‘Puke it up, churl! And get used to pain, because if I see you accuse my lady of adultery in front of the jury, I’ll ensure you receive more suffering than you could ever imagine!’
Gervase toppled, choking, to his side.
‘My wife means more to me than anything. I’ll protect her with the full extent of my power, and if that means I have to kill you, I will!’
Suddenly, Nicholas was overcome with uncontrollable rage. He kicked Gervase again and again, and Anne had to cover her eyes and ears as best she could against the terrible cries of the steward as the heavy boot crashed into his belly and breast, but when she heard his armbone crack with a noise like a mace striking a shield, she fled from the room even as Warin and Richer stormed in and pulled the castellan away.
Simon and Baldwin were already at the vill’s church house; they’d been there since a little after dawn. Simon was unhappy to be up at such an unpleasant hour for the second day running, but the urgency of their need to learn the truth bore them both up. They had returned to the castle to hear that Ivo had caught the murderer. He was waiting in the hall to explain what had happened.
The culprit was being held in the church house, and Baldwin had been all for going straight to him, but Ivo said that he’d knocked the man out with an iron bar, and Simon had persuaded Baldwin both to stop interrogating Ivo, who was as pale as a candle from loss of blood, and to forget the idea of questioning a man who had almost had his head crushed. Baldwin had reluctantly agreed to leave things until next morning. Alexander wasn’t going to escape them, after all.
But now, hurrying to the church house, he experienced an overwhelming urge to learn what this murderer could tell him. The man had killed so many, including his own wife, and the motives for the crimes were, at best, nebulous.
They thundered on the door, and a slightly bloodshot eye peered out at them before the door opened. A scruffy peasant yawned widely to display only five gleaming teeth, shuffled to lock the door again, and then led them to the figure bound on the rushes.
Baldwin knelt. ‘Alexander?’
‘Why, Keeper! You thought to come and visit me? That was kind,’ Alexander said. ‘Please – will you tell this churl to release me at once! He doesn’t seem to realise I’m the Constable here!’
‘We’ll arrange for your release as soon as we can,’ Baldwin said. ‘But you have to tell us what has happened.’
‘It was the steward,’ Alexander said quickly. ‘I saw him. Last night, he was trying to kill Julia – obviously he wanted to kill all the women he had polluted and got in pup, to try to atone for his fornication. I saw him entering the priest’s house, so I smashed down the door to arrest him, when some fool ran me down and broke my head …’
‘He wasn’t there, Alexander,’ Baldwin said gently. ‘The man trying to break in to hurt Julia was you. We know that. We have witnesses.’
‘No, that’s wrong.’
‘Why did you kill your brother?’
‘Serlo?’ Alexander looked up at him and tears started. ‘I loved him. Always had. Serlo was my little brother, my best friend. I didn’t want to see him hurt in any way.’
‘Why kill him then?’
‘He … It was Richer, because Richer heard Serlo fired his parents’ house. Richer killed him.’
‘Richer didn’t realise Serlo had done that,’ Baldwin said, his voice level and calm.
Simon stood behind Baldwin. Alexander was by turns calm, then furious; he hardly seemed to know his own mind, and to Simon this was the most terrifying thing: the man had lost his reason.
Baldwin was continuing just as patiently. ‘Why did Athelina die, Alexander? Was it because of the money?’
‘Of course it was! Serlo was furious with her. Do you know what he said to her? He said that she should go and whore, if she couldn’t find the cash. And do you know, she tried! The bitch even tried it on with me – the Constable. It wasn’t our fault, was it, if her man had left her high and dry? No. But she refused to clear off. Dug her heels in. We couldn’t allow that. We needed the money. I mean, Serlo did.’
Even the doorman heard that, the way that the miller’s name was added as an afterthought.
‘Serlo needed money to pay his fines and bills, didn’t he?’ Baldwin said.
‘Yes. I helped as far as I could, of course, because he was my kid brother, but there’s only so much a man can … and he was proud, you see. Serlo didn’t like taking charity. Last time I offered him money, he was upset. Very upset. He threw his plate across the room and said he didn’t need my alms. I can see why, of course. Letty was hurt, though. Well, she can’t understand what it’s like, having a brother. She never was so close to her family.’
‘Did you kill her because of that?’ Baldwin asked.
‘Kill Letty?’ Alexander peered up at him in amazement. ‘How could I do that? I love her. She’s the only bright light in my life, now Serlo’s dead. Poor Serlo.’ He began to sob, then stopped abruptly.
‘It must have been very difficult,’ Baldwin observed.
‘What?’
‘Having a child by Matty, when Letty couldn’t conceive.’
‘My Danny was no trouble.’
Simon felt his heart thunder. This was the proof, at last!
Baldwin nodded understandingly. ‘But you were terribly hurt by Serlo’s callous attitude after Danny died so tragically.’
‘It was a very bad time,’ Alexander agreed. ‘Serlo didn’t understand why I was so upset.’
‘So why did you kill Serlo?’
Alexander looked as though he was about to deny it, but then his head dropped slightly and he stared at the floor. There came a time, Simon had observed, when a man stopped bothering to deny what was so obviously true, and this appeared to be still more the case with Alexander. If his mind was twisted and corrupted with madness, how much more difficult was it for him to invent a new tale? The truth was easier.
‘He proved that he didn’t deserve to continue living. I was hurt when he made disparaging comments about my son, my only son; I was hurt again when I heard he’d been taking gifts from people to escape the tolls, because that was taking money from my pocket too; and then I saw that he couldn’t even protect his own boy. He left Aumie and Ham alone, and cost one of them his life. A man who was so selfish and stupid didn’t deserve to live. I killed him, and I’d do it again.’
‘And you went on to try to kill Julia. What had she done to you?’
‘That slut? I thought if she died, it would prove that Gervase was guilty. He deserved to suffer anyway, for his disloyalty. Adultery is a terrible thing.’
‘You committed adultery. You fathered Danny on Matty,’ Simon said.
‘That was different. She was only a peasant – little better than a whore. Lady Anne is the wife to the castellan. Gervase deserved his punishment! So did Julia. She gave birth to that boy. She was no better than any other stale.’
‘Men have said that they saw Serlo near Richer’s house when it was burned,’ Baldwin said slowly. ‘I don’t think he set fire to it, though.’
‘Serlo? He couldn’t have – he didn’t have the guts. Me, I have always been able to fight back when someone tries to ruin me. That fool Richer made sure that Serlo and I were thrashed when he let our beast loose. The lord of the manor took it for himself, and my father beat us so furiously, I had thought he might kill us. At the harvest, when all were busy in the fields, I went to Richer’s house and set it alight. Serlo was nearby, but when he saw it was ablaze, he ran to fetch help and put it out, the idiot! I loved him, you know, but he was so stupid! His negligence cost me my son, and then he allowed his own son to die. How could I let him live after that?’
‘What about your wife?’
‘You asked me that before! What of her? She would keep going on and on about things … I put her in a trunk to keep her quiet, that’s all. I wouldn’t hurt my Letty. It’s she who kept me sane after Danny’s death. I love her.’
‘What did she go on abo
ut?’
‘Oh, she knew I’d killed Serlo. There was blood on my coat, you see, and she realised when she heard that Serlo was dead, that I must have done it. She wanted me to confess to Adam, to do a penance, but like I said to her, I wasn’t going to do that, not when the man was openly carrying on with that slut in his own house. Oh no, I wasn’t going to confess anything to him. But she would keep going on and on at me about it. In the end, I was so angry, I shut her in the chest in my strongroom.’
‘You killed her first. You cut her throat.’
‘No!’ Alexander looked at him with anger in his eyes. ‘You’re lying. She’s fine, she’s just resting. I couldn’t hurt my Letty. I love her.’
Just as you loved your brother, Simon thought.
Epilogue
There were many people who declared that, since Alexander was so obviously insane, they should take pity on his soul. The Bishop of Exeter himself was petitioned to ensure mercy was granted to him, but then one morning Alexander was found dead, hanging in his cell by the thongs which had bound his hosen to his tunic. He had spent the evening carefully pulling them free, one by one, and tying them together to fashion a rough noose.
There was no one to grieve for him. Sir Jules certainly didn’t when he went to view the body. To him, the Constable was just one more corpse. Already he had seen more than he wanted to, and at least this was less traumatic – a convicted murderer and madman was not the sort of victim Jules could lose sleep over. It was other deaths that stuck in his memory and returned in his dreams to haunt him. Already he had told his Sheriff that he didn’t want to continue in his post, and so far as he was concerned, the sooner the Sheriff could find another fool to take on this thankless job, the better.
Roger didn’t seem bothered to learn that his Coroner was going to resign. He merely shrugged. ‘Oh well. I’ll just have to break in another one, then.’
Gervase had been in the hall that day, and heard his words. Sir Jules had looked offended, drawing himself up to his full height before stalking away. Roger shook his head. ‘At least there’s a chance I’ll get a man with some brains this time.’
‘Sir Jules wasn’t the brightest?’
‘Not in my experience. He needs a war to blood him. There hasn’t been a decent chance to fight since the King stopped tournaments. That’s what Sir Jules needs – an opportunity to prove himself in the lists, so he could come to the job with an experience of death and the reasons why people kill.’
It was one thing Gervase had no need of: he already knew some of those reasons. However, the thought of pitting himself against another man clad all in mail, was revolting.
No, his fights required more subtlety.
He had been very lucky, he knew, to survive the beating meted out by Nicholas. And in the end, it had achieved Nicholas’s twin objectives: Gervase was far too unwell to attend the inquest, and the castellan had some compensation for his pain and hurt. Yet there was mitigation for Gervase.
As he fell to the floor, he had looked up just once, and saw Anne’s expression. It was love. It had to be. She was looking down at him with that light in her eyes that spoke of her feelings, and the sorrow in her face to see how her bastard husband kicked at him told Gervase that this woman knew at last which of them she truly adored. It was him.
That had decided him, and although the course of action took some planning, it was going to be worth it.
After Warin’s intervention, pointing out that without the steward the manor would soon fail, Nicholas conceded that Gervase might continue in his duties, but only if he no longer slept in the castle or ate at Nicholas’s table. Warin had agreed and now Gervase lived in a small house on the outskirts of the vill.
He had bought the poison from a pedlar, ostensibly to kill some rats in his yard. Then he arranged to have some of Nicholas’s favourite treats delivered on a day when Warin and the castle’s guard were out hunting. The timing couldn’t have been more propitious. Nicholas was eating alone still, not with his wife, because of her faithlessness, and the Lady Anne ate a meagre and curious diet in her room, pale and wan as the birthing came closer. So it was that Nicholas enjoyed the poisoned pies on his own, and scoffed the lot.
He was fine for some little while, but then Gervase heard that one of the men-at-arms had fallen from his horse, and Warin sent to the castle for a cart to collect the injured man. Nicholas himself escorted the cart, saying he needed some exercise, and on the way, his face reddened, his lips became blue, he complained of a pain in his chest, and suddenly toppled from his horse. He was dead before he hit the ground.
And Gervase was now content. He could wait a little while, he thought, for the necessary period of mourning, and then he could enfold his beloved in an embrace, declare his love for her, and the two of them would be content for the rest of their lives.
Except it didn’t happen that way. Warin, apparently, had no regard for the niceties of decent behaviour. While Gervase watched in horror, the squire laid siege to Anne’s honour, and in the week before the baby was born, he won her hand in marriage.
Gervase was stunned. All he had wanted to do was help his lover to be free so that they could be together, and now she had declared her love for another. He couldn’t have misread the love in her eyes though, surely? In despair, a week later he went to the priest’s house to speak with Julia, seeking to renew his relationship with her, knowing that the only way to exorcise the grief of losing this woman was in the arms of another. Once there, however, he learned that Julia had left the vill. The young ostler from Bodmin had claimed her as his wife, and she and the baby had gone back there with him.
Father Adam seemed less than happy about the arrangement. ‘Who will cook for me?’ he demanded petulantly.
Adam was relieved that his attempted murder was forgotten so easily, until he learned what the cost would be of Warin’s silence. The idea that he could be forced to spy on his congregation was appalling. As he said to the new master of the castle, he had a duty to a higher authority than Warin.
‘That’s fine, then. We’ll see what the rural dean has to say about you,’ Warin had grinned.
It was that grin that cowed Adam. He had no idea what Warin might know of him, but there was something deeply unsettling about the fellow. It was almost as though Warin knew of his love for John. He couldn’t, of course. John wouldn’t have told anyone about the strength of his passion, surely? John was his soul, his heart, his love. Even if John didn’t reciprocate Adam’s fervour, surely he wouldn’t have sought to shame him by telling of his desires …
That smile was very worrying, yes. The rural dean was an evil-minded old bigot who would push a homosexual into a fire himself, without waiting for official sanction from the Bishop. Warin was a danger to him, it was true, but all he said he wanted was to prevent another war. Any man would want to do that. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, to let him know if trouble was brewing … if doing so meant staying here and being left alone. He wouldn’t be far from his John, apart from anything else, and he could still see him every now and again.
Perhaps all would be for the best. Especially if he could find a new maid.
When he heard that Muriel was looking for a home, it seemed as though his prayers were answered.
John was particularly happy to hear that Adam had been able to find space for the miller’s widow. From all he had heard, she was an excellent cook. She would be so much better off away from the home in which her child had died before her eyes, and from the mill where her man’s body had been found.
For John there was no such comfort. He lived with the constant fear of the mad squire at Cardinham arriving at his door with a troop of King’s men to arrest him for preaching against the King. After Boroughbridge and his uncle’s death, John didn’t care any more. To him, the only thing that mattered now was his pastoral care, and he would only preach the truth to his parishioners. If that meant upsetting the King, so be it.
It was late in the year when he re
ceived a message from Exeter. He was told that the Bishop would like to see him. There was a parish church in the city which had need of a strong-willed priest keen to do God’s work among the poor and needy. John had been suggested to him, and the Bishop felt sure that God wished John to take up His mission.
This was a decision that needed little thought. In one move, freedom from Warin and Adam. John packed his meagre belongings that very night, and left for Exeter without a backwards glance.
Simon and Baldwin reached Simon’s home at the end of September. They had travelled together all the way to Lydford, and when they reached his house, both were weary after two nights in the open air. There was a sense of anticlimax about this end of their pilgrimage.
Both felt it. It was an unsettling sensation, and for a moment neither could speak. They stood like strangers, hardly able to meet each other’s eye.
‘Baldwin, it’s been a marvellous experience,’ Simon said at last.
‘I am only sorry that it is over,’ his friend replied. ‘We must return to our true lives now. I am not sure I am ready to. There is a curious urge in me to go on another pilgrimage.’
‘Perhaps you are better suited to travel,’ Simon said. ‘Especially sea-travel!’
‘Yes, well – I think that we have been unfortunate in our choice of vessels and ship-masters.’
Simon nodded, and glanced westwards. The sky was already darkening with twilight. ‘You’ve been all over the world, Baldwin, whereas I have never been farther than Exeter until now. You’ve made me see places I wouldn’t have dreamed of seeing. Compostela, Ennor – the world is so much larger than I had thought.’
‘And now you shall go to Dartmouth and be the Master of the Port for our friend the Abbot,’ Baldwin said. ‘While I shall retire to Furnshill and occasionally visit Crediton when there is a matter requiring my attention. Perhaps you shall become the traveller instead of me?’
The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) Page 36
