The Malice of Unnatural Death:

by Michael Jecks

  ‘He was carrying a message from the bishop. It was a reply to a message from the king, I think. He’d have left that night if he’d had a chance, but the bishop was so slow in composing his note that he only received the message as dark was falling. Too late to do anything then. He had been going to ride off at first light. And then, I think, I was hit on the head. I seem to remember it now, a blow, and then I was falling.’

  ‘To get here from the Noblesyn you’d have gone along the High Street, and then carried on westwards,’ Walter pointed out. ‘You woke up nearer the South Gate, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps I’d got lost … or James led me the wrong way?’

  ‘Perhaps he did, at that. Where was he when you fell?’

  ‘At my side, I think.’

  ‘I think that explains a lot,’ Walter said. He picked up his wooden spoon and began stirring again. ‘He knocked you down when you were near a place he knew would be safe for you.’

  ‘Him? Why’d he do a thing like that?’

  ‘Perhaps James didn’t trust you entirely, and sought to protect himself. Or …’ Walter paused, chewing at his inner lip.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was just thinking – if he thought he was going into danger, and didn’t want to lead you there too, perhaps he sought to protect you?’

  ‘If he thought it was dangerous, any man would have kept a friend at his side,’ Newt scoffed.

  Walter shrugged pensively.

  Newt shook his head gently, and offered to fetch a fresh loaf.

  Outside the roads were icy, and he had to mind his step as his leather-soled boots slipped over the cobbles. The way to the bakers’ shops was easy enough, and he was soon standing in a small stall off Bakers’ Row where the scent of fresh loaves filled the air.

  It was only as he walked back that he recalled something else. While they had been walking out from the inn, he had seen someone at the mouth of an alley – a slim figure in dark clothes. The body itself was all but hidden, but he was sure that the figure had a gaunt, sallow face.

  And he was just as convinced now, as he recalled it, that James had seen him too.

  Baldwin woke with a sense of gratification that he had managed to avoid any further contact with the good coroner.

  When in trouble, Baldwin had always felt able to trust and rely on the coroner. He had been in some tight situations earlier in the autumn with Simon and Richard de Welles, and de Welles had always been a reliable and honourable friend. However, although his strength and ability in a fight was not in question, Baldwin was perfectly aware that the man was ruinously hazardous when it came to drinking with him.

  Almost any man alive could drink more than Baldwin. It stemmed from the time when he was a Knight Templar, many years ago. He had early decided that moderation would ensure that he was as effective as possible at performing God’s will and defending pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Abstinence in the heat had left him more capable during weapons training than those who had imbibed too strongly the night before.

  In the event, of course, there had been no need to worry. He joined the Templars because they took him in, wounded, when he was at Acre, trying to protect it from the massed hordes who sought to capture it. The siege of the city had marked him for ever, and the fact that the Templars had saved him left him with a profound sense of debt. As soon as he could, he had taken the threefold oaths, firm in the resolve that he would fight and lay down his life, if need be, in the reconquest of the Holy Land to save it from the Saracens. It was an ambition that was to be cruelly crushed when the French king and the pope dishonourably perverted justice in order to persecute the Templars out of nothing more than their own intolerable greed.

  His order had been hunted and destroyed, so that their chests of treasure could be raided and plundered. Many of Baldwin’s friends and companions had been tortured to death, some slaughtered, and all for declaring their innocence. There was no defence against the accusation of heresy. They were not permitted to know the charges raised against them, nor who had levelled them. Instead they were invited to confess, and when they declared that they had no idea what crimes they could have been guilty of, they were put to the torture.

  That gross, obscene injustice had coloured the whole of the rest of his life. It left him with an enduring hatred – of politics, of greed, of unfairness.

  There were many who had turned to ritual magic after the destruction of Acre. The fall of the city was a cataclysmic event for the whole of Christianity, for if God Himself had so turned His face from His own people, their sins must have been enormous. Some turned to flagellation, others to intense prayer, while a few sought solace in ancient learning. They tried to conjure demons and bind them to themselves.

  It was nothing new. It was rather like alchemy, and Baldwin had the same regard for both. He thought that they were nonsense.

  From his early days in the Templars, he had studied when he might, and he had read some of the philosophical tracts written by Thomas Aquinas. He recalled that Aquinas felt that any attempt to conjure a demon, for whatever purpose, was in effect forming a pact with that demon. It was heretical, and an act of apostasy.

  For all that, though, men, and sometimes women, would try to make use of magic to achieve their ends. Since the apparent weakness of Christianity was exposed by the fall of Acre, perhaps more fools had turned to these supposedly ‘older’ crafts. Baldwin neither knew nor cared. All he was worried about just now was the one man.

  It was always possible, after all, that the fellow was less of a fool than he appeared. If he was not actually a dolly-poll, and instead was a shrewd man, he might have pulled the wool over Baldwin’s and Sir Richard’s eyes. It was not impossible. Baldwin was always unwilling to support authority against a churl because of his own experiences, but just because he had once had a miserable experience did not mean that all in authority were inevitably corrupt. Some were no doubt as honourable as he.

  And even those, like the Sheriff of Devon, who were undoubtedly corrupt in certain spheres of their professional life, might be perfectly justified in prosecuting a man like Langatre, who was a self-confessed dabbler in the occult.

  ‘Rubbish!’ he muttered to himself. There was never any good reason for persecution. Never.

  Chapter Eighteen

  North-East Dartmoor

  Simon woke with a pain in his hip where the unyielding soil had been an inadequate cover for a large stone. Busse was snoring gently at his side, but when he peered out into the cold daylight he saw Rob shivering at the fire, Simon’s spare cloak pulled tight, his arms wrapped about himself, a thin smoke rising from the twigs and tinder he had worked at.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ Simon asked quietly as he crawled from their shelter. It looked quite solid still, he was pleased to see. It gave him a feeling of quiet satisfaction to think that he had managed to construct that at short notice.

  Rob nodded, but his face was pinched, and Simon could feel the chill air at his own back.

  The landscape had altered over the night since Simon and the monk’s conversation. The snow had kept on falling, and now there were a few inches covering everything. Usually Simon enjoyed the sight of snow. It was lovely to rise in the morning, look out from the window and see all covered in the unmarked blanket of white. To see the trees bowing, to hear the branches cracking with the weight, and then to see children skating on the ice of the ponds … it all made a man’s heart leap. Especially when he could return to his own house and stand in front of his own fire to warm himself. That certainly helped.

  Not all would view it in the same light, of course. Some, he knew, hated the snow and feared its arrival. Mostly it was the older folks. Each year the winter would carry away the older, the more infirm and feeble. It was natural, but sad. And when the snow fell, there were other deaths too: men fell through the ice while playing on the ponds; children fell prey to the cold; some folks would drink themselves stupid and then die on the way home from a tavern, o
nly to be found the next morning by a passer-by, lying at the roadside with their bodies frozen to the soil. Aye, there were plenty who had cause to dislike and mistrust the weather, but for his part Simon loved it, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than the fresh, crisp air and the crunch of compacted snow underfoot when he was well prepared for it.

  And that was the trouble. Today he and his companions were not ready. ‘Rob, go and see how the horses have fared,’ he said. ‘I’ll attend to this.’

  The lad walked away without even a sharp comment about masters who preferred to hog the fire, which showed Simon just how jaded the lad was feeling. He set to with determination. The fire had been banked up well last night, and the embers were still good and warm, so he set about rekindling it. The tree which had supplied so much of their needs last evening was of little use. All the fine twigs were hidden by the snow. Instead he walked about the encampment seeking small sticks, and soon had found a fair collection, getting himself thoroughly smothered in snow in the process. He bound them together into a faggot and bound it tightly together with green withies wrapped about it, and put it onto the hottest part of the fire, kneeling down and blowing steadily to waken the sparks. Soon he could feel the warmth, and there was a hissing and spitting as the twigs began to take the heat.

  He had brought a clay pot with him – he fetched it now, and filled it with the wine left in his skin. Setting it in the midst of the fire, he hoped the pot would warm gradually and not shatter.

  ‘Ho, Bailiff, and a fine morning to you,’ Busse grunted as he thrust his head from the shelter. ‘In God’s name, but this is a cold dawn!’

  ‘As a whore’s heart,’ Rob muttered. ‘Horses are all right, master. All stood together, and kept their heat in.’

  Simon nodded, but his mind was already on other matters. ‘Prepare them, then. We shall leave here as soon as they are ready.’

  Rob nodded, too cold to argue. It was Busse who protested as the boy walked back to the mounts. ‘But should we not break our fast? Surely it would be foolish to set off without something in our bellies?’

  ‘Brother, I fear it would be more foolish to remain here in the open. We’ll soon start to freeze. Better to ride on and see how soon we can find a house. A farm or cott. It matters little where we shelter, but we must get moving – if only to keep ourselves warm.’

  ‘How long will it take us to reach Exeter?’

  ‘With luck, if the weather off the moor is more clement, we might reach the city soon after noon. It depends upon the mounts. If they can cope, we should hurry. It is only one league to the edge of the moor, I’d guess. Maybe a little farther. And there are roads down there, which will make the going easier.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’ Busse began to settle himself on the ground.

  ‘Brother, there isn’t time.’

  ‘I am a man of God. I have to pray at first rising.’

  ‘Look on this as a special dispensation, Brother. There isn’t time.’

  Busse looked at him long and hard, and then began to pray, muttering a hasty Pater Noster, and adding sarcastically, ‘I hope that is not too slow for you?’

  Simon shrugged. He had retrieved his pot, and now he sniffed at it. About to take a long swallow, he remembered his manners, and offered it to Busse. The monk drank with his eyes closed, as though this was the finest drink he had ever tasted. As well it might have been, Simon reckoned. When the pot came to him, he sipped slowly, rolling the warmed wine about his mouth and feeling the sensation of heat strike at his belly. It felt as though every inch of the liquor’s journey to his stomach was distinct, and every particle of his being thrilled to the sensation.

  The rest was saved for Rob, whose need was the greatest of all of them. Today, when they mounted, Simon lifted Rob up before him on the horse. In this weather it would be better for him to ride and keep his feet out of the snow. Simon was happy that he would soon be able to lead his little party off the moors and down into the warmer lands that encircled them.

  It was a thought that had clearly occurred to Busse too. ‘Will it be this cold and snowy all the way?’

  ‘No. Usually the moors catch all the worst weather. We used to live north of Crediton, and there we could be enjoying a bright sunny day, and when we looked to the south we’d see Dartmoor with clouds above. Often in the spring we could be working in the warm, but Dartmoor would have snow. You could see it like a white coat lying on top. So I am hoping that when we leave the moors we should find the way a great deal easier.’

  Busse nodded, but Simon could feel the man’s eyes on him, and he was struck with that anxiety again – not fear exactly, but just the faint nervous premonition that this man could be dangerous to him.

  He could have cursed brother John de Courtenay.

  Exeter Gaol

  It had been a miserable night for Master Richard de Langatre.

  He had spent evenings in poor dives before now, what with one thing and another. There had been a deeply unpleasant little cell just outside Oxford where he had been incarcerated for a couple of days before the error of his arrest had come to light, but notwithstanding that, this had to be the very worst pit in which he had ever been forced to spend a night. The walls were dank and mouldy, the floor a foul mix of substances which were best forgotten, the toilet facilities non-existent. Not even a pail!

  He knew why he was here, of course. It was that devious shit Sir Matthew. The sheriff had made it clear enough that he didn’t like men like Master Richard. Well, that was the sort of thing which he had grown all too used to – but he never expected this! The man had seemed almost beside himself last night when he shouted at him. Sweet Christ in heaven, how could Langatre have guessed that the sheriff would fly off the handle like that! The worst that anyone could say about Langatre was that he had been attacked and robbed, and yet here he was – he was – in gaol for his trouble! It was grossly unfair.

  There was a skittering noise, which he had grown to recognise as rats, and then he heard the scrape of the bolts on the great door outside that gave onto the castle yard. The screech of the door’s hinges was like a knife dragging down Langatre’s bones: a hideous, drawn-out metallic squeal of agony. He wondered if they soaked them in water daily to give the sound that timbre.

  Footsteps crunched along the paved corridor, and stopped, so far as he could tell, outside his chamber. There was a silence for a moment, then the rattle of a key in the lock, and the door suddenly opened.

  He winced in the sudden light from a torch, peering up at the shadowy figures before him and fearing what the sheriff might have in store for him, but then he heard the welcoming bellow and felt his courage return.

  ‘Christ alive, man! What sort of sty have they kept you in overnight? Eh?’

  ‘Coroner? Sir Baldwin?’

  The two slipped inside, and Baldwin looked about him with distaste. ‘I am truly sorry to see how you have been treated, Master Langatre. I shall ensure that you are released as soon as is feasible.’

  ‘I am grateful to you. I am not used to such conditions.’

  ‘Better get used to ’em, then,’ the coroner stated cheerfully. ‘If the sheriff keeps to his word and has you held for questioning by the king’s men, you could be here a while.’

  ‘But that would be daft! What could I have done? I’ve never even seen the king!’

  ‘The sheriff seems determined enough,’ the coroner said. ‘Perhaps he knows something else you’ve been doing?’

  Langatre frowned down at his boots. These two seemed friendly enough, although that was an attitude which could all too easily dissipate. Still, he was in no position to conceal anything from anyone. The very worst thing for him would be to continue to be held down here.

  ‘My lords, look, I have done nothing wrong. I have certainly never tried to summon a demon.’

  ‘Tell us what you have done.’

  ‘Nothing! I swear! All I have ever done is try to earn a small living. That’s all. There’s nothing secret about m
y work. Sir Baldwin, you saw that I was robbed – my knives, my hat, all gone!’

  ‘You have been said to have been involved in telling the future,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Oh, that! It’s mainly a knack of letting people tell me what they want me to say, and then telling them what they want in a different manner. Easy, that is. But there are many in town who profess to be able to do the same – even one of the monks in St Nicholas’s Priory is supposed to be able to do that.’

  ‘Is there something in particular that could have irritated the good sheriff? Anything you have done recently?’

  ‘Nothing I know of. What is this all about, anyway?’

  ‘Someone has attempted an attack on the king and his friend Despenser, from all we’ve seen,’ the coroner rumbled. ‘I should take it that the king is not happy with anyone supposedly associated with the magical arts.’

  Langatre stared about him helplessly. ‘Oh, cods!’

  ‘So if there is anything – anything – you can tell us that might help,’ Baldwin prompted seriously, ‘it might just assist us to help you.’

  ‘Oh, God in heaven!’ Langatre gazed from one to the other. ‘You want me to be honest?’

  Exeter City

  Master John of Nottingham was happy with his work so far. The models were taking on their own appearances already, and he felt sure that they would be as successful as the originals.

  He put the final touches to the first of them, using his knife to remove a small flaking of wax from the little crown he had placed on its head, and setting it upright on the table before him, then bowing his head and pinching at the top of his nose where the headache seemed to be starting.

  It was one of the problems he had suffered from for a long while now: he was sure that his eyes were beginning to fail him. In the past he had been graced with perfect eyesight, and there would have been little difficulty involved in doing this kind of work by candlelight, but more recently it had started to take its toll. Perhaps it was just that he was still tired from his long journey down here from Coventry. It had been a hard effort. A sore, hard effort.