King's Gold

CHAPTER EIGHT

Exeter

Many miles to the south, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill walked amidst the din and smoke of the local smithies.

Sir Baldwin was a tall knight, strong in the arm, with a neck thick and muscled from long years of wearing a heavy steel helmet. The neat beard that traced the edge of his jaw had less black in it now, and was thickly salted with white, while the hair on his head was turning grey all over.

His was a face marked by experience. At his cheek was a long scar from the Siege of Acre in the Holy Land, but that was less prominent than the creases that passed over his brow and down at either side of his mouth, showing the pain he had endured in his long life.

He was tired. The last year had seen such unrivalled madness that he was weary to remember it. From the invasion of the Queen and her lover, their swift progress across the kingdom, snapping up towns as they went, the revolt in London, the slaughter of Bishop Walter II of Blessed Memory, the King’s capture, the executions. . All had happened in so short a space of time it was a miracle the realm had not collapsed.

To have forced the King to resign was a deplorable act. Baldwin had done his duty: he had remained at the King’s side through those long weeks when Edward was forced to ride from Bristol ever farther into the Welsh countryside. Not until the day that the King’s party was captured did Baldwin leave him. It was a matter of honour.

But honour was dead. The kingdom had once been God-fearing, with knights who believed in the chivalric ideals of piety and honour. He had himself proved his own religious dedication by joining the pilgrims who sailed to the Holy Land to fight in its defence. The Fall of Acre nearly saw his own death. It was the Templars who rescued him.

In gratitude, Baldwin had joined the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, the Knights Templar, and served them until the dreadful day of Friday, 13 October 1307, when all were arrested by King Philippe IV of France.

The King, who coveted the Templars’ wealth, had set in motion a plot to deprive them of their riches, their properties, and ultimately their lives. He laid at their feet accusations so appalling that all over France, men and women viewed them with horror. The Order was disbanded, the Knights harried and tortured. Baldwin himself escaped, and he made his way gradually to Devon, to his family’s lands, where he had hoped to live peacefully as a rural knight.

Baldwin had been happy here. He had won a reputation as a fair judge of character, and been given the job of Keeper of the King’s Peace, and his life had continued in its orderly manner until the recent civil strife.

Good God, he was tired. The kingdom was in a state of chaos, and men like him — those who were supposed to enforce the King’s Peace — had been overwhelmed with work. In times of trouble, lawlessness increased — which was why he was here, in this place. Sir Baldwin needed a more reliable sword.

In Exeter there were many smiths and armourers of varying quality, but Baldwin knew one man who was capable of producing the very finest work.

Years of swinging heavy hammers had given David Smith’s fingers a grip which rivalled that of the metal he bent and twisted to his will. He had a brown beard shot through with silver, and dark brows hooding suspicious grey eyes. His skin was like old leather, worn and blackened by his work. By nature, he was rude, morose, and prone to flashes of anger. He was also the most expensive of all the smiths in Exeter — and the best.

Until the last summer Baldwin had owned a beautiful sword. Its blade was as blue as a peacock’s feathers, and although moderately short, it had a perfect balance. But during a skirmish at sea, he had lost it and ever since had been forced to rely on a cheap weapon that had all the balance of a sack of turnips. It was high time to replace it.

‘Sir,’ the smith grunted as Baldwin entered his little chamber. He was bent over a curving bar of glowing metal, beating it with his hammer.

‘Master Smith, I hope I find you well?’

‘Well as any man can be when he’s been fleeced by the taxman again,’ David Smith said angrily. ‘They take all our money and then expect us to thank them! Thieving scrotes.’

‘Is my weapon ready?’

‘I said it would be, didn’t I? Have you known me lie before?’

‘Master Smith, I am keen to see it,’ Baldwin said testily. This politeness in response to the gruff smith was wearing, no matter how good the man was.

David Smith gazed at him. ‘You want to take over this?’ he demanded, thrusting his curved metal into the forge. He watched as the metal began to glow, then gradually spit little sparks, before pulling it out and placing it carefully on his anvil once more, this time beating the curve down until it was almost flat again.

Baldwin had seen this process often enough before. Drawing out the metal took an age. Only when the shape was roughly formed would the smith begin to put some definition into his work.

He waited patiently. It was always the same when he came here. David was ever crotchety and difficult — but he could afford to be, knowing he was the best.

‘Look over there, in the wrapping,’ David said at last, thrusting the blank into a quench. The hissing and bubbling was deafening.

Baldwin walked to the table at which the smith had pointed, and found the package. Slowly, with care, he unwrapped the waxed material to reveal a new sword.

He held it joyfully. It was a perfect blue, polished to a mirror-like perfection, with a fuller that ran for some two thirds of the blade. ‘You have created a marvel, David. This is beautiful.’

The smith had joined him, rubbing his hands on the old leather apron that covered the front of his body. It was blackened and scarred in many places, where sparks had caught and flared. The mere sight was enough to make Baldwin feel queasy. In the last days of Acre, when he was young, fires had been started by the Moorish siege engines, hurling boulders and flaming bales designed to cause infernos all over the city. He could recall the screams of people burning. Some ran to rescue those trapped in buildings, and their clothes were pocked and marked like this.

Baldwin swallowed and turned away. Death by fire was hideous.

‘I’ve not had time to finish the surface as I’d have liked,’ David said grimly. ‘I need another few weeks for that.’

Baldwin hefted the sword in his hand. He had ordered this in December, when he first returned to Exeter after the trials of the last year. The smith had made the blade, while an armourer Baldwin knew, who worked with David quite often, had provided the cross and the grip, and had wound the fine leather about the hilts, fitting them together with the sword and then riveting the heavy round pommel in place.

‘This is proof that you are a master of your art.’ Inset into the blade on one side, Baldwin saw the letters picked out in fine gold script: BOAC (Beate Omnipotensque Angeli Christi: Blessed and Omnipotent are the Angels of Christ). On the reverse, in memory of his friends in the Order, he had a small circle, and within it was a Templar cross.

‘Not perfect. I missed a little dint down there — see? I had my apprentice polish it up, and he failed there.’

‘No, I do not see,’ Baldwin said, smiling. ‘You are a man who is determined upon perfection, my friend.’

‘I don’t know why you were in such a hurry for it, anyway,’ the smith complained. He took the sword back and began to wipe a cloth smeared in fat all over it, rubbing quickly, and peering along its length to make sure that it was all uniformly covered. ‘The land should be calming, now we have a new King.’

Baldwin took his sword. He would buy a scabbard from a shop farther along the street. It would be easy to find one that fitted.

‘The land should be calmer,’ he agreed. But as he left the smithy, he knew very well that the kingdom’s troubles were far from over.

The King had been deposed and the Crown had passed on, but although many sought to uphold the succession, even if it was unorthodox, there were others who preferred to make as much profit as they could from the situation. Sir Roger Mortimer, his lover the Queen, and the under-age King Edward III ruling in a three-way council, was no recipe for peace. Baldwin suspected that the realm would suffer more dramatic shocks before long.

He was determined to be prepared for them.