The Outlaws of Ennor

Chapter Three

There was nothing but emptiness in his heart as Isok reached the cottage north-east of his own. He threw open the door and pulled it to behind him quickly, keeping the weather out so far as he could.

‘So you’ve decided, have you?’ a voice asked quietly.

He looked into the shadows. There was a dog curled by the fire, a goat tethered at the far side of the room, and he could see his wife’s aunt as a bundle of old clothes on a bench near the wall.

‘Mariota, she’s-’

‘I know, you great lummock! Come in and sit by the fire. I’ll fetch you some ale. Did you hit her?’

‘How could I?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘She’s made it plain enough she wants me. She’s tried to make me stiff for her, but nothing works. I can’t blame her, can I?’

‘Many men would, though,’ Mariota observed. She had brought him a jug of warmed ale, and now she pushed him down on the floor near the fire, and stood over him to watch while he drank off a great gulp. She was much older than this man, and tonight she felt all her years. It was during a storm like this that she had lost her own man. Now poor Tedia was going to give up hers, but in a more painful manner. Mariota knew perfectly well how much her niece had loved Isok and wanted him — and yet he couldn’t service her. Both were humiliated and shamed.

Well, there was nothing so certain as suffering in this world, she reflected. ‘How is she?’

‘How do I know? I left her ages ago.’

‘Don’t sulk with me, Isok, or I’ll let you feel my fist!’

‘I had to go and see to the boat after I left her. Once it was safe, I came up here. I can’t live with her any longer, Mariota. She’s already selected a lover, someone to service her,’ he said, his voice breaking.

‘I can’t stay there while she does that, can I? I can’t welcome another man into my home to take my own wife!’

‘Are you sure she’s sought a lover?’

‘She didn’t deny it.’

‘That’s not the same thing,’ Mariota said.

‘She’s already chosen her way. It doesn’t include me.’

Making a quick decision, Mariota pulled a heavy rug from her bed and tugged it over her shoulders. ‘Well, if you’re so stupid, at least I can go and make sure that your wife is safe this night. Stay here and look after the goat while I’m gone. I don’t want to come back and find her dead of fright because you left her in the middle of a storm!’

Isok said nothing. He was staring at the heart of the fire. But as the woman left, he felt a slight lightening of his spirits. At least now the future was decided. The knuckles had been thrown, and he could see how they had fallen.

He knew what the future held for him.

Thomas, the Sergeant of Ennor Castle, strode along swiftly as night fell. The rain was sheeting down as he hurried towards the castle and warmth, a huddled figure in his sodden cloak.

He hadn’t realised how bad the weather would be. The squall had been a black slanting smudge on the horizon when he first glanced up, but it appeared to be about to pass to the north of the island. He hadn’t expected it to move over and envelop him on his way back to the castle.

This place! It was as wet as Ireland. As wet and as miserable. There was no reason for him to be here, other than the obvious ones. He hated the place, and the people. They were nothing more than cattle.

No. Not cattle. Here the peasants were more likely to grab a knife and try to avenge an insult immediately, rather than behaving like proper serfs. It was the atmosphere of this curious little place. Five islands men could live on more or less comfortably, but without much in the way of pasture or decent farming land. It was all hills. Even when the farming brought in a return, what little the peasants had was always likely to be broken up and stolen or burned by pirates. The island of Ennor was the first place that many ships would see when they set sail for England, if they were blown from their course and approached from the west. That meant that hungry and thirsty sailors would arrive with pennies in their pockets, happy to pay any price for a good pot of ale — but it also meant that pirates and murderers from Brittany would sometimes arrive here instead of Cornwall or Devon, and denude the islands of all their stores, killing where they could. It was some years since the pirates had last come here, but that meant nothing.

It certainly led to a particular … spirit of independence among the islanders. When they heard the warning bells from St Mary’s on Ennor, or from St Nicholas on the island named after the Priory, they would grab their tools and go to protect their land and families.

The trouble with such independence, as Thomas knew only too well, was that it could sometimes lead to peasants getting above themselves. They grew to desire control over their own lives — and that was never a good idea. They were not powerful like him; he was free, and he had his own wealth as a result of his speculations.

A drip ran from the back of his thick felt hat; he felt it trickle down his neck, and beneath his outer tunic to his shirt. It itched like a devil, and he had to set his teeth. Damn this place! Full of ignorant peasants and mud. That was it. Mud and peasants.

Ennor, they called it. Imaginative arses! The old folks who could still speak the ancient tongue reckoned that it meant simply ‘The Land’. Ingenious, these peasants, he sneered to himself. Look at the ruddy place! He stopped and glared about him. The trees were rattling as the raindrops struck them, and all about him was the noise of water. Here, in the middle of the area called Hal La Val, the ‘low, marshy ground’ near La Val, all was soaked already. These wetlands sometimes made Thomas anxious. He had odd dreams, in which the sea rose here, in the middle of the island, and suddenly overwhelmed and consumed the population. It had happened in The Flood that all men were drowned, so the priests said, apart from the especially righteous one, whatever his name was.

It had happened before here on the islands, too. Men spoke of a legend that all the islands were once one. They had been broken up by a terrible storm and now the sea was biding its time, ready to smother them entirely. Even since Thomas had arrived here, seven years ago, there had been one exceptionally bad storm during which the sea battered almost over the sands at Porth Mellon. It had been a terrifying sight. The waves pounding at the shore, white spume jetting up fifty feet and more, and then the thunderous crashing as the water hurtled down once more.

This one could be as bad, he reckoned. The way that the sky had become suddenly black and the clouds had rushed over the sea as though to engulf Ennor and its neighbouring island St Nicholas, and then this heavy rain: it seemed more alarming than a normal storm.

For him, a storm at this moment would be disastrous. His investments were heavy, and the cargo expensive. There was no point in smuggling small amounts when a large consignment was possible, and when his ship landed in Cornwall — if it did so, safely — Thomas would make a lot of money.

The Sergeant to Ranulph de Blancminster was taking advantage of the confusion created by the sudden changes in the earldom. A short while ago, the earldom had been the possession of Earl Edmund, but since his death twenty-two or — three years ago, the earldom had been given to Piers Gaveston, just before he was exiled and then captured and executed, and more recently Queen Isabella had been granted it. There were new officials with each change in control, new men to bribe and flatter, but for all that Thomas reckoned he had some years of profit-making left to him. It would take an age for the earldom to realise that he was sending a ship of smuggled goods to Cornwall once a year and meantime profiting by the customs.

It was easy. All ships which landed in the Earl’s lands had to pay customs for their cargoes. The money collected was for the Earl, of course, but Thomas had soon realised that since his own master, Ranulph de Blancminster, couldn’t read, the only reports that would be seen by the Earl’s officers were the ones Thomas bothered to send in. Since the Earldom was in a constant state of flux, it was easy to falsify his reports. Thus, since Gaveston’s death, the Sergeant had been creaming off large amounts of the customs, which helped subsidise his investments in smuggling. Now he was independently wealthy, and he rarely sent in any customs reports at all.

His ship was the reason why he had been out tonight. He had been hoping to see a sign of it coming towards land, but the horizon was devoid of hope, offering only an evil darkness that foretold of the storm. This meant that his ship was either in the middle of the storm, or had already foundered. Neither option was attractive. Thomas had invested heavily in this shipment. Over fifty tuns of wine, all paid for by himself. If that lot was at the bottom of the sea, he would be severely out of pocket. It was enough to make him scowl as he marched back towards the castle.

There was a figure walking towards him in the gloom, and he slowed his steps. Living in the castle of Ranulph de Blancminster, one took no chances, for it contained the most unpleasant group of felons, thieves and outlaws Thomas had known. If one of them was out in this weather, he could only be enormously drunk, and in that state was more likely to pull out a sword and run him through than ask him to move aside. The locals were just as likely to try to kill Thomas if they could do so with any chance of escaping afterwards. No one liked the Lord of the Manor’s Sergeant.

In the past, Thomas had relied on the fearsome reputation of his men to keep order. The peasants were a quarrelsome group at the best of times, but now they were furious because their taxes had risen sharply. Thomas had taken to spreading word of how he had found Robert, his gather-reeve, just to ensure that people were too scared to harm the fellow. But a drunk might forget his fears, and Thomas was the Lord’s administrative officer, detested even more than the man who collected the taxes.

The shape hesitated, almost seemed about to turn away and hide among the trees, but then came on, and Thomas felt his hand make its way towards his sword almost as though it went of its own will and without his compliance.

‘Thank God!’ he muttered when he recognised the man. ‘What are you doing out here, Brother Luke?’

‘Coming to see you!’ Luke said, and his face held an unpleasant, set smile.

There was no sleep for Jean de Conket and his Breton crew, that terrible night.

It had looked so easy, nom de Dieu! The great lumbering cog, obviously overloaded with tuns of good Guyennois wine, hides and skins, maybe even a little gold, and yet the master had managed to evade him, Jean de Conket, with his ponderous vessel. It was galling to think that he had been beaten by superior seamanship, but Jean was nothing if not a realist. He had been outmanoeuvred by the master of the cog. Perhaps the wind and rain had played their part, but that meant nothing to Jean. He took it as a personal affront that another seaman had beaten him. Then there was that knight …

Yes, that bastard who had marked him. Jean flexed his arm, grimacing at the pain. Surely it wasn’t so bad; his dip in the sea must have washed it clean. Jean had faith in the cleansing properties of seawater. It was pure good luck that his plight had been witnessed by two of his comrades, who had immediately taken steps to save his life. If they had stayed on the cog, they might have won her and slaughtered the knight and the master, but that would have been little satisfaction to a corpse. Jean was glad they’d come to his rescue. The alternative was a hideous death. Some weeks hence, his corpse would have washed up on a shore somewhere, the eyes empty sockets, his clothing shredded, bite marks all over him, like any number of bodies spat out on coastlines after every storm. All sailors had seen them, and all felt the horror of suffering the same fate. The thought made him long for home and safety.

There was no possibility of turning into the wind to try to make their way home now. All the crew knew that. They sat huddled on the thwarts, their oars lashed to the deck as the winds grew in force, while their master bound himself to the mast, his eyes searching for that damned ship all the while, his senses alert to the sounds of straining rigging, tortured wood, and, most important, the thunderous roar of waves crashing on the rocks which he knew lay about the west of England. If they were thrown onto those rocks, their ship would shatter in a moment, and he and all his men must die. In the dark of night like this, Jean feared those rocks more than anything. This ship was a good size, about five and twenty yards long, and with a keel of beech, while the framing, stem and planking were of good Breton oak, but if flung onto rocks by this sea, she would last no longer than a coracle.

Where had the cog gone? It had disappeared as the rain started lashing down again, concealed behind a wall of water. At first, Jean and his men hoped that they might be able to regain her after their abortive withdrawal; Jean in particular had prayed for this. He wanted that tall, dark-haired knight to eat his steel. No man had ever wounded Jean de Conket so cruelly before! The murderous, white-livered Englishman would pay for that!

He hoped that the Englishman was dead, that the cog had hit a rock and sunk. No, he didn’t wish that, he told himself with a grin. He wanted that knight to feel Jean’s blade in his ribs. Also, he wanted that cargo. Better by far that the Anne had lost her mast, that she had wallowed like a hog in a pond for ages, so that all her crew were unwell. Jean and his men would find her later, when the rains had stopped and the wind died down, and the seas grown calmer.

Tedia woke as soon as the door opened. ‘Isok? Is that you?’

The storm was raging now. The wind caught at the open door and slammed it back against the wall, the gusts scattering the bright sparks from the nearly dead fire in an orange cloud.

‘No. Not Isok, my dear.’

Tedia relaxed. ‘Mariota! Is Isok safe?’

‘Yes,’ her aunt laughed, pushing at the door with main force until she could reach through the hole and bind the thong which held it. ‘He’s fine.’

‘Oh, good.’ There was an odd tone in Mariota’s voice, as though she was angry or bitter about something. Still, Tedia was too tired to worry. She felt her eyelids closing. As she did so, she was aware of Mariota shaking her blanket from her shoulders. Her legs were sodden, as were her skirts. Tedia thought she looked like a woman who had been through a downpour.

At last Simon felt the sand scraping at his knees, then a rock snagged his shin, and he could set his feet on the sloping beach. In the thin morning light, he stumbled on through the shallows, the slash in his shoulder hurting abominably; his teeth were set into a snarl of determination as he forced himself on, dragging his burden.

The moorstone grey of the sky had faded gradually while Simon had clung to his timber, and now above him was a gleaming blue vision that was as clear, distinct and perfect as the inside of a polished bowl, except this had no flaws or scratches, only occasional soft clouds like finest lamb’s wool. Of the previous night’s storm there was no hint. Simon guessed that there would be a thin line of blackness at the far horizon to give a hint of the filthy weather heading onwards, but in his present state he didn’t care. All he knew was that it had gone, and that he had somehow survived.

He pulled the body with him up the beach with what little strength remained in him, and dropped it when they were far enough from the water, sinking to his knees. There was no sound, and Simon eyed the boy for a moment with a sense of alarm.

When the mast had gone and the ship had grounded, the graunching noises grew. Only when he realised that the sound came from the ship’s main timbers as they began to break up, did Simon understand that the ship was doomed. Then a man went below and reported that there was a huge hole in the ship’s bows. She must sink. Gervase said tiredly that it was every man for himself, but insisted on being left behind. He would die with his Anne, he said. Simon had been about to leap into the depths when he heard the keening.

It was Hamo, the cabin-boy. When Simon saw him kneeling and praying, he had been tempted to jump and forget the lad, just as he must leave behind the other sailors, but then he caught sight of the tear-streaked face and there was something about it, something oddly like his own son. His boy was miles away, was only a fraction of Hamo’s age, and yet Simon liked to think that had Peter been left on a ship like this, another man might have tried to save him.

The thoughts sped through his mind, and then he was racing over the leaning deck. He grabbed Hamo under the armpits, roared, ‘Hold hard, lad!’ and set off for the lower rail. As he sprang over and down into the water, he heard a short scream of complete horror, but then they hit the water.

Simon was no great swimmer, but Hamo, like so many sailors, had never learned. Sailors often preferred a quick death by drowning, rather than to suffer the prolonged death of swimming until exhaustion took them over or a sea monster found them and made play with them like a cat with a mouse.

There was something to be said for that view, Simon told himself as he struggled his way towards a massive timber, dragging Hamo behind him. By this stage, the cabin-boy was nothing more than a dead weight, and swimming here, with the waves slamming down onto them after every few strokes, was almost impossible. There was rubbish all about, ropes and spars intermingled, but Simon dared not grab at them in order to bind Hamo to the beam, because he was certain that the loose ropes would entangle them, and probably seal their doom. Instead Simon made his way to the timber with a set determination, while the saltwater threatened to flood his lungs at every stroke, the wind blew spray into his eyes, and his arms began to ache with the unaccustomed exercise. At one point he let go of Hamo when a large spar cracked over his back, but fortunately he caught hold of the lad again, and set off once more. The world was a roaring blackness, a place filled with pain, noise and fury; Simon must reach the beam to have even a remote possibility of survival.

And as if by a miracle, suddenly his nails scraped the slimy surface, and he could haul Hamo to his side, loop his arms over it, and then allow his own exhausted frame to cling to the other side, not knowing where they might end up, nor whether there was a hope of their survival, while the black storm raged.

Thus had Simon spent himself, his strength supporting both of them until the breaking dawn, when suddenly the wind’s rage died and the foul weather passed by. As it did so, Simon looked up and saw that they were drifting slowly towards a group of islands. Kicking with renewed energy he helped them on their journey until they came to the shore.

But now Simon gazed helplessly at the boy, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He was all alone here. The only companion he had was this cabin-boy, and if he should die, Simon had no one. It was a selfish wish, but he wanted the lad to live just so that he had some company. Especially since Baldwin …

A wracking sob burst from him, as though a giant had taken his chest in his hand and squeezed. It was entirely unexpected, but Simon could not prevent himself from falling to his knees, a hand going over his face as he began to give himself up to his loss. Baldwin, his friend, the man with whom he had gone on pilgrimage, was dead.

‘Christ! Brother Jan!’

Simon felt a hand on his back, but he remained as he was, his face covered, while the sobs choked his throat, ashamed of the tears that flowed. Gentle hands prised his head up until he found himself surveyed by a friendly face, through the haze of exhaustion, tears and his salt-filled eyes.

‘Christ’s wounds, master — you need warmth. What of your friend?’

Vaguely Simon was aware of the man grabbing Hamo, turning him over and muttering a swift prayer.

‘Save your tears, master. He’ll live.’

There was a damp scratching at his cheek when Baldwin moved. The world was filled with noise, when all he wanted was peace.

An idea was floating near his consciousness, but he couldn’t quite get hold of it. He didn’t mind. The most important thing was Jeanne. She was lovely; she had given him Richalda. They were all to him. There was nothing without them. His life depended upon them both, and it was somehow important that he concentrated on them.

There had been a fight, he recalled. On a ship. They had repelled the pirates, but then the storm struck them again, the rain beating down from all sides. The wind was vicious, sending them tearing along at a terrifying speed, the cog rolling fearsomely, bucketing down over the crests and diving into the next wave. It was terrible, a scene from hell.

He could remember a crack. A rippling series of explosions like detonating gunpowder that seemed to go off directly over his head, and then the sail was nothing more than a series of shreds. He vaguely recalled one sailor falling to his knees and weeping inconsolably; another climbed up to try to do something to the wreckage of the sail, but he was almost immediately flung from the yard. The helmsman’s body was there one moment, gone the next. Throughout it all the master remained sitting on his arse, trying to hold his belly together, his face grey with pain as his narrowed eyes darted hither and thither. Simon and Sir Charles were clinging to a rope near the stern, both silent and fearful, while Hamo cowered on the deck between them. Sir Charles’s man, Paul, sat impassively near the rail. He was resigned to whatever fate God had in store.

A cold wash flowed past Baldwin’s face, up into his mouth, and he choked on the chilly salt. It made him retch, and he felt warm water shoot out from his nostrils.

It was too difficult. Better to remember his wife and daughter. Easier, too. They were something to hold on to, to recall with pleasure and pride. Better that than worrying about the present. There was no point. He was probably asleep. This was all a dream.

The noise washed over him like water, constant but ever-changing. It was like a series of pebbles being rolled around a breastplate of armour, different all the time, but always there.

As was the water, he realised. It was odd. A part of his brain reminded him that this was all a peculiar dream, and he was instantly reassured. He could have imagined that the sensation at his brow and over his ear was water, but what if it was?

He felt safe and warm, with this gentle massage of water all about him. Yes. He would sleep at last.