The Malice of Unnatural Death: (14 page)

Baldwin shot a look about them, and then rapped smartly on the timbers of the door. They were all mis-sized, fitted together
inexpertly, and would provide little defence against the elements. Just standing outside here, Baldwin was aware of the wind
that whipped along the line of the wall from the quay over to the east, and straight over as though using the wall as its
own roadway.

‘Piss off!’

The
coroner turned and looked at Baldwin. There was an expression of mild pain on his face. Then he closed his eyes for a moment,
and Baldwin was about to knock again and call out his title, when the sound of the Coroner’s deep intake of breath warned
him, and he took a quick pace backwards.

‘
Hoi! You festering piece of dog’s turd,
OPEN THIS DOOR IN THE NAME OF THE KING!
’

In what was for him a whisper, the coroner added for Baldwin’s benefit, ‘I tend to find that voice works with reluctant witnesses.’

Baldwin was not surprised. Nor was he surprised when a few moments later he saw an eye appear in one of the cracks, an anxious
eye that stared at him for a short while. Shortly thereafter there was the sound of a wooden beam being lifted from its rests,
and the door was opened, scraping over the dirt and making an arc in the soil of the floor.

Entering behind the coroner, Baldwin found himself in a small, noisome dwelling, with a mess of dirt on the floor, a single
small table and stool, and a filthy palliasse. The smell was a mix of damp dog, urine, and sweat, all mingled in an unwholesome
fug. There being no window, the only light came from the doorway through which they had just entered, and in it Baldwin could
see that the whole of the rear wall was red sandstone like the rest of the city wall, although here it was streaked with green
where water was leaking at the junction of the roof and the wall itself. The water puddled at the base of the wall, making
the floor perpetually damp through the winter. Perhaps in consequence, because it would have been difficult to light a fire
and keep it going, instead the watchman made use of a charcoal brazier for his heating. There was one small
cauldron for heating water and perhaps making a pottage, but apart from that Baldwin assumed that Will Skinner ate at a pie
shop or bought an occasional loaf of bread. There was no sign of any cooking.

‘You remember me from this morning?’ the coroner said, and in the small room it sounded like a bellow.

‘You are the coroner,’ the small man said, and he almost shivered as he spoke. It was plain to Baldwin that the fellow was
entirely unused to being questioned by men of such standing, and he didn’t enjoy it. He had been asleep, from the look of
his bleary eyes.

‘What do you want with my man, then, eh? You going to try to have him arrested?’

Baldwin and the coroner spun about to find themselves confronted by a woman. In age, she could have been anything from forty
to seventy. Her face was dreadfully scarred, and she was bent like an old crone, but Baldwin had seen a woman like that before
– the survivor of a siege who had been engulfed by flames in a final assault.

‘Mistress, you are this man’s wife?’ he asked.

She peered up at him, turning her head sideways to accommodate her bent spine. ‘You guess well, master.’

From nearer, he could feel sympathy for her. Lank hair straggled at either side of a long, thin face pinched with the grief
that was reflected in the eyes. Intelligent, they were red-raw with weeping, and Baldwin had the impression of paleness, as
though all the crying had washed the colour from them. She was an aged peasant woman in shabby clothing, and clearly pain
and she were long-standing companions.

‘Woman, I am the coroner, and I would speak to him. Pray sit and don’t interrupt,’ Sir Richard said.

To
Baldwin’s surprise she made no protest, but walked over and sat down on the stool, one arm on the table while she turned and
listened to the men talking.

‘Now, fellow. This friend of mine here is the Keeper of the King’s Peace, and he has some questions for you. So listen and
answer honestly. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Baldwin was tempted to suggest that they leave the hovel and speak outside, but even as he considered the suggestion there
was a rattling, like gravel thrown at a wall, and when he glanced out he saw that there was a sudden shower of hail. Steeling
himself, he faced Will Skinner.

‘The man you found out there. You found him because there was a hog there?’

‘Yes, it was chewing at something, and I saw the blue and thought to myself that it looked like cloth. So I chased the brute
away, and saw this fellow’s arm. I thought, “That’s not right,” and pulled at it, and there was the man. So I raised the hue
and cry.’

‘Very good. Did you recognise the man? Have you ever seen him before?’

‘Not likely, sir. I’m the night watchman for this area. He’s not the sort of man I’d expect to see down here at night. It’s
drunks or men wanting the stews I tend to see. During the day, I try to sleep,’ he added with a sidelong glance at the coroner.

‘So do I, my man!’ Coroner de Welles said, and laughed long and hard.

‘In the time while you were raising the hue and cry, did you leave the body alone? Could someone have got to it and searched
it?’ Baldwin wondered.

‘You mean, have a look in his pouch? No, I don’t think
so. When I found him, I pulled his arm free, and tugged hard enough to know that the whole body was there. Soon as I felt
that, I stopped pulling, and left him instead. If anyone had tried to get into his pouch, they’d have had to clear all the
muck away from him. No one had, though. When I got back, he was still just as covered in stuff as when I left him.’

‘Was he absolutely cold when you found him?’

‘Yes. Stone cold. But it gets cold here at night.’

Baldwin nodded, his eyes going to the brazier. ‘Do you keep that going all night, then? Somewhere you know you can come to
get a warm-up when you need it through the dark hours?’

‘Well, yes. There’s nothing to say that a watchman has to freeze,’ Will said truculently.

‘No, I was merely wondering how long you have to spend on your patrol, and how long back here indoors to warm up again. It
could have a bearing on when the man was killed.’

‘I …’

‘Because it is mightily unlikely that he was murdered and dumped in that pile of rubbish during the day, isn’t it, Will?’
the coroner added.

‘Why?’

‘Because, my fellow, the
damn roadway is full of people during the day
, isn’t it?’ the coroner explained testily. ‘How could someone walk round there and happily throttle a man in broad daylight?’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, “Oh”, as you say. So how much time do you spend outside compared with inside?’

Baldwin was struck by the man’s evident nervousness as the questioning continued. He was not the kind of man to
impress as a reliable witness.

‘I don’t spend much time indoors – I would lose my position if the city’s receiver thought I wasn’t doing my job.’

Baldwin wondered if that might be a cause of his nervousness: the simple fear of being thrown out from a job like this. It
might not be lucrative – judging from how the man lived it could scarcely be less so! – but nor was it strenuous, and the
man had an easy enough time of it. ‘We will not discuss your strengths or otherwise with the mayor or his men,’ he said briefly.

‘Well, perhaps I do take some breaks when the weather really is bad. Last night it was so cold, I had to keep warming myself
at the brazier. Few nights ago, some men had lit a fire in the street near the bishop’s palace gate, but there was nothing
yesterday, and by the time I’d walked up there I was perished.’

‘What area do you cover from here?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Oh, I’m supposed to walk from here up South Gate Street, then up along the lane towards the Bear Gate, before turning back
towards here again, coming down to the Palace Gate, straight on south to the wall, then up the alleys between the Bear and Palace gates. Sometimes I go the other way about, for the variety.’

‘So, you would occasionally have to come back here after walking the circuit. I suppose when it was that cold, other people
would hardly be about much anyway, would they?’ Baldwin said. It was clear enough what the man was up to. He’d walk around
the perimeter of his patch, then stop back at his hovel to warm himself and forget about criss-crossing the smaller alleys
and lanes.

‘No one in his right mind would be out on a night like last! It was terrible. All the puddles had frozen. God’s teeth!

This
morning when I tried to break the ice in my bucket, I couldn’t: the water was frozen right to the bottom!’

‘So a sensible man would have spent much more time indoors, then,’ Baldwin said. ‘I suppose that you saw absolutely no one
while you were supposed to be walking your rounds.’

It was there: a not-so-subtle shift in the man’s stance, and then his head dropped a little, and his eyes moved away.

‘In the night, you sometimes see shadows and imagine a man, I suppose.’

‘That doesn’t answer the keeper’s question,’ Coroner Richard pointed out forcefully.

‘Did you see someone?’ Baldwin pressed him.

The watchman shook his head hopelessly, and Baldwin suddenly realised that this was the aspect that had made the man so nervous:
it was nothing to do with the fact of being indoors when he should have been walking his territory, it was something else
– a man he had seen while out on his walks.

‘Who was it, man?’ Coroner Richard demanded. ‘It’ll all come out in the end, but the fact that you forgot to mention it before
won’t look good unless you make up for your forgetfulness now, and
quickly
!’

‘When you’re out, you can imagine things, yes? I wasn’t sure if I saw anyone at all. It was a shadow, that’s all. Just a moving
shadow in the moonlight. There was only a brief glimpse …’

‘Where was this “brief glimpse”?’ Baldwin asked patiently, but with a hint of steel in his voice.

The man sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘I was up past Palace Gate, walking down this way again,
and it was towards the middle of the night. I know because of the cathedral bells. They were tolling for Matins when I saw
it, so it must have been …’

‘Get on with it,’ the coroner growled.

‘Well, I was past the entrance to the little alley, the second after South Gate Street, when I saw something down in the alley. I looked down it, because I wasn’t sure I’d seen anything, holding my torch up high, and I was almost sure that there was
a flash of paleness.’

‘What does that mean?’ Coroner Richard snapped. ‘Be precise, man!’

‘I thought it meant that there was man down there, that I’d seen his face,’ the fearful watchman explained. ‘My torch could
light quite some few yards well enough, especially with the moon’s light falling down in the alley too. I thought it was a
man in dark clothing.’

‘But you didn’t go down the lane to check?’ the coroner said accusingly.

‘That was it: I did! I was really scared, sir, but I did go in. And I thought I saw a man, but then he disappeared, and when I got there, there was nothing. Only …’

‘
Spit it out
, man, in God’s name!’ de Welles blurted.

‘There was a cat. A black cat. It yowled at me as I approached, and I almost stained my hosen at the sudden noise. Christ
alive! If you could have heard that sound down that alley!’

‘I have heard cats before,’ Baldwin said wearily. ‘In many alleys. Even, occasionally, in houses. You were startled, then?’

‘Startled? I was terrified, sir! I had seen a man, and now he’d gone and here was this cat! I tell you, I turned and fled
the place!’

‘Because
of a cat?’ Baldwin asked scathingly.

‘There are some say …’

‘Yes, yes,’ Baldwin said impatiently, ‘sorcerers!’

Will didn’t meet his eye. ‘Necromancers can change themselves into cats,’ he agreed.

He
had seen her. God in heaven, but she was beautiful! Her face was like the Madonna’s, and her gentle gait was enough to make
a man sigh for jealousy that another could possess such perfection.

She hadn’t seen
him
, of course. He couldn’t let her. Not yet. Better that he wait around here and observe. With a caution that was entirely unnatural,
and yet he was learning to use most cunningly and quickly, he set off after her, his long legs covering the ground easily.

Her path was leading straight along the High Street towards the Carfoix. He allowed her to move on a little, and then he gave
her some moments to continue while he apparently lounged idly, all the while watching the people hurrying about. He looked
at faces, wondering whether here there was someone who was taking too much interest in him or not.

No. All appeared safe. He quickly set off again.

It would be easy to overtake her whenever he wanted. All he needed was for the streets to become a little quieter and then
he’d have her.

It was
enough to make him weep with despair when they came to tell him that his master was dead.

Robert le Mareschal had taken his life in his hands when he finally submitted to the voice in his head that told him to confess
his crimes, praying to be treated leniently for attempting to rectify his earlier errors.

He had gone to the Sheriff of Warwick, Simon Croyser, and told the whole story. How he and his master had been approached
by twenty-five men of Coventry, how they had offered John of Nottingham twenty whole pounds sterling, offered Robert himself
another fifteen. A fortune! And for it, they were to use their skills to assassinate the king, his friends Sir Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, Sir Hugh le Despenser his son, Henry Irreys, the Prior of Coventry, the prior’s cellarer, and Nicholas Crumpe, the prior’s steward. And they had chosen the poor Sir Richard de Sowe as well, for a trial of their skills.

It was the sight of de Sowe’s petrified expression that had persuaded him in the end. The man had done nothing to harm John
of Nottingham or Robert, but John and the others had picked him to be the test of their abilities. If they could kill Sir Richard de Sowe, they would have a proof of their strength. That was their reasoning.