The Last Templar aktm-1

by Michael Jecks

  The route took him into the centre of Crediton, and he had to turn off by the ancient church. Passing it in the street, he wondered whether to stop and beg a drink from Peter Clifford, but even as he passed the open doors, he heard the voices singing in praise and realised that the rector would be too involved to talk, so he carried on past. Carefully avoiding the open sewer, and wincing at the fetid stench, he went along the narrow lane that bordered the old graveyard, past the cottages where the church workers lived, and so up to the hill that led out of the town.

  In daylight he always found this road slow, relaxed and pleasant. It curved gently up the hill, winding like an old stream, with a wall on one side that protected the church estates. On the other side the road gave directly on to fields, a sweep of narrow strips that led to the forests on the hill above. It was a rural scene of tranquillity, a pastoral picture, in green where the grass and crops grew, and in red where the dark earth had been ploughed, that never failed to please him. When he was upset or peevish, a ride along this road would inevitably calm him. It was the sight of how man could change nature, bend it to his will and manipulate it to provide him with his food and protection. He felt the same whether he was looking at the strips of the fields or the coppices. Both seemed to him to be proof of the mastery of mankind over the anarchy of wild nature.

  But now, as he crested the peak of the hill and followed the lane down into the valley on the other side, the road seemed to change. Now, as darkness came on, he was into the other part, and like the scenery, his feelings changed too. Here the wild had never been pushed out. Here the woodcutters had not wanted to go, it was too far from the town. The farmers would not clear the trees here, the fields would be too far to bring seed to. Animals would be kept nearer the town where they could be seen and protected.

  No, here the land was still wild and untamed, here nature still ruled and men walked cautiously. The dark and threatening woods crowded closer at either side of the road, as if struggling to reach the humans that travelled along it so that they could squeeze the life from them. The brambles sprawled from the edge of the trees in an attempt to colonise the packed dirt of the lane, catching and ripping at the clothes of any passer-by unwary enough to walk too close. In between the trees, he could sometimes hear the tick and crack of the wood settling, but to his fearful ears, raised from the cradle to be scared of the various spirits that haunted the moors and hills of Devon, they sounded like the voices of the unspeakable, ghostly horrors as they hunted for humans. In the dark, this road reminded him of the most fearsome of all: Old Nick and Old Crockern.

  These two characters were well known in Devon, their fame was boundless in the countryside, and Simon found himself unwillingly considering each with a degree of trepidation he had not felt for many years. After the death of old Brewer – he still found it hard to believe that it was a murder; easier by far to consider it one of those sad but all too common accidents, a stray spark in the thatch, and, by all accounts, a man too drunk to wake – the stories and legends seemed to crowd in on him as he wound his lonely trail home.

  Old Nick was the devil himself. The tales told of him riding a horse, a headless horse, all over the moors and beyond in his search for souls. At his side was a pack of hounds, evil, wild eyed creatures whose baying showed that they had the scent of a human spirit ready for taking. The wild hunt was reputed to be a regular event, not requiring fogs or mists to cover its cruelty as the horde swept after its quarry.

  The other was a more understandable spirit, if just as unpleasant to meet. Old Crockern was the ancient soul of the moors. He was everywhere, but on occasion would make himself appear to those who threatened his lands, and would destroy them. It was true that he would normally use simple methods, like bankrupting a farmer who decided to take more of the moors than he needed, by ensuring that he could grow nothing on the ground he stole, but if Old Crockern found someone intentionally affecting the life and security of the moors, it was rumoured that he would come and take the perpetrator away, to a hell more evil than ever Satan could devise.

  As Simon passed by, the lanes were darkening. The sunset had been a warm, orange glow on the horizon, promising another dry and clear day ahead, and he had been momentarily pleased to reflect on the fact before his mind drifted back to consider the ancient superstitions. It was not that he was overly credulous himself, but the lanes leading up to Sandford were narrow and lined with dark ranks of trees, standing silent like accusing monsters from a far-distant past. The great twisted, primeval boughs loomed grey and foreboding on either side, reaching upwards into the swiftly gathering darkness as if trying to block off the light, as if trying to strangle any remaining glimmer before it could reach the road. Simon could almost fancy, as he rode along, that the branches were attempting to touch over the road, and that when they did their gnarled and tortured limbs would drop, plummet down, to smother any passer-by…

  He shook himself vigorously. A mist swept silently, malevolently, across the road in front of him, and he shivered. “God’s teeth!” he thought. “How old am I?” And he spurred his horse faster.

  But he still looked over his shoulder occasionally.

  By the time he arrived home the dark had settled heavily over the land like a grey velvet carpet, and his fears retreated at the sight of the orange glow from the windows of his house. Taking his horse round to the stables, he gave it a quick rub down and settled it for the night before going in.

  It had been costly, but he was pleased that he had paid, as Margaret had suggested, for the wood-panelled passageway. It cut the hall off from the kitchen area, the buttery and servants’ quarters, and stopped some of the more vicious drafts from the front door that had whistled around the hall and disturbed the rushes.

  At the other end of the hall was his solar, the family room, blocked off from the hall itself by the huge curtains. He had intended, when he had been able to afford it, to have that panelled off too. His lip curled into a self-mocking sneer. Too late for that now. There would be little point in spending money on the place with the move to Lydford coming up.

  His wife was sitting in the hall with Edith, both on the large bench in front of the fire. His daughter seemed to be asleep, lying down in her light dress, her head resting on her mother’s lap. Margaret was sitting and stabbing at a tapestry with quick, vicious thrusts, looking as if she was trying to kill the cloth.

  Simon stared at her. She did not look up, but said, as if through gritted teeth, “There’s stew for you in the pot,” without looking up from her needlework.

  He quietly stepped over to the fire in the middle of the room. The stew sat in its small cauldron, hanging from the steel tripod, and he could see that it had been ready for some time – the meat had all but collapsed in the liquid.

  “Hugh!” he shouted, and when the servant rushed in, told him to fetch a bowl and spoon. When he had his earthenware bowl filled, he sat beside his wife and began shovelling the stew. “All right, so tell me what’s wrong.”

  She threw down the cloth and glared at him, her fury mixed with despair at his lack of understanding. “What’s wrong? You were supposed to be here all day and instead you’ve been out! You promised Edith you’d spend the day with her, how do you expect me to explain when you disappear?” Feeling Edith squirm, the prelude to waking, she broke off and gentled her daughter, picking her up and carrying her out to the solar. But soon she was back, and speaking low, her voice a sibilant hiss, she said, “Why couldn’t you have sent one of the others – the constable, Tanner, or just left it to a priest? Why did you have to go there and see to a fire yourself?”

  She glowered at him, feeling the injustice of it. Margaret was no shrew, no nagging vixen, but she needed him to understand. Of course, she knew full well that now, especially now he was bailiff, he had responsibilities that he must meet. But she too had important jobs to perform, not least of which was managing the household, and when their daughter was expecting her father to spend the day with her, she could
be very fractious and difficult. She had been today.

  Margaret had counted on being able to reorganise the buttery and prepare for their next brew of cider, but every time she had tried to have a word with Hugh she had found Edith nearby and wanting attention. Every time she had gone out into the kitchen Edith had followed and asked her to join in a game or simply kept asking questions until Margaret had lost her temper and told her to play outside and leave her alone.

  It was then that her diminutive and tyrannical daughter had told her that her father would never say that to her and that she hated her.

  Margaret had been shocked and deeply hurt – for all that she knew it to be untrue, that it was just a sudden flaring of temper that would soon be forgotten, and that she, the mother, would be expected to forget it too. But she could not. And it had made her resentful that Simon had been able to spend his day, yet again, out of the house and involved in uninterrupted work. Why was it considered right that the father should be free from his encumbrances when the wife, with as much work to do, was not?

  So, after being able to leave her anger and annoyance to establish themselves and develop for the afternoon, she felt justified in lashing out at him on his return. But as she glowered at him, her anger undiminished by the absence of the cause of her afternoon’s disturbance, he started to grin, and she soon found herself torn between fury that he could still have this effect on her and pleasure at his happiness.

  “Why don’t you come here and tell me what’s the matter?” he said, motioning to the bench seat beside him.

  So she did. She wandered over to him, sat, and told him of her day. As she knew it would, the telling made her feel better – calmer and more at peace. “But what were you doing? Why were you so long? It was only a house fire, wasn’t it?”

  As soon as she said it she felt him stiffen, and, sitting upright, she rested her hands in her lap and concentrated on him as she listened. “Tell me about it.”

  And he did. He started to tell her all about the body they had found in the house, the charred and unrecognisable figure of old Brewer, who had died so alone that no one even knew where his son was, or if he was alive. His face calm, yet distant, she watched him and listened as he told of Baldwin, the new knight, and how he had taken a different view of the fire. She frowned in concentration as he told of the men who had been there, of the Carters and Roger Ulton, who seemed to know nothing, and of Cenred, whom he hoped to question soon. At first she listened in disbelief, but then with a feeling of growing concern, as if in simply being told of Baldwin’s suspicions, she could be similarly persuaded that a crime had been committed.

  “So do you think it was murder?” she asked at last.

  “I don’t know what to think. It could have been, like Baldwin says, but I really don’t know. It seems so unlikely. I could understand it happening in a city like Exeter, but in a quiet hamlet like Blackway? It just doesn’t seem possible.”

  While he gazed thoughtfully into the fire, she asked, “What if Cenred says he knows nothing as well? What will you do then?”

  “I don’t know. I think Baldwin will want to speak to the whole village – question everyone there and try to find out that way. The trouble is, there’s no proof that there has been a crime! How can we expect people to accuse someone when there’s nothing to show that there’s been a crime?” He stopped and frowned at the flames as if he could divine the answer there.

  “So what are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’ll have to go back there and see if I can make any sense of it. I’ll have to speak to Cenred, at the very least, and then maybe to the others again. Baldwin will meet me there, he said, and I suppose we’ll know what to do afterwards.”

  Jane Black cuddled closer to her husband in their bed, trying to help him calm with the warmth and promise of her body, but it did not seem to help. It was the same when he had lost his favourite dog, Ulfrith the mastiff, to a wolf two years before. Then too he had lain in bed until late, not moving, hardly breathing, but not sleeping either, as she knew all too well.

  It was obvious from the rigid set of his body, from the tautness that was as far removed from rest as she could imagine, and she was desperate to help him, but how?

  “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 recalcit
rant 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.