The Last Templar aktm-1

by Michael Jecks

  “No need, my loves. I’m here.”

  Spinning, Godwen saw a short but heavyset man standing behind Mark, who, taken unawares, jerked round in a spasm of fear. Smiling, Godwen kicked his horse forward.

  “Afternoon.”

  “Ah, afternoon to you. What can I do for you?”

  He seemed amused by their arrival, watching them from under his bushy brows, the grey hair seeming to fit him like lichen on an old log it was so grizzled and rough-looking. His clothes were almost exclusively leather, from the tunic to the kilt and down to his light boots, and he carried a rusted pike in his hand. Mark seemed to be at a momentary loss for words as he gazed at the man, so it was Godwen who introduced them and explained their visit while the man listened, ducking his head now and again to show he understood.

  Cutting the explanation short, Mark snapped, “If you heard nothing, then just say so and we’ll be gone. Did you hear anyone? Or see anything?”

  Perhaps it was Mark’s curt sharpness, but Godwen could almost feel the little man withdraw from them at this. He seemed to almost shrink in front of them, as if he could hide in his coat.

  “Oh, no, no, sir. I didn’t hear him, I’m sure,” he said softly, as if afraid, but Godwen was convinced he could see a little gleam in his narrow, dark eyes.

  “Good. That’s that then. Come on, Godwen,” said Mark.

  He whirled his horse around, trotting off as if expecting Godwen to follow like a dog now that he had been given the command.

  The woodman watched him go, then turned his gaze to Godwen, where he sat musingly on his horse. “Aren’t you going with him?”

  Godwen shrugged and gazed at Mark’s back as he rode into the trees again, a bland expression on his face. He had no desire to listen to Mark’s moaning all the way home. “He’ll not need me to help him find his way,” he said mildly and turned back to glance at the leathery little man.

  His eyes fixed on Godwen’s face, the man seemed to consider for a moment before nodding seriously. “I think you’re right. He seems to know what he wants. Only trouble is, he’s in too much of a hurry.”

  “Yes. I’m not, though. Can I ask you a couple of things?”

  “Course!” said the man. “What do you want to know?”

  Godwen looked over at the lane, to where it passed through the woods some fifty yards away. “You didn’t hear the man as he died, but did you hear or see anything else?”

  “Not on that night, no. Nobody came past then.”

  “Has someone come past since then? A man who could have been a knight on a great horse? He probably had a squire or someone with him on a smaller horse?”

  “No, no pair of men, just the one.”

  “One?”

  “Yes, there was a knight came past two days ago, my love. Big man he was. But he was all alone.”

  “Was he on a war horse?”

  “Oh no, no. No, he was on a lovely little grey mare.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Simon and Hugh finally arrived home again in the middle of the afternoon, both tired and waspish after their journey, and the bailiff marginally the worse-tempered of the two. He was angry with himself, annoyed, and felt no need to hide it. It came from a feeling of failure, as if he had forgotten or missed a vital hint that could have solved the mystery and led him to the murderer of the abbot. His conversation with the monk, which had left him more confused than ever, had done nothing to improve his temper, and his curtness with his servant was reciprocated in full by the time they returned home.

  Both sour and tense, they rode up to the old house in a strained silence, each deep in his own thoughts. Hugh had tried to interrupt the bailiff’s contemplation a couple of times, but when his conversation had been rejected he went into a sulk and maintained an aloof taciturnity for the rest of their journey, wondering whether he had taken the right job when he had joined Simon’s household.

  There was a horse outside the house when they reined in, and Simon felt a thrill of excitement when he recognised it as Black’s. He jumped down, threw the reins over to Hugh, and hurried indoors to see what he had to report.

  Black was sitting in front of the fire and watching Margaret stirring at a pot as Simon entered. The bailiff walked quickly to his wife and kissed her perfunctorily before eagerly turning to Black and nodding to him as he walked over and sat down on a bench close by. “Any news?” he asked, trying to control his excitement and keep the hope out of his voice.

  “Not much, I’m feared,” Black said slowly, taking a long pull at the jug of ale Margaret had given him. “We’ve been all over from Crediton to Half Moon and nobody on the road remembers anyone on a war horse, or anyone in armour. There were several farm horses went by, but none with a man like a knight riding. We did that this morning, and then I sent some of the men down south to ask at some of the bartons down that way while I took the rest up around here. Same thing, so far, though I’ve yet to hear from a couple of the lads I sent down near the moors. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for any sign of a man going into the woods by the side of the roads, but there’s no signs at all, not as far as I can see. Trouble is, the roads’re so messed up since the rains, and we’ve had so many travellers using them, it’s next to impossible to see any tracks at all in the general traffic. They seem to’ve just disappeared. Have you heard any news from Tanner yet?”

  “No. No, nothing. I… Thanks, my love.” Simon gratefully took a jug of beer from his wife and took a deep draught as she sat beside him to listen. “I hope we’ll hear something soon, but God only knows how long it’ll take to check all the roads to the west.”

  “Aye. Trouble is, with the time and everything, they may’ve finished him off at night. They could’ve made off in the dark. Maybe no one did see them,” said the hunter gloomily.

  Simon nodded slowly. “I know. And if we find no trace to follow, we might never find out what really happened and who did it.”

  “What do we do if we hear nothing from Tanner’s search?”

  “Keep searching. Tell people farther afield. There’s not much else we can do, is there? If we can’t find any trace of them, we’ll have to assume they’ve gone somewhere else and won’t attack anyone round here again.”

  “Aye.” And with that monosyllabic response, Margaret felt that Black allowed himself to sink into a brooding melancholy. He seemed downcast by his inability to track the killers and by the thought that there was little more he could do unless Tanner brought fresh news from his search. She was repelled by this depression, it seemed ridiculous to her that he should be so despondent when there was still hope. Simon sat quietly, glaring at the mug in his hand.

  After waiting in silence for some minutes she had to try to lessen the strain of the silence. She broke into their meditation with a voice that sounded a little high and unnatural even to her own ears. “Did the monks help?”

  Simon nodded slowly and pensively, and Black said, “I heard you’d been over to Clanton Barton again to speak to them. What did they have to say?”

  “Not much, really,” said Simon with a small frown as he thought again about his conversation with the monk. He quickly told them what he had learned. “At least we know the abbot’s name now. He was called Oliver de Penne.”

  “Oliver de Penne? Never heard of him,” said Black, ruminatively shaking his head.

  “No, neither have I. I’m sure he was not from around here, I think he must have been as French as his name suggests.”

  Black puckered his brow restlessly. “It just seems odd that he should have been killed like that.”

  Simon’s face registered scowling concentration, and then his wife saw his brow clear as he stared past Black’s shoulder to the wall behind, musing. Glancing back at John Black again, she saw that the hunter’s face showed a mounting exasperation and dejection, as if he was already almost thinking that they had lost, that they would never find the killers, and when she looked back to her husband she could not help a brief flare of pride at the contra
st.

  Margaret had married Simon not because she had realised that he would become a powerful man in the shire, but because she could see in him the same incisiveness that her father had possessed. As a farmer’s daughter, she had been raised as a pragmatist. Whether the decision to be made was to cut the crops now or tomorrow, or to build a new byre or not, her father had instilled in all his children the same common-sense principle: always decide what was needed first. He used to say that it was useless to try to do something if you weren’t even sure what it was. Only when the objective was chosen and clear could it be tackled.

  It seemed to her now that they were trying to make cob without straw. They had no information, so how could they expect to be able to decide anything? And yet Black had almost given up already; he seemed to have decided that they were defeated. How could he feel like that when they had not even explored some of the possibilities? She rose and returned to her stirring.

  “So how much do we really know about this abbot, then Simon!” she asked thoughtfully, her back to the men.

  “His name, Oliver de Penne; his position as abbot at Buckland; and the fact that his horse was a grey mare. We know he had money with him.”

  “And?”

  “He had spent time in France – with the pope at Avignon. It appears that he was popular with the last pope, but, if Matthew’s right, not with this one. He seems to have been an arrogant man, and prone to fighting, from what David and Matthew both said. Beyond that, not very much.”

  “And he was scared of being waylaid, from what you saw?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “Hmm.” She carried on stirring thoughtfully. Turning she saw her husband’s gaze resting on her and she smiled before continuing, “He was taken into the woods where no one would hear, and burned at the stake?”

  “Yes.”

  The hunter winced, his eyes screwed into thin slits with his distaste at his thought, as if expecting to be told his idea was nonsensical. “Bailiff, I can’t help thinking… well, look, we can’t imagine that it was any normal robber did this to the abbot – it wouldn’t make sense, would it? No, so we’re left with this strange killing, maybe there’s some kind of meaning behind it? Now, it strikes me that it’s the way they kill heretics in France.”

  “Yes. Thank God we haven’t sunk so low in England. The king won’t allow the Inquisition into the country.”

  “No, but do you think this could be something like that? He was French, from his name.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.” Simon stared bleakly into his drink.

  “After all, it’s almost like someone’s trying to make a show out of the death, if you see what I mean.”

  The bailiff stared at him. “You’re saying he could have been killed to make some sort of a point?”

  Shrugging, the hunter said, “Well, I can’t see any other reason to kill him like that. Can you?”

  “No. No, I can’t,” said Simon, frowning thoughtfully at his wife’s back. He shook his head. This was getting him nowhere – he knew nothing about these things. Could Baldwin help? He was only recently back from France.

  Then, startled, his eyes focused sharply and he drew a quick breath as his mind considered a new possibility – could Baldwin have been involved somehow? He was recently back from France, he had Edgar as a perpetual shadow, he was a knight – could he have had something to do with the abbot’s death? Had Baldwin and the abbot known each other before?

  It was with a small sigh of relief that he remembered the day he had first seen the monks and then mentioned them to the knight at Furnshill. No, of course it could not have been Baldwin, if so he would surely have expressed some interest in the travellers when Simon spoke of them. As the bailiff recalled, the knight had not shown even a passing curiosity, he had dismissed them and gone straight on to talk about his new estates.

  Eyes glazing again, his attention wandered around the room until he focused again on his wife. She was clever, he knew, and keen to understand his work. He could see that, even in the way she had asked about this affair just now when Black had seemed to become so despondent, and her questions had made him start thinking again. If she had not… A quick grin suddenly cracked his serious features.

  Stirring the pot, Margaret was smiling to herself. It had not taken much, but it had worked – at least Black was thinking again! With a slight feeling of smugness she threw a glance at her husband, and was irritated to see that he was grinning at her with an eyebrow lifted ironically as if he could read her mind. She stared back at him coolly; it was obvious he realised what she had done, but when she turned back to the pot she too was grinning, and had to fight to control a giggle.

  “But why should someone have wanted to do that to de Penne?” she heard Black say musingly.

  “I don’t know. It’s not as if he was known down here.”

  “Same with Brewer. Why would someone kill him?”

  “For money, I suppose. And he was hated, Cenred said, by almost all the people in the vill.”

  “Well we don’t even really know that Brewer had any money. It was a rumour, but no one ever saw it.”

  “So we don’t even know that he was wealthy, or at least we don’t know he kept money at the farm?”

  “No.”

  Simon raised a hand to his head and rubbed his brow with the back of a fist. “Oh, God. Neither killing makes any sense. Why…”

  He was cut off by a loud knocking at the door. Margaret stopped her stirring and the two men sat still and silent, all their eyes turning to the tapestry that covered the entrance from the screens. Simon had to contain the urge to leap up and answer it himself in case it was a message from Tanner, and as he sat his eyes were gleaming with hope. As soon as Hugh came in with a young man, slim and dark, who was stained after riding quickly through the puddles in the lane, his face ruddy from the exertion, Simon slumped back in his seat with a grimace of disgust. This was not one of the men from the posse, he would have remembered his face. As the young man entered, he looked from Black to Simon with confusion in his dark eyes until Simon motioned him forward.

  “Sir? Bailiff? I’ve been sent from Sir Baldwin Furnshill. He sends his best wishes and asks if you and your lady could join him this evening at the manor.”

  Simon shot a glance at his wife and smiled at the unmistakable signs of hope on her face, forgetting his conversation with the hunter. He feigned disinterest, casually glancing in her direction. “I don’t know. Margaret? Would you like to go?” he asked, his voice showing his unconcern.

  She raised an eyebrow and looked at him with an expression of exasperation on her face. He knew only too well that she wanted to meet the new master of Furnshill, she had told him so; especially now she had heard a little about the strange new knight. She ignored her husband and turned to the messenger with a sigh of patient suffering. “Please tell your master that we will be pleased to join him this evening, but do warn him that the bailiff seems a little confused today. It’s probably his age,” she said sweetly, and with a slight shake of her head, as if in disgust with her husband, she turned back to the fire and took the pot from the flames.

  Simon smiled to himself. He could think of no other man he would prefer to discuss the abbot’s death with, especially since Baldwin had seemed so interested in the death of the farmer. Could he help with this killing too?

  Later, as they rode together from Sandford to Cadbury, leaving Edith with a maid, Margaret turned and saw Hugh was trailing a short distance behind. Turning to Simon, she gave him a look of wary concern. “Simon, do you really think that the murders can’t have been done by the same people? It seems such a strange coincidence that both deaths should have involved fires.”

  He grunted noncommittally as he turned his mind back to the mysterious deaths. “The only similarity between the two deaths is in the fact that fire was common to both.”

  “Surely that’s enough of a coincidence, isn’t it? When did someone last die from fire?”

 
“No, that’s not what I meant. If both men died in fires at home, then I could understand it. If both were taken on the road and ransomed, then I could happily say, ”Yes, here’s a coincidence.“” But I can’t. One man seemed to die in his bed, one died at a stake. One was definitely robbed, one may – only may – have been.“

  They fell into a thoughtful silence as they jogged along on their horses. Could there be a small band of trail bastons this far south, Simon wondered, one that had started raiding down south of Crediton, had found the Brewer house and killed him and had then gone on and seized the abbot? And then – in a fit of jealousy at the hostage’s wealth, perhaps? – killed him in that senseless manner?

  Margaret watched as his hand slowly came up to scratch at his ear, a sure sign of perplexity. His frown would soon disappear, she knew, as a new thought occurred to him, making him lose his glowering concentration as he peered ahead, looking as if he was lost, like an old man confused of his surroundings, until he had worried the thought to death and gone on to the next one. Smiling, she saw the anticipated expression appear and turned her gaze back to the view ahead.

  They topped a hill and waited at the top for Hugh, who toiled slowly after them. From here they could see for miles and Simon was happy to rest and stare, forgetting the affair for a moment as he leaned on his saddlebow and breathed in the clean air.

  Margaret watched him with a little smile as he sat comfortably on his horse. She was proud of his strength and calmness, and loved him for his gentleness with their daughter, but behind her smile she was worried. She had never seen him as absorbed as he was now with these killings. In the past he had sometimes been forced to get involved with legal matters, when there was a theft in the village, or a land dispute, but generally they had a quiet life together – there were not that many crimes in this part of the world. She was fearful, too, that these killers could strike again, that another person could be killed for no apparent reason. As she thought, though, she suddenly realised that her main fear came from how it would affect him.