The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17)

by Michael Jecks

  He sighed, leaning on his staff. Before Nicholas had married the pair of them had grown into an easy, comfortable relationship; they had become close. As castellan, Nicholas was responsible for the law all about the manor, while Gervase was in charge of the maintenance of the estates. Under them, the manor had flourished. And then, six years ago, she had arrived, the Lady Anne, and Gervase had lost his companion.

  Cardinham Castle had, until then, been a quiet place. Sir Henry had won favour with the King, and was today a member of Edward’s household, surviving the many twists and turns of politics. He had been given an estate in Kent, once the possession of a man who had been proved to be a traitor, and lived with the King. He had not been to Cardinham for at least twenty years, so the place was more or less under the permanent control of Nicholas and Gervase his steward.

  Anne had been a forlorn traveller, only sixteen years old, orphaned by the Scottish wars and half-starved by the famine. Nicholas had seen her, this sad little chit, and apparently been immediately smitten. His heart was hers. It was a strange sight, the grizzled old warrior so besotted. It was more than simple lust. If it had been only that, he could have taken her and been satisfied, but there was something else about her that attracted a man. Gervase had felt it too. She was fresh and fragrant – lovely; bewitching to any man with red blood in his veins. Even her melancholia was entrancing. It made a man want to slay dragons to lay at her dainty feet. She was adorable.

  When the two made their oaths at the church door, Nicholas holding her hands with reverence, as though he was holding the hands of an angel, Gervase had felt his heart swell with pride, a sense that the manor was honoured. He had looked at his friend’s smiling face, glad to see him so happy. Nicholas had lost the frivolity of bachelorhood and gained the stern duty of responsible manhood. He now had a woman to serve and protect, a duty and honour he would relish, Gervase knew.

  At the time, Gervase had not realised that he had lost his companion for ever.

  Stumping into the vill later that day, Serlo frowned at all about him. He was in no mood for a chat. He had a task to perform – not a pleasant one, either.

  Serlo had tried figuring out all the ways he could of earning a little more money. There were the tolls, of course. He’d done what he could with them, but the fact was that the threatening clouds of war were putting travellers off. Even the merchants who normally came this way had stopped. Serlo had borrowed heavily to buy ‘the farm of tolls’ – the right to charge – and it was all wasted. It was so bad, he’d gone to speak to Gervase, but the steward had only grinned smarmily at him, saying that once he’d bought the right to charge tolls there was no mechanism to reduce it or give him a refund.

  The only way to make money from the tolls was to conceal a proportion of them from his brother. Alex had helped to buy the farm for a share of the profits, and it wasn’t Serlo’s fault that there were none. Anyway, Serlo could bump up the share to Alex when things looked a bit better. He didn’t want to steal from his own brother. No, but he had to show that he was competent.

  That was the problem. Serlo, the younger, always felt that his brother was patronising him, even when he knew perfectly well that Alex had no intention of doing so. He was just as good as his brother, Serlo told himself: he’d not had quite the same luck. Alex always managed to make money, but when Serlo tried to do so, it never quite worked out. It wasn’t his fault; these things just happened. Alex could stick his hand into a midden and come up grasping rose petals; Serlo would find nothing but turds.

  For now, the main thing was to get hold of some extra money. He’d decided to start by increasing Athelina’s rent. She had a lover – let him pay. He could afford it, God knew. He was one of the richest men about here.

  He had reached her home – a large building with a door in the middle of the whitewashed wall that faced the road. Walking down the path between her vegetable beds, he saw how her plants were thriving. She could easily afford to pay a little more, he thought. He needed the money more than she did.

  At her door, he braced himself, then rapped sharply on the timbers.

  It was a week or more before Athelina approached her lover, and then her nerve almost failed her. She could do nothing until she had spoken to her protector – but he was unavailable again. For a long time Athelina had been used to being received with some honour at the gate, courteously escorted to the room where she could be enjoyed by her man in peace, but now, that was no more. The nearest she got was the lewd suggestion from the gate-keeper that he should service her in the place of her man.

  That was proof enough. If the doorman dared try his luck, all in the castle must know that her man had deserted her. It was no surprise, after all. She’d guessed as much when she saw the strumpet in the vill. It was clear that he’d found a new woman, and had no more interest in her.

  Still, all was not lost. It was not easy for her to play the whore, because she’d always made love for love’s sake, not for money, but now she must earn her keep. Whatever happened, they must not lose their home. She could not make her children suffer like that. No, she would entertain any man who could afford her. So she combed her hair, standing in front of her plate of polished copper. Studying herself, her tunic untied, she could see much still to admire. Her breasts were large and firm still, not flaccid like drained sacks; her belly was flat, her hair luxurious. In a darkened room, it was possible a man might notice her large eyes and ignore the lines of age and care. Or so she hoped.

  When the knock came, she felt her heart thud painfully, but then she took a deep breath and strode to the door, pulling it wide. Giving a smile, she welcomed her visitor, stepping back into the room.

  Before he could speak, she pushed the door shut, then bravely put her lips to his as her hand fell to his groin.

  Chapter One

  It was two days later that Richer rode back alone from a hunt with his squire and Nicholas the castellan. Richer’s rounsey had thrown a shoe, and Richer knew perfectly well that a man-at-arms looked to his horse before his own pleasure. Some day his life might depend on it. Pleasure could be sought at any time.

  The vill was quiet as he clattered slowly along the stony path. He felt surprisingly relaxed. After fleeing from here in such a hurry all those years ago, he had anticipated an overwhelming sadness when he finally returned. And fear, too: this was the first time he had passed through the vill on his own, without the protection of Warin or one of the other men-at-arms.

  From here the road curled up towards the church and soon, through the trees, he could see the little belltower ahead. It was only a short way from there to the place where he had been born and raised. The long low thatched cottage had had a large logpile at one side and a barn behind, where the family pig and some hens were housed. His father had been a serf – a peasant who owed his labour to the lord of the manor – but Richer had gained his freedom by running away and not being caught. He wondered what his parents would make of him now. Probably they’d be unhappy at his chosen career, a henchman for a lord, but there was little else he felt he could do. At least he wasn’t a mercenary. He earned his robes and food from his loyalty to his squire, and if he was employed indirectly by Sir Henry of Cardinham now, it was on a more equitable basis than being a mere serf like his father.

  At least he had travelled and seen a little of the country. That was more than most could say, especially fellows like Serlo. Cheeky bastard, trying to thieve money from people passing by his mill. Richer had asked about this at the castle, but apparently it was legitimate: the miller had bought the farm of the tolls. Which was weird, because if he owned the farm, there was no reason why he should let people through at a reduced rate, unless he was desperate. Perhaps that was it. Serlo’s family had always been money mad, ever since his father’s failure. Some men could be driven like that. As far as Richer was concerned, it was a curious craving. He preferred the security of belonging in a household. Especially since losing his family.

  It was odd comin
g back here. Glancing about him again, he saw how little changed the place was. He would have expected the vill to show the scars of loss, some memory of the disaster which had taken his parents from him, but there was nothing. It was almost as if their deaths hadn’t happened. The houses were the same, the green unchanged – even most of the people were immediately recognisable when he saw then. A part of him expected to see his home; maybe he would meet his father again as he turned a corner. But he couldn’t. They were all dead: it was why he had run away in the first place. All were gone.

  There was one welcoming face he longed to see, but after fifteen years, she must surely have been married. Yet he hadn’t seen her since his return. She wasn’t dead; he’d asked about her generally, and received some grunts from servants in the castle, as though mention of her was somehow bad luck, but he didn’t get the impression that she was in the graveyard. Christ’s bones, but he hoped not. He had loved her so much … so, so much.

  And then, as though she had heard his wishes, he saw her on the way ahead. A tall woman, bent with hardship, but still strikingly attractive.

  ‘Athelina!’ he called in a choked voice.

  She turned, and for a split second, her face registered astonishment. Then her face tightened, and resumed its expression of anguish. In her eyes was no pleasure, only a grim horror, as though she feared any man she met.

  Even him.

  It was almost a whole month later that two men stood high on a hill at the coast, one disconsolately throwing pebbles at an ant scurrying about a rock. He looked up again, a dark man with a dark face, and said emphatically, ‘No!’

  The tall knight with him turned and gave his companion a stare. ‘Are you sure of that, Simon?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you, Baldwin. I want no more of your damned boats,’ rasped his friend. ‘First I nearly die of sickness on the journey to Galicia, then I nearly die on the return, then we are blown from our course to hit those benighted islands, then we both nearly died under attack on those islands! And now we have struck our homeland again, thanks to that drunken oaf of a shipmaster, and you ask me to take another sour-bellied whore of a ship? God’s thigh! Be damned to you, man! I’ll take no more vessels. For me, it’s dry land from now on.’ He shuddered. ‘Christ save me! I could be seasick just walking over a puddle! No, leave me to ponder your fate while you go on alone!’

  The two men stood staring down at the little vessel which had brought them this far and which had now failed them. One, a tall, rangy knight with the strong arms and shoulders of a man who had trained for his vocation since a lad, the other a thickset fellow with the ruddy complexion of one who had spent much of his life in the open, his hair bleached by the hot sun of Galicia.

  ‘It would be a great deal faster,’ the knight said mildly. ‘All I wish is to return home to Furnshill as soon as possible and see my wife and child.’

  His friend sighed. ‘Baldwin, I want to get home too, home to Meg and Edith and Peter – but I don’t want to die in the process. Every attempt to travel since we first left home has left us close to death. For me, the land is so much more secure; I’ll take no other route.’

  ‘Yet the land itself holds dangers, Simon,’ said Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, his attention travelling inland. He had penetrating black eyes, which some said could see through a man’s skin to the sins beneath, but that was the merest nonsense and he was intensely irritated to hear such chatter. He simply had the skill of listening, and usually heard when a man spoke untruthfully.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Simon Puttock agreed. ‘But at least the risks you take on land are the sort which a knight like you and a man like me can protect ourselves against.’

  Baldwin nodded. His companion, the Bailiff of Lydford Castle in Devonshire, was more than capable of defending himself, and the pair of them had been involved in many fights both together and apart. It was the strength of Simon’s courage in battle that Baldwin found so confusing: a man prepared to brave a sword or arrow shouldn’t fear the sea so much – not in Baldwin’s opinion, anyway.

  ‘If we were to sail, it would be a great deal faster,’ he attempted.

  ‘I will not sail.’

  ‘It should be more comfortable, too,’ Baldwin pointed out. ‘No lurching nag, but a gently rolling deck …’

  Simon flinched. He had been so badly seasick during the last voyage that he had prayed for death. ‘Give me a lurching brute. I prefer a lurching brute.’

  Ignoring him, Baldwin blithely continued, ‘And wine available from a smiling fellow sent to serve the guests …’

  Simon held up his hand. ‘All right, all right – you want to travel by ship? Very well.’

  Baldwin tried not to gape. ‘So we can continue by ship when she is mended?’

  Simon glanced over his shoulder. The sun was low in the sky, and the western horizon, away over the land, was gleaming pink and gold. Leaves were licked with fire, and even Baldwin’s face shone with an unearthly glow that lit up the thin scar on his cheek. It was a knife-mark, Simon knew, nothing like so damaging as the other wounds, the scars of swords and axes that marked his torso, but in this light it showed up livid and vicious. It made him look curiously threatening, a harkening back to the great civil wars of the past century. Even his beard was an anachronism. No one wore smart, trimmed beards nowadays, but Baldwin was proud of his. Once he had been a Templar knight, and in that Order it had been illegal to shave.

  ‘Simon, this beard is a mark of respect to those of my Order who lost their lives when the French King betrayed us,’ he had explained to his old friend. ‘If I allow it to grow wild, it would be a mark of disrespect. I will not allow that.’

  To Simon’s disgust, he had even purchased a pair of small scissors from a cutler passing through the vill this morning. It was a well-made tool, Simon could acknowledge, like a small pair of sheep shears, with two sharp blades connected by a horseshoe-shaped spring that held them apart until the fingers squeezed the cutting edges together, but simply unnecessary. He could as easily have bought a pair in Crediton when he got there, but no, he needs must have his beard kept trim.

  The sea was now a chill grey mass, occasional waves sparkling gold, while the ship lay, a black shell in the shadow of the hill in whose lee she sheltered. Simon winced at the sight of her and shivered in recollection of the night before.

  Roaring drunk, the shipmaster had deserted his post at the tiller and fallen in a stupor after finding a bottle of burned wine. This powerful drink, apparently made by monks boiling wine and cooling its steam somehow – a process Simon neither understood nor cared about – had completely ruined the man after only a pint, and yet Simon had seen him consuming a quart of wine the day before! Without a helmsman, the ship had struck a sand bar, breaking her mast, and for the second time this year, Simon had thought that he was about to drown.

  The memory was enough to stiffen his resolve. ‘You sail if you must, Baldwin, but my journey continues on foot.’

  The knight made a great show of puffing out his cheeks and shrugging. ‘If you feel so certain …’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then it is fortunate indeed that I hired the best of the inn’s horses. Otherwise another might have secured them!’ Baldwin said, and laughed at Simon’s expression.

  On the Sunday following this conversation, Serlo the miller left his house to walk the short distance to church, leaving his wife Muriel to prepare their tiny sons Ham and Aumery for the Mass. Serlo needed to speak to his brother Alexander, the Constable of the Peace, about some business, and the church was the usual place for men to discuss their trades.

  He shrugged himself deeper into his thin tunic. The summer was nearly over now and autumn held the land in its fist. Last night there had been a slight frost, and the chilly atmosphere suited his temper. Since the arrival of Richer and his squire, Serlo had noticed people in the vill watching him. He didn’t need their fingers pointing to know that he was the object of all the gossip in the place. Damn them all! Too many reme
mbered how Richer ran away as soon as his family was discovered dead, and many recalled the rumours at the time, that Serlo had been there at the house before it burned down. Rubbish, of course, but throw shit against a wall and some would stick.

  He glanced into the fields nearer the vill and then at the lowering clouds. If it were to rain, the stooks could be ruined. The grain would get damp, and if it wasn’t properly dried it would not last the winter, which would mean disaster for everyone. Some men were already recalling the last war, when the stocks for half the winter were stolen by the King’s Purveyors. Christ’s bones, the weather here was as inconsistent as a woman’s moods.

  His wife Muriel was always whining, demanding money as though all a man need do was wave a hand and coins would come sprinkling from the heavens. She swore that she and the children were always hungry, that they had nothing to live on since the failed harvest last year, as though it was Serlo’s fault. Stupid cow! Why couldn’t she comprehend that he was doing his best for her? Like any other man, he relied on his skills and cunning to wrest as much as he could from the mill, but there was little enough he could do when things were as bad as they were at present. All must be patient. Perhaps now the harvest was in, provided there was no rain for a little while, there would be more money. A harvest meant grain to be milled, and he would take his tenth from each sack – occasionally more, if the owner wasn’t watching too carefully as Serlo weighed his portion.

  He could do with the cash himself, since apart from all his debts, he badly needed a new surcoat. This old thing was too threadbare to keep him warm. It had been fine the winter before last when he bought it, but now it wouldn’t keep out the chill of an autumnal morning. And the evenings were already creeping in. Soon it would be winter. The years flew past so quickly. His father had once told him that: as a man grew older, the days passed by more swiftly – and he was definitely not getting any younger, he acknowledged sourly.