The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25) (9 page)

‘Very well. I shall inform the Bishop and see what he desires,’ Baldwin said.

Cook nodded, then gave a short grin before leaving. It was enough to make Baldwin feel a little unsettled as he walked over
the floor to the door on the opposite side. He had clearly failed to overawe Cook.

Beyond the door was a little chamber which had been set aside for the Bishop’s men. The Bishop of Orange was himself in the
prior’s hall. Baldwin had only been seated a short while
when an anxious-looking monk arrived with the message, asking Baldwin and Simon to go with him to the abbot’s lodgings.

‘What does he want with us?’ Simon grumbled, regretfully eyeing his jug of wine as he stood.

‘He wishes to discuss the murder, I think,’ the monk said.

It didn’t make Simon feel any better about leaving his wine.

Coroner Robert was waiting in the Prior’s hall. The Bishop sat at table, noisily dismembering a chicken and paying the prior
and coroner no attention while the prior introduced them. As Simon said to himself, though, the man hardly spoke any English.
It was no surprise that he was silent.

The Coroner of Canterbury had met enough knights and King’s officers in his time. It was his firm belief that there were only
a few different types. They all fell into one of three categories, and he was perfectly capable of recognising them all. There
were those who were set upon personal aggrandisement, seeking money at the expense of all others; those whose sole ambition
was to have power; and those, a form of reptile like the repellent Despenser, who wanted both at the same time. Coroner Robert
had no time for any of them. Yes, in his experience all men fell into one of the three, and he wondered idly into which category
these two fell.

‘You are a keeper?’ he asked of Baldwin. Hearing the response, he nodded to himself. If he had to bet, this was one of those
who sought power. Clearly the other one, the former bailiff, was after money. You could see that by looking at the two of
them. The better dressed, albeit with the stains and mess of the roads on his clothing, was the former bailiff, while the
knight was quite shabby-looking. He clearly didn’t have any care for fashion. Presumably, the former bailiff was
looking to improve his treasure so he could maintain himself in the style he enjoyed, while the knight was merely power-hungry.

Satisfied with his conclusions, the coroner felt a vague disappointment. It was a common experience for him nowadays. Everyone
could be slotted into one of the three sheaths he had seen. The King was not powerful enough to control the rampant ambitions
of his nobles, and in the free-for-all that was modern politics, everyone was out to grab what they could. Even when the coroner
had, generously, given someone the benefit of the doubt, hoping that the fellow would not fit into the sheath of greed or
power, he had, unfailingly, been disillusioned later. Now he preferred to see the worst from the first moment. It saved trouble
later.

‘You are investigating the three?’ Baldwin said. ‘I am glad to see you take your job so seriously as to come here this late
to investigate, Sir Robert.’

‘We are not so populous that we can afford to lose three men without noticing,’ Sir Robert said sharply.

‘I would not have thought so,’ Baldwin said with a smile. ‘I respect you for your diligence, though.’

‘Thank you. Now, these two who killed them. They are here in the priory?’

‘They will go nowhere.’

The Bishop of Orange’s words were the first the coroner had heard him speak, and he was startled for a moment. Then he bowed
stiffly and thanked him. ‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘But I will have them with me in the morning when I leave.’

‘My Lord Bishop, that is difficult. I have a duty to investigate the deaths of the three outside the city gate, and—’

‘They are my guards. They must leave with me. I am on an urgent embassy to your King, and the guards fall under the
protection of your King. They were set upon and attacked by a small mob. They defended themselves. That is all you need to
know.’

‘With respect, my Lord Bishop, the law of
my
country says that I have to investigate and record the facts. And if I discover that the men were guilty of murder, I have
a duty to have them held until the next court is held to hear their case.’

‘That is not possible. My men answer to me, and I will not have them left behind.’

The coroner’s hackles were rising. ‘My Lord, they must be kept here until my inquest. After that you may –
may
– be permitted to take them with you.’

Baldwin interjected. ‘Coroner, I think that the only issue here is the urgency of our mission to the King. If there is any
means of speeding the inquest, so that it could be held in the morning, would that satisfy your need for justice and the Bishop’s
need for haste? After all, it is to be hoped that the two will not be found guilty of deliberate murder. There was clearly
no premeditation here, nor was it some secretive assault under cover of darkness. It was two nervous men who were assaulted,
just because they were riding to the gate on the orders of the Bishop. The locals deprecated their temerity at hurrying past,
and they tried to defend themselves against apparent attack.’

‘So you say. I do not know until the jury meets.’

‘But it would be possible to hurry the matter along?’

‘Not if there is any risk of an injustice.’

‘If there were,’ Baldwin said gravely, ‘I assure you, I would take a dim view of it.’

Of course you would! Coroner Robert thought to himself. Aloud, he said silkily, ‘And, naturally, you would want to see them
punished if they were found guilty?’

‘Yes. I am Keeper of the King’s Peace in Devon, and I spend my life seeking the fair punishment of those who deserve it.’

Coroner Robert nodded, but he was not persuaded. Sir Baldwin was clearly a man who enjoyed power and the trappings of power.
‘You have been keeper for long?’

‘It will be ten years next year, I think. Is that right, Simon?’

The bailiff nodded.

To the coroner’s eye, the bailiff looked the grimmer, less trustworthy of the two. He had a bleak expression in his sunburned
face, like a man who was constantly waiting to hear an insult so that he may avenge it. There was a bleakness about him that
made the coroner feel wary.

Ten years. There were few keepers who had held their positions for that length of time. Usually their corruption was discovered
much sooner.

‘And you, Coroner? How long have you been in post?’

‘I’ve been here for some six years now.’

Baldwin’s eyebrows rose a little. Then he nodded slowly.

To the coroner’s acute annoyance, it felt as though Sir Baldwin was having the same kind of thoughts about the coroner as
the coroner was having about him. Admittedly, there were some coroners who were venal and unfaithful, but that was no reason
to lump Coroner Robert into the same group. He was an honourable man.

‘What of you, Bailiff?’

‘Me? Well, I’m not really a bailiff any more.’

‘No?’ Ah. No doubt the man had been taking bribes or—

‘I was made the Abbot of Tavistock’s personal representative to the Port of Dartmouth. Now I only hope to become bailiff once
more.’

‘You
hope
? You have lost your post at the port?’

‘It did not suit me. I’m happier away from the sea.’

‘But it must have been a rewarding position.’

‘Fairly, yes.’ His expression darkened as though he resented the coroner’s assumption that this could have had any bearing
on his decision to leave his post.

The prior was clearly growing irritable. ‘Coroner, are you going to discuss the matter or not? If you will not broach it,
I shall.’

‘What subject is that?’ Baldwin demanded.

‘Can I have some wine first, please?’ Simon asked plaintively.

In the guest chamber, the guards ate their food and for the most part did not speak. Why would they? They were not comrades
by friendship, but merely associates who had been thrown together by their service to the Bishop. It did not make for the
refreshing sharing of confidences or the offer of sympathy, Jack of Oxford told himself.

He glanced across at the others as they ate, and winced inwardly. It was very difficult to have any feelings other than contempt
for such fellows – and it was a mark of his own disgrace that he was here in their company.

Those two, André, his head swathed in linen after his wound had been stitched, and Pons, were both sitting a little apart.
They were no different from any of the others, although today they were more reserved. The others were avoiding direct contact
with them, as though they already had the ropes about their necks for their murders.

It was unfair, of course. If he had been there, Jack would have reacted in the same manner, drawing his sword in order to
defend himself, especially if he’d seen someone throwing dung at him. The peasants in a city like this had no respect for
their betters! Still, the pair of them were quiet now, fearing that here in this strange town their bishop might not be able
to protect them. Now, without even the friendship of their peers, they sat solitary and grim-faced, contemplating their fate,
should their master fail to defend them.

These fellows had nothing in common other than their master, and there was nothing to bind them either to him or to each other,
really, except the money which he offered. For his own part, Jack felt no bond to the Bishop. He was not a warmhearted man
who inspired devotion. He was too lawyerly in his manner, looking at anybody as though he was peering at an interesting specimen,
rather than a human.

Most of the men here had been in the service of the Bishop for some years. It was a large household, and life with the Bishop
had great advantages. No man would go hungry living with a bishop. And that was an important consideration – especially after
the dreadful years of famine.

Jack remembered them, all right. All too clearly.

He had been barely eighteen when the rain began in that awful year of 1315, and he had watched as the fields flooded and the
grain rotted on the stems. All the food which they had expected to farm that year was lost, and there wasn’t enough to feed
the people, let alone the animals. Within two years, the herds and flocks had been all but wiped out, and the grain stored
went rotten each winter. Although that was not what Jack remembered most of all. What he remembered most clearly was the sight
of the bodies lying at the side of the road, the peasants who tried to work their lands, only to collapse and die, thin and
racked with hunger, where they fell. It had been a time of misery, of grim, unremitting hell. The devil himself could not
have imagined such scenes.

Jack’s family had been moderately well-to-do at the time.
They had been small farmers, but they were at least free men. His older brother Peter was to inherit their farm on the death
of their father, but when his father died, Peter was already two months dead. And by then Jack had decided that there was
nothing for him there. He packed his bags and left the homestead which had grown hateful to him.

Those days had been appalling. People were dying all over the land, and he had been fortunate to find a fisherman who wanted
help. He had lost his own son, and took Jack on, teaching him how to use the wind and the sea. It was only when the old man
had himself died that Jack had taken his vessel and crossed to France, where he had hoped to find work. But so many were seeking
food, that all were forced at one time or another, to find food in the oldest manner possible. Jack had, too, first by robbing,
and then by killing.

He had never tried to count the dead. In his time he had waylaid and cut the throats of many, he guessed, but at last he had
found salvation. He had been with a small band, trailing after some merchants travelling to a great fair, when he had seen
a woman. She had been walking tiredly by the side of the road, and for some reason he had not indulged his whim with her as
he had so often before, but instead had spoken to her, and learned a little about her. She was a maid to a lord, a kindly
man, in a small manor nearby, he learned. He had stayed there with Anne-Marie for some little while, and when her priest came
to talk to him, Jack had remained, out of affection for her. The few days became a couple of weeks, and then some months,
and gradually he found himself slipping into the old ways of life, helping with the harvest, then with the ploughing and the
sowing, until he suddenly realised he had been there a year.

This and his growing love for Anne-Marie, his love of the vill and the affection he felt for the area, made him offer his
heart to her, and it was only then, when the people realised he wanted to take her for his wife, that the atmosphere changed.
Suddenly he was ostracised, and his lovely little woman would not speak to him. He was foreign. He came from England. They
would not let him have their girl, and she felt the same. She had never meant to lead him to believe that she could love him,
she said. No. Of course not, he told himself cynically. He didn’t believe her, of course. He reckoned she was just saying
what the others in the vill wanted her to say, and so he did what he felt any man might.

He left the same day, bitter, and disillusioned. When he saw a man being attacked in Tours shortly afterwards, he, a natural
fighter, entered the fray himself. It was more than trying to aid a man in need, though. He was seeking the peace that would
come from battle. He allowed his rage to overwhelm him.

It was fortunate that the scruffy, foul little man whom he leapt to help had been the Bishop’s own servant, and soon he was
hired by the Bishop to join his bodyguards. At least, so he reasoned, it was safer for him to be there than to be out in the
open where his rape could be punished.

‘What do you say?’ Prior Henry asked.

Baldwin glanced at Simon. Now that the bailiff had been able to quench his thirst again with a jug of wine, he was feeling
a shade more lively, and the change showed in his face.

It was Simon who shrugged. ‘We would need to see the place where it happened; the body, where he died, anyone who could have
been about at the time, and we’d need to see where the stolen things were kept, of course.’

‘What was stolen?’ Baldwin asked.

Prior Henry looked at the coroner, then sighed. ‘It was a phial of oil A very valuable oil indeed.’

‘Just some oil?’ Simon repeated disbelievingly. ‘You say your monk died for some
oil
?’

‘This was no ordinary oil. You see, many years ago, while St Thomas Becket was in exile in France, he had a vision. He saw
the Virgin Mary come to him. She gave him this oil, and told him to hold on to it until the time of the sixth king after his
own. That would be Edward, our King. But although the oil was there for his coronation, it was not thought … er …
necessary to use it. There were disputes, I believe, about its authenticity. So it was not used for the anointing of the King.
Instead, it was returned here, and placed in the reliquary with St Thomas’s bones. And there it should still be.’