No Law in the Land

Chapter Eight

Furnshill, near Cadbury

Baldwin whistled to his dog as he reached the turn-off in the road towards his house. Wolf had been sniffing at a badger’s sett, but as soon as he heard his master, he relinquished the scent and hurried to catch up.

Looking about him, Baldwin was satisfied. It was good to see that the estates had not been allowed to sink into disrepair while he had been away. But it was more than that. He had to sit on his horse and study the landscape, drinking in the picture, as though by doing so he could fix it in his mind and his life for all time.

He loved this place. It was many years ago that he had been born here, and in those days he never thought he would own it for himself. His older brother would naturally inherit. That was why he had chosen to leave the country and travel to the Holy Land to try to protect it against the onslaught of the massive armies that opposed it. He arrived in Acre just in time to be injured in the last, tragic days of the city. Also hurt was Edgar, the man who later, with Baldwin, joined the Knights Templar in order to try to repay the debt both felt for having their lives saved. Both had remained in the order until the very end. When the arrests had taken place, both happened to be out of their preceptory, and evaded capture. Later, they had made their way back to England, and Baldwin learned that only a short time earlier, his brother had died in a riding accident, and so he could return as the owner of Furnshill rather than a mere supplicant begging alms from his brother.

‘Come on, fellow,’ he called quietly, and trotted over the front pasture to his house.

There was a man over at the western edge of the house when Baldwin arrived. He looked at Baldwin, blinked, and then scurried off in a hurry.

Baldwin smiled to himself and dropped from his horse, relieved to think that he would not have to set his backside on a saddle for a long journey any time soon. So many days he had spent sitting on a horse in the last year, he felt as though his arse had been remoulded to fit the leatherwork.

He was just tying the horse’s reins to a ring in the wall when he heard her running.

‘Jeanne,’ he said, and she stopped on the threshold, leaning against the door frame.

‘My love,’ she said, and began to weep for joy.

Sandford

The expression on Meg’s face removed any doubts in Simon’s mind as to her enthusiasm to see him. She pelted past Sir Richard in a most indecorous display, and threw herself bodily at her husband, arms about his neck and kissing him. ‘Simon, Simon,’ she murmured as she drew away, but then she was kissing him again.

Sir Richard looked at the sky. He pursed his lips and thought to whistle, but then he decided that it might be a little distracting for Simon, so he turned his back on the couple and stared out at the landscape.

There was no little vill about here, with strip fields where the peasants all laboured. Instead this was a working farm that depended upon pasturage, he saw. There was a field ahead of him, long grasses rippling in the wind. Over on the right there was a stand of trees — a mixture of all kinds of wood, with some coppiced nearer the house. In front of that there was a good-sized orchard, and a set of small pens, empty at the moment. It was a pleasant little farmstead, he felt.

‘Meg, this is Sir Richard de Welles, the Coroner of Lifton,’ he heard, and turned to find himself being studied with some interest by a tall woman, very fair, with browned skin and bright blue eyes. She was slim, and although she had now lost the first flush of youth, to Sir Richard she was astonishingly lovely.

‘Sir Richard, God keep you,’ she said with a broad smile, and ducked her head as she gave him a brief curtsy.

‘My dear lady, God will keep you, I know,’ he said, bowing low.

‘I am honoured. Now, husband, will you come inside and I will have food and drink fetched for your guest.’

She glanced at him, her expression as serene as Simon remembered from all those years ago when he first saw her. All those years before their first son had died, before the years of anguish during the famine, the years before the misplaced kindness of the Abbot of Tavistock forced them to become separated. Before William atte Wattere had arrived and helped to steal their house from them. And then her serenity was shattered as she laughed aloud, took his hand and brought him inside.

‘Sir Richard?’ Simon called.

The knight was still standing outside, an expression of wonder on his face. ‘Yes? Oh, yes. Of course.’

He followed Simon and Meg indoors and joined Simon in the little hall.

‘You are very welcome to remain here with us for as long as you wish, Sir Richard,’ Simon said. ‘We have wine and cider aplenty, and some ale, which, if I say so myself, is the equal of the king’s. You have travelled far in the last weeks. Will you not stay here with us a little?’

‘I would dearly like to,’ Sir Richard said. He shook his head as some servants entered and set out a large trestle table near the fireplace. ‘But I have a need to return to my duties. A coroner has work to keep him busy no matter where he lives nor what the time of the year.’

‘Yes. Well, work is something I will have to find for myself now,’ Simon muttered.

‘Bailiff, I am sorry. It is hard to believe that you could be without employment.’

‘Oh, I have employment — I have my farm, after all,’ Simon said lightly. But his face showed his continued concern.

It would be hard, he knew. The post at Lydford had been so effective for him. He was happy there, especially since it gave him the right to wander where he might over the moors he loved. Still, he told himself. This was good land, this rich red soil of Sandford. It was a good place to finish a life. And now his daughter had already left home and he had only his son to worry about. Perhaps it was better that he was here again.

‘You look thoughtful, husband,’ he heard his wife call from the doorway.

‘I was thinking about the quiet of living here in the country again. We stayed last night in Exeter.’

‘You saw Edith?’ Meg asked, the eagerness making her almost drop the trenchers she was carrying.

‘Yes. She and her husband seem very happy.’

‘I am glad,’ Meg breathed. It was hard to say God speed to a child and send her into the world. A man could be a good husband or a bad, but a daughter would always run the risk when she left her home. ‘But there was never a reason to suspect that he wouldn’t be a good man for her.’

‘No. Not even though he’s so young. God’s ballocks, so is she.’

‘And so are most when they marry, Simon,’ Meg said a little tartly.

‘Yes, I know, I am an overprotective monster. I’d prefer to have her husband dangling by his wrists for the nerve of asking for my daughter.’ Simon laughed. ‘But since he was so gracious last night, and poured us a goodly quantity of wine, I think I can forgive him just now, eh, Sir Richard?’

‘Hmm? Yes, I think so,’ Sir Richard said. He was a little confused, and he appeared embarrassed, or perhaps upset.

Simon looked over at Meg, but she had little idea what sort of a man Sir Richard was, and she merely looked back at him with confusion.

‘Meg, do you think you could bring our friend some wine?’ he asked, and even as he spoke, all three heard the rattle of hoofs on the stones in front of the house. Simon stood abruptly, staring at the window. There was no sign of the rider from here, for the window was high in the wall, but they could all hear the voice.

‘A message for Bailiff Puttock. Is your master here? I have an urgent message from Cardinal de Fargis.’

‘In Christ’s name, what now?’ Simon muttered as he spun on his heel and left the room.

‘It will be nothing, my lady,’ Sir Richard said.

Meg was standing at the table, listening intently. There was a slight puckering at her forehead that he recognised so distinctly. The frown of anxiety. He couldn’t keep his eyes on her, he found. She was so like his own, dear, dead wife, it hurt to look at her.

Road between Nymet Cross and Sandford Cross

Sir Peregrine was not overly bothered by the sight of dead bodies. He never had been. Why should he be? He was a knight and the son of a knight, and for all his pride in being able to converse with the meanest villein on his lands, he was prouder still of his martial experience and skills.

A man like him who was used to the sights and sounds of battle wouldn’t be concerned by the sight of wounds. He had seen friends die near him in the petty wars that plagued this disputatious land, and on occasion he had travelled as far as Guyenne in support of the king, protecting Edward’s territories from the depredations of the French. But there was somehow a difference between seeing men-at-arms fighting and dying in a battle, and this.

The others were sad, of course. The clumps of bodies in the woods had been very disheartening, for such a scene was inevitably depressing, and yet the fact that Sir Peregrine knew none of them meant that he could at least maintain a professional detachment.

‘Who found him?’

He didn’t really care who had discovered the fellow. Sir Peregrine stared down at the body of Bill Lark with a rising sense of resentment. There were times when he felt that it was better never to grow fond of anyone, because he was invariably hurt when they died.

It was particularly true of his love life. He had almost married three women. Each had died before he could. Back in the year before King Edward took the throne from his father^* he had lost his first love. He would have married her else. The next was his lovely Emily, who had died giving birth to their child four years ago when he was master of Tiverton Castle for Sir Hugh de Courtenay. And then, more recently, dear Juliana had died, leaving two children from another man, and he had taken them on himself, not reluctantly, in memory of her. But no matter how fond he was of them, he could not look upon them as his own. Which was a shame, but hardly surprising. They were not of his blood.

But it wasn’t just the women he had loved who had died just as he had grown to think that there could be a new life beginning. His loneliness was enhanced by the deaths of men like this.

This man was scarcely known to him, of course, and yet he felt a bond already. There was something about the fellow that had inspired confidence. He looked competent, stolid and dependable. The sort of man in whom another could place his trust. And Sir Peregrine had felt quietly confident that he would do all in his power to find the men who had committed the atrocity in the woods.

‘Who did this to him?’ he wondered aloud.

The man had been bludgeoned to death, from the look of him. It looked as though his head had been beaten with a rock, or maybe a mace or similar weapon. Until the blood had been washed away, it would be pure guesswork to try to say what did make those wounds.

‘He was found here last afternoon,’ a man said helpfully.

Sir Peregrine growled at him, commanding the full jury to be brought immediately, as well as a clerk or anyone else who could hold a reed, so that they could have the inquest, and bellowed when no one seemed to want to move. Soon he was all but alone, and he squatted at the man’s side, as though talking to a resting friend.

‘I am sorry about this, Bailiff. Truly, I will do all I may to find the men who did this to you. And if I can, I will bring them to justice. I swear it on my soul!’

Furnshill

‘You look tired,’ Baldwin said as he walked inside with his wife.

It was the same as it had been. In the worst days of his travelling, when he was incarcerated in the Louvre, trying desperately to stop himself from causing offence to any French nobility, he had been prey to horrible fancies: that his farm would have suffered from drought, or perhaps from dreadful fires; that his house had suddenly succumbed, as he had seen others, and collapsed with his wife inside. All those were in many ways easy to reject as being foolish. However, he had a strange, recurring thought that when he came home there would be some appalling alteration in his family that would make his return a matter of horror, not delight. It was a terrifying thought that, when he marched through his front door, he might learn that one of his children had died; perhaps even Jeanne herself.

Now, walking through the screens passage and into his hall, he was relieved to see that his fears were baseless. It made him even more glad to be home again, and he encircled his wife’s waist with his arm, drawing her nearer to kiss her.

She reciprocated, but after a shorter period than he would have liked, she drew away. In the doorway he saw his old Templar comrade, Edgar, and Baldwin inclined his head. ‘I hope I see you well, Edgar?’

‘Sir Baldwin,’ Edgar responded, bowing low. ‘I shall fetch you some wine and meats. You must be hungry.’

He was gone in an instant, and Baldwin could look down at his wife. ‘As I said, you seem very tired, my love. Are you quite well?’

‘Mostly, yes. The children exhaust me, I confess, but Edgar and his wife have been very kind. They both do all they can.’

‘Is it the estate? I can take all the effort of that away from you now, Jeanne,’ he said softly.

There was a redness about her eyes that he did not like to see. It was almost as though she had spent much of the last weeks weeping, and the idea that she should have been so saddened without his being there to calm or soothe her made him feel chilly with guilt. He was her husband, in Christ’s name. It was his duty to be here for her.

‘It isn’t the lands or the manor,’ she said after a few moments. ‘There is more than that.’

She walked to her chair and seated herself, waiting for him to join her. As soon as he had taken his own seat, Edgar returned with a tray and jug. Baldwin’s favourite mazer was on the tray, a beech cup with a silver band about it. Edgar filled it with wine and passed it to his master.

Jeanne waited until her husband had taken a sip before continuing. ‘It is the sheriff and his men. The sheriff is a new man, one of Sir Hugh le Despenser’s companions, I think, and it seems as though all are subject to Despenser’s scrutiny.’

‘How do you mean?’ Baldwin asked.

It was Edgar who, on a signal from Jeanne, began to speak. ‘I believe Despenser has grown terrified of an attack from a foreign power. Perhaps he fears that Mortimer will soon cross the sea and try to take the kingdom. Whatever the reason, he is even less trusting than before, and now he seeks to implement his control over every part of the land where there is a coast and where an invasion force could land. Clearly Devon and Cornwall are particularly dangerous, in his mind.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘There are coastlines to north and south, of course.’

‘And an infinite number of places where a man might bring a host to attack the king,’ Edgar agreed.

It wasn’t strictly true. In the north of Devon, as Baldwin knew well, there were few naturally safe harbours for a ship, let alone a fleet, but that was not the point. Devon and Cornwall were exceedingly hard to protect.

‘There is more,’ Edgar said. ‘Of course Despenser will know that the queen was mistress of much of both shires. She controlled the mining of the tin, and she had a lot of supporters over here.’

‘What of it?’

‘The king — and Despenser — would hardly be natural if they didn’t wonder whether she too might try to gather a force to oust Despenser. She has seen her power and authority eroded by him in the last years.’

‘So you think that Despenser has planned to come here and take over the running of the West Country from the locals?’

‘I think he is plotting to have his placemen set in all positions of any form of authority at the coast,’ Edgar said. ‘And that includes Devon, because there are so many ideal places for a bold team to land, and many potential supporters for the men who would try it. He has installed this Sir James de Cockington as sheriff, but there are others who are winning his favour as well.’

‘I suppose that is natural enough,’ Baldwin said thoughtfully. ‘He is putting men in place to ensure that the land is safe from attack.’

‘Yes, but there are other men who seem to have little regard for the law. So long as they are Despenser’s friends, they feel that they can wander the land at will, taking whatever they desire,’ Jeanne said. ‘And that appears to include the sheriff himself. He is more corrupt than any, if what is said is true.’

‘Which bodes not well for those who have shown themselves to be enemies of Despenser,’ Edgar added, looking at his master with a serious expression.