No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27)

by Michael Jecks

  She was already fleeing along the road towards the middle of the vill as he roared his last words, and as she ran there was a satisfying sound of doors being wrenched open, and even the clatter of a bowl being dropped and smashing.

  Before long, Simon and the coroner were inside a small hovel, setting the widow on a low palliasse, and hurriedly pushing past the women who thronged the doorway to see what was happening to their neighbour.

  The coroner took a deep breath of the cool early-evening air. ‘Right, Bailiff, Brother Monk, we have been working and travelling all the weary day. It is time for me to have at least a gallon of wine and mead before I take responsibility for a large joint of meat of some sort.’

  ‘I think we shall be fortunate to find a decent meal here,’ Simon said with a tired smile. It had been harder than he would have expected to carry the poor woman the relatively short distance to her own house. For such a small-bodied woman, it was a surprise how much she seemed to weigh after a few feet.

  Coroner Richard hesitated, fixing Simon with a look of puzzlement. ‘You think so? I’ve never yet found a place that couldn’t provide a perfectly good meal if you know who to speak to. Mind you, this is a strange-looking vill. Not the sort of place I’d think to stop in usually. But there must be an inn or something nearby.’

  He saw a man staring at the door to Agnes’s house. The fellow was surely on his way home from a day in the fields, and had seen or heard the noise of their return. Noticing the coroner bearing down on him, he squeaked and would have fled, but Sir Richard’s voice was pleasantly modulated for him. ‘Friend, I am in need of wine and vittles. Do ye know a good tavern about this place?’

  Even with the coroner’s most gentle smile, the man looked ready to bolt, but Mark was already behind him. ‘My son, you need only point out the way to the tavern if that large fellow intimidates you too much. Personally, I think his bark is worse than his bite. But then, having heard him, you wouldn’t want to get too close, would you? I don’t anyway. So please, put us all out of our misery and just tell him where to get some wine.’

  It was a rough little building, but Sir Richard declared himself delighted with it and its rustic charm. Simon looked about him and thought it looked marginally worse than some of the brawling drinking chambers in Dartmouth where the sailors would go to forget their woes. There were no stools, only a few large round tree trunk logs to rest on, and one bench that appeared to have been made by a man who had heard of such things but had never actually seen or used one. Simon stood eyeing it for some little while before resorting to leaning against a wall.

  Sir Richard was less particular. He stood at the hearth in the middle of the room and warmed his hands on the rising heat. There was a tripod set over the fire, and a pot held a thickening pottage with some lumps of indeterminate meat bobbing about occasionally. A young girl of perhaps nine summers clad in a simple shift stood and stirred the pot seriously, spending more time warily keeping her eyes on these three strangers. Mark had walked straight in, sighed, and made his way to the bench, on which he rested his backside with a show of caution – a display that appeared unnecessary, for there was not even a squeak of protest from the wood as it took his weight.

  ‘Child, where is your father?’ Simon asked.

  She said nothing, but nodded towards a door at the opposite end of the room. Simon walked to it, and soon there was a man with them. He was as old as Simon, but his face wore the years with less ease. He was also a deal slimmer than the bailiff, and his hair was almost all grey, while his brows were black as a Celt’s beard. In a short time they had ordered ales – there was no wine – and bread, pottage and a steamed suet pudding of apples and pears.

  For some little while there was an appreciative silence as the three finished their meal and sat back contented. The coroner gave a belch, and then a trumpet blast from his arse. ‘Hah! I needed that. There’s nothing so disorders a man’s humours as having no ballast in his belly. And a pot or two of ale helps the digestion, I always reckon.’

  ‘I will be happier when I’ve had a sleep,’ Simon said. He stretched his arms over his head and felt the tension in his shoulders with a grimace. ‘So much still to learn and do in the morning.’

  ‘Aye. Well, we will be up early, I dare say,’ the coroner said with a rueful glance at the floor. They had agreed with the host that they could sleep in a room at the back, but it looked a verminous, unpleasant bedchamber. Sir Richard’s only hope was that the promised straw for bedding was not too smothered in fleas or lice. He had slept rough before and had no wish to do so again.

  ‘I find your attitudes astonishing,’ Mark hissed. ‘Today you have wasted so many hours in merely wandering about the land, asking all kinds of questions about a dead reeve, and learned nothing at all about the murder of two priests and their guards. These are the men the good cardinal requested you to ask after, but you’ve done precious little to learn anything so far as I can see.’

  ‘Aye?’ Sir Richard said, fixing a genial look on the monk. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I assume you are still new to this kind of inquest,’ Brother Mark said. ‘In God’s name, I wish we had found another to do the job.’

  ‘Do ye now? Hmm. How many deaths have you investigated, Master Monk?’

  ‘Do not be ridiculous! I have never—’

  ‘None? Ah. And how many dead bodies, then, have you buried?’

  ‘I have been to a number of funerals.’

  ‘Not what I asked. No, you see, I was wondering whether you had buried many of your own family?’

  ‘I was present at my mother’s funeral not long ago.’

  ‘Oh? Your mother’s? Was she murdered?’

  ‘No, she was old, though.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well then, Master Monk, you should remember that Simon and I have actually investigated more than a few deaths. Me, I’ve held more than a hundred inquests on corpses in my time; and I’ve seen enough felons hanged to fill my days. I have what you could call experience, if you were to be so crass.’

  ‘Then why did you ask nothing about the men today, and instead spent so much time on the reeve?’

  ‘That is why I asked whether you had lost a close relative. When you have, when you’ve had to find someone who’s close to you, when you’ve had to help bring that loved one home again, so that you can bury her, and when you have suffered all the misery and recrimination, all the self-loathing and hatred, for being so stupid as to let her die while you were off enjoying yourself, master, then, and only then, can you criticise us. I left my wife alone one day, and she was killed. I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. For now, let me remind you that you are here in the vill where an honourable, decent reeve lived and worked, with all his friends and companions from the area. He was a man of this vill. He did what he could for the folk here. They have had a loss that cannot be mended. And his wife, you will remember, was with us. How would she have felt were we to have ignored her old man and instead spent all our time in asking about a group of foreigners she’d never known? Eh? There is such a thing as compassion, Master Monk. Perhaps you have heard of the term?’

  Mark was appalled. He could not meet their eyes, but shortly afterwards he silently walked from the room while Sir Richard squatted at the edge of the fire, poking at it with a long twig. ‘Has he gone?’

  Simon nodded. ‘So, do I take it that you forgot about the travellers, then?’

  Before answering, Coroner Richard cast a quick look over his shoulder to make sure that Mark wasn’t in earshot. Then he gave a sly grin. ‘Aye. I was thinking more of the reeve. Takes a damned monk to remind us of our jobs, eh?’

  ‘We will learn more tomorrow,’ Simon said. ‘And I am sure that the murderer of the reeve is somehow connected with those of the travellers.’

  ‘How so? Same men did them all, you mean? Looks unlikely to me – the weapons were all wrong, like we said.’

  ‘True. But perhaps there was one man left behind who realised the reeve was gr
owing close to them, and decided to kill him. He may have picked up a stone purely because drawing steel would have betrayed his intent.’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t deny it’s possible. If that is right, though, it would imply a well-organised force.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just this: a rearguard left behind to cover their trail or to guard against attack shows military thinking. But if someone was left behind they would have gone within hours of the force passing by. No, it cannot have been a guard. More likely it was a fresh person out for personal gain.’

  ‘So you consider it likely that the killing of the reeve was entirely unconnected? Or it was a man on a freelance mission? Riding out, he sought any suitable target for his attack, and picked upon a lone wandering reeve with no money?’ Simon said with a grin.

  ‘You may chuckle, Bailiff. I would wager a few pennies that the reeve was more unfortunate than you’d think. He could have been at home, curled up around that wife of his, but instead he went out and was met by a man on his way. The fellow realised he had money—’

  ‘Scarcely likely.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he thought the reeve was on the trail of his companions. so he chose to remove him before he could learn where they all came from.’

  ‘And where did they?’ Simon wondered aloud. ‘They cannot fade into the undergrowth. A force large enough to kill so many in so efficient a manner must have a goodly number of men.’

  He turned. The host was in the rear of the room, and when Simon beckoned, the man hurried over. ‘Masters? How may I serve you?’

  ‘About here are there any large manors with a knight or squire living in them?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Not near here, no, lording. There are no great lords about here. Not even a squire for miles.’

  ‘Where is the nearest man-at-arms, then?’ Sir Richard demanded. ‘A man with a small force who’re trained to the saddle and to arms. There must be someone not too far away.’

  ‘There is Sir John de Sully. He lives up at Ashreigny.’

  ‘I know him,’ Simon said.

  ‘I too,’ Coroner Richard agreed. ‘He’s an honourable man. Who else?’

  The landlord scratched his head. ‘There’s the castle at Oakhampton. The Courtenay family maintains a small force there.’

  Simon considered. ‘That would make more sense, certainly. The men there could have seen these travellers as they passed along the Cornwall road, for they would have journeyed up there once they were off the Tavistock road, just as we did this morning. But the coppicers and charcoal burners were very sure that no one came up from their direction, nor returned that way.’

  ‘Yes. And the Courtenays are not so foolish as to try to rob and kill so many,’ the coroner responded.

  ‘No,’ Simon agreed thoughtfully. ‘Although the baron himself lives mostly in Tiverton, he may have a castellan at Oakhampton who is less level headed.’

  ‘True enough. There are men all over the country who are less reliable than they should be,’ the coroner said sadly. ‘My own wife was killed by a servant I trusted. No man can entirely trust even his own men.’

  ‘There is nobody else,’ the host said helpfully.

  ‘What of the east?’ asked Simon. ‘The reeve’s footprints were heading in that direction, Sir Richard.’ And the charcoal burners had mentioned the men from Bow, which was east.

  ‘Aye. True enough,’ the coroner said, cheering up. ‘What of that way?’

  ‘There’s no force at Tawton, nor at Sampford,’ the host said, scratching at his head with a frown. ‘Think there’s a small fortified manor east of it, though. What’s that place called?’ he added to himself in a mutter. ‘Bow! Sir Robert of Traci, he’s over there.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nymet Traci

  Sir Robert de Traci stalked along his hall and out into the yard, one hand on the pommel of his sword. ‘Osbert? How was it?’

  His henchman shook his head. ‘As you’d expect.’

  The knight shrugged. ‘Well, no matter. I didn’t expect more. So the abbot-elect didn’t send a note with the messenger?’

  ‘There was nothing there, no,’ Osbert said.

  ‘The messenger’s dead? I don’t want any risk that he could get back to the king. Good, good. The main thing is, the message was delivered. Now we’ll have to use a little guile to bring in the big fish. You don’t catch a salmon by beckoning, do you? The idea was all right, but there was never much likelihood that it would work for a man like the aspiring abbot. He’s too wily for that. No, what we need is a more realistic temptation for him to come to us.’

  ‘What will you do to tempt him, then?’ Osbert said. His good eye was fixed on his master.

  ‘We’ll have to think of something. After all, there cannot be too much in the life of a man like him. All we need to do is figure out what little latch will open his heart. What key will fit it, and how to turn it. Money failed, which means perhaps avarice is not the way. He’s a man, though, and a monk, so perhaps a suitable woman?’

  Osbert shrugged. ‘I never understood the sort of men who would want to hide away in an abbey.’

  ‘No. You and I are two of a kind, Os. We prefer the reality of this world to dreaming of the next, eh?’

  Osbert snorted as he busied himself about his mount. ‘What of the next world? So long as there’s time to say a Pater Noster, we’ll be allowed in anyway. Why live like a monk with no cods, when you can live like a king down here?’

  ‘Quite right. One thing, Os – the messenger had no other messages in his little pouch?’

  ‘Nothing I saw. I reckoned he had some verbal messages. Nothing much I could do about them, though. Basil killed him as soon as he could.’

  ‘Ah yes. My son,’ Sir Robert said. ‘And where is he?’

  ‘In Bow. There’s a girl there—’

  ‘I see. Which?’

  ‘The little black-haired one with the long legs. You know the one? Lives at the farm in the middle of the high street on the north side.’

  ‘I think I do, yes.’

  The knight was plainly worried about his son’s tardiness. Osbert nodded as his master took his leave, and then set about removing saddle and bridle. There were plenty of ostlers and grooms, but this was no simple palfrey he had used; it was his own horse, and one thing he had learned in eighteen months of wandering the roads was that his own horse merited his own efforts. A horse was like any other tool: if a man valued it, he would be rewarded by it.

  While he brushed the sweat and dirt from his beast, Osbert was thinking again of the messages in the messenger’s pouch.

  It was true that there was nothing directly relevant to him or to Sir Robert, but there had been the one little note in there. The cylinder had opened easily enough, and Osbert had been able to read it with ease, even with the mud all about. The message had said that a shipment of over one hundred pounds had been stolen from the abbey on its way to the king.

  Osbert had stared at it expressionlessly while the other men stamped their feet and muttered about the God-damned cold, before he dropped the cylinder back into the leather pouch.

  After all, there was no point hiding the robbery. All would know about it soon enough.

  He was still there when there was a banging at the door, and some ribald shouts. Looking up, he saw a pair of horses appear in the gateway. One of the riders was a scrawny-looking fellow who might have been a lawyer from his appearance, but the other was very different: a slim, rather beautiful young woman with the haughtiness of a countess, who stuck her chin in the air and ignored the comments that washed about her.

  Before long she had been helped from her mount, and willing hands guided her to the hall, where a maidservant came to meet her and took her inside.

  It was nothing to Osbert. He continued with the long, regular strokes of his brush that he knew his horse most appreciated, until Sir Robert appeared beside him a while later, laughing and rubbing his hands in glee.

  ‘You se
em happy, Sir Robert,’ Osbert noted.

  ‘And why not, Osbert? After all, we were discussing how to unlock the abbot’s heart, weren’t we? I would think we have the key now. After all, what could be better to aid us than the daughter of one of his friends?’

  Tavistock Abbey

  Robert Busse walked the short distance from the choir to the chapter house, and had seated himself at the stone bench that was fitted into the wall when the knock came.

  It was an irritation. There was so much for him to consider, especially with the sudden death of the messenger. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Brother, the men have discovered something.’

  Busse sighed. If the whole community was going to behave like this overenthusiastic puppy, he would resign his post and run away to become a hermit somewhere far from here, he told himself. Oh, the boy meant well, but he was so keen to see Robert installed as abbot that he was always about his ankles like a devoted mastiff. Robert found he was forever tripping over the lad. Perhaps it was planned, he wondered. Perhaps in fact the boy was the devoted servant of de Courtenay, and spent his time about Robert so that the abbot-elect would grow completely enraged by his solicitous attention and give up all hope of the position.

  The idea was enough to wipe away the final vestige of grumpiness, and in its place he fitted a smile. ‘How may I serve you, Peter?’

  ‘This!’

  The lad dramatically opened his hand. In it was a pair of small cylinders. Robert recognised them instantly. ‘Where did you find them?’ he asked.

  ‘They were in the messenger’s shirt, Abbot.’

  ‘Nay, I am not abbot,’ Robert chided him gently.

  ‘But you will be, Abbot!’

  Robert shook his head. ‘What are they?’

  ‘You must see them. The others, they were in his pouch or scattered about, but these two were inside his shirt and hidden. I suppose he thought that they were too important to be left behind!’