No Law in the Land

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nymet Traci

‘What about the maid, Father?’

‘Oh, the wandering son returns, eh?’ Sir Robert said. He was standing with Osbert near the stables.

Basil was clad in parti-coloured tunic and hose, the tunic tight over a linen chemise. He swaggered to the horses and patted a neck. ‘You’ve been riding them hard, Father.’

‘We were in a hurry. You know I like a good gallop of a morning.’

‘Oh, aye. This wench, anyway?’

Sir Robert clapped his son on the back. ‘You were gone a long time, boy.’

‘I was busy.’

‘Where, my son?’

Osbert watched impassively as Sir Robert took hold of his son’s neck.

‘Father, that is painful.’

‘I am glad. I meant it to be.’

‘I want you to let me go, Father.’

‘Where were you?’

‘With a maid in Bow.’

‘The whore in the tavern?’

‘No, a maid from a farm. She pleases me.’

‘She doesn’t please me,’ Sir Robert said.

‘What of that? I do not offer her to share with you.’

‘I would have you leave her alone. I expected you to be here last evening with Osbert.’

‘He is boring company, Father. Whereas my friend is more amusing.’

‘You will return when I order in future, son,’ Sir Robert said.

‘That hurts!’

‘It is meant to.’

‘Let go, Father!’

‘This is my castle, boy, and I give the orders here.’

‘Very well!’

‘One of my men said that you’d gone to our guest and offered to sheath yourself in her. Is that right?’

‘She’s only a little slut …’

‘You cretin!’

Osbert saw the dagger suddenly drawn, and as soon as it was clear of the sheath, his hand snapped out sharply and grabbed Basil’s wrist. He twisted and pressed with his thumb into the hollow of Basil’s wrist, and the dagger fell to the floor. Osbert placed his foot on top to keep it safe.

‘So you were plaguing the girl?’ Sir Robert asked.

‘I went to see that she was well, that’s all.’

‘I do not want you there, boy.’

‘Yes. And I want to see her.’

‘I wasn’t clear enough, obviously. When I said I didn’t want you annoying her, what I meant was, I want you to leave her alone. And I still want you to leave her alone. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, and one other thing, boy. If I ever see you draw a knife on me again, I will personally break your arm. Don’t try it again. Is that all right?’

Basil said nothing, but watched with a baleful eye as his father walked away.

Osbert said nothing, but remained with his foot on Basil’s knife.

‘Get your foot off it. It’s mine.’

‘Of course. Your father won’t want it to remain in the dirt, will he?’ Osbert said, stepping away as he released it. He eyed Basil as the boy bent and took it up, and the two men stood for a few moments, Basil with the dagger in his hand, balanced, while Osbert remained seemingly relaxed. But neither was. Both knew that at any moment there could be a sudden flare of death.

It was Basil who broke the spell of the moment. He gave a short laugh, tossed the knife up and caught it, then thrust it into its sheath again. ‘It’d be unkind to kill someone as old as you. Where’s the honour in slaying an old man?’

Osbert smiled at the thought. ‘I feel honoured you can think in such terms. You are too kind to me.’

Basil saw his grin, and his own smile faded in an instant. He slapped the hilt of his sword, spun on his heel and marched away.

Road near Copplestone

They had passed through Crediton and were approaching Copplestone when Edgar cleared his throat.

‘Sir Baldwin, I am concerned as to why that man would take Mistress Edith.’

‘A young woman like her? There is likely only the one reason, Edgar. You appreciate that well enough.’

Edgar ignored the reminder of his womanising past. ‘But we are both aware of this man Wattere. We know what sort of person he is. He is Despenser’s man in Devon, is he not? The sheriff himself told us that he arrested Peter because the king and Despenser were seeking traitors in the realm. But surely he has some ulterior motive for capturing the boy.’

‘I do not follow your thinking,’ Baldwin said.

‘We know that Edith’s husband has been captured. The charges against him are such that he will not easily be released. He has nothing of value, but his father has lands. That seems to mean that there could be pressure being brought to bear. But I do not understand why someone would also capture Edith, unless they are seeking to influence Simon directly.’

‘Perhaps her capture was a random matter? Nothing to do with her husband’s arrest?’

‘Sir, do you believe that?’ Edgar said with a pitying smile. ‘The man Wattere happened to be riding past and found her on her own. He the most committed enemy of her father in the land since their fight. Simon scarred him, do not forget.’

‘So? What do you mean by this?’

‘Sir Baldwin, the son and the father both told you that the sheriff is close to Despenser and the king’s court. Wattere is Despenser’s man. Surely this is all a scheme by Despenser? He has his own men in Devon. That is no surprise, for he and the king will have their men placed in all positions of authority now because their authority is itself being undermined. However, it seems like a great scheme to deprive Simon of his daughter.’

Baldwin winced at the thought. ‘Despenser has already deprived Simon of his home. Why would he want to do this too?’

‘Because he is thoroughly foul,’ Edgar said. ‘He seeks power over others, and when he is thwarted he seeks to destroy them.’

Baldwin need say nothing to that. It was the simple truth. ‘So what will he do now?’

‘I think we have to hope and pray that it is him,’ Edgar said. ‘Because if it were Wattere who took her, and Wattere was not under Despenser’s control, it is likely she could have been taken just for her looks. A man who seeks to rape her and discard her later would be more dangerous. He may already have achieved his aim. And that could mean she has already been killed.’

‘So you say that the best we can hope for is that she has been taken by the most powerful felon in the land?’ Baldwin said. ‘It is a curious hope you dispense, Edgar!’

‘Aye. But at least,’ Edgar said more quietly, ‘it is some kind of hope. Some is better than none, Sir Baldwin.’

Near Bow

The man who had hauled her up into the tree was swarthy and powerful. He had the wild dark hair of a Cornishman, and blue eyes that seemed to look through her without any feeling. Most men on looking at her would give her the impression that they liked her buxom breasts, or would touch her arse with mild enquiry until she slapped invasive hands away, but she had the feeling that this man, if not immune to her charms, was at least without the desire to take her against her will.

He yanked her up from the roadway with such a jerk that she could hook her legs and feet under her, and swing straight over the hedge with ease. Almost immediately he sprang down to the ground at her side, a hand on her back, pushing her down to the grass, while he stayed rigid as a cat staring at a prey, all tension and controlled energy, so focused on the road he might almost have turned to stone.

There was a large thorn still in her hand. She tried to move to look at it, but the pressure on her back increased, subtly, and she heard the sound of the horses increase.

They were there! A group of scruffy, noisy men who would not look out of place in the pictures of demons she had seen on the church walls. Their horses were small, hardy creatures, stocky little fellows with stamina to cover huge distances. The riders were armed and easy in the saddle, like men who were accustomed to long rides with their beasts, and they rode along without chatter or laughter, only a set look of determination. The leader was a large man with a belly and a single eye. The other he had lost. He looked so powerful and full of bile that Agnes had to glance away as a cart rattled past in their wake.

Her sense of inadequacy returned. She was sure that these were the same men who had killed her husband, and the sight of them was enough to prove to her that she could never hope to attack them and win.

The sound of hoofs gradually faded, and as it did, she felt the man’s hand lift away, and then he was moving swiftly back to the hedge. He swarmed up the tree again, and she saw his head lower as he kept his eyes on the party until they were out of sight. ‘It is safe,’ he breathed, and jumped down again, agile as a monkey.

‘Where did you learn to do that?’ she asked.

He looked at her closely, studying her face. ‘You were in Jacobstowe. I saw you there two weeks ago.’

She withdrew, just slightly, from his serious blue eyes. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘Nothing, maid, if by that you mean what do I intend to do to you. I’m not that kind of man. But those men there. Did you see them? Did you recognise them?’

‘No. I’ve never seen them before.’

He nodded, his attention apparently fixed on the hills in the far distance, but the faraway look in his eye seemed to imply that he was thinking of something else.

She felt curiously slighted, as though his lack of concentration on her was an insult. She was unused to such lack of interest. ‘Do you know them? You look like a man who has seen a ghost.’

‘Yes. I feel as though I have,’ he said quietly. Then he looked at her, at the hedge, and up at the tree again. ‘Do you wish me to help you back to the road, maid?’

Nymet Traci

It was hard to see how she could escape. The castle itself was scarcely impregnable, but for Edith to make her way out, she would have to pass between all the guards and servants, and then somehow find a means of climbing the walls, without falling the other side and harming herself. The only real means of escape was by the doors, but she had already seen that the gates tended to remain closed through the day. The only time they were opened was when a rider approached.

She could hear the gates opening now. A low rumbling as the baulks of timber were slid sideways into the recesses in the walls, and then the creaking and squeaking of reluctant metal as they were pushed wide. It was like a Dartmoor gate, she saw: any force pushing at the gates would be pushing them against the rock of the walls, and the great timber locks would prevent them being hauled open from outside. Simple, but most effective.

A party of riders entered, a small cart behind them, and as she watched there was ribald laughter. Four, no, five men were there, and then a big ugly brute with one eye sprang lightly into the bed of the cart and looked about him with satisfaction at the contents. He jumped down with every appearance of happiness, bellowing about him, and she heard the rumble and thump of barrels being rolled and set down from the cart, then moved off towards the buttery and storerooms.

It was a sight to set her heart fluttering. Such joy in the faces of the repellent guards about the place could only mean that the barrels were full of ale or wine. There was no protection for her in here. The men could drink themselves into lust, as all men could, she knew, and if they did, there was little if anything she could do to defend herself here in her little chamber.

As the sounds of revelry rose from the yard, she shivered, feeling a fresh sense of panic. There was no one in all this household upon whom she could place any trust. The idea that the men were steadily drinking themselves to foolishness was appalling. All the more so because she was filled with the empty despair of knowing that she was entirely alone. And she dreaded the reappearance of the man called Basil.

Even Wattere was preferable to him.

Bow

Simon stared at the man. ‘Why do you blame yourself?’

‘He came here. A few days ago. The man Lark. He was here, and he asked the same sort of questions you have, and I was as reluctant to talk to him. But he was a pleasant fellow. Plainly came from around here, too, which made me trust him that much more. There aren’t all that many men who speak your own language. He was from Jacobstowe, and I came originally from Exbourne, so we weren’t too far adrift.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘All about them in the castle. Sir Robert and his son Basil. They rule this country like demons. Everyone has to pay them for anything. If a man doesn’t, he finds his lands on fire, his stables afire, his cattle dead, his sheep stolen. No one may stand against them.’

‘There is the law!’ Simon growled.

‘Not for us there isn’t. The law is for those who can afford to pay lawyers. What, do you think I could plead against them? They have the ears of the justices, of Despenser — of power.’

‘I have heard of these men before,’ Simon said, remembering his conversation with Sir Peregrine. ‘Was it not this man whose son raped a woman? Sir Robert and his son Basil?’

‘That is the pair. Yes. But they do not travel lightly or alone. The two men have a large host.’

‘What did you do to cost the reeve his life?’

‘I defended my own. When the man had left, two riders came a little later. Basil, and his father’s henchman, Osbert. They threatened me.’

‘With what?’

‘They said that they had heard of a man asking about them. Did I know anything, because they would burn my house with me inside if they heard I’d talked. So I did tell them. But they laughed when I said it was a reeve. They swore they had nothing to fear from a shit-arsed tatterdemalion from Jacobstowe, and rode off still laughing.’

‘But you’d told them already?’

‘Yes. God save me! I told them he’d been here. But they did promise that they’d do nothing about him, Bailiff. You have to believe me! I thought they’d been amused to learn about him because he was so lowly there was nothing for them to fear from him. And … even now …’

‘Yes?’

‘There was no need. He was so far below their station, he could do nothing to harm them.’

‘That is hard to imagine, surely,’ Simon said.

‘Sir Robert was for a long while in the king’s own household. He is a close confidant of Sir Hugh le Despenser. That is a name even I know of, Bailiff. Any man who is a friend of Despenser’s is safe anywhere in the land.’

Simon nodded. He was still musing over the tale he had heard as he left the cottage and mounted his horse. He snapped the reins and kicked with his heels, and the horse trotted off.

‘Well?’ the coroner said, almost unable to contain his frustration. He was not used to being left outside while others spoke.

‘Sir Richard, do you recall Sir Peregrine telling us about that appalling court case? The man whose daughter was raped by the son of a knight?’

‘I lost my wife to a dishonourable cur who should have been slain at birth,’ the coroner said heavily.

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Sir Richard. Of course the matter will still be fresh in your mind. Well, I think that the men who were said to be responsible for that are the same who are responsible for the death of the fellows on their way to the king.’

It was Mark who responded to that. ‘You mean to say that the man who had all those people killed was also a rapist? Why was he not captured and punished?’

‘Because the fellow was a friend to Despenser. And to the sheriff, too, according to Sir Peregrine,’ Sir Richard growled. He glanced over at Simon. ‘That’s what he said?’

‘He was reluctant to talk — he had been told that they wouldn’t hurt the reeve, though.’

‘Hah! And he believed them?’

‘Yes,’ Simon said slowly. He was still thinking about the expression in John Pasmere’s eyes as he spoke of Bill Lark’s death. There was an infinity of self-loathing there, as though the man had himself committed the murder. ‘But the truly fascinating point is that they might have killed the reeve — but why not kill that peasant too? If they were going to silence the man who’d learned about their crime, why would they not kill the informer?’

‘Aye, why?’ the coroner said.

‘Perhaps because they did neither?’ Simon wondered. But that was ridiculous, he knew. There was no point in thinking such thoughts. It was idle. Surely the men who had such notoriety were the same who were responsible for the murders at Abbeyford.

He stopped his mount and stared ahead. Without thinking, he had let his horse have its own head, and he had gradually gone further on the road away from Pasmere’s house, wandering south and slightly east. Now he saw that there was a broad plain in front of them, with trees over to the east, leading along the line of a ridge up to a long, tall, castellated wall. It was solid-looking, and grey like moorstone, and Simon looked it over with an appreciation of the construction.

This, he thought, would be a place that would be very difficult to take by force.

‘Whose place is that?’ Mark asked.

‘That, I think,’ Simon told him, ‘is the house of the men who killed your priests and their party.’

There was little more to be said at that. They could see a path that led up north and slightly east, and taking the chance for a good scout about the walled house, Simon led them up and along it. There was a fine view all over the house’s grounds, and he could see that the place had a goodly stock of fish in a nearby pond. The surface of the water leaped and bubbled as flies approached. Outside the walls there was a huge flock of sheep, and Simon had no doubt that in the summer the woods nearby would echo to the snort and snuffle of pigs. This was no small estate, but a huge working manor, from the size of the space all about.

‘What now?’ Mark said.

‘Now, my boy, we leave before we’re considered as spies,’ the coroner said firmly. ‘Best thing to do is head for the town up there. Bow, isn’t it; Simon? If we go there, we may just learn something to help us. It’s the little towns where you can get the best help, I always say.’

Simon agreed, and they all clapped spurs to their mounts and continued on their way, up past the woods, along the top of a ridge, and then down into the town itself.

They were sitting outside the tavern in the main street, enjoying a few moments away from their saddles, drinking strong ale, when they heard horses approaching.

‘Dear heaven! Baldwin!’ Simon shouted when he recognised his old friend. With a thrill of pure delight, he put down his drinking horn and hurried into the street, stopping at Baldwin’s horse. ‘Baldwin, it’s so good to see you again. I could not hope for better fortune!’

His joy was not reciprocated, he saw, and gradually he grew aware that his friend wore a grim, sad face.

‘Simon, I doubt you will still think that in a moment. I am so sorry. I have dreadful news,’ Baldwin said.

Tavistock Abbey

Robert Busse was happy to hear that the Cardinal de Fargis had arrived at the abbey for further discussions and to hear more evidence. It could hardly be a better time, he thought.

The whole of the previous evening and night, he had been almost unable to sleep. It had not been helped that whenever he looked in the direction of John de Courtenay, he saw a man who seemed to have a little smile fixed to his lips. The man was insufferably proud, of course, and he had always had a hatred for Robert, but that was no excuse for his seeking Robert’s murder. It was astonishing that a man who professed love for all others, and who wanted such an important leadership position in the abbey, could at the same time have been so avaricious that he would pay to have a rival removed.

‘You wished to see me?’ the cardinal said as Robert entered the abbot’s hall and bent to kiss the episcopal ring.

He remained on the floor kneeling, his head bowed. ‘Cardinal, I fear that I have some rather terrible news.’

‘There appears to be little shortage of bad news about here,’ the cardinal commented drily and took his hand away.

‘The king had a messenger here. He came to bring messages.’

‘That is somewhat less than news,’ the cardinal said sharply.

‘Some were for John de Courtenay. And he took messages back from Brother John, too.’

‘Well?’

‘He fell from his horse and died a little way from here. In his shirt were two of the messages. Here they are.’

The cardinal took them, warily eyeing Brother Robert. ‘What do they say?’

‘One is from Brother John, and he thanks Sir Hugh le Despenser for his offer to aid his campaign to become the next abbot. He states that he will be willing to pay Sir Hugh from the income of the abbey.’

‘The second?’

‘That is another message from Brother John to Despenser, saying that he has a friend in Tavistock, Master John Fromund, who is prepared to put into action my assassination as soon as Despenser approves his action. Apparently Master Fromund has many companions who would be happy to assist Brother John and Sir Hugh le Despenser.’

‘I see,’ the cardinal said. He stood and walked over to the table. ‘And tell me, you know a man called Langatre?’

‘Oh, well, yes, but he-’

‘And I understand that in February this year you removed one thousand and two hundred pounds from the abbey’s treasury?’

Busse was quiet.

‘And later that month you returned with a small force of men-at-arms and took another eight hundred pounds in money, gold and silver plate? Is that correct?’

Robert closed his eyes. ‘It is. But I had to remove it to a place of safe-keeping, to protect it from Brother John.’

‘And he sought to remove you for the good of the abbey because he says that you are a danger to the community. Too divisive, he says, and too keen to promote those who are your friends, rather than those of quality or merit.’

‘That is entirely unjustified. I seek only to serve the abbey.’

‘I wonder,’ the cardinal said, ‘whether any man here actually seeks the best for the abbey.’

‘You may be assured that-’

‘No. I may not be assured of anything.’ The cardinal opened the first of the small scrolls and gazed at the contents. ‘It is his writing, I believe. Very well, Brother Robert. You may leave this with me.’

‘Am I safe?’

The cardinal looked at him. ‘I shall speak with Brother John, if that is what you mean. However, this is a matter that will require the pope’s intervention, I believe. You had best remain here at Tavistock.’

‘Thank you, Cardinal.’

Brother Robert was almost at the door when the cardinal’s quiet voice halted him. ‘One more thing, my friend. There will be no more money removed from the treasury. Nor plate nor gold. I hope that is understood. Because if any money goes missing, I shall not pursue your case with the pope or anyone else.’

‘I understand, Cardinal.’

‘Good,’ Cardinal de Fargis said. As the door quietly closed, he closed his eyes and offered a quick prayer for patience. ‘In Christ’s name, Father, if these men cannot live without each of them seeking the death of the other, what hope is there for peace within this community?’

But that was not the point. That a baron should seek to work for one man and could consider the murder of the other to aid his case was atrocious. There had not been a similar plot since the death of Becket. The pope must be told, and that quickly.

He sat and wrote his note carefully, the reed scratching on the parchment, but then, as he signed it with care, a thought struck him. It would take an age for the message to reach Rome.

Without hesitation, he began to write a new message, this time addressed to Sir Hugh le Despenser.