The Outlaws of Ennor

Chapter Thirty-Two

In the hall, Simon was sitting blearily at the fireside. He looked up as Baldwin entered. ‘I was wondering where you had gone,’ he said, and held out a jug to Baldwin.

‘I have had a most interesting talk with Mariota. She saw the murder,’ Baldwin said. As he spoke he saw the figure of Cryspyn approaching them. ‘Prior.’

‘My friend. I am glad to see you have returned. I was wondering where you might have gone.’

‘I was with a most interesting person who witnessed the death of Robert,’ Baldwin said.

‘Was it William?’ Simon asked.

‘No,’ Baldwin said, looking at the Prior.

Cryspyn had jumped as though startled. His face worked as the acid rose into his throat. In the past he had been able to eat the finest of foods and wines, but not now. He was forced now to suffer the most tedious of foods, which a physician had told him would work well for his humours, but nothing seemed to work for unpleasant shocks.

‘And did this person give you a name?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps you’d have the goodness to tell me?’ Cryspyn asked, his voice rising with his impatience.

Baldwin said nothing, but held Cryspyn’s gaze with a serious intensity.

The Prior tutted. ‘Come, now! Won’t you tell me?’

‘I had thought you would like to say. After all, Benefit of Clergy protects a man in Holy Orders.’

‘Benefit of …’ Cryspyn’s face paled. ‘My God! You don’t mean … William?’

Baldwin snapped irritably, ‘No, I do not! I mean you!’

‘Me?’ Cryspyn’s face fell. His eyes widened, his mouth gaped, and then he hiccupped. A hand flew to his mouth, and his face drew back into its normal expression of pain. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘I think you should have the goodness to confess, Prior. You were seen there.’

‘Sir Baldwin, you are the unsuspecting victim of a joke, surely a joke in bad taste.’

‘You deny killing the man?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘You were not there on the island?’

‘No. I wasn’t!’

Baldwin was confused, but then he thought he had a glimmering of understanding. Of course! The woman Mariota was protecting someone else. She had only mentioned Cryspyn to give herself time to warn him! ‘Prior, please accept my apologies.’

‘I suppose I must accept them, but only as a matter of politeness to a guest,’ he said pointedly as he thrust past Baldwin and stalked out.

Baldwin roused Simon from his partially drunken reverie. ‘Come with me. We need to talk.’

‘I think it’s better that we find a place to sleep.’

‘Not yet, old friend.’ Baldwin had Simon’s arm in a firm grip, and he manoeuvred him through the door and out, across the courtyard and through the gate. ‘I have been speaking to a woman who stated that she saw Cryspyn stabbing Robert. Since Cryspyn has denied the murder, this means that one of them is lying. If she is lying: why? She has convicted Cryspyn for no reason.’

‘She has reasons,’ Simon said. He closed his eyes and leaned back. ‘Perhaps it’s just that she dislikes him and made it up.’

‘She knew that I’d have to confront him. That means that she knew her lie would be found out, and probably quickly. Perhaps she meant to run straight to the guilty man and warn him.’

‘Who?’

‘There are only two men whom she would try to protect. She would not wish to protect any of the men from Ennor, I am sure of that. No, I think that it comes down to two: either David or William.’

‘Why David?’

‘Because he is of her tribe. This place is astonishingly tribal. David is of her family, and more than that, he is the leader. Thus she would be willing to serve him by lying to us. That, to me, makes much sense.’

‘I see. What of William?’

‘There is a bond between him and the people of the islands. He loves them, and I think that they reciprocate that love. Luke, I think, he detested because of the mess he made of the church of St Elidius. William was enormously proud of that little church, and Luke ruined it for him. He murdered Robert, I suppose, because he was angry about the gather-reeve’s depredations — although any man could have seen it was Thomas, not the gather-reeve who was responsible. Why William should have suddenly killed Robert now, I do not understand.’

‘I think I know that, at least,’ Simon said. ‘I heard from Ranulph on the ship coming here that the story of Robert’s murder in a tavern had not been broadcast for some years. Perhaps it was common knowledge before William went to Ennor, and he never heard it before, or at least, he never heard who the man was whom Robert was supposed to have murdered. And then, recently, while he was living in St Mary’s, suddenly he heard the full story.’

‘What story?’ Baldwin asked.

‘William is called “William of Carkill”. The man Robert murdered was called “Jack of Carkill”, and William once told me his brother had run off to sea. When he saw me on my first day, he called me “Jan”.’

‘Another name for Jack,’ Baldwin breathed.

‘Yes. Jan is a nickname. I think he heard about Robert’s murder of his brother, and it made him lose his mind. He stabbed his brother’s murderer.’

‘Perhaps. Yet what of David? He has never made a secret of his hatred of Robert, nor his loathing for men who tried to prise apart Tedia’s legs. I think he has a particular detestation for any foreign man who attempts to win the affection of a local woman.’

Simon opened an eye. ‘That was said with feeling.’

‘No, no. I was just thinking.’

‘So if this woman would have protected either, which do you think it was?’

‘She told us of Cryspyn, knowing that he wouldn’t suffer — even if we were to accuse him, we could do little. He is a man of the Church, so he’s safe.’

‘The same goes for William,’ Simon yawned.

‘But not for David,’ Baldwin said. ‘She never mentioned David. Perhaps she wanted to make sure that he was secure even from investigation?’

Simon grunted. ‘You can let go of my arm now, if you want,’ he said. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

‘I want to speak to David again, and William.’

‘William said he was going to the church.’

Baldwin glanced back at the great building behind them. ‘Come on, then.’

The door thundered when they threw it open and strode in, Baldwin tall and imperious, Simon more subdued.

For William, kneeling at the altar, their entrance was like a clap of thunder. He gave them a bad-tempered look before returning to his prayers and closing his eyes. It was hard, trying to remain forgiving, but he was determined. He had said many prayers for Robert already, since learning of his murder. Now he wanted to say some more.

But the presence of the two men was distracting. He found his mind wandering. It was infuriating that they should come in here and disrupt his prayers. Muttering a hasty Pater Noster, he stood, made the sign of the cross, and walked past them to the entrance, where he waited, fuming.

‘What was the meaning of that? It was an intrusion into a man’s communion with God, you irreverent arseholes!’

Baldwin was in no mood for his temper. ‘Mariota told us about you. She saw you at the beach. She said you were there, that you saw the body and saw the murderer.’

‘She’s wrong,’ William said, and made as though to move off.

Simon blocked his path with an apologetic, ‘Sorry, William.’

‘She told me it was someone else killed Robert,’ Baldwin pressed on, ‘but I don’t believe her. I think she was trying to protect someone. Someone like you.’

‘You think I killed him?’ The priest smiled thinly. ‘Just as I’d have liked to kill Luke for his betrayal of the trust put in him? He took my little chapel and turned it into a midden. A disgrace for St Elidius — Luke dishonoured him — so I executed them both, is that what you think?’

‘What of Robert?’

‘I was there, yes. I saw his body. I didn’t see her, though.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘Why should I?’ He looked up and met Baldwin’s eye.

‘Because he killed your brother Jan,’ Baldwin said.

William sighed. ‘I knew of Robert as an evil man when I lived on St Elidius, and then, when I moved to St Mary’s, I met him a few times, and I realised that Thomas’s story about him being a cheerful murderer was nonsense. He was a weak-minded fool who had made some mistakes and was paying for them with his exile. He may have killed, but not in anger or from some bloodlust. No, he killed to protect himself or another. Then, when I heard of his victim, I realised that I hated him for ending Jan’s life, but I knew what sort of a man Jan was. He was an unholy terror, brutal and cruel. If he had found a good woman who could have held him in check … but no. Some men cannot even be held back by women. No, Robert was almost certainly forced to kill him. You see, I cannot blame a man for self-defence.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘Why should I believe you? Everyone appears to have had an opportunity to have killed Robert, but you definitely had the most pressing urges.’

‘You think so? Do you really think that a man who has forsaken God could deserve the same loyalty as a member of a community like this? Sir Baldwin, these islands are unique! They are home to a race of honourable, decent people who are fleeced by those devils at Ennor. They deserve their protection. A man like my brother? I fear not.’ He looked up with a sudden grin. ‘I suppose you now think I’m guilty because I wanted to protect the folk here from the depredations of a greedy gather-reeve!’

‘No, but perhaps David did,’ Baldwin said.

‘I doubt it. He hated Robert as the symbol of Ennor’s power, but he knew well enough that if he cut off the head of that gather-reeve, there would soon be another. Besides, I never saw him on Ennor that day. Who said they did?’

‘No one. Mariota said it was another, but he denies it.’

William looked away. ‘I cannot help you more.’

‘Did you see the killer?’ Baldwin said.

William burst out, ‘What good will it do if you find the man? What good will it do anyone? Can you bring either of them back to life? No. Can you heal the damage which they have done here? No. So leave matters as they stand. Why not let people believe it was the pirates who killed them? That would be believable, wouldn’t it? Let the people blame them.’

‘I cannot do that. Whoever …’ Baldwin began, but then he heard the great bell tolling mournfully and realised his error.

When they all arrived in the Prior’s hall, the doorway was filled with anxious, silent monks, all of whom stared inside at the grim sight. The room was still warm from their meal, and the body hanging by the neck was vertical, with only a slight tilt to the head, as though the Prior had stood on the chair to set something on the beam, and was welcoming them from that curious position. He had a slight smile on his face, although the eyes bulged and the flesh was suffused with blood. The smell of death was cloying.

Pushing past the monks, the three entered. He had used his own rope belt, Baldwin saw. Cryspyn had looped it over the beam, thrust his head through it, and used a stick to twist it tight, garrotte-style. Baldwin had seen many corpses which had been hanged, but only a few had remained standing on a chair like this. Most kicked the chair away, hoping for a swift, assured death. Cryspyn cared little for that. He had stood on the chair to reach the beam, and killed himself while he stood there, his legs giving way as the life left his body and, so Baldwin hoped, making the death more swift.

‘I should have trusted to my own intuition. I believed Mariota when she told me,’ he said. ‘I could have saved him this.’

‘He was an honourable man,’ William said softly, and Baldwin saw that there were tears in his eyes. ‘He was always good to me. I think he knew how hard it was to live with guilt. He had been guilty of a crime himself.’

‘Yes. He told me.’

‘And that guilt ate at him. There was not a single day he didn’t suffer.’

‘Simon, is there a note on his table?’ Baldwin asked. He knew his friend preferred to avoid intimate encounters with death. While Simon went and scanned the desktop, Baldwin pulled up a stool and stood on it, trying to untie the rope while William supported the body from below. The rope was too tightly bound, held with Cryspyn’s full weight, so Baldwin took out his knife and cut Cryspyn’s body down. William took the full weight of the sagging figure, and two monks hurried forward to help him lower their dead master to the floor.

‘Nothing here,’ Simon called. ‘Strange, I would have hoped he would have left us some clue as to why he did this.’

‘So would I,’ Baldwin said. ‘But sometimes a man’s heart is too full and bitter. He must have guessed that we’d return to charge him with the murders, and he wished to have nothing to do with the shame that would bring to him and his priory.’

‘Perhaps,’ William said. ‘Yet I would have hoped he would have tried to explain. It will make his death more — incomprehensible — and that will lead to rumours and foolish speculation.’

Simon had rejoined them. ‘I would have expected a note. Perhaps he was in too much of a hurry.’

‘He had little time,’ a monk offered. Baldwin recognised the man as the new gatekeeper.

Simon had lifted the rope and was staring at it with a strange expression. ‘Baldwin, look at this.’

Baldwin took the rope and studied it. ‘What of it?’

‘The knots are so precise. Was Cryspyn ever a sailor?’

William said, ‘No,’ as the gatekeeper continued: ‘Yes, he had little time after David left him.’

‘When was David here?’ Baldwin demanded.

‘He came just before you,’ the gatekeeper stammered, shocked by Baldwin’s sudden ferocity. ‘He was there until after you ran out to find William here.’

Simon and Baldwin exchanged a horrified look.

‘He was there in the hall when we spoke,’ Simon said. ‘He heard you accuse …’

‘And decided that the best course for his own defence was the death by suicide of the Prior,’ Baldwin finished for him. ‘The man’s a devil!’

Brosia was at her cottage shaking out her bedding when they arrived. She cocked an eye at them, hastily bundling it up and thrusting it in through her doorway. ‘Good day! Can I offer you-’

‘Where is your husband?’ Baldwin rasped. He glanced inside the cottage, and he saw Mariota. ‘I hope you are proud, woman! You have cost another good man his life!’

‘No. Not me. I have merely protected the man I had to,’ she said. ‘I am an islander, and I’ll always protect an island man over any other.’

‘He heard your words and instantly murdered the Prior! I said, where is your husband, Brosia!’

‘He is down at the boats, I suppose … why?’

‘Ask her!’ Baldwin spat, pointing at Mariota.

His anger at Mariota’s deceit was already fading as they hurried along the grassed track to the beach. He shouldn’t blame her: she was a hardy islander. This was her way of life, the way of life of all the people here. They were weak against the powers of Ennor, the priory, and most of all the weather. All they had was each other. Mariota was protecting her tribe. Tedia would have done the same.

There was a lurch in his heart at the thought of her, but it was lessened. Now the memory of her was already fading. More in his mind was Jeanne, her smile, her calmness, her warmth. ‘My God but I miss her!’ he breathed.

William led the way to the shore. There, up on a hillock of grassy sand the three gazed out over the flat expanse. There was no sign of David, and when Baldwin stared out to sea, there was nothing. Not a single sail showed itself on the flat calm water.

Up to the north of the beach there was a group of men working on a boat. ‘Come,’ Baldwin muttered, and they pounded along at the edge of the sea where the sand was firmer. Soon they were with the men. ‘Where is David?’ he called.

‘He’s just gone to sea. Should be back at nightfall,’ one of the men replied without looking up from his work.

‘Gone!’ Baldwin breathed.

‘Perhaps he will return,’ Simon suggested.

‘No,’ William said. ‘I think he has decided to imitate Tedia’s man. He has made his choice. He knows what would happen to him here, if he were discovered. No one would want to suffer the penalties given to a felon. He has gone.’

‘He has escaped,’ Baldwin agreed bitterly.

‘Perhaps he has, for now,’ William said, ‘but there is a higher justice, and he can’t evade that.’

They began their return to the priory.

‘One thing,’ Simon said, ‘which I still don’t understand, is why Thomas was so keen to accuse the men here of piracy.’

William shrugged, but then cast a sharp look at Baldwin. ‘Perhaps, if you could swear, both of you, to keep this secret, I can enlighten you.’ Having received their assurances, William chuckled to himself. ‘You ask why? It’s because it takes one to recognise another. Thomas was a pirate of a sort. He would rob any man to make his money — well, in that way he was a true islander. There is not enough land here for men to make their livelihoods. They can win fish from the sea, it’s true, and they can try to farm, but there isn’t enough land. We have to import food from elsewhere all the time. And when fishermen can’t earn enough to support their wives and children, what do you expect them to do? Roll over and accept death? No, they go out and take whatever they can on the seas.’

‘So Thomas truly believed that his ship had been attacked by islanders?’

‘I expect so. Why else should he want to attack them? And he had been under pressure. His own ship was late in, and he thought that he might be financially ruined. If the islanders had taken his vessel, he thought he should get his lost goods back. That meant robbing the robbers.’

‘And David was their leader,’ Baldwin stated.

‘Yes. It was why poor Cryspyn hated dealing with him. It gave him a pain in the belly to have to deal with the man whom he knew was every day planning the destruction of ships. Yet Cryspyn had no proof with which to accuse David.’

They had reached the priory’s walls, and they stood a while under the gateway. There seemed little to say.

‘So why do you think David killed them?’ Baldwin asked.

‘That is easy. I think he suspected that Luke was having an affair with his wife, Brosia. He hated that kind of behaviour, and he distrusted other men about her. Strangely, I don’t think he ever sought to blame her for their attentions. He never realised how she tempted them.’

‘And Robert was killed for the same reasons?’ Simon guessed.

‘I think so. He was trying to climb into Isok’s bed, and David could see that as well as any of us — including Isok himself. David was proud of the people here. He would have hated to think of some foreigner — still worse the thieving gather-reeve — taking advantage of Tedia. I think he went off to the other island with the hope of scaring the man off, but then events overcame him.’

‘Mariota was there and saw it all,’ Baldwin said.

‘Yes, I daresay. I only saw Robert’s body and the figure of Cryspyn striding off through the water. I did guess that he might have been the killer, but then commonsense came back to me.’

‘In what form?’ Baldwin asked.

‘I saw David’s boat putting out from the next beach,’ William smiled.

‘I don’t understand why David put Luke in a boat and let him drift like that,’ Simon said, eyes narrowed.

‘I expect he hoped that the boat would be taken by the sea.’

‘Isok was certain that no local man would believe that the sea would do such a thing,’ Baldwin reminded him.

‘That was what he said,’ William agreed comfortably.

‘You mean he lied to me?’

‘Sir Knight, the man had a choice of slipping a noose about the neck of a friend and companion over many years; probably the man who had stopped another from cuckolding him. Yes, I think Isok guessed, and I think he was so emotional that day when we saw Luke’s body, because he feared we might otherwise guess. So he put the blame on someone who knew nothing about the currents around here. It was a shrewd throw.’

Baldwin was silent a moment. So it was not only Mariota who had sought to protect his tribe: even Isok, who was ridiculed by his own tribe, still sought to defend his folk, trying to conceal the killer from Baldwin.

Simon belched. ‘There is …’

‘Speak!’ Baldwin said.

‘I don’t understand why David killed the Prior. If he killed Cryspyn to deflect attention from himself, as though to direct all blame upon the Prior, why then did he flee the islands? Why not leave Cryspyn alive and simply bolt?’

‘Because David and Cryspyn detested each other,’ said William. ‘Cryspyn knew what sort of man David was: a pirate. David had fought against the Prior’s interference for all his tenure as reeve. This was his last cast against the man who had meddled in his affairs for so long.’

‘Does anyone on these islands stoop to telling the truth?’ Baldwin asked bitterly.

‘Yes. But only to those whom they have known all their lives. Not strangers and foreigners,’ William said pointedly.

‘They trust you.’

William gave a wolfish smile. ‘And how do you think I come by such good quality wines?’