The Outlaws of Ennor: (Knights Templar 16) (44 page)

‘It wasn’t him!’

‘Perhaps not, but I wouldn’t want the islanders to think that someone could kill my gather-reeve and get away with it. I must have a culprit, otherwise the peasants might think that they could rebel with impunity. So your friend will die … unless I find another suitable murderer. Tell me, where were you on the night Robert died?’

‘I was in the sea, as you know.’

‘But I don’t, do I? No, you could have come up on the land a while earlier. So you’d make a convenient victim of island justice, too. Perhaps I should have you arrested as well.’

Simon set his teeth until he thought his jaw would crack, and he held Ranulph’s fixed, stern gaze for some moments. And then, as he was preparing
to turn and walk away, as his mind dwelled on the risk of leaving his back exposed to those two daggers, Ranulph spoke again.

‘So you
will
join me tomorrow, Bailiff. You’ll fight with me to protect this place. And if we find another suitable victim, maybe I’ll let your friend free. Maybe. It’s up to you.’

‘I have
never felt so ridiculous in all my life,’ Baldwin said.

It was not the first time he had said this, and he was aware of the fact, but repetition somehow made him feel a little better. This was a ludicrous position for a knight. Swordless, he felt unprotected, but that was nothing compared to removing his boots and hanging them about his neck, removing his hosen, lifting his tunic and tying the skirts about his waist, and then setting off to walk in the sea at twilight. ‘Are you quite sure of this?’

‘This’ was the path through the waters. Baldwin was stepping timidly through the cool water following William along a sliding pathway that was hidden by waters that came up to Baldwin’s knees. With every step he took, Baldwin could feel the sands shifting beneath him, chill fronds of seaweed tickling at his shins, tiny fishes nibbling at his toes, and the occasional terrifying rasp of … of something else. The feel of sand would give underfoot, and instead he would have the unyielding, rough scrape of moorstone, although the first few times he had sensed it, he had thought it felt like the outer shell of an enormous crab, and even now his feet cringed at each step when he felt the sand move.

‘It is the way that the islanders often use when it is dark,’ William said, happily unaware of Baldwin’s anxiety. ‘But I’d be grateful if you kept this path secret. We don’t want the castellan to learn of it.’

That, Baldwin thought, was an interesting point. ‘Surely he must know already?’

‘Not, um, necessarily,’ William admitted as he placed his foot in the water and shivered. ‘Christ alive! I thought it was warmer at this time of year! No, this pathway is an old route which has sunk for some reason. I’ve been told that this used all to be a part of one big island, and this road was the main path from La Val to Bechiek and
thence St Nicholas, but that it was all washed over by the sea many years ago, and now the roadway is open only at low tide generally. At the lowest times a man could almost walk dry-shod.’

‘If that is the case,’ Baldwin scoffed, ‘the castle must be aware already.’

William sniffed. ‘No. We told them that the sands were treacherous and prone to sucking men in.’

‘You told them that they were quicksands?’

‘There are only twelve men-at-arms who could
want
to know, and all of them were too scared to attempt it,’ William said smugly. ‘There are enough men in the castle who know the truth, but why should they help the greedy bastards who live there? It made sense for us to keep it quiet so that we could get from one place to another, even if the castle men couldn’t. If you lived on an island like this, you’d want to keep some secrets too. Ranulph isn’t a kindly man, Sir Baldwin. No one wants him to learn of the road from Penn Trathen.’

Baldwin shook his head. His feet were gradually losing all feeling, but at least he had lost the conviction that someone a scant hundred yards away was trying to draw a bead on his back with a crossbow. ‘That name is familiar. What does it mean?’

‘Penn Trathen? It means “end of the sand bar” in Cornish. “Trathen” itself is a sand bar. That is how the place got its name, because of this old sunken road.’

Baldwin stopped suddenly. ‘My God! This is where he was when he was killed!’

‘Who?’

‘The tax-gatherer, Robert. He was found here, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, I believe he was,’ William said loftily. ‘But that means nothing.’

‘That is why Tedia mentioned the flats. I suppose ultimately this roadway takes us up to the flats at the south-eastern edge of St Nicholas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course! I was stupid not to have realised before. If Robert
was
murdered here, it was as easy for a man from St Nicholas to kill him as another from Ennor!’

‘I suppose
you’re right.’

‘So it was quite possible for Isok to have come along here and killed Robert. There was no alibi for him. He could have come here, murdered Robert, then gone back to the island and stayed with Mariota. Yes! Yes! Isok is a perfect suspect for the murder. And then he went to kill Luke as well, because Luke was the man who was most active in trying to climb inside his wife’s skirts.’

‘It’s possible, yes. But think of the alternatives: the people here on Ennor all detested him as well,’ William said, slipping slightly as softer sand gave way under his feet. ‘Practically everyone wanted Robert dead!’

‘The fact he was a tax-gatherer is not sufficient excuse to see him dead, surely? If that were the case, we should expect murdered tax officials to be found daily. No, there must have been another motive behind his death.’

‘If you say so. For my part, I still believe that Thomas is the obvious culprit.’

Baldwin scarcely heard him. ‘Another man with a good reason to want to kill him … or a woman, of course.’

Mariota could have had the opportunity – and where was David at the time of Robert’s death? He said he was at his boat, but that might have been a lie; he could have been out here on the sands. Was William right, that only the people from St Nicholas and a few from Ennor knew of the route through this sand? That would make sense to Baldwin, if only because Robert had been planning to see Tedia, yet had not taken a boat. He had instead gone to Penn Trathen, the end of the bar. There he had waited, perhaps for his woman to come and take him away. Maybe he was standing there at the end of the bar, excited, convinced that he was about to be given the reward for his gentle wooing of Tedia, only to be confronted by her husband.

No. That bucket would not hold water. If Robert had been there waiting, he would surely have noticed that the figure heading towards him from the sea was not his beloved. He would have seen that it was the figure of a man. He’d have stood, protected himself. If he saw Isok, he’d have known he was in danger. Of course, if the figure was that of a woman who hated Robert enough herself to kill him, he
wouldn’t see the need for defence. Or, and this was possible, Robert had no idea that there was any route over the water, and therefore waited with his breath stopped in his lungs, keenly watching over the dunes. If he had, though, surely he would have heard the splashing of a figure through the waves as the murderer appeared and rushed forwards to strike him down?

No! That was surely wrong. The man was there with his boots off and his hosen too. Surely that showed that he knew there was a secret route …

There was another possibility, that Robert’s killer had chosen to attack him not because of his affair, but because he hated some other aspect of the man’s behaviour. His affair with a woman from St Nicholas was perhaps known to only a few, no matter what David had said. Yes, David had told Isok, but then, if David was the murderer, wouldn’t he have done just that, providing a perfect suspect to deflect all attention from himself?

Another thought came to him. If Robert was preparing to make his way over the bar, someone could have crept up on him when he was about to set off. Then the murderer could have been another man from Ennor. His motive? Taking over Robert’s job after his death?

They had covered more than half of the distance now, when Baldwin saw William turn eastwards and move off in a new direction. ‘Where are you going, Father?’ he asked.

‘This bar is not so certain as all that, Sir Knight! It doesn’t go in a straight line like an arrow. It goes this way now, to Bechiek, and when we arrive there, we have to take a new route from there to St Nicholas. It’s not so far.’

Baldwin slouched along behind him, loathing the feel of the water. It was all too much a reminder of his near death after the storm, and he was shocked, when he turned, to see how far from solid land he was already. The hills of Ennor were a large mass far behind him, and he could see the white lengths of the wave-tops rolling gently to the shores. He had to steel himself to continue, rather than running back to Ennor. Panic gripped him, and he walked more slowly and cautiously.

They
were heading towards a small rock that jutted up ahead of them. When they got nearer, Baldwin saw that it was a sea-washed lump of some black rock, splashed with a white covering of birds’ excrement. It had an unnatural appearance, to Baldwin’s heightened alarm, like a rock that had been set here as a marker, and suddenly he stopped dead, seeing a head rise from the depths.

‘Jesus, Mary and all the saints!’ he blurted with shock and fear. ‘It’s the woman, the
lady
!’

William followed his pointing finger and chuckled. ‘That’s no lady, Sir Baldwin – it’s a seal. Good eating on them. Catch the pups when they’re young, and you have a pelt fit for a king, too. They’ll keep the coldest winter from you. Now, come along.’

Baldwin moved off after him, but he couldn’t help glancing back at the head in the water. It was so like the old tales of Arthur’s death, with the ghostly woman’s hand rising from the depths to take Excalibur back until Arthur should need it again, that he felt a shudder pass down his spine. That must be why the island on which Luke was found was called Arthur, he told himself. Because someone had seen this place, and knew the tale of Arthur. There was certainly an otherworldly atmosphere here. It had the feeling of death and old pains.

He was relieved to reach Bechiek as darkness began to fall. Then his relief turned to grim resolution when William smiled, and said, ‘Right! Only a short step to St Nicholas now.’

In the castle, Ranulph sat thinking long and hard, his daggers thudding into the door with monotonous regularity. He finally came to a decision. Shouting for his steward, he told him to bring Walerand to him.

‘You want to be the gather-reeve now Robert’s nailed, don’t you?’ he began.

‘If I can! I’ll be a better rent collector than him any day.’

‘If you’re serious, I have a job for you.’

‘Anything, master.’

Ranulph held up a key. ‘See this? It’s the key to the shed down at the harbour. I want you to go in there when all’s quiet and the castle’s asleep
and count the tuns of wine – all of them, mind. Then come back to me tomorrow morning and tell me what’s in there.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t look so surprised, lad. Do you know why I want to know?’

‘No.’

‘Good. See to it that you stay ignorant until I explain it all to you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Walerand? Don’t screw up. If you are found down there and Thomas hears of it, I’ll accuse you of stealing my wine.’

Simon made his way through the hall to the bench he had started to look on as his own, but when he reached it, he saw that another had already taken it and was snoring like a peasant after a particularly good harvest. From a short look at him, Simon was quite sure that he would not be able to reason sweetly with the man, if he could wake him at all. Instead, he reached under the bench and rescued Robert’s sword.

Already up and down the hall there were men snoring fit to raise the dead at St Nicholas’s graveyard, and Simon, glancing about him, wondered where on earth Hamo had gone for his own sleep. The young fellow must be exhausted, being so young, he thought, then told himself not to be so foolish. Hamo was a sailor, as his language proved, and he was more than capable of staying awake through the night or collapsing at noon and snatching half an hour’s sleep.

Not yet ready to copy the man on his bench, Simon went to the cross passage and out into the yard. Here he saw that the moon was quite full, and he stood for a while staring up at it.

It was painfully beautiful. The stars shone with a particular clarity, and the breeze was cool but fresh with an odour of kelp from the pits not far from the shoreline. It may have been a long way away, but the smell was distinct even up here.

‘Bailiff?’ Hamo slipped around the corner of the hall, his eyes large and nervous in the flickering light of a torch over at the stables opposite. ‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

Simon had that guilty feeling again. The cabin-boy was plainly sad and anxious. He had no family to speak of; his only reliable
relation had been his master on the
Anne
, but now Gervase was gone too. The lad had no one to rely on, apart from Simon. It made Simon feel bad to think of what he was going to ask him to do.

‘Did you get some …’ he began.

‘Yes,’ Hamo said, holding up a small flask. ‘Here’s the burned wine you asked for.’