The Malice of Unnatural Death: (51 page)

He didn’t answer. The necromancer had to be here somewhere. Not in with the congregation, not if he was going to strike right
now … and he
had
to strike now. It was the only thing that made sense, attacking during this special celebration.

There!

It
was a fleeting glimpse of blackness up at the top of the wall, where the new construction joined the older section of the
building. A flash of black clerical cloth, nothing more, and it was that very movement that told him he was right. Any other
man would have stood still and watched the service. Only a man seeking concealment would disappear like that.

‘He’s there.’

Baldwin saw Robinet start to move towards the rear of the church, his eyes fixed skywards, and he turned to stare up, wondering
what the retired king’s man had seen.

‘Simon!’

‘I see him!’

The two pushed through the laity towards the back, but even as they moved they heard the door open and the steady tramping
of the coroner’s feet, the petrified girl bound at his side, his hand on her arm to stop her bolting. Immediately attention
was diverted, and people craned their necks to see what was happening, some few, who were better informed, telling others
that this was the mad girl who’d killed that servant over near the West Gate.

‘Come on, Simon,’ Baldwin muttered as he shoved people from his path. Then, at the rear, he found a clearing, and he hurried
over it. At the back of the church there was a ladder set up, and he came to it just as the girl was dragged to the altar. Baldwin cast a look over his shoulder, then began to climb. Reluctantly: he hated heights.

It was fortunate that the ladder was only propped up against a lower section of the wall. While it looked high enough to Baldwin,
and set his heart racing, there was a
dread emptiness in his stomach as he looked overhead and saw how much higher the walls climbed.

‘Come on, then!’ Simon said enthusiastically as he reached Baldwin.

‘Yes. Yes.’ Baldwin gathered his thoughts and his courage and took a deep breath before gritting his teeth and making his
way along the wall to another ladder. This one took them up to another level, and now Baldwin did not dare to look down. The
sound of singing and prayer came to him, but only dimly, because there was an unpleasant rushing sound in his ears. He heard
a wailing cry, and it distracted him long enough to make him glance in its direction. There, before the altar, he saw Jen
kneeling while the bishop set his hands upon her head, the coroner nearby, his head bowed, but his eyes fixed on the child.

Turning away quickly, swallowing, Baldwin continued. There ahead he could see the king’s man, and now he searched about for
any sign of their quarry.

Up here, the walls were a mass of confusing blocks of stone. There was a great scaffold erected, with good poplar boughs lashed
together, but the uneven nature of the building work made it difficult to see. The man could be anywhere along here, only
a matter of feet away, and Baldwin would not spot him.

But then he did. He saw a sandalled foot between two lumps of rock. John of Nottingham was the other side of them, sitting
in a vantage point where no one could see him, but from where he could see all that was going on below.

Baldwin signalled to Simon, and began to creep nearer.

It was perfect up here. John of Nottingham smiled to himself as he drew out the figure and gazed at it, wiping the brow
smooth with a rough thumb. Down below, there was a sudden hiss and rush as all the congregation bowed their heads and pulled
off hats or drew back their hoods, and the bishop lifted his hands high overhead with the host, praying.

John took the small antler pin from his purse and waited a moment, then set it at the figure’s temple. He peered down again,
and slowly pushed it into the waxen head.

At first he would have said that nothing appeared to happen. The bishop continued his prayer loudly, unfalteringly, and with
determination, but then, as John pushed the pin all the way in, and felt the point at the far side of the skull, he was sure
that he saw the bishop stumble over a few words. The host was set down on the table, and the bishop shook his head. Yes! It
was working.

The efficacy was proved. He took out the pin, and held it over the figure’s heart. Uttering a prayer of his own for the success
of his effort, he was about to push it in when there was a scrape of rubble behind him. It urged him on, and the pin had just
begun to penetrate the breast when a bright blue steel blade appeared in front of him. It flicked, and the pin was jerked
from his hand, to whirl over and over, away from him, down to the floor.

‘
No-o-o!
’

‘Keep still, man, or you’ll be joining it,’ Baldwin said. ‘Come round here, and don’t be foolish.’

John was staring down in dismay. There was nothing on him. Nothing at all – not even a little knife to stab at the thing in
his hands. Yet he must … he took the figure in his hands, and slammed it down on the edge of the wall in front of him. The head was dented badly. He did it again, and the head snapped off, falling to bounce on the floor of the cathedral.

‘There!’

Ivo
was behind Robinet when they both heard the voices behind them. Robinet stared, and then his brow cleared as he saw how he
had walked past John without seeing him. He started off in a hurry, and almost knocked Ivo down as he hurtled along the wall
to where John knelt, smiling up at Baldwin.

‘Well done, Sir Baldwin. Where are the other dolls, though?’

Baldwin reached round the stone and gripped John’s tunic. Pulling hard, he half pulled, half lifted the older man back to
the more solid base of the cathedral wall. ‘Where are they, John? You
are
John of Nottingham?’

‘Yes. I am John, but I see no reason to help you. The others will be destroyed in time. You cannot stop me and my friends.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think! Because of the injustice daily perpetrated by those miserable bastards. The king was a supposititious child. You only have to look at his unnatural activities to see that! Look at his lovers. Forsaking his own wife he consorts with
hedgers and ditchers, dancers and play-actors! And then he gives up the riches of this sovereign realm to his advisers the Despensers, and richly rewards the thieves. And asks your Bishop Stapledon to spy on the queen. Did you know that?’

‘Enough! Come on, you’re coming down with us. You have many questions to answer,’ Baldwin said.

‘Oh, yes.’ John stared at him, a thin, gaunt man with a face like a skull. Baldwin could feel the strength of the man’s intelligence
as he met that firm gaze. It was almost as
though John was trying to work upon Baldwin silently, by the power of his thoughts. It was alarming to see how he strained,
as though by the mere exercise of will he could force Baldwin to change his mind and release him. A vein throbbed in his temple,
and he brought his head down slightly, as though to add to the intensity of his stare.

It made Baldwin smile to see it. ‘You may as well relax your overworked features, John. I do not succumb to witchcraft.’

They reached the ladder in short order, and Simon, knowing how Baldwin felt about heights, volunteered to climb down it first. He went, and when he was almost at the bottom, Baldwin and Ivo pushed the sorcerer towards it, Baldwin sheathing his sword
ready for his own descent.

Suddenly John spun round, his fist catching Ivo full in the face. The watchman fell back, and would have toppled over the
edge but for the attention of Robinet, who caught him and whirled him round, using his weight to pull him back towards the
safety of the wall. Baldwin saw it, and his hand was on his sword-handle, but before he could reach it he felt something whip
round his neck. It was a fine cord or thong, and on one end was fixed a small lead weight, so that it encircled his throat. Immediately John grabbed the second end and started to pull tight, strangling Baldwin.

If he had done that from behind, Baldwin would have been fearful for his life, but as it was, he took hold of John’s hands
and forced the older man to loosen his grip. Crossing John’s wrists, he lifted them until the cord was over his head. ‘It’s
too late for that.’

John responded by dropping the thong and grabbing at Baldwin’s belt. The old man was astonishingly powerful for
one so frail and thin, and he wrestled Baldwin towards the edge of the wall.

‘
Baldwin!
’ he heard Simon shout, but he had his mind on other things. He threw himself bodily backwards to the wall, striking his head
on a stone, and suddenly he felt a great lassitude overwhelming him. There was a roaring in his ears, and his head was swollen,
so he thought, to double or more its usual size. He was aware of being dragged a little, and then he realised that John had
thrown himself over the edge of the wall, and his weight was pulling Baldwin towards the abyss.

‘No!’ he roared, scrabbling with his feet for any purchase, but they were already over the edge. There was nothing for them
to grip. His hands were scratched as he tried to cling to the bare rocks, but the new dressing was so precise that he could
gain no hold. Inexorably he felt himself sliding towards the edge and certain death on the floor below.

And then he saw Robinet at his side. Robinet drew Baldwin’s sword and hacked down. There was a short scream, and Baldwin glanced
down to see the bloody stump of John’s left forearm waving, blood flicking in an obscene fountain. Still clinging to Baldwin’s
belt with his right hand, John stared up, and saw Robinet. ‘Tell Matthew I shall see him with you in hell!’

The sword flashed down again. There was a spurt of blood that sprayed up and over Baldwin’s face, then a hideous, damp sound.

The
bishop felt his headache begin to reduce as he sipped his wine. ‘It was most peculiar,’ he admitted.

Baldwin could say nothing to that. He was still only too aware of the great height from which he had nearly fallen. When he
had reached the ground eventually, which had taken him some time, the ladder did bounce so, he had been confronted with the
body of John of Nottingham, a tortured figure, oddly shrunken. At first Baldwin thought it was his headache and the sensation
of sickness. Only later did he see that the man’s leg bones had been thrust upward until they protruded from his torso, so
immense had been the violence of his fall. It was Ivo who pulled the two hands from Baldwin’s belt and threw them after their
owner. Now the groin of his tunic was damp from the spurting blood as they had parted from John’s body.

‘Are you quite well, Baldwin?’ Simon asked kindly.

‘Yes, old friend. I am well enough.’

They were all in the bishop’s hall: Baldwin and Simon, the coroner, and Baldwin’s saviour. Baldwin had also asked Langatre
to come to speak to them.

‘So can you tell me what this was actually all about?’ Bishop Stapledon asked.

‘I
think that it is quite clear,’ Baldwin said. ‘We know already that there was the assassination attempt in Coventry, when this John of Nottingham tried to make seven wax figures with a view to killing a number of men – among them the king, the Abbot
of Coventry, a man called de Sowe and others. He succeeded in one killing, but then his assistant caught a fit of fear, and
reported the matter to the sheriff. The sheriff tried to catch all those accused, but there were twenty-seven of them, and
perhaps one escaped. John. He gradually made his way here, and found himself refuge in the city, where he managed to find
a man who was inclined to help him. This Michael. Perhaps he knew what John intended, but it is possible he did not. Although I can quite see that it would look curious to any man to see how people died when John was near, it is possible that John
had a control over Michael’s mind. He was very strong-willed.’

‘You mean that he did have some powers over others?’

‘He tried it on me. At the time I thought he was trying to force me to release him so he could escape, but maybe I was wrong. It is possible he was bending me to his will without my knowledge, and that I was the unwitting associate in his last plot
– to kill me as well as himself. If he had succeeded, he might have killed Simon too.’

‘Why did he kill the messenger and take the message?’

Baldwin made a vague gesture with his hand. He still felt enormously weak after the near-death on the wall. Answering what
seemed to him to be fatuous questions was hardly relaxing. ‘He saw the messenger, and he recognised him, I expect. You yourself
told us, I think, that the messenger had brought news of the attempt in Coventry. It is quite possible that in a city the
size of Coventry a messenger would be a not common sight. Perhaps John saw James there, then saw
him here, and feared that he was about to be arrested again. He killed the messenger to empty his purse, found the note from
you and kept it.’

‘Why?’

‘I think Master Langatre is in a better position to answer than I.’

‘Most magic, Bishop, relies on the use of God’s own power and authority, as you know. But when there is some evil to be done,
a magician would need more. He would need to have some tokens to give added force to his work. For him to harm you, he would
have had to have taken some part of you – parings from your nails, perhaps, or some hair. Or, so I would think, an example
of your writing on parchment. Such as your writing on the note in the messenger’s purse.’

‘So what happened to it?’

In answer, Langatre picked up the figure from the table on which it lay. Simon had pressed the head back on to the neck, but
now Langatre pulled it off again, and pushed his finger down into the body. ‘Aha!’ He pulled out a little roll of parchment.
‘Is this it?’

The bishop tried not to appear too eager as he took it and unrolled it. With an expression of intense satisfaction, he rerolled
it and put it into his purse. ‘And the fingers?’

‘Twofold purpose to that,’ Baldwin said shortly. ‘One: to provide human flesh which would perhaps aid him in some magic later;
or, two: to torture poor James to learn whether or not he had been sent here with news of John. And, of course, once he was
sure that he was safe, he could not permit the messenger to live, or James would have gone straight to the sheriff and told
him all about John. So he died.’