Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23)

by Michael Jecks

  ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Of course, sir. He was a little under your height, Sir Baldwin.’ She stepped towards the knight and studied his face. ‘And younger. Much younger. Less of a paunch, I would say, and very light on his feet, like a dancing man.’

  ‘I thank you for your observations,’ Baldwin said, smiling a little. ‘Why do you think he was younger than me?’

  ‘You mean because of his little mask? Ah, even in the candlelight there were very few wrinkles or worry-lines about his mouth. And his hair had no hints of grey,’ she added, reaching up to gesture at his own greying temples. ‘And the way he moved, it was plain to me that he was a fit, young man – although he wasn’t a knight.’

  ‘Oh? How do you know that?’

  ‘His neck was not so thick and muscled. A knight who is trained to the joust will always have a neck that is built to hold the weight of a tilting helm, will he not? And this man’s shoulders, too, were not so bulky. He was altogether a smaller-framed man than you, Sir Knight.’ She glanced back towards the gate to the garden.

  ‘His clothing?’

  ‘He had all grey and brown, except for his gipon. That was different, because although it was not emerald, it was a good, fresh green.’

  Sir Baldwin gruffly cleared his throat. ‘Joan, we are keen to learn all we can about the man who entered the palace and was killed. Do you know of anyone who could help us?’

  ‘There is one, I think,’ she said. ‘Arch, the guard up at the wall, was found the next morning, snoring.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s said that he’s often up there in the morning, usually snoring because he drinks so much.’

  ‘What of him?’

  Joan shrugged and pulled her mouth into a little moue. ‘I am often sent to fetch wine and ales for my Lady and the other ladies-in-waiting. When I spoke to the steward in the buttery next morning, he said that Arch hadn’t been near the ale that night. He reckoned he must have gone somewhere else. But I wonder whether Arch could have been telling the truth, and had been on the wall as he should have been.’

  ‘He was a heavy sleeper? He snored?’

  ‘A man may snore and sleep heavily without ale, Sir Baldwin,’ she said, but there was no cheekiness now. ‘If he is knocked down, he will also snore.’

  ‘Who would have done that?’

  ‘An assassin entering the palace clandestinely would want no one to give the alarm, would he?’

  Ellis was exercising his brain, an activity to which it had grown unaccustomed, and he was finding his conclusions more confusing than enlightening.

  If what he had heard from the discussions between his master and Sir Baldwin were correct, someone had been trying to kill his sister and not the Queen after all. But who could have wanted Mabilla dead? She was a sweet girl, no one’s enemy.

  Except the Queen’s, he thought with a start.

  And then there was Jack’s death.

  The only people who’d known about Jack were him, his master, and Jack himself – and Ellis knew full well that Jack would never have told anyone about his mission. Equally, he knew that he himself had said nothing, and so perhaps the confession from Sir Hugh that he might have given away the plan to Piers was not so wide of the mark.

  Piers was a spy. His trade was lying and passing on news to others. Perhaps he had sold Sir Hugh’s plot to someone else. Earl Edmund was his master when he wasn’t with Sir Hugh, so had he mixed his loyalties and found solace in the fact that for once he was acting in some form of good faith by aiding the Earl? The only alternative to that was that the Queen herself had plotted to remove Mabilla.

  And surely that was unthinkable.

  Simon and Baldwin soon found their way to the gaol. It was down a dank corridor far beneath the King’s chambers, close to the river itself, and as the gaoler opened the door to the cell, Simon was very aware of the great river just a short distance beyond the walls. There was a perpetual trickling, tinkling sound, and it was impossible for him to ignore it. He had never much liked being underground. The thought of the weight of stone and timber overhead was always unpleasant to him, and never more so than here.

  There was a scattering of straw on the ground, but not enough. A bucket held some water, brackish and foul from what he could see, and there was a stench of urine and excrement about the place.

  Not that the occupant appeared to care. He lay crouched in the far corner, his eyes on them like those of a whipped hound, his arms wrapped about him against the cold.

  ‘Dear God,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘Are you Arch?’

  At first Arch didn’t seem to understand. Simon saw him shake his head and pull his arms tighter, ducking his chin to his breast as though that would hide him from his tormenters.

  They had been busy on him. Blood marked him, and mucus and slobber had drawn trails in the filth on his face. His hair was awry, but there was more blood among it, and Simon thought that clumps had been wrenched out. And then he saw the missing fingernails and felt sick.

  ‘Leave me, masters, please leave me. I know nothing.’

  His whine was pathetic. Although his eyes looked towards them, it was plain to Simon that he did not see them. Instead, he saw his tormentors returning to inflict more pain.

  Baldwin crouched near him, sniffing at the bucket. Suddenly angry, he stood and would have kicked it over, but for the fact that it would have added to the chilly misery of the cell. Instead he gritted his teeth. Arch, I want to know what happened on the night that the maid was killed.’

  ‘I’ve told you all …’ Arch was huddled away from them, rocking gently.

  ‘Not me, my friend. Just tell me: did you see anyone up there on the wall that night?’

  ‘I was just looking out over the river, and I heard a rat. That was all. But I didn’t have a drink, not that night. I was sober. It was just a rat.’

  ‘Arch, look at me. What sort of noise?’

  ‘It was a rat eating at wood. I heard the crunching. You hear them down here. They’re all over the place.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t drink anything? You were still sleeping the next morning.’

  ‘I was just so tired. And my head hurt.’

  ‘You had a hangover?’

  ‘No. My head hurt.’

  Baldwin shrugged and glanced up at Simon helplessly.

  But Simon was convinced. ‘This headache – is your head sore?’

  ‘Ach!’ Arch rolled into a ball, his hands gently covering his head. ‘No more, please, no more …’

  Patting him gently on the shoulder, Baldwin signalled to Simon that they should go, and leave this poor fellow in peace.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘Was that any help?’ Baldwin wondered. ‘I should have liked to take a look at his head, but the poor fellow was terrified.’

  Simon was more sanguine. ‘If Alicia’s right, and he didn’t get any drink from anyone, then why would he have a headache? I think Joan was right. I knew a miner once. He was struck on the head by a felon, and he was found out on the moors because he was snoring so heavily. Sometimes a man who’s been knocked out will snore like that. I don’t think it was a rat that Arch heard: I reckon it was someone creeping along the walkway behind him, and who then knocked him down.’

  ‘The assassin? Unless it was the other killer, the one who killed the assassin,’ Baldwin mused. ‘Who on earth was that, though?’

  As he spoke, he was leading the way to the stairs that gave onto the walkway about the inside of the palace walls. After speaking to another guard, Simon and he learned exactly where Arch would have been standing on duty. There was another man there already.

  Baldwin explained who they were and asked for the man’s name. He was wary, but gave his name as Will Fletcher, and was helpful enough when he realised that they were only interested in the morning when Arch was found.

  ‘He was often drunk up here, I know, but I never heard of him still sleeping the next dawn.’ />
  Simon listened as Will said a little about Arch, how he was always scrounging ale and wine, and was looked down upon for his laziness. ‘But he’s no traitor, I’d wager. He’s honest enough in his own way, but he’s too old for this job; at his age he needs a warm fireside rather than a chilly, wet wall like this.’

  Simon was peering over the walls at the wetlands beneath. From the look of it, the mud there would be waist-deep. No one could clamber across that without making a row about it and broadcasting his presence to all the guards on the walls. When he looked eastwards, there was only the Thames itself. Even a quiet boat would alert guards. No, Simon was convinced the man hadn’t come from the south wall or the east. Which meant that either he had climbed over the north wall, or the western one. Since there was no point approaching from the north and having to pass all the other guards on their rounds, surely he had come from a nearer post.

  Satisfied that his logic was solid, Simon walked to the nearer part of the western wall and peered over into the Abbey’s grounds. ‘What’s happened here?’

  ‘That? They had a fire there thirty-odd years ago. They’re still trying to clear the ruins and rebuild them.’

  Simon could see the ladders and ropes, and, like Ellis before him, knew that this was how the assassin had entered the precinct. He said so.

  ‘I agree. It is likely,’ Baldwin said. ‘The abbey grounds would be easier to enter than the palace walls by the river. There must be several places to enter the abbey quite easily.’

  ‘And not even clandestinely,’ Simon noted. ‘A man could have entered the place pretending to be a workman, hidden himself until nightfall, and then climbed up here.’ He drew away from the wall, peered back into the Palace yard. ‘So we can be sure that the man came up here, struck down the guard Arch, and then sneaked into the Queen’s cloister, before perhaps losing his way in his panic following Mabilla’s death, and heading to the Great Hall by accident,’ Simon theorised.

  ‘Unless he had been paid not to harm the Queen – whom he didn’t approach – but instead to kill another. Eleanor? Cecily? Joan, or Alicia? Or was he meant to kill Mabilla?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘Who could have wanted Mabilla dead?’

  ‘Earl Edmund is the obvious man.’

  ‘And he is not fond of Despenser.’

  ‘No. Neither is enamoured of the other,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘Perhaps that has some bearing on the murder.’

  Earl Edmund of Kent had been drinking, and seeing the rain falling so steadily outside, he chose to remain indoors with his two henchmen.

  Usually he did not bother with guards, especially when he was in the palace grounds, but today he felt jumpy. Sir Hugh le Despenser was a dangerous man at the best of times, but never more so than when he felt himself in a corner – as he must do now. The discovery of the assassin had come as a shock to him, Edmund was sure, and the fact that he lied about knowing him meant little: the Despenser was almost incapable of telling the truth, Edmund knew that. Who else would have considered hiring an assassin to come and murder the Queen? There was no one apart from him who could have been so brazen in their actions.

  Mad. Bloody mad. As soon as the Queen died, her brother in France would demand the heads of those responsible, and all knew exactly how much Sir Hugh hated and feared her. He would be the number one suspect.

  At that moment, Sir Baldwin and Simon appeared. Seeing the Earl, Simon pointed him out to Sir Baldwin, and the pair crossed the yard towards him.

  ‘My Lord, would you object to answering some questions?’ the knight asked. ‘As you know, your brother the King has asked us to investigate the murder of the woman Mabilla.’

  Simon was eyeing the Earl as Baldwin introduced them, and try as he might, he could not shake the description which Alicia had given them from his mind. She had said young, which was fair enough, but she’d also described a less muscled neck, and shoulders that could not have graced a knight. This man was living proof of his skills with lance and sword. His shoulders were broad as befitted one who trained with weapons every day of his life; his neck was strong enough to hold a man sitting on his head. Still, he could have hired a man to kill the woman, he supposed.

  ‘If you must,’ the Earl said with a bad grace.

  ‘We have heard that you knew the woman Mabilla.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Is it true that she rejected your advances?’

  Earl Edmund coloured with anger. ‘What is that to you? Oh, I forgot, my dear brother told you to investigate this little affair, so naturally you had to come here to me. Well, yes, the brazen little bint did waggle her arse near me once too often, and I succumbed. It was after Christmas, and she was obviously demanding some attention. Christ, you know what some of the bitches can be like. She was on heat, and I was ready. So I chased her out of the hall and into the yard here. It was clear what she wanted, and I was happy enough to supply it. I mean, last year …’

  What could he say? That last year hadn’t been his best ever? By the Gospels, that was an understatement. He had been sent out to Guyenne with the King’s host to protect the lands, and then when the French arrived, his military career was shredded. They had the son of the devil himself, Count Valois, there, and that experienced old bastard had trounced Edmund at every turn. There was nothing to do but retreat, and finally Edmund had been surrounded at La Reole. By late September, Charles Valois had conquered all, and Edmund was forced into a humiliating truce.

  When he finally returned to England, he had hoped for some sympathy, but no. There was nothing, only contempt for his actions and failings. No one wanted to listen to him or to hear his side of the story. All they cared about, as the King himself had said, was the loss of their lands. Well, so did he!

  Mabilla was the only one who ever gave him the time of day during those miserable lonely weeks. She obviously had the hots for him, and he thought she was lovely, although he waited for a signal. And when she seemed to give him the come-on, he rallied, set his lance to the rest and charged.

  ‘She was a lovely wench, I’ll give her that.’ The Earl sighed heavily. It was dreadful to think she was dead.

  ‘But she rejected you?’

  ‘Look, I’m a man, and I’ve had many maids – most willing, some not – and I know when one of them wants to play hide the sausage! She was keen – she made that obvious. And then, when I followed her out from the hall, and tried to grapple with her in the Green Yard, she swore at me, screamed and accused me of rape, God help me!’

  Simon said, ‘You’d been drinking?’

  ‘Oh, you can look at me like that if you want, Bailiff, but you hark to me! That wench knew how to wriggle her arse as she passed by, how to bend just low enough to give me a view of her bubbies, and she would sit so close to me I could hardly put my hand down without resting it on her thighs. That went on for weeks. And then, the first time I gave chase, I got the brush-off and accusations of rape. It was ballocks! Pure ballocks. She’d been drawing me on, and as soon as she had my blood up, she lost interest. She’s damned lucky I didn’t rip her clothes off there and then and give her a good bulling!’

  ‘Why didn’t you? She deserved it, for being a tease,’ Simon said sarcastically. It was the excuse he had often heard in his own court.

  ‘I’m no rapist,’ Edmund said hotly. ‘And in any case, if I was found to have done something like that, I’d have had my arse in gaol instantly. My name is no protection – not after last year.’ He said bitterly, ‘Even the King would have been happy to see me, his own brother, out of the way.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Baldwin said as they walked away. ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘The Chaplain told us he thought that there was a gleam in Edmund’s eye towards Mabilla. But surely if he had killed her, he would have denied any flirtation between them. Why should he admit it, and tell us the story straight out like that?’ Simon shrugged. ‘It didn’t seem the act of an ashamed or guilty man.’

  ‘I agree. Which means that the
rest of his tale could also be true. In which case, what was the girl doing, teasing and tormenting a man like him until he felt he had no choice but to bed her? Clearly she did not want that, so why tempt him?’

  ‘What motive could she have had?’ Simon agreed.

  ‘I do not know. But it is something I intend to try to understand,’ Baldwin said.

  They were almost at the gate to the Green Yard now, but then they heard Baldwin’s name being bellowed, and turned to see a messenger running towards them at full tilt.

  Earl Edmund was still at his table when he heard the shouting and saw a rider approaching through the rain. He rode in at full tilt, yanking the reins about as he cleared the gatehouse, so that his beast thrust both forelegs out stiffly; the man was out of the saddle almost before the horse registered that he had stopped.

  ‘What’s his hurry?’ Earl Edmund wondered aloud.

  The man pelted in towards the palace, but before long he was running out again. He grabbed the reins, pulling the horse to a mounting block near the gatehouse, he sprang up into the saddle again, and then sat waiting for someone else.

  Men were running about, and two more horses were quickly brought out and saddled. Then Baldwin and Simon hurried over, and in a moment the two and their guide had spurred their mounts and hastened off through the gate, heading west.

  Edmund finished up his drink, belched, and wiped his mouth. If they were going, it left much of the palace empty. That was good. It gave him a little time to do a few things himself.

  The news that Jack atte Hedge’s lodging had been found gave Baldwin a whole new view on their position. As though this mere snippet of information could protect him and his family, he grabbed at this chance.

  Chelchede was the name of the small vill to which the messenger took them. It was one of those places which Baldwin always disliked; built in the loop of the Thames, the area was prone to flooding. It was very damp now, in the middle of the winter, and puddles and mud predominated. The trees which survived were stunted and unhealthful, because of the sodden soil. At least the people looked fit and well. Their diet must include a large quantity of the wild fish that swam in the river, Baldwin guessed.