The Outlaws of Ennor

Chapter Twenty-Six

Simon rose to the sound of men arming themselves. There was the steady rattle and scrape of a grinding-wheel as men ran knives, swords and axes over the spinning stone; a subdued chatter filled the hall, as though all were making an effort to be normal, to hide either their fear or their excitement. Simon reckoned there were more who were looking forward to the day than were fearful that the innocent could be harmed. For his part, he wanted to be off, but only so that he was away from Ennor before the gaoler discovered the escape of Sir Charles.

There were some twelve men-at-arms in the guard at the castle, but Ranulph had managed to accumulate a mob of mercenary sailors, all of whom were enthusiastically relating stories of previous fights, and a group of servants from the castle and the farms about, who handled their weapons less enthusiastically.

To kill a man was wrong, Simon knew, although it was excusable on occasion. Clearly a man might protect his own life by killing an attacker, just as he might to protect his wife from death or rape, or protect his property from a felon who sought to take it. Plainly that was fine. Then there were other admissible homicides, such as the execution of a known felon who was on the run from justice, or a man who had accepted exile and then returned. These were judicially approved executions.

What Simon found difficult was the attitude of these sailors. They seemed to think they were entitled to seek out and sink a Breton ship, yet when the latter treated them in like fashion, they were called pirates and labelled as among the most foul of God’s creation.

It was confusing. To an extent Simon had always felt that he had a better understanding of his fellow men than most, which was one reason why he thought he made a reasonable Bailiff, but listening to these men, he was struck by how different they were from the simple miners of Dartmoor. It applied to all seafarers, he told himself. The miners on the whole were reasonable men, while seafarers were quite mad. Any adult male who decided that a good life involved being thrown from side to side in a wooden bucket, or hurled from a mast in a gale, or dying as a pirate or a pirate’s prey, was mad or a fool. Simon didn’t care which, he was only aware that the whole idea of being responsible for a port like Dartmouth was growing steadily less desirable.

‘They nearly took us, the sons of Saracen whores,’ one sailor was saying, ‘so this time we’ll go and rip them all open from tarse to chin. That’ll teach them to try to take the Faucon Dieu.’

‘It’s the same with us. They chased us for hours in the Anne,’ Simon heard a man from his own ship respond. ‘I’m looking forward to cutting the throat of that bastard with the beard.’

‘The same man attacked us,’ the first replied. ‘Short-arsed git! He had a wound, right about here.’

Suddenly Simon remembered that fight, the wind howling, but the men making more noise as they streamed up the side of the Anne and tried to take her. The mad scramble, the stab, block, stab on the treacherous deck, and that evil-looking Breton man … he could have been a Cornishman, Simon supposed; he had the right features and build. Yet Simon was sure that the voices which had cried at them had a different accent to the men here on Ennor. Why should he have had so definite an impression that the pirates were Bretons, if there was nothing to substantiate it? It was very strange — but these men understood the sea, they knew the accents of the people here, and of the ships which had attacked them, so surely they could be trusted. Nobody would be so foolish or so wicked as to attack an innocent vill, would they? And yet had anyone bothered to think of the language of the pirates? He doubted it.

He strapped on his belt, and his eyes narrowed as he studied the workmanship of the blue steel. If he was to fight, he would prefer a good, well-made blade, and he knew that Baldwin’s sword was only recently manufactured. It would be a much better weapon than any he could find in the castle’s armoury.

It was as he was thinking this that Thomas appeared in the doorway and surveyed the men in the room. Another man appeared behind him. When Simon nudged his neighbour and asked who it was, he learned that this was the master of the Faucon Dieu.

Fitting a smile to his face, Simon approached them. ‘Thomas, I am pleased to see that I shall be going with you today.’

‘Yes, it’ll be good to see the pirates finished,’ Thomas said. ‘Still, Bailiff, you were unable to learn anything about the murderer of my man. A great shame.’

There was an emphasis on that ‘my’ that made Simon pause. There was definitely some sort of warning here, maybe a hint that he should stay out of the way while other men went about their business. It made Simon want to hit him, very hard, but he restrained himself, although some devil tempted him to say, ‘I wanted to ask again about my companions from the boat. They should be released. In an attack like this, they would be a considerable help to your cause.’

‘I doubt it. Felons aren’t much help usually,’ Thomas said without thinking. His mind was on other things. Then his thoughts snapped back to the present. ‘I am sorry? You were saying?’

‘Felons?’ Simon repeated.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said “felons” when I mentioned Sir Charles. What did you mean by calling him that?’

‘I was thinking of the men whom we are to capture today,’ Thomas said suavely. ‘Now, your friends are comfortable here. Taking them out to fight for my Lord when they drew weapons against him, that would be irrational and inhospitable. Leaving them here to rest after their exertions is generous. They should be very grateful.’ His voice was grown sharp.

Simon watched him swagger away. ‘No court you run will ever be fair or just, you vain, primping peacock!’ he muttered under his breath. It was better that Sir Charles and Paul had been taken off Ennor. The sanctuary of the church of St Nicholas was their target, and hopefully they were there already.

Looking about him, Simon prayed that this unruly host wouldn’t find them on their way to the island. He wondered how the two of them had fared.

It took Baldwin and William a little while to find a boat, but once they had spoken to a surly old man with a face burned all but black from a life out on the sea, they were soon off.

‘This is the island of St Elidius,’ William said.

He was sitting forward of Baldwin in the little boat, while the ancient man rowed without comment, as though he had seen too many people come here for him to worry himself. For his part, William was sitting keenly eyeing the little place as they drew nearer.

‘This place is good for the abbey. It generates quite a good revenue from pilgrims and shipping. Any vessels which come here for water and provisions can have what they want, but they pay a heavy toll,’ William said, indicating the broad sweep of water.

Baldwin looked about him with interest. The water was growing more rough, as though restless, and looked a great deal deeper. ‘Just here?’

‘Yes. It’s called many things, sometimes just the Priory Pool, because the Priory makes so much from it. If Ranulph could, he would take this. It is a profitable port, worth as much as all the customs on Ennor. I always called it the Pool of St Elidius, though. This is all his land. Or so I believe.’

He had a fanatic’s expression on his face, a mingling of fervour and spiritual excitement. Baldwin thought he looked like a stuffed frog. ‘Who was St Elidius?’

‘He was the son of a Cornish King, a Bishop and confessor. He came here many years ago to build his church, and he remains here, buried under his own altar. His feast day is only recently past.’

Baldwin was struck by the look of the island. It was not so vast as Ennor or St Nicholas, but it was a good-sized place, with a soft-looking southern shoreline with lots of sand. It stretched far to left and right before them, and Baldwin was struck by the sense of peace here.

‘He was a good man,’ the taciturn rower told them. ‘He helped the people here while he lived, and he still does now he’s dead.’

‘There are several pilgrims each year,’ William agreed. ‘They come from Cornwall, of course; St Elidius is not known elsewhere.’

‘I had not heard of him,’ Baldwin admitted. ‘So there are many people travelling to this island all the year round?’

‘Not so many now,’ William said.

‘No one much since Luke came here,’ the rower spat. ‘He’s not like you, Father.’

‘Come now,’ William said, unhappy to hear a member of a congregation criticising his own priest. ‘He was as good as he could be, but sometimes a man will follow the wrong path and things fail. I am sure Luke tried to be a good man, but a place like this, with so few islanders, well … It was more like a hermitage for him than a church with its own flock, wasn’t it? I don’t think you should blame him for his weaknesses, however many they may have been.’

‘You forgive if you want,’ the boatman said. ‘Me, I’ll not forget how he used to look at my daughter.’

Baldwin smiled to hear that. It was the way of such men that their grudges were harboured long and kept fresh by constant reminders to themselves of the iniquities of others.

‘Tell me,’ he said to the rower, ‘are there many people living on the island?’

‘No, sir. Most moved away during the famine, and few have returned. Most are on St Nicholas and Ennor, and a few on Bechiek. St Elidius suffered from the rains, and now it’s all but deserted, except by the priest at the church.’

When William and Baldwin had hopped from the boat into warm, shallow water, William led Baldwin enthusiastically up the shore until they were into a thick scrubby area of gorse. Here they turned up the slight incline to a little-used path.

‘My heaven!’ Baldwin exclaimed as he topped a low hill.

Before him was the enclosure. A group of three small huts connected by a low wall for protection, and a small round cell on the left. Beyond, inside the wall, was the church.

‘It’s a good size,’ William said proudly. ‘Some twenty-six by fourteen feet. Enough for most of the people from St Nicholas, when they wanted to come to visit. Sometimes they did.’

‘Who would come here to talk to you?’

William gave him a look from under grim brows. ‘Often it would be Tedia — while I was here and at St Mary’s too, but not for the reason that Luke invited her. When I was here, she came to ask me for help, and I would pray with her, at her side, to try to give her the courage and support she needed so badly. And then a man like Luke arrives, and all that’s out the window. Damn his black soul, the pustulent streak of piss!’

He took Baldwin to the western edge of the wall, where there was a little gate. It flapped open in the wind, and Baldwin stepped around it carefully, looking for signs of a man having walked past here on his way to kill, or returning from killing, Luke. ‘There’s nothing to see here,’ he said. ‘The ground is too stony. If there were some marks, they have been blown or washed away.’

‘So he died before the storm?’

‘Prior Cryspyn told us that it rained last night,’ Baldwin noted, touching the leaves of a plant near the gate. His fingers came away damp. ‘Yes, it clearly did. Which means that any bloodstains or marks could have been washed away by now. No matter, we shall have to do the best we can, that is all.’

‘Yes,’ William said, mournfully walking to the church. ‘I shall just see whether my chapel has been defiled.’

Baldwin smiled. The man was a single-minded fanatic when it came to this island, plainly. When William had disappeared, Baldwin himself walked about the enclosure, studying every part of the ground with interest, but finding nothing.

Luke had been no gardener, that much was plain. The little beds in which plants had grown were infested with weeds; the grassed lawns were long and rank, unkempt as a peasant’s hair during the harvest when he was living in the fields for days at a time. At the far edge of the church’s land there was a garden which should have provided all the sustenance a priest should need, but that too was a mess. It was almost as though the man had decided that he was not going to be here on the island for too long. There was no need of cultivation.

Baldwin walked around the outside of the church once more, and then opened the great door and entered.

The walls were covered in rich paintings, all scenes from the life of Christ. Baldwin recognised the largest, which showed Him being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. It caught his attention immediately: a thin, painfully hungry Jesus, a black-faced demon at his shoulder, showing all forms of earthly delights, and the Son of God recoiling in revulsion.

‘It took me an age, that one,’ Baldwin heard.

William was behind him. He stepped forward, a glow of pride on his face, and pointed out the details. ‘You’d never believe how hard it was to make the face so realistic, especially the devil’s! That was dreadful. I had to make fourteen shades of black for it. Every time I tried to use charcoal in oil or anything, the colours didn’t work.’

‘Did you paint all these?’ Baldwin asked, but there was no need. The similarity of each face told of the skill and pleasure of the artist, and proved that one man had painted them all.

‘Who else could have done them? When I arrived here, there was nothing. And then, when I started painting, I couldn’t stop. The only pleasure for me, moving to St Mary’s, is that at least I managed to finish this first.’

‘The one of Jesus Christ being tempted is most striking.’

William grinned suddenly. ‘And what could be more realistic here than a man tempted by all manner of pleasures, when he lives on a rock in the middle of the ocean like this, eh? All the people who visit here go to that one first; even pilgrims come and stare before going to the altar. Yes, it’s done its job well enough.’

At the eastern end, there were two altars of moorstone. One was in the main part of the church, but beside it, the north wall had two rounded arches leading to an aisle. Both had platforms for their altars, and Baldwin and William knelt awhile in prayer, and then Baldwin insisted on visiting the cell where Luke had lived.

It was a small chamber in the outer wall, and when Baldwin pushed at the door, it squeaked open easily enough, but then crunched on something. When he peered into the gloom, he saw shards of pottery broken on the floor. There was a rancid stench, as though a man had tipped over a whole barrel of wine on the clay floor. From the feel of it, the fire hadn’t been lighted in a long while, and it was a cheerless little room.

A palliasse lay on the floor near a wall, while some rubbish and bits and pieces of food littered the place, scattered by a scavenging creature of some sort. When Baldwin crouched, the shards were pieces of a broken jug, and he considered them thoughtfully before carrying them outside and studying them in the light.

‘He was prone to heavy bouts of drinking?’ he asked William.

‘It’s no secret that he lost his vocation and sought comfort in whatever he could find inside a jug,’ William agreed.

‘The room stank of it.’

William shrugged. ‘It is a common failing with those who take up the cloth and live in remote places. He’d have had no visitors except occasional pilgrims and sometimes a member of the congregation, like Brosia or Tedia. The women liked to come, to flaunt themselves at him.’

‘There is no sign or smell of blood, anyway,’ Baldwin said. ‘Your church and outbuilding is not polluted with the man’s murder.’

‘That is a relief,’ William said, his eyes on the seas about them. His eyes held a great longing.

‘You didn’t mind the solitude?’

‘Not at all. There are views to compensate.’

‘Show me.’

Needing no second bidding, William led Baldwin up from the church along a narrow path, and up to perhaps the highest spot of the island. ‘Look about you!’

Baldwin gazed about him, and at last he could understand William’s attitude.

St Elidius was a small island, nothing like as large as Ennor or St Nicholas, but it had as much variety as both together. Northwards was a small separate island with a rounded, rock-girt outline called, William said, An-Voth, which meant ‘hump’ in the local language — a very suitable name. The channel from there to St Elidius was covered with water, but Baldwin was sure that he could see the ground beneath, and suspected that it would be accessible when the tide was lower. To the west of it stood the northernmost tip of the island, a promontory which William told him was called imaginatively Men-ar-Voth, which meant ‘rock facing the hump’. Beyond this series of rocks the island spread out farther westwards, Baldwin could see, and there were some inlets, but all looked as rocky and dangerous as the north Cornish coast. It was only as he turned and studied the southern view that he saw that the bays grew more sandy and attractive.

‘I love it here,’ William said. He made a brief sign of the cross. ‘It’s so restful and quiet. I always felt that St Elidius was watching over me. He’s buried here under his own altar, as you know.’

‘It is most soothing.’

‘Not during a storm it’s not,’ William chuckled. ‘I can understand Luke wanting to leave here in the middle of a storm. That sort of weather isn’t easy on a man of weak spirit, and Luke was not a strong-willed man. All he ever wanted was a woman. The fool should have remained a peasant and raised hundreds of smaller Lukes with a woman who was happy to lie on her back for him when he demanded it.’

‘He was unfortunate, then?’

‘Look at this beauty! Not just the island, with the joy of welcoming pilgrims every year, but the delight of living amongst these seafarers. The people here do not welcome strangers open-heartedly, but if you work with them, you learn to appreciate their dedication to work, their strength. But Luke couldn’t do that: he just looked on them as peasants — a class of person he detested, I think because he had once been like them and was revolted to remember it.’

‘Whereas you …?’

William suddenly guffawed. ‘Me? I’m an unrepentant old sinner who’s proud to say that I was a peasant, am a peasant, and will die a peasant! My family came from Cornwall, and if I hadn’t shown a skill at singing and learning my letters, I’d have gone to sea like my father and brothers. I suppose that’s why I like it here. It reminds me of my family.’ He was silent a moment, staring out over the gentle seas. ‘It is a good place, this. Harsh but kindly.’

Baldwin nodded. Glancing to the north again, he was about to speak when he saw a ship’s prow.

The vessel had lain concealed in a bay low beneath them, resting in a natural harbour north of their island. Now that Baldwin saw the ship, he could see that there was a rock or pair of rocks that stood between An-Voth and St Elidius, lumps of black stone that stretched east-west for maybe five hundred feet. Now that the ship had appeared, Baldwin could see the rock as a slightly different colour, maybe a paler grey against the darkness of An-Voth. Before, he had thought that they were a part of An-Voth’s coastline, but now it was obvious that there was a natural cleft between the two.

‘What is that doing there?’ William cried in surprise. ‘I didn’t know there was a harbour up there!’

‘I think,’ Baldwin said, staring hard, ‘that there could be a clue here to the murder of Luke.’

‘What do you mean?’

She was emerging from her hiding-place now, a long, low, ship with her mast slowly rising as men scrambled about and hauled on ropes. Gradually the massive timber lifted upwards to the vertical, and Baldwin could all but feel the strain in their arms as the crew roared commands at each other.

At any other time he would have stood and watched, but not this time. The sleek raider was preparing for sea, and Baldwin knew what that meant. He could see the black-bearded face of the Breton master as the current caught her and swung her head around. The master was at the back, his arm in a makeshift sling, bellowing at the helmsman.

‘Come quickly, William!’

‘Why? What is it?’

Baldwin saw before his eyes the helmsman of the Anne collapsing, gouts of his blood splashing on the deck, the screaming sailor falling from the grapnel he had tried to cut away, the cowering figure of Hamo — and when he spoke he scarcely recognised his own voice, it was so thick with hatred.

‘That ship: it is the pirates who attacked us.’