The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21) (26 page)

‘I did not witness him holding you down and forcing the drink down your throat,’ Baldwin pointed out.

‘It would have been churlish to refuse his generosity,’ Simon attempted loftily. ‘Christ’s ballocks, but some rat’s
left shite and piss in my mouth.’

‘Stop your complaining and dress yourself,’ Baldwin said, eyeing his flabby naked body without enthusiasm. ‘Simon, you should rise earlier and exercise. For a man so young as you, your body is growing too rounded.’

‘It’s all this sitting around doing nothing except agreeing with Stephen’s adding,’ Simon admitted.

‘Hah! It’s too much knocking back ale and wine, I’d guess!’ boomed a new voice, that of Sir Richard, as he entered the room. ‘Morning, Bailiff, Keeper. Sleep well? I was out like a snuffed candle. Wonderful place this, and you have a good bed, Master Bailiff.’

‘I am so glad to hear it,’ Simon said, baring his teeth in a mockery of a smile.

When Simon rose and had dressed, he leaned on the doorpost and gazed into his parlour in amazement. Rob had already been in, he saw, and there was a fire already crackling brightly! His sour feelings towards the Coroner took on a more mellow aspect.

‘Today, then, we should go and see if there is anything to learn about this lad found dead on the ship.’ Baldwin was sitting at the table, studying his fingernails. He rubbed his index finger nail against his tooth, grimaced, and took out his little knife, using it to pare away a fragment. ‘After that, I suppose we should take the nephew of Stapledon and have his body sent to the bishop. Dear God! I hate to think of that. His brother will be so distressed to learn that his son has been murdered.’

Sir Richard clumped into the room with his thumbs in his belt. ‘Good idea. Don’t need stiffs lying about the place if
we can help it. I’d have had him buried here if you hadn’t told me who he was.’

‘I still cannot make sense of the man on the ship, though,’ Baldwin said. ‘It is curious that two murders should take place so near to each other, and the ship be so devastated, and yet none of the three incidents to have any connection.’

‘I have known such occurrences,’ Sir Richard said easily. He sat on a stool and bellowed suddenly for Rob, making Baldwin wince almost as much as Simon. ‘Boy, take these pennies and see what you can find for our breakfast. And fetch us a little ale, too. You can finish what we don’t, so make the most of the money. Understand?’

Rob took the coins and stared at them as though he had never in his life held so many – which, Simon reflected, was probably no more than the truth. In an instant he had darted from the room, and the three men heard his feet slapping down the lane.

‘He’s not too bad, that lad. Needs a strong hand to guide him, though,’ Sir Richard said approvingly.

When the three heard a light step, a little later on, they thought it must be the boy returning. There was a tentative knock, as though Rob was leaning a heavy basket against the door as he sought to lift the latch. Baldwin stood and crossed the room, pulling the door wide.

Outside stood a hooded figure, and even as he opened his mouth to speak he saw the flash of steel.

Sir Baldwin de Furnshill had been trained well. The blade was thrust at his heart, but he fell to his right, grabbed the wrist with his right hand and slammed it across his torso and into the open door. The wrist caught the edge of the door
itself, and he felt the shudder as the hand released the knife. He swiftly kicked it aside, pulled the figure in bodily, and booted the door shut.

‘Now, Edith, that is the least gratitude I have ever experienced after attempting to aid someone. I assume you have some reason to want to harm me?’

‘You think you can forget your actions by buying his family?’ she spat.

Simon had joined Baldwin, and stood behind his shoulder. ‘What is all this?’

Edith saw the knife on the floor near the door. She made a move as though to dart to it, but Baldwin did not release her wrist. Instead he hauled her with him further into the room, leaving the knife where it had fallen. ‘Sit, child, and tell me why you tried that.’

‘What can we do if you have him killed? It’s bad enough paying for his keep while he’s out, but at least he can help mend nets and earn a few ha’pennies here and there. But now? You’ve condemned us all to death!’

‘I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about.’

‘My father! He’s in the gaol for stealing some silver from the dead man’s purse, and you made out you weren’t going to do anything about it! You deceived us, and now he’s—’

‘Wait!’ Baldwin snapped. ‘I know nothing of this. Coroner?’

‘What?’ Sir Richard growled.

‘Is this your doing?’

‘Why me?’ Sir Richard asked with a baffled lifting of his eyebrows.

Baldwin nodded. ‘Edith, it is none of us here. Where is
the gaol?’

‘At the market house.’

‘Come with us now, and we shall have him released if we may.’

She stared at him warily. ‘Why should I believe you? You’ll have me arrested too!’

‘Edith,’ Baldwin said with some asperity, ‘it was
I
who gave you money to help the family. Would I then order your father to be arrested? You have drawn steel against me, but I have not killed you as I might. I have no intention of hurting you or your father. Now come and help us.’

Her expression remained suspicious, but when he released her hand, she walked to the door. Standing by her knife, she looked back at Baldwin. He nodded, and she picked it up, concealing it in a sheath under her cloak, and led the way outside just as Rob appeared, whistling. His whistle became low and appreciative as he leered at her, and Baldwin was tempted to cuff him as he passed. Instead he heard Sir Richard take a pie.

‘Good choice, lad,’ he bellowed as he munched. ‘Keep them hot by the fire at the Custom House. We won’t be too long.’

When Rob arrived at the Bailiff’s place of work, Stephen was already sitting at his desk and eyeing a set of new figures with a dubious expression on his face. The numbers were very precise, and he distrusted any figures from sailors which were precise. To his mind, that spoke of dishonesty.

‘Bailiff’s off questioning. Says you’re to get on with things,’ Rob said as he placed the pies carefully about the hearth.

‘Good. I shall. And
you
should return to your home and clear it up. I have heard that you leave it in a terrible state. Do you never do any work?’

‘Me?’ Rob demanded indignantly. ‘I’m always working. Look at my hands, almost completely worn away, they are. And all this for next to nothing. I tell you, if I could get on a ship, I’d sail away tomorrow. Any berth would do. I’d be better than most in climbing aloft, you know. And I can—’

‘Clear off home, boy. Get on with your work and leave me to get on with mine!’

‘You? Don’t know what work is, you don’t,’ the boy called derisively as he slipped quickly from the door, leaving it open.

A small gust blew in, lifting the corner of Stephen’s roll,
and he irritably set a pebble on top before rushing to the door and staring down the road at the disappearing back of the servant. ‘Little monster!’ he muttered, and turned back to the chamber.

As he did so, he caught sight of a face in the alley, and felt his heart quicken. It was the man from the gaming room who had made Strete stop. An unremarkable man, short, almost squat, with the complexion and the rolling gait of a sailor, but with a shaven jaw that looked odd.

It was as he peered at the man that he was noticed. The sailor glared at him aggressively as though about to demand what the clerk was so interested in him for, but then he spun on his heel and hurried away.

The clerk slowly closed the door, wondering what had been so odd about the man, and then he realised that the fellow must only recently have been shaved. The flesh of his jaw was pale and smooth.

With that little conundrum settled, he returned to his desk.

Cynegils had passed a miserable night. The floor was damp, unyielding rock, and he had huddled shivering in the corner, wondering what latest misfortune could visit itself upon him.

When the trapdoor above him opened, the light flooding the cell all but blinded him, and he had to cover his face with a hand. There was a rattle and thump, and he saw that the gaoler had let the ladder down into the chamber.

‘Come on up. Apparently you’re free.’

Cynegils remained where he was for some heartbeats.
The idea that he could be sprung loose had been so far from his mind that he found it hard to accommodate it. ‘Me?’

‘GET UP HERE, MAN!’

The raucous tones of the Coroner were not to be ignored. Cynegils groaned as he eased himself upright and hauled himself up the ladder to the chamber above.

‘Father!’ His daughter was there; she had been weeping.

‘I wouldn’t get too close, Edie,’ he said. The stench of the prison was on him, a foul miasma of decay, fear and excrement.

‘Who ordered you here?’ Simon demanded.

‘A knight – Sir Andrew, he called himself, off that ship, the
Gudyer
, in the haven.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He was at the inn last night. They took me in the street at Hardness, and dragged me to the inn, and when he was done he had me brought here.’

‘By what right?’ Simon asked in a low voice.

Cynegils shrugged. He had no idea. A man of his low status was fodder for any powerful man who chose to snare him. They needed no reason.

Baldwin glanced at Simon. ‘This man needs to be away from here. He’s a sailor. If there were a ship with a master who swore to keep him from ale while he was at sea, he should be safer.’

‘You want me to find him a place on a ship?’ Simon asked with some disbelief, staring at the noisome figure before him.

Edith was about to fall to her knees and beg, when she saw the Keeper shoot her a look.

‘I feel sure that he needs all the protection he can find,’ Baldwin said. ‘So do his children. Find him a berth on a ship and pay all the money to this excellent girl. Oh, come on, Simon! There must be a ship somewhere that needs another hand.’

‘Come with us, then,’ Simon said. ‘You can bathe and change your clothes, and then we will ask Stephen what he would recommend.’

‘And
then
,’ Baldwin said grimly, ‘I think we ought to go to this Sir Andrew and enquire by what right he seeks to arrest men here in Clifton and Hardness.’

‘Why are you here?’

The soft voice cut into Hamund’s thoughts as he sat with his back to the
Saint Denis
’s planks. He looked up at the Frenchman’s dark features and sighed. ‘I killed a man who has powerful friends.’

‘All men seem to have powerful
enemies
in this country now.’

‘I fear you are right.’

‘How did it happen?’

Hamund looked away, and his gaze was attracted to the sky. Even there she haunted his thoughts: he could see her sweet face in the clouds. ‘My master died, serving his lord, and that same lord now covets his lands. So, he has ordered my master’s widow to go. He will have her evicted so that he can take possession. The man sent to tell us was a foul, cruel brute, and I was disgusted. So I went to the inn where he was staying, and I killed him.’

‘In an inn?’

‘Yes.’

‘My friend, you have inherited your English race’s talent for subtlety.’

Hamund frowned. ‘You would have stabbed him in the back on the open road, I suppose?’

‘With a man who could do that to the widow of a comrade, I would have challenged him on the road, and I would have killed him,’ Pierre said, but then he grinned. ‘Or perhaps I should have paid another to do it … Footpads are so cheap, I believe, since so many have lost their homes. It would be good to give one of them some real employment.’

Hamund was not inclined to trust this foreigner, and he didn’t know whether the man was speaking with genuine sincerity or was being flippant. ‘Rapists are not usually considered so subtle.’

‘Rapists?’ Pierre’s face hardened in an instant. ‘If I ever meet a man who accuses me of that, I shall castrate him!’

‘You didn’t rape a lady?’

‘On the Gospels, I swear it,’ Pierre said.

‘Then why do they hunt you down?’

‘I loved a lady who was as far above my station as the moon is above the earth!’ Pierre exclaimed, and then his voice dropped. ‘You have loved. You know what it is to love and leave the object of your desire. My lady was honourable, and would not consider leaving her household for fear of the shame. And I would not torture so sweet a creature by remaining. So I thought to leave the country and return to my native land where I may find some peace.’

‘I am sorry. You are in the same position as me, then.’

‘Yes.’

Hamund shook his head slowly and sadly, but then his eyes narrowed. ‘But why are they chasing you? Did they realise you were in love with this lady? You didn’t—’

‘Neither of us committed adultery,’ Pierre said flatly. ‘I would have, but she would not. She is honourable. No, they chase me because I am French, my friend. I think that all Frenchmen will be pursued from the realm before too many weeks have passed.’

‘Our Queen is French.’

‘And that is why the King harries all her countrymen. He despises her, and would see her shamed. He is a cruel man, this King of yours.’

‘Not of mine,’ Hamund said sadly. ‘I have no liege now. I am outlaw.’

Pierre glanced at him, and saw to his surprise that the fellow was weeping with silent despair, the tears trickling steadily down his cheeks. It was an odd sight. Pierre had seen many men cry with pain, or heard them sob with sorrow, but never to his knowledge had he seen a man give himself up to hopelessness in such a manner. For a while he stared, and he became prey to a sudden whirl of thoughts. First loathing and disgust that a man could display such weakness at all, let alone in front of a stranger; then plain contempt. And yet even as he sought to look away he seemed to hear his own lover’s sweet voice and see her thick brown tresses, and he felt the prickling at his own eyes to think that he would never see her again either.

He knew what it was to have lost, just as had Hamund. And as he thought again of his lady, he understood what Hamund must feel. Except Hamund had lost his woman, his
livelihood, his property and his King. He was outlawed and alone in the world.