The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21)

by Michael Jecks

  Master Hilary Beauley called an order, gripping the nearest shroud as he peered ahead. He shouted again, and felt the ship begin to slow. Until now she had been racing ahead while he kept his eyes on the far distance, but now he was near enough, and he bellowed a third command down to the men at the halyards and up on the sail itself. Soon the great sail was rising as the men reefed it in, clutching great handfuls and hauling it up until only a tiny fraction of the canvas was catching the wind. The ship slowed in her majestic progress, and he could feel her begin to level out.

  ‘Get my boat ready!’ he bawled down.

  This delay would hold up all those in the convoy. His was the first ship to return, but just behind him, he knew, were the others. The law said all ships were to travel in convoy, to protect them from raiders, but this particular convoy had not started out that way.

  Pyckard’s ship had been first to leave the port. His little vessel had careered away, and it was only when it was already gone that the others realised what a march he had stolen on them. Beauley had set off immediately with his own ship, with Hawley, so he felt sure, a short way after him. From that moment, time was critical. If Pyckard’s ship reached France a long time before they did, Pyckard’s merchants could make their own prices, and when the others arrived, their own cargoes would be less attractive.

  Hawley had one of the fastest and best ships available, and since the concept of the convoy was already rent asunder, it was every man for himself. Each master knew that. Beauley could make good speed, but he must be overtaken by Hawley in the end.

  So when Pyckard had gone, he quickly followed, desperate to beat his competitors. If he was to make his profit, he would have to be as quick and seamanlike as he ever had been.

  ‘Boat’s away!’

  Beauley swung down and stepped lightly across the decking. He sprang up to the wale, the thickest strake at the top of the ship’s side, and let himself down the ladder into the boat. ‘Haul away!’

  Sitting here in the rear of the boat, he felt a thrill of anticipation, which was only dulled by the lousy oar-strokes of the man in front of him. ‘Stop trying to look through the back of your head, man,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll tell you when to ship oars.’

  Alred Paviour kicked at a pebble and glowered down at the body. This was one job he should have refused. A simple hole in the road, and a few other repairs, and he’d thought he couldn’t possibly lose; they were offering a fixed contract and it had seemed too good to turn down. But he’d always had a thing about sailors, and this damn town was absolutely full of them: great horny-handed, hairy-arsed, swearing sailors reeking of fish and seaweed and other things he’d prefer not to guess at.

  ‘You might as well go to the tavern, master. There’s no point waiting here.’

  Glaring at the watchman standing guard over his hole, Alred swore softly. ‘You know how much this is costing me?’

  Aye. And every time he entered the tavern alone, it went quiet. People didn’t like strangers down here, and when you saw that almost all the men in the taverns were sailors, who’d be willing to cut your throat as soon as look at you, you realised that this was a very dangerous place. Never trust a matelot, that was the paver’s rule.

  The watchman was sympathetic. ‘Nothing you can do about it. The Coroner’s been sent for. If you’re lucky, he’ll be only a couple of days.’

  ‘Even if he is, he’ll need a day to arrange his inquest,’ Alred grumbled. ‘I’ve seen them in Exeter. Bloody fools take a good time over their inquests, and all the while poor workers suffer.’

  ‘We don’t take so long here,’ the watchman said with a chuckle. ‘This isn’t some borough in the middle of a city where they can bugger about for days. We’ve got work to be getting on with down here. You wait and see.’

  Alred nodded bitterly. A man of middle height, with grizzled hair and beard, his eyes were more used to laughter, but today there was nothing to laugh about. He glanced down at the corpse, shaking his head. This fellow must have been a lover, a son, a father, perhaps … and now all he had become was sport for others to gawp at.

  There were plenty who kept coming to take a look. Two youngsters, a boy and girl of ten or so, were standing up at the edge of the hole even now, their mother or nurse with them, all three peering down, wide-eyed, at the dead man. Well, it was best that everyone who could might see him, so that someone could identify him when the Coroner arrived.

  Turning, he made his way to the Porpoise further down Higher Street. It was a small alehouse of the sort he would normally avoid in Exeter, but here … where else would a body go? Blasted place was hopeless. In Exeter, there were attractions all the time: you could watch the baiting, see a duel, or go and watch the jugglers and fools at the market square. Ah, how he missed Exeter.

  The alehouse did have one advantage, though: it was cheap. He walked in, stooping under the low lintel, and looked about him for the others.

  ‘That bloke said the Coroner should be here in two days, and he may be quick to come to a conclusion,’ he said when he had joined them.

  Bill and Law were his helpers. Bill was a taller man, his eyes a pale blue, his features wrinkled from laughter and sunburned in a round face. Law was darker, with steady brown eyes set in a narrow face, and he was much shorter. Only sixteen, he had been apprenticed to Alred for two years now, and was bright and quick, if not strong enough yet to do much of the heavier work.

  ‘Two days? What do we do now, then?’ Law asked.

  ‘Wait until we hear, I suppose. We can’t go and do anything until we’re allowed. Oh, God’s ballocks! What a mess! Why did we ever come here to this miserable midden?’

  Law shrugged. His real name was Lawrence, but Bill and Alred had agreed early on that the shortarse didn’t justify so long a name. Now he leaned forward eagerly. ‘See that girl over there? She’s been making eyes at me for the last while. Reckon she fancies me!’

  ‘Law, she’d be more likely to fancy a hog,’ Alred sighed. ‘Your face looks like you’ve been rolled in a bed of nettles.’

  ‘It’s not that bad!’ Law protested, a hand going to his volcanic chin.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on the lad,’ Bill said. ‘It might just be that she’s got lousy eyesight.’ He burst out laughing.

  ‘There are many eye me up, I’ll have you know,’ Law said sulkily.

  ‘They’re desperate in a town like this,’ Alred chuckled, then sighed. ‘What are we going to do for money if we get held up? Christ’s pain! what made me take this job in the first place?’

  Bill smiled, showing his uneven teeth. ‘Because you said we’d clean up in a little place like this. You said we’d charge them through the nose for everything they needed done and we’d live the high life when we got home again. You said the locals down here never saw anyone from the real world and had less sense than a peasant from—’

  ‘Yes, yes! All right!’ Alred said hastily, aware of all the eyes in the place going to him and his friends. Bill’s voice was penetrating. ‘But in the meantime we’re losing money. That road has to be repaved, and I agreed a fixed price for the job. If we’re held up, we won’t make a penny profit.’

  ‘You agreed a price for the job?’ Law burst out. ‘You always taught me that a fixed price was daft, that you’d never know if something was going to go wrong, and that you always need to be flexible in case of problems.’

  ‘Yes, well – this proves I was right, doesn’t it?’ Alred snapped, adding nastily, ‘And it was you supposed to put up the barriers, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I did! You know I did!’

  ‘They weren’t there this morning, were they? How do I know you put them up right? If it was that easy for some thieving scrote to nick them, you can’t have fixed them in place all that well, can you?’ He sank his face in his cup of ale.

  ‘It’s not my fault all this happened, as you well know!’

  Alred grimaced, then: ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Law grinned. ‘Come on, Alred. What are we?’<
br />
  ‘Don’t. Just don’t say it.’

  ‘What are we, eh, Bill?’

  ‘We’re paviours, Law. We keep people moving.’

  ‘What are we, Alred?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. We’re bleeding paviours. But that isn’t going to help us when …’

  ‘Hey! Is the paver in here?’ It was Stephen, the clerk.

  Alred closed his eyes and screwed up his face. ‘See?’ he hissed. ‘And now I’m going to go and get stuffed for finding a stiff. I hope you’re pleased with your work, lad! Yes – I’m here.’

  ‘Come with me. The Port Reeve wants a word with you.’

  Hamo the cooper was at his bench outside when he heard the boat returning to the shore. It scraped along the piles of empty clam and oyster shells that shingled the beach, and the men inside jumped out, hauling her up the slope to lie out of the water. Hamo watched idly as Jankin took the great stone anchor and thrust the rope from the boat through the hole bored in it, and then Hamo returned to his work, shaving a stave to fit a broken barrel. Much of his work involved mending damaged vessels. He didn’t know what he’d do if sailors were more careful!

  ‘Come on, Henry, let’s be getting you out of there,’ a man called.

  Hamo noticed that Henry Pyket was still seated on the thwart, his face in his hands.

  ‘Come on, Dad, eh?’

  Jankin was a steady fellow, sound and as hard as oak in a fight, and Hamo was oddly affected to see how he went to the older man and placed an arm about his neck comfortingly.

  ‘Hey, Jankin, you want some help there, boy?’ he shouted.

  ‘We’re fine, I think, Master Hamo,’ Jankin responded, but he didn’t sound it.

  ‘Let’s help him out of there, eh?’ Hamo went over and said gently, ‘Henry, have you hurt yourself, man? Hit your head on a beam?’

  ‘We’ve all seen them, haven’t we,’ Henry said dully. ‘You’ve seen your share of dead men, I daresay, Hamo?’

  ‘We all have, aye. There isn’t the year we don’t see enough washed up on the beaches.’

  ‘But have you ever been touched by one?’ Henry gave a shudder of horror. ‘He was in there, he was, poor Danny, and a-wavin’ like he was asking me to join him. It turned my stomach, it did!’

  ‘Danny? What was he doing in there?’ Hamo asked, bewildered.

  ‘He’s dead, Hamo. Murdered, like all the others.’

  ‘God’s teeth, you mean that’s the Saint John?’

  ‘There’s no one on board, I swear. Only Danny down in the hold, and he’s dead. All the other men have gone,’ Henry said with another shiver. ‘The ship’s cursed, Hamo. It must be. Sweet Jesus! It’s like the devil came up and took ’em all. Took ’em all down into the sea with him.’

  Chapter Four

  Simon was sitting in his favourite chair when John Hawley entered. ‘Master Hawley, good day. You have a rich prize, I see.’

  ‘Has your man told you about it?’

  Hawley was a bluff, sturdy character. His eyes were as grey as Simon’s, but in Hawley’s there was a glint of steel. He had a reputation for fearlessness in the face of the elements, which was a good trait for a ship’s master, but there was another aspect: utter ruthlessness to those who stood in his path. It was rumoured that during the recent crisis in relations between King Edward II and the French King Charles IV over that place – Saint Sardos or somewhere; Simon wasn’t sure exactly, but the two nations had gone to war over it, wherever it was – Hawley had made himself some good profits by taking a privateer’s papers and capturing all the ships he could. There were many. Those which were owned by the King’s allies were supposed to have been freed and their crew unmolested, but there were strong suggestions that this Hawley, with his ‘Devil take you’ attitude and the quizzically raised eyebrow, had occasionally forgotten that rule.

  He was shorter than Simon by a half head at least, and his shoulders weren’t so broad, but for all that Simon would not have liked him for an enemy. He wore his short sword with the easiness that only professional masters of defence could emulate: it was a part of him, whether sheathed like this, or gripped in his hard, leathery fist.

  Crossing the floor to Simon, Hawley held out a hand, and Simon stood to take it. Both nodded, each respectful of the other, if wary. They were aware that their objectives and ambitions were entirely different.

  Respect was easy with a man like this. There were men of the sea whom Simon had known who knew nothing of ships and coasts, men who depended on their navigators and crew to keep the ship safe. They were invariably slothful, drunken fools, in Simon’s mind. Not so Hawley. He had been living aboard ships since he was a lad, and as the years passed, he had grown knowledgeable of all the coasts, if the stories were true, all the way down to the Portuguese king’s lands. Simon could imagine him being entirely uncompromising in the face of cowardice or incompetence. He was a determined man, as bold and daring as any knight, but less constricted by the code of ethics which so many knights claimed to espouse.

  Not that many lived their lives constrained by them, if Simon was to be honest.

  For the rest, Hawley was rich, as demonstrated by his crimson velvet cote-hardie, and the softness of his linen beneath. If salt had marred his hosen, they were still made of good, thick wool, and his shoes were of the best Cordovan leather. It made Simon feel tatty in his old robe from last year. Since the death of the abbot, he had not felt it was the right time to ask for the annual replacement that was the perquisite of his position.

  ‘I saw it for myself,’ he replied now. ‘It was burned?’

  ‘Aye. All above decks quite badly, although below there’s little damage. There’s a stench of oil all about it, but I think much didn’t catch, by fortune.’

  ‘Do you know whose ship she was?’

  ‘She has the lines of the cog Saint John, one of Paul Pyckard’s ships, but I can’t be sure without looking through her more carefully.’

  ‘You mean your men didn’t?’ Simon asked with a slight smile. He wouldn’t call the man a liar, but it seemed unnatural for such a bold seafarer not to have looked.

  Hawley stared at him blankly, not returning the smile. ‘We were sailing from here to Bordeaux as part of the fleet.’

  Simon nodded. The haven was more empty than usual, because recently all the shipmasters had been ordered to sail in groups for their own protection. Since the opening of hostilities once again with the French, it was necessary to protect ships from the depredations of French privateers.

  ‘It’s a journey we’ve made often enough, Bailiff, with a hold filled with wool and tin amongst other things. Lots of produce to sell, and we should have made a goodly profit. Then, last night, when we’d only made a day’s journey, we saw the gleam of fire in the distance as the light faded. I ordered the sails to be reefed and sailed for her, wondering what had happened, whether this was a random act of piracy – you know what those French are like.’

  ‘Yes.’ Simon did. They were exactly the same as the man in front of him.

  ‘When we got closer, there was no sign of another ship. All we knew was, this cog was ablaze. So the first thing we did was stop the fire. I reckon what happened was, they soaked her sails in oil and put a torch to them, thinking the whole ship would go up in flames in an instant, but it takes a bit more than that to put paid to an old ship like her. It’s like burning stone, when the timbers are so well weathered. As her attackers sailed away, though, they’d have seen roaring flames, and maybe thought she was gone.

  ‘It took a long effort, hurling water from all the buckets we could grab,’ he went on. ‘We put paid to the worst of it by dropping a sail over the side, lifting it on the windlass, and aiming it filled with water over the worst of the fire. Then it was a case of climbing over there and putting out all the smaller ones.’

  ‘It can’t have been a pleasant sight.’

  ‘A ship in such a state is never pretty.’

  Simon allowed a fixity in his stare. ‘I meant the peop
le.’

  ‘There were none.’

  ‘What?’ Simon asked, unsure whether he had heard aright.

  ‘That’s correct, Bailiff. There was no one aboard. There’s already talk about her being a death ship, that the devil’s taken her crew.’

  Sir Baldwin de Furnshill was sitting on his throne-like seat in the hall of Exeter’s Rougemont castle listening to the cases before the court of gaol delivery, at which the felons would be delivered from the gaol either to freedom or death, and was delighted when the last case had been heard and justice passed down.

  It was the hardest part of his function as Keeper of the King’s Peace, this listening to the miserable churls who passed in front of him. They were invariably fools, or brutal outlaws who should preferably have been throttled at birth, rather than being left alive to harm others. One in particular, a devil with one eye and a ferocious scar through his empty socket, spat when he heard the sentence of death, and swore he’d see the justices in hell.

  Baldwin knew the case intimately. The man had stolen from a miller near Tiverton, killing the poor man in front of his family, then raping the mother and a daughter, before stabbing them both. The mother died, the daughter still lingered – although Baldwin was sure that her broken heart would never heal and she must die within a year and a day. And why had it happened? Because this man had taken offence at an innocent comment passed by the father. He was a foul creature, and the sooner he was dead the better. Others, though, did not deserve their punishment.

  With that thought in mind, Baldwin scarcely noticed the man calling to him until he had almost walked into him.

  ‘Sir Baldwin? The bishop would like to speak with you.’

  ‘Oh? I shall come with you, then,’ Baldwin told the young cleric in black garb. ‘It’s only a short walk.’

  ‘He is not at the palace just now, Sir Baldwin, but at his manor at Bishop’s Clyst. He begs that you will join him there.’

  Baldwin winced. It was late already, and he had hoped to be finished in time to ride homewards to see his wife and Richalda, his daughter. Lady Jeanne was six or seven months into her pregnancy, and he was attempting to spend as much time as possible at her side while they waited for the day when their latest child might be born. ‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly.