Crediton Killings

by Michael Jecks

  It would be lonely, though, and Stapledon had hinted that he might need help. Usually a new rector would have other staff to help, but in Callington there would be no one. Only Roger struggling to keep the congregation together.

  He had to pause near the jail to rest his foot, for the ankle was swelling a little, and his toe ached horribly. Leaning against the wall, he glanced around phlegmatically. There was ribald laughter leaking out through a broken shutter at the inn, and the sound of someone singing. The pain receded again, and he tested his foot, staring at it dubiously. It should hold, he felt.

  The dull thudding of hooves on dirt made him look up. From the street that led along the side of the butcher’s, he saw two men appear on horseback, leading a pack-mule. They slowed as they came to the main road, then walked off slowly on the Exeter road, seeming to increase their speed as they went, until they were cantering gently at the bottom of the slight hill.

  Roger watched them impassively. It was a strange time to be beginning a journey, but he was not particularly interested. He was more concerned with getting himself back to Clifford’s house, so, sighing, he forced himself upright and started off again. At the entrance to an alley, he halted again. Leaning against the wall was a heavy stick; he took it and tested his weight on it. It held him, and he was about to move on when he heard noises.

  The alley had no light, and in the dark he could only see for a few yards, but he was sure he could hear movement. There was a dull susurration, as of a group of people talking in whispers, nervous of being discovered.

  He paused, concentrating hard, trying to see through the gloom, but the darkness was thickened by the smoke from a multitude of fires, which hung in thin streamers like watchful wraiths.

  Suddenly feeling a chill which had nothing to do with the cold of the night, he hobbled back to Peter Clifford’s house as quickly as his game ankle would allow.

  Margaret watched with fascination as Walter Stapledon held them to his face again, reading the paper carefully.

  She had never been able to read herself: being a farmer’s daughter there was no point in her father investing in her education. As soon as she was old enough she would be married and become a mother. Her training was complete by the time she was fourteen, for by then she could brew and bake, and had learned the basic skills of looking after children. Simon was able to read and write, and it was not that skill which astonished her: it was the forked piece of metal which Stapledon held to his nose while he squinted at the page.

  Catching sight of her expression, Stapledon smiled as he set the paper down. “It is an old man’s weakness to need help with those bits and pieces of his body which do not function as they once did.”

  “But what does it do?” she demanded.

  “It was designed for old and feeble men like me who find their eyes are not as efficient as they once were. I used to be able to see as clearly as you can, but now I need these two glasses held in their frame to make the words look bigger.”

  “How do they do it?”

  He laughed and passed them to her. “I look on it as a gift from God—a miracle that makes my work easier. I do not pretend to understand how! I merely accept them.”

  The door slammed as Baldwin and Edgar returned from checking on their horses. “Is Simon not back yet?” the knight said, glancing at Stapledon with his eyebrows raised in faint alarm.

  The Bishop shook his head. “Does it matter? He seems a strong enough man, more than a match for any footpad.”

  “Yes. He must be all right.” Baldwin lowered himself into a seat and watched Margaret playing with the spectacles with the delight of a child, studying the woodwork on the table, the page before the Bishop, even the skin on the back of her hand, while the Bishop looked on indulgently.

  For all his expressed confidence, the knight was concerned. Simon had been so out of sorts for the last few days that his disappearance after their meal was cause for worry. It was not that Baldwin expected his friend to harm himself intentionally. Simon was in no way capable of so foolish an act, and suicide for someone relatively God-fearing was unthinkable. No, Baldwin was not anxious on that score—but he was nonetheless unquiet. There were many dangers in a town during darkness, even at the lowest level of simply falling down in a darkened street. Baldwin had once found a man in the gutter. From the indications, it was clear what had happened: the man had tripped over a drunk at the roadside, but the unfortunate fellow had struck his head, then rolled into a ditch full of muddy water. Unconscious, he had drowned. The drunk had not even woken.

  And then there were thieves. Even a tiny town like Crediton had its undesirable element, and these were augmented at present by the mercenaries—a group who were used to killing as a way of life.

  Poor Simon. He had enjoyed a life full of success and rewards, and yet the taste of all had turned sour in his mouth with the death of his son. Baldwin had seen it happen to others, but rarely so strongly as with his friend. Most, when a child died, had to shrug and try to produce a replacement. There was little point in worrying unduly about the ones who died, not when so many remained, needing help to survive.

  But Simon had pinned all his hopes on the boy. After so many years of waiting for a child who could live more than a few weeks or days, for all their children apart from Edith and Peterkin had died very young, there was the double agony of knowing that his heir too was gone. Simon must have a son to allow his family to continue, and Baldwin could all too easily comprehend the agony of knowing that there was nobody to carry on the name. He had the same pain himself.

  “My lord! Bishop!” The door was flung open, and now Roger burst in, wild-eyed and panting.

  “Calm yourself, lad!” Stapledon ordered, staring at his young rector. “What in the Lord’s name is the matter?”

  “Is…is it my husband?” Margaret stuttered, paling with a quick intuition. “What is it? Where is he?”

  “Your husband?”

  Baldwin shook his head. “Simon went out to walk off his meal, that is all. What have you seen?”

  “Sir, I don’t know—but I’m sure something’s going on in the alley by the jail. There’s noise like a lot of men talking low. I really think you should send someone to investigate.”

  “Why?” asked Baldwin. “Maybe it was a party on their way home from a tavern.”

  “No, sir. They weren’t walking, they were keeping quiet, like men planning a riot.” Roger told them about the sounds near the alley’s entrance, and Baldwin’s face hardened.

  “Bishop, I think I should check on this. There’s no way to tell, of course, but we have heard today that some of the mercenaries might be plotting to remove their captain. If they are, I do not want them to kill him here in Crediton.”

  “No, of course not,” Stapledon patted Margaret’s hand. “See? It’s nothing to do with your husband.”

  She smiled wanly, and looked away, but not before Baldwin had seen the fear in her eyes. “Edgar? Get Hugh. I think he’s asleep in the buttery again. And tell Peter where we’re going. Ask him for two of his men, just in case we need help, and tell them to bring weapons. Then come back here.” As soon as he finished Edgar disappeared, and they heard a sleepy voice complaining at being woken. “You, Roger. You must come with us and show us where you heard this noise.”

  It was the faint awareness that something was not right which propelled him on. He had no doubt that his friend was able to protect himself: Simon Puttock, he knew, was a capable man in a fight. Baldwin had seen the proof of that often enough—usually the knight felt it was his task to control his friend when Simon became too heated, for the latter was apt to lose his temper, much like the red-headed men from the north whom Baldwin looked on as mad. The bailiff was a staunch ally in a fight, but he had been gone for a long time, and Baldwin felt the same trepidation that agonized Margaret.

  It took little time to get to the alley, and Roger pointed at it with his stick. He could see that the tall knight was concerned, and his very silence
indicated how perturbed he was at the disappearance of his friend.

  Baldwin stared frowning into the alley, and then marched in without a word. The others followed him in silence, only to halt. Some little distance away they could hear the muffled sound of crying, which suddenly rose and was cut off.

  Rollo was petrified with terror as his crying and weeping faded to a mumble. He stood, staring down at the two bodies, pawing at his mother, avoiding contact with the man who had fallen by her side. The stranger was unknown, and his mother had always told him to be cautious with people he did not know.

  She had been lying for a long time, but no matter how often he prodded and nudged her, she would not wake. Rollo had seen others who had died, but he refused to accept the possibility that his mother could have. She would never have left him alone.

  The alley was dark, but he was used to that. He and his mother had never had a home, and he was accustomed to sleeping outside with her, taking what meager protection from the elements they could by hanging up her cloak from a nail on a wall to form a makeshift tent and huddling together beneath it in the worst of weathers. More commonly he would find himself left alone in a room while his mother spoke to a man in a separate chamber. He had often jealously watched the children of townsfolk as they played and shouted. Rollo would never know such pleasures, because his mother had done something wrong.

  He could not comprehend what it was that they were being punished for. They were both somehow guilty of a great crime, and it made them have to live apart from the other people of the town, constantly in fear. Rollo was six. If he had been the son of a merchant, he would be learning the trade he had been born to, or discovering the skills of a knight if his father had earned enough money and had an eye to the future. At the very least he could expect to be accepted into a farming community. But he and his mother were forced to beg and avoid others in case they were considered a nuisance.

  And now his mother had fallen asleep, with this stranger beside her, and the other man had gone.

  The sound of stealthy footsteps made him look up warily. He knew he must keep away from the men of the town—his mother had said so. She had always warned him to avoid the people who lived there, not that he had needed to be told. He had always known he was different. People looked at him, when they noticed him, with distaste, a kind of loathing. They scared him. He knew he was safe with his mother, but he was unsure of everyone else in Crediton—though he had no idea why.

  Cautious, quiet noises approached slowly, and the boy’s eyes widened.

  The man, the odd one with the giggle who had embraced his mother and then knocked this man down, he had moved slowly. Rollo had seen him. As the fallen man had reached out to him, the giggling one had hit him, and the nice one had fallen. Rollo had seen the face of the odd one, and it had scared him, He did not want to see him again. Turning, he stared round with wild fear. The walls crowded in on him, dark and fore-boding, but there was a hole at the base of one—the escape route for the rats that lived inside.

  It took him but a moment to leap across the ground and lie down, wriggling round and shoving himself inside. A moment later a nervous group of men from neighboring houses appeared at the entrance.

  Later, Baldwin peered in, his hand on his sword. He was perplexed—he could see little in the deeper darkness of the side-alley, and decided to investigate. Motioning to the others to stay, he carefully walked in. Without looking, he knew Edgar was close behind him. Edgar hardly ever left his master unprotected, always taking his place behind and to Baldwin’s left where he could protect the knight from a sudden assault. It had been so now for more years than Baldwin wanted to remember, ever since their time together in the Knights Templar, when Edgar had been his man-at-arms, and there was no one Baldwin would have preferred to have beside him in a fight.

  The light from the stars gave a silver sheen to the trodden dirt of the alley. This was a poor area, and the town would not spend good money on cobbles for the people who lived here. There would be no point when none of the residents could afford a horse, let alone a cart. Rubbish lay around: old staves from barrels piled into a mound for firewood, tatters and rags of cloth too worn and threadbare to be of use, a mess of bones and reeds from a hall, and odds and ends of leather tossed aside from one of the tanners’ works.

  Edgar wrinkled his nose in elegant distaste. “It astonishes me that people can live in such squalor.”

  Glancing down at something he had stepped on, Baldwin nodded. It was a dead rat. There was more scuffling ahead, from a hole under a building, and the knight irritably wondered why people didn’t destroy the creatures—they caused such damage to houses and stores, chewing through sacks of grain and ruining the valuable food saved through the summer months. They should not be left to run free, doing harm wherever they went. He was tempted to go to the hole and shove his sword in, to see how many of the vile creatures were inside.

  “Master!”

  Edgar’s hissed exclamation made Baldwin whirl round, and he quickly forgot the rats. Running to the two slumped bodies, he crouched by them. He frowned at the skinny, gray-clad woman, and sighed. Feeling for a pulse, he bit his lip. He could recognize her now, the poor woman who had begged alms from Sir Hector. “Who did this to you?” he murmured. “Was it another man you had begged from? Another man who wanted revenge for some imagined slight? A man who had waited for a woman to meet him, and who then took his frustration out on you? You lived in miserable poverty, and you have died in it.”

  “What, sir?”

  Baldwin shook himself out of his reverie and moved on to the next figure. “God’s blood! Simon, what were you doing in here? And why,” his eyes moved to the woman beside him, “were you here with her?”

  15

  Hugh cursed as he tripped over a loose cobble. They were carrying Simon on a ladder filched from a yard nearby, and although it made a good stretcher, it was heavy—and the supports, formed from the two halves of a tree trunk which had the rungs hammered and pegged into its flats, were sharp and uncomfortable to hold. A man carried each corner, and Baldwin strode alongside, his gaze flitting to Simon every now and again.

  The woman had been left with one of Peter’s men as a guard. She was past help; and they would send others to collect her body, but Simon still breathed, and Baldwin wanted him back at Peter’s house as quickly as possible.

  For his part, Hugh had become aware how much his master meant to him; he was surprised by the strength of his emotions, seeing Simon lying flat on the ladder, an arm dangling at one side.

  It was not the fear of unemployment. That was a concern for any man, but Hugh knew he could make his own living, even if it meant returning to his old village and eking out a life with relations, catching rabbits and game for his food and sleeping in a barn. There was always a place for him to live. That was not what made him silent, his eyes fixed on the still form before him, trying to avoid stumbling and tripping as he devoted himself to his master’s safe delivery at the priest’s house; it was the realization that the bailiff was more of a friend than a lord. For the first time, the servant understood that without Simon his existence would lose purpose. His being revolved around Simon and Simon’s family, and without the man, there was nothing.

  Just then, Edgar faltered, missing his step on a loose cobble, and made the ladder pitch. Hugh barely managed to restrain an impatient curse at the man for being so clumsy. They were all feeling the weight.

  Seeing his white face, Baldwin walked over to him and patted his shoulder. “He will be all right, Hugh,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “He’s strong, and he’ll soon mend.”

  “But what’s the matter with him?” Hugh burst out. “He’s breathing, but he won’t wake. Was he stabbed, like that woman?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s unconscious, so he must have been hit by someone.”

  “Who?”

  Baldwin gave him a tired smile. “When we have found out who murdered Sarra, and that poor
woman there tonight, I think we’ll be nearer answering that.” They were at Peter’s gate now. “Someone must have hated the poor wretch to kill her and dump her there like that…but who? Who could have hated a beggar so much?”

  Simon came to wakefulness only slowly, like a child woken after too little sleep, resentful and fractious. His head felt as if it had been scraped along the ground on one side and bumped over a series of cobbles, and his neck hurt as horribly as the time when he was a boy and had been playing at jousting with a friend. He had fallen off his horse, and the sharp crackle, like lightning exploding at the base of his skull as his head was jerked back in the fall, had shortly afterward led to the same kind of sore, red-hot sensation.

  For a moment he enjoyed the comfort of the bed with his eyes shut. For some reason he knew that the pleasure would not last, but he had to force his mind back to think what was wrong, and when he remembered, his eyes snapped open. The woman, lying, her son staring, and then—nothing. Someone had hit him; must have knocked him out. Who?

  His anger rose steadily. Somebody had attacked him—him—a bailiff! Had dared to strike him. Whoever had done that would dare anything.

  “Are you well?”

  He glanced to his side, and there he saw his wife. Margaret sat with her head resting against the back of her chair. She looked exhausted. Her head felt too heavy to lift, her neck too weak to support it after spending the whole night with her husband, hoping and praying that he would recover. Everyone knew how dangerous head wounds could be. Sometimes they looked little more than slight bumps, yet the victim could suddenly begin to have fits, and then might die. Simon’s wound was only a minor scrape apparently, but he had been so deeply asleep she had wondered whether he might ever waken again.