The Devil's Acolyte (2002)

by Jecks, Michael

‘Look, I couldn’t help it, all right? He just asked me to join him in a game of knuckles, and I didn’t see the harm. When his friend challenged me, I had to accept.’

  ‘Oh? And which friend was this?’

  ‘Just some foreigner. He’s Sergeant to the Arrayer who’s in town. You must have heard about him,’ Nob said, attempting a confidence he didn’t feel while his belly bucked at the memory.

  Humphrey had worn a serious expression, winking to Nob as he asked him over, and Nob soon saw what he meant. The Arrayer was here to take every able-bodied man from sixteen to sixty, and that meant Nob was well within the age range. If the Arrayer saw him, he could be taken – but if this Sergeant gained an affection for him, he might be safe. Nob and Humphrey set to with a will, gambling wildly so as to lose, and buying the stranger plenty of ale. It would be dangerous to openly bribe him in public, but the Sergeant must surely know what they were doing. It had been expensive.

  ‘You haven’t the brain you were born with, have you? Well, I hope you didn’t gamble too much.’

  Nob remained strangely quiet on that score, and Cissy had pressed him. Finally he had been forced to admit that his investments hadn’t been blessed with profit.

  Not only had he suffered the losses, but plying the Sergeant with good ale had proved ruinous. The man had an astonishing capacity for drink and hardly seemed to feel the effects. Then, when Nob went out for a piss, and the Sergeant followed him, grunting and farting as he did so, the Sergeant blandly thanked him for the gambling, accepting the money as his due from the run of the dice, no more. He had no idea, or so he said, that Nob had been playing to lose.

  Nob was dumbstruck. As the Sergeant made to return indoors, Nob gave up, and with a bad grace he offered the money remaining in his purse. With an equally ill grace, the Sergeant accepted it – but somehow Nob didn’t feel confident that he was entirely secure in the cold light of the following dawn.

  ‘You’re an oaf and a fool! You go in there and drink yourself to blind stupidity, and then you come back and want sympathy!’ Cissy snapped, but then fetched him a morning ale to whet his appetite. ‘I suppose you want me to give you some breakfast now.’

  ‘No, I’ll be all right with a pie,’ he said with stiff pride. ‘I wouldn’t want to put you out.’ He turned away and tripped over a stool, barking his shin on the seat. ‘Oh, bugger, bugger, bugger!’

  It was enough. Laughing, she took his arm and settled him in his chair by the hearth, and bent to cook him some bacon and an egg. She had some bread she had thrown into the oven the night before when he had finished cooking, and now she broke off a crust and gave it to him while his meal spat and sizzled on the griddle over the fire.

  ‘You daft old sod,’ she had said fondly.

  No, Cissy thought now, it was no wonder that she was tired. No rest Sunday night, and Monday had been busy, too, what with all her work and Nob being unable to do more than grunt all morning. Monday night she had been so tired she’d only slept shallowly, waking at the slightest groan or squeak amongst the timbers of the house. And today, Tuesday, she had had to listen to poor little Sara as well. Sometimes it felt as though she was mother to all the foolish chits in the town.

  Sara was a silly mare! She was always hoping to find a man who would help her, and she was so desperate that she would give herself to anyone, and now she must suffer the inevitable result of a fertile woman and be scorned as a whore. The parish had to keep her and her children, just as it would any child, but Sara would be fined the layrwyta by the Abbot’s court. Her child would be known as a bastard, and while a King or nobleman could sire bastards all over the country without concern – why, even King Edward himself was taking his bastard son, Adam, with him to wars, if the stories were to be believed – a woman like Sara got off less lightly. Adam would be provided for by the King his father, but Sara’s child would be despised by everyone, as an extra burden on the parish. No one would blame the incontinent man who had promised to wed her; no, they’d all blame the gullible woman.

  Idly, Cissy wondered again who the father might be, but then she shook herself and told herself off for daydreaming. There were some crusts and scraps of pie in a pot, and she reopened the door and threw them out, and it was then, as she saw the bits and pieces fly through the air, that she saw a man recoil.

  He looked familiar, she thought, a young fellow with broad enough shoulders, but then he was gone. Disappeared along an alley. Cissy closed the door thoughtfully. He was familiar . . . and then she realised who it was. ‘Gerard, you poor soul!’

  Simon was about to make his way to the guest room when, yawning, he heard a chuckle and turned to see Augerus and Mark sitting in the doorway to the salsarius’ room.

  ‘So, Bailiff, the strain is showing, is it?’ Augerus asked, not unkindly.

  Simon smiled and accepted a cup of Mark’s wine. ‘You fellows are never likely to suffer from thirst, are you?’ Mark looked like a man who had already tasted more than a gallon of wine, Simon thought.

  ‘We have a resonable supply, it is true,’ he agreed. ‘Why, any monk should be allocated five gallons of good quality ale and another five of weaker each week. Even a pensioner gets that. And Augerus and I have strenuous work to conduct for the Abbey. We need to keep our strength up – and what better for that than strong wine?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you both be abed, ready for the midnight services?’

  ‘I rarely go to bed until later. I need little sleep,’ Mark said with a partly boastful, faintly defensive air. ‘I am like Brother Peter, the Almoner. He only ever has three hours a night. Never needs more than that. Most of the night he wanders about the place, along the walls and about the court. And look at him!’ He belched quietly. ‘He doesn’t look too bad on it, does he?’

  Simon noted that. So, Peter was always up and wandering about, was he? Well, it was hardly surprising. After his wound, maybe he found it hard to sleep. He was ever looking out for another band of attackers, perhaps?

  ‘Have you found out any more about the murderer?’ Augerus asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Am I right, that the miner was killed by a club?’

  ‘Yes. The sort of weapon that anyone could make,’ Simon said. He saw no reason to mention that it had gone missing. Augerus or Peter was responsible for gossip, according to the Abbot, and Mark had already admitted his own interest in it.

  Augerus glanced at Mark, then back to Simon. The Bailiff’s tone was curious, he thought, and he wondered whether Simon harboured a suspicion against Mark. It was quite possible. After all, Augerus knew that Mark had been up on the moors, the day that Wally died. And he had argued with him. Perhaps the Bailiff knew that, too.

  ‘I only asked, because I have heard that some mining men will scratch marks into wood they have purchased to stop others from stealing it. Perhaps there might be something on the timber that killed Walwynus?’

  Simon was still a moment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Take a closer look at the weapon. If it came from a miner, marks will be visible.’

  Mark sniffed. ‘I think Brother Augerus here has been drinking too much of my wine, Bailiff. Ignore his words. You will only find yourself wasting time. Have you learned any more about the thefts?’

  Simon was suddenly aware that Mark’s eyes were brighter and more shrewd than his voice would have indicated possible. Mark was perhaps inebriated, but that was his usual condition, and he was still perfectly capable of reasoning.

  ‘What should I have learned? The Abbot did not ask me to investigate the theft,’ he said, purposefully leaving the word in the singular.

  ‘Aha! So you weren’t piqued with interest? But perhaps other things have been taken from here, which could lead to the reputation of the Abbey being damaged – badly so. Don’t you have a duty to seek out the truth?’

  ‘Not if the Abbot told him not to,’ Augerus said, and hiccuped. ‘Isn’t that right, Bailiff?’

  ‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘After all, I have no jurisdic
tion here, do I?’

  ‘If a man is threatening to trample the Abbey’s good name in the mud, he should be punished,’ Mark said, but now his eyes were turned away, and Simon felt he was almost talking to himself. ‘He deserves punishment.’ Then he turned to face Simon again. ‘Any man who dares harm this Abbey will suffer the consequences,’ he declared. ‘God won’t allow blasphemous behaviour.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  After a long and strenuous ride, Baldwin and the Coroner had slept the Tuesday night in a pleasant inn at South Zeal. The weather had been kind to them, and they had made good time, riding fast on the swift road that led through Yeoford and then Hittisleigh, finally arriving in the village only a short time after dark.

  Sore from their ride, Baldwin rose with a grunt as the innkeeper arrived and started opening the windows. This, Baldwin thought, was the worst aspect of travelling. Small inns so often had nowhere to put guests, and all they could do was make space for a man to sleep on a bench, or perhaps allow him to sleep on the hay in the stables. Perhaps he should be glad that at least there was space near the fire, because the weather was turning unseasonably cold. The landlord and some local men asserted that it was normal for the time of year, but Baldwin found it hard to believe that the weather so near to his own home could be quite so different. And the midges were foul, too. When he went out during the night to piss against a nearby tree, he found himself crawling with them in the space of a few minutes.

  It was a great relief to be up and ahorse after a rushed breakfast of cold meat and some coarse bread. While he chewed, Baldwin saw the Coroner putting half his own loaf in a cloth and tying it into a neat bundle.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘I thought it would be as well to take something for our lunch.’

  ‘There are plenty of good inns on the way to Tavistock, Coroner. We have eaten in some of them.’ Baldwin eyed his own loaf. ‘I certainly do not think that this would be comparable with some of the food at inns there.’

  ‘No. If we were to ride around the north side of the moor, you’d be right,’ the Coroner agreed. ‘But I didn’t intend that.’

  ‘Which way do you want to go, then, Sir Roger?’

  ‘Over the middle.’

  Baldwin considered this. ‘You do realise how quickly the mist can come down?’

  ‘I have been on the moors and lived to tell the tale when that happened to me,’ Coroner Roger said lightly. ‘No, I merely wish to see the place where this death happened before we go to Tavistock and hear what people think we wish to hear.’

  Baldwin nodded, but he was not content. Even when they had mounted their horses and he could see that the sky was almost devoid of clouds, that the top of the nearby hill was smooth and an apparently easy ride, and that the ground underfoot was dry and not at all boggy, he still felt a nagging anxiety.

  ‘Come on, Sir Baldwin. Courage!’

  They had left the inn, and were riding down the main street, past all the houses in their burgage plots on either side, and then turned right at the bottom of the road, heading for the great hill Baldwin had seen before.

  ‘I am not fearful,’ he said stiffly. ‘Yet I swore to my wife that I would avoid spending too much time on the moors. Every time I visit, there is death and murder.’

  ‘Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

  Baldwin grunted. He could not put his feelings into words. He was aware of a curious awe about the moors which bordered on the superstitious; probably, he told himself, because his wife’s attitude had coloured his own. Earlier this year, before the double disasters of the tournament at Oakhampton and then the murders at Sticklepath, he would have scoffed at the idea that the moors could themselves be unlucky or fated, but now he was growing to feel if not a fear, certainly a degree of apprehension.

  ‘How do you know where we are to go?’ he asked. ‘I thought you only knew that the body was over towards Tavistock.’

  ‘It is. It’s down near Fox Tor. I know that way a little – there was a knife-fight there some years ago and a man died, and I had to go there to hold the inquest. It was one of my first cases, so of course I recall it well.’ Cheerfully, he related the tale of a man who had come to the area with a friend, both seeking to become miners, but then one day they argued, and one stabbed the other.

  Baldwin listened with only half an ear. They had followed the narrow lane for some hundreds of yards, with the land rising steeply on their left, while on their right there was an area of pasture with a small stream beyond, chuckling merrily. Their track took them right, down a dip and up the other side, and here Baldwin realised that they were climbing the hill.

  From a distance it had looked immense, like a great bowl which God Himself had inverted on the horizon, and Baldwin was glad that the daunting sight of it was concealed by the thick woods that grew here at its base. In among some of them pastures had been cut, and the woods were receding as the men from the borough cut their winter logs and coppiced and cleared, but there were enough trees to hide the vast bulk.

  They wound upwards, and then took a left fork. ‘No point climbing to the top,’ the Coroner muttered as he led the way. ‘This is the peat-cutters’ track.’

  The track led between two walls, both of which had bushes and trees growing in them and reaching high overhead, creating a tunnel of verdure. At their feet, it was metalled with rocks of moorstone which had sunk to an even level, so that packhorses could pass up here even in the worst of the winter weather, and Baldwin was glad of it because at the side of the trail was a trickle of water. If there were no stones, this would soon become another quagmire.

  The way climbed, but more shallowly, and at last they were out into the open, leaving the trees behind.

  Baldwin took a deep breath. The last time he had been up on the moors he had seen another death, and it had touched his soul with sadness. That was partly why he was growing to detest the moors, because he could only ever associate them with death and murder. Not that this visit would make him feel any more content, with another murdered man at the end of the journey.

  Here, though, it was hard to view the surrounding landscape with anything but awe and delight. The ground dropped away to their left, while on their right was the steeper rise to the summit, the side of the hill scattered with a thick clitter of stones. A tough climb on foot.

  Coroner Roger took him on, past a strange little triple row of standing stones. ‘God knows what they’re doing here!’ and on to a lower hill. From here, he pointed south. ‘All this land is the King’s. He must have magnificent hunts over here, eh?’

  Baldwin could not help but agree. As they trotted on, he marvelled at the odd, soft beauty of the place. It was as though the only people alive were he and the Coroner. No noise of axe or pick reached their ears, and no house could be seen. There was only the endlessly rolling little hills, mostly smothered in a bright mantle of purple heather.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the Coroner said, smiling at the sight of Baldwin’s face.

  ‘Very!’ Baldwin twisted in his saddle to take it all in. Some hills were surmounted by great hunks of stone, while others were smooth, shallow ripples in the grass and heather. Here and there a stream cut through a hillside, casting a sharper shadow like a gash in the grass, but mostly it was all soft-looking undulations.

  They stopped at the side of a stream, freeing the horses to drink their fill and crop the grass while the two men idled on the banks, and then remounted and rode on unhurriedly. The weather remained clear, and Baldwin could feel his trepidation falling away: as he had believed, it was superstitious in the extreme to blame the land itself for the evil actions of the men who trod upon it.

  He hoped his attitude would not change again.

  They followed well-trodden tracks for some more miles, but then Sir Roger began searching about, peering at the horizon.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Miners. There should be some near here. Aha! Over there!’

  The Co
roner pointed and Baldwin saw in the distance a thin plume of smoke rising. They rode towards it and found themselves in a small miners’ camp. Having asked for directions, they were soon on their way again, and this time they reached a larger camp where a well-built miner pointed over to a hill. ‘See where that stream is? You’ll find poor old Wally there. But don’t go straight. Head up that hillside west of here, then go south until you come to the cross. Then turn east again. Not until you reach the cross, though. The mire’s deadly down there.’

  Hearing his words, both agreed that his advice was sound. Soon the two were walking their horses up a hill. The cross was not difficult to see – a tall, somewhat rough-hewn shape. There they turned east and crossed a pleasant ford.

  ‘If it’s true that he was beaten to death, surely another miner was responsible,’ Roger grumbled. ‘Those bastards are always quarrelling. And they’ve got so many potential weapons to hand.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Except you don’t mean it. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I trust the judgement of my Lord Abbot. He would only call us both out if there was good cause. Otherwise he would surely only ask for you to be here.’

  ‘You mean he doesn’t trust my judgement?’

  Baldwin smiled innocently. ‘I mean he probably has more than one concern. He knows how busy you are, Coroner. If there were another matter, he would hardly dare take up more of your time than he need, would he?’

  ‘Oh. You do mean he doesn’t trust my judgement!’

  ‘The little devil,’ Augerus said. ‘If he couldn’t be bothered to come and help me, the least he could have done was let me know.’

  It was early afternoon, and the two were seated in the salsarius’ room amidst the odours of gently curing hams and sausages, and the sharp tang of sea and fresh wind from the open steeping barrels in which the salt fish had soaked yesterday. It could take many hours for the salt to be washed out, and Mark had other duties, so he tended to leave the fish to soak for as long as possible, sliding the slippery fillets into a wooden trough to wash off most of the salt, then dropping them into the barrels of fresh water as early as possible on the Tuesday, ready for cooking today, Wednesday, the fast day. The barrels were still full of the fishy water, waiting to be emptied.