The Prophecy of Death

Chapter Twelve

Jack watched the knight and bailiff with the body as he rode on past them. It was plain enough that the bailiff was less than comfortable in the presence of the corpse, but that the knight was relishing his task. He was a sick kind of fellow, in Jack’s eye.

He had known a felon in France when he was first there, a short, ill-favoured man, marked with the pox, and who had a cast in his eye that made him appear still more foul. This man, Guillaume, took inordinate delight in torturing men slowly to learn whether they had more money or treasure hidden about them, or nearby. His favourite method was to slice open a man’s foot, and fill it with butter before setting it over a fire to roast. The screams of those who suffered under his care Jack could still hear in his dreams.

However, there was at least good reason for that: the men all wanted to learn where wealth could have been secreted. No, it was the other damage inflicted which set Jack’s belly roiling: once his victim had died, little Guillaume would set about mutilating the body for fun. Once he had emulated the Scottish leader, Wallace, and flayed a man so that he could use the skin as a sword-belt. It hadn’t worked, though. The leather was poorly tanned, and soon rotted.

Those days were black indeed. At the time Jack had been certain that his life would end soon enough. The effect of the famine and the death of all his family had served to destroy his faith in the world and in God. God couldn’t care for men if he could seek to destroy them in this manner. The loss of the Holy Land at the time of his birth showed that God had grown to despise His creation. Why else would He have given the Holy Land to pagans? No, God had decided that it was time to end the world, that was what Jack had believed back in those grim days, and Jack was content to watch it happen. He had little enough to live for. All he sought was a means of feeding himself each day, and without work, often the only way meant capturing a man and making him give up all he owned. He would die, but at least Jack and the others would live for a little longer.

Until he met his Anne-Marie. He had truly felt that with her, he could at last find some peace. The famine appeared to have ended, the cattle and the sheep began to wax fat on the grasses, and the people who had survived suddenly found that there was a superfluity of food for all. Men like Jack could return to little villages where their labour was desired and work for the good of others again, and in time perhaps forget that in harsher times they had been prepared to throw away their humanity and lower themselves to the level of beasts. But no matter how hard they tried, they would always find that the nightmares would return to them in sleep, and they would be forced to relive their past crimes and confront their victims once more.

At least his old companion, Guillaume, was dead. Jack had seen his head removed. But this knight could have been his student, pulling and shoving at the body with enthusiasm. From this distance, it looked as though he was enjoying the exercise.

Jack turned to the road ahead with his belly feeling uncomfortably hot, as though the acid was boiling and about to rise into his throat. He would watch out for this knight, too.

As he turned away, he noticed John was staring at him fixedly.

Jack truly did not like that man.

Baldwin set the man back down. ‘This is very curious.’

‘What?’ Simon demanded waspishly. Watching his friend pulling the corpse about like that was deeply unpleasant. He kept expecting a decomposing arm to be pulled from the sack of pus and gas that was the torso.

‘There is no obvious mark on his head or throat. Nothing that could have killed him.’

‘So?’

‘So, then, the wound must have been inflicted upon his torso to kill him. But in that case, you would expect him to have been marked through his tabard. Yet there is no such damage.’

‘Perhaps it was flying away in the wind? He was shot by an arrow underneath it while he was on a horse, and fell down here.’

‘Where is the arrow?’

‘The killer came here to get it, and in the process he found the man’s purse and other valuables. There! No wound on the tabard, a deadly blow that killed him, and it explains also why there is nothing of value about him.’

‘True enough. But if he was shot, surely the arrow would be broken as he fell,’ Baldwin wondered aloud. He broke off and studied the man’s hands for a moment. ‘Nothing to see there. He has been a man who has used his hands, but who hasn’t?’

‘When I’ve shot a deer, often it has fallen away from the direction of the arrow, as though punched by it,’ Simon tried. ‘The arrow remains uppermost.’

‘Yes. You are probably correct. Yes,’ Baldwin agreed. He strode to a nearby branch which had broken from its tree and lay on the ground nearby. Baldwin eyed it thoughtfully, then picked it up and set it over the body. He took the man’s tabard off, and fixed it to the branch with a leather thong he took from his pack, and then set the makeshift flag over the body, bound to the limb of a nearby ash.

‘That will do it,’ he said. Then he began to cast about him, studying the ground, carefully parting the grasses and weeds at the same time as prodding with a small stick into any deeper patches.

‘Do you think anyone will actually find his murderer?’ Simon said, gazing at the body.

‘The coroner will do his best to make a record, I’ve no doubt. When I found a dead king’s messenger in Exeter, I moved heaven and earth to find his killer and succeeded — but that was in a city. People are close, there. Here, in the wilds, anyone could have done this. That is the great fear of the countryside. A man may commit homicide with impunity, when he would be fearful of doing so in the town. In a town his offence will be more speedily noticed, and the perpetrator can be uncovered. In the countryside, his crimes may never be noticed. Finding this body was more by luck than good judgement. He said he saw something metal, didn’t he? I wonder what that was.’

‘So — what now, Baldwin? Shouldn’t we hurry to get back to the Bishop?’

‘Yes — in a while. But first I want to check about here and ensure that there is no sign of the oil. This fellow has been killed in some manner, but there is something odd about the manner of his death. It is not … right!’

Simon grunted. ‘In what way is it not “right”?’

‘Do not use that tone with me, Simon,’ Baldwin said with a grin. ‘I know that long-suffering pitch too well. But since you ask, it’s as I said earlier; he does not look like a man who has simply fallen here.’

‘The tabard?’

‘That is one thing.’

‘If he fell, and then a dog or hog found him and hauled him along a short way by the leg, his tabard would ruck up, wouldn’t it? There is nothing necessarily suspicious about it.’

‘True,’ Baldwin said thoughtfully. ‘Except then his tabard would have dragged some leaves and twigs and soil under it, surely. There is little evidence of that. And the tabard would have brushed a swathe of the ground clearer, too. There is no sign of that either. No, I think that’s not right.’

‘Then what is your suggestion, Baldwin?’

‘It is almost as though this fellow was killed, and then the tabard thrown over him to show he was the king’s herald. It makes sense, after all. If he got here, he would hardly have ridden all the way from Canterbury with a bloodsoaked tabard, would he? No, he would have taken it off. So I think someone killed him, found the tabard, and then put it over him to show who he was.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve no idea! Perhaps I’m wrong — a man could have come along later, found the body, and wanted to show that it was a man of some position, in case someone else came along who didn’t mind finding the body.’

There was no need to explain why. All too often, a man who discovered a body would do nothing. The ‘first finder’ was required to appear at the subsequent inquiries, on pain of a fine. So many preferred to walk past.

Oddly, it led to a small market in discovering bodies. Once a man had found one body, he would have to turn up to describe what he found to the justices. He would not be amerced again for the second body, so many took the pragmatic approach and would tell the man in the area who had already found one body, so that he could ‘discover’ any subsequent ones. First finders often had a monopoly in their areas.

Clearly this man had not been found by anyone who knew a first finder.

Simon eyed the body again. ‘You seriously suggest that someone killed him and threw his tabard over him before riding off?’

Baldwin had conducted a careful examination of the ground immediately near the body. Now he stood and wiped his hands on his old tunic. ‘There is one thing for certain, old friend: whoever this was, whoever killed him, the oil is nowhere near. So the killer, or someone else, took it.’

‘Unless, of course, this fellow had nothing to do with the matter at all,’ Simon pointed out.

‘Yes.’

‘Fine. Now, let’s get back to the Bishop. This place makes me uncomfortable.’

‘Very well.’

Baldwin was about to set off with Simon when something on the dead body caught his attention. Stuck in the fold of his shirt, hard by his neck, there was a gleam, and Baldwin bent to peer closer. He could see something shining there, and when he moved the head to the side, he could pull it free. ‘Aha! So this is what Joseph saw!’

‘What is it?’

‘A necklace formed of pilgrim badges,’ Baldwin said, handling the lead badges with care. ‘They may help find the dead man’s identity.’

‘If we can find someone who knew a man who carried a string of badges about his neck like beads,’ Simon said as they started to walk to where their horses were tethered, but then Baldwin stopped and glanced back.

‘When you said “uncomfortable”, you were right, Simon. And you saw how that messenger was affected by the woods. They are fearful, aren’t they? Just imagine how that poor man must have felt, riding in here, all alone, and then feeling the blow that killed him. All alone, and the one man in the world whom he didn’t want near him was there, and he killed him.’

‘And you call me fanciful and superstitious!’ Simon said.

Joseph trotted much of the way through the trees, his eyes flitting nervously from one side to the other as he rode along, until he was close to the outside of the woods. There, a blackbird squawked at his horse’s hooves, and made the beast shy, while the blackbird pelted along an inch from the ground, calling out his warning song.

It was enough for him. Joseph set spurs to his mount and burst from the woods and into the open in a flurry of dirt and dust, crouching low as though thinking that all the French host was after him.

He hurried on for a long way, hardly taking any note of the distance, but when he reigned in, he found he was a long way from the edge of the trees. They stood some half-mile distant, looking like a ruffled green blanket, with the swirls of the treetops. They were almost beautiful.

His heart was still thrilling, though. The thought of the dead man lying in there … that was enough to make his belly try to empty again. Those hideous eye sockets, the trail of ants to the wounds … he had to think of something else.

There was smoke ahead. He was cautious, but it was possible that there was a cott up there through the trees. If there was a small house, a pot of ale would help him feel a little more normal.

He could see it through the trees, a small, low, thatched property, built of crucks and with wattle and daub to fill the spaces. It would be warm, in the winter, and with all the wood about here, plentifully supplied with heating. There was a man, a shortish, thickset peasant, who was using his bill to split saplings for firewood. For an instant, Joseph thought he knew the man: something about the cast of his head, the way he swung his arms while chopping the wood …

‘Who are you?’

The woman appeared from nowhere, staring at him with fear.

‘Good wife, I’m just looking for some ale. I found a body in there in the woods, and it made me feel unwell. I’m a king’s messenger, and I’d be glad of something to help settle my belly, if that is all right.’

He glanced back to where the man had been, but he was gone now.

She looked behind him, along the way he had come. ‘A man?’

‘A King’s man. A herald.’

It didn’t strike him at the time, but afterwards, he was quite sure that she was relieved to hear it. She probably just didn’t want to think that a neighbour had died, he thought.

Second Friday after Easter¹⁴

Beaulieu

It was all to no avail. As the sun gradually began to sink in the west, the friar was forced to accept that his mission had failed, and there was little point in extending his stay here. The King would not see him.

Nicholas of Wisbech was about to leave the precinct when he saw a bench, and overwhelmed with a sudden lassitude, he sank gratefully on to it and rested his legs.

As a friar he was perfectly well used to walking up and down the country, but these last days of standing about, waiting and hoping to be able to see the King, had been not merely tiresome but also enormously exhausting. It was fortunate that a kindly clerk had found him a berth in the great tithe barn, for without that, with the rain of three days ago, he might have died of cold and exposure. All the friars were aware of the dangers of lying out in the damp and cold of an English night. For others, for peasants with thick jerkins and warm hosen, it was less of a trial, but for a friar who was never overly well-fed on his diet of begged bread and pottage, it was indeed a hazard. He had seen his own companions catch chills and hasten their souls away to heaven in that manner.

Yes, he was safe from that gloomy ending, being discovered one morning under a hedge hard and cold as ice, like his old friend Walt. It was discovering Walt that had made Nicholas seek a more reliable occupation than mere preaching.

It had not been an easy transition, but he had ever been fortunate. Nicholas had been sent to college when he was still young, and had proved a shrewd academic and philosopher already. It took little persuasion of his prior to win a place at Oxford when he had shown his abilities, and once there his intellect made him rise above so many of his peers. There was no point concealing the fact that he was remarkably fast to understand complex concepts, and the fact that the masters and tutors were occasionally behind his own reasoning was enough to prove that he was possessed of an unnatural brilliance. And so he was elevated, and found himself soon employed in researches of some arcane material. Such as the oil of St Thomas.

Now he could curse the day he found that reference, for it had led to so much hardship for him, even this present disaster, in truth, but at the time he had instantly comprehended the potential of the marvellous fluid.

The King, Edward II, had been widely respected and adored when first he came to his throne almost twenty years ago, but that had instantly changed when the character of his friend, Piers Gaveston, was better understood. Suddenly the barons began to withhold their favour, and tried to impose restrictions on the King himself that would control his rule. He could not comply with those who sought to clip his wings — and why should he? He was King, anointed by God. If God chose him, Nicholas was content with God’s choice.

But his reign went from bad to worse. While the Scots destroyed the Royal Host in some foul backwater called Bannockburn, while they invaded his Irish colony and imposed the reign of Edward Bruce on an unwilling population, his own barons grew more fractious. And then it was that Nicholas found the reference to the oil. St Thomas’s oil.

Such a simple solution to all the King’s problems. That was how it appeared to Nicholas that day when he learned the whole story. A frayed and worn parchment told of the gift, the wondrous gift, passed to St Thomas in exile. The man must have been almost an angel to have been granted such a vision and so magnificent a treasure from the Holy Virgin herself! No one else would have been vouchsafed a vision of her, let alone a gift. But St Thomas took it, and straightway obeyed her injunction, delivering it to a monastery where it could be buried for safekeeping until it was needed.

And here it was in London, brought especially for the King. And when brought, it remained unused!

Dear Christ in Heaven, the fools who had withheld it must have rued the day they were born. If only they had delivered it to the King on the day of his coronation, his reign would have been blessed, and all the catalogue of disasters, from his choice of advisers, to his inept war-leadership and failures over his French territories, would have been reversed. But no, some baron or other must have decided that the King had no need of such a great boon, and had rejected the oil. For preference, they made use of the normal holy oil used for his predecessors. That baron must be kicking himself now, Nicholas thought to himself as he scurried to the King to tell him all about the wondrous discovery he had made.

The King had appreciated the importance in an instant. And under Nicholas’s prompt urging, had agreed to send Nicholas to the Pope with a request for his aid.

It had taken an age, that journey. All the way to Avignon to the Pope’s palace, and then returning with the sad response which had ruined Nicholas’s life.

The unfairness of it was shocking. Truly shocking. All Nicholas had tried to do was help others, and yet here he was, sent on his way home with the Pope’s message: ‘If you wish to be anointed, pray be so. It can do no harm. But I cannot spare my cardinals at present to do it for you.’ That was the gist of the courtly Latin which Nicholas had to read out to a dumbfounded King on his return.

Dear God, it was as close as he had ever been to being murdered, from the look on the monarch’s face. Nicholas had already heard of the King’s tempers, even though this was before the terrible revenge which he visited upon his enemies after Boroughbridge, and the fact that the Pope had elevated Nicholas to papal penitentiary, as well as giving him a licence to allow him to take Cambridge University clerks and install them in vacant benefices, did not affect the King. No, he would have nothing to do with Nicholas of Wisbech. His career was ended.

It had taken him all his courage to come here to Beaulieu to visit the King and to try to persuade him to look upon him more favourably. After all, it was not his fault that the Pope chose not to comply with the King’s request. The Pope had made it plain that he wouldn’t help by sending one of his own cardinals, but he did give permission to the King to have any of his bishops in the land conduct the ceremony and anoint him. So the mission was not a complete disaster. Nicholas had secured that. And all the King need do was arrange for a bishop to visit him with the oil, and all would be well. Surely, if he was touched by the holy oil of St Thomas, his reign would be cured of malignancy and treachery, and King Edward could reign contentedly from then on.

But he wouldn’t so much as meet with the friar. To the King, Friar Nicholas was dead. It was so unjust that he could burst from simple indignation.