‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’
Jeanne looked down at her for a moment, and then across at Edgar, who gazed back blankly, and then grinned broadly. A large dog had appeared about the corner of the house: a black dog, with brown eyebrows and cheeks, with a white muzzle and paws, a white tip to his tail, and a white cross on his breast. ‘I think she is probably right, my Lady.’
‘What? I—’ and then Jeanne heard the steady trotting gait, and glanced up at the trail that wound past their door, and saw him. And without realising that Edgar had taken her daughter, she was already running up the track to her husband, skirts billowing, her coif flying from her head.
Fourth Tuesday after Easter19
Baldwin woke with a panic, dreaming he was in a field, in a tent, Simon at his side, and the screaming was from a man murdered outside in the fine snow … cold … it was so cold, especially at his armpit …
And then he opened his eyes with a jolt, drawing away from the dog’s wet nose, and found himself in familiar surroundings. He knew that ceiling, those rafters, the feel of this bed … Home!
Pushing his newest dog away, he muttered, ‘You’ll be sleeping outside if you keep shoving your nose there, dog. Go on, piss off!’
Still, waking him every morning was the least of bad behaviour he would have expected. ‘Wolf’ was in almost every way a perfect companion. Handsome, obedient (when he understood what Baldwin was saying) and ever-present. Baldwin was sure he would become an excellent guard.
Yawning voluptuously, he scratched his beard. It was strange to be here again, he thought contentedly. There was a loud whining from the door, and he rose on both elbows to look. The beast needed to go out. At least the thing was house-trained. He stood, let Wolf outside, and then slapped barefooted across the planks to his bed, flopping down. He grunted, stretched, and threw his arms over his head, causing his wife to mumble and complain in her sleep. She rolled over to enfold herself into his body again, her cheek against his breast, hands clasped as though in prayer under her chin, one soft thigh placed gently over his own. He ignored the cries from his daughter, in the room beneath, and let his arm fall over his wife, cradling her closer.
‘What now?’ she murmured as his hand slid along her flank.
‘I was enjoying the peace before dawn,’ he said. ‘I do not suppose you …?’
‘It will not last,’ she said with confidence. Already there was the sound of small feet downstairs, and Baldwin was sure that in a moment the door would be thrown wide open and Richalda would be upon him.
‘I missed you,’ she said quietly.
‘And I you.’
‘It was hard, not knowing when you would be returning.’
‘It was as hard for me, Jeanne. I had no idea when I might be permitted to return from the Queen. Still, I am back now.’
‘And hopefully you will not have to leave us again?’
‘Jeanne, if there was any such need, I would take you with me.’
‘What, even to France? You know that they have clothes and material in Paris that a woman would sell her children to buy?’
He chuckled. ‘Then it is fortunate that we won’t be going, maid. We can stay here and live the gentle life of rural knighthood. I shall be Keeper of the King’s Peace again, you shall be my wife, and the King and the Queen may sort out their own problems.’
‘You think so? There are terrible rumours, Baldwin.’
‘Of what nature?’
‘People talk of traitors gathering hosts abroad, Baldwin. They say that we could be invaded by the French, that they will come and pillage and kill all who stand before them—’
‘No. I saw no desire to try to overcome our lands while I was there. The French are angry that our King will not go to pay homage to their King for the lands he holds from King Charles, but there is not desire for war. They will absorb the King’s possessions, that is all.’
‘They say that the traitors will come, though.’
‘There is one traitor, Roger Mortimer, who would be able to collect some mercenaries about him, but even the French King knows what sort of man he is, I think. He sent Mortimer from his court. The man’s without friends even there.’ He did not say that Mortimer had warned Baldwin of the threat posed to him by Despenser.
‘That relieves me, husband.’
‘Good,’ Baldwin said. There was no need to worry her. She need not hear that he had met Mortimer. It was the kind of information that could serve no useful purpose.
‘Will you remain here now?’
There was a small tone of doubt in her voice, a note that tore at his heart. Only a short while before, Baldwin had been unfaithful to her. Oh, there were plenty of excuses to justify his behaviour, but he had found when he came home again afterwards, that his relationship with Jeanne had been affected. He felt his guilt, and it put a pall over their love. It was only recently that he had felt the shame and remorse lift, and their lives had returned to – if not the same tenor as before – a new balance.
‘I will remain here, woman. Unless the King calls me away. And if he does, you may journey with me, as I said, even if it means I must take you to Paris and buy every item in every haberdashery shop!’
She mumbled at that, and by the regularity of her breathing, he knew she had fallen asleep again.
He wished to sleep like his wife, but try as he might, he was left with a sour flavour in his mouth whenever he thought once more of the man left dead at the side of the road in those woods. He felt a certain guilt at not seeking the killer more relentlessly. It was the first time he had not. There was no comfort in the reflection that it was not his responsibility while on the road – that was only a sop to his own conscience. If he could return, he would spend more time on seeking the man’s murderer.
And learning who it was who had taken the King’s oil.
Beaulieu
Sir Hugh le Despenser was already in his chamber, his clerks at their table, running through the expenses for his stay here at Beaulieu so far, and keeping an eye on his ready money, when the knock came at his door.
His man was a hard-faced fellow with the thick hair and grey eyes of a southern Welshman. He was slight, with a gentle gait that concealed his strength. Although his limbs looked thin, they were immensely wiry and powerful.
He looked at Despenser. ‘I’ve checked.’
‘And?’
‘The herald you mentioned, Richard de Yatton, has been missing for some days. He was sent off to see the Castellan at Leeds Castle, but he never came back.’
‘How long ago did he leave?’
‘About the end of the Lenten period. Not sooner.’
‘He left in Lent? Before Easter? You’re sure?’
‘He was sent away while we were still in Westminster, and hasn’t been seen since. He never came back.’
‘Good. I think we know who the dead herald at the side of the road was, then,’ Despenser said with a cold frown at the ground. ‘But who killed him, and why? What would be the point of killing a King’s herald? It’s not as though he was carrying a lot of money about him. Or was he?’
‘It’d be sure to bring down a painful load of trouble on the man’s head, Sir Hugh.’
‘Yes. I think you’re right there. We need to do the same.’
Chapter Eighteen
Vigil of the Feast of the Apostles20
Near Lydford
It took Simon an extra day to cover the distance to his own home, and it was the excitement at seeing his wife again that caused him to rise before the dawn on that Wednesday and set off on the last few miles of his journey after spending the night on the moors.
He had stopped at the little inn that nestled on the southern side of the road from Mortonhampstead, perhaps one third of the way over the moors. From here he could turn up, past the little dwarf trees at Wistman’s Wood, and head westwards, towards his home. It was a route he had taken often enough, and it would give him a clear view on how the moors were. After his travels to London and t
hence to France, it felt like an age since he had last been here, on the moors where he had been happiest. There was nowhere better for a man to live, he reckoned.
All appeared normal. There were occasional plumes of smoke from the tin works, where the miners tried to smelt their ore into black ingots of semi-pure metal, and the constant sound of water from leats, hammering, and the slow, rumbling of mill-wheels. On the early morning air, all these sounds carried so clearly, the workings might have been right at his side, rather than perhaps a mile distant. Not that he cared. The main thing was, that the moors were being farmed, so there was still work for him, provided he had a job.
Some months past, he had been given a new post as Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth, a great honour and promotion which his master, the Abbot of Tavistock, had given him as reward for his service over the past years. The sad truth was, however, that he didn’t want it, and neither did his wife. Meg would have been happy to remain as the wife of a bailiff on the moors. She had no desire for more money or the authority that came from a senior position. All she craved was that their lives might continue comfortably, that their children might grow strong and healthy, and that she and her husband might enjoy their time together. The idea that they should be uprooted and dropped some tens of miles to the south, devoid of friends, without even the companionship of the animals on their small farms, threw her into a despondency. And the alternative was to see her husband go to do his duty while she remained here at their home.
It had been a wrench, but that was the only resolution at first. But now all had changed, because the good abbot had died, and the two men who desired his abbacy were fighting over it tooth and nail. Simon had no idea who would eventually succeed to the post, whether it be John de Courtenay, whom Simon considered a fool, or the more urbane, calm, Roger Busse, whom Simon thought much brighter, and possibly more corrupt. There were rumours, which Simon had confirmed to his own satisfaction, that Busse made use of a necromancer in Exeter. That was itself enough to disqualify the man from the abbacy, so far as Simon was concerned.
Still, at least he should soon know which was to become the abbot, and when he knew that, Simon would be able to confirm what his own position would be – whether he would be entitled to return to his work here on the moor, or whether he would have no position within the abbey at all. If that was the case, he was not sure what he would do.
At last he found himself dropping down the hill at Brat Tor, a long, gentle incline that halted at the road which headed northwards from Tavistock, and here Simon had to turn a little north himself, to meet the long road that took him along the ridge towards Lydford itself.
So many of the roads here in Devon wound about the long scarps at the top of hills. The alternative paths were precipitous lanes that sometimes dropped vertiginously into valleys, and then climbed alarmingly – and exhaustingly – back to the next. Simon had spent much of his youth swearing at such hills, but now that he was older, he minded them not at all. Especially since his rides to London and beyond. Those journeys had shown him how tedious travelling could be. There were whole plains in which a man could ride for days seeing scarcely a tree, and the only alteration was in the quality of the soil. Few places had the rich, black soil of the peat-filled moors of his homeland, or the deep red of the lands about Crediton, the earth that shouted to him of vegetables and cattle pasture. Nowhere he had seen could bear comparison with his own lands, he felt. Simon was a Devonian through and through.
The road brought him straight into the old stannary town of Lydford, and just as the great square, black block of the prison came into view, he turned left into his yard, and sat there a moment looking about him contentedly. He knew that the pride and happiness he felt now could not be improved upon. It was as though he had been a soul travelling for a thousand years in purgatory, only to suddenly find his way to the gates of heaven itself. He sighed with a gentle moan of contentment, and then took a deep breath.
‘Hey! Hoi! Is there anyone at home?’ he roared.
‘Simon? Simon? Oh, Simon!’ his wife called, and suddenly he was standing on the ground and Meg was in his arms.
He knew only delight at the feel of her breasts at his chest, her hips at his, her arms about him, her lips on his, and then she pulled back a little, hands on his shoulders, and he saw the tears in her eyes and smiled. ‘I’m home, Meg.’
But her words made his soft smile dissipate like fog in the sun.
‘Oh, Simon, what can we do?’
Beaulieu
There was no solution, Nicholas of Wisbech told himself. He needed one man to make his case for him, just one man, and in a week of searching it seemed plain that there was no one here.
He knew most of them. He should do after so many years working first with the King, and latterly trailing after him and his household, trying to see how to work his way back into the King’s favour, but of all of them, none appeared to desire to help him. There was nothing they could do, they said. Nothing they wanted to do, more like.
At least one or two had been happy enough to tell him the story of what had happened to the oil. A monk slain, the oil taken. That was bad, truly bad – but others said that a king’s herald had been killed, too, a man had been found by the side of the road, and that might mean that he had been killed by the same murderer and thief. Perhaps. There was no proof, of course, but in the King’s household, proof was rarely necessary to provide a good tale.
So the oil was gone. It was galling, and dreadfully soul-destroying. To think that, after all his efforts, the monks of Christ Church had failed so miserably, allowing the King’s property to be stolen like that … well! They might as well have left it on the roadside for anyone to pick up.
And meanwhile, he was stuck here, wondering what he might do to win a little favour. Oh, perhaps he ought to give up on all this and make his way back into the Church. He could join the Bishop of Orange, perhaps. The men who professed to know said that he was going to be returning to the Pope soon with a letter from the King. Perhaps Nicholas should volunteer to go and help. That might be a good idea. At least it would get him away from this blasted land with all the misery and failure he had experienced.
So long as the Pope didn’t look on him as unfavourably as the King, of course.
His feet had taken him on a circuit about the abbey gardens, and now he had made his way back to where he had started. He felt like some beggar at the door, walking about like this, trying to think his way through the problem. It was deeply shaming. But he could see no way round it. There had to be a means of …
And then he saw him. A man in the uniform of a king’s herald. A strong-looking man, tall, quite striking, really, and oddly familiar. Where had Nicholas seen him before, though?
Lydford
‘They came early in the morning,’ Meg said. ‘Five men, all of them armed, and they said that they were to take over our lands here.’
‘No one can take away our lands,’ Simon said. ‘These are mine!’
‘They said that the farm was owned by Sir Hugh le Despenser, Simon. They told me I had a week to leave, and then they’d come and formally take the place.’
‘A week? When was this?’
‘Sunday. Oh, Simon, it’s been driving me mad to think of it!’
‘What was the name of the man who said this?’
‘He was a man-at-arms, a man called William atte Wattere, he said.’
‘And did he have any kind of warrant?’
‘Nothing, husband. Simon, what can this mean?’
‘It means that someone has made an error, Meg. Don’t you worry yourself.’
‘But our farm – all our lands, everything we’ve built in the last ten years, we’d lose everything if he succeeds!’
‘No one is taking my farm from me, Meg. In the worst case, I’ll speak with the new Abbot of Tavistock. My service there is enough to make sure I have the support of the new abbot. Uh – who is the abbot?’
‘You hadn’t heard?’
‘In France? No. Who is it?’
‘There isn’t one. The monks all elected Robert Busse to take the abbacy, but John de Courtenay contested it, and so the Pope has appointed the Cardinal de Fargis to adjudicate between them. It’s all in uproar in Tavistock, they say. All the monks are arguing and fighting, and the two men at the centre will not talk to each other. It’s horrible.’
‘Oh,’ Simon said, but his mild tone belied his racing thoughts because he did not truly own this place. He held it on a lease. Still, that meant Despenser could not simply take it from Simon. However, without an abbot to give him support, he was in a weaker position. There was no man whom he could petition in his defence. Although he had lived on these lands for almost ten years, that did not mean he was secure. If Despenser had it in his mind to take them, it would be enormously difficult for Simon to fight so strong a protagonist.
Baldwin was his friend, of course, and if there was a fight, Simon knew he could count on him. But this was not an ordinary problem. It was a matter of politics, too. He had no idea what the man Wattere thought of it, but if Despenser was involved, that meant that it was a situation where national politics could hold sway. Despenser would make sure of it. And if Despenser wanted, he could force Simon from the land by use of his men. He had so many people he could use to make life impossible for men like Simon, men without hosts of servants and men-at-arms, men without political influence …
Except he did have a friend with political influence. He was friends with Bishop Walter II, the Bishop of Exeter. Bishop Walter would know what to do. And with luck, he would be prepared to help Simon.
Beaulieu
Sir Hugh le Despenser was not known for dilatoriness. Rather, he was likely to make a swift decision and stick to it. It was always his belief that, generally, the first decision made was the best, and in any case, he had enough men at his command to be able to rectify any occasional little embarrassment.
He had no need to worry about Simon or the course upon which he had launched William Wattere. That was one decision that had been taken. The bailiff would soon be neutralised as an effective tool of any enemy, and his friend the Knight of Furnshill would either learn from his friend’s discomfiture, or would overreach himself to get back at Sir Hugh. More than likely, he would bow down and hope to avoid Despenser’s rage. That was what most men did. No matter how often they espoused their convictions and declared their loyalty to a man or a cause, at the first sign of personal risk they were silenced.
The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25) Page 18