The Tolls of Death

Chapter Fifteen

‘Do you think Richer will do something stupid?’ Simon asked Baldwin as they walked away with Sir Jules.

‘He is in no fit state to hurt Serlo,’ Baldwin said. ‘In fact, in his present condition, I would expect the miller to thrash him.’

‘Would you care for some food?’ Sir Jules said.

‘Perhaps later,’ Baldwin said pensively.

‘That means at some time when he realises he hasn’t eaten for a month or more,’ Simon said caustically. ‘For my part, I’d enjoy some cuts of meat with bread.’

‘There is so much to do,’ Baldwin objected. ‘We have to speak to as many people here in the vill as possible, then perhaps go to the castle and question the men there. We should also travel to Temple to interview the priest there, find out what he thinks of Adam.’

‘You don’t believe him?’ Sir Jules asked. His young face was already troubled, but on hearing this his eyebrows shot up almost under his unkempt hair.

‘I don’t disbelieve him yet,’ Baldwin corrected him. ‘But in a situation like this, with a woman murdered, it’s first necessary to hear what people have to say about the matter, and then pass their evidence through the most effective sieve available — the mind. If one man says a thing is so, you trust him until you hear a second say that it is not so; then you ask a third, and see what he says.’

‘And if two men say a thing is so, and the third doesn’t, you assume the latter is the liar, so he’s the killer,’ Sir Jules said dismissively. If this was the sum of intelligence that these two could bring, then they were little more use than himself, he reckoned.

‘No. Then you find others and learn why any of them could have lied, whether they hate each other, so that two were putting the blame on one innocent, or whether all were wrong and were giving evidence based on bigotry or stupidity,’ Baldwin smiled. ‘There is rarely an easy path to the truth with a murder of this type. It is always a matter of balancing facts and using intuition. But one way in which to gain knowledge and base intuition upon fact, is to ask all the people you may about the folk involved.’

‘And then ask more,’ Simon said, adding, ‘but we can plan who we need to speak to over ale and pie.’

‘You are incorrigible, Bailiff,’ Baldwin said, but he chuckled. ‘Let us find our way to the alehouse.’

‘It’s this way,’ Sir Jules said. He was still confused. ‘What would you hope to learn from the priest at Temple, though? The man here appeared honest enough to me.’

‘And to me,’ Baldwin acknowledged. ‘Yet his evidence should be tested, just as Richer’s must be. Why, for example, did Father John evict the girl Julia, who now lives happily with Father Adam? Was it bigotry, or was there another reason? We have to find others in the vill who can vouch for him.’

They had reached a long, low cottage with three unglazed, barred windows open to the road. From inside came the smell of good clean woodsmoke and sour ale. ‘Shall we try our fortune here?’ Baldwin asked tentatively. There was a bush tied to a pole beside the doorway, which proved that there was ale ready to be consumed, but Baldwin couldn’t help but reflect on the semi-poisonous brews he had been sold in the past. With a sigh he recalled the strong wines of Galicia, the sweeter and more refreshing wines of Portugal, and the delicious black olives. They were a delight of which few men or women of England could have dreamed, and he knew that he was now spoiled for ever.

The others had entered, and reluctantly he ducked below the lintel and followed them.

Lady Anne was happy to see her husband return, even though he was late for their usual meal. ‘My love, are you hungry?’

‘I am ravenous.’

She kissed him, then called for the servants to bring the food. Like a good wife, she had not eaten while he was out, and she was glad to see the plates of meat arrive with a loaf ready sliced, the crusts removed by her panter. Nicholas said grace, and then the two set themselves to their task.

Anne herself was voraciously hungry, and it was only after she had taken the edge off her appetite that she could pay attention to her man. It was often the way, she had heard: sickly and repelled by food all morning, then starving and vexed all afternoon. At least her appetite had not been altered by pregnancy. One friend had told her that she desired only bloody pork, eaten raw, while another discovered the delights of charcoal. ‘Charcoal?’ Anne had demanded. ‘You’re joking!’

‘With gravy, of course,’ her friend had replied distantly.

She was tempted to mention this revelation to Nicholas, but something about his demeanour told her that he was in no mood for pleasantries. ‘You are very upset?’

He looked at her and smiled, but his face was quite pale. ‘I am sorry, my love,’ he said, his eyes going to her bump. ‘Are you all right? I don’t want to trouble you.’

‘I am all right,’ she smiled. ‘Please tell me.’

He nodded. ‘It’s Athelina, of course. Her corpse and those of her boys were hauled out for the jury, but as we were proceeding, Keeper Baldwin and Bailiff Puttock suggested that she was herself murdered.’

With a flare of pride, Anne recalled that it was she herself who had pointed out the grazes on the corpse’s throat. ‘Who could have wanted to kill her?’

‘A rapist? Someone who thought she had money to steal?’ he guessed, and then waved a hand in frustration. ‘Who would think that!’

‘What of poor Aumery?’

‘I forgot you were there.’ He studied her face a moment, anxious not to alarm her in her delicate state. ‘It was all Serlo’s fault. The idiot left the children with his sick wife. The family pig got in, and knocked a basinful of boiling pottage over little Ham. The poor lad was dead in an instant.’

‘Oh, poor Muriel!’ She put a hand to her breast to stop her heart’s fluttering, but no matter what she did, she could feel the beat racing. As if in sympathy, her baby gave a convulsive kick. Perhaps he was simply complaining, she thought, and then she felt her mood lighten. By now she was quite certain her child would be a boy. That was wonderful. Her husband would be delighted to know that he had an heir.

But then, looking at him again, she knew that this was the wrong moment to share her pleasure. ‘My love, you are very upset by all this, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Nicholas said heavily, his face still troubled. ‘But talking of Serlo — what did he want with you? I saw him approach you at the inquest. What was that about?’

She smiled at him, but it was some moments before she could trust her voice. ‘Why, nothing, dear. Nothing at all.’

Warin had stood at the back of the inquest, but left long before the arrival of Muriel with the body of Hamelin and the revelation about Athelina’s death. He had other work to do. Behind the churchyard he had left a horse. He went there now, and mounted it.

From the churchyard where the inquest was being held, the road led northwards past the spring called the Holy Well. It joined up with the road to the moors after a while, a long road that opened out after a quarter mile or so, away from the trees and low bushes that lay about the vill itself. Here the land undulated more smoothly, with sprinkles of bright yellow where the gorse flowered. Warin stopped once, staring about him at the view, and then took a deep breath before setting off once more.

His path took him up past the fields at Colvannick, and then on towards the vill of Temple. It was a place with which he was well acquainted, and he glanced at the fields approvingly. The harvest had been good this year, and it was pleasing to see that it had all been collected before the weather worsened.

The road to Temple was over the top of the moors, and he could feel the hot sun burning into his back. He took a drink from a spring at a high point, from where he could stare back towards the vill. The church stood proud of the landscape all about, a tall steeple with little decoration, a clear marker for those who had faith so that they knew where to go. Even the poor traveller who was desperate for a chance to pray, or perhaps merely seeking warmth and shelter, would be able to see this building from miles away. After crossing the worst of the moors, a traveller would be glad of such a sight.

And in the other direction there lay the strange little manor, once a part of the great organisation that owned so much of the country: the Knights Templar. Now destroyed, the Order existed still in stone and mortar in a thousand little manors and chapels up and down England. Across Europe most had been handed to the Hospitallers, in compliance with the Pope’s orders, but in England, the King preferred to protect them. He had kept several of the manors for himself.

This was not one of them, though. Too small to interest the King, it had been absorbed by a knight who had given Edward good service, as Warin knew; perhaps he was the only person in the Earldom of Cornwall to know that. But he had good reason to know. The new owner had instructed him to come here and look at the place, evaluate its worth, and decide what should be done with it.

That would not be too difficult, but the second of his tasks was to assess the loyalty of the men of the county, so far as he could. Not because Warin was a spy by nature, but because there must be one man in whom Sir Henry of Cardinham could trust, and who better than bluff, honest Warin?

Warin knew why he had been picked for this job, but he was also aware of the desperate need of Sir Henry to know the mood of the county. A single man could be an irritation in a vill; a vill like Cardinham in revolt could prove to be an annoyance for the Sheriff; a few places like Cardinham rising up could mean a civil war.

Many of the men from the Marches had been arrested and thrown into the Tower or executed since the last abortive uprising. The King had been defeated and his most trusted aides exiled, but then he had planned, as only a man like he could.

Warin was no cretin: he knew how devious King Edward II could be. He’d seen Edward and his lover, Hugh Despenser, plotting the overthrow of one man after another, even to the exclusion from his affections of his own Queen. At the first opportunity, Edward had baited his trap. One by one, the men who could have threatened his power were caught in his nets, even the most powerful, Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, who now mouldered in the Tower of London. He had been arrested eighteen months ago, and at first was threatened with execution, although he was later reprieved. However, Warin knew that Hugh Despenser, the son of the Earl of Winchester, was pissing in the King’s ear again, demanding Mortimer’s death.

Mortimer, as Despenser knew, was a risk as long as he was alive. One of a few men who were competent to lead others, as he had proved in Ireland, he was a threat to the rule of the Despensers. For that reason, Roger Mortimer would be dead before the end of August. That was the rumour. Despenser had demanded his head.

In this year of 1323, the Despensers, father and son, held sway. There was no theft, no act of brigandage, no extortion, which could persuade the King to remove them. Of course, it was likely that the King didn’t hear the murmurings of unrest. All the reports he received came through his most trusted adviser, Hugh Despenser, and all Hugh ever wanted was more money, land and property. The man got away, literally, with murder, since none would dare to speak ill of he whom the King most trusted — and loved.

Another reason for Warin’s being sent so far from the court was to protect him in the event of a fresh coup in the King’s Household. Such things, Warin knew, could suddenly spring up. In the last decade he had seen the deaths of many men. And when such men were executed, they left behind them the disgruntled and the avaricious, who craved vengeance or their own rewards. Knowing this, Warin was only too happy to be away from court.

Especially now, in mid-August. If the rumours were true and the traitor Mortimer was to be executed later in the month, Warin knew that the end of so powerful a nobleman, once the King’s trusted friend and ally, could cause mayhem on a scale unforeseen by either Edward or Despenser. London no longer felt like a safe city. The apprentices were always an unruly band, and just recently they had been worse than usual. There had been reports of gangs of them wandering the streets just before he and Richer had left Kent.

He clattered along a stretch of almost metalled track, and then found himself on a well-made road which, although it had not been properly maintained for some while, was still perfectly usable. This took him past a few small buildings, and then he was in a wooded area. The road led on straight ahead, but he took a well-used track southwards, and here, a short way down the path, he found the church. He swung himself down lightly, and tethered his mount.

It was a small church, some six and twenty feet long, maybe fifteen wide. The altar was a simple slab of moorstone, while the walls were decorated with vivid scenes from Hell: there were beasts of all sorts, reptilian, human in body but with animals’ heads, or scaled and twisted, all wielding tridents and bills, pushing the wailing, weeping naked souls of the damned into the flames of the pit.

Warin studied the pictures with some interest for a few moments, but then he heard a cough, and he looked up to observe a slender figure beneath the small tower. ‘Godspeed, Father.’

‘Godspeed, my son. If you wished for a prayer on your journey, I can help you shortly, but …’

‘No, Father John.’

‘You know me?’

‘I have heard much about you. I am not here for a prayer,’ Warin said. He watched as the priest approached him, smiling a little uncertainly.

‘No? Then how can I help you?’

‘You can talk to me about the wench living with the priest at Cardinham, for a start,’ Warin said, and then he smiled wolfishly as Father John’s smile froze on his lips.