‘You can take that mulish expression off your face for a start, you bellicose old fart,’ William declared. ‘Come in and sit down here. Now tell this gentleman what you found when you saw Brother Luke on the beach.’
‘It was as I told you before, Father,’ Isok said, ignoring Baldwin. ‘I noticed some wreckage on the water and looked about me to see where it came from. When I glanced at Great Arthur, I saw the splinters of wood, and then this body. I took my boat in to pick him up and bring him to the island.’
‘Speak to the man here as well as to me, Isok.’
Isok shivered slightly. ‘I don’t want to talk to him.’
William glanced at Baldwin. ‘It looks like this man has grown a worm in his bowels. Sorry he’s so rude.’
‘If he wants company, he can get it from my wife, no doubt,’ Isok declared vindictively.
‘What has your wife to do with this? Come, man, we’re trying to find out what happened with this monk. What is the difficulty with that?’
‘I want nothing to do with him.’
‘Isok, he has to see where the body was found,’ William said heavily. ‘This is ridiculous! Look, you were First Finder. You have to help us to seek the killer.’
Isok lowered his head. That was a fair point, and he knew it. If he didn’t help the authorities to investigate a murder, he was breaking the law and risking a serious punishment. A First Finder had legal responsibilities, and since the dead man was a priest, the Prior had every right to demand that his murderer be found. Added to the fact that Prior Cryspyn was Isok’s master, Isok knew he couldn’t very well refuse to help, but he saw no reason to volunteer too quickly.
‘Can you take me there?’ Baldwin asked.
At last Isok favoured him with a cold look. ‘Aye. I could.’
‘And his safety would be on your head,’ William rasped. ‘Don’t think you can throw him over the side, lad! In fact, I think I’d better come too, Sir Baldwin, just to make sure that you’re safe.’
Baldwin was glad of the company. It would be more pleasing to have William to talk to. The belligerent sailor obviously wanted nothing to do with him, and in fairness to Isok, Baldwin was unpleasantly aware that he had cuckolded the man that very morning. It would not be possible for him to relax in Isok’s company.
They soon made their dispositions. William said that as soon as they came back he would send a messenger boy to the castle to let Simon know that Baldwin was safe, but that he couldn’t do it yet if Baldwin wanted to investigate the island where the body was found today. William had duties in his church, he couldn’t spend all day wandering over islands. Baldwin asked for a dagger, and William found an old rusty ballock knife – a long-bladed weapon with two large round spheres at the base of the blade. It was a Dutch weapon, and well-enough balanced, for all that the metal was tarnished and pitted. Baldwin found a stone and began sharpening it. Isok merely demanded some cold meats and a skin of fresh water to take with them.
His boat was large enough for them all, and Baldwin was pleased to see that William was a mariner in his own right. As soon as he was on board, he installed himself at the back, well out of Isok’s way, but he leaped forward when Isok needed a rope to be pulled. For Baldwin’s part, he had little enough understanding of how the vessel was propelled, and was content to sit at the rear of the boat and listen to the thrumming of the taut ropes as the wind blew.
It was a magnificent way to travel, he felt. The spray was thrown up at the bow, and tiny spits of seawater flecked his cheeks and brow, instantly drying as he turned his face to the sun, which was like a fire in the sky. The warmth was marvellous, and soon he felt that the skin of his face was being gently but firmly stretched, the flesh tightening against his bones. The salt air licking at him was wonderfully soporific, and if it wasn’t for the alarm he felt at the thought of sleeping in Isok’s presence, he would have dozed off. The rocking of the boat was enough to lull a man to sleep, he thought. At least, it would be in an environment like this, when the seas were so calm.
To keep himself awake, he glanced out at the island of Ennor as they passed around it. It was beautiful. Rocky shores, sandy beaches, sheltered coves, and over all a lush green blanket of healthy plants. Small cottages stood alone, some clustered together, while herds of cattle and flocks of sheep wandered happily. William had mentioned that there were no predators on the island, and Baldwin could see that all looked content. It was indeed an Eden here on earth.
On a hill, he suddenly saw a figure. It made him start up: the man had the same build, the same posture, it … it must be Simon! But before he could wave, they were past the point of land, and the figure fell back out of sight.
Baldwin felt strangely heavy-hearted, as though as well as having caught a glimpse of his friend, he had been offered the opportunity of renewing their friendship, but now that the fleeting view was gone, so was his friend. A sense of impending loss remained with him all the way to the island, as though he had rejected Simon by sailing past.
It took them long enough for the sun to have moved about the sky, and when Isok steered them around the farthest point of Ennor, the sun was already on Baldwin’s back, a warm hand pushing him on towards the island where the body had been found.
‘You are steering far to the east,’ Baldwin remarked.
‘There are many obstructions in the waters here,’ William said. ‘Rocks and sands lie close beneath the surface of the water.’
Baldwin peered over the side, and could see what William meant. There were stones amid broad fields of sand, with thick clumps of weed waving gently. Flitting here and there were shoals of fish: occasional yellow bursts of sand erupting as a tail flicked, or a series of little puffs as a crab scuttled hurriedly away from the boat’s shadow. It all looked so close that Baldwin could have reached down and touched them. Impossibly close, impossibly beautiful, it reminded him of the stories he had heard of beaches in the Holy Land. Sadly, he had never been able to see one. He had arrived in Acre near to the end of the defence of that great city, and had not been granted a sight of the beautiful country.
‘It is all very calm today,’ William commented.
Isok grunted, but Baldwin felt the urge to make comment. ‘It reminds me of the Mediterranean.’
‘You were out there?’ William asked.
‘I sailed to the Holy Land to protect Acre, but not successfully.’
‘It was a terrible battle, so they say.’
‘It was,’ Baldwin said. There was no sadness now. The events of so long ago had dwindled and even the nightmares of those last days had faded.
‘That was many years ago,’ Isok said with a glower.
‘I was only some seventeen years old,’ Baldwin admitted, ‘so it was a good two and thirty years ago.’
Instantly Baldwin felt Isok’s eyes upon him. ‘You are that old?’ he asked, and there was some astonishment in his voice, mixed with what sounded almost like relief.
‘I am, I fear. I was an enthusiastic young squire in 1291, and now I am only an enthusiast.’
‘And a devout one,’ William said. ‘Only the devout went to Acre.’
‘There were some with less honourable intentions,’ Baldwin said, recalling faces from his past. ‘Some were keen simply to make money, others were there because they had been offered forgiveness for past evils. There were many men who should never have been permitted to take up arms in God’s name. Men who were spending their free time in the brothels or who appeared to have suddenly won great wealth.’ All the way to the Holy Land Baldwin had seen them.
‘The fact that they went there meant that they deserved praise,’ William said firmly.
‘I do not think so,’ Baldwin said. ‘A man who is a criminal should seek forgiveness on his knees, begging God to forgive him, not seeking another country to kill other men.’
‘They were seeking Moors,’ William pointed out. ‘Better that they should kill those heretics than stay here pleading for God’s mercy.’
; ‘Even a Moor can be a good man,’ Baldwin said. ‘Saladin was a Moor, but he was an honourable, chivalrous knight.’
‘As far as he could be, within the restrictions of his faith,’ William said shortly.
‘I am afraid that I consider a man who has lived honourably and chivalrously is as deserving of God’s compassion as a Christian who has committed a great sin and begs forgiveness.’
William smiled cynically. ‘I don’t think you should let the Bishop hear you talk like that.’
Baldwin smiled and shrugged, but he was silent. From the old priest’s tone he was quite sure that William was one of the Church’s firebrands. The newer, younger men were often created in a different mould. More commonly, they would look with sympathy upon men who were from different faiths, considering them to have been misled or perhaps not led at all, and that their lack of education or direction was the cause of their belief in heretical ideas. William was plainly one of those who saw all foreign ideas as alien to his own God. It was not a line which Baldwin could accept. ‘You remember the story of the Good Samaritan?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sometimes a man who is not of the same belief can still be a good man.’
‘Perhaps. Yet a man who believes in God may enter Heaven, whereas a man who has no belief may not.’
‘Perhaps God is more tolerant?’ Baldwin enquired mischievously.
William shot him a look, but did not deign to respond.
Soon Baldwin saw that they were approaching land. Compared with Ennor, or the great mass of St Nicholas, this was a tiny island. It curved like a large ‘C’, with the eastern, concave section containing a broad swathe of bright sand, up to which the waves rolled softly. Isok aimed the boat at the beach and soon they were scraping the boat’s bottom along the sands as he furled the sail and neatly stowed the ropes. He sprang out, indicating that Baldwin and William should do the same, and then dragged the vessel up the sand a little, until she could not be pulled away by the waves. He picked up the anchor rope with its heavy stone and, walking away from the boat, he paid it out as he went until he reached a large formation of rocks. He wedged the anchor in among them.
‘Where did you find the man?’ Baldwin asked.
Isok walked him to a point on the sand where there were some few timbers. ‘Here.’
This was a spot towards the middle of the island. ‘Here’ was about the narrowest point on the place, with a scant eighty yards from the eastern shore to the western. From north to south the place was little more than a half mile long, stretching roughly north to south, although with the degree of curvature, Baldwin was sure that it was longer in reality.
It was impossible to detect any sign of footprints. The sea had washed up and over this point, and any marks of blood or prints from the body or a possible killer had long since been laved away.
‘This is a fool’s errand,’ William said, grimly staring about him. ‘There’s no chance of learning anything from this remote spot.’
Sadly, Baldwin had to agree. ‘We do not know that he died here, of course. It is possible that he died somewhere else and was brought here.’
‘In which case our journey is still more of a fool’s errand,’ William grunted. He had not enjoyed their discussion on the way.
Baldwin could see the spars and bits of small wood. ‘What are they from?’
‘A small boat,’ Isok muttered.
‘What are they doing here?’ Baldwin wondered.
‘Someone must have been out in a vessel which foundered here, or perhaps on the rocks.’
‘Could it have been Luke himself?’ Baldwin asked.
‘Could have been anyone.’ Isok shrugged.
‘I don’t think Luke would have stabbed himself prior to climbing into a boat,’ William said.
‘He died quickly, I should think,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Which means that either someone was in the boat with him, stabbed him and left him in the boat, which then came here and crashed, or he was killed and then put in the boat, which came here.’
‘He was killed first, then,’ Isok said.
‘Why?’
Isok kicked at a stray piece of wood. ‘A larger boat would have used better timber. We don’t have trees here, so we have to use as little as possible in our boats – whatever we can rescue from the sea. This was a tiny boat. No space for a second man.’
‘So we can assume that he was murdered and set loose in a boat,’ Baldwin guessed. ‘What would the purpose of that be? Presumably to hide the murder. The killer decided to kill him and then conceal the crime, hoping that the man would be taken away, drifting on the waters.’
William nodded, and then, Baldwin noticed, shot a suspicious look at Isok. ‘He might have hoped that the poor fellow’s body would have been washed out to sea and lost. Even if Luke was found later, the fact of being in the sea would mean that his wounds would become hidden as fishes ate his flesh.’
‘Who could have done this? Who in these islands would be cruel enough to send a man’s body out to be devoured by the creatures of the sea?’
Baldwin’s question was rhetorical, but he was shocked, when he looked up, to see how pale Isok had become; from the expression on William’s face, he could see that the priest was already convinced that he knew the murderer’s identity.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Simon left Sir Charles with a feeling of despondency. It seemed as though the pleasantly reassuring words that Thomas had given him were not the same as the ones Sir Charles was hearing. He looked like a man who was in danger of his life – or a man who believed that his life was in danger. That was why at first Simon was pleased to meet Hamo as he walked along the road from the castle. That feeling was soon to pass.
‘Bailiff, I have to talk to you.’
‘Not now, lad. I have other things to—’
‘Sir, they’re going to storm the island.’
‘Island? What island?’
‘St Nicholas, that one.’
Simon gave him a pitying look. ‘So what? It’s only the haunt of pirates and felons. I don’t think they deserve my sympathy.’
‘Not all of them can be pirates.’
Simon was about to answer with a sarcastic comment, but then he saw the expression on Hamo’s face. ‘Look, lad, it’s possible that they aren’t all felons, and if that’s the case, so much the better.’ He began to walk along the roadway southwards from the castle. Farther on, he knew, there was a path that led along the hills which bounded the coast. ‘But many of them are, from the sound of things. It’s certain that they act as killers. I suppose it’s not surprising, living in a terrible little place like this. I’d probably get anxious if I were here. The thought of a bad winter is terrible.’
‘It’s not that, sir. It’s the Sergeant, Thomas. I’ve learned what he’s been up to, the fornicating son of a Moorish harlot.’
Simon’s eyebrows rose a little.
‘He’s been cheating the customs, taking money from his own ships and lining his purse, then sending the ship off to Cornwall with receipts in the earldom’s name. Ranulph doesn’t know about it, and he’d be angry if he did, but Thomas knows that none of the people here would dare to denounce him because he’s too powerful and in league with Ranulph. It makes Thomas terribly important. Ranulph won’t hear a bad word against the bastard son of a diseased whore …’
Simon’s eyebrows rose a fraction higher.
‘… but the fucker is safe anyway, because everyone on the island is scared of him.’
‘I … where did you learn that sort of language?’
‘What sort of language?’
Simon looked at him. The lad had been living with sailors since a youngster. It was no surprise that his language should be extreme – but there and then, Simon resolved to keep his own daughter away from sailors or youths who had had anything to do with the sea. He shook his head. ‘Never mind. He may well be as corrupt as you say, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the rest of the islanders are free of gui
lt.’
‘No, but he has been earning good money … Perhaps he’s trying to distract people – start a little war to stop them looking at his accounts?’ Hamo said slyly, looking up at Simon.
Simon was passing by a large stone. He thrust his hands into his belt, leaned against the rock, and stared down at Hamo. ‘I don’t think that is very likely. You have been confused because of the trials of our voyage here.’
‘You think I’m dreaming because I’m only a boy, but I’ve heard the men talking. They all say that he’s ruthless, and he’s been on edge for the last few days. Ever since we got here.’
There was a knowing tone to his voice, and Simon gave him a quizzical look. ‘What of it?’
‘What happened the night we arrived, Bailiff?’
‘The storm.’
‘Aye. And the murdered man. And Thomas was out that night. He didn’t get back until the storm was begun.’
‘How do you know?’ Simon asked, surprised that Hamo too had heard this. Plainly Oderic had told the truth then.
‘I’m only a boy. Men talk when I’m around because they can ignore me,’ Hamo said bitterly. ‘It doesn’t matter what I hear because I’m too thick to put two and two together.’
‘Is it common knowledge that Thomas was out that night?’ Simon asked seriously.
As Hamo nodded, Simon stared out to sea. If Thomas had been involved in the murder of Robert, perhaps he might suggest that someone else had killed his gather-reeve. A man like Sir Charles was a gift to him. The perfect suspect: a man who had been seen to be violent, who drew his sword first and asked questions later, a man who was used to killing.
That was one thing; there was also the matter of the men of St Nicholas. Simon detested pirates. Now he had experienced at first hand how terrifying their assaults could be, he was happy to think that any who were guilty of attacking innocent ships, like the Bretons who had pursued the Anne, should themselves be hunted down and slaughtered. People who routinely committed such crimes deserved all they got.
However, the murder of the gather-reeve was a different issue. Simon was unwilling to see Sir Charles used as a convenient scapegoat in the absence of the true criminal. Especially if Thomas’s action was a result of his own guilt.
The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16) Page 28
