The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘I am concerned that Richer in particular might be in danger,’ Baldwin said. ‘He was known to dislike Serlo; if the Constable should take it into his mind to challenge him, or worse, attack him, there could be bloodshed.’

  ‘True,’ Nicholas said heavily. Since the death of Athelina, he had been prey to appalling doubts, and he was aware that his attitude must seem peculiar to these men. How could they understand!

  ‘Are you quite well?’ Baldwin asked.

  Nicholas looked at him sadly. ‘I would see the boy safe, if at all possible,’ he said.

  ‘Boy?’ Baldwin asked, confused.

  ‘Richer atte Brooke.’

  ‘We shall protect him if we can,’ Baldwin said, but then he took a second look at Nicholas’s face. ‘But if you know something which may help us, you should tell us now. You do know something, don’t you? Tell us, please!’

  Yes, I should. But how can I tell you the truth without earning your condemnation? Nicholas thought to himself. He rose from his chair, went to the door and called to a servant. ‘If anyone wants me, tell them they’ll have to wait,’ he ordered. ‘I want no one to come in here until I say so.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Go!’

  Nicholas returned to his table and poured himself a mazer of wine. Standing with it in his hands, he began to speak, not once glancing at the other two men.

  ‘When I was a lad, I was a cause of shame and embarrassment to my father,’ he said at last. ‘He was a cobbler, a simple but cheerful soul who wanted me to follow him. I hated the thought of being apprenticed; instead I set my heart on higher things. So when the King’s Sergeant came asking for men to join his Host, I volunteered.

  ‘I’d always been a hearty lad, full of piss and wind, and when there was ale flowing, I was there, mouth agape to drink it. After taking my fill, more often than not, I’d get into a fight. Many’s the time I’ve been knocked sideways by someone bigger than me,’ he said nostalgically, ‘but I usually got my own back on the bastards.

  ‘Anyway, I left my home and went with the King. I fought well in his service, and I made my way through his forces. Lord Henry was my master, and as he grew from squire to become a belted knight, I grew with him.’

  Baldwin nodded. ‘It is the way with warriors.’

  ‘Yes. Still more so when they have been involved in evil.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Baldwin asked sharply.

  ‘When we were sent to subdue the Welsh, we had a hard time of it. They captured the King’s baggage train, and we spent a miserable few weeks in Conwy waiting for ships to come with food and drink. God bless the old bastard’s memory! The King was always a warrior first and politician second: he knew what it was to fight. When his supplies of wine were down to the last gallon, he insisted that it be shared among the men with him. While we waited, we were forced to go and seek provisions. We had to take whatever we could, before the enemy could starve us. You are a knight, you know what war is like!’

  As he turned to look at Baldwin, he saw the cold expression on the other’s face. Baldwin looked like a man who had been turned to stone.

  ‘Yes, I have seen war,’ he replied, ‘yet I never robbed the poor unnecessarily. We always took what we needed at that moment, and left enough for them to survive.’

  ‘Enough? What is enough for a peasant?’ Nicholas cried. He flung an arm towards the south. ‘Look at them! They have a hard time feeding themselves when the weather’s good, let alone when it’s foul. There’s never enough to fill their bellies. They survive when they’re fortunate, but more often they starve. What we did was wrong, perhaps, but we were at war.’

  ‘You robbed them and left them nothing, then?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘We took what we needed.’ He remembered the flames. When he closed his eyes, he could see them lighting his inner lids with amber vigour. The horror was still foul even after so many years.

  ‘We were told to fetch food from a vill a few miles from the castle. It should have been an easy job, but the land wasn’t safe. You know how these things go: occasionally sling shots, some arrows. A companion of mine suddenly fell, an arrow in his throat. That kind of thing wears you down, and I never had a good temper. I was in charge of the chevauchée because I was the more senior man there, and I grew more and more bitter and vengeful. The people were spiteful. Rebellious to the last, damn them all!’

  He paused for a moment, remembering. ‘We rode into the vill and as we entered, I saw some men with …’

  Weapons. That was what he’d thought. They looked like the long bows which had been plaguing them all day, and he’d felt his bile rise to see these peasants flaunting their treachery. What could a man do? He ordered the charge, and spurred his horse on in a moment.

  It was like a dream, or so it felt now; a slow-moving dream in which he wallowed onwards through treacle, his mace in his hand. The men turned and saw him, their faces blank in terror, and then one dropped his weapon and darted away, ducking under the lintel of a nearby cottage; a second slowly stepped backwards, appalled; the third stayed put, no fear on his face, only bovine resignation. And then the scenes came with a vividness that still woke Nicholas in his dreams.

  The nearer man was felled by the iron mace, his skull so completely crushed that the spikes caught, and when Nicholas twisted it free, it pulled great slobbery lumps of brain with it. Blood dripped on his arm as he rode at the second man. He was still there, a look of pleading in eyes filled with tears. Nicholas saw his hands come up as though in supplication, but Nicholas knew no compassion. The mace swung, and the spikes raked down his cheek, puncturing his eyeball, which turned to a bloody mess in an instant. A second swing and his face dissolved: the steel hit his nose squarely, smashing his features.

  His bloodlust was still with him. He threw himself from his horse and pelted into the cottage. There was a naked woman with a rug over her breast, but he thrust her aside and he stood, breathing like a horse after a gallop, until he heard the sobbing.

  Pulling away a curtain, he found the two children hiding in a recess in the wall. They stared at him, eyes wild like dogs with the rage, the drooling disease that made men fear water even when they were dying of thirst.

  He reached in, hooking out the first, slamming the figure to the floor with a blow from his mace, then grabbed the other, lifting the mace high over his head to kill, when the bare woman grabbed his arm.

  Christ’s bones, but she had some strength, that woman! She grabbed him so hard, he thought he must have his arm wrenched from its socket, and when he turned to face her, he saw she gripped a knife. He shattered the hand with his mace, the spikes ravaging her wrist, tearing down her hand and pulling off her thumb and forefinger. Still she came at him, a terrible expression of hatred on her face, eyes quite mad, mouth spitting in that lunatic gibberish they called a language! He swung again, and the fury and hatred died with her.

  Turning to the last, he saw that he was too late. The figure had snatched the dagger from the floor, and had already used it on himself, thrusting it into his own breast. Except now he could see more clearly as the red mist left him, Nicholas saw that this was no warrior but a slim girl. Probably the dead woman’s daughter. Only thirteen years or so. Not more.

  The boy at his feet was the one who had ducked inside, but now Nicholas looked, he too was hardly more than a child. He was her son. The woman herself was older, more worn, but there was something about her; the sweat and stench of the cottage was not just from the odour of animals or rank humans, it held something else, and when he looked at her more closely, he saw that she had a disease.

  ‘We went into the vill, and they had some people there,’ he said at last. ‘I had ridden with the men for miles, with bowmen taking their chances at us all the long way, and when I saw three men with bows in their hands, I thought these were some of those who had been attacking us. I rode them all down. A woman tried to protect one, too, and I killed her.’ He swallowed. It hardly expressed the reality of the sl
aughterhouse that was their home. ‘When I looked later, it wasn’t a weapon. They were all playing with wooden lances. Toys.’

  ‘You killed them for playing?’ Simon asked. His face registered incredulity.

  ‘We rode in, we saw what we thought were weapons, so we protected ourselves,’ Nicholas declared stiffly. ‘If it helps you, Bailiff, I have ever seen those faces before me in my nightmares. We fired the place once we had taken all we could.’ It was all he could do not to order that the vill be razed to the ground, he felt it to be so vile, but instead he ordered that the carts be filled, and while the sullen villagers watched, he took the first of the burning torches and threw it into the cottage, watching as the flames grew, the smoke rising, first green and yellow and foul, then thick and blue-black, the stink of burning flesh disgusting on the evening air. And they had left. But Nicholas bore the scars. He always would.

  ‘What has this to do with us now?’ Simon demanded harshly.

  ‘I left there soon afterwards. I grew ill with a sickness. Henry my lord was unwell too, and he and I left Wales to come here, to his home, to recuperate. It was here that I found some peace.’

  ‘With a woman?’ Baldwin asked, glowering.

  ‘She was willing!’ Nicholas protested at Baldwin’s tone, and then his eyes dropped. ‘When she conceived, I was delighted. My own child. And I saw to it that she and her family were looked after. When she decided to marry, I gave her money to help. Later, she and her husband and all their children died in a fire. Only my son survived, and he fled, but I was able to ensure that he wasn’t chased for being a runaway serf. Instead, I had him guided into the arms of Sir Henry’s retinue, where he was protected. He learned his skills as a warrior, and later he could come home again.’

  ‘This was Richer?’ Baldwin continued relentlessly. ‘You are his father?’

  ‘He is my only child.’

  ‘Be glad you have another coming, then,’ Baldwin said remorselessly. ‘Because I swear, if I find he is the murderer, I shall see him hanged.’

  Nicholas stared at him, wanting to demand sympathy, but couldn’t. After a moment, he looked away again, and prayed that Richer might be safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Warin was noble by birth, and certainly didn’t fear this rabble. They made him want to laugh. There was none among them whom he would be concerned about individually, he grew aware of their eyes moving from one to another, like a pack of dogs working up the courage to make an attack. That was less amusing.

  He couldn’t really permit them to take Richer, no matter what he had said before. Richer was his servant, and no one was going to take him against Warin’s will. The squire was more than powerful enough to prevent a small group from lynching his man. Still, he must also be seen to be fair. He didn’t want to be thought of as harbouring a fugitive from justice. That was not the way to gain the respect of the peasants.

  A strange place this, when tempers were hot. The alewife was serving with a face like a wet week in Wales, while men fingered their stubble or hunched their shoulders and glowered.

  In the far corner was an old man, hard to see at the other side of the room, just a dark smudge with eyes that twinkled as the firelight caught them. Then he sat forward, and Warin recognised Iwan. The old smith didn’t look away, but met his gaze calmly, a massive pot in his hand. Then he smiled, but somehow he still looked threatening. It was the eyes, Warin’s father had once said: the eyes told you about the soul. Watch his eyes and you’d see the attack before his hands could move. Warin wouldn’t want to have Iwan as an enemy … at least not if Iwan was younger.

  Richer was anxious: Warin could sense fear oozing from his pores like sweat. Couldn’t blame him. This was the most dangerous situation Richer had ever endured. Going into battle with friends at his side was one thing: sitting and waiting for a man who was sworn to see his destruction while on all sides his enemy’s friends fenced him in, that took courage.

  And conviction, of course. Perhaps Richer wasn’t the murderer. Attacking a man in the dark was not his way – but the question was, would the people here believe that?

  A sudden hush smothered them. The fire sparked, and Warin saw the smoke gust up and through the window. At the door, men moved aside, and there in the doorway stood Alexander.

  ‘So, murderer! You thought to celebrate your success here, did you? Didn’t think that there’d be anyone else here who’d challenge you?’

  ‘I didn’t touch him, Alex,’ Richer said. There was an edge to his voice: partly fear, partly anger, but only the fear was heard by Alexander’s men.

  Warin could read their minds. These folk were like cattle. The strongest man in the room today was the Constable, and he could herd them. He was strong because of his hatred, sincerity and rage. Today all the men would follow him.

  ‘You didn’t touch him? Was it your knife, then? Did it leap from your belt, slash his throat wide, and carry him to the mill to be draped over his own wheel?’

  ‘I had nothing to do with his death,’ Richer said.

  ‘You had no reason to murder him,’ Alexander said, stepping forward slowly, his head jutting pugnaciously. ‘But you did anyway. You waited until his mind was weakened by seeing his poor boy, my nephew …’ His voice was choked suddenly, and he had to break off, while fresh tears flooded his cheeks. ‘While his wife was still inconsolable with grief, you slaughtered him!’

  ‘It was not me!’ Richer declared again, and he held out his hands in an impassioned plea to the men about him. ‘Look at me! I’m Richer atte Brooke! This is my place of birth! I’m no murderer!’

  ‘You say one of us is?’ a voice sneered, and Richer sensed his master stiffening.

  Richer felt it too. There was passion in the crowd. Richer could hear low, bitter mutterings. They were like the apprentices after the ale had flowed too freely in the taverns; a mob that hunted in a pack, attacking anyone in their path, whether an enemy or passerby. None was safe when the mob prowled. These usually submissive peasants had been welded together by a sense of injustice; few might have liked Serlo, but he was at least one of them. In comparison, Richer was a stranger after running away fifteen years ago.

  They were ready to tear Richer to pieces with their bare hands.

  There was a blow at his shoulder, and a heavy earthenware pot fell and smashed on the floor. A platter span across the room: it slashed a cut into his cheek and bounced from the wall behind him. A metallic rasp spoke of a blade being pulled from a wooden scabbard, and Richer knew he must die. Next to him, Warin drew his own sword and the polished blade gleamed evilly in the dimly-lit room.

  Warin bared his teeth. He hadn’t expected violence to flare so swiftly, damn it! He’d wanted to use his authority to persuade the men in here that Richer was innocent, but events had moved too quickly. Now it seemed certain that Richer must die. In a moment the hot rage in his belly was fired, but now, seeing the churls baying, Alexander’s pale and resolute face approaching, he felt his ire fade and a strange new sensation take its place: fear. He had brought his servant here to save him, and instead he had escorted Richer to his doom. Richer was stunned by a jug hitting his head, his sword still sheathed. Warin shouted: ‘Richer! Defend yourself!’

  Other voices took up the cry of rebellion. ‘Catch him – let’s string him up! Who else could have wanted to have Serlo killed? Only you, Richer!’

  To Warin’s surprise, a loud, calm voice answered. ‘Oh, I reckon any man here who took oats to be ground and found his grain had melted away when his back was turned. Serlo was good at taking more than his multure.’

  It was old Iwan. He had remained at the back of the room when the men pressed forward to encircle Richer and Warin, but his voice was clear through the baying of men become animals. He was staring at Alexander with a fixed intensity.

  Alexander glared and pointed a shivering finger at him. ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead, old heretic! You never liked him, did you? Leave his memory alone, lest you have cause to regret i
t later!’

  Some of the men were readying to spring on Richer and Warin, but some, if only a few, were glancing from Iwan to Alexander. They wore puzzled frowns, like men who were recovering from a strange dream.

  Iwan’s eyes narrowed as though in amusement at some joke the others hadn’t seen. His posture, though, was not that of an ancient, but of a warrior who was capable of teaching a man half his age many lessons. ‘Do you think to threaten me?’

  ‘Don’t push me, old man!’

  ‘Alex, boy, I reckon ’tis time you was goin’ home.’

  There was a chuckle, instantly stilled, but Warin saw some faces lighten for a moment. Then another rolled his eyes ceiling-wards, and Warin realised that Alexander had lost the momentum of the crowd about him.

  ‘Shut up, Iwan! I’ve got business here.’

  ‘Alex, I’ll ignore your manners, but I call on the tithing to witness you’re breaking your pledge to hold the King’s Peace. You may be the Constable, but that don’t put you above the good King’s laws. You’re trying to raise a mob, and I won’t let you.’

  Those words made some men take pause. A fellow at the back moved a little away from the men ringing the two. He was less reluctant to join in.

  ‘You can’t stop me!’ Alexander spat.

  ‘Oh I can, Alex,’ Iwan said, crossing the floor until he stood with Warin and Richer. He frowned at Richer. ‘No one can really believe that this man’s guilty of murder. We all remember him: he’s one of us.’

  ‘He hated my brother!’