The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘But not for David,’ Baldwin said. ‘She never mentioned David. Perhaps she wanted to make sure that he was secure even from investigation?’

  Simon grunted. ‘You can let go of my arm now, if you want,’ he said. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

  ‘I want to speak to David again, and William.’

  ‘William said he was going to the church.’

  Baldwin glanced back at the great building behind them. ‘Come on, then.’

  The door thundered when they threw it open and strode in, Baldwin tall and imperious, Simon more subdued.

  For William, kneeling at the altar, their entrance was like a clap of thunder. He gave them a bad-tempered look before returning to his prayers and closing his eyes. It was hard, trying to remain forgiving, but he was determined. He had said many prayers for Robert already, since learning of his murder. Now he wanted to say some more.

  But the presence of the two men was distracting. He found his mind wandering. It was infuriating that they should come in here and disrupt his prayers. Muttering a hasty Pater Noster, he stood, made the sign of the cross, and walked past them to the entrance, where he waited, fuming.

  ‘What was the meaning of that? It was an intrusion into a man’s communion with God, you irreverent arseholes!’

  Baldwin was in no mood for his temper. ‘Mariota told us about you. She saw you at the beach. She said you were there, that you saw the body and saw the murderer.’

  ‘She’s wrong,’ William said, and made as though to move off.

  Simon blocked his path with an apologetic, ‘Sorry, William.’

  ‘She told me it was someone else killed Robert,’ Baldwin pressed on, ‘but I don’t believe her. I think she was trying to protect someone. Someone like you.’

  ‘You think I killed him?’ The priest smiled thinly. ‘Just as I’d have liked to kill Luke for his betrayal of the trust put in him? He took my little chapel and turned it into a midden. A disgrace for St Elidius – Luke dishonoured him – so I executed them both, is that what you think?’

  ‘What of Robert?’

  ‘I was there, yes. I saw his body. I didn’t see her, though.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘Why should I?’ He looked up and met Baldwin’s eye.

  ‘Because he killed your brother Jan,’ Baldwin said.

  William sighed. ‘I knew of Robert as an evil man when I lived on St Elidius, and then, when I moved to St Mary’s, I met him a few times, and I realised that Thomas’s story about him being a cheerful murderer was nonsense. He was a weak-minded fool who had made some mistakes and was paying for them with his exile. He may have killed, but not in anger or from some bloodlust. No, he killed to protect himself or another. Then, when I heard of his victim, I realised that I hated him for ending Jan’s life, but I knew what sort of a man Jan was. He was an unholy terror, brutal and cruel. If he had found a good woman who could have held him in check … but no. Some men cannot even be held back by women. No, Robert was almost certainly forced to kill him. You see, I cannot blame a man for self-defence.’

  Baldwin nodded. ‘Why should I believe you? Everyone appears to have had an opportunity to have killed Robert, but you definitely had the most pressing urges.’

  ‘You think so? Do you really think that a man who has forsaken God could deserve the same loyalty as a member of a community like this? Sir Baldwin, these islands are unique! They are home to a race of honourable, decent people who are fleeced by those devils at Ennor. They deserve their protection. A man like my brother? I fear not.’ He looked up with a sudden grin. ‘I suppose you now think I’m guilty because I wanted to protect the folk here from the depredations of a greedy gather-reeve!’

  ‘No, but perhaps David did,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘I doubt it. He hated Robert as the symbol of Ennor’s power, but he knew well enough that if he cut off the head of that gather-reeve, there would soon be another. Besides, I never saw him on Ennor that day. Who said they did?’

  ‘No one. Mariota said it was another, but he denies it.’

  William looked away. ‘I cannot help you more.’

  ‘Did you see the killer?’ Baldwin said.

  William burst out, ‘What good will it do if you find the man? What good will it do anyone? Can you bring either of them back to life? No. Can you heal the damage which they have done here? No. So leave matters as they stand. Why not let people believe it was the pirates who killed them? That would be believable, wouldn’t it? Let the people blame them.’

  ‘I cannot do that. Whoever …’ Baldwin began, but then he heard the great bell tolling mournfully and realised his error.

  When they all arrived in the Prior’s hall, the doorway was filled with anxious, silent monks, all of whom stared inside at the grim sight. The room was still warm from their meal, and the body hanging by the neck was vertical, with only a slight tilt to the head, as though the Prior had stood on the chair to set something on the beam, and was welcoming them from that curious position. He had a slight smile on his face, although the eyes bulged and the flesh was suffused with blood. The smell of death was cloying.

  Pushing past the monks, the three entered. He had used his own rope belt, Baldwin saw. Cryspyn had looped it over the beam, thrust his head through it, and used a stick to twist it tight, garrotte-style. Baldwin had seen many corpses which had been hanged, but only a few had remained standing on a chair like this. Most kicked the chair away, hoping for a swift, assured death. Cryspyn cared little for that. He had stood on the chair to reach the beam, and killed himself while he stood there, his legs giving way as the life left his body and, so Baldwin hoped, making the death more swift.

  ‘I should have trusted to my own intuition. I believed Mariota when she told me,’ he said. ‘I could have saved him this.’

  ‘He was an honourable man,’ William said softly, and Baldwin saw that there were tears in his eyes. ‘He was always good to me. I think he knew how hard it was to live with guilt. He had been guilty of a crime himself.’

  ‘Yes. He told me.’

  ‘And that guilt ate at him. There was not a single day he didn’t suffer.’

  ‘Simon, is there a note on his table?’ Baldwin asked. He knew his friend preferred to avoid intimate encounters with death. While Simon went and scanned the desktop, Baldwin pulled up a stool and stood on it, trying to untie the rope while William supported the body from below. The rope was too tightly bound, held with Cryspyn’s full weight, so Baldwin took out his knife and cut Cryspyn’s body down. William took the full weight of the sagging figure, and two monks hurried forward to help him lower their dead master to the floor.

  ‘Nothing here,’ Simon called. ‘Strange, I would have hoped he would have left us some clue as to why he did this.’

  ‘So would I,’ Baldwin said. ‘But sometimes a man’s heart is too full and bitter. He must have guessed that we’d return to charge him with the murders, and he wished to have nothing to do with the shame that would bring to him and his priory.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ William said. ‘Yet I would have hoped he would have tried to explain. It will make his death more – incomprehensible – and that will lead to rumours and foolish speculation.’

  Simon had rejoined them. ‘I would have expected a note. Perhaps he was in too much of a hurry.’

  ‘He had little time,’ a monk offered. Baldwin recognised the man as the new gatekeeper.

  Simon had lifted the rope and was staring at it with a strange expression. ‘Baldwin, look at this.’

  Baldwin took the rope and studied it. ‘What of it?’

  ‘The knots are so precise. Was Cryspyn ever a sailor?’

  William said, ‘No,’ as the gatekeeper continued: ‘Yes, he had little time after David left him.’

  ‘When was David here?’ Baldwin demanded.

  ‘He came just before you,’ the gatekeeper stammered, shocked by Baldwin’s sudden ferocity. ‘He was there until after you ran out to find William here.�
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  Simon and Baldwin exchanged a horrified look.

  ‘He was there in the hall when we spoke,’ Simon said. ‘He heard you accuse …’

  ‘And decided that the best course for his own defence was the death by suicide of the Prior,’ Baldwin finished for him. ‘The man’s a devil!’

  Brosia was at her cottage shaking out her bedding when they arrived. She cocked an eye at them, hastily bundling it up and thrusting it in through her doorway. ‘Good day! Can I offer you—’

  ‘Where is your husband?’ Baldwin rasped. He glanced inside the cottage, and he saw Mariota. ‘I hope you are proud, woman! You have cost another good man his life!’

  ‘No. Not me. I have merely protected the man I had to,’ she said. ‘I am an islander, and I’ll always protect an island man over any other.’

  ‘He heard your words and instantly murdered the Prior! I said, where is your husband, Brosia!’

  ‘He is down at the boats, I suppose … why?’

  ‘Ask her!’ Baldwin spat, pointing at Mariota.

  His anger at Mariota’s deceit was already fading as they hurried along the grassed track to the beach. He shouldn’t blame her: she was a hardy islander. This was her way of life, the way of life of all the people here. They were weak against the powers of Ennor, the priory, and most of all the weather. All they had was each other. Mariota was protecting her tribe. Tedia would have done the same.

  There was a lurch in his heart at the thought of her, but it was lessened. Now the memory of her was already fading. More in his mind was Jeanne, her smile, her calmness, her warmth. ‘My God but I miss her!’ he breathed.

  William led the way to the shore. There, up on a hillock of grassy sand the three gazed out over the flat expanse. There was no sign of David, and when Baldwin stared out to sea, there was nothing. Not a single sail showed itself on the flat calm water.

  Up to the north of the beach there was a group of men working on a boat. ‘Come,’ Baldwin muttered, and they pounded along at the edge of the sea where the sand was firmer. Soon they were with the men. ‘Where is David?’ he called.

  ‘He’s just gone to sea. Should be back at nightfall,’ one of the men replied without looking up from his work.

  ‘Gone!’ Baldwin breathed.

  ‘Perhaps he will return,’ Simon suggested.

  ‘No,’ William said. ‘I think he has decided to imitate Tedia’s man. He has made his choice. He knows what would happen to him here, if he were discovered. No one would want to suffer the penalties given to a felon. He has gone.’

  ‘He has escaped,’ Baldwin agreed bitterly.

  ‘Perhaps he has, for now,’ William said, ‘but there is a higher justice, and he can’t evade that.’

  They began their return to the priory.

  ‘One thing,’ Simon said, ‘which I still don’t understand, is why Thomas was so keen to accuse the men here of piracy.’

  William shrugged, but then cast a sharp look at Baldwin. ‘Perhaps, if you could swear, both of you, to keep this secret, I can enlighten you.’ Having received their assurances, William chuckled to himself. ‘You ask why? It’s because it takes one to recognise another. Thomas was a pirate of a sort. He would rob any man to make his money – well, in that way he was a true islander. There is not enough land here for men to make their livelihoods. They can win fish from the sea, it’s true, and they can try to farm, but there isn’t enough land. We have to import food from elsewhere all the time. And when fishermen can’t earn enough to support their wives and children, what do you expect them to do? Roll over and accept death? No, they go out and take whatever they can on the seas.’

  ‘So Thomas truly believed that his ship had been attacked by islanders?’

  ‘I expect so. Why else should he want to attack them? And he had been under pressure. His own ship was late in, and he thought that he might be financially ruined. If the islanders had taken his vessel, he thought he should get his lost goods back. That meant robbing the robbers.’

  ‘And David was their leader,’ Baldwin stated.

  ‘Yes. It was why poor Cryspyn hated dealing with him. It gave him a pain in the belly to have to deal with the man whom he knew was every day planning the destruction of ships. Yet Cryspyn had no proof with which to accuse David.’

  They had reached the priory’s walls, and they stood a while under the gateway. There seemed little to say.

  ‘So why do you think David killed them?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘That is easy. I think he suspected that Luke was having an affair with his wife, Brosia. He hated that kind of behaviour, and he distrusted other men about her. Strangely, I don’t think he ever sought to blame her for their attentions. He never realised how she tempted them.’

  ‘And Robert was killed for the same reasons?’ Simon guessed.

  ‘I think so. He was trying to climb into Isok’s bed, and David could see that as well as any of us – including Isok himself. David was proud of the people here. He would have hated to think of some foreigner – still worse the thieving gather-reeve – taking advantage of Tedia. I think he went off to the other island with the hope of scaring the man off, but then events overcame him.’

  ‘Mariota was there and saw it all,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Yes, I daresay. I only saw Robert’s body and the figure of Cryspyn striding off through the water. I did guess that he might have been the killer, but then commonsense came back to me.’

  ‘In what form?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘I saw David’s boat putting out from the next beach,’ William smiled.

  ‘I don’t understand why David put Luke in a boat and let him drift like that,’ Simon said, eyes narrowed.

  ‘I expect he hoped that the boat would be taken by the sea.’

  ‘Isok was certain that no local man would believe that the sea would do such a thing,’ Baldwin reminded him.

  ‘That was what he said,’ William agreed comfortably.

  ‘You mean he lied to me?’

  ‘Sir Knight, the man had a choice of slipping a noose about the neck of a friend and companion over many years; probably the man who had stopped another from cuckolding him. Yes, I think Isok guessed, and I think he was so emotional that day when we saw Luke’s body, because he feared we might otherwise guess. So he put the blame on someone who knew nothing about the currents around here. It was a shrewd throw.’

  Baldwin was silent a moment. So it was not only Mariota who had sought to protect his tribe: even Isok, who was ridiculed by his own tribe, still sought to defend his folk, trying to conceal the killer from Baldwin.

  Simon belched. ‘There is …’

  ‘Speak!’ Baldwin said.

  ‘I don’t understand why David killed the Prior. If he killed Cryspyn to deflect attention from himself, as though to direct all blame upon the Prior, why then did he flee the islands? Why not leave Cryspyn alive and simply bolt?’

  ‘Because David and Cryspyn detested each other,’ said William. ‘Cryspyn knew what sort of man David was: a pirate. David had fought against the Prior’s interference for all his tenure as reeve. This was his last cast against the man who had meddled in his affairs for so long.’

  ‘Does anyone on these islands stoop to telling the truth?’ Baldwin asked bitterly.

  ‘Yes. But only to those whom they have known all their lives. Not strangers and foreigners,’ William said pointedly.

  ‘They trust you.’

  William gave a wolfish smile. ‘And how do you think I come by such good quality wines?’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The decking rolled gently as they made their slow way up the northern channel from St Nicholas, through the deep water, and then started to corkscrew in earnest as they passed the northernmost tip of the islands. The shipmaster set her prow southwards as soon as he could, and the ship began her journey.

  As they passed the dismal rock to the west of the islands, two figures knelt and begged on the slippery green-coloured stone. Both were bed
raggled and sodden, their hands red where manacles had rubbed their wrists raw overnight, and their pleading was the more poignant for the way that they tore at their hair and begged with reedy, thin voices.

  ‘Aye, they won’t last above another tide,’ the master said. He was a short, hook-nosed man called Henry with an entirely bald pate and a thin scatter of black hair above his ears.

  ‘Poor, miserable devils,’ Baldwin muttered. ‘Give me the noose any day rather than this protracted and cruel death.’

  ‘Think that’s cruel? You should see some of the foreign ways of killing, Sir Baldwin,’ Henry said.

  ‘I have. I never thought to see their like on English soil,’ Baldwin said shortly.

  ‘Perhaps. But I say, they are welcome to their death. They asked for it by the way they tried to steal cargo and ships. They cost men dear in effort and treasure.’

  Baldwin nodded. Henry’s tone showed his malice towards the two. Any sailor must detest pirates, but perhaps those who preyed upon their own countrymen were hated most.

  ‘Bastards!’ Henry muttered.

  Turning away, Baldwin went to seek Simon. The cries and desperation of the two surviving Breton pirates was too heart-wrenching.

  Simon was at the prow. He heard Baldwin’s steps, but didn’t turn. ‘You know, if you stand up here and keep your eyes on the horizon there, it doesn’t make you feel so sick. I could almost feel all right up here.’

  ‘Certainly it is preferable to being down below,’ Baldwin agreed.

  ‘How long will it take to sail all that way?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Baldwin said. ‘The master reckoned anything from a half-day to nightfall, depending on the winds.’

  ‘Winds I can bear,’ Simon said sourly. ‘It’s the storms I despise.’

  ‘Forget such things, old friend. Concentrate on seeing your wife again,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘I shall. Although I still cannot forget that poor cabin-boy’s body,’ Simon said.

  ‘Nor me,’ Baldwin said, but for different reasons.

  They had attended the church service in memory of the dead only two days after the capture of the pirates’ ship and the recovery of the Prior’s treasure. First the monks had set Cryspyn in a vault beneath the altar, showing their very genuine grief at losing so close a friend. When the rough slab had been set over him, the other bodies were taken outside. The gatekeeper and novice were buried in the monks’ own cemetery within the priory’s precinct, while the others, including Hamo, were carried out to the vill’s graveyard just outside.