No Law in the Land

Chapter Twenty-One

Exeter

Baldwin had persuaded the coroner to leave the castle for a while, and now the three men were at a quiet table in a tavern beside the east gate to the city. Edgar stood, his eyes flitting about all the others in the room, watching carefully for any sign of danger to his master — and keeping all those who might have wished to listen at bay. His was not a demeanour that would brook any argument about whether or not he had the right to prevent others from coming to a table.

Sir Peregrine was not a man whom Baldwin had ever liked. He felt sympathy for him, for he knew well that Sir Peregrine had loved three women, and all had died. Their deaths had marked him in some way. He had apparently grown more patient and sympathetic. But he was still the devoted ally of the men who had set their hearts against the king, and although Baldwin himself was growing impatient with Edward’s excesses, and his irrational devotion to the hideous, avaricious adviser Despenser, yet he was still the king and Baldwin owed him allegiance.

Despenser was the one point of mutual understanding, Baldwin now learned. Both detested him.

‘You are coroner still, then?’ he asked.

‘I fear that there is an ever-increasing need for such as me. The shire is growing yet more fractious,’ Sir Peregrine said.

‘In what way? At my home there are few signs.’

‘The first proof is the number of felons wandering in gangs. There was a time ten to twenty years ago when the trail bastons wandered with impunity. Now they have been superseded by this latest menace. There are as many wandering bands as there are malcontents with the king, or so it would seem now.’

Baldwin grunted noncommitally. ‘I do not wish to-’

Sir Peregrine interrupted him with a faint smile. ‘Sir Baldwin, I do not plot or scheme against the king. I have but one desire: to see the kingdom ruled more effectively and in the interests of the crown. I am no malcontent who would see Edward removed from his office. I have changed somewhat since our last discussion. However, it is plainly true that there are numbers of men who were once opposed to the king’s adviser, and who through him have been dispossessed of all their lands and titles. Many have seen their relations thrown into prisons, or have learned that their children have been deprived of their inheritances, their wives removed from their houses, or their lords accused of treason, executed barbarically, and their limbs hung on city walls up and down the land to feed the crows. There is a great deal of bitterness.’

‘I do not care about those who have been shown to be disloyal to the king,’ said Baldwin. He leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘Troubles in other parts of the realm are for others to worry about.’

‘This is not far from you, Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Peregrine countered. ‘In only the last few days I’ve had a group of nineteen slaughtered, and a matter of days later the local reeve slain while he tried to discover who was responsible.’

‘Where was this?’ Baldwin asked.

‘Over near Oakhampton. The men were slain in the woods a little north of the town, while the reeve was from Jacobstowe, and his body was discovered a short way east. That is what I mean, Sir Baldwin, when I say that the country is unsafe no matter where you travel.’

‘It is worse than only a short while ago.’

‘Yes. And now there are men of rank who are stealing and killing, men with influence, men with castles.’

Baldwin was silent as he considered. ‘This is sorely troubling,’ he said at last. ‘Simon’s daughter has disappeared, and the sheriff has arrested her husband, alleging that the fellow is guilty of some form of treason.’

‘Simon Puttock? I saw him with the king’s coroner from Lifton only two days ago.’

Baldwin looked up. ‘Where was he then?’

‘Just a little past Bow, on his way to Tavistock, I think. Why?’

‘I would like to have news taken to him about his daughter. Someone will have to go and seek him.’

‘Perhaps I can help with that,’ Sir Peregrine said. ‘I would be happy to send a man to find him and tell him.’

‘That would indeed be helpful. And then I have to try to ensure that the girl’s husband is released as well,’ Baldwin said.

‘I should speak with the lad’s father and tell him to keep an eye on his son to make sure he stays safe, then leave him to sort it out,’ Sir Peregrine said. ‘The girl is the one who must take up your efforts. Whether she is fallen from her horse or has been captured doesn’t matter. Either way, she must be found urgently. There are too many felons and outlaws who could seek to take her. I regret that I cannot assist you personally. I have some matters to work on in court. However, when I am free, I swear that I will do all in my power to see the boy released.’

‘I thank you for that. You are right, of course,’ Baldwin said. He felt as though it was a weight being lifted from his shoulders, hearing the clear-sighted Sir Peregrine voice his own feelings. ‘Edith must be found first.’

‘Good! God speed, then, Sir Baldwin.’

Baldwin nodded and gave Sir Peregrine his hand, both rising. Sir Peregrine promised to send one of his own servants to find Simon, and to send any other men he could find to aid Baldwin in the hunt for Edith, and then the two parted, Baldwin striding purposefully into the gathering dusk with Edgar along the high street.

‘Where are we going?’ Edgar asked.

‘We must speak with the husband’s father. This man has some authority in the city. Surely he must be able to do something for his son. He may not be able to get the lad released, but he can at least see to it that he gets some food.’

Jacobstowe

At the vill there were a couple of women chatting on a doorstep, and the coroner bellowed at them to fetch help.

One of the women looked at him with some alarm. The other looked as though she was about ready to run immediately for help in the form of men with billhooks, but the coroner stood and glared at them. ‘What is it, gossips? You more keen to discuss the doings of your husbands and daughters than help a neighbour? Come here, the pair of you, and tell us where we may install this poor woman. She’s your neighbour, in Christ’s name!’

‘What have you done with her?’ This was the woman in the doorway. She appeared reluctant to leave it while the coroner stood before her, and her sharp, weaselly face moved from Coroner Richard to Simon with deep suspicion.

Sir Richard stared at her. He was not yet over his initial shock at seeing this woman collapse before him, and the fact that it had been Simon who had realised what was happening, and not him, lent additional force to his voice. He took an immense breath, and then bellowed, ‘In the name of Christ, you stupid, malodorous bitch, since you haven’t the wits God gave you at birth, run and find a woman who has some! Fetch someone who knows what to do with a poor widow who’s fainted, and if you don’t do that in less time than it takes me to draw breath, I, Coroner Richard de Welles, will have you attached and amerced for your astonishing stupidity!’

She was already fleeing along the road towards the middle of the vill as he roared his last words, and as she ran there was a satisfying sound of doors being wrenched open, and even the clatter of a bowl being dropped and smashing.

Before long, Simon and the coroner were inside a small hovel, setting the widow on a low palliasse, and hurriedly pushing past the women who thronged the doorway to see what was happening to their neighbour.

The coroner took a deep breath of the cool early-evening air. ‘Right, Bailiff, Brother Monk, we have been working and travelling all the weary day. It is time for me to have at least a gallon of wine and mead before I take responsibility for a large joint of meat of some sort.’

‘I think we shall be fortunate to find a decent meal here,’ Simon said with a tired smile. It had been harder than he would have expected to carry the poor woman the relatively short distance to her own house. For such a small-bodied woman, it was a surprise how much she seemed to weigh after a few feet.

Coroner Richard hesitated, fixing Simon with a look of puzzlement. ‘You think so? I’ve never yet found a place that couldn’t provide a perfectly good meal if you know who to speak to. Mind you, this is a strange-looking vill. Not the sort of place I’d think to stop in usually. But there must be an inn or something nearby.’

He saw a man staring at the door to Agnes’s house. The fellow was surely on his way home from a day in the fields, and had seen or heard the noise of their return. Noticing the coroner bearing down on him, he squeaked and would have fled, but Sir Richard’s voice was pleasantly modulated for him. ‘Friend, I am in need of wine and vittles. Do ye know a good tavern about this place?’

Even with the coroner’s most gentle smile, the man looked ready to bolt, but Mark was already behind him. ‘My son, you need only point out the way to the tavern if that large fellow intimidates you too much. Personally, I think his bark is worse than his bite. But then, having heard him, you wouldn’t want to get too close, would you? I don’t anyway. So please, put us all out of our misery and just tell him where to get some wine.’

It was a rough little building, but Sir Richard declared himself delighted with it and its rustic charm. Simon looked about him and thought it looked marginally worse than some of the brawling drinking chambers in Dartmouth where the sailors would go to forget their woes. There were no stools, only a few large round tree trunk logs to rest on, and one bench that appeared to have been made by a man who had heard of such things but had never actually seen or used one. Simon stood eyeing it for some little while before resorting to leaning against a wall.

Sir Richard was less particular. He stood at the hearth in the middle of the room and warmed his hands on the rising heat. There was a tripod set over the fire, and a pot held a thickening pottage with some lumps of indeterminate meat bobbing about occasionally. A young girl of perhaps nine summers clad in a simple shift stood and stirred the pot seriously, spending more time warily keeping her eyes on these three strangers. Mark had walked straight in, sighed, and made his way to the bench, on which he rested his backside with a show of caution — a display that appeared unnecessary, for there was not even a squeak of protest from the wood as it took his weight.

‘Child, where is your father?’ Simon asked.

She said nothing, but nodded towards a door at the opposite end of the room. Simon walked to it, and soon there was a man with them. He was as old as Simon, but his face wore the years with less ease. He was also a deal slimmer than the bailiff, and his hair was almost all grey, while his brows were black as a Celt’s beard. In a short time they had ordered ales — there was no wine — and bread, pottage and a steamed suet pudding of apples and pears.

For some little while there was an appreciative silence as the three finished their meal and sat back contented. The coroner gave a belch, and then a trumpet blast from his arse. ‘Hah! I needed that. There’s nothing so disorders a man’s humours as having no ballast in his belly. And a pot or two of ale helps the digestion, I always reckon.’

‘I will be happier when I’ve had a sleep,’ Simon said. He stretched his arms over his head and felt the tension in his shoulders with a grimace. ‘So much still to learn and do in the morning.’

‘Aye. Well, we will be up early, I dare say,’ the coroner said with a rueful glance at the floor. They had agreed with the host that they could sleep in a room at the back, but it looked a verminous, unpleasant bedchamber. Sir Richard’s only hope was that the promised straw for bedding was not too smothered in fleas or lice. He had slept rough before and had no wish to do so again.

‘I find your attitudes astonishing,’ Mark hissed. ‘Today you have wasted so many hours in merely wandering about the land, asking all kinds of questions about a dead reeve, and learned nothing at all about the murder of two priests and their guards. These are the men the good cardinal requested you to ask after, but you’ve done precious little to learn anything so far as I can see.’

‘Aye?’ Sir Richard said, fixing a genial look on the monk. ‘Why is that?’

‘I assume you are still new to this kind of inquest,’ Brother Mark said. ‘In God’s name, I wish we had found another to do the job.’

‘Do ye now? Hmm. How many deaths have you investigated, Master Monk?’

‘Do not be ridiculous! I have never-’

‘None? Ah. And how many dead bodies, then, have you buried?’

‘I have been to a number of funerals.’

‘Not what I asked. No, you see, I was wondering whether you had buried many of your own family?’

‘I was present at my mother’s funeral not long ago.’

‘Oh? Your mother’s? Was she murdered?’

‘No, she was old, though.’

‘Oh, I see. Well then, Master Monk, you should remember that Simon and I have actually investigated more than a few deaths. Me, I’ve held more than a hundred inquests on corpses in my time; and I’ve seen enough felons hanged to fill my days. I have what you could call experience, if you were to be so crass.’

‘Then why did you ask nothing about the men today, and instead spent so much time on the reeve?’

‘That is why I asked whether you had lost a close relative. When you have, when you’ve had to find someone who’s close to you, when you’ve had to help bring that loved one home again, so that you can bury her, and when you have suffered all the misery and recrimination, all the self-loathing and hatred, for being so stupid as to let her die while you were off enjoying yourself, master, then, and only then, can you criticise us. I left my wife alone one day, and she was killed. I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. For now, let me remind you that you are here in the vill where an honourable, decent reeve lived and worked, with all his friends and companions from the area. He was a man of this vill. He did what he could for the folk here. They have had a loss that cannot be mended. And his wife, you will remember, was with us. How would she have felt were we to have ignored her old man and instead spent all our time in asking about a group of foreigners she’d never known? Eh? There is such a thing as compassion, Master Monk. Perhaps you have heard of the term?’

Mark was appalled. He could not meet their eyes, but shortly afterwards he silently walked from the room while Sir Richard squatted at the edge of the fire, poking at it with a long twig. ‘Has he gone?’

Simon nodded. ‘So, do I take it that you forgot about the travellers, then?’

Before answering, Coroner Richard cast a quick look over his shoulder to make sure that Mark wasn’t in earshot. Then he gave a sly grin. ‘Aye. I was thinking more of the reeve. Takes a damned monk to remind us of our jobs, eh?’

‘We will learn more tomorrow,’ Simon said. ‘And I am sure that the murderer of the reeve is somehow connected with those of the travellers.’

‘How so? Same men did them all, you mean? Looks unlikely to me — the weapons were all wrong, like we said.’

‘True. But perhaps there was one man left behind who realised the reeve was growing close to them, and decided to kill him. He may have picked up a stone purely because drawing steel would have betrayed his intent.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t deny it’s possible. If that is right, though, it would imply a well-organised force.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Just this: a rearguard left behind to cover their trail or to guard against attack shows military thinking. But if someone was left behind they would have gone within hours of the force passing by. No, it cannot have been a guard. More likely it was a fresh person out for personal gain.’

‘So you consider it likely that the killing of the reeve was entirely unconnected? Or it was a man on a freelance mission? Riding out, he sought any suitable target for his attack, and picked upon a lone wandering reeve with no money?’ Simon said with a grin.

‘You may chuckle, Bailiff. I would wager a few pennies that the reeve was more unfortunate than you’d think. He could have been at home, curled up around that wife of his, but instead he went out and was met by a man on his way. The fellow realised he had money-’

‘Scarcely likely.’

‘Well, perhaps he thought the reeve was on the trail of his companions. so he chose to remove him before he could learn where they all came from.’

‘And where did they?’ Simon wondered aloud. ‘They cannot fade into the undergrowth. A force large enough to kill so many in so efficient a manner must have a goodly number of men.’

He turned. The host was in the rear of the room, and when Simon beckoned, the man hurried over. ‘Masters? How may I serve you?’

‘About here are there any large manors with a knight or squire living in them?’ Simon asked.

‘Not near here, no, lording. There are no great lords about here. Not even a squire for miles.’

‘Where is the nearest man-at-arms, then?’ Sir Richard demanded. ‘A man with a small force who’re trained to the saddle and to arms. There must be someone not too far away.’

‘There is Sir John de Sully. He lives up at Ashreigny.’

‘I know him,’ Simon said.

‘I too,’ Coroner Richard agreed. ‘He’s an honourable man. Who else?’

The landlord scratched his head. ‘There’s the castle at Oakhampton. The Courtenay family maintains a small force there.’

Simon considered. ‘That would make more sense, certainly. The men there could have seen these travellers as they passed along the Cornwall road, for they would have journeyed up there once they were off the Tavistock road, just as we did this morning. But the coppicers and charcoal burners were very sure that no one came up from their direction, nor returned that way.’

‘Yes. And the Courtenays are not so foolish as to try to rob and kill so many,’ the coroner responded.

‘No,’ Simon agreed thoughtfully. ‘Although the baron himself lives mostly in Tiverton, he may have a castellan at Oakhampton who is less level headed.’

‘True enough. There are men all over the country who are less reliable than they should be,’ the coroner said sadly. ‘My own wife was killed by a servant I trusted. No man can entirely trust even his own men.’

‘There is nobody else,’ the host said helpfully.

‘What of the east?’ asked Simon. ‘The reeve’s footprints were heading in that direction, Sir Richard.’ And the charcoal burners had mentioned the men from Bow, which was east.

‘Aye. True enough,’ the coroner said, cheering up. ‘What of that way?’

‘There’s no force at Tawton, nor at Sampford,’ the host said, scratching at his head with a frown. ‘Think there’s a small fortified manor east of it, though. What’s that place called?’ he added to himself in a mutter. ‘Bow! Sir Robert of Traci, he’s over there.’