The Last Templar

Chapter Four

It was another two hours before they felt happy about entering the blackened and still warm shell. Black led the way, a small team of local men following, all with cloths tied round their mouths against the dust, and Simon, the priest and the knight waiting by the doorway, where they could watch the men inside.

The body was easy to find. It had not been hit by the heavy oaken beam that had fallen from the roof, but still lay on the remains of the palliasse that had been the man’s bed, over near the far wall. At first Simon could see little – the haze from the heat distorted the view, small grey clouds of smoke rose here and there from the embers, and the beam itself with its accretions of burned waste obstructed the scene with its solid mass, seemingly unaffected by the flames that had destroyed the house around it, Amongst all this mess and desolation, Black’s small group walked with confidence, along the length of the beam, to duck underneath where its end was still supported by the wall, and walk back along it until opposite the door where the simple mattress lay.

Simon could hear the muttering as they came close to it, a curse of disgust, a call for assistance. He could not help thinking how foolish this all seemed. The walls over to his right had collapsed, were now simply a pile of rubble. The men had no need to enter by this door, by this old gap in the wall that had been constructed decades before. Why did they go in here? Was it a politeness? Was it a sign of respect for the corpse that they should only use the door that his guests would have, as if in so doing they were receiving his approval? Or was it simply force of habit that they should go in where they knew there to be an entrance, as if their minds could not quite accept the fact that the whole house had been changed?

Beside him Baldwin stood, chewing on his moustache and frowning. When he threw him a glance, Simon was surprised to see that the knight’s eyes were not, like his own and Clifford’s, following the men inside, but were staring fixedly at the massive doorway at the other end of the house, the doorway for the oxen.

He seemed perplexed by something, Simon thought. Noticing his look, Baldwin grinned shamefacedly. “I always seem to look for a difficulty. It must be part of my nature,” he said, and turned away to watch the party inside. But Simon could not help noticing that every now and again his eyes would drift back to that large doorway, as if dragged unwillingly.

The men seemed to take an age to fetch the body out. They rolled it onto an old blanket, then with one man at each corner they hefted it and began to weave their circuitous way back to the entrance. They had to try to keep the blanket taut in order that the cloth did not touch the hot embers all around, and the force necessary was evidently great, making the men bend away from their load and each other as they struggled over the rubble and mess, stumbling and tripping as they went. They had difficulties when they had to bend under the beam, at last reaching some mutual arrangement whereby one man went through – was it Black? – then another, each man at his corner crouching individually and making his way under before standing and waiting for his companions. Then, at last, they were making their way back to the doorway, and the others stood back to give them room as they made their way out, dropping the blanket with its unwholesome contents with irreverent haste as they grasped at the cloths covering their mouths, tearing them off so that they could breath the sweet air again, away from the stench and dust inside. The body rolled from the covering to lie on its back a foot or two from the waiting men.

“It’s him,” said Black before stumbling away coughing.

At the sight of the body, Simon could not help wincing in disgust and taking a short step back. Then, as he became aware of Clifford’s muttered prayers, he felt ashamed and peered closer.

The blackened and ruined body was clearly that of a well-proportioned man, broad in the shoulder and fairly tall. His clothes had burned away, or so it seemed, and the body was rigid and fixed, like clay that has been in the furnace. But the bailiff recoiled and he had to turn away at the sight of the face, sucking in deep breaths in an attempt to keep his bile at bay.

Baldwin grinned as he saw Simon spin away. It was natural at the sight of victims of the flames, he knew, but this was not the first time the knight had seen bodies ruined and burned, and he stared down, noting the position of the limbs with an impersonal detachment. But when he studied the face his interest suddenly quickened. Where he would have expected to see agonised pain in the twisted features, there seemed to be none.

Puzzled, he stared at the body for a moment, then looked up towards the house. Then, like a hound on a scent, tense and eager, he strode up to the door, leaving Clifford and Simon gazing after him in their surprise.

Marching quickly, the knight strode through the door and, holding a sleeve to his nose and mouth, moved to the middle of the ruined house, peering through slitted eyes at the beam and the rubble all around. Something was wrong, he felt sure. Other bodies he had seen after a fire had shown signs of the fight for life, of the desperate attempt for survival – Brewer’s did not.

He stood and glowered at the door for the livestock, where the wood, at that end of the building almost untouched by the flames, still showed the scars from the horns and hoofs of the terrified oxen. Then he kicked at the ground a few times and crouched, apparently staring at some of the mess on the floor, before rising and leaving the room once more, coughing.

As the knight left the group, his departure made Simon turn and watch, and this sign that someone else at least was relatively unaffected made him determined to shoulder his responsibility with more dignity than he had so far exhibited. Squaring his shoulders, he forced his eyes down again. To his surprise, now, after the initial shock, he found himself less horrified, and he could look at the body with a degree of equanimity. At least, he felt, the man had no apparent signs of pain. His arms, he could see, were restfully at his side, not clawed to scrabble a way to safety, the legs were straight rather than contorted in an effort to crawl away. It looked as if the man had passed away quietly in his sleep. Simon could sense a sadness, a fleeting empathy for the lonely end of this man, but little more. Then it struck him – why had the man not recognised his danger, awoken and tried to escape? Surely he could not have slept through it? His brow wrinkled at the thought.

The huddled blackened shape seemed to have no fears for Baldwin either. He returned and stood, arms on hips, glaring at the body as if daring it to argue with him. Interested, Black wandered over to the group and glanced at the body, then at the men encircling it. He saw Baldwin catch Simon’s eye.

“Looks very relaxed, doesn’t he,” said the knight. It was not a question, it was a flat, dry statement, requiring no response, and Black saw Simon gazing back and nodding pensively.

Clifford looked from one to the other with a frown of mild impatience. “What do you mean? Of course he was relaxed. He died in his sleep, I suppose. The smoke got to him while he slept.”

Baldwin kept his eyes on him as he said, “Black?”

The hunter grunted. He too was frowning, wondering what the knight was driving at.

“Black,” Baldwin continued, “how many of this man’s oxen died with him?”

“None, sir. All eight got out.”

“So what?” said Clifford, gazing from the knight to the bailiff. “So what if they did? I don’t…”

“What about other animals?”

“No, they all got out.”

“If they got out, they must have been scared by the flames,” said Baldwin deliberately. “You must have heard the noise that scared oxen make. You wouldn’t be able to sleep through it, would you?”

Simon ventured, “Well, maybe he was overcome by the fumes, maybe he…”

“Oh, come now!” the knight’s teeth showed briefly in a white grin. “The beasts would have been terrified from the first sign of flames. They would not have slept until the house was almost consumed, they would have woken as soon as the fire began. If they did, the man would have been woken by them – he was sleeping with them after all.”

The priest, frowning, stood shaking his head. “I still don’t quite…”

“It’s obvious – or it is to me, anyway,” said Baldwin, suddenly serious. “I think he was dead before the fire was started. I think he was killed and the fire started to cover the murder.” Black could see that it was Simon who seemed to take this announcement most calmly. While the others gaped, the bailiff considered, looking up at the knight, peering at the building, then scratching his head and frowning at the ground.

“So what do you suggest we should do then, Sir Baldwin?” asked Clifford, consternation raising the pitch of his voice.

Baldwin shot a glance at Simon. “That’s up to the bailiff, isn’t it?”

“But I don’t see how we can show he was already dead!” said Simon irritably. “Not without someone having seen him when…” His voice trailed off. Could someone have seen something? God! He had only just been given his job – and now this knight already thought he had found a murder! Forcing his thoughts back to the problem in hand, he said musingly, “We don’t even know that he has been murdered. Couldn’t it have been an accident?”

“I don’t think so,” said Baldwin pensively. “As soon as the fire started the oxen would have panicked, I think that is clear. If he had been asleep that noise would have woken him quickly enough, so he would not have been found in his bed. We would have found him near an entrance, or at least on his way to one. I cannot see any reason why he would have gone back to his bed after realising that there was a fire – that, surely, is inconceivable. So he cannot have been woken by his oxen. And if he wasn’t, he must have been dead already. I refuse to believe that any man could be so heavy a sleeper that eight oxen stampeding nearby would not stir him.”

“Even so, sir, we cannot simply assume this. How could we be sure?” said Clifford softly.

“There is one other thing that makes me suspicious,” said the knight. “When you go to your bed, what do you do to the fire?”

Simon shrugged. “Well, bank it up. Make sure there’s enough wood to keep it going quietly over the night.”

“Yes. You put fresh logs on it to keep it going overnight. Brewer’s fire seemed too low. It looked as if it had not been touched since the morning. That seems to show that he had not set it up for the night, but it also means that it would be unlikely that any sparks would have reached the ceiling. The fire was too low. I am certain that he was killed. The question is, who did it?”

They all went to the inn and sat on the benches at the front while they waited for food to arrive. From here they could see in both directions along the road, south and west to the burned-out shell of Brewer’s house, and north and east to Black’s. In front of them the road formed a red and muddy boundary to the small strips of the fields beyond, where the families of the hamlet grew their crops on those days when they had no responsibility to the fields owned by the manor.

The sun was past its zenith, sweeping slowly across a sky that was, for once, almost miraculously free from clouds. Its brightness lit up the scenery with a soft splendour. In front of them at the other side of the road was the sewer, but beyond it was the stream with the flat stone slabs of the clapper bridge crossing both, and over the ridge were the strips.

They seemed almost to have been created to assist the inn by giving it a pleasant aspect. It was as if they were radiating out with the inn building at their centre, and their colours – soft red from the earth, white-yellow from the older crops, green from the grass – seemed to emphasise the rural nature of the scene. Beyond, the trees took over again. The great oaks and beeches, elms and sycamores dominated the whole area, lurking with indifferent ease at the edge of the habitation. How long, Simon wondered, how long before these trees are removed and the strips expand further into the forest? How long before new assarts are developed to push the trees back so that these poor people can have more lands for fields, so that they can have more food and not be so dependent on so little? But, looking at the ring of trunks, he wondered whether they could ever be pushed farther back. They seemed too substantial, too massive for puny humans to destroy.

Against his will, Black had agreed to join them, and he sat now in between Simon and the priest, while Baldwin had a stool, sitting in front of them. Edgar stood a short distance away as usual, his eyes flitting over the men with his master.

“It’s really very simple,” Baldwin was saying. “We simply speak to the people who were here yesterday and try to see who might have had a reason to kill this… this Brewer.”

“But there are loads of people here, sir,” Simon protested. “You don’t mean to speak to them all, do you?”

“Yes.” His voice was uncompromising. “We must. If I’m right, a man has been killed. The very least we owe him is to find out why he was killed. Black?” The hunter started at being addressed. “Black. Do you have any idea why someone should kill this man? Is there anyone in the village who hated him enough to kill him?”

“Not that I know of. No, this has always been a quiet hamlet. It seems unbelievable that Brewer should have been murdered.”

Baldwin took a long swallow of his beer and carefully set his pot down on the ground beside him before leaning forward, his hands clasped and dangling between his parted legs, his eyes fixed on Black. “Tell me about the other people in the village. How many families are there?”

“Oh, seven. Seven families in seven houses. Of course, there are some adult sons in a couple of them. Thomas has two sons old enough to have their own places now, so has Ulric.”

“I see. Well, tell me about this man Brewer. What was he like?”

Black shot a glance at the priest, who murmured gently, “Don’t worry, my son. Just tell the truth.”

“He was not liked.”

“Why?” asked the knight.

“Well, he had several acres. He had eight oxen. That made the other farmers jealous. And there was always the rumour that he had more money in his chest, hidden. It seemed unfair. Everyone here works hard for their living, working their strips, borrowing whatever they need from their neighbours and working on the manor’s lands when it’s time, but Brewer, he seemed to be able to survive on his own. He paid the bailiff so he never had to work on the lord’s land. And he kept buying more land. He kept taking more from the forest. The lord – that is your brother, Sir Baldwin – let him keep taking over new assarts. He could afford to take on the land in the woods and pay for men to go and clear it, so all the time his money was increasing. All the time he was getting more land and increasing his crops. It made people jealous.” As if he suddenly realised how long a speech he had made, he subsided, glaring at his boots.

He was rescued by the innkeeper arriving with their food. On a heavy wooden tray were earthenware bowls, one for each of them. In the bottom of the bowls was a thick slab of bread, and a heavy stew bad been ladled over the top.

After a few minutes, Baldwin frowned at Black again as a thought hit him. “What about the man’s son? You mentioned a boy in Exeter.”

The hunter sniffed, scooping another spoonful of stew into his mouth with every sign of pleasure. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he belched. “My wife might know something about him. She’s lived here all her life.”

After their meal, Peter announced that he would have to leave them. He had his church work to attend to, he said, although Simon did wonder whether this was mainly for show and the priest was thinking that the affair was simply a wild-goose chase.

Simon was not sure how to treat the knight’s allegation. It seemed too unlikely, somehow, that one of the peaceable villeins from Blackway could have committed murder. It was far more likely that, as they had first thought, the man had died in his sleep. But could Sir Baldwin be right? Could the man have been killed first and then dropped onto his palliasse, so that any others coming later would assume that he had been killed by the thick smoke of his homely pyre? It was possible, he had to agree, but was it likely? Somehow it did not seem so. But the knight was full of nervous energy at the mere thought.

He had bolted down his food, eager once more to be off, and when his companions completed their meals at a more relaxed pace, possibly, although unintentionally, indicating their doubts about his theory, he seemed almost to panic, so intense was his desire to get on with what he termed “our investigation”. Simon was amazed by the difference in the man. When they had first met, so few days ago, at Bickleigh, he had seemed reserved and aloof, tolerant it was true, but aware of his station and noble birth. Now he seemed keen and eager to meet with all the villeins and cottars, the most humble of the serfs of the hamlet, purely to satisfy his curiosity about the death of a man he had never even met. And even the death itself seemed unremarkable to all save him. Was that it? Simon wondered. Was it simply that having proposed what seemed at first sight to be a preposterous concept he now wanted to try to justify it to the others? Or did he need to justify it to himself?

Baldwin Furnshill knew that he did not. He had been ill for months, first with a physical ailment, and, more recently, with a brain fever of alarming proportions, but he knew that neither had any effect on his thinking about the death of the old man in his house. Of course he was aware of the scepticism of the others – he would have been surprised if they had not displayed any, for it did seem very strange that there should have been such a crime in so quiet a part of the land. He could think of many places where death and murder would have been less surprising – London, Bristol, Oxford, and hundreds of towns and villages in between – but here?

And why an old, harmless man who was close to the end of his life anyway? What was the point?

He was still mulling it over when they came to Black’s house at the northernmost edge of the village, over at the west of the road. Although smaller than the other houses in Blackway, it was one of the newest. It was a more solid-looking place, all of cob, but with a strong timber frame that showed around the door and the windows. Baldwin raised a half-amused, half-suspicious eyebrow at the sight of the wood, wondering whether to make a comment, but decided against it. He looked at Black with renewed interest, though. If this hunter was prepared to break the forest laws and steal the king’s wood, he could be a useful man to know for the future. After all, taking the wood could result in a noose at one of the verderer’s courts. Then another thought struck him. If this man was unafraid of the king’s displeasure, would he care about killing a neighbour? Putting the idea to one side, he bowed to the hunter’s wife as she came to the door.

Black stood between her and the others, in an obviously defensive posture, as if trying to keep the world from her – and Baldwin could see why. Jane Black was a strong and pleasant-looking fair woman in her early twenties. She wore a simple woollen shift that reached almost to the floor, with long sleeves and a carefully embroidered pattern on its front. From the noise indoors, she clearly had already given her husband a pair of young sons, but her face and her figure did not show it. She was a little under Black’s height, a healthy woman, unmarked as yet by hard work. It was obvious that the hunter kept the best of his meat for his family, for there was a pleasant roundness to her youthful body. Her face was a little too narrow for Baldwin, her mouth perhaps too thin, and her breasts could have been larger for his taste, but there was no denying that she was extremely attractive.

But even as he took in her looks, noting her smile and the warmth of her gaze, he realised that this was too superficial an evaluation – this was a very intelligent woman. Her intellect was clear in her appraising eyes, in the speed of her glance as she subjected the men to a minute scrutiny, in the measuring, almost bold and defiant, stare when she caught the eyes of the others.

Her husband seemed almost shy as he explained why they were there, as if he was more afraid of worrying her than he was of upsetting the knight and bailiff, and instinctively Baldwin knew his concern was unjustified.

Jane Black was intrigued. She had never seen such important men in her village before – Blackway was too far from the normal routes for any officials to bother to stop off – and she was not sure why they were so interested in old man Brewer’s boy. The visitors did not seem to want to explain, but that did not matter to her; she knew that her husband would tell her all about it later. As she listened, though, it was the knight who caught her attention. He seemed so earnest, so intent, as he watched her, and as she responded to their questions she saw that his gaze fell upon her lips, as if trying to make sense of her words before their meaning could even be imparted to his brain by his ears, as if everything she said was so crucial, of such fascination, that he had to listen with his whole soul.

“Do you remember his name?” Simon asked.

Jane Black slowly wiped her hands on the cloth that served as an apron while she lost herself in her past, in the times when she was a young girl, long before she met John Black, and when the Brewer family had been together. Slowly the pictures started to come to life, as she recalled faded visions of years long passed, of a boy with a simple rough tunic who always seemed to be close to tears from the beatings his father gave, a boy who longed for a mother, but whose mother had died during his birth, a boy who wanted love and affection from a father who seemed to blame him for his widowhood. He had always seemed cowed, like a dog that was thrashed too often, waiting for the next whipping. She had always felt a sneaking sorrow for him, as if she could have taken him up and helped him, perhaps by becoming the sister he had never had. But kindness between children was difficult. She had given in and joined in the vicious jibes and sneers of her friends. When had he left the area?

“His name was Morgan; he was named after the father of his mother,” she said, her eyes seeing only the past.

“Why did he leave, Mrs. Black?” said Baldwin, a scowl of incomprehension darkening his features.

“Why? Oh to get away, I think. He managed to save some money and went to Exeter. He got his lord’s agreement – that was your brother, Sir Baldwin. It’s not surprising. Brewer was a hard man. I can remember seeing Morgan bruised and hurt on mornings when his father had been in his cups the night before.”

“Did he often get drunk, then?”

She gave a chuckle. “Oh yes, sir. Very often indeed! It was rare for him to get home sober. Many was the night he had to be helped home from the inn or from a friend’s house after too much ale or cider.”

Baldwin nodded slowly. “And he became violent when he had too much to drink?”

Her eyes seemed to film over as she looked at him. “Yes,” she said at last. “He would often abuse others. If he had drunk too much he tried to fight – and he was strong, sir, very strong. My father used to try to avoid him, but others would be hit by him. He even used to hit the very men that were helping him home. Oh, yes, he could be very violent.”

“This son, Morgan. You think he’s still in Exeter?”

“No, I doubt it. If he had any choice, I think Morgan would have gone as far away as he could. He had no need of his father’s money, I think. He earned enough himself in the city and could easily afford to travel farther.”

“Do you know where he can be found?”

“Oh no. No, I’ve no idea. And I doubt whether anyone else in Blackway will, either.”

Preparing to leave, Simon and Baldwin stood and waited on the doorstep while Black took his wife back indoors to give her his farewell.

“Are you really sure that this man Brewer was murdered?” said Simon at last.

Baldwin shot a glance at him, then smiled sardonically as if mocking himself. “Oh, I don’t know. Not really know. But I am sure he was dead before the fire started. And I’m equally sure that the blaze was not caused by his cooking fire.”

“Why? How can you be so sure of that?”

“Because of what I said. The fire was too low. It couldn’t have thrown up enough sparks to light the roof.”

Simon scratched his neck and squinted at the tall, dark figure beside him with a sceptical grimace. “Baldwin, you may be right, but just what the bugger do you think we can do even if you are? We can’t show that the body was injured – it was too badly burned for that. We can’t prove that anyone went there to kill him – what do you want?”

“Of course we can prove it,” said his friend, looking at him with an expression of patience mixed with frustration. “All we need to do is find the man who did it and get him to confess.”

“Ah,” said Simon sarcastically. “So that’s all, is it? I may as well go home now then, if you have it all tied up so neatly already!”