King Arthur's Bones (26 page)

‘He was with another man too.’

‘Aha. You interest me, Sir Baldwin. Who was this other man?’

Huw sat at the side of the road and pulled his boot off, staring at his foot with wry discontent. The hole in the side of his boot had grown, and mud had stained his toes red, as though he was bleeding from a cut. It also let in stones, and he tipped the boot up, watching pebbles and muddy water dribble out.

The weather was atrocious this year. Nearly as bad as the famine years, when all the crops withered where they were planted, the rain flattening them to the ground, drowning the grain and leaving many people to die of starvation.

At least the downpour had eased a little over the morning. Now he was more than a part of the way to the place he thought John had mentioned. Somewhere called Sandford. From the look of it, it was well named, he thought sourly. There was indeed a shallow little ford here, with a wooden bridge for those on foot. Hardly any point in his worrying, though, with this hole in his boot.

A loud thudding of hooves made him look up. Even this close to a large town like Crediton, no traveller could afford to be complacent, not with the numbers of cutthroats and club gangs who roamed the lanes, always seeking out the unwary. And status meant nothing. There were all too many noblemen who behaved in the same manner, stealing anything they might from those who passed near their castles.

All the same, these didn’t look like outlaws. They were not clad in bright armour, but they were on horseback, which together meant well-to-do and less likely to attack. He hoped so, anyway, because it was clear that they had seen him from the way that they slowed and pointed.

No one was safe in this God-forgotten land, Huw told himself as he pulled his boot on again and slowly made to stand up as they approached.

‘You are Huw? The triacleur?’

‘I have been called that. Not that I have much in the way of medicine with me just now, friends,’ he said, observing how two of the men had their hands near their long-bladed knives.

A third held a billhook in his fist, and he pointed it at Huw. ‘He’s a bit past your medicine now, you Welsh git.’

‘Who is? Friends, I don’t know what you mean,’ Huw said, his hands held up in a placatory manner. ‘I stayed overnight in Crediton, and have only just been in a position to set off to meet John.’

‘Who, you say? Your mate, the pardoner. You killed him.’

‘John is dead? It was nothing to do with me!’

‘Tell it to the Keeper!’

To Baldwin’s secret astonishment, the coroner sank three quarts of Hob’s best ale before sitting at the table, belching gently and patting his belly. ‘Ach, there’s nothing so good as a fresh ale on an empty belly. Nothing except a haunch of meat on top of it anyway,’ he added, eyeing the capon roasting over the fire.

‘Do you never suffer from an indigestion? Liverishness? A sore head?’ Baldwin enquired rhetorically. He had never seen the vaguest indication of Sir Richard feeling out of sorts.

‘Me? What do you take me for? Some milksop youth? Eh?’

Baldwin smiled to himself. ‘What do you think of this killing, then?’

‘The entry is clear enough. A man slid himself inside from under the eaves.’

When they had looked about the chamber, the hole at the rear of the room was immediately plain. The cob had fallen away a little, and the thatch pulled apart to leave space for a man to enter.

‘He was so drunk he probably never heard his killer enter,’ Baldwin said. ‘Hob and Ulric both said he was well in his cups and had to leave the room before they went home.’

‘So someone entered afterwards and killed him, before cutting his hand free,’ the coroner said, and belched.

‘Yes,’ Baldwin said.

‘Come along, then – why burn his hand?’

‘I have no idea.’

They had found the hand, scorched and blackened, like some wizened relic, lying in the furnace under the copper.

Coroner Richard grunted. ‘If he thought a little fire like that would do more than singe the hair from the fingers, he was a thoroughgoing idiot,’ he concluded.

‘No man would think a little fire like that would have destroyed the hand. It wasn’t thrown there to be destroyed, not on a little fire of twigs and shavings. No man would think it would work for that,’ Baldwin said.

‘So why put it there?’

‘I can hear horses,’ Baldwin said, climbing to his feet.

They had sent the reeve and some men in the direction of Crediton on horseback to see if any news could be discovered about the triacleur, but that was only a short while ago. There had been no time to ride all the way to the town, let alone enquire. And yet here they all were, riding at a trot, with a bedraggled man hurrying behind, his hands bound with a stout rope that was gripped in the reeve’s own hand.

Baldwin and the coroner walked out to stand near the tree where their horses had been hitched. A trio of young boys were rubbing their horses down and seeing to their water and feed. Baldwin had paid them earlier. His training as a Templar had taught him always to see to the comfort and health of his mount before his own. He walked over and patted his old beast, muttering to him as he gazed along the road at the approaching riders.

They drew up in the market area, and Reeve Ulric clambered down, yanking his prisoner forward. ‘Here’s your man, Sir Baldwin, Sir Richard. A
Welshman
,’ he added, spitting the word.

Before Baldwin or Sir Richard could comment, a priest appeared, striding down the lane from the church. ‘Is this the man? Is this the killer?’

‘We don’t know it,’ Baldwin said coolly before turning to the man again. ‘What do you say?’

‘I am innocent, Sir Knight. These men found me on the road coming here. They saw me and brought me, but I don’t know why.’

‘You say you don’t know what’s happened to the pardoner, eh?’ Ulric snapped.

There was a flash of fear in the man’s eyes, Baldwin saw. ‘I don’t know what happened to my friend.’

‘You call him your friend?’ Hob said. He was behind Baldwin, and now he stepped forward. ‘Sir Keeper, this man was no friend to the pardoner. The pardoner told me last night that this fellow, who had walked with him all the way from Wales, had said he would see the pardoner in hell before the week was out. They argued, and the pardoner had hoped that they might make amends to each other, but now it’s obvious what happened. This Welshman broke into my tavern to murder my guest in his sleep.’

Baldwin looked at the man they were all accusing. He was a tatterdemalion, it was true. His hosen were beslubbered with mud, his coat stained and marked, his cloak ragged where thorns had tugged at it – but a man’s appearance after a long journey could be deceptive.

He cast a glance up. The sun was hidden behind clouds, which hurried across the sky with a smooth urgency, but there was no sign of serious bad weather. If anything, it seemed warmer. He looked across at the coroner.

‘Do you wish to open your inquest?’ he asked.

‘May as well, I suppose,’ Coroner Richard said, amiably enough. ‘You, man. Yes, tavern-keeper, you. What’s your name? Hob? Fetch more wine. Priest? You’ll have to clerk for me today. I’ve lost my normal ink-dribbler. Ulric? Gather the freemen of the vill here.
Come on, man
! I don’t have all day even if you do!’

Sir Richard cast an eye around and shot a look up at the sky ‘Bring me a bench,’ he said. ‘We shall begin our inquest here.’

Baldwin ordered that the man’s hands should be unbound as soon as the coroner and he were sitting. There was no need to worry about Huw escaping from here, for he clearly would have little chance of outrunning the men of the vill. Instead, Baldwin allowed him to rub his wrists where the hemp rope had chafed, and let him take his stand near them both. Ulric stood near at hand, watching the triacleur suspiciously and hefting his billhook, while two men went and fetched out the body. They stripped it naked, before rolling it over and over in front of all the freemen of the vill so the wounds could be noted.

The coroner called out a list of the injuries, examining them closely, pulling the head back to show the depth of the wound in the throat, lifting the arm to show where the hand had been cut away. Letting it fall, he turned to the prisoner.

‘Well, Master Welshman, what do you have to say?’

‘I can give no story at all, good Knight, for the simple reason that I’ve no idea what had been done to my old friend. All I can tell is, I was in Crediton last afternoon, and there were many saw me there. One fool had a loud shouting match with me, demanding to know what I was selling, and saying I was selling poisons. That’s why I’ve no bag with me now. I was forced to run and lost all my wares. It was not a good day.’

‘Where did you go after that?’

‘I found a hayloft over near the church. I don’t know whose.’

‘Did anyone see you there?’

‘How would I know?’

‘What of this morning? Did any man see you rise and leave?’

‘I was careful no one did! What would they do to a poor pilgrim of the roadway like me?’ Huw demanded hotly, staring about him at all the grim faces. ‘A stranger and foreigner in a strange land is always suspected, no matter whether he be innocent or guilty. Foreigners are easy to blame, Sir Knight.’

‘That may be true. The guilty are also easy to blame, Triacleur,’ Baldwin noted. He chose not to comment on the fact that a man with so sour a face might expect to be viewed with suspicion.

‘He is the murderer,’ Reeve Ulric said. ‘Listen to him! You can hear the guilt in his voice.’

‘I hear nothing of the sort,’ Baldwin said. ‘Only a man in fear of his life. A justifiable fear, I have to say.’

‘Slipping into a room in the middle of the night – that’s a Welshie trick,’ the reeve persisted.

‘You have experience?’ Sir Richard said at last. He had been sitting with his chin on his fist, elbow on his knee, eyeing Huw with a wary lack of enthusiasm, as he might study a rabid hound.

‘What?’

‘You sound like a man who speaks from experience. Were you in Wales?’

‘I fought there for the last king, God save his memory! Edward the First took me and seventeen others from about here with our lord.’

‘You fought, eh?’

‘We fought much, yes. Pacifying that country was hard work. But we did our duty, although only seven of us came home again.’

‘A shame. I have been involved in battles too.’

‘Sire.’

‘Do you tell me that none of you would slip into a tavern at night to take a swig?’ the coroner asked with a grin lifting one side of his beard. There was a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. ‘You’d be the only men-at-arms ever to be sober, if so.’

‘Perhaps some did take some ale or wine when they may.’

‘Sometimes I’ve known men take more than just a little ale too,’ the coroner reminisced. He looked over at Baldwin. ‘Once one of me own boys took a set of plates from a wealthy merchant’s town house. That was a goodly haul! Too good for that damned churl. Took it meself. Gave him a little coin for it, of course. Damned fool spent it inside an hour at a tavern, I expect.’

‘Aye,’ the reeve agreed, stony-faced. ‘There were some made themselves rich out there. Happy days, for them.’

‘So you admit Englishmen were capable of the same thievery, then, and that you have experience of it. So, then, Reeve, am I to think you did this thing? You wandered in there last night, killed the man and slipped out again, putting into practice all the expertise you built up during your war career? No? Then don’t be so damned keen to blame another man, eh? Now, then.’ He sat upright, glaring about the gathered men with an expression that could have turned ale to vinegar. ‘Did anyone see this man about the vill yesterday or yestere’en? Come, now! All you are happy to accuse the man, but has any man a shadow of evidence? Will any man say they saw him?’

There was no response to that challenge, and Baldwin felt an unaccountable sense of relief. He had no cause to think that the man was innocent, after all, and by his own admission he had argued with his companion. But Baldwin was a renegade Knight Templar. He had seen the punishment meted out to so many of his comrades on the basis of evidence they never saw. It was the foundation of his own loathing of injustice.

The Templars had been arrested and accused of crimes, but not allowed to know what the offences were, when they were committed, how they were committed, nor even who accused them – nothing – and yet were tortured until they ‘confessed’. They were burned, broken and cut without understanding why. Some had their feet roasted until the flesh fell away, and they still did not know why. The experience had taught Baldwin that in the absence of a lawyer there was no justice.

‘Right, then,’ the coroner continued. ‘Who was last to see the man alive?’

This elicited the response that Ulric, Hob, Father William and two or three others had remained in the pardoner’s company. He had grown sleepy some hours after dark, and had gone to his palliasse in the brewhouse before the others had left. Hob had taken the pardoner at his word and continued selling beer on his account, assuming that he would be reimbursed the following morning. Soon his snores could be heard, and then gradually the men had parted. First to go was the priest, then Ulric, and Hob was forced to stay up with the others until he grew bored of their company – and singing – and threw them out in the middle of the night. He had tidied the room, doused his fire and then went to make sure his guest was all right. A scratching noise had made him wonder whether there was a rat in the chamber. As soon as he found the corpse, he raised the hue and cry.

There was more evidence to hear from the men who had been drinking, but little more could be learned. All pronounced themselves moderately drunk and had gone home to their beds.

Baldwin nodded and glanced at the coroner. But there was something in the tavern-keeper’s tone which made him a little suspicious. He felt the man was concealing something. But who in these days of violence and hardship had nothing to hide?

‘In that case,’ Coroner Richard declared, ‘this matter is unsolved. I find that this pardoner has been murdered by a man or men unknown, and that he is not of this parish. The murdrum fine will be imposed, and the weapon used to kill him must have been a knife or dagger. I will say the weapon was worth at least a shilling, and that much is deodand. And now my inquest is closed.’