The Death Ship of Dartmouth

Chapter Seventeen

Cynegils was feeling terrible. His head seemed swollen, and his mouth hardly worked. There was a dryness when he tried to speak, and the wrong words would keep coming out. If only these bastards wouldn’t hurry so much. He needed a moment to pause and take his breath, but already they were hurrying him up the hill towards Higher Street. Even when he stumbled, the men didn’t seem to care. They continued hustling him along with his knees scraping the cobbles until he found his pace again and could march with them.

‘Where are you taking me?’ he gasped.

‘Shut it. You’ll learn soon enough.’

‘Oh come, now. What am I supposed to have done? Who wants me? I’ve told all I can to the Coroner and his friends. Can’t do more … tell more.’

If the sergeant wanted someone brought to him, he’d order the nearest watchmen to go and grab him, but these two weren’t watchmen. In fact, Cynegils didn’t think he’d seen either of them before. They were too well fed and well clothed to be locals, and they didn’t look like seamen, either. They had more the appearance of henchmen to a wealthy lord. Suddenly Cynegils felt sick. The nausea seemed to permeate his entire body.

The inn appeared, and to his astonishment, he was bustled through the narrow doorway and allowed to drop to the floor just over the threshold. When he remained on all fours, he was kicked roughly up the backside, and he fell forward onto his face, where he lay panting, trying to keep the vomit at bay.

‘Oh, good. I’ve heard so much about you,’ said a voice.

At a bench there sat an amiable-looking man, perhaps ten years younger than him, who held a large horn of ale and slab of meat skewered on a long dagger, from which he alternately gulped or took a sharp bite.

‘Master?’

‘You may call me that,’ the man said affably. ‘And now I should like to know all you can tell me about the night when you tried to follow a man in here.’

Baldwin took more wine and listened as the Coroner questioned Hawley again about all he had seen on the day he found the cog, but there was little he could add to what they already knew.

‘The convoy never happened, really. Pyckard’s ship went off first, and then Beauley’s, and we were third.’ He sat and frowned as he relived that day. ‘There was a thin mist all over the sea when we set off, and I ordered the men to reef the sails to slow her. Didn’t want to run straight into another ship. I wasn’t too bothered, because my ship is much faster than either of the others’, and I thought that I’d catch them in one good day’s sailing.’

‘You set sail in the early morning?’ Simon asked.

‘Yes. The other two had left the day before — Pyckard’s ship in the early morning, Beauley’s late morning. We missed the wind and had to wait. When the fog cleared, we put up all the canvas and ran as fast as we could. Late in the afternoon we saw one ship, which must have been Beauley’s. Only a little later, close on evening, we saw the smoke on the horizon and ran Pyckard’s ship down.’

‘So Beauley could have been responsible for this?’ Baldwin mused.

‘Why would he do this? The ship was left with cargo and ship intact. It makes no sense! And if you’re worried, you can check his ship for the crew. I’d bet you’d find no sign of bodies or blood.’

‘He is a seamanlike fellow,’ Simon agreed. ‘Did you see no other ship at all?’

‘No, I saw no sign of another out there. All we saw was the smoke, then the cog came into view.’

‘If there was another ship in the area, wouldn’t you have missed it anyway?’ Baldwin asked reasonably. ‘I would imagine all eyes would be on the stricken cog.’

‘You imagine wrong, then,’ Hawley said sharply. ‘What, if you find a woman screaming, tied to a tree, do you go straight to her? No! You stand back and watch to see where is the man who bound her there. Otherwise you’d be walking into a trap. It’s the same at sea. If you find a ship like the Saint John which has been attacked, you look all about the horizon with care before approaching her. And my men are good. No, there was no ship in the area when we caught her.’

‘So the assumption that the attacking ship fled before they could steal the cargo …?’ Baldwin said.

‘Is so much garbage. They may have seen another ship, but not mine.’

‘Which means that the ship was boarded and attacked earlier.’

‘Maybe, but not much earlier. That part of the sea is quite busy. There are plenty of fishermen who ply their trade about there, and many ships make the crossing to Normandy or Guyenne. If she’d been there for more than a few hours, she’d have been seen. No, I think she was boarded and attacked late in the afternoon, and drifted a while until we found her.’

‘If these shipping lanes are so well used,’ the Coroner said slowly, ‘the men who left her must have known that there was a good chance she’d be found, and didn’t care whether she was or not.’

He shot a look at Baldwin as he spoke, and Baldwin found himself nodding. This Coroner was no fool. ‘Yes. Which means that they didn’t care whether the crime was discovered or not.’

‘No. Because they consider themselves safe from the law,’ Hawley said. ‘And that is not a happy conclusion.’

Sir Andrew de Limpsfield smiled affably down at Cynegils. He could afford to be affable, for he was sure that this little sailor-peasant was going to make him a moderate sum of money. ‘So you know nothing more from the moment that you were knocked down until you found yourself with a drenching to waken you?’

‘Yes, sir. Someone threw a bucket of water over me, and that brought me round.’

‘But by then, both men were gone,’ Sir Andrew said. ‘And one was dead that we know of. Where did the one go who owed you money?’

‘I haven’t seen him again.’

‘Did you see the body they found in the town? It is said he might be the man who you watched or who told you to watch.’

‘I didn’t see him.’

‘Even though he could be the man who hit you, or the man who caused you to be struck, and owed you money?’ Sir Andrew enquired silkily. ‘What restraint!’

‘It’s the truth, sir.’

‘No. It is utter ox-shit. You are incapable of telling the truth even when it is in your interests to do so. I think that I shall have you arrested and held until you confess the truth to me.’

Cynegils had already suffered enough from Sir Baldwin and the Coroner, and now he bent his head again. ‘Sir, I did see him, I think … but he owed me money.’

‘Tell me all, man, if you don’t want to feel the point of my sword at your throat.’

‘Have we learned anything from that man that we didn’t know already?’ Coroner Richard muttered as they left Hawley’s house and began to wander homewards to Simon’s lodgings.

‘I am comfortable that Hawley himself is probably innocent. I think he fears another attack.’

‘If he had piratically attacked Pyckard’s ship, he would declare himself innocent like that, wouldn’t he?’ the Coroner said.

‘Yes, but Hawley was talking of asking the King to become more involved in the protection of ships. A man who depends for his livelihood on the freedom to behave exactly as he wants at all times is the last who would express those views.’

‘But even if he is not guilty of attacking the ship at sea, he could be the man who killed Danny before the ship sailed — if you are right,’ Simon put in.

‘Why should he kill a sailor?’ Baldwin said.

‘Jealous of a woman? Or Danny was jealous of his money and attacked him?’ the Coroner suggested.

‘Possibly, but I should prefer to have a little evidence to suggest those motives,’ Baldwin said.

‘At least we’ve learned how the body was thrown into the pit,’ Simon said musingly.

Sir Richard gave a grunt. ‘Yes. There is not much I would trust from the mouth of that tatty drunkard Cynegils, but I believed his fear at confessing to finding a body and robbing it of four shillings.’ He sniggered. ‘Astonishing that he should bend to taking one extra shilling as payment.’

Baldwin grinned too. ‘In a way, it was only fair. If he hadn’t been following the Frenchman as instructed, he wouldn’t have received that blow. If he was less honest, he would have taken the whole purse.’

‘More fool him,’ Sir Richard scoffed. ‘I would have taken it, and without shame. It was insane to leave the purse there for any other man to take.’

‘But no one did,’ Baldwin pointed out. ‘Which proves that the man who killed him did not do so for personal gain.’

‘At least we know his identity now. Stapledon’s nephew,’ Sir Richard said. He looked up at the twilight. ‘And now, gentles, I think it is time that we considered the work of the day to be past. There are taverns in this little town which would grace a much larger place. Master Bailiff, have you ever been to the Crossed Keys up on the road to the gallows? It used to be an exciting little haunt, with some of the best ale in the area … not that the alewife would still be alive, I expect. Good women with a talent for brewing tend to die young, sadly.’

‘I think an ale would be an excellent idea, Sir Richard,’ Baldwin said cruelly, then, seeing the expression on his old friend’s face, he relented. ‘But I fear that I am very fatigued after my journey. If you do not mind, I would ask Simon to walk me back to his house.’

‘If you must, you must. It’s a shame, though. When I was younger, men were better able to hold their drink. Aha, but Bailiff, you can come and join me when this fellow’s resting his bones, can’t you?’

It was plain enough that the man was drunk, but Pierre would not normally have concerned himself with that. Everyone occasionally drank too much. No, it was the expression in his eyes as he took in the sight of Pierre, as though something clicked in his mind. There was recognition there. Merde! His description must be all over the town by now!

‘Master, you’ll go with these two men,’ Moses was saying, but Pierre was struck by a chilly concern.

‘Who are they?’

‘This is Gilbert, one of my dead master’s best shipmen. You can trust your life to him.’

‘And this?’

‘I am called Hamund. I too am travelling to France,’ Hamund managed, and belched.

‘He is to help sail the vessel,’ Moses explained. ‘There are not enough men in the town, and since the last ship was taken and burned, many fear pirates.’

‘You do not?’

Moses smiled thinly. ‘I do not sail. It is better that you go with these men. They can tell you all you need to know. In the meantime, I wish you well. Go with God, master.’

‘Why must I leave now? Is the boat ready to leave?’

‘The Saint Denis is a ship,’ Gil said testily. ‘She will be ready soon, but just now it seems you’ll be safer hidden away on board than out here in the town where someone could clap eyes on you at any moment. If you come with us now, we can hide you.’

‘Men still seek me?’

‘Is it true you raped a woman?’ Hamund burst out.

There was a ringing sound, and Hamund felt his bowels turn to water as a grey steel flash ended with a cold, deadly sensation at his throat. He scarcely dared look down the length of the sword’s blade to the man’s staring, furious eyes.

‘Who accuses me of this?’ the Frenchman hissed.

‘It was s-said at the inn,’ Hamund stuttered.

‘He’s telling the truth,’ Gil said. ‘A man, a tall fair knight called Sir Andrew de Limpsfield, came in and said he sought a Frenchmen who’d raped a gentlewoman.’

‘He lies,’ Pierre said through clenched teeth. ‘He accuses me of this? This Andrew dares to say that I, I, would do such a thing, when his master …’

‘Who is his master?’ Gil asked.

Pierre gave him a look that was a mixture of dread, and pure, ferocious hatred. He seemed to be about to answer, but then he snapped his mouth closed as he reconsidered. Then he withdrew his sword and sheathed it again. ‘My apologies. I thought you sought to insult me, my friend. It is not you who is responsible for this.’

Hamund said nothing. It was enough that he dared breathe again. He was grateful for the sensation of blood pounding in his veins.

‘You’ll be safer aboard with us,’ Gil said.

‘Very well. Good. Farewell,’ Pierre said, bowing to Moses, but keeping his eyes on Hamund. As the other two left, he followed them out along the passage to the garden behind the house, and thence to a gate in the wall which led out to the shoreline.

Their path took them north, following the Dart’s shore towards Hardness, until they reached a group of beached boats. Gil motioned to Hamund, and the pair pulled one down to the water’s edge, thrusting it bobbing and swaying into the water. Once there, Hamund held it steady while Gil climbed in and grabbed an oar, beckoning to Pierre. The Frenchman splashed through the water, cursing the ruination of his fine clothing, and clambered in alongside him, and finally Gil helped Hamund up into the boat. The abjurer was shivering miserably already, and as the boat rocked and jolted, his face became green in tinge.

‘If you want to throw up, do it that side,’ Gil said gruffly.

Pierre was scarcely aware of Hamund’s suffering. All the way, he was considering the men who had sought him. To lie about him in so foul a manner was … was repellent! He had never raped a woman, and never would. His life was devoted to the service of his love, no one else. He would do all in his power to honour her with his acts of selfless courage.

‘Why did he want to help you so much?’

Pierre had not been listening, but now he looked at Gil as he rocked back and forth rhythmically. ‘What?’

‘I said, why did my master want to help you? There must be a reason.’

‘Did you ever meet his wife?’ the Frenchman asked.

‘She died long ago, when I was a child, but yes, I knew her. A lovely woman. Everyone liked her.’

‘Amandine was my sister, God rest her beautiful soul.’

Law watched as the little boat bobbed its way out into the river and from there up to the great cog standing out in the middle of the channel.

It had been Alred’s idea to stay on the quay here in case the man turned up. He had reasoned that if someone wanted to escape from Dartmouth, the best way to do so would be to take a ship. Bill had gone to Hardness to take a look at the fishing boats up there, and speak to the men who worked them, hoping to learn something of strange movements of ships, or even, if they were lucky, hearing of a sailor who was trying to win a passage to France. Law hadn’t reckoned much to the idea. If he was a Frenchie hoping to get away from the country, he’d have just hopped onto a ship and hidden away, wouldn’t he?

He was just thinking of leaving the riverside to go and find himself an ale or two, when he heard the voices.

All in all, it had been easier to find the man than even Alred had thought.