The Last Templar

by Michael Jecks

  “John,” she said softly, “why don’t you tell me about it? I might be able to help.”

  She could feel his chest catch, as if he was holding his breath to listen better, as she had seen him when he was out hunting. But this was different, this was more as if she had broken a chain of thought and he was concentrating on her words and assessing their worth. But then she felt his chest move again and he slowly turned towards her. She could feel the rasp of his bristly beard, and then the smell of his breath.

  “They think that Brewer was murdered. They think it had to be someone who was out late last night. That means they think it could have been me.”

  She froze. “But you wouldn’t do something like that, you had no reason to kill him. Why should they think you could—‘

  “I was out. They knew that, how could I hide it? I was the one that found the fire!”

  “But John, John, if it was you there would be no point in telling anyone about the fire. They’ll see that, you’ll see. Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I am worried. Apart from anything else, who did do it? It must have been late in the evening. Who could have done it? Who was it that took Brewer back from the inn?”

  “Well, what about Roger Ulton?”

  “Roger? What, while he was on his way back from Emma’s? But he wouldn’t even have gone near the inn on his way back from the Boundstone place.”

  She withdrew a little, peering towards him in the dark, and when she spoke her voice was low and troubled. “But he didn’t. I saw him walking back up the lane, and he wasn’t coming from the south, from Hollowbrook or his house, he was coming from the north, going home.”

  “What?” He moved suddenly, his arm gripping her shoulder tightly. “Are you sure? But… what time was that?”

  “I don’t know, just before I went to bed. I think it must have been almost eleven, but—‘

  “And you’re sure it was Ulton?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  “And he was going back towards his house?”

  “Yes.”

  The hunter released her, settling back to stare up towards the ceiling. If Ulton had been coming down the lane, he must have lied about coming back from Emma’s house. Why? Could it have been him that killed Brewer? He must tell the knight tomorrow. That should take the suspicion away from him.

  To his wife’s relief, she soon heard his breathing slow and felt the tenseness in his body relax. Only then did she settle herself and, with a smile in her husband’s direction, she rested her head on her crooked arm and searched for sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  Simon arrived at the warrener’s house in the mid-morning of the next day. As the sunset had promised, it was a bright and clear day with no hint of rain in the air.

  The journey, by the same roads he had taken the previous evening, made him sneer at himself. Where were the fearsome terrors he had imagined?

  In the morning sunlight he rode along between the trees and looked in among their leaves with sardonic self-deprecation. Now they looked like friendly guards -sentinels standing watchfully to protect travellers from the perils of their journey. In the warm daylight they lost all sign of that menace that had seemed so clear and terrifying the night before; now they appeared friendly, a sign of security and comfort on his way, and he welcomed them as he might a companion.

  The village was slumbering in the bright sunshine, the houses seeming new and cleaner somehow, the grass greener, and as he rode up the lane past the inn he could almost imagine that none of the events of the previous day had occurred.

  There were few people around. He could see some women down by the stream, washing their clothes, he could see the lye and clay in the pots and the wooden paddles used for pounding the recalcitrant cloth. The women were laughing and shouting, their dresses gaily coloured in the sun, and he felt a pang of jealousy that he could not be, like them, carefree and happy on this morning.

  Then, as he rode farther up the lane, they became aware of him, and their laughter and chatter died, so suddenly that it seemed to him that they might all have disappeared, that they had all been whisked away by some strange magic, but when he turned to look they were all there, silent and unmoving as they stared at him, the unknown traveller through their village.

  It was disconcerting, this stillness where there had been good-humoured noise and bustle, and he felt a prickly sensation of trepidation, as if this was an omen, a warning that his presence was unwanted, an unnecessary intrusion. He watched them for a minute as he rode, until he passed the sharp bend in the road and they were obscured by a house. He was grateful to lose sight of them - their silent staring had been deeply unsettling.

  The warrener’s house was a smaller property even than Black’s. It lay a short distance back from the lane, with a strip of pasture in front on which a goat was contentedly feeding. As the bailiff drew near, it stopped chewing and fixed him with its yellow, unfeeling eyes with their vertical irises. Simon found that his sensations of discomfort returned under the yellow stare of this creature, and he could not shake it off as he tethered his horse. There was no sign of Baldwin: should he wait for the knight? He turned and peered back down the lane, debating with himself whether he should await his friend, but then a picture rose in his mind of Margaret saying, “Why did you have to spend the whole day away again?” and that decided the matter for him. He turned back and walked up to the front door, feeling the goat’s gaze on his back as he went.

  The cottage was old, a clunch hovel with just two rooms. Unlike most of the other houses in the village, this one had no need to contain animals, and the air was clean and fresh all around. The building seemed to have suffered a collapse years before, as was so common with the older cottages when the walls could no longer support the weight of the roof. At some time it had been almost twice its present size - the outline of the old walls could be made out in the grass to the side. No doubt the end had fallen down and the hole created had been blocked up in some way to keep the remainder of the property habitable. It appeared to have been well looked after recently - the walls were freshly whitewashed, the wood painted and the thatch seemed well cared for, with little sign of moss and no holes created for birds’ nests.

  The warrener opened the door himself. He looked as though he had just risen from his bed, with his tousled hair and sleep-fogged eyes, which he was rubbing as he stood on his threshold, blearily staring at the stranger on his doorstep.

  “Are you Cenred?” Simon asked and, when the man nodded, “My name is Simon Puttock, I’m the bailiff. I’d like to ask you some questions about the night before last.”

  The warrener blinked. “Why?” he said.

  Simon could have wished he had asked almost any other question. “Because it’s possible that the man who died that night—‘

  “Old man Brewer,” said the warrener helpfully.

  “Old man Brewer,” Simon agreed, “could have been murdered, and I’m trying to find out whether he was or not.” Somehow he felt a certain degree of relief that he had managed to finish his introductory speech, and he continued with more confidence. “So I want to know what you were doing that night and where you were, when you got back home and so on.”

  The man’s face was still sleep-blurred as he stared at Simon. He had friendly, open features, a large, round head on top of a thick, square body. He was obviously faintly amused as he looked at the bailiff; a small smile played around his full, red lips and his dark brown eyes were creased where the laughter lines lay. The hair on his head seemed thin, as if he was soon to lose the crown, but his chest made up for any loss from the thick, black, curling mass that peeped from the open top of his smock. He was bearded, and the hair here too was dark, except at the point of his chin, where it showed ginger, as if it had been dipped in paint and permanently stained when he was young. He was probably only eight and twenty years old, but his face seemed more wise than his years implied, and Simon found himself feeling nervous, as if he should apologise
for interrupting the man’s sleep.

  Shaking off the feeling, he said, “So where were you that night? The night before last?”

  Cenred appeared to find the question mildly funny - he looked almost as if he was about to laugh - but then he saw the earnest expression on Simon’s face and seemed to reconsider. “Come inside and have a glass of beer, bailiff. We can talk more comfortably indoors, and I’m sure you’re thirsty after your ride.”

  He was right, Simon knew. His throat was parched from the journey, and it would be more pleasant to sit. He nodded and followed the man into his hall.

  It was a simple room, but with signs of modernisation. The first thing that Simon noticed was the chimney. This was the first small cottage he had been in where there was such an innovation - most people were happy enough to let the smoke drift out through the thatch of the roof as their forebears always had, but this man obviously wanted more comfort than a smoking fire offered. In front of the fire was a large, granite block which served as a hearthstone, and here the man had placed his mattress. He rolled it up and set it beside the fire to keep warm.

  “I was up all night trying to catch a fox. You woke me,” he said simply and walked out to the back to fetch the beer. Simon walked to a bench and pulled it over to the fire, setting it down on the rushes by the hearth to wait. Cenred was soon back, carrying two large earthenware pots, one of which he passed to Simon, before dragging another bench from the wall, so that he could sit facing the bailiff.

  “So you want to know where I was night before last, eh?”

  The bailiff nodded silently, studying this large, comfortable and, above all, confident man. It was the confidence that shone like the light of a lantern in the dark, in vast contrast to the hesitant nervousness of the three men whom he and Baldwin had seen the day before. Where they had shuffled and twitched this man seemed to be positively enjoying himself, sitting comfortably, legs outstretched, one hand on the seat beside him, the other gripping his pot of ale.

  “Well, now. I left here in the late afternoon. I had to go up to my coppice to get poles for fencing to replace a section that fell. I took the poles straight over to the warren and fixed the fence, then went round the traps. At one of them there was a badger, which I killed, but near another I found the pelt of one of my coneys. Well, I spent a good half hour looking around to see if I could find the trail of the beast, but I couldn’t, so I came back here, had some supper, and—‘

  “When would that have been,” interrupted Simon.

  “When? Oh, I suppose about dusk. Say about half past seven. Anyway, I went back up to the warren then, to see if I could find the animal that did it. I stayed up late, but I couldn’t see any sign, so I came back.”

  “What time did you arrive home?”

  “I really don’t know. It was long after dark, I know that, but more than that I can’t say.”

  Thinking, Simon said musingly, “To get home you don’t go through the village, do you?”

  “No, the warren is down on the moor, about half a mile to the south from here, so I only pass the Ulton house and Brewer’s on my way home.”

  “Hmm. Tell me, what do you think of the Ultons?”

  “Oh, they’re alright. They’re jealous of me, or at least Roger is, but they seem friendly enough.”

  “How do you mean, jealous?”

  “I am a free man. Everyone else in the village is either a cottar or a villein, but I earned my freedom. I earned it by buying it from the Furnshill estate, and it has made some people a bit difficult. It’s foolish, because others - look at Brewer - are more wealthy than me, but that doesn’t stop them envying me.“

  “What do you know about Brewer? No one has been able to tell me much about him. Did you know him well?”

  The warrener’s friendly smile did not leave his face, but his eyes lost their focus, making him seem to almost go into a daydream as he thought. Now when he spoke, his voice had fallen, becoming quieter and lower.

  “He was not an easy man. Everyone hereabouts was sure that he had a lot of money, but I don’t know whether that’s true. It didn’t make him popular, anyway.”

  “No?”

  “No, he had money but he kept it for himself. And he was a heavy drinker, and when he had drunk too much he got violent. He was a big man, Brewer, and when he decided to hit someone, he could hurt.”

  “Did anyone have a reason to hate him, then? Did he hurt anyone recently?”

  The warrener gave a sudden laugh, a great gale of amusement, and had to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand before he could answer.

  “Oh, sorry, bailiff, sorry! Yes, you could say that. He was a drunkard, often got into fights, was always sneering at others and belittling them. I don’t think you really understand how people felt about him! Round here it’s hard to find anyone who did like him!”

  Chapter Nine

  The bailiff must have shown how much this comment depressed him, because the warrener stood, walked over, and patted him on the shoulder.

  “Come now, bailiff! It’s quite likely he just died in his bed and it was an accident. Are you sure you’re not chasing a wild goose? Come on, give me your pot. If you like my beer, you may have another pot with me.” So saying, he took Simon’s mug and went through to the back room.

  By the time he returned, Simon had managed to recover to the extent that he was able to smile again in gratitude for the fresh ale. “Thank you. Do you mind humouring me a little further? For example, did you see anybody when you did finally get home? We have been told that someone helped Brewer home on the night he died, but no one seems to know who it could have been. Do you?”

  “Well, no. I didn’t see him being helped -I assume you mean he was being dragged home after he was thrown out of the inn again? I thought so. No, I didn’t see him.”

  “Are you surprised that someone would help him? After what you said, about him being so unpopular?”

  “No, people often helped him home. Oh, he was hated alright. Arrogant and rude, and he would always use his fists when he couldn’t find words, but this is a small vill. We need to get on. Otherwise, if there’s arguing, how can we get the harvest in, or get the ploughing done? We have to get on together - it’s just that he made it hard.”

  “How?”

  The warrener’s eyes crinkled again in amusement. “Do you like braggarts? No, well that’s how Brewer was. The rumours about his money - well, I don’t know if they’re true, but he certainly helped put them about. He owned his own oxen, always had money for ale, and always seemed happy to put others down.”

  “I see.” The bailiff peered at the fire. “And you didn’t see him that night?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said, but then he put his head on one side and glanced at Simon with what the bailiff felt was a faintly shamefaced smile. “But I think I might have seen someone on my way home.”

  “Who?”

  He gave a short giggle. “I’m not sure! It was far too dark. I’ll tell you how it was, though. I’d finished trying to catch the fox, or whatever it was, and was on my way home again. I was annoyed and tired, and I had just got past the Ulton place when—‘

  “Have you any idea what time it was?”

  Cenred gave him a pitying look. “I don’t know why you keep asking me that. Look, I don’t carry an hour candle with me out of doors, bailiff. How could I know what time it was? All I know is, it was dark. It could have been just eleven o’clock or well past midnight. How could I tell? No, all I can say is it cannot have been more than one, and it was past ten, but beyond that I don’t know -I was too tired to think about it. Anyway, as I came past the Ulton place and down the road towards my own, I could have sworn I saw a figure at the edge of the road. It would have been down by Brewer’s house, I suppose, opposite, in the trees on the other side of the road. At the time I did nothing -I…‘ He paused, embarrassed. ”It seemed like a slim, dark figure. You know, what with the dark and the shadows from the moon and everything, when I saw this shape s
cuttling into the trees in front of me I sort of thought back to the old stories and, well, I walked past and tried to forget I’d seen it. Anyhow, it was around Brewer’s house, on the other side of the lane, where the trees come and meet the roadway. You know where I mean?“

  “Yes, yes I think I do,” said Simon. But he was thinking, who could it have been? What time was it, was it one of the two brothers? Was it Roger Ulton? Was it the man who had led Brewer home? Or was it someone else?

  Simon stood outside the warrener’s cottage for several minutes when they had finished talking. He wished that Baldwin was here, that the knight could have heard the evidence of Cenred, so that he could have the advantage of his opinion, but the knight still had not turned up. Kicking at stones and pebbles, he made his way back to his mare, untied her and walked south with her, away from the village.