The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18)

by Michael Jecks

  Baldwin gave a shrug. ‘Did you smell anything in there? A candle recently snuffed?’

  Janekyn gave a sour grin. ‘All I smelled was blood. I wasn’t going to go and search for more. No, I sent Paul to fetch the Dean while I waited there with the body. That was that.’

  ‘What of earlier? Did you see anyone in the Close who was acting or looking suspicious?’

  Janekyn frowned. ‘There was only the physician, Ralph. He was wandering about the place when Henry came in, and he asked for his money for treating the German. Henry just told him he’d bring it later, and hurried on. Ralph didn’t look happy to be brushed off.’

  ‘Was there anyone else?’

  ‘Not that I saw, no. And Ralph didn’t kill him – not just then, anyway. The two parted, and Ralph came back towards the gate. I was called by a man walking in just then and didn’t see him actually leave, but he probably did. He doesn’t live too far from here.’

  ‘But he could have turned back and gone to lie in wait for Henry,’ Baldwin commented.

  ‘Aye. And he could have sprouted wings and flown to the chapel’s roof,’ Janekyn grunted. ‘But it’s best not to guess when it’s a man’s neck you’re wagering.’

  Although Baldwin questioned him on other aspects of the case, he could bring no further light to the affair. The porter had seen no one else talking to Henry that day, nor did he see where Ralph had gone, and there was no one suspicious who entered the Close. Baldwin left him as the light faded and stood outside the lodge, gazing at the labourers packing their tools amid the mess and chaos of the building site.

  He scarcely noticed the man who hurried into the Close like one fleeing from the Devil himself.

  Thomas hardly knew where to go or what to do. After he’d been accused by Dan, he’d run away from that hovel, up to an alehouse he spied from the top of the alleyway, but as soon as he reached the door, he turned and started running towards the East Gate, desperate to be as far as possible from Sara.

  Ah, God! He’d never be able to forget the expression of horror on her face. There was nothing he could say in his defence. Nothing at all. It was true. He had killed her husband through his negligence; that meant he had killed her son and reduced her to abject poverty. It was all his fault. If his death could ease her mind, he’d kill himself, just to avenge the dreadful crime his slipshod work had caused. At least that way she might find some peace, and so might he, too. Since returning here, he had known little enough.

  Standing in the Close, he felt his legs beginning to move towards the stark walls of the Cathedral. There was a ladder propped against the scaffolding, and he walked to it like a man in a dream. The last few workers were clearing up, most of them had already gone, and few noticed as Thomas stumbled over the ground, his face pale and preoccupied. Suddenly, he tripped over a loose rock and fell heavily onto a large shard of stone. The splinter was as sharp as a fragment of glass, and it tore a great rent in his hosen and sliced through his shin like a knife, but he didn’t heed it. He righted himself and continued on his way.

  At the bottom of the ladder, he stared upwards into the darkening sky. Turning, he saw the evening star gleaming, but then it was erased by a cloud, and as though this was the signal, he put his hand on the ladder and lifted his foot to climb.

  ‘It’s a little late for that.’

  Thomas heard the voice and instantly his blood froze. His head was suddenly an awful weight, and he had to rest it upon the ladder’s rung between his hands.

  ‘Nicholas,’ he breathed, but his voice was a moan.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Baldwin awoke feeling entirely unrested. There was a lethargy about him that was unusual for him. An old campaigner, he was used to taking his sleep wherever there was a dry place to rest his head, and normally he would be fully asleep in moments, but not now. Just now he felt as though his life was fraying, and he was distracted.

  He had hoped that coming here to investigate a murder would allow him to forget his problems at home, but it had proved to be impossible. He had betrayed his wife, and that act of disloyalty must inevitably alter their relationship; perhaps even break it.

  In his mind he saw Jeanne’s face again when he had allowed his anger to show after her light comment about the peasant girl. There was such a depth of pain and hurt in her eyes, he wasn’t sure how he could ever retrieve the situation. But retrieve it he must.

  The room he had here at the Talbot Inn was large for a city inn. He always tried to rent this room when he needs must travel to Exeter, because he had a dislike, based upon too many years of sleeping in dorters with snoring companions, of sharing a room with other travellers. That was one thing that he would never miss about the life of a warrior monk!

  Here he had a good-sized bed with a palliasse that was large enough to accommodate five men in a normal inn, but Baldwin had never yet been asked to share it. The master of this house had been a merchant until his profits from his excellent ale-brewing showed him that his talents were being wasted in providing ale only for his own household. He stuck up his bush over the door, and now his ale accounted for half of his business. A wealthy man, he was perfectly happy to accommodate Baldwin’s need for solitude. In return, Baldwin paid rather more than the room would normally be worth.

  Today he awoke early, and with a slight headache from a disturbed night’s sleep. He was tempted to roll over and close his eyes again, but instead he lay back and stared at the cracked ceiling, trying to make sense of his feelings for Jeanne. Then, in despair, he pushed her from his mind and considered instead the murder.

  This was one of those killings in which it was quite likely that no one would ever be brought to justice. There were cases of that nature – and although Baldwin knew that his own methods of detection were more successful than those of other men, still there were many murderers who committed their crimes and were never caught by him. Some men were too clever, others fiendishly lucky; most murderers were caught because they made mistakes or were too stupid to conceal their crimes. Baldwin had once found a man who denied the murder, but had cleaned his knife of blood by wiping the blade on his own jack. It was still fresh when Baldwin caught him, and although he claimed that he had killed a dog, he could not recall where, nor where he had put the body.

  In a matter like this, though, there had to be a motive for Henry Potell’s death. If he could discover that, he would be much further on in the enquiry. It was possible, of course, that the widow would be able to help in this, but all too often Baldwin knew that the wife was the last person to discover certain secrets. He put the sharp mental picture of his own wife to the back of his mind again as Jeanne leaped into the forefront of his thoughts; no, in matters of business many men would not tell their women all that had happened in a day. It was one of those basic differences between men and women: the men would prefer to leave their work and relax; women by contrast sought to discuss every aspect of their day in the minutest detail before they could think of relaxing. Or maybe that was their way of relaxing – Baldwin didn’t know …

  He woke to the sound of hammering on his door. Startled from a light doze, he was halfway out of his bed, his hand reaching for his sword when the door slammed wide. He grasped his hilt, swung it free with a flick of his wrist, sending the scabbard flying across the room, and span on his heel to face the doorway.

  ‘Come on, Keeper, put the bloody thing down. You should be up by now, anyway.’

  ‘Simon!’ Baldwin gasped with relief and delight.

  Then he scowled. ‘Shut that door, Bailiff, before I catch a chill, and what is the meaning of this ridiculous noise? Are you so short of amusements that you must terrify a poor sleeping knight with your infernal row?’

  ‘Yes, it’s good to see you too,’ Simon grinned.

  It had been the right thing to do. Yeah, of course it was. Vincent swung his legs out of his little cot and sat there naked with his legs dangling. It was cold, so he dragged his blanket over his shoulders. He’d done the right
thing, sure enough. It was only …

  He’d been really horrified to hear his master say all that last afternoon. To learn after all this time that his master had been involved in that murder, to think that he’d been there on the night his old man’s brother had been killed … well, it was really weird.

  Rising, he pulled on his shirt and tunic and tied his hosen to the dangling laces. He had a thicker quilted jack which he pulled over the top, and then he tied a short strip of material about his throat. It was perishing cold out there in the yard and the workshop at this time of year, especially first thing, before anyone had time to build up a bit of warmth in their work. He tidied his bedclothes, put his blanket back on top, and patted the side of the cot. It was one of his first jobs when he was taken on as apprentice to Joel. His master had brought him up here and pointed to the small chamber. ‘You could make a bed in there if you wanted. The wood’s all outside.’

  The first attempt had been embarrassing. He’d not known how to joint properly, and how to make the ends of the planks square so that they fitted together neatly was beyond him, but gradually as he learned his trade, he saw how to make the cot better. Each time Joel demonstrated a new joint or explained the principles of smoothing and chiselling, or how to square-off ends, Vince saw how to improve his work, until after two years he had a cot that was more prone to holding his weight, rather than falling apart every two months as wooden pegs worked loose.

  His first real project, that bed. It was the sort of thing which he could knock up in a few hours now, but he was enormously proud of it. The cot had shown him that he was capable of doing this job, that he was right to be a joiner.

  It hadn’t been easy at first. The old man wanted him to follow in his own footsteps and learn the tanning trade, but Vince was determined to escape that trap. The idea of remaining his whole life with that stench was revolting. He’d been there long enough as a boy, before he managed to win the argument and come here instead. It hadn’t been an easy fight, that.

  The trouble was, his old man was determined to keep Vince with him so that he could protect him from the dangers of the city. Out on Exe Island, Wymond reckoned they were safe, free of the risks of politics and the disputes between the rich and powerful. The Church had regular fights amongst its different parts, between the Priory and the Cathedral, the friars and the monks. Wymond said it was only a few years before Vince’s birth that the Cathedral had fought a bitter fight against the friars down at the southern wall, because the friars claimed the rights to some dead man or other and the Dean and Chapter stole the corpse to give it the funeral rites in the Cathedral. That was fine, but the man’s estate was due to pay well for the funeral, and when the Cathedral later brought the body to the friars, they refused to accept it. The man lay there outside their gate for ages until the Cathedral shamefacedly sent someone to collect it.

  Wymond wasn’t an expert on Church law, but he believed that if a man was dead and his soul was at risk, it was the duty of men from the Church to see to his protection without worrying about how much money they’d receive. The behaviour of those churchmen was enough to convince him that a man was safer outside the city. Country people were more pleasant.

  That was what he’d always said, anyway. And there was the other event, the one which had coloured his life so vividly. The result again of Church disputes: the murder of his brother Vincent, after whom Vince himself was named.

  Over the years the memory of that dreadful night had faded in the city’s memory. It was forty years ago: Wymond himself was only six-and-forty, but he remembered his brother with a fondness that bordered on adulation. When he was killed, it was like a bolt from heaven. And then the stories started to circulate.

  It was just like the rumours which began over other events. If you have enough people together in one place, and you give them the opportunity of gossiping, some will inevitably come up with a theory that sort of fits the facts, without ever worrying about minor details like the truth.

  So when there was the murder of the Chaunter, and some folks heard that Vincent hadn’t been in the Cathedral with the others at that Matins, it was assumed that he had been outside in order to help the assassins. He had been one of the killers.

  That, so Wymond had always said, was ballocks. His brother Vincent loved the Church, and he was a devoted member of the Chaunter’s familia. The idea that he’d have betrayed his master, still worse taken part in his murder, was beyond belief.

  Still, Vincent’s complicity in the murder was assumed for many years. His death meant that there could be no defence, because the accomplices refused to talk about his part. In fact, the Dean and the vicars who were caught refused to discuss any part taken by Vincent – because they simply knew nothing. Other men had commanded the attack at the Cathedral’s door; the Dean wasn’t there, and the vicars were standing at other points of the Close. Only the men in the group who actually killed the Chaunter could answer yea or nay to Vincent’s guilt or innocence, and they refused to admit their crime. The Mayor, Alured, didn’t confess – so who else could speak for Vincent?

  In the absence of any others, Wymond himself spoke of his brother’s innocence and his devotion to his master, but that wasn’t enough, and soon the whole city was convinced that the novice was an ally of the Dean, like so many others. His memory was polluted; his integrity slandered. That was why Wymond detested the city. It had allowed his brother, his wonderful, kind brother, to be turned into a traitor and killer.

  Poor Uncle Vincent. The tale told yesterday by his master had come as a shock, because he had been content to consider that in those far-off days his uncle might have been persuaded to change his allegiance and join the men allied with Pycot; perhaps he had gone to murder the Chaunter at their side. Only now he had heard from a witness that the poor fellow had been trying to save the Chaunter, his master. He had been honourable to the very end, when he was struck down by the man Joel called Nicholas.

  One thing Vince knew, and that was that his father ought to be told. So late in the afternoon, he had invented a ruse to take him out of the house, and he had fled down the hill to the tannery. Before long he found his father, stirring skins in the handling pits.

  He was panting slightly, and he caught his breath, savouring the moment that he should explain to his father what he had heard. Wymond would be delighted to hear that his impression had been vindicated, he’d be over the moon to learn that there was a witness, a credible witness, who had confessed at last.

  Which was why Vince was baffled when his father listened, and then walked away, head bowed with sorrow. Vince ran after him, gabbling that all was well: Vincent his uncle was cleared, but his father waved a hand for him to go. And as Vince went, he could hear the sound of dry, racking sobs. It completely mystified him.

  Baldwin threw on his clothes, washed his face in the bowl of water provided, and then followed Simon down the stairs.

  ‘You cannot know how glad I am to see you here,’ he said as they sat at a table. The owner’s daughter gave them bread and some cold slices of meat with a large jug of weak ale.

  Simon gave a chuckle. ‘Nice to know that I’m indispensable at last.’

  ‘This affair is peculiar, old friend. A man suddenly appears in the Charnel Chapel, with a knife wound in the back. It’s a strange place to commit a murder.’

  ‘Perhaps. All I can say is, I am glad to be here,’ Simon said.

  ‘How is Dartmouth?’

  Simon crumbled a piece of bread in his fingers. ‘It’s lonely, Baldwin. I hate living there without Meg and the children, and I worry all the time about Edith. What she won’t do in order to get her way, I don’t know, and it’s not healthy for Meg to be looking after her on her own. They both need a man about the place to stop them fighting.’

  ‘That’s Lydford, not Dartmouth,’ Baldwin pointed out.

  ‘Dartmouth is a pleasant, fresh little vill. There’s a great port and lots of ships,’ Simon said drily. ‘It’s convenient, because
it means that yesterday when I heard I was required here, I was able to be directed to a ship and board it to come here swiftly, rather than making the arduous journey on horseback.’

  ‘You came by ship? That must have been a difficult transport!’ Baldwin joked.

  ‘You can smile, if you wish, Baldwin,’ Simon growled. ‘You won’t get me on another, though. Damned thing. I had to stay up on deck the whole time to stop myself throwing up, and that meant I was soaked with spray and rain by the time I landed. Foul things, boats.’

  During the year the two men had travelled to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Simon had learned that his belly was most uncomfortable aboard ship. During their return voyage, foul weather and pirates had almost killed both men, and the memory wouldn’t fade from Simon’s mind. He passionately detested anything to do with ships, and he intended to avoid them all his life. It was particularly galling to have to resort to a ship to come here now, when he had sworn only a matter of weeks ago, on their return, never to use that means of transport ever again.

  ‘I am delighted to see you here, in any case,’ Baldwin said, and explained what he had so far learned about the death of the saddler.

  ‘So plainly we need to visit the man’s widow,’ Simon observed.

  ‘Yes. It is unlikely to be a pleasant encounter.’

  ‘A woman who’s just been made a widow is hardly likely to be congenial, no,’ Simon agreed. ‘Does this mean you’re getting to be a little less ruthless in your questioning, then? The knight who was always known for rigour bordering on callousness in the search for the truth is at last learning empathy?’