The Malice of Unnatural Death: (11 page)

‘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 bishop’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!’

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.

‘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.

‘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.

But for all that, the day was clearing nicely, with the grim clouds floating away, and the sun appearing every so often. Hills
in the distance flashed bright in the light, then darkened as clouds drifted past, and from this higher point Simon could
see the shadows washing over the hills like an ink poured over them. It was a thrilling sight, and one that made his heart
leap for joy. No more sea and arguing sailors, no more John Hawley complaining about the amount of customs due on his imports,
no more bickering between his neighbour and his servant …

‘How far is it, then?’

Simon glanced down at the urchin at his stirrup. ‘I will tell you when we are nearly there,’ he grated. Rob was limping. Simon
had insisted on buying boots for Rob before they tried to cross the moor, but the lad’s feet were unused to them, and Simon
had a feeling that he would take them off before long. He saw no need for such things, when he had never worn them before.

‘But how much longer is it?’

Rob was peering ahead, eyes narrowed as the sun came out again, and suddenly Simon appreciated his interest: this was a lad
who had never before travelled more than perhaps three miles from the house in which he had been born. He was a mere child
when it came to experience of the world, and here he was, anticipating a visit to the largest city for hundreds of miles. He might never see such a place ever again. Although he had no comprehension of the distance to Exeter, he was as excited
as a puppy with its first stick at the thought of it – and probably petrified in equal measure.

‘We should be there tomorrow,’ Simon said. ‘It’s a long
walk from here. Perhaps forty or fifty miles? And the ground is not so easy as most of the way from Dartmouth to Tavistock. How are your feet?’

‘This ground’s fine,’ Rob said. ‘But God’s ballocks, that’s a long way to go.’

‘Sooner we get on the sooner we’ll arrive,’ Simon said more curtly, nervously shooting a look at the man who wished to be
abbot.

As if feeling his eye on him, Busse winked at Simon. ‘I can see that a prayer for the easing of profane comments from the
mouths of children could be a good idea.’

Rob frowned, then pulled a face that seemed to indicate that his respect for the monk was not increasing. Not that Simon reckoned
it was because Rob was concerned that he might have offended the monk with his language; it was more that Rob hated being
described as a child.

The messenger had been pulled free of the pile of rubbish and lay face down on the packed earth beside the roadway. When Baldwin
enquired, Coroner de Welles confirmed that he had given the body a cursory inspection. The inquest would be in a day or so
as usual, and the body would be stripped naked and rolled over and over in front of the jury so that they could see and witness
all the wounds. So far, the coroner had merely watched the body being pulled from the rubbish, and briefly glanced at it before
seeking Baldwin, who was kneeling at its side now, examining it carefully.

He looked up at de Welles. ‘Your conclusion?’

‘You can see for yourself. The man had a thong pulled about his throat. Dead fairly quickly, I should think, although it wouldn’t
have been pleasant. He struggled. Look
at the marks on his neck, eh?’

Baldwin peered frowningly at the thin line about the pale, slightly bluish flesh. ‘Yes. But not a simple leather thong. If
you look closely, you can see that there is a weave in the bruise. I should think that this was either a woven leather cord,
or a hempen one. But very fine. Perhaps it could have been either, although if I were the assassin I should aim for leather
as being stronger and safer. I see what you mean about the marks, though.’