The Malice of Unnatural Death:

by Michael Jecks

  Suddenly Robinet felt a flash of anger. His belly roiled, but his eyes narrowed and he began to think more quickly as he started to walk.

  Chapter Seven

  Tavistock Abbey

  Simon had not been in a good mood the next morning when he had woken up. All too soon he had remembered the half-grin on de Courtenay’s face as he delivered the final blow: bad enough that he should want Simon to follow a man who might well be consulting a maleficus – someone who might take offence at being followed even to the extent of having Simon murdered. And by supernatural powers, not even the normal, everyday risks of a knife in an alley.

  Anyone who knew Simon knew of his … caution when it came to matters of superstition. There were some, like Baldwin, who thought that his attitude bordered on the fringes of credulousness – or worse. Simon didn’t care. So far as he was concerned, the idea of magic was nothing new, and he had personally seen people who had used it to cure cattle of various diseases. They would incant a phrase or mumble some weird words, and in the time it took the farmer to get back to his house, the animal would be cured. And there were evil spirits who could be used to attack people who stood in the path of their human patrons. Simon had heard of plenty of examples of that kind of evil: where people were harmed, or their libido destroyed, or their energy sapped, and all because of an evil-doer.

  The idea of chasing after someone of that kind was enough to make his flesh creep.

  He rose and dressed slowly in the old guesthouse above the main gate, kicking Rob as he passed the lad snoring gently in the corner of the room on a thin palliasse. Rob muttered a comment concerning Simon’s parentage, but today Simon was not of a mood to listen, and instead strode downstairs to fetch himself some food to break his fast.

  It was a cold day, with white and grey clouds hanging in the air as though plastered to the sky. Simon sniffed: there was a metallic edge to the air, and he was unhappy with the thin, insubstantial sunlight that filtered through the clouds. Although their edges gleamed silver, the sun kept herself behind them, and Simon had a horrible suspicion that this was to be the rule for the day. At best they would be chilled by the icy breeze as they rode, and at worst they would be drenched in freezing rain. It was not a prospect to thrill.

  He found a warm loaf in the bakery, and sat on a bench nearby with a slab of cold sausage. An amiable monk made an offer of warmed ale, which Simon accepted with alacrity, and when he was feeling a little more normal he went to seek Robert Busse.

  A helpful monk pointed him in the direction of the cloister, and Simon soon found the man who sought to grasp the abbacy before de Courtenay could. Busse nodded to Simon, and then led the way down a short corridor to a chamber.

  Busse was a genial man, a little taller than the old abbot had been, but considerably shorter than the younger de Courtenay. He had pleasantly rounded features, twinkling blue eyes, a high brow and, when he spoke, a soft tenor voice. More than that, though, Simon was aware of a chuckle that was always nearby. He appeared to be on the brink of laughter all the while.

  ‘So you are the bailiff? Aha! Good. Just what I need to make sure that I get to Exeter in one piece.’

  ‘With the weather the way it is now, I doubt we’ll be there in less than a day and a half at least,’ Simon said grimly.

  ‘That soon? I had hoped for a pause at a tavern or two, Bailiff. Especially if this inclement weather continues. It’s too chill for a body to sit a horse for too long – and woe betide the man who tries to sit out in this stuff.’

  ‘I cannot argue with that,’ Simon said.

  Busse tilted his head and studied Simon. ‘Are you quite all right?’

  ‘Yes. I am fine.’

  ‘I know that this must be a rather sore and tedious task for you, Bailiff, but I will try to make it as pleasant as possible. You must have covered the journey many times in your term of office as a stannary bailiff.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Simon smiled without humour. ‘I’ve certainly made the journey many times.’

  ‘Well, it is a long way to go. Perhaps we should fetch our belongings and meet down in the court?’

  Simon left him and strode ill-temperedly to the guest house again, where he found that Rob had disappeared. ‘God’s fist! The little sodomite is going to hold us up,’ he muttered as he returned down the stairs with his pack in his hand, and gazed about him. On a hunch, he paced across the cobbled yard to the stables, and peered inside.

  ‘Go on, another ha’penny.’

  ‘I’ll lay on.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘I’ll pay later …’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Rob said, and then caught sight of his master in the doorway.

  ‘What is this?’ Simon demanded, entering the gloomy interior. There were four youths inside, three grooms, and, Simon saw with a sharp pang of guilt, a novice too. ‘Rob, tell me you aren’t tempting these fellows into gambling?’

  ‘Gambling? Hardly that, Bailiff. No, it’s more a sort of trial, that’s all.’

  The others were hurriedly gathering up coins and thrusting them into their purses. If any were discovered here gambling during Abbot Robert’s tenure, they’d have been given short shrift – or maybe not. The good abbot was no hypocrite, and he was a man of contrasting interests himself. Perhaps if he had found the lads there, he would have pretended anger, and then insisted that they joined him in a game too, so that he could fleece them and thereby give them a clear and unforgettable demonstration of the evils of gambling.

  ‘What sort of trial?’

  Rob shamefacedly held up a number of dice. ‘Just a game,’ he amended. ‘Hazard.’

  ‘Put the things away, Rob. And don’t let me see you trying to take money from others like that. In God’s name, taking cash from a novice!’

  ‘It’s what we all do in Dartmouth to while away the time. If they aren’t so practised, it’s hardly my fault,’ Rob said heatedly.

  ‘Enough. You’ll have time to reflect on your actions later as we ride. You’re too late for breakfast now. You will just have to make do.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had my breakfast, master. And I’ve got some vittles for the journey, too. Enough for three meals.’

  Simon blinked. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Well, I played them for it. The novice was taking all this food from the kitchen to the servants somewhere, so I played him at dice for it, and then the others wanted to join in too, so I took their money. It would have been daft not to.’

  ‘What of the horses?’

  ‘They’re already tethered to the rail by the gate. I had the grooms promise to do them before I’d play them at any games in here.’

  Simon took three paces back and peered across the yard. True enough, there were three horses, two riding beasts and one packhorse, ready loaded, out near the gate. And as he stood staring, he caught sight of Busse standing and gazing up at the sun.

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes. Well, come on! We’re late,’ Simon said.

  The Bishop’s Palace

  ‘Coroner, it is good to see you again!’ Baldwin said, smiling broadly as Richard de Welles entered.

  ‘Keeper!’ de Welles boomed as he saw the knight. ‘Good to see you too. Ha!’ He glanced about the room, nodding to the sheriff. ‘This reminds me of a story about a young whore and a …’ He suddenly recalled whose room he was in and cast an apologetic glance towards the bishop. ‘Ah, a good day to you, my Lord Bishop … Sir Matthew. But that’s not why I’m here. No, I was going to ask you for your assistance, Keeper. I heard the sheriff was here, and the man at the castle said you would be here with him.’

  ‘I am here to be commanded,’ Baldwin replied. ‘What is it you wish from me?’

  ‘Is it a matter for the keeper, or for me?’ the sheriff demanded, somewhat petulantly.

  ‘A man has been murdered out near the South Gate, and I fear it’s a matter which will affect the whole city if something is not done about it, and that swiftly. A king’s messenger …’

  The b
ishop’s head snapped up. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Yes, Bishop. A youngish lad, with a shock of chestnut hair, green eyes and a kind of oval face. His cheek is marked with a ragged scar, as though someone has stabbed at him with a blunt or jagged blade, and …’

  ‘I know him,’ Sheriff Matthew declared.

  ‘Ah, good,’ the coroner said with satisfaction. ‘I knew this matter could soon be cleared up. What was his name?’

  ‘His name? I have no idea! He was just a messenger, not someone I would chat with.’

  ‘My lord?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘I am afraid he was quite new to me. I did not know his name.’

  Baldwin’s eyebrows rose. Messengers trusted by the king tended to be insiders at court, and he would have expected a wily politician like the bishop to have a great interest in speaking to them and showing himself to be courteous and friendly. After all, whether he liked the messenger or not, the messenger would have the ear of the king.

  Stapledon had turned to face him. ‘Sir Baldwin, this is most important. You must go with the good coroner and investigate this killing. Is that clear? I want to know if he was murdered for his money, or whether it was something more serious.’

  Baldwin exchanged a look with the coroner. ‘Bishop, this man – he was a messenger, so had he come here to give you a message?’

  ‘Yes. And I sent him away with a response. It is a most important document. You have to seek it.’

  ‘It may well still be on him. What sort of document is it?’

  The bishop glanced away from Baldwin, and appeared to be staring out through the window. ‘Sir Baldwin, if he has it still, it is a small parchment some four inches long, with my own personal seal at the top, and the seal of the Lord High Treasurer in the middle to secure it. I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important it is that the document is found. The thing is incredibly sensitive. You have to find it.’

  Baldwin sighed with some exasperation. ‘Very well. Coroner, you will have searched the man’s clothing. What was in his pouch?’

  ‘There were messages there, but I did not feel free to rifle about in the king’s business. I didn’t look.’

  ‘What is in the document?’ Baldwin asked the bishop. ‘If you want me to find it, you have to tell me what I am looking for.’

  ‘Sir Baldwin, I cannot. You will know it if you find it. Just search the man and see if it is there. I must press you – it is enormously important to me!’

  Chapter Eight

  Warwick Gaol

  The warder was back again. The crash of the great oaken door with the iron furniture was so loud, the noise of it echoed along the corridor. Even at the farthest end of it, Robert le Mareschal was stirred. He only prayed that the man wasn’t coming to question him again.

  He had lost track of time. It was certainly a long while since he had gone to the sheriff and insisted on telling his story, how the figures had been made, whom they represented, how he and John of Nottingham had taken the figurine of de Sowe and pulled out the pin, then waited a moment and thrust it deep into the waxen figure’s breast. God, but Robert had been so scared by then. He had almost fainted away with the fear. And then, when he heard of de Sowe’s death, there had been only an all-encompassing terror of what his master had achieved, and, together with that, a dread of his own fate.

  The money was nothing. Money could buy nothing that mattered to him now. The whole affair had started with money, it was true, and then he had realised that it also gave him a chance to win his revenge on the faithless devils who had so ruined his father, but that was not enough, no, not by a long measure, to justify his own destruction.

  It was when he heard that de Sowe was dead that he truly realised his peril, and only then did he take that terrible step, and go to see the sheriff. And soon after he and all the others were taken and held in gaol. All twenty-five of the men who had asked them to make the figures and kill the king and his favourites, as well as Robert and John of Nottingham. And John had stared at him, and then smiled, as though he knew full well that the betrayal came from him, and Robert feared that more than anything: the knowledge that his master knew his guilt.

  Because Robert knew – Christ Jesus, he knew! – that John of Nottingham was a truly evil man.

  Exeter City

  ‘What do you think of this, Coroner?’ Baldwin said quietly as they made their way from the bishop’s palace, out through the palace gate, and thence down to the southern gate of the city.

  ‘Me? I’d reckon he’s either lost a large part of his senses, or he has reason to know that there’s a dangerous document in the messenger’s purse.’ Normally a man who would have a hundred filthy jokes to hand, the coroner was unusually quiet today. The seriousness of the matter had eradicated his sense of humour.

  ‘Is it likely that the messenger could have been killed for any other reason than the theft of his purse?’ Baldwin wondered. King’s messengers were almost never attacked or harmed. They were known by their small pouches with the king’s own arms on them as much as by their uniforms.

  ‘A man might have seen him and desired to know what was held in his purse, I suppose. An off-the-cuff decision. A chance encounter. Man saw him, thought: “Nice little purse, wonder how much money’s in it,” ’ Coroner Richard proposed. He looked at Baldwin. ‘No. You’re right. He was murdered for this document, whatever it was.’

  ‘Which puts us in a very difficult position, old friend.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because whoever killed that messenger must have known what was in his pouch, and desired it for his own reasons. And that man therefore must be known to the bishop. He is probably in the bishop’s own household, because how else could a man have come to know what was in the pouch?’

  ‘There was the messenger himself.’

  Baldwin shook his head. ‘The messenger would be the last to know what was held in his pouch. He would only know the destination of the message, not the content. No, it must have been someone in the bishop’s household who heard what was in it, and sought to take it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We cannot tell that until we have it in our hands. Perhaps blackmail, perhaps information that could be easily sold to someone?’ Such as the French king, he told himself. If Bishop Stapledon had written something defamatory of the queen, the information could be enormously useful to the king of England’s leading enemy.

  ‘Well, let’s go and check, then,’ the coroner said easily. They were already at the gate, and he motioned to their left, to where the body lay, a beadle standing alert nearby.

  Baldwin nodded, and crouched at the corpse’s side. The pouch was a small leather purse with the king’s arms painted carefully on the side. It was well constructed, with a waxen coating to protect the contents against wind and rain, and the fastening was tight, so Baldwin found he had some difficulty in opening it at first. Inside were some small message rolls, each some four inches long, and two in diameter. He glanced over at the coroner, who stood now leaning against a wall, picking at his teeth with a small stick he had sharpened. He eyed Baldwin with a contented, untroubled look.

  Sighing to himself, Baldwin carefully studied each seal before removing the pouch from the dead man’s belt and reinstalling all the messages in it.

  ‘Well?’ Coroner Richard demanded. ‘Was it there?’

  ‘No,’ said Baldwin, and he couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder towards the bishop’s palace. This would not be a surprise to the bishop, he felt sure, but no matter whether it was or not, the fact was that Baldwin was being asked now to seek out a roll even though he knew nothing about the contents.

  Looking away from the palace, he found himself wondering how many people within the city walls could be carrying a roll just like the one which had been stolen.

  Dartmoor

  ‘I hope you do not mind my observing,’ Busse said, ‘that you seem to be rather reserved today, Bailiff. In the past you have always struck me as a happy fellow, but
today you are reluctant to speak to me.’

  ‘No, no. I am just thinking about my wife,’ Simon lied. ‘I had been hoping to go straight to her when I was called back to Tavistock. Being sent on this journey was not in my mind.’

  ‘I am sorry, Bailiff. I had no idea. I did not want company myself. It was only the insistence of others that led to my accepting your escort. I would much rather you returned home, if you wish to, than continued with me to a meeting you have no desire to witness.’

  ‘I am sure that it is best that you have company on such a long journey,’ Simon said shortly.

  They had left the abbey and crossed the river by the old bridge, then taken the steep lane that rose from Tavistock heading east and north up to the moors themselves. It was Simon’s intention to cross Dartmoor towards Chagford, and then head east towards Exeter. They would probably have to take it relatively slowly because the monk was unused to such journeying, but Simon was hopeful that no matter what happened he should be able to return to his home within the week.

  ‘But why? Because I am elderly and infirm? I have been living here on the moors for more than twenty years, Bailiff,’ the monk declared with a look of bafflement.

  Simon could have snarled with annoyance. The sole reason for his being here was the one which he could not admit: that he was spying. ‘The moors can be dangerous. You know that.’

  ‘There are many dangers in the world,’ Busse commented, looking about him. There was a furze bush nearby, and he trotted to it, reaching down and picking some of the brilliant yellow flowers and popping them into his mouth.

  Simon agreed with that, glancing at Busse from the corner of his eye. He had no intention of admitting that he was afraid of no earthly dangers quite so much as the supernatural, but even as he watched the amiable monk at the gorse bush he was aware of the spirit of the moors, the spirit of old Crockern. If a man treated the moors disrespectfully, Crockern would take his revenge. There were many stories of how farmers would seek to change the moorland to suit them, but the moors would always revert, and the farmers would be ruined. No man could beat Crockern.