The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘We found this cog floating without a crew,’ Hawley called. ‘Can you give her a good look-over? I don’t want the cargo lost.’

  ‘At once.’

  If there was any risk of her sinking, Henry needed to get the ship out of the water as soon as possible so the cargo could be saved. On a cog this size, there could be enough to make a good profit for all involved in the salvage.

  From this initial glimpse, he reckoned that she was safe enough. The smell of burned pitch and scorched wood was very strong, though, and he wrinkled his nose as well as his brow as he rubbed his chin reflectively. ‘Take us nearer.’

  As the oarsmen heaved, Henry opened his jack. The breeze was cool, fresh off the sea, but the sun was blazing down on them from between the clouds, and he was feeling hot. He pulled off his cowl and scratched at his thin, lank hair, idly pushing his head into his cowl again as they slowly encircled the ship and he could see her from every angle, until he snapped an order, and they rowed in to the ship’s sides. There, he studied the strakes closely, peering at the caulking, reaching out and feeling for himself how well she was coping. When he nodded to himself, he heard a snigger from behind him.

  ‘You concentrate on your oars, Jankin.’

  ‘She’s riding low. Must have a good cargo aboard,’ Jankin said, ignoring him.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Henry couldn’t be bothered to argue with his son today. Better that he should concentrate on the cog herself.

  A small ship, this. But then few ships in this part of England were large. There were none of the great vessels which a man could see down south in Castile or even over in Yarmouth on the east coast. Some there were at least 200 tuns, using the standard measure. All ships were assessed in terms of how many standard Gascon ‘tuns’ they could carry. Each of the enormous wine barrels weighed somewhere in the region of a ton, and they provided a handy measure against which to assess ships.

  From the look of her, this ship would hold twenty or so tuns. Master Hawley’s ships were all about forty tuns, like the Christopher here, but Master Pyckard, another local merchant and shipowner, liked smaller ones that could navigate the smaller ports, saying that they could hurry over the seas, empty themselves speedily, and return. He had three of them, the Saint John, the Saint Simon, and the Saint Denis. There had been one more, the Saint Rumon, but she had sunk some fifteen years ago, when there had been a sudden squall.

  Poor old Paul – he had lost his treasure, his beautiful young wife Amandine, in that freak storm. Never been the same again since, really.

  ‘Master Hawley did say she was carrying a lot,’ Jankin persisted. ‘Look how low she is in the water, Father.’

  The young man’s voice held that hint of greed familiar to all those who eked a living at the coast. While they lived in fear of the sea, they depended upon it too, and although sometimes it could rise up and destroy them, at other times it would bring them a generous harvest. A single shipwreck could supply enough to maintain an entire community for months. Here, safe in the haven, they rarely found wrecks from the sea, but when a good seaman like John Hawley captured a prize, the effects would ripple through the town.

  ‘I heard him. Let’s just make sure she’s safe first,’ Henry said, eyeing the sheer above his head and shaking his head. It made no sense that a man would attack a ship, kill the crew, and then leave the valuable craft with all her cargo aboard. What kind of a fool would do that?

  Henry Pyket was a heavy-set man of almost forty, with a great pot-belly, his tanned face square and kindly, with oddly gentle eyes. Few men in charge of a good-sized shipbuilding business were known for their generosity and charity, but Henry had always been different.

  Taking a grappling iron, he swung it contemplatively in his right hand, the one which was missing two fingers, before hurling it aloft. It snagged, and he tugged, but it came free and rattled over the decking, from the sound of it, until he saw the top spike appear over the sheer. Then it gripped as he put his weight on the rope, and he nodded to the oarsmen as he stepped forward, and hauled himself upwards, his legs walking him up the strakes to the sheerline.

  Once there, he clambered over with the ease and skill of a sailor, standing on the blackened decking and gazing about him.

  ‘Begin at the bottom,’ he muttered to himself. That was the rule which his master had always stressed when he was still an apprentice, and he was strongly reminded of it now. Then, he and his master had been surveying a French hulk, and although they did not know it at the time, the hull was sorely stressed and damaged. From above, it looked fine: the line of the decking was straight enough, the mast stood firm in her rigging, and she rode high enough in the water, but when they went into the hold and saw the water slopping about, they understood that the strakes were dangerously loosened, and that they must either stabilise the leaks or evacuate her quickly.

  This one was riding smoothly enough, just rising gently on the swell, and he felt hopeful that they would not have to do too much to keep her cargo secure. He walked to the coaming before the hold, and glanced over the edge. Barrels and bales moved about, and he could hear the sloshing of water, but there was no great invasion, so far as he could see. It was only the very bottom that was truly wet. Still, best to be sure.

  There was a ladder, and he gripped it firmly, looking around. All about him up here was blackened. Much of the decking would need to be ripped up and replaced. He wasn’t sure if the damaged mast would survive a strong blast. Best replace that too, just in case. In the prow lay a filthy mess of blackened canvas, and thin wisps floated about every so often as the wind caught them: burned sails. There were metal rivets and shreds of leather about the place, too. It was almost as though … but that would make no sense.

  Reluctantly, for Pyket was never happy on ladders – give him a strong hempen cable for preference, he swung himself over the coaming, and let himself down into the dark depths.

  Here he was shin-deep in cold seawater. As he stood there, sniffing, listening, he could feel the movement of the ship through his bare feet. The creaking and groaning of moving strakes was deafening, and the steady lapping of water in the bilge and at her sides was magnified until it sounded as though waves were hammering at her. More troubling were the five barrels which had been dislodged from their moorings and now floated about, threatening to crush him if he was careless. The great bales were massive; he felt sure from the smell that they were full of cloth. An experienced seaman could recognise the odour of different cargoes without difficulty.

  It was not that smell that made him scowl, though. No, it was the overwhelming stench of oil. And the atmosphere of terror that even to his stolid mind seemed to pervade the vessel.

  Bailiff Simon Puttock smiled, and Ivo le Bel quailed.

  The Bailiff was a tall man with calm grey eyes in a slightly pale face. In the past, when he had been Bailiff to the Stannaries of Dartmoor, he had been responsible for maintaining the King’s Peace over the wild lands, and he had travelled widely, his features burned to the colour of old oak. Since he had been promoted to this new position at Dartmouth, he had been forced to remain indoors more often, which he deplored. For him, far better that he should be able to wander the open moors, free of concerns and God-damned figures. He couldn’t return yet, though. Not for a while.

  For all that Simon would prefer to be at home in Lydford, there was something attractive about the noises of this busy, industrial port. The slow, steady creaking of timbers as ships rolled from side to side, the trickle and slap of small waves, the howl of the wind on a cold evening when a man was already in a warm house by his fire, all were welcome. The assault on the nostrils was less so, though. There was a permanent stench of fish from the salting yards where they were gutted, spread and dried, and it was not enhanced by the odour of rotting flesh where the fishguts lay in the middens, to be dug over by the great seagulls. Tar and seaweed, hemp and coal smoke, all smothered the town like an unwholesome blanket, and at the same time there was the perpetual din of th
e smiths, carpenters, shipwrights and others, all of whom seemed to delight in as much clattering and crashing of metal and wood as possible.

  ‘Sir Bailiff, I hadn’t seen you there.’

  ‘I’m no knight, Ivo – you know that. Why are you in charge? Did you find the body?’

  ‘This is my tithing, Bailiff. I am responsible to the Coroner when he arrives.’

  ‘Fine. What happened?’

  ‘This fellow says he put up boards to protect people, but the victim still fell in. He must have struck his head – look.’

  Simon winced at the sight. The man’s head was a mess: he had fallen forwards, clearly, and his left temple was a bloody, blackened wound.

  ‘As I said, I watched the paver here put up his warnings. Some thieving bastard must have stolen them, leading to this accident.’

  The man lay in the hole with his head at a curious angle, his legs twisted together. The left arm was under his body, while the right was flung out into the middle of the hole. His head was resting near the wall, the wound right by a rock which had been smeared with his gore.

  Simon asked, ‘Does anyone know him?’

  There was a ripple as all shook their heads.

  ‘Ivo, have you sent for the Coroner?’

  ‘I was about to.’

  ‘Hurry, then,’ Simon said, and he set off for the pie shop down near his chamber, where his clerk would be waiting for him.

  As he crossed the street, he saw old Will the gaoler – a tatty, degenerate-looking man with a paunch like a bishop and a threadbare white beard – walking up to the gaol in the market square. There was no one there so far as Simon remembered, but Will was a dedicated man. The gaoler was generally amiable, and called ‘old Widecombe Will’ because he had been the youngest son of a farmer from that little vill. Bored with prodding cattle to pull the plough, he had preferred to run away to sea. At least, that was his tale.

  It was not entirely true. He had been a farmer’s boy, although the legitimacy of his birth left a little to be desired. Also, rather than leaving his home from boredom, there was the matter of Millicent, the maid from the neighbouring hamlet, who had grown suddenly large with child. Still, in essence he had not lied. Now the father of six other (legal) children, and four grandchildren, he had a certain position in the town, and he was immensely proud of it. And part of his responsibilities for this year was the maintenance of the simple gaol.

  The Bailiff sighed. Another day of numbers and reports lay ahead. Oh well. He knew he must remain patient. Before long, with fortune, he would be able to go back to Lydford. To his home, his beautiful wife Meg and their children. They would be missing him, as he missed them. He was needed there.

  At the door to the pie shop, he hesitated, recalling that body in the hole. There were some details that looked out of place. Surely … but no. The fool of a sergeant must have moved him; there was nothing to worry about. Yet the scene stuck in his head, even as he entered and chose a good beef pie.

  Henry splashed through the water, running his hands over the strakes. There was no apparent leaking, and as he passed down the hull, he began to relax. All about him was the constant noise of running water, trickling, dripping, slopping about, but that was the normal sound of a working ship. The important thing was, he could see no holes or broken strakes, and by the time he had reached the stern, and had stumbled only once over a rib, he was feeling much happier. The second side of the ship appeared to be as safe, but he was nothing if not assiduous.

  It was as he stepped over the rib, planting his foot carefully down in the water, that he felt something brush against him. He screamed shrilly as he took in the sight of the corpse under the water, with its gaping mouth, pale, dead eyes and the hand that moved gently as though beckoning Henry to join him in death.

  Chapter Three

  By the time Simon had entered his little counting-house, his latest clerk was already sitting at the trestle table, an anxious frown marring his brow as he added figures from a row of tally-sticks. Seeing Simon, he looked up and his mouth moved into a smile of welcome which somehow didn’t touch his eyes.

  ‘Bailiff – oh, right. Good. We’ve a lot to get through today. There’s a new ship come in.’

  ‘The burned one?’ Simon asked, crossing the room. At the far side there was a broad window which was shuttered most of the winter, but now in the late-summer was more often opened. He pulled up the heavy bar and set it on the floor, then pushed the shutters wide on their hinges. ‘It is one of the few advantages of this job, you know, that I have this marvellous view. And you, Stephen, persist in closing the shutters at every opportunity!’

  Stephen, a thin young man of two-and-twenty, smiled nervously. ‘I feel the chill so much, Master Bailiff, and—’

  ‘Chill? Look out there at the sun,’ Simon scoffed. ‘It’s a beautiful day, perfect weather. You could ride across the whole forest of Dartmoor to South Zeal market and back today.’

  ‘As you wish, sir,’ Stephen said. ‘Yet the open window will let in every gust and gale, and it blows my parchments all about the place.’

  ‘Use a stone to weight them down, then,’ Simon said unsympathetically, leaning against the window’s frame and listening. The hammering was continual down here, near some of the shipbuilders. At first he had hated the din, longing for the peace and tranquillity of the moors, but now he had grown accustomed to it, and when the men stopped working in the evening, he rather missed it.

  Stephen, he saw, was hunched a little more at his work. It was unkind of Simon to insist on having the shutter open, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. He needed the air. It was just a shame that no clerk seemed able to cope with it.

  His experience of clerks was not extensive, and less than positive, but he was gaining an insight into them and their work.

  The first, Andrew, had been a whining pest; the next had been a weedy, frail man, little better than a boy, really, who’d been sent back when his coughing had grown so insistent that Simon could not concentrate. He secretly believed the lad was faking illness to shirk his work, but the abbot had assured him that the fellow had been sent away to recuperate as soon as he returned because he was ravaged with a fever; the third had been wealthy, and clearly a great deal more fit. He had been sent back to Tavistock when Simon encountered him in a tavern’s bedroom with two women.

  This Stephen was more pleasant than any of the others. Less cocky (in both meanings of the word) than his immediate predecessor, he managed to look ascetic, while still reserving some spirit. Simon’s occasional irritable outbursts could reduce a weaker man to tears in a moment, but Stephen would listen, and if there was a rational cause to the explosion, would sometimes offer useful advice. If there was no good reason, however, he would just sit back with a puzzled expression that was somehow amused and condescending at the same time. At first this had made Simon ashamed, then it infuriated him, and now, after some weeks, it actually soothed him.

  The fact was, there were many frustrations to this job. As well as Simon’s anger at being removed from the job he knew and loved, he missed his family. Especially after the return of his old servant, Hugh. And now, of course, he wanted to be nearer home and Tavistock since the death of his patron, Abbot Robert.

  Abbot Robert. There was a man who would be sorely missed. Simon had all but idolised him. To those who knew him, he was a powerful force for good. For those who did not, it was hard to know where to start to describe him: kind, generous, worldly, and a man of business like no other Simon had ever met. He had taken on Tavistock Abbey when it was in a terrible state, and had been forced to borrow heavily to keep the institution afloat. That was many years ago, forty-odd, and in the time since, he had built Tavistock up to become one of the most effective and wealthiest convents in the whole of Devon and Cornwall. Simon had respected him hugely … and loved him. Abbot Robert had replaced the father who had died some years ago, and Simon felt the loss sorely.

  Without a spiritual and businesslike head, the abb
ey was marking time, and all could feel it. Stephen here was in a similar position to Simon. Both knew full well that their position would be discussed at the highest level, as soon as the new abbot was confirmed in his post, but neither could influence the outcome. It left a man feeling peculiarly isolated.

  If Stephen was not wearing the cloth, Simon could easily believe that his slender frame, large blue eyes and fair hair could be a sore temptation to many of the women about the town. From what he had seen of other clerks, not even the cloth itself would protect them from womanly ways. Not that Stephen’s predecessor had needed much tempting …

  Ach! It was no good. There was too much on his mind to keep him concentrating on his work.

  ‘The ship, master,’ Stephen prompted him now. ‘She was found on the sea some miles out, just over the horizon.’

  ‘Yes – and?’

  It wasn’t only his work, either. He had his daughter Edith to worry about, and her impending marriage, long-threatened and now imminent. Well, she was old enough, and her young man, Peter, was bright enough. Simon had persuaded her not to marry, though, until Peter had completed his apprenticeship to Master Harold, the merchant. Better not to have the expense and worry of a woman to support when he wasn’t his own man yet. Except that now Peter had succeeded in winning his position, Simon was still anxious. For some reason he could not accept that his little girl was old enough to be wed. Well, he would have to grow accustomed to the thought, and that was an end to it!

  ‘She is fully loaded,’ the clerk went on, ‘but there’s no one alive on board.’

  ‘What do you mean? She must have had a crew of ten or more!’

  ‘Eleven, Bailiff.’ Stephen shook his head a little, and then tilted it. ‘Let me send for the master of the ship that found her.’