The Malice of Unnatural Death

Chapter Two

Exeter City

It was late afternoon when John of Nottingham at last reached the city. From the wide flood plain, he could see it from far awayas a smudge in the sky. He had to stop and rest, his sore feet aching and blistered from his hastening march.

His had been an arduous journey. Thanks to Christ that he had learned of his danger and escaped quickly, because otherwisehe’d be dead already. It was only the speed with which he had made his escape that had saved him.

In part it was the example of his master that had given him the spur. When Lord Mortimer of Wigmore had been captured, hehad little opportunity to resist; to have defended himself would have meant instant conviction for treachery to his liege-lord,the king. All through the war, Mortimer had been careful to avoid raising his own standard against the king’s, but insteadhe’d held up the king’s standard while razing the Despenser lands so that when he explained himself later as only having theking’s interests at heart, none would find it easy to reject his assertion.

He had been forced to surrender when the long hoped for support from Thomas of Lancaster never arrived. That cowardly sonof a diseased sow stayed in his castle and refused to make the leap to defend his own comrades — with the result that the king destroyed Mortimer’s armies, and thenturned on Lancaster himself. And when Lancaster was caught, he was condemned out of hand with no opportunity to defend himselfagainst the charges, and executed — the first of hundreds to be slaughtered by that vengeful, vicious king. The man didn’tdeserve his throne. He didn’t deserve his life.

To remove him had been the most precious desire of so many, and yet only so few could have achieved it. And it had been soclose. But when the assassination plot had been discovered, all were taken. All but John of Nottingham.

He eased the staff over his shoulder, his pack an almost unbearable weight. Few enough possessions: mostly it was his oneheavy book. That was all, wrapped up together with some clothes in his blanket, but they had rubbed the flesh in a broad swathe,and now he spent much of his time trying to forget the pain. Still, better to be foot and shoulder-sore than dead, or heldand tortured.

Exeter was a new town to him. He had never been here before, which was itself an advantage, but it had the additional meritof being far enough away from all central sources of power in the realm for him to be perfectly secure. And there was a port,which meant that if he needed, he could escape over the water, too. For now, though, all he sought was a warm fire, a bed,and some hot wine to ease his chilled bones.

The smudge in the distance began to acquire definition as he followed the old roadway and found himself skirting a high plateau. Now he could see that it was composed of many fires throwing their fumes up into the air. And then, as he continued, he foundhimself face to face with a broad city wall, all red stone, with ditches raised before it as additional defences. There were houses lining the route now, some well built with little garden plots before them where straggling plantsgrew in the chill: spindly stems of rocket with the last few tiny leaves, and some harsh-looking cabbages. Not much stillgrew at this time of year.

From close to, the gates were enormous, and he stood before them with relief to know that here at last he would be able tosleep indoors. He marched in, and soon found where he could take a drink or two. After asking advice, he chose a place calledthe Suttonsysyn, which was only a very short distance from where he stood. And it was while he was there, looking about himself,that he saw him again.

It was a shock. He had been ready to relax, take a drink, and then retire to his cot, but now here was this fellow, one ofthose guaranteed to remember him — the king’s messenger from Coventry. There was nothing for it: he must leave the city, escape,run away again. Perhaps head straight for the coast, take a ship to Guyenne … Lord Mortimer had done just that, afterall: he’d fled the land, and was now living with the French king, so they said.

But to run now might mean he could never achieve the destruction of the king and his favourites. The thought was unbearable. He had to stay.

It had taken him four days to march here. Four days of walking without halt except at night, avoiding people as far as possible,and now he had arrived here and already his safety was at risk. He sank onto a low wall, thinking desperately about his mission. It was enough to make a man weep, seeing an agent of his destruction so soon after arriving in a town where he had thoughthimself secure. Perhaps there was nowhere which was entirely safe. This, maybe, was to be the tenor of his life from thismoment forth: to wander the lands, ever seeking safety, only to discover at every vill yet another familiar, and dangerous, face.

But he was not the man to accept defeat. Other churls might whine and complain at the way that fate would play hazard withtheir lives, but that was not for him! He was stronger than that: he made others change their situation to suit him! It was he who was in control. Events were so constructed by him that they guided others to obey his whims.

He would not be thwarted. Standing, wincing, he watched the man disappear down the street ahead of him, and squaring his shouldershe set off after him, his hand pulling at the little weighted cord under his tunic. With that, he could defend himself.

And then, as he stepped out, he saw another man follow him, a short, dark man who watched him closely with wide-set, darkand serious eyes.

John took a closer grip on his cord.

Tuesday, Feast Day of St Edmund⁴

Exeter City

It was Will Skinner, the watchman at the South Gate, who first noticed the body slumped just inside the alley on that Tuesdaymorning.

Will was one of the older night watchmen. When he first took over duties down here near the gate, he had been middle-aged,but that was six years ago now. Felt like a lot longer. At the time he had only recently lost his house and everything he loved.

Poor Margie had never recovered from that fire. Badly burned, seeing their bodies drawn from the house, she’d lost her mind. They’d both doted on the little mites, all three of them. They’d had seven children born, but they’d had to bury the otherfour only a short while after their births. Not many children lived to four years old.

Bob had been twelve, Joan eight, and Peg six when they died. That damned fire had rushed through the house like … likeanything. Will had been speaking at a small meeting, telling his audience they should fight to reject the latest demands forextra taxes, when the woman came to get him. She was herself distraught, and he gaped at her, not really comprehending whatshe was saying. It was like a dreadful nightmare, hearing her talking about his children, his wife badly burned …

He had run to the house, but by the time he got there there was nothing. Just a smoking wreck.

It was a friend who had managed to get him this job. Others had told him not to take it, because his house had been aroundhere, not far from the gate itself. That was why he liked it, though. He walked down there at every opportunity, past thealley where his children had died, where his wife had lived with him happily, before that dread evening. It was his dailypilgrimage.

The gap where his house had once stood remained, shut away behind a wooden paling fence. Now, as he wandered down the alley,he saw the broad gap where his family had once lived. It made him feel — not sadness exactly, more a sort of emptiness. He had long ago grown accustomed to the fact of their deaths; that was something any manmust learn to cope with. But passing the space he was reminded again that it seemed out of place, as though he still almost expected his house to reappear.

This month was always hardest. It was at this time of year that his children had died, and the chill in the air, the nakedtrees denuded of leaves, the ice in the lanes, all reminded him of them.

He couldn’t help but stop and stare at where the house had been. Leaning on his staff, he gazed hungrily, as though the intensityof his regard could bring them back to life. But nothing could. Turning to continue on his way, he stumbled, and nearly fellheadlong.

Over the body in the alley.

When the keeper of the gatehouse heard the pounding on his door, his immediate thought was that his blasted son had been onthe sauce again, and he threw off his bedclothes with an angry curse at the thought of what the damned fool could have beenup to this time.

Old Hal was not a particularly ill-tempered fellow. Certainly, many would agree that he tended towards a melancholy humourat the best of times, but more often than not he could be amusing, and good company when a group got together in the tavern. His jokes were risqué, his songs filthy, his mind invariably lewd, so men got along with him enormously well — provided thatthey never mentioned his good-for-nothing son Art.

Art. It was ironic that he and Mabel had named the little devil after Hal’s grandsire, for if ever a man was unlike his namesake,it was Art. Where old Art had been reliable, responsible, honourable and dedicated, young Art was the opposite. He wouldn’twake on time, he was always late and blaming others for his failings, and when he did turn up of a morning, it was invariably with a headache and a pathetic, shaking demeanour. Twice in the last month Hal had been calledto have him released from the gaol after drinking too much and fighting. He hated to think what else the little bastard hadgot up to without being discovered.

‘Why do you fight?’ Hal had demanded after the last escapade.

‘It’s not that I want to … when I’ve had too much ale, it just happens.’

‘You’d best stop now, before someone stands on your head too hard,’ Hal had said unsympathetically, looking at the wreckagethat had been his son’s face. Now it was a mass of bruises and scabs. The trouble was, Art was born with more sense than henow had. He couldn’t assess odds, apparently. If he was drunk and his dander was up, he’d pick a fight with a man in armour.

Reaching the door, Hal threw aside the bar and pulled it wide. ‘What’s he done this … oh, Will? What is it? Christ alive,man, it’s hardly daylight yet!’

Will entered hurriedly, and from the look on his face Hal knew it wasn’t good news.

‘Murder — there’s been a murder!’

South Dartmoor

Simon Puttock’s journey to Tavistock was eased considerably by the memory of Stephen of Chard’s face the night before whenhe realised that Simon’s recommended inn was a place frequented by gamblers, sailors and whores.

Even this early, a little after dawn, his mood was sunny because he would soon be seeing his children and his lovely Meg. It seemed such a long time since he had last been with her. That was when he had first heard of the death of his friend and mentor, Abbot Robert. Even now the memory was depressing. Strange to think how close a man could grow to his master.

With uncanny timing, his own servant’s whining voice intruded on his thoughts. ‘Is it much farther, Bailiff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Many miles?’

‘Boy, be quiet! It is a long way, and the more you chatter, the longer it feels. Enjoy the views and the air, and hold yourtongue.’

If it weren’t for Rob trailing along with him, he would have been enjoying this perfect morning. As it was, he was constantlyaware of the lad behind him, muttering and complaining under his breath as he stumbled along after Simon, the reins of thepackhorse in his hands. Rob was little more than a lad, only some thirteen summers or so, but as hard and devious as onlythe illegitimate son of a sailor could be. He was sharp-eyed, with dark eyes set close together in a narrow, weaselly face. His accustomed expression of suspicious distrust reminded Simon of a small ferret who was forever seeking the next rabbit. He was clad in a simple tunic, a leather jerkin and a cowl, and barefooted like so many who live near the ships. Boots costmoney, and when sailors disdained such wastefulness, many of their children had to learn to do without too.

In the middle of the summer the journey was an easy one. In winter even a man like the obnoxious Stephen could make the distancesafely by keeping to the larger roads, but only slowly. Stephen had apparently taken two days to cover the thirty or moremiles between Tavistock and Dartmouth. Simon was disinclined to take his time. He was keen to learn the reason for being calledback, and still more so to see his wife. That was why he avoided the lower roads that encircled the moorland, and in preference made his way along the muddiedtrackways until he reached the open heights, and then took his way north and west until he met up with the Abbots’ Way, thegreat path marked by enormous stone crosses that guided a man safely across some of the most treacherous parts of the moors.

This was land where a man could breathe, Simon thought as he stopped his mount to wait for Rob to catch up and gazed abouthim. From this hill, he could see nothing but rolling countryside on all sides. He had joined the Abbots’ Way near Ter Hill,and westwards he could see the first of the three crosses that showed the safe route past the Aune Head’s mire. The path herewandered north of that, then curved to avoid the Fox Tor mire a short distance farther on. The bogs were deadly, and all toooften the ghostly shrieks and wails of animals who had blundered into a mire would be heard as the terrible muddy waters graduallyenfolded them and smothered them. No matter how often Simon crossed and recrossed the moors, he would never get used to thosecries. They sounded like tortured souls screaming out from hell.

But Simon adored this landscape just as much as any lord would love his deer park. For Simon it was the picture of a modernworking environment, with the smoke rising from the miners’ camps, great trenches dug to show where the peat was being harvested,and rubble all about where great hunks of moorstone had been dug up and roughly cut to size. All over the moors people workedthe land. It might not be so fertile as some of the valleys nearby, but to Simon these open, rolling hills were as near perfectionas anywhere in the country.

Not that he would ever admit to such thoughts in front of his old friend Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, of course. Baldwin would merely scoff at such views.

‘Where’s the nearest inn?’ Rob demanded, gazing about him with unconcealed disgust.

‘Probably about ten miles west.’

‘Christ’s ballocks, what a privy!’

Simon clenched his jaw and dismounted. He would lead his old horse for a while to rest him.

They had left Dartmouth as the sun rose. The night before, Simon had introduced his clerk to the new Keeper of the Port, andtold Rob about his impending departure, and to his considerable surprise Rob had insisted on leaving with him. There was littlechance of refusing him. The mere thought of trying to persuade Rob’s mother that it would be a good idea for her to keep himwith her at Dartmouth was enough to persuade Simon that he might as well accept the lad’s company. She was not a greatly maternalwoman, and as soon as she heard that her firstborn was leaving her she’d be out of her house and into the nearest tavern tomeet another man. She had only ever looked on Rob as an unwelcome nuisance at the best of times. He got in the way of hersearch for a husband.

Besides, having an additional servant was always a good idea. Simon had no idea how his household was faring just now. Itwas always possible that one of the other servants had been taken ill or died. Yes, bringing Rob was almost certainly a goodidea.

He had brought a skin of wine, some cheese and a loaf of bread for the journey. Others might look upon a ride of ten leaguesacross the moors as dangerous at best, and more probably near suicidal, but Simon had covered these moors regularly in thelast eight or nine years, and he knew the different parts better than he knew his garden at Lydford.

They stopped in the lee of a hill and lunched together, drinking the wine and chewing lumps of cheese with the loaf, a harshbrown one which proved to have more fragments of grit from the millwheel than actual grain, judging from the foul crunching. Several times Simon had to search out shards of moorstone and discard them. Still, it was enough to fill their bellies, andonce the horses were watered they set off once more, Rob muttering under his breath all the while.

‘Why did you ask to join me, if you are so bitter?’ Simon demanded at last, exasperated.

‘I didn’t know you were bringing me up here. Thought we’d be going on a real road, stopping off at a tavern for the night. Thought it would be a laugh.’

‘Now you know the truth,’ Simon said unkindly. ‘So shut up, or take yourself to the main road south of here and meet me in Tavistock tomorrow.’

‘I can’t go alone! I’ll get lost!’

‘Let me dream,’ Simon muttered.