The Devil's Acolyte

Chapter Seventeen

The next morning Baldwin saw that there was another guard at the corpse when they all reached the scene of the murder.

A crowd of miners had gathered, a grim band of men with the uniform of peat-stained, ragged clothing and eyes bright from malnutrition and overwork. Some were staring at Wally’s body, but for the most part they appeared content to stand as far from it as was possible. When Baldwin and the others drew nearer, it was easy to see – or, rather, to smell – why.

Simon had said nothing about his concerns to Baldwin. Indeed, the two men had scarcely spoken. When Baldwin had returned from his private meeting with the Abbot, Simon had hoped that he would say something – but Baldwin made no reference to the lengthy interview. This made Simon think the worst – that the Abbot must have wanted to talk about Simon, probably warning Baldwin that he wasn’t capable of doing his job any more.

It was terrible, this certainty that his best friend was aware of his position; Simon felt as though he was marked out, like a felon waiting to be caught. Not that there was any guilt, as such; it was more a deep sense of failure. He wanted to shout, to punch someone, to take control of events which seemed to be conspiring against him, to show that he was the same man, unchanged, as able as any other. But he couldn’t.

He rode silently to a gorse tree that stood a few yards from the body, thankful that it was upwind of Wally’s remains. Dropping from his mount he gave Baldwin a pleading look, and the knight gave him a nod as he too dismounted.

In the past Baldwin would have smiled or winked at his old friend, but his sympathy was beginning to wear thin. It wasn’t a bit like Simon to be so… what, sulky? It was the best word Baldwin could find to describe his morose temper.

Occasionally, it was true, Simon could be pensive, such as when something occurred to him that might have a bearing on a matter that they were investigating, but more usually they enjoyed an open, easy relationship. When the Coroner was with them, all three relished telling jokes or stories about the fire. They were comfortable with each other, unworried about hurting feelings, but last night Simon had been gruff and all but silent. Soon after they had returned from the alehouse, he complained of being tired and went to his bed, but Baldwin knew it was not to sleep. There was no grunting and snoring, but a deathly silence.

It wasn’t only he who felt the atmosphere. The Coroner himself had spoken in a hushed voice, with many a glance at Simon, as though wondering whether Baldwin and he had fallen out. It was almost as though Simon suspected Baldwin of molesting his wife – a ridiculous thought, but that was the only comparison Baldwin could think of that in any way reflected Simon’s attitude.

Perhaps it was because he simply did not wish to be here, Baldwin thought. Although the knight could never quite understand why Simon was so squeamish about corpses, he could appreciate that for some people, the sight of a putrefied mess could be the last straw.

With that thought, he began to concentrate on Wally. Although the body’s odour was not pleasant, it was as nothing compared to the stenches Baldwin had been forced to experience in Acre during that city’s siege in 1291, when the fresh corpses would be bloated and fly-blown within a few hours of death. It was impossible to eradicate that odour from his memory. In comparison, this corpse smelled almost fresh.

While the clerk whom the Abbot had sent with them to take the Coroner’s notes sharpened his reeds and prepared his papers and ink, his eyes enormous and fearful as he gazed at the figure, Baldwin and Coroner Roger squatted by the corpse.

‘All consistent with a beating,’ Baldwin observed. ‘Extensive damage done to his skull, poor devil.’

‘Yes. Nothing to give us an idea of who did it or why, just a ravaged skull. What of the rest of him?’

The two stood aside while two men stepped forward. One was a gravedigger and sniffed unconcernedly, grabbing the shoulder and hose to pull Wally on to a blanket brought for the purpose. ‘Good clothes, these,’ he said appraisingly. He would be wearing them in a few hours, Baldwin thought.

His companion was more reluctant, a younger lad who wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes, as though he was likely to be sick at any moment.

Baldwin and Roger moved to a more open space in front of the jury while the two men dragged the body on the blanket over to them, dropped the corners and waited for another order. The Coroner told them to remove the victim’s clothes, and while the older man immediately bent to his task, the younger one vomited noisily into a gorse bush.

‘Don’t worry, boy. You’ll get used to ’un,’ the gravedigger said as he worked a puffy arm through a sleeve.

Baldwin and Coroner Roger were soon confronted by the body of a man in his early thirties, slender of build, like one who has worked long and hard with not enough food or drink. His face was terribly beaten, his jaw broken, one eye-socket smashed in and the temple crushed. Dark brown stains of his blood lay all over his body, yet, as the gravedigger turned him over and then over again, there were clearly no recent stab wounds nor any sign that the fellow had been throttled, although there were some appalling scars from previous wounds, well healed now, about his shoulder, his flanks and one leg.

‘What do you think, Sir Baldwin?’ the Coroner asked.

‘You can see as much as I,’ Baldwin responded thoughtfully. ‘He was killed by a blunt weapon, and I am sure Simon was right when he suggested that the studded timber he found was responsible. Apart from that, his body has lain here unmoved, from the look of the grass beneath him. It’s paler compared with the rest.’

‘I agree.’ Coroner Roger eyed the jury of miners and began to call out his findings for the clerk to record. Later, when the Sheriff came on his annual perambulation, these records could be presented by the Coroner so that the guilty man might be held. Still later, when the Justices came in their own turn, the Coroner would once more attend the court and his records would be used to confirm the guilt or innocence of the accused man and, some felt more importantly, to gauge the extent of the fines and taxes to be imposed on the populace.

‘There are no obvious stab wounds,’ he said, eyeing the clerk sternly. Hastily the man began scribbling.

‘No, but there are many scars. All healed now, but he must have been severely treated at some point,’ Baldwin noted.

‘Who saw this man last week?’ Coroner Roger called out. ‘Does anyone know what led to this happening to him?’

‘I saw him on the day before the coining.’

Baldwin leaned to his left, peering past a tall red-headed man with a fierce-looking, bristling beard. Behind him was a shorter man with sallow complexion and intensely bright blue eyes in a weather-beaten face.

Roger pointed to him. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ivo Cornisshe. I work at the bottom of Misery Tor, not far from Wally’s old place, and I saw him setting off for Tavistock early on the Thursday morning.’

Simon scowled about at the men. ‘Where is Hamelin? He lived nearest, up at Wally’s old place. Why isn’t he here?’

There was no answer from the men arrayed before them.

The Coroner nodded to Ivo to continue. ‘How was Wally when you saw him?’

‘Cheery. I asked him why and he said he was looking forward to a good quart of ale. He hadn’t made much money recently, he said, and he was miserable as the Tor itself with the thought of drinking any more water off the moors.’

‘His mining wasn’t successful?’

‘It wasn’t too bad, I suppose,’ Ivo said with transparent honesty. ‘He did well at first, but then he could only just scrape together enough to live on. That was why he tried farming instead.’

‘Near here?’

‘Yes. A mile or so. His rabbits and vegetables kept him fed. At least he didn’t have a family to keep. Trouble is, veg is tough to grow on the moors. Especially if the rabbits get to them,’ he added as an afterthought.

Coroner Roger glared about him to quell the sudden ripple of laughter that spread about the gathering. ‘And he had little money?’

‘None of us have much of that. If a mine is working, then all is well, but it only lasts so long. You dig and dig, wash away the rubbish, dig again, and then you have enough ore to fill a few bags. Melt them, pay the owner of a furnace, carry the ingots to Tavistock and pay your tax, pay your feed bills, have some ale, and suddenly you’ve got nothing left again, and you have to come back to the moors to try to dig out a load more tin or find a new claim.’

Simon interrupted. ‘I have been told that on the day of the coining, he had money aplenty. Where did he get it?’

Ivo shrugged. ‘Maybe he found it?’

There was a quiet comment, a miner suggesting that he could have sold his remaining asset, his body, to one of the rich women who were always passing by here, and some coarse sniggers were silenced only when the Coroner barked, ‘Shut up!’

Simon was still listening as the Coroner began asking about Wally’s sudden wealth, but standing at the edge of the miners, his eyes ranged over the men. Ivo was known to Simon, but then most of the men here were, by sight if not by name. It was natural that he should recognise them all, for there weren’t all that many miners, especially since the famine years when even places like Hound Tor had been deserted.

He stared fixedly at Hal. The man knew something. It was obvious in the way that he stood with his legs apart, as though preparing for a verbal sparring match. His arms were crossed over his chest, with a long staff hooked in one, and he was perfectly still, as though he was at his ease, but his good eye was sharp and moving swiftly from Baldwin, to the Coroner, to Simon, below his black brows.

Seeing the swift flash of Hal’s eye, Simon lifted his eyebrow, and he saw that his guess was correct. Hal looked away so fast, his head actually moved, and immediately the Coroner was on him.

‘You! What’s your name?’

Hal’s head dropped lower on his shoulders. He threw Simon a bitter look as though the Bailiff had betrayed him, then cleared his throat. ‘Hal Raddych, sir.’

‘You’re a miner as well?’

‘Yes, sir. I protected this body the first night and last as well.’

‘Very good. And tell me, did anyone come here and move the body while you were here?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What of the club that was used to kill him, Hal?’ Simon interjected.

‘The club?’

‘The blood is still there on the bush. It’s obvious that there was something there.’

‘Perhaps it was stolen away, sir.’

Simon stood and hooked his thumbs in his belt. ‘You take me for a fool?’

Hal looked away. ‘No, sir. But I don’t have the club, and I don’t know anyone who does.’

‘You don’t know anyone who does? You mean that your guard yesterday took it?’

‘I don’t know where it could have gone. Maybe a dog took it, or a fox, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was only a lump of timber.’

‘It matters how many nails there were in it,’ Coroner Roger said. ‘We have to know how much it was worth for the deodand.’

Simon smiled. ‘It must have been worth at least two shillings, Coroner, for someone to bother to take it away.’

‘I agree. Unless we find it, I shall value it at two shillings. Sheriff to come and collect and so on.’ He looked at the clerk. ‘You know the right words to use, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So it comes to this, then,’ the Coroner said. ‘We have a dead man, murdered by a man or men unknown, his head bashed in. He was a poor man, yet he somehow had collected money. We don’t know where from, but he splashed it around liberally. We know he was at the coining from what the good Bailiff has learned. Did he sell something? When he left his home to go to Tavistock, did he have a lump of tin to sell? Did he have a packhorse or anything? Did he look as though he was suddenly wealthy?’

Ivo answered. ‘No, he had nothing but a small wallet on his back. His purse didn’t rattle, either.’

‘Could he have had tin in his wallet?’

‘I suppose, but that much would be worth little. That was why he was so dependent on his rabbits. He used to sell the meat to other miners, the pelts separately. They were good on a winter’s day, those pelts. He knew how to cure them with salt. Took him time, but he was good at it.’

‘And yet he had enough money to buy drink?’ the Coroner asked.

Hal interrupted. ‘He was probably just looking to get some credit with a tradesman in Tavvie.’

Simon watched him closely. Hal looked deeply uncomfortable, as though he was trying to move the conversation on, afraid that something might be discovered.

‘Hmmph,’ the Coroner grunted. He was staring at the clerk, and Simon saw that he was taking Hal’s words at face value. He was surprised – then afraid that he really was losing his touch. If he thought that the man’s evidence was so clearly dishonest, perhaps it was because his own judgement was at fault, because Coroner Roger obviously didn’t share his misgivings.

Then he felt a shiver of resentment pass through him. He refused to believe that he was so incompetent that he didn’t understand his own miners. Simon had spent six years getting to know these men, and he’d cut his own cods off if Hal didn’t know more than he was letting on. Simon would speak to him separately. It would show that he still knew a trick or two. Maybe it would teach the Abbot that he was trustworthy still. It might even prove to Baldwin that Simon wasn’t burned out and only good for the midden.

There and then Simon determined that he would learn all that Hal knew, and if he could, he would discover the murderer of Wally before anyone else.

Nob belched as he finished the last of his ale and glanced up the road. The kennel was filled with mud and filth, and even as he watched, he heard the familiar bellow of ‘Gardy loo!’ from Tan the cobbler’s place up the road. There followed a minor eruption of green liquid from an upper window, narrowly missing a well-dressed merchant who stopped in the middle of the lane to roar and shake a fist upwards with fury.

This was such a small street, it was no surprise that pedestrians would often get spattered, but there was little choice for housekeepers. They had to empty their pots somewhere.

Ordering another ale, Nob wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and considered the place. It was only a little town, Tavistock. Not like other places he’d been. Mind, some of them weren’t so disorganised as this. The trouble was, Devonshire was so hard to get to. Most towns he’d been to, there was some sort of plan about them before the houses went up. Like Longtown in Herefordshire. Even newer towns in Devonshire had some thought invested in them; he remembered South Zeal as a pleasant place with a good broad road and pleasant plots set out regularly along it.

Tavistock was older, though. It had been a Burgh since the days of Abbot Walter, many folk said (although exactly how long that meant Nob didn’t know), and the lanes and streets wound their way untidily about the town. But there were advantages to it. Such as this, the quiet little alehouse not far from his pie-shop, hidden from the main roads by a bend where the lane was forced to curve around the back of Joce Blakemoor’s large house.

It was an imposing property, although Nob himself reckoned it gaudy. Joce was supposed to be a wealthy man, and this was one of the most impressive places in town. The front opened on to the main street, and there you could see that the owner was important. All Blakemoor’s goods were stored in the undercroft, a massive, stone-vaulted chamber that lay under the level of the road. Between the undercroft and the roadway was a large channel, like a moat, which must be traversed by a set of wooden steps, like a drawbridge, which led up to Joce’s shop, where he sold his bolts of cloth, everything from the coarse, cheap dozens to linens and fine wool materials. He even sold silks occasionally, the only cloth merchant to do that this side of Exeter.

Behind the shop itself was Joce’s hall, a high-ceilinged room with doors at the back which gave out to the parlour and service rooms, while a ladder led to the bedchambers at front and rear.

Nob knew the place well. On several occasions he had been instructed to bring pies here and set them out for Joce’s friends, and he and Cissy had been led through to the great hall, its fire roaring in the middle of the floor, then out to the parlour and storerooms beyond. While Cissy went through some final details in the arrangement of the pies, for she was never satisfied, Nob had taken the opportunity to go upstairs and have a look around.

Joce had made a lot of money, that was obvious. The tapestries hanging from the walls, the pewter and silver on his shelves, all spoke of enormous wealth. A merchant selling fine cloths to the men and women of a place like Tavistock could earn himself plenty. Yet the last time Nob had visited, there were fewer plates on the cupboard, less pewter. Joce was obviously selling or pawning his things for cash. He had made more money than Nob ever would from flogging pies, but then, as Nob told himself, he had enough for himself and his family, and that was all a man could ask for.

He was a fortunate soul, Nob told himself again. Good wife, good food, enough to buy himself ale whenever he wanted, and his children all doing well. What more could one want? Especially when the alternative was to live like Joce, always trying to keep up appearances, spending lavishly just to maintain his position in society.

Not that his position was that impressive, in Nob’s view. Nor was he highly respected. Especially now, since his temper seemed to be growing shorter.

Tavistock was a quiet town, and violence was a matter for conversation, so when a man like Joce went to his neighbour’s house and threatened him, that news was soon the subject of gossip up and down the place. And when a man beat his servant for no reason, especially a likeable young fellow like Art, that too caused much quiet speculation. After all, it only took one fool whose brain was in his fists, to lead to fines for all the people living nearby. It was every man’s responsibility to keep the King’s Peace.

‘Drinking so early?’ said a smooth voice, and Nob recognised the figure of Sir Tristram’s Sergeant.

‘Jack!’ He smiled broadly, partly because he wanted this man to look on him in as friendly a light as possible, but also from the hope that since Sir Tristram was thought to be done in the town, Nob himself should be safe from being recruited. ‘Fancy an ale?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Jack said, taking his seat with a grunt. ‘I’ve been up half the night keeping an eye on the pitiful little company Sir Tristram’s hired. A drink would be welcome.’

‘Perhaps a game or two while we’re here?’

Jack smiled hawkishly. ‘Now wouldn’t that be fun?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Nob, gesturing to the host to fetch ale and dice. Soon they were throwing the cubes on the table-top, and before long a number of coins had transferred themselves from Nob’s purse to Jack’s.

Trying to distract him, Nob said, ‘You lot all off now?’

‘As soon as the men have been fed and have collected water, we’ll set off. Sir Tristram has more men waiting for us at Oakhampton and further north. We’ll have a long and weary march to get up to Scotland.’

‘It sounds a miserable land. Cold and wet all the time,’ Nob shivered. ‘I knew a man from up there – Wally, his name was, but he’s dead now.’

‘Aye?’

Nob winced as he caught sight of Jack’s throw. ‘Yes, he was murdered. The inquest is today.’

‘There’s a monk who came from up there, too, I’ve heard.’

‘That’ll be Peter. The wounded monk.’

‘Oh aye? How’s he wounded?’

Nob took up the dice with a sinking feeling as he eyed his losses. He explained about Peter’s jaw, and saw Jack nodding.

‘That’s what Sir Tristram told me. Peter, eh? Well, I’ll be buggered. Never thought he’d survive that one. We killed most of the men, but some of those bastards got away. And that bloody Brother had helped one of them.’

Nob listened with his mouth open wide as Jack told how Wally’s life had been saved and how he had then participated in hunting down Peter.

‘So Wally and these others escaped?’

‘Yes. I was with Sir Tristram even then, and we chased after the three as soon as Peter was found, but they split up. First we knew, we came across this hut where Peter’s woman had lived.’

Nob thought Jack’s face seemed to harden at the recollection. The Sergeant leaned both elbows on the table and grimaced. ‘She’d been raped, poor lass, and then she’d been killed – slowly. She was such a beautiful girl, too. I tell you, I’d seen the Armstrongs’ handiwork before that, but I’d never seen anything so… so pointlessly cruel.’

‘Did you never catch any of them?’

‘They all escaped into England and we couldn’t chase them. There were other clans rattling their swords. We sent to warn other towns and villages, but no one saw them again. I’d thought they’d died – maybe fallen into a bog or died from the cold. Not hard enough as a way to perish, but then nothing would be cruel enough for bastards like them.’

Ellis put his strop on the doorpost and began to stroke his razor up and down it. He was still standing there when his sister appeared at the doorway with her children. She sent them to play with some sticks in the alley, and walked to him.

He looked tired, she thought. Weary, like a man who’s been working too hard without enough to eat. ‘Ellis?’

‘What is it?’

His tone was grumpy, and he didn’t meet her eyes as she stepped behind him and leaned against the wall, watching her children. ‘I’m sorry, that’s all. I thought he loved me, and I thought he’d marry me, and that would be my life settled and secure. All I wanted was to look after the children. Was it so terrible that I slept with him? He had told me that he’d marry me. Ellis, please!’

‘What?’

‘Look at me! Put your razor down and listen to me. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘You did, though. What will men call you now, eh? Slut, slattern, draggle-arse… whore!’

‘He swore he’d marry me,’ she said obstinately.

‘And you’d trust the word of a fucking miner?’ he spat.

‘Miner?’ It felt as though she was losing her grip on reality. ‘He’s no miner.’

‘No, but he was, wasn’t he?’

‘I don’t think so. Wasn’t he always a merchant?’

Ellis gazed at her. ‘You mean Wally, don’t you?’

‘Wally? What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘Wasn’t it him? The father?’

‘What do you take me for?’ she gasped. ‘You think I’d lie with… Good God!’

Ellis weakly grabbed a chair and sat. ‘But who, then?’

‘Joce, of course.’

‘But I went up to Wally and…’

Sara felt her heart stop in her breast. She put her hand to her throat as though to massage air into her lungs. ‘What? Ellis, what did you do?’

‘Nothing, Sara. Christ’s Bones! But I could have,’ he shuddered.

Sara was relieved to hear his denial. He had never, to her knowledge, lied to her. ‘What happened?’

‘The next morning – Friday morning – I went up to the moors first thing. I wanted to scare him away from you, and I shouted at him, threatened him.’

‘Did you hit him?’

‘No! I didn’t need to. Someone else had already laid into him. But I told him to leave you alone. He looked confused, denied anything, but then just agreed. Said he’d agree to anything if I’d just go.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘Only a monk.’

Sara pulled her tunic closer about her against the chill which had filled her. ‘You could be accused of killing him.’

‘Perhaps. If it happens, it happens.’

‘I’ll protect you,’ she whispered, and hugged him.

For the first time that day, he looked a little easier.

Nob grunted when Jack scooped up his coins – Nob’s coins – into his purse, said goodbye and thanked Nob for their game.

‘Bastard!’ Nob muttered. It was bad enough that Jack had taken his money – but he had played while drinking at Nob’s expense too. Never even offered to buy a round.

Jack had wandered up the alley, and shortly afterwards, Nob heard what sounded like shouting. Hoping that someone was beating up his opponent, probably, as Nob told himself, to avenge his cheating at dice and general tight-fistedness, he glanced that way. Immediately his eye was caught by a flash of metal up beyond Joce’s house. Throwing down some coins, he headed in that direction.

A fight was always worth seeing!