with an immense curling beard. He stood with his thumbs in his belt and stared blankly at Simon’s pointing finger. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘There was a morning star there. Home-made, just a lump of timber with a load of nails hammered into it. It’s what killed Wally. Wasn’t it here when you arrived?’

  ‘No. Nothing there what I saw. And I haven’t slept, Bailiff.’

  ‘Shit!’ Simon turned away and walked to his horse, his mind whirling. If this man hadn’t taken it… He span on his heel. ‘Who was here when you arrived?’

  ‘Hal. No one else.’

  ‘Good. Come, Hugh,’ Simon said, mounting his horse. He considered riding out to see Hal now, but a quick look up at the sky persuaded him against it. Hal was only a short distance away, but Simon didn’t know the safe route. To get to him would mean walking around the great bog, going far out of his way, and then it would soon be dusk. No, he must see Hal later, and demand to know what he had done with the club – and why.

  The thin grey dusk had already given way to a clear, cloudless night, with stars shining bright in a purple sky. Having partaken of a loaf of bread and some pottage, he and Hugh sat back in the little chamber that stood at the ground floor of the Great Court’s gate and drank from their jugs of ale.

  From there, Simon could peer through the doorway to the court itself, and see when Sir Tristram was likely to appear. As soon as the knight did so, Simon planned to leave. He would say that he had to go and talk to a man who had been seen up on the moor when Wally died, or perhaps that the abbot needed to talk to him – or just that he felt sick and was going to spew. Anything to keep away from Sir Tristram.

  If only Hal was here, he thought. He would have liked a chance to talk to him about the disappearance of that morning star. It made no sense for Hal to have taken the thing, unless he thought that somehow it was incriminating and wanted to protect the real killer. Perhaps even protect himself.

  Except Simon knew it made no sense. The nails could have been made by any one of a number of smiths in Dartmoor. Simon had seen them making their nails, setting a red-hot bolt of iron into the spike-shaped metal formers and beating it until it was pushed into the mould, the head gradually rounding over. It was easy work, if dull and repetitive. Similarly the wood of the club itself would give no sign where it had come from. There was no point, no point at all, in taking the thing away. All it could do was indicate that a miner was involved, but the fact that Wally had died up on the moors tended to suggest that anyway.

  He was considering this for the thousandth time when he glanced through the door and observed a monk walking slowly with bent head, along from the main gate and across the court. When the figure turned, Simon saw the flash of the scar shining in the torchlight. He left Hugh and walked outside.

  ‘Brother Peter, may I speak to you for a while?’ he called.

  ‘To me, Bailiff? Aye, if ye’re sure ye can cope with the ranting and ravening of a mad northerner,’ Peter said in his thickest dialect.

  ‘Do you often find people saying they can’t understand you?’ Simon smiled.

  ‘Aye. And usually it’s the most uncommunicative and intractable shepherds or farmers who accuse me of being hard to listen to,’ Peter snorted. ‘Well, never mind.’

  ‘No. Don’t fear, though. I’ve lived in Devonshire all my life, and if I go and listen to moormen talking, I still can’t understand a word they say; It’s too broad for me.’

  ‘Aye, but you’re a foreigner like me, aren’t ye? You come from at least two miles outside the moors.’

  ‘True enough,’ Simon said with a chuckle.

  The monk was in an apparently contemplative mood. He walked slowly, and although he gave his lopsided smile in response to Simon’s comments, he said no more. The bailiff had the impression that he was waiting for him to speak.

  Now that he was here, Simon wasn’t sure how to continue. He wanted to warn the older man to beware of Sir Tristram, that the knight might lose his temper if he knew about Peter, but Simon’s diplomatic skills were not up to telling a man whose face proved how terrible his time up in the north had been, that someone else wanted to hit him, especially since Sir Tristram’s reason was in order to punish Peter for collaborating with the very men who had given him such a grievous wound.

  ‘You appear ill-at-ease, my friend,’ Peter said softly.

  ‘It’s Sir Tristram,’ Simon blurted out.

  ‘Aye. He’s a hard man – Sir Tristram,’ Peter said mildly.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I know him well, but I’ve seen him a few times. He’s a tough warrior, always out on the warpath. As soon as there was ever a hint that the Scots were at the border, Sir Tristram would take up his sword and lance and ride with his men. I don’t think I could count the number of lives that man has ended.’

  ‘He was telling me that the Scots raid over the border, though,’ Simon frowned.

  ‘It’s always the way, isn’t it? Somebody did commit the first raid. I wonder who it was? Perhaps it was the Scottish, for all we know, and then the English border folk decided to take revenge, and then the Scottish strong men took their revenge. It’s easy to see how the border reivers could cross the border from both sides. And what happens? A few cattle are stolen and taken back to the other side of the border, or a house is found locked up and is fired, with the screams and pleadings of the women and children inside falling on deaf or uncaring ears, or perhaps they ride into a group of other men in the dales, and Armstrongs fight Elliots until all are dead, for none would give quarter.’

  ‘And Sir Tristram was one of these?’

  ‘Sir Tristram!’ Peter said, and there was a chuckle in his voice, although his eyes didn’t reflect any humour. ‘I saw him once, you know. He had lost a pair of oxen, and he decided that reivers from the other side of the March were responsible, so he rode off with his men, great, fierce warriors, they were. I saw them come back. Sir Tristram was proud. He’d lost one man, but he’d killed three himself. Personally. Do you know how I know that?’

  Simon shook his head.

  ‘Because that honourabl
e knight had their heads dangling from his saddle, Bailiff. Tell me, how do you order the law here? Do you slaughter and bring the heads back?’

  ‘It is possible. If an outlaw is found, his head is forfeit.’

  ‘Come, Bailiff, how often does a man sweep off the head of an outlaw? The man is taken prisoner and brought back to the justices if possible, and if not, why then the fellow is fought, and his corpse brought to the justices. If not, the coroner would ask questions. Even if a felon’s head is needed for the city’s spikes in York or Exeter, so that all can see that the King’s justice and his laws are still functioning, it is carried in a sack. Not much of a distinction, I know, but at least that demonstrates a certain respect for the dead man’s soul. Not Sir Tristram, though. He kills, and enjoys the killing.’

  He stopped and glanced up at the sky, which was darkening. ‘Perhaps I am just too old, Bailiff. I spent so many years trying to find peace where none existed, and then I received this, when the Scottish rebels came over the dale and attacked us in revenge for a raid that English reivers had launched on them. Where is the sense? Will the feuds never cease?’

  ‘I am sure they will,’ Simon said seriously. ‘Once the Scottish stop rebelling against the King’s rule, and we become one nation again as we should be, the border region must be pacified.’

  ‘Bailiff,’ Peter said, smiling now as he faced Simon. ‘You cannot pacify those men, only kill them. They won’t stop fighting until they are dead, or all their enemies are, and there is nothing more for them to steal.’

  ‘Then perhaps it is natural for Sir Tristram to want to fight them and protect his own,’ Simon said hesitantly.

  ‘Him? He is one of the worst of them,’ Peter said, and his voice was suddenly terribly cold, as though he had seen the ghosts of all his friends who had died on the Marches passing before him, ‘Few on either side of the border don’t know of Bloody Tristram.’ The old monk stopped and looked past Simon to the abbey’s church tower. ‘He doesn’t only attack the Scottish, our Sir Tristram. He is like the shavaldores – happy to rob any man for profit. No one may cross his lands without being attacked.’

  ‘Are you-sure?’ Simon asked doubtfully. ‘The King has sent him here as an arrayer. Surely he wouldn’t send a man who was untrustworthy?’

  Peter looked at him; there was deep sadness in his eye. ‘You think the King would object to a man like him? Sir Tristram gives King Edward all he wants: a constant fight to irritate the Scottish, and a boundless zeal for killing Scots and terrorising the whole of the March. Whenever the King wants men-at-arms or archers, he can go straight to Sir Tristram and find a ready source.’

  ‘Yet he needs to send Sir Tristram here to fetch them?’ Simon queried.

  ‘At times the King needs more men. When he plans to slaughter even more Scottish than usual, or when the Scottish decide to raid more deeply into England, like a sword thrust, instead of their usual short stabs at the border, like daggers, then he needs more men. But whatever happens, Sir Tristram will not lose by it.’

  Simon could say nothing. The pain in Brother Peter’s face was all too evident, and the bailiff wanted to distract him. ‘You have heard about the dead man on the moors?’

  ‘Poor Walwynus? Yes. Terrible to think of his being clubbed to death so far from friends, out on that bleak moorland. He lived out in the middle of the moors, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In among the tin-miners, then. Do you think one of them could have killed him?’

  ‘It’s possible, although I can’t understand why.’

  ‘You know how it is. Feuds.’

  Simon shot him a glance. The old monk was facing the ground now, but Simon was sure that he was watching him keenly from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that will be for the coroner to discover.’

  ‘Who is the coroner?’

  ‘Sir Roger de Gidleigh,’ Simon said, adding, ‘He’s a very astute man. The killer should beware. If there is any sign of who was guilty, Sir Roger will find it.’

  ‘Well, shall I save you some trouble learning things, then, Bailiff?’ Peter muttered.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Wally, the dead man – he was one of the group that did this to me. My woman had saved his life only a short while before, nursing him. Then, when he was hale and hearty again, aye, and could ride, he and his friends found me. His companion, Martyn Armstrong, headed me off from my escape, and Wally came up. I think, perhaps, he was going to try to save me, but before he could, a third man caught me and did this with an axe.’

  Simon winced. ‘You saw him swinging his axe at you? That must have been…’

  ‘No, I didn’t. He swung, but all I saw was a blur. And then I was down. But you know the worst, Bailiff? Aye, that was when I came to, and I was told that my girl was dead. Raped and murdered on the very same day. It was that which ruined me, more than this wound even, for in losing her, I lost my life.’

  ‘So you came down here.’

  ‘Aye, I came here, every day cursing Wally for leading his men to my woman and letting them rape her after her kindness to him. It was only last week that I learned he hadn’t. He had stayed with the men and tried to lead them around her house, but they met a party with Sir Tristram and got separated. By the time Wally met them again, she was dead. They tried to escape by coming south, and Wally dared not confront his companions, for he knew he needed them to survive, the coward, but once they were settled here, he killed Martyn for her murder. They were drunk and Wally couldn’t help but taunt him. When he accused Martyn, the mad Scot went for him, but Wally won the advantage.’

  ‘He was happy to live with the man out on the moors until then?’ Simon asked doubtfully. ‘Even though he thought the man had murdered the girl?’

  ‘By then the man Martyn was his only comrade in a terrifying world. Imagine if you were forced to flee to Scotland, Bailiff. Would you question a companion closely, if he was your sole contact with your old world? I think not.’

  ‘Perhaps. I hope I never suffer such an existence. What of the third man?’ Simon wondered, ‘Did he come here too? Or did he die on the way?’

  Peter shrugged. ‘I care not. I hope he is dead and broiling in hell, but if I met him on the street, I would think it my duty to try to, save his soul. I might even shake his hand. Repellent thought.’

  Shortly afterwards the bell began to toll, and Peter sighed and gave his farewell, making his way to the church and the last service of the day.

  Simon was strangely happy to see him go. He had never heard a bad word about Brother Peter; the almoner was known among the townspeople to be a gentle, intelligent and mild-mannered man, but something about him today made Simon feel cautious. The monk had been interested to hear about the dead man, and if Simon was right and Peter had attempted to distract him, maybe drawing him away from the real killer and instead focusing his attention on the miners, that could indicate some form of complicity or guilt.

  It was something that he should ask about, he decided. Turning, he was about to make his way back to the welcoming room and ask for a fresh pot of ale, when he caught sight of a figure standing at the top of the stairs leading to the guest rooms: Sir Tristram.

  The knight was staring after the disappearing monk. As though feeling Simon’s eyes upon him, he glanced down, his face empty of any emotion. Without even acknowledging the bailiff, he suddenly turned away, into the guest room, leaving Simon aware of a sense of grim foreboding.

  * * *

  Cissy pushed the last of her customers from the pie-shop and shut up the door, dropping the peg into place on the latch so it couldn’t be lifted, then shooting the bolt.

  She was tired. After the coining the previous week, they hadn’t stopped. Sunday, supposedly the day of rest, had been hectic: Emma, Hamelin’s wife, who was always struggling to feed her children, while her man lived out on the moors for seven weeks in every eight trying to make enough money to keep them all, had burs
t into tears in the street, Joel in her arms and three of her brood hanging on her skirts, and Cissy had pulled her into the parlour, sitting her in one of Nob’s chairs and warming a little spiced wine for her. She had always kept the toys her own son had played with, and now they were a boon. She brought them down from the shelf in their box and the three children fell upon them with squeals of delight. When Nob poked his head about the door, Cissy glared at him until he shamefacedly disappeared, returning to the alehouse he had just left.

  ‘You sit there, maid. You’ll soon feel better.’

  Emma sobbed into her skirts, unable to speak while Cissy clattered about the place, cutting up one of the pies Nob hadn’t sold the previous day and setting the pieces on the box for the boys, then slicing another in two for Emma. She had a bread trencher, and she put the pie on it, filled a large cup with the wine, and held it near Emma until she could smell it.

  The girl looked at it, her brown eyes watery. She was not particularly attractive, with her large, rather flat nose, and the almost circular shape of her face, but her heart was good, and Cissy had sympathy for any woman who must raise six children, five of them boys, on her own. Many other women were in the same situation, of course, but that didn’t make it any less tiring. What’s more, poor Emma had lost both her parents and her husband’s during the famine, so there was no family to help her. She had to rely on neighbours and friends with young families, and sometimes such people couldn’t do much.

  ‘What is it, maid? Things got on top of you?’

  ‘It’s my little Joel. He’s fading away.’

  The mite was only a year old, but scrawny, and hadn’t ever had much of an appetite. Prone to crying, he was probably more than half the reason Emma was always so tired, because his whining wail could be heard all through the night, and Cissy knew that he kept Emma from her sleep.