The Outlaws of Ennor

Chapter Five

Ranulph de Blancminster was already out investigating the damage done to his properties when William arrived at the small castle, and William couldn’t help but feel that it was fortunate. He and the Lord of the Manor had never seen eye to eye, and William dreaded to think of the expression on Ranulph’s face when he heard that there was easy plunder from a wrecked ship.

Ennor Castle itself with its new crenellations appeared unaffected by the storms. It was a simple rectangular keep, sitting on a craggy outcrop of rock with a rocky outer wall enclosing the main court with its stables, cookhouse and stores. It was not designed to protect the occupants from invasion, and a good thing too, in William’s view. Still, it was built of good local stone which could keep out discontented islanders, and that was all Ranulph wanted.

Outside the walls were more stables and stores, together with some living quarters for the men who served the castle and Ranulph’s manor all about. These were in turmoil as William walked through, and he offered his sympathy to women who forlornly picked through the wreckage of huts blown over in the gales, all their meagre belongings crushed beneath. One mother sat sniffing sightlessly, a dead child cradled in her arms. The father was nearby, picking up timbers and throwing them aside, calling increasingly desperately to his other daughter. William felt a clutch at his heart at the sight. This was the reality of God’s power. Simple folk could be destroyed in the twinkling of an eye. At least this woman would soon conceive and bear more children. They would have to be her consolation in the future, for these two would soon be only a sad memory.

He had known both children since their births; he’d christened them both. He came here to St Mary’s in Ennor when Peter Visconte was ordered away by the Prior after his whoring with Mabilla de Marghasiou, the ‘priest’s mare’ whom he had brought with him when he first arrived in the islands. At the time William was living a quieter life up in the chapel of St Elidius in the north of the islands, but he had been commanded by the Bishop to come here and take over Peter Visconte’s responsibilities, and his own little chapel had sunk into disuse until Brother Luke arrived. Clearly Luke had been badly behaved, because the Bishop had given him the hermit’s chapel. William, by contrast, had been told to stay here at Ennor instead.

William looked about him with a blank expression. He must comfort the people here, he knew, and yet he would have been happier to have been left up on St Elidius. He craved the peace of his little chapel. Not like Luke, who appeared to loathe it.

Luke was a weird one. He was certainly bright enough. His sermons seemed to catch the folk all about with their vivid depictions of suffering, as though he himself had experienced loss and pain; he fixed on the sins of the flesh a little too much for William’s taste. William himself felt happier preaching against the sins of gluttony, pride and sloth — especially when he observed Ranulph de Blancminster in his audience.

There was something in Luke’s expression that spoke of sadness. No, it was more than that. Perhaps it was soul-deep. William had a theory that there were two types of person. Some wore their sadness on view for all to see. The woman who had lost her children was one example: she would mourn loudly when the terrible torpor which now had her in its grip finally left. Then would begin the longer period of quiet grief.

Others couldn’t afford to succumb to their misery. Her husband was an example. He would work now, seeking to save whatever he could from their little property, and when that was done, he would spend his time in trying to comfort his woman. He would hide his sadness, but it would still be there, deep within him, burning away at him like a canker.

Of the two, William was sure that the man needed the more support. The woman had her man to give her his strength, but there was no one apart from the chaplain to give her husband comfort. His pain lay far below, not up on the surface. It was there that William must concentrate his efforts.

Luke had that same sort of quiet, concealed pain. It was a manly pain, a hidden grief that was enough to tear at his soul, but which he could not mention to others. Perhaps he had raised it with his confessor at St Nicholas’s Priory. Because Luke had come here from a convent, so William had heard (gossip among the brothers and other religious was more common than among the most garrulous women on the islands), he was confessed by the Prior himself, so William had heard. That in itself was a bit curious. Not many lowly chaplains had such a prestigious confessor.

Yes. It was possible that the fellow had a deep hurt which had led to his being brought here to recover himself.

However, William was unconvinced. He had seen the way Luke’s eyes invariably sought out the prettiest women in his congregation and stayed there. To William’s mind, Luke was the sort of man who depended upon women to keep him content, and that was a poor qualification for a celibate. It was more likely that Luke was here for a failing. Perhaps it was that common failing among priests: the same as that which led to Peter Visconte being removed from St Mary’s in the first place.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, Walerand made his way from the castle towards the marshy lands in the middle of Ennor, and thence up towards Penn Trathen.

He was relatively new to Ranulph’s service, but he was confident that he’d be promoted before too long. For now, he was merely a servant, but he hoped to follow men like Robert, the gather-reeve, and become a known strong man. Perhaps he could take over Robert’s job, winning money for their master. It was easy enough. The man only had to sneer a bit, act tough, and these pathetic bastards gave him their money. Walerand could do all that. More, in fact, because he wouldn’t stop at a scowl. He’d be happy to beat the living shit from most of the cretins on the islands.

He wasn’t born here. Originally he came from Falmouth, but an unfortunate mistake had led to his leaving in a hurry. The mistake was, he had thought that the priest in the church up on the hill just outside the town, was asleep. Sadly, he wasn’t, and when Walerand tried to pinch the plate, the chaplain had come in breathing hellfire and damnation. Walerand had been forced to pull out his knife to defend himself as the priest drew his sword and denounced him as a trailbaston and thief. Luckily, the priest was old and unused to fighting, whereas Walerand had grown up as an orphan in the rougher streets of Falmouth, and was more than capable of defending himself. He ducked under the priest’s blade, then stabbed upwards, feeling his own blade snag on something. Unpleasantly convinced that the ‘something’ was the priest’s heart (it was in fact merely a jerkin of sheepskin which the priest wore under his tunic during the miserable winter months, and he was unscathed), Walerand fled the place with no money and the conviction that he had consigned his eternal soul to hell.

The islands had called to him eventually. It had taken some while. After the botched robbery, he had escaped to Truro and tried his hand at many jobs, but every time, when a tradesman realised that he had never been apprenticed, he was looked at askance, apart from in the small brothel there, where any fellow could have gained a position.

One day, he heard of the island of Ennor from a sailor who had been there, and learned that there was a place which was a haven for outlaws. As soon as he heard this, he resolved to visit and offer his services. The sailor was happy to take him there, for a fee, and before dawn the next morning, Walerand stole the purse of the brothel’s keeper, and boarded ship. As he had hoped, Ranulph was happy enough to have him as one of his men, initially a servant, but soon no doubt he could take on more responsibilities as a man-at-arms or something.

He’d like that. He might even turn out to be better at that than at collecting the taxes. All too often people paid up on time, which wasn’t what Walerand wanted. He’d prefer a weaker peasant to give him trouble so that he could give the poxy shite a good kicking. He had gone with Robert before now, helping the gather-reeve as one of his guards; Robert always had guards about him because so many people here hated the tax collector. Robert got in their way, took whatever money they had, and most of them thought he stole a slice for himself. What if he did? Walerand thought it was fair payment for a man who had a hard enough job of it, trying to keep track of who owned what, who earned what, and who could pay what. If he made a bit on the side, that was only to be expected. He was farming the farmers.

It was no surprise that the folks here disliked him. Although it was odd to Walerand that Robert felt he should have a guard. From Walerand’s experience, there was no one on the island who was enough of a threat to the men from La Val’s castle to justify the protection of men-at-arms.

He walked farther up the coast. His master, the Lord of the Manor, had told his men to go and investigate his properties to see if they had been affected by the storm. Ranulph himself had gone to the worst-hit parts, over on the south-eastern side of the island, to inspect the damage. It was expected that there would be extensive waste of the crops over there, and he had some flocks pastured there too, which he wanted to see, to assure himself that they were all well. Meanwhile, the servants had been ordered to view other stretches, and Walerand had been detailed to come here, to the northernmost tip of Ennor, at the place called Penn Trathen by the locals. It meant ‘the end of the sand bar’, a treacherous spit of sand that always caught the unwary larger boats when they attempted to pass between St Nicholas and Ennor at low tide.

It was not the sort of work which appealed to Walerand’s nature. He broke off a stick from a hedge and used it to slash at the road as he went. From the castle, he had taken the old rutted track towards the middle of the island, until he reached the marshes. Once there, he took a detour around them, not knowing the safe routes through the middle which older Ennor hands told him existed. Once Walerand had witnessed the death of a pony which had fallen into the marshes, and its protracted suffering had amused him, but he had resolved never to allow himself to sink into that same damp embrace.

From the marshes, he had to climb the little hill. At the top he began to drop down again, towards the shore. Walking down between the fields, he soon passed in among the little stand of trees which a farmer had planted as his shaw. Once through them, the trail took him down to Penn Trathen itself.

He stopped at the treeline. Here he could see the length of the sand bar clearly, with the line of old rocks below the surface, their position clear because of the slimy trails of seaweed which clung to them. The sight made him shiver with revulsion. To his mind seaweed looked like a dead man’s fingers, and the feel of the soft, stringy tissues against his skin made him want to scream with terror, as though the weeds would drag him down into the icy depths of the sea. It was a fear he had wisely not confessed to his companions in the castle, but when he saw the peasants collecting kelp and drying it for fuel, he wanted to be sick.

Some said that the line of rocks here was an old road which was now submerged, but Walerand neither knew nor cared whether that was true. He would never try a roadway that was so smothered with weeds.

Continuing down the path, which now grew sandy and less muddy, he reached the shore and started for the point. There was not so much damage here, he noted. Some of the cottages had suffered badly, their roofs blown off, their doors of hanging leather or old wood stripped, their windows of waxed linen shredded, but that was the problem of the peasants, nothing to do with de Blancminster. No, his concern was the fields which bounded the sea, and the animals which lay within.

Since the fields were small here, the walls and trees offered good protection to the creatures, and when he peered over the walls, Walerand saw that the cattle and sheep appeared to have forgotten any fears from the night before. The cows sat chewing the cud contentedly, the sheep circled their pastures, cropping the grass.

Bored, Walerand wandered idly to the shore and kicked up the sand. Here, above the watermark, the sand was still cluttered with rubbish from the water which had blown over it the night before. Pieces of timber abounded, and he frowned. Surely a ship must have foundered for there to be so many wasted baulks lying about here.

A man who had lived on the islands for any period soon knew when to look for an opportunity, and Walerand was no exception. He knew that the island folk would soon be out here, scavenging whatever they could from the wreckage, and rather than let them take everything, he started searching for valuables. You never could tell what might have been lost from a drowning ship.

The treasure he found, though, was more directly beneficial to him than all the timbers and trinkets which might have fallen from the ship.

He had just passed Penn Trathen, and was continuing along the coast, when he saw an odd lump in the grassy dunes. Walking over to it, he saw it was a boot, and a good one at that, so he scrambled up the sand to grab it. But when he got to it, he saw that it wasn’t one boot, it was a pair of them, bound together with a short thong. He had bent to pick them up, already assessing their value and quality, when he saw something else.

A short distance beyond lay a man: Robert, their owner. He lay on his back, his hosen off, leaving him bare-legged, his jack open at the breast and his shirt beneath a curious hue. There was blood on his lips, and Walerand realised that more had run down his torso and stained the sand a pale pink all about him. When Walerand saw his face, he thought Robert must have died in agony, his hands scrabbling at the sand and grasses about him. Some grasses still protruded from his dead left hand, although when Walerand prodded at the hand with his boot, the bits and pieces fell away, leaving his clawed hand resting on the sand.

This was an unpopular place because it was said that a vill had once stood here until the sea had overwhelmed it. Ghosts were supposed to populate the place. Now Walerand looked about him, but he felt no fear. He had seen enough dead men to know that Robert was no longer a danger to him. More to the point, as he told himself happily, throwing the boots over his shoulder and whistling, the job of gather-reeve was open again. He began searching for booty among the corpse’s belongings. Maybe his promotion would come sooner than he had expected.

On St Nicholas, it took some little time for Tedia to gather up women and two men to carry the body to her house. As the woman who had found him, Tedia laid claim to the half-drowned man, and soon had him laid upon a palliasse in her home. It made for a crowded room, but there was nothing she could do about that.

Baldwin for his part was only semi-conscious. He came to partly as soon as he felt Tedia’s hand on his neck, gently stroking him, but the night had taken its toll, as had the shock of the long journey, swimming desperately in the hope that he might find a spar or piece of jetsam to cling to. It seemed too much to hope that he might strike land, and as soon as his exhausted mind took in the fact that he was safe, he fell into a deep sleep and was entirely unaware of anything that went on around him.

While the men stood in the doorway and watched, the women stripped the figure bare, then began to wash him with warm water fresh from the fire. His clothes were taken by Mariota, who shooed the men away, and then sat in the doorway with needle and thread to mend the worst of the tears, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the stained and malodorous material.

Tedia surveyed him as she cleaned him. There was blood in profusion from a graze at his temple and down past the left side of his jaw, and a long, deep scratch from his shoulder to his right nipple, and the women washed these areas most carefully with clean water. Salt in a wound caused great irritation, as the islanders knew. When all had been cleaned, one woman broke an egg, quickly separated out the yolk, and poured the white into the wounds to clean them. The yolk was set aside for him to eat later.

When he was cleaned, Tedia sat back on her heels and studied him. He was definitely good-looking, she thought. If she hadn’t already lost her heart to Robert, she could be tempted by a man like this.

He was much older, at least double her age, not that such a difference mattered. The thin line of beard that followed the line of his jaw was odd, for men generally wore their beards untrimmed or went close-shaven, but this man seemed to have cultivated an appearance of cleanliness, for all the filth on him from his time in the water. It was attractive, and she found herself wondering who he was and where he had come from, to arrive here so suddenly. His breathing was irregular, and now and again he made little snuffling noises, then gasps and cries in his sleep, and she stroked his hand and arm. Gradually his alarms faded and he calmed.

The other women all had their own work to attend to. They melted away when they could see that nothing exciting was likely to happen for some time. Before long even Brosia had gone (Tedia had seen her at the edge of the group while she washed Baldwin’s wounds), and there was only her Aunt Mariota left sitting impassively in the doorway, her needle rising and falling with her stitching.

‘This is a fine mess, isn’t it?’ Mariota said when she felt Tedia’s eyes upon her. She was a large woman with pendulous breasts under her shift from birthing and nursing eight boys. Three of them had survived to adulthood, a good record. ‘I wonder where the man’s ship struck.’

‘He doesn’t have the look of a sailor,’ Tedia said reflectively.

‘No,’ Mariota laughed. She held out her own hands, heavy and powerful like a man’s. Work had made them hard, just as it had made her arms more powerful than many a smith’s. ‘Look, mine are more horny than his! He must have an easy life of it. You mark my words: he’s a rich man.’

Tedia felt her aunt’s eyes on her. Mariota had the sharp intelligence of a woman who was used to dealing with her own problems alone, ever since her husband had died, many years before, in another storm. ‘You mean he may pay me for saving him?’

‘No. You know what I mean. When you have got divorced from that wastrel, you-’

‘There’s no need to call Isok a wastrel. He has done all he can.’

‘You protest all you want, maid. I only say what everyone else thinks. He may be a good enough fisherman, but he can’t snare his own wife, can he? What sort of a man does that make him? You mark my words, you’ll be best off without him. Feel sorry for him, by all means, but you need a new life. A new man.’

‘He has been a good husband to me,’ Tedia stated, and left her aunt sitting there on her stool with her wise old eyes sparkling with humour.

The trouble was, there were no secrets on an island. She had gone to Luke, and already her aunt knew all about it. So did everybody else on the island. As she left her home, Tedia was sure that she could feel their eyes on her. She set her back defiantly and strode proudly, bucket in hand, to fetch fresh water.

Meanwhile, in William’s church of St Mary’s on Ennor, Simon Puttock felt his eyes growing heavier with each passing moment. Soon after William had left him, he nodded, his chin resting on his breast, and when he came to with a start, he saw that an old man with a long, skeletal frame was sitting cross-legged at the cabin-boy’s side.

He had a hand on the boy’s wrist, and he mumbled to himself softly. As he spoke, he lifted his other hand outstretched, and then slowly let it fall towards the boy’s chest. Simon almost expected to hear something as it touched, but there was nothing, only a sudden pause in the old man’s voice.

‘He’ll be well now.’

‘Who are you?’ Simon asked. He had no need to ask what the man had done. He was a charmer, a man who could cure animals of most ailments. Such men were prized in vills of all sizes, although often frowned upon by the Church.

‘I’m known as Hamadus. It’s a good enough name, I daresay, master.’

‘Tell me, where are we?’ Simon asked. ‘The priest told me, but …’

‘But you were tired. Yes, you did well, master, getting all the way here. You are on the island of Ennor. It’s south and west of your land.’

‘Ennor.’ Simon had heard of it before.

‘It is owned by the Earl of Cornwall,’ Hamadus added helpfully.

It was little help to Simon. The information only made him realise how much further he must travel to get to his home. ‘Christ’s blood, and I have to cross the damned water again,’ he groaned.

‘To get home?’ Hamadus cackled. ‘Of course, my friend. You can go nowhere from here without getting your feet wet, apart from to other islands, when you’re very lucky and the tide’s well out.’

‘I don’t want to go to other islands,’ Simon said. ‘I only want to make my way home.’

‘You’ll have a wait. There’s a boat every once in a while.’

‘What of all the ships based here on the islands?’

Hamadus shrugged with a happy smile. ‘They’re all looking for your ship now. They’ll try to steal everything they can before Ranulph finds it, and then they’ll claim salvage. You know what that is?’

‘Yes. I know,’ Simon said. After all, when he returned home, he was to take up a new post at Dartmouth, under his master, Abbot Champeaux of Tavistock, who had bought the post of Keeper of the Port. The good Abbot hoped to make a profit for the Abbey, so that it would be left with a favourable balance on his death. Simon knew that his master was determined to see the Abbey on a sound footing, and the way that the Abbot had arranged the Abbey’s finances, Simon was comfortably assured that his master would succeed. ‘Who is this Ranulph?’

‘Ranulph de Blancminster, the Lord of the Manor. He owns all these islands, apart from the northern ones, of course. They are the Abbey’s.’

Now Simon remembered the name. Of course! Tavistock Abbey owned property in a place called Ennor. This must be the same place. That was a stroke of luck, since he was himself in the Abbey’s employ. ‘Thank God,’ he breathed.

‘Salvage is the law that means a man can win himself a share of half the value of the ship he finds, if he helps it to be saved. Half of the value of the ship and all the goods inside it.’

‘Yes,’ Simon said as testily as his tiredness allowed. ‘I know.’

‘Better than a wreck, of course.’

‘I know … Why?’

Hamadus grinned, as though acknowledging that he had won Simon’s interest against his will. ‘Because salvage means that they will save lives if they can. They’ll win money anyway, but if it’s supposed to be a wreck, then they have the problem.’

Simon waited impatiently. His head was hurting already, and he had no wish to sit here listening to the old dollypoddle. ‘Well?’

‘It’s not a wreck if there is a man, woman, dog or cat left alive, is it? In the good old days, people would sometimes kill everyone, just to remove witnesses, and then they’d take the ship and its cargo for themselves. It was profitable in those days. Unless the King’s Coroner, or the Earl’s Havener got to hear of it. Many were hanged for taking a ship that wasn’t theirs. The law of salvage is better: a man knows he can go and save a ship and all the souls in her, and be paid up to half the value of the vessel and her cargo. It means losing the whole value and only claiming a part, but at least a man doesn’t risk his neck for the money. Better for all.’

‘They would kill people to prevent witnesses giving testimony against them?’ Simon asked, appalled.

‘Do you realise how much some of these ships can be worth?’ Hamadus asked scathingly.

‘So a King’s Coroner lives here?’ Simon said. ‘A Coroner must view all wrecks.’

‘Not here. We have the earldom’s Haveners to answer to. The money goes to the earldom.’

Simon was frowning. His head ached, and his eyes felt gritty and foul from saltwater, as though someone had thrown a handful of sand into each. ‘That makes no sense. I thought the King owned all wrecks. It’s nothing to do with the islanders.’

‘The King?’ Hamadus laughed aloud. Standing, he walked over to Simon and crouched at his side, eyes gleaming like a demon’s. ‘You think the King’s writ runs here? He’s a clever man, so they say — witty, generous and bold — but that means nothing here. We live miles from him. He would have to cross the seas to find us. We have our own laws.’

Simon felt a sudden shaft of fear as the man lifted his hand to Simon’s face, but there was nothing he could do to protect himself. It was just the exhaustion of the ship’s foundering, he told himself; that and the loss of his closest friend. To have lost Baldwin was appalling. It made him feel a renewed grief, and as though in sympathy, his eyes watered again.

It was good, though. As soon as the old man’s hand touched his face, he felt refreshed. His eyes were less sore, his body a little less worn. Instead he felt overcome with an enveloping lassitude.

‘But the King’s laws …’ he muttered.

‘Here we have the Earl’s laws,’ Hamadus said, his voice showing that he was concentrating on other things. ‘Well, usually. If a ship is wrecked, it’s not the King’s. It may be the Prior’s, and it may be the earldom’s, but if Ranulph claims it, the earldom won’t argue. Ballocks! It’ll probably never even hear of it!’

His voice seemed to come from a long way away. Simon knew that the hand was gone, but he didn’t care. For the first time in weeks he felt secure. In Spain he had suffered from illness and wounds; while travelling he had been constantly on his guard, worried that a sailor might rob him, or a footpad cut his purse, and this felt a soothing, reassuring place in which to rest. ‘Sleep well,’ were the last words he heard.