The Prophecy of Death: (Knights Templar 25)

by Michael Jecks

  However, he was not to kill today. Baldwin had made that perfectly clear. Today was to be bloodless. They were here to speak with the man who was attempting to persecute Simon.

  Gripping a long staff, Edgar moved along the wall of the inn with all the noise of a shadow, while Simon and Baldwin made a meal of tying their reins to a pair of saplings. The two of them looked at each other, and then marched side-by-side to the doorway.

  Then, just as they reached the threshold, before they could enter, the door slammed wide open, and William and three men hurtled out, coming to a halt a few paces before them. William had his sword out already, and it was pointing at Simon.

  ‘You thought you could jump me, Master Bailiff? I am surprised at you. Attacking a man in a tavern could be thought of as an attempt at murder. You know what that means, don’t you? A premeditated homicide carries the same penalty as a successful one: death. Looks like I’ll have to arrest you and take you in. And then your nice little wife can entertain me when I go to take over the house.’

  ‘What is your reason for trying to steal this man’s house?’ Baldwin asked harshly.

  ‘He is a squatter. My master owns the land outright. And your friend there will be happy enough to agree to that when we ask him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  William Wattere smiled thinly. ‘We can put things to you in a way you understand. Perhaps we’ll string you up and rape your women in front of you until you sign it all over to us, eh? Or we could take a hammer to your fingers, one by one. You have made me angry, you see. I was happy to be reasonable, but when you found out you were dealing with Sir Hugh le Despenser’s man, you should have expected someone a bit more competent than you. You aren’t bright enough to take me, Bailiff. And it’s stupid, anyway. You try to hurt a man who is Despenser’s own, and he will always seek you out. You’ll always pay.’

  ‘So what do you intend now?’ Simon demanded.

  ‘Oh, you’re arrested, Bailiff, so keep your hands away from your sword, there, Master. And you too, Knight. You try to fight, and we’ll be happy to kill you. It’ll save all that trouble later. We’ll just bring round the documents to your wife and have her agree them right now, while you stay here. Women are always so much more … helpful.’

  Simon was about to respond when two more men appeared in the doorway, both with swords in their hands. One had eyes only for the men before the door, but one happened to glance to his side. He saw Edgar there.

  Edgar smiled at him, raised a finger to his lips in the universal gesture of silence, and then looked thoroughly disappointed when the man shouted, ‘Will!’

  Wattere was about to turn and look when there was a sudden crack from the doorway. A cry, a shout, and Edgar swung his iron-shod staff at the man to Wattere’s left. He fell like a stunned hog, landing partly over Wattere’s feet.

  Realising he had been fooled, Wattere’s eyes widened with horror and anger, and even as the third of his men crashed to the ground, Wattere made a quick choice and sprang over the body of his man, flying towards Simon. Simon had no time to grab his sword. With the flat of his hand, he tried to bat the blade away, down to his left, and he grunted as he felt the scrape of the blade on his palm, cutting deeper towards his wrist. It hurt more than his shoulder, and he bared his teeth in a snarl as the blade slid away. He was close enough to grip the man’s wrist with his right hand, and as he did so he turned, swivelling on both feet, hauling at the same time, using Wattere’s momentum to pull him off balance, and then he gripped Wattere’s sword wrist in his left and slammed back savagely with his right elbow.

  He had meant to hit the man’s nose, but his elbow missed slightly, and he raked over the nose and into his eye and temple. There was a satisfying sensation of pain in his arm as he did so, and a still more pleasing feeling of heaviness in Wattere’s body as he collapsed unconscious at Simon’s feet.

  Pulling his sword free of the scabbard, Simon watched while Baldwin and Edgar pushed the last man standing back until he was at the inn’s wall. Then he looked about him wildly, before throwing his sword down and holding his hands away from his dagger. Edgar looked at Baldwin, who was returning his own sword to its sheath, and then hit the man very deliberately in the middle of his belly with the iron tip of his staff. The man doubled over, retching, trying to gulp in some air. Edgar imperturbably grasped his hands and yanked them round behind his back, and then bound them with a rawhide thong.

  ‘Simon,’ Baldwin said, peering about them affably, ‘would you care for an ale?’

  Beaulieu

  Nicholas of Wisbech had endured a thoroughly depressing few days. He had done all he could to try to advance his case, but no matter what he did, he could not find anyone who could help him. All the knights and lords about the King here seemed to be those who had no knowledge of Nicholas and his difficult mission. There was no one who could speak out for him.

  There was a grim expression on his face as he walked about the cloister. He had been here ages, and yet had found no means of defending himself. Perhaps he should simply leave the place and see if he might find a berth in a little monastery somewhere.

  He had tried to write to the Pope for his support, but the Pope’s response had been most discouraging. If he had to guess, he would think that the King’s own letter had arrived before his, and the Pope was wondering now whether the King’s assertion was true. Nicholas had heard this already: the King had told people that Nicholas of Wisbech had invented the whole matter of the Oil of St Thomas, and the oil itself was not genuine.

  Dear God, how could anybody think that, when the oil he had found had been brought to England by the Duke of Brabant especially for King Edward II’s coronation? It was hardly in Nicholas’s hands for him to be able to manipulate the phial and place false oil in it. But the King could be most persuasive, and he was, after all, a king. People would tend to believe him – or, at least, they would say they did.

  But it did leave Nicholas feeling strangely abandoned and deserted. He might have been a sailor, wandering the seas, desperate for a return home, only to be shipwrecked. And here he was, on this unfriendly shore, wishing for a little help, only to find that there was nothing for him. Nobody would aid him.

  He was morosely kicking at a pebble when he happened to glance up and see a face he recognised immediately.

  A man had ridden in, and he reined to a halt before swiftly dismounting. He had a shock of thick brown hair, brown eyes, and a laughing face that instantly sent a shock of fire into Nicholas’s belly. The last time Nicholas had seen that face, it had been twisted with horror and grief.

  ‘I know you!’ he breathed, his eyes narrowing with recollection. Where had he seen the man – not here, not recently … and then he had a startling memory, of a face whitened with lime, eyes staring and dulled, a trickle of blood from the shattered skull.

  And a boy, reaching to touch his face while the burnished steel of another knight gleamed in the sunlight. And he saw again Despenser’s face, twisted with disgust as he cuffed the boy about the head and then spat at the floor, spinning on his heel and storming off back into the church.

  Mary Tavy

  William Wattere found himself confined. His breath was loud in his ears, and there was a roughness on his cheek. Then he noticed the smell: there was a strange, cloying, musty odour about him. His cheek was sore, and so was his left shoulder. For some reason he was lying on the floor, his legs curled up, arms behind him. He tried to move the constriction about his face, but all he could do was swear when he felt the pain in his wrists. His arm was only vaguely healed, he recalled … but that didn’t explain the pain in the other wrist. What was that stuff on his cheek: rough, smelly … sacking? Yes. It was hessian or something. He tried to move his arms, and that was when he realised he was bound hand and foot.

  That mother-swyving churl, Puttock! He’d knocked William down, hadn’t he? William could just remember the sight of that elbow coming back and the sensation of it hitting him, club-
like, in the eye was all too fresh. Sweet Mother of Christ, the bastard had hit him hard enough to shatter his cheek! When he was free of this, Wattere would see to it that the bailiff recognised how foolish he was to attempt such an assault on a Despenser man. He would cut the man’s ballocks off, he’d skin his arse, he’d pull out his liver with his bare hands …

  ‘Awake, are you?’

  William Wattere rolled, and by pushing up with his face, managed to lift himself to a kneeling position, gazing about him within the darkness of his sacking hood. ‘Get me out of this, Bailiff. If you don’t, I swear I’ll have your family destroyed! I’ll burn that hovel you call a house and salt the land so that no one will live there for a hundred years! When I tell my master what you’ve done, he’ll have your legs broken, then your arms, and leave you to crawl on your belly for all your days! He’ll have your wife taken for the amusement of his garrison, he’ll have—’

  ‘When you’ve finished shouting, Wattere, would you like to know what I’ve done while you’ve been dozing?’

  ‘I don’t care what you’ve done, you hog-shit! When I’m finished with you, you’ll regret the day you were born!’

  ‘Oh. Oh, well. Just so you know, Wattere, I’ve brought you into our shed, so I can hang you up here – where the pigs are hung for the blood to be collected. I’ll lift you by your hands until you lose all feeling, and then let you rest so all the pain comes back to your hands. You like that? I can do that fifteen or twenty times, but I’m told that if I do it too much, you’ll become unconscious again, and I don’t really want that. No, I’m happier knowing you’re feeling every fragment of pain I can give you, after your threats to my wife.’

  ‘If you don’t cut me free right now, I’ll see your whole family entirely destroyed. You know what I mean? I will kill your wife, your children, your parents, all of them! And I’ll do it in front of you, you miserable—’

  ‘Why did you threaten to take my house?’

  ‘Go and swyve a chicken!’

  ‘Not now, Wattere. Perhaps later. Who told you to threaten us?’

  ‘You know who did it. My master, Despenser.’

  ‘Do you mean Sir Hugh, the younger Despenser, not his father?’

  ‘You know who.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what you and your friend did to my master at Iddesleigh, of course.’25

  ‘What do you mean, what we did? It was his men who tried to murder others, and … well, no matter. So that’s why you were sent? To force us from our home, to forcibly remove us even though you had no reason to? Because you have no case in law, do you?’

  ‘Why should I care? You are dead, now. Dead. My Lord takes what he wants. If you get in his way, he will kill you. And all your family. Feel proud, do you? You’ve signed the death warrants of your whole family, little bailiff.’

  ‘Cut him down, Edgar. I have heard enough.’

  This was a different voice, and William stopped and cocked his head. ‘Who’s that?’

  His hands were released at last, and he pulled at the sacking, hauling it over his head like a linen shirt, and then he felt a terrible sinking feeling as he took in the sight about him. This wasn’t a pig-slaughterhouse. It was the inn at Mary Tavy. Dear Christ, they’d taken him nowhere. They’d only pulled him inside. And that man …

  ‘My name, my friend, is Bishop Walter of Exeter. And you, my friend, are arrested for attacking a servant of the Church and threatening him, and his family.’

  Beaulieu

  Jack sat back easily. Resting came naturally to him, and since the hurried ride here, he had been keen to take his ease as much as he possibly could. Any seasoned traveller, like a veteran at arms, would understand his enthusiasm for any snatched moment of peace.

  They had been here some time now, and if he was honest, Jack was growing a little bored. Beaulieu was a lively little palace for monks, no doubt, but there was little entertainment for men like him. He had noticed that even the two, Peter and John, from Canterbury, had been showing signs of restlessness recently. It made him wonder about them again.

  Thing was, they’d been perfectly amiable during the ride here. Oh, they still had that odd way of looking at a man as though wondering whether to knock him down immediately, or to first let him open his mouth. Just once. There was nothing that inspired a man to trust them. But to their credit, they appeared to be cautiously watching everyone else, too, as though they were themselves nervous. Not surprising. They didn’t really know anyone.

  Which was what was so odd about their coming here in the first place.

  He was sipping a large mazer of wine as he considered them, and then he heard a shout. Idly standing, he wandered to the corner of the barn, a good few tens of yards from his bench, and then gaped.

  Some of the King’s men had encircled Peter and John.

  ‘Look at them! A pair of complete whores, aren’t they? Cock-queans, the pair of them,’ one was shouting exultantly. ‘Come on, let’s take their ballocks. They don’t need ’em!’

  ‘You sad, little man? You want a kiss?’

  ‘Ah, look, he’s going to cry, if you’re not careful!’

  The ribald comments grew more lewd and less subtle as the courage of the men grew. There was no sign from Peter and John, no evidence of fear, no reaction whatever. And yet Jack was struck again with that sense of immense power and authority in the two. It made him mutter to himself, ‘No, don’t pick on these two.’ He even winced, as though he knew what was about to happen.

  And then one of them, the smallest of the six taunters, stepped forward. Jack wasn’t sure what he was going to do, other than tease and torment, but he had no chance to do anything. As soon as he was within range, he was suddenly snatched up, and heaved over Peter’s shoulder. Peter eyed the men watching, while the little man on his back squeaked and threatened, and then Peter hefted the fellow high, and allowed him to fall, flat on his back to the hard, packed earth. The squeak became a squeal.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Jack murmured. He had witnessed wrestling before, and he feared that this heavy man might jump at the body on the ground, but then he saw his error. The little body was an obstacle for any others to surmount. It was plain enough the two had fought together before, and now they stood shoulder to shoulder, Peter again with that oddly unsettling smile on his face, almost as though he was a little sad, but if the others wanted to play like this, he would join in. The other just scowled about him as usual.

  A pair of men exchanged a glance, and then rushed forward. One drew a dagger. That was an error. In some kind of swift manoeuvre, Peter took his hand with his left, pushed it away from him, and hooked his own right through at the man’s elbow. A jerk towards his chest with his right fist, and Jack could hear the elbow shatter over the man’s shriek of agony. He fell.

  John had done nothing, merely waited for the second. He hurtled forwards, swinging a punch at John’s face, feinting, and then snapping his left into John’s belly.

  It had no discernible impact. John caught the right fist in his left hand, and merely gripped it. Very tightly. Then he peered down with an expression of near-perplexity at the man as he whimpered, gazing up at him, slowly sinking to his knees, not even attempting to strike John again. That would have been as painful as it would have been futile. When he was down, John looked across at Peter, who gave a short moue of consideration, and then shook his head. John released the man, who fell on to his rump, and then stood with Peter, both blank-faced, and watched the last three.

  There was no more fight left in them. The sight of their friends being so swiftly beaten was shocking to men used to bullying others. They took up their fallen friends and helped them to hobble away, the man with the broken arm weeping in a high-pitched tone. If Jack was any judge, that man would never wield a dagger again in that hand. He was ruined.

  Jack whistled. He had known that the pair of them were dangerous.

  He had no idea who they were, nor what they wanted, but suddenly he was glad that h
e would before long be leaving this country with the Bishop, to return to the Pope.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lydford

  Bishop Stapledon was not a man who undertook journeys lightly. He was a tall, slightly stooped man, with fading hair and a perpetual peering manner because of his failing eyesight. When reading, he was forced to use spectacles, a fact which never failed to irritate him immensely. As a younger man, he had been possessed of exceptional sight, as he never tired of mentioning. He could read the very smallest script without any aid whatever. No longer, sadly.

  He looked up as Edgar bowed at his side, proffering a goblet of Baldwin’s best wine. Taking it, the Bishop eyed Baldwin and Simon carefully over the rim. ‘This is a very serious matter, of course.’

  ‘I think we were aware of that,’ Baldwin said drily. ‘It is Simon’s house and farm that is at stake, after all.’

  ‘A little more than only that, now. The man you have captured and placed in my care is Sir Hugh le Despenser’s henchman. Despenser will be furious when he hears that you have had him incarcerated in my gaol. Get off, dog!’

  ‘Come here, Wolf,’ Baldwin said quickly. Wolf, seeking an affectionate stroke, had nudged the Bishop’s elbow as he lifted his wine to his lips, almost spilling it over his breast. Baldwin absentmindedly patted Wolf’s head as the dog sat at his side.

  ‘He was trying to steal my house!’ Simon protested.

  ‘It has happened before. For some reason, this time Despenser did not use his normal approach,’ Stapledon said, warily eyeing Baldwin’s newest dog.

  ‘What would that have been?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘He would bring a large number of men and attack in main force, or, failing that, he would have no men appear at all, but instead would proceed through the courts. I would think that he wouldn’t dare try that because he knows that the King trusts you, and that I and many other senior members of the Church do too, so any fraudulent claim would be set aside. Usually, if he couldn’t do that, he would turn to overwhelming force. I wonder why on this occasion he did not.’