The Traitor of St Giles aktm-9

by Michael Jecks

  He laughed, walking from the room. Simon shook his head, but followed him, closing the door behind him.

  Aylmer sat a while longer, frowning suspiciously at the door. When he was sure that all was quiet, he stood, circled round his dead master’s belongings two or three times, then lay down with his head on his paws as if to sleep, but at every noise from the yard his eyes snapped open.

  Later, Jeanne and Baldwin were leaving the hall with Simon after their meal when Jeanne saw Edgar at the far side of the court. She thought little of it at the time; she was too full of good humour to consider why her husband’s man should wave at her. In any case, it was late, she was weary and her bed was calling to her. Baldwin and she had to share their room with another couple but the thought of resting on her mattress was enormously appealing. She thrust her arm through her husband’s and smiled up at him.

  ‘Tired, my love?’ he asked.

  She yawned in answer. ‘The journey was not so tiring as I had expected, but it is exhausting to have to meet so many people whom I have never seen before.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Especially when some of them are dead.’

  ‘It would be nice to be able to accept what the Coroner said,’ Simon said.

  ‘Very nice,’ Baldwin said scathingly. ‘But how can one trust that fool’s judgement? A man who thinks a Templar could have his knife stolen and be stabbed with it!’

  ‘Couldn’t he, though?’ Jeanne wondered. Her attention was wandering. Edgar had caught her eye again and now he gestured urgently, his lips pursed with concern. ‘Husband, excuse me a moment. I must see what Edgar wants.’

  She left them speculating on the reasons for Sir Gilbert’s death and crossed the yard.

  ‘My Lady, I am very sorry to have interrupted you, but I thought it better that you should help than that I should call for another.’

  ‘Why, what is it, Edgar?’

  ‘Petronilla.’

  She followed him out to a little storeroom. Inside she could hear drunken sobbing. Glancing at Edgar, she saw him nod slowly.

  ‘Something happened to her today,’ he said.

  Jeanne muttered a curse and entered. Edgar followed more slowly. He felt unqualified to assist with the girl. He had seen how the Coroner had molested her, and was sure that the last thing the girl needed was another man offering her sympathy.

  The two women soon appeared, Petronilla weeping and leaning on her mistress’s arm. Jeanne had to ask. ‘Edgar – are you responsible for this?’

  Edgar blinked in shock, but it was Petronilla who threw out a hand in extravagant denial. ‘Of course it wasn’t Edgar, my Lady. He saved me from him. Edgar’s my hero.’

  Jeanne sighed at the slurred voice. ‘Well, your hero can help me take you to your room. I can’t get you there alone in this state.’

  She was right. Edgar took one arm while Jeanne kept hold of the other, but even then it was hard to half-carry Petronilla back to the women’s rooms where she was supposed to be sleeping. In the end Jeanne stopped, breathless. ‘Edgar, if we get her to the room she’ll wake everyone else. Help me put her in the hayloft. She can sleep there the night. Then you go and tell Baldwin that I’ll stay with her most of the night, and see the child’s nurse. Stephen must stay with her tonight, not Petronilla.’

  Soon they were hauling her up the small staircase to the low loft.

  ‘It’s love that matters,’ Petronilla declared as Edgar shoved her rump upwards.

  Jeanne pulled her arms, snarling, ‘There’ll be little love around here if you aren’t silent, my girl.’

  ‘My little son loves me,’ Petronilla continued, throwing her hand out emphatically and nearly sending the three of them back down the ladder.

  Snatching at her wrist Jeanne spoke through gritted teeth. ‘That’s fine because right now your mistress certainly doesn’t!’

  ‘He loves his mama. Not that Coroner, though, the filthy bastard!’

  Edgar pushed but the girl was resisting. Glancing up he saw that Lady Jeanne was near the end of her tether; he made a quick decision. Stepping back, he allowed Petronilla to topple a little. As she gave a short squeak of alarm, he set his shoulder to her waist and caught her about the knees, climbing quickly up the ladder and depositing her giggling in a thick pile of hay. She rolled over and tried to stand. ‘Again! That was fun.’

  Jeanne groaned as the girl made as if to throw herself down the ladder. Edgar grabbed her at the last moment and lowered her back onto the hay.

  ‘Lady, you should go to bed.’

  ‘She can’t be left a moment, can she?’

  Edgar shook his head.

  ‘This was all the fault of that Coroner?’

  Edgar explained how he had found them and Jeanne scowled angrily. ‘Molest my maid, would he?’

  ‘I think it would be best to leave the matter,’ Edgar said. ‘If you accused him, he could make life difficult. Better to let things lie. I shall see that Petronilla is safe from him.’

  ‘He’s my hero. Edgar must love me too!’ Petronilla gurgled happily from the straw.

  On the morning of St Giles’s feast, it was a sad little group which attended the church for Sir Gilbert’s burial service. Father Abraham stood before them and began speaking in a quiet, low monotone.

  ‘Dirige Dominus meus in conspectu tuo viam…’

  Baldwin found it was difficult to concentrate. He had decided to attend with Jeanne to represent the Order which he and Sir Gilbert had both served, and yet now he was here he hardly knew why.

  He had known Sir Gilbert from the time when the other knight had been at the Temple in Paris. Baldwin had been there as well, and the two men had been on nodding acquaintance. Nothing more than that, but it meant that there was a certain confusion of emotions as he stood watching the priest before the large hearse, the metal frame sitting over the dead bodies with the dark, threadbare cloth of the parish pall hanging over and concealing the corpses beneath.

  Standing there at the final ceremony of a man who had once been a comrade in arms, a companion warrior-monk in his Order, Baldwin felt a rush of grief that threatened to overwhelm him for a moment. It was as if the death of this man was symbolic of the end of the Order which they both had served; as if Baldwin himself was the sole survivor of their warrior caste. It made him feel exceptionally lonely.

  The service ended before he was ready, his mind still whirling with despair. He wished he could have told Jeanne about his membership of the Templars and about his present desolate mood but it was difficult: although he trusted to her solid commonsense he had never discussed the Templars with her. Many people believed the Church’s malicious propaganda against the Order and Baldwin could not tell how she would respond to hearing that he himself had been one. In any case, one look at her this morning told him that after sitting up much of the night with an inebriated maidservant, his wife was in no mood to listen.

  Jeanne and he walked out with the bearers and stood staring down at the hole in the ground. The plot was not far from the church but was not in the yard itself.

  Baldwin and his wife waited as the coffinless body wrapped in its cheap winding-sheet was rested in the bottom of the grave. Hick, who today was the gravedigger, wandered over and gazed down speculatively, leaning on his shovel. The priest was still in the churchyard seeing to the similarly shrouded figure of a woman. Baldwin gathered from listening to others witnessing her interment that she had died in childbirth. A woman and many children stood by her hole, staring down into it as the priest tossed soil onto her face. A young girl holding the hand of an older sister burst into shattering sobs.

  Meanwhile Father Abraham strode towards Baldwin and Jeanne, the family trailing after him as he walked to a patch of clear ground outside the yard but near the wall. There Baldwin saw a woman standing with a tiny corpse, and he guessed it was this child’s birth which had caused the woman’s death. The priest spoke for a short while, begging God’s forgiveness for the baby’s sins, pleading for the life which
had scarcely existed, that God would take his soul up to Heaven.

  Baldwin sourly thought to himself that the child could hardly be guilty of many sins.

  ‘Sad business, that,’ said Hick. He eyed the family weeping at the small graveside. ‘Shame children can’t be buried in the yard with their mothers.’

  ‘In most parishes the priests allow them to be,’ Jeanne said, and hearing the tightness in her tone, Baldwin smiled and put his hand through her arm.

  ‘That a fact?’ Hick said, and spat on the ground. ‘Not here. Our Father Abraham, he sticks to the rules, he does.’

  Baldwin was hardly listening. He was staring down again at the figure of Sir Gilbert.

  Seeing the direction of his attention, the rat-catcher motioned towards the body. ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Not really,’ Baldwin said. ‘But I helped to find his body and investigate his death. He was a stranger to the town, and I knew he wouldn’t be allowed a grave in the yard.’

  ‘No, course not. Can’t have strangers buried in a Christian yard. Poor old sod! And he seemed so cheerful.’

  ‘Yes, poor devil,’ Baldwin agreed absently and then started. ‘What do you mean, “he seemed cheerful”?’

  But Hick had no time to answer; Father Abraham was with them. Baldwin swallowed his urgency and concentrated while the priest ran through what sounded like a very terse version of the funeral rite. Finishing, Father Abraham stood looking down a moment, before suddenly hissing: ‘Lie there in great opprobrium, excommunicate! Your heresy at least is finished.’

  And before the astonished Baldwin could angrily demand what he meant, the priest had swept around and was marching back to his church.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After attending a short Mass in the castle’s chapel, Simon went to the buttery and broke his fast with a hunk of bread washed down by a quart of thin ale. Feeling replete, he walked from the hall and stood in the doorway to the yard, idly scratching at an insect bite on his groin while he studied the servants and guests milling about in the yard.

  It was a busy place, this castle. Much more so than Lydford, which was little more than a simple gaol now, with its courtroom above. Women hurried past carrying pails of milk; men rolled barrels ready to be stacked in the buttery; a girl walked slowly and carefully from the kitchen, not yet ten years old from the look of her, frowning with concentration, her tongue protruding pinkly as she took an over-full pitcher of cream to the hall; a pair of grooms recently returned from exercising a pair of Lord de Courtenay’s mounts rubbed them down with handfuls of straw; dogs snapped and barked, a pig wandered slowly rummaging through the detritus, and a cock crowed time after time while one of his hens called enthusiastically the loud cry that Simon’s father had once told him meant, ‘An egg, an egg, an egg!’

  Simon rubbed at his back. He was one of a few men who had come alone, without a wife to keep him company and, since bedrooms were at a premium even in a castle the size of this he had been forced to find a bench to sleep on in the hall near the fire. Men with wives were allocated rooms with other couples so that the women should be spared the draughty hall and the indignity of enduring the lascivious gazes of other men at night. Simon had spent an uncomfortable night while drunken guests snored, servants giggled, men and maidservants coupled in the dark and dogs scratched flea bites. Gradually, to add injury to insult, Simon came to realise that he too had caught fleas.

  But the sun, already high in the sky, was welcome and after his ale he felt a little more comfortable and less snappish. He fetched a new pint of strong ale, and took it outside to a low wall near the stables where he could sit and nod in the clear sunshine.

  ‘So, Bailiff. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Sir Peregrine, a good morning to you. Yes, I slept well, I thank you,’ Simon lied cheerfully. ‘I trust you did too?’

  ‘I did not,’ said Sir Peregrine bitterly. ‘There were two couples in my room: one man snored so loudly I thought the foundations of the castle were endangered, while the other two held a whispered argument until almost dawn. I understood from it that the husband had been paying too much attention to one of the serving girls and too little to his wife. From listening to her,’ he added grimly, ‘I would have done the same.’ Then he sighed. ‘I feel I should apologise for my mood last night,’ he said stiffly.

  Simon smiled and proffered his pot of ale. Sir Peregrine lifted it in grateful salute and sipped. His depression had not left him. He would have liked to have witnessed Emily’s burial, but he was his Lord’s man and he must do his work.

  ‘A good brew. Lord Hugh does himself well here,’ Simon said.

  ‘It’s a well-run castle. With sensible advice the Lord Hugh should be able to keep it.’

  Simon knew that Sir Peregrine was leading towards the previous night’s discussion and swore to himself. He was about to deflect the bannaret’s attention to another subject when they heard shouting.

  ‘God’s blood! What is it this time?’ Sir Peregrine roared.

  A man appeared in the gateway and, seeing Sir Peregrine, ran to him. Stopping before the bannaret, he had to pause to get his breath back.

  ‘Sir Peregrine, can you come? A body has been found – a body in the river.’

  ‘Here to see the man buried, Keeper?’ Cecily Sherman asked, and she was rewarded by seeing Sir Baldwin start with surprise.

  Exchanging greetings with him and his wife, Cecily thought that Sir Baldwin looked rather handsome in the morning’s thin light, with the sun filtering through the thick columns of smoke which rose upwards in the still air from the cooking fires of the town. The sun treated him kindly, smoothing out some of the interesting, deep lines at his forehead and reducing the impact of the scar that reached from one temple almost to his jaw.

  ‘You are here early, Lady,’ he answered.

  ‘I wanted to see the woman and her child buried. One always feels sympathy for a woman who dies in childbirth.’

  ‘You have no children of your own?’ Jeanne asked.

  ‘No, my Lady, but I pray and hope.’

  Baldwin indicated the hole nearby into which Hick was studiously shovelling soil. ‘That knight Sir Gilbert – did you see him alive?’

  ‘Me, Sir Baldwin? Heavens, no! How would I?’

  ‘He was camped down at the river, I understand, but he was riding about the country the previous day. His man even said that he had come here to Tiverton,’ said Baldwin, casting a glance at Hick.

  ‘Oh, I fear I rarely leave the town. My husband might have seen him, though. He was visiting South Molton the night that this good fellow was killed.’

  ‘You didn’t see him in Tiverton?’

  ‘Do I look the sort of lady who would wander the streets whenever her husband is abroad?’

  ‘Oh, no. No, of course not. I didn’t intend to imply…’

  She waved aside his protestations. ‘No matter, sir. No insult was taken, I assure you.’

  Something in her tone made Baldwin shoot a look at her. Cecily looked demure, but when he caught her eye she gave him a fleeting, saucy wink. Instantly he reddened, and saw that she was amused by his reaction. It made him angry: a woman hardly half his age, and a momentary flicker of the eye could make him colour like Wat with Petronilla! His temper made his voice harsh. ‘Is there anyone who can confirm you were at home?’

  ‘My servants, of course.’ She indicated a woman standing a few yards behind.

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Sir Baldwin, do you suspect me of riding out to an assignation with this knight?’ she asked archly. She determined that she would not confess to her affair in front of this fellow. ‘In any case, I understand the man’s dog died too. Do you think I would be capable of wrestling a hound to the floor?’

  ‘The dog…’ Baldwin frowned.

  ‘And I thought the Coroner had closed the matter – saying that the felon killed the knight, then was himself executed.’

  ‘Well, I believe that someone murdered Sir Gilbert of Carlis
le – and, if he was distracted, a woman could have stabbed him as easily as a man.’

  His words made her protest with apparent honesty. ‘Sir Baldwin, what possible reason could I have for killing someone I had never met?’

  That, Baldwin knew, was the nub: how could she have known Sir Gilbert? He would have left the Order in 1307 or 1308, and had not been here for years, if what William Small had said was correct. In those far-off days Cecily would not have been seven years old.

  The spicer’s wife glanced over Baldwin’s shoulder to where the family stood near the other grave. She continued, ‘It’s so sad to look at poor Emily. And to think that her man has lost her.’

  ‘Her husband?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Oh, he left her ages ago. Even when he was with her, the useless devil didn’t bring in enough money to support the family. What little he earned he preferred to spend on ale and women in the taverns.’

  ‘But all those children… weren’t they his?’

  ‘Emily had many,’ she corrected. ‘I understand the baby that killed her was Sir Peregrine of Barnstaple’s.’

  ‘Oh, the poor man,’ Jeanne breathed.

  Baldwin considered how Sir Peregrine had been the previous night: distracted, fractious, unhappy. ‘I would like to speak to your husband,’ he told Cecily, and she beamed at him flirtatiously. ‘He is in the shop. Would you like directions?’

  The Coroner slammed his front door behind him and strode away up the road, roaring at anyone who blocked his path.

  It was so unreasonable of his damned wife! He had only gone to visit Felicity before the inquest on that blasted woman Emily and her child, the pair that died in the child’s birth, last afternoon to enquire about the dead woman – it was his job, for God’s sake! But no, his blasted wife Jenny had to assume the worst, didn’t she? Always thought he was out for a quickie, trying to poke his dagger in another woman’s sheath. The fact that she was right didn’t ease his mood.

  And Felicity hadn’t been accommodating either, which didn’t make things any better. She was usually so gentle and understanding, but yesterday she’d seemed in a hurry to get away; hadn’t wanted to service him or answer his questions. ‘I’ve got to go before the market opens tomorrow, you know the rules,’ she’d told him. ‘I’m not allowed in town while the market’s on.’