Not that there was much point, Baldwin reminded himself. There was nowhere to run to for people whose business and livelihood were tied up with Crediton. However, all the neighbours must be kept until they had been attached – made to pay a surety that guaranteed that they would attend the Justice’s court when he next appeared. All of them would be fined anyway, because any man who lived near a murder was taxed for the infringement of the King’s Peace, which was why the men shuffled resentfully.
‘You have sent for the Coroner?’ Baldwin asked Tanner quietly.
‘Yes. The messenger left at the same time as the man sent to fetch you.’
‘Good. So we need not keep these folk too long, hopefully,’ Baldwin said. ‘Although the dull-witted fool may take his time.’
‘He usually does,’ Tanner growled.
Both knew the Coroner. Sir Roger of Gidleigh had been a useful ally in Baldwin’s previous investigations, but he had been thrown from his horse earlier in the summer and confined to his bed, a shrunken, twisted reminder of his previous hale and powerful self. In his place had been installed Sir Gilbert of Axminster.
Compared with Sir Roger, Sir Gilbert was a weakly and insipid youth. Sir Gilbert had never taken part in a battle, nor had he earned his rank from proving his honour or courage. No, he had become a knight under the ridiculous law by which any man who owned an estate worth more than £40 each year could be compelled to take up knighthood; it led to cretins like Sir Gilbert wearing the golden spurs, Baldwin thought contemptuously. Feeble-minded doddypolls who were scarcely capable of lacing their enamelled sword-belts. And once knighted, Sir Gilbert’s puerile sense of humour and effeminate manner had led to his advancement to Coroner. With a King such as Edward II, who preferred favourites like Piers Gaveston and the appalling Hugh Despenser to his own wife, it was no surprise that men like Sir Gilbert found senior posts.
It hurt Baldwin particularly because he had been a ‘Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon’, a Knight Templar, who had risked his life in the hell-hole of Acre in 1291 as that great city fell to the Saracen hordes. The Templars had been honourable, devoted monks who had taken the threefold oaths of poverty, chastity and obedience, and yet they had been slaughtered for personal gain. The French King had coveted their wealth, so he unleashed a storm of impossible accusations against them, having them arrested and then burned at the stake like heretics, all because he wanted their money.
That was the prick that drove Baldwin to investigate crimes: he had been the victim of persecution; he had suffered from the lies of politicians; he knew how difficult it was to deny the claims of bigots. All made him determined to protect others who suffered from injustice.
The memory of his comrades’ foul deaths made him wear an expression of glowering bitterness which lent his dark features a ferocious air, a fact which was brought home to him when he caught the eye of a young girl, who recoiled as though from a blow.
Abruptly he turned and glanced again at the dead man’s hall, trying to drive away the memory of Templars burning in their pyres.
‘Looks new still, doesn’t it?’ Tanner said, following the direction of his look. He was still unused to his Keeper’s sudden mood swings, even after six years.
Baldwin grunted assent. The hall shone, showing the gleaming white of fresh limewash. The oak timbers were light-coloured, fresh, and had hardly twisted or cracked yet. It would need a couple of good winters to weather them.
Alongside was the man’s place of work, and before talking to the waiting neighbours, Baldwin entered it.
It was a long, low building, as new as the hall. At the far end were the huge hammers which were tripped by cams beneath, driven by the massive wheel outside in the leat. A large anvil sat in the middle of the floor, stapled to a section of tree trunk, and all about were sheets of metal, tools, and at the wall, neatly swept piles of the detritus of the forge: steel shards and metal filings. A box held broken blades, larger offcuts from helmets or plate armour, while at one corner there stood straw dummies with armour bound to them. A trestle contained two helms and various farming implements: scythes, hammers, axes, and sharpened edges for shovel blades.
Everywhere there was the stench of the armourer: the sharp tang of metal and rust, the insidious odour of oil, the brackish, unpleasant scent of the filthy water used to quench the red-hot metal and temper it, but above all there were two smells: the sweetness of the beeswax which was rubbed over the metal while still hot to protect it from rusting, and the noisome stink of animal excrement, almost human in its foul pungency.
‘He has a pig?’ Baldwin asked. There was no sign of it.
‘Everyone has a pig,’ came Tanner’s laconic reply.
Baldwin nodded as he walked to the corner where the smell came from. ‘It is not here now. Where is it?’
‘Maybe it’s out in the orchard or the woods?’
‘Odd time of year for that,’ Baldwin said. Hogs were usually left to rootle about in yards on their own, which was why they so often escaped and caused such mayhem in the roads. They were such a nuisance that if someone caught another man’s pig, he could demand its execution and claim its trotters as his reward.
He could learn nothing from a pig’s excrement. Baldwin peered about him again. It was a remarkably well-ordered smithy. Blacksmiths he had known tended to work bare-chested, apart from their leathery aprons, in black, sooty rooms. They were invariably wiry, lean men, with hands scarred from gripping hot metal, their faces weathered and crazed with wrinkles from staring into white-hot charcoal as they tempered blades and armour. Humphrey’s forge was almost clean and tidy by comparison. Only by the anvil itself were there the fine, silvery flakes which showed that red-hot metal had been worked.
It was almost as though the place had been cleaned, ready for his death.
‘Massive hammers, those,’ Tanner said.
‘You need them to make good blades,’ Baldwin said, then he paused. ‘I wonder if it was one of his own that killed him?’
Back outside, he studied the shuffling, anxious men.
‘Who lived nearest the armourer?’ Baldwin called out. Although there was a general movement among the men standing before him, no one cared to volunteer information to the Keeper of the King’s Peace. He was the most powerful and important of all the King’s local officials, and as such inspired fear. It was a constant cause of irritation and near-despair for Baldwin. He could never understand why he should be viewed with such alarm. However today he was aware of a certain lethargic dullness growing within him. It was not his place to investigate and report on murders – that was the Coroner’s duty – and Baldwin wished to be gone from here. In truth it was tempting to go and leave Sir Gilbert to his task – but if he did, he knew there was a risk that the wrong man could be arrested for the murder. He had no faith in Sir Gilbert.
With a sigh, Baldwin accepted that he must inquire himself, just to ensure that the innocent might walk free.
The crowd was a curious blend of people. Two poor-looking churls, Ham from Efford and Adam Weaver, and one more affluent serf, Jaket the Baker. Ham and Jaket’s women clung to their husbands with terror in their eyes, while Adam’s wife Edith stood proudly apart. Children mingled with the adults, plainly fretful, and a pair of dogs fought, egged on by two lads with sticks.
Baldwin could smell the fear rising from them like a sour miasma that crept into his nostrils and made him feel tainted. Poor people always stood to lose when they were investigated, he reflected: the rich could afford a pleader to lie for them.
Picking a man at random, he pointed at Ham. ‘You! Come here!’
Ham started, nervously smiling, a weaselly fellow with sallow complexion framing sunken dark eyes and pinched cheeks. ‘My Lord?’
Baldwin beckoned. Ham had been standing with his wife and two young girls. He left them reluctantly, approaching Baldwin with his eyes downcast.
‘You are Ham from Efford, aren’t you?’ Baldwin demanded. He
vaguely remembered that the man had been working with a cloth-maker some while ago.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You work with John in …’
‘No, he let me go when he took on a new apprentice. An apprentice is cheaper than a trained man.’
Baldwin nodded, and his voice became more gentle. ‘Where do you live?’
‘In that house,’ he pointed. ‘My family has a room at the back.’
It was two doors along the alley from the armourer’s place. ‘How well did you know Humphrey?’
‘Hardly at all. He was a cocky bastard, making his bloody metal all day. You could hear the din ten miles off, I reckon.’
This was declared in a wheedling tone, like a beggar whining for alms. Baldwin raised his voice. ‘Who else disliked him?’ There was no answer and he spoke coldly to Ham. ‘Perhaps the dead man was not so troubling to others, eh?’
‘They thought the same,’ Ham said sulkily. ‘Jaket? You had enough trouble with him.’
Baldwin beckoned the man. ‘Jaket, what can you tell me about Humphrey’s death?’
‘Sir Baldwin, I know nothing about his death,’ Jaket said. He was a large, pudding-faced man with sparse hair and a large gut. Baldwin recalled seeing him often enough in taverns and inns, always with genially beaming features. Jaket was the first to lead singing or to call for fresh ales, a good companion for an alehouse.
‘Did either of you see Humphrey yesterday?’ Baldwin asked.
Ham shook his head. ‘I was working all day, logging in the Dean’s garden.’
Baldwin nodded. He could check with the Dean of Crediton’s Collegiate Church later. ‘What of you, Jaket?’
‘I think I did see him, yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the alley, near his door. He was with a tall, foppish young fellow, fair-haired, wearing a rich scarlet tunic. He must have been a knight, from his belt and spurs.’
Baldwin was struck by the similarity between this description and Sir Gilbert. ‘Did you hear them talking?’
‘I didn’t go close to them.’
Ham spoke up. ‘He never got on with the armourer. They’ve been fighting in the courts for ages, ever since Humphrey first came here.’
Baldwin vaguely remembered hearing of their battles in court. ‘What was the dispute?’
Jaket had reddened. ‘It was nothing much. He built his forge on my land, but when I told him he refused to stop building, said he had bought the land fairly and it was nothing to do with me. I couldn’t fight with him, so I paid a lawyer to argue my case in the Church court. Dean Clifford chose to find in favour of Humphrey.’
‘And that rankled,’ Baldwin observed.
‘No. Not much,’ Jaket protested.
Baldwin did not believe him. Jaket had realised that admitting to an unneighbourly dispute could make him the most obvious suspect. ‘ “Not much”? Does that mean that you were happy to lose your land? How much did he take?’
‘Half the forge is on my land,’ Jaket said, throwing a fierce glare at Ham. ‘And he never even offered to buy it. How would you feel? Anyway, I didn’t talk to them because they were arguing. Something about money.’
‘Who else could wish to harm Humphrey?’ Baldwin asked.
It was Jaket’s turn to implicate someone to deflect attention from himself, and he jerked his chin at Edith Weaver. ‘Ask her.’
‘Edith?’ Baldwin asked with surprise. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘Nothing, Sir Baldwin,’ she said, casting a cold glance at the watchman, who had prodded her forward with the butt of his staff.
She was a comely woman, a brunette of maybe twenty years, of middle height, with an oval face that, although it was not beautiful, had the attractions of youth and energy. Slanting eyes met Baldwin’s with resolution, but also a slight anxiety. However Baldwin would not convict anyone for appearing nervous before a King’s official.
By comparison, her husband was a pop-eyed fool of some thirty years, with the flabby flesh of the heavy drinker who scarcely bothers with solid food. He had the small eyes of a rat, but set in a pale, round face. Baldwin had never liked him, and liked him even less when he thought of Edith.
‘Ask anyone here,’ Jaket said. ‘She’s got a common fame for whoring. She’s notorious!’
‘Edith?’ Baldwin said. ‘Have you anything to say?’ He could smell lavender again, he thought. It was on the woman. A cheap perfume.
‘What can a wife do, when her husband has no work and spends his days in the tavern?’
‘Shut up, you stupid bitch!’ Adam snarled.
‘When did you last bring money for me and our children?’
‘I’m going to get work soon.’
‘Oh, yes? For six months you’ve given me nothing for food or drink, but have taken everything you could to fill your guts with ale, you drunken sot! What did you expect me to do? Watch my children starve?’ she sneered.
Baldwin stared at him coldly. ‘Adam, I shall question you in a moment. For now, be silent!’ He faced Edith. ‘So, you do not deny your trade?’
‘Why should I? Don’t most wives have to turn to selling their bodies at one time or another?’
Baldwin reflected that his own wife was born to a more fortunate environment. ‘Did you see Humphrey yesterday?’
She was quiet for a moment, as if choosing whether to lie, and Baldwin snapped his fingers to Tanner. The Constable pulled the kerchief from his belt and passed it to him.
Adam cried out, ‘Edith, your kerchief!’
Baldwin said, ‘This was beside his bed. It is yours?’
‘Yes, it’s mine,’ she agreed.
‘Where were you last night? Were you there?’
She paused again, but this time Baldwin had noticed something else. ‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing at her foot.
On one sole of her thin sandals he had seen a mark, and there was a corresponding smudge on the inner side of her foot below her ankle. Edith gazed down at it with a kind of weary resignation.
‘It is blood, is it not?’ Baldwin said sternly.
She sighed and nodded. ‘Yes. I had to flee after I saw him die. Humphrey was here in the yard yesterday morning, and he asked me to visit him last night. I knew Adam would be in the tavern till late, so he wouldn’t care, and Humphrey always paid me well, so I agreed.’
‘When were you to go to him?’
‘At dusk. But when I arrived, he was in the forge talking to the man Jaket described. I walked into the hall and drank some of his wine. When I heard him leaving the forge and talking outside, I went up the ladder to his chamber and began to doff my clothes. He was talking angrily, I thought. I wasn’t sure if he would still want me, but I was desperate for the money, so I prepared. My kerchief and skirts were already off when I heard him come in, and a gust blew out the candles. I could see nothing in the dark. I took off my other garments, thinking he would soon join me, and then … I heard it.’
She lifted her eyes to meet Baldwin’s serious gaze. ‘It was like the thud of a clod of soil thrown at a man’s back. I heard Humphrey curse, then cough, and I heard him say, “You have killed me!” and there was a tumbling noise, then a rough, rattling sound, as of a man with too much phlegm in his throat. I remained silent up in the chamber, not daring to move, until I heard the door slam. Then I donned my clothing as speedily as I might, and rushed down the ladder to him, but I was too late.’
‘He was dead?’
‘Yes. There was nothing I could do. And I feared that if I called the Constable, I would be suspected. What else could I do? I ran.’
‘The door was locked,’ Baldwin said.
‘I locked it.’
‘Where did you get the key?’
‘He always kept a spare in the forge, hanging with his tools. Everyone knew about it. I went there to fetch it, locked the house, and returned the key to the forge. I was scared – but I am no murderer.’
&n
bsp; Which explained why the hall was locked but the forge open, Baldwin thought. ‘Did you see whom it was that entered the hall with Humphrey and stabbed him?’
‘No. I swear it.’
Jaket interrupted eagerly. ‘Surely it was the tall knight I saw with Humphrey earlier.’ And then his eyes widened with horror.
‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said. ‘But there is no proof of that.’
‘Proof of what, Sir Baldwin? My Heavens, have you decided to hold the inquest without me? Eh? Won’t do, Sir Baldwin. No, it won’t!’
Sir Gilbert, Sir Baldwin sourly told himself, could scarcely have picked a better time to have arrived.
Baldwin sent Tanner to fetch bread, wine and some roasted meats, then joined Sir Gilbert in the hall. They sat at Humphrey’s table, and while they waited for their meal to arrive, Baldwin summarised the evidence he had heard so far.
Sir Gilbert appeared unconcerned by Humphrey’s death. ‘He wasn’t a terribly good metalsmith.’
‘But you chose to buy from him.’
‘I didn’t know how poor his work was. Not that it matters. I have an almost complete suit of armour and have paid nothing.’
‘How so?’ Baldwin asked in surprise.
‘I was here to collect it yesterday, but the helm didn’t fit snugly. It was shoddy, quite shoddy, so I told him to fix it before I would pay him anything. He wasn’t happy, of course, but then, who ever is? Serfs nowadays are so surly. They hardly even show the manners they were born with.’ He yawned, adding petulantly, ‘Where’s that damned fool with the food?’
‘He will not be long,’ Baldwin said. ‘What time did you leave Humphrey yesterday?’
Sir Gilbert had curious eyes that remained half-lidded, as though he was in a perpetual state of confused lethargy. It was one of the reasons why Sir Baldwin disliked him, but now he also found himself distrusting the knight as well.
‘Are you suggesting that I could have had any part in his death, Sir Baldwin?’
For the Love of Old Bones - and other stories (Templar Series) Page 6
