King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  The reeve here was a quiet, usually cheery fellow of middle height, with an open, red face like a ripe apple. Unusually for this area, he had blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, which he kept wedged under a woollen cap, but now he removed it as Baldwin approached, holding it in his two hands. ‘Sir Baldwin, I hope I find you well?’

  ‘I hope I see you well also, good Ulric.’

  ‘I am well enough, Sir Knight.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  ‘She thrives, Sir Baldwin. And yours?’

  Baldwin continued with the lengthy introductions, although he was keen to see the body. There was much for him to be working on when he returned home, and the unpleasant dampness dribbling down his back was a reminder that it would be good to get indoors and out of this downpour, thin though it may be. And yet he would need this man’s help. Ulric was the reeve for a wide area about here, responsible for the vill here at Sandford, and the hamlets at West Sandford, and some five miles all about. Ulric knew all the men personally within that area, and he would be essential as a helper. But Baldwin knew that Ulric had one failing: the man was a menace for the correct behaviour. He would panic if there was the faintest hint of impropriety. For him, to hurry through the greetings would be an insult to him and to the visitor.

  At last, when Baldwin felt the man should be content with the health of his wife, his children, his hounds, hawks and stables, he felt ready to ask where the body lay.

  ‘He’s not been moved, Sir Baldwin. Just in here, if you please.’

  He led the way into the tavern. It was a small room, only shoulder height at the walls, but rising up into the thatch overhead. At the middle was a series of planks laid over the beams that held the roof trusses together, which Baldwin knew would be the tavern-keeper’s bed. It was a scant foot over his head, and Baldwin only hoped it was safe. It didn’t look it.

  Ulric continued through the building to where a second low door stood ajar.

  Inside was a small storeroom and brewhouse. The further wall held a waist-high furnace, with a copper fitting tightly into the stonework over it. A series of barrels lay off to the left, while sacks of grain hung from rafters nearby, off the ground to prevent them growing damp or getting attacked by rodents. The room held the warm, sweet odour of malt, mingled with the more obvious scents of death. And the smell Baldwin recalled so well – burned human flesh.

  Baldwin had seen deaths of all kinds in his life. He had witnessed the easy deaths of older men and women, he had witnessed executions, he had seen the slow, agonizing death throes of those dying of starvation, and brutal slaughter during ferocious battles before he began to investigate murders. But when he saw who had died here, he felt a pang of regret. It was rare that he would meet a murder victim only a short while before his death, and when Baldwin met this man, all he had done was insult him.

  ‘Where’s his friend?’ he said as he squatted near the body.

  ‘He had none here,’ Ulric said. ‘He came here alone, and died alone.’

  ‘No? I saw him in Crediton, and there he was travelling with a Welshman.’ Baldwin looked down again. ‘It was a hard death.’

  Ulric shook his head sadly. ‘There are few easy ways to die, but whoever did this . . .’

  The body was lying near a wall. Gagged with a cloth, his cheeks were distended, his eyes staring madly in a face that was grey and bloodless in the cold light. His left hand had scrabbled madly in the dirt of the floor, while his legs had been held still by a sack of grain dropped on to them. A trickle of malt had run out and now mingled with the blood that had puddled on the ground.

  But the right arm was what took Baldwin’s attention.

  ‘Have you seen his hand?’ Ulric asked in a fearful undertone.

  Baldwin glanced at him. Where the hand had been there was only a bloody stump. Nothing more. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Sir Baldwin! Hah! In God’s name, I am glad to see you. How is your wife, eh? The daughter still growing strong and fit? I’ll be bound your little boy’s nothing less than a chip off the old block, eh? Let’s hope the little devil doesn’t have to rest his head on one himself before he’s twenty, though, eh? Ha! No need for the headsman’s axe there, eh?’

  This was all delivered at a volume that would have drowned the hucksters at Exeter’s market. Baldwin could almost feel the words assaulting his ears as Coroner Sir Richard de Welles threw his reins to a boy, lifted his leg over his horse’s neck, kicked his other foot free of the stirrup and sprang to the ground as lightly as a man fifteen years younger.

  Sir Richard was not so young. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a face that was made to smile, he was a powerful man who wore a thick beard and moustache. He was a kindly soul, though, who had seen much of life. He was often surprisingly sympathetic to victims, because he had seen sadness in his time, losing his young wife when he was still very young, yet he always attempted to see the best in life. There were few situations in which he would not find a grain of humour, and for that if nothing else Baldwin was fond of him. His other traits, bellowing at people as though all peasants were deaf, telling appalling jokes and playing practical jokes when he could, were less endearing.

  ‘Where’s the stiff, then, eh?’

  ‘Through here,’ Ulric said starchily. He had not yet been introduced, and he felt that this was an insult to his reeve’s dignity. A reeve was the most senior representative of his area, and for Ulric to be ignored was bound to have been noticed by some of the local villeins. They would make fun of him for this.

  ‘You are?’

  ‘I am Ulric, reeve of Sandford.’

  ‘Master Ulric, you have my apology. I have travelled far today, and was so glad to see my friend Sir Baldwin that I entirely forgot myself. Master, would you do me the honour of showing me the corpse? And if you could let me know his name and anything else you know of him, I would be most grateful. And while we are viewing the unfortunate, if you would be so good as to suggest to the good alewife here that a man who’s ridden close on twenty miles for a sight of a body is likely to have a parched throat, I’d be even more glad. A man could die of thirst here and lose his voice before a body stirred to help him, I dare say.’

  Ulric hesitated, overwhelmed by the effusive friendliness as much by the bellowing voice, before waving to Hob and hurriedly leading the way into the back room.

  ‘Not pleasant,’ Sir Richard said, peering down at the body. ‘Who did it?’

  Ulric shook his head. ‘We have no idea.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘A pardoner, sir. He arrived here yesterday, no earlier, and came alone. Nobody in the vill knew him, so far as I know. His accent was not local. And I’ve travelled.’

  Sir Richard tilted his head to one side and cocked an eye at Baldwin.

  ‘I think he is right,’ Baldwin intervened quickly before Sir Richard could make a joke about a reeve’s potential journeys. Few would see more than a radius of some twenty miles about their vill in their lifetime, but he knew that Ulric had fought in the king’s wars. ‘I have myself met this fellow, only the day before yesterday. He was in Crediton then. I noticed that he had an accent from the north. I would think he might have hailed from Bristol, or somewhere about that way.’

  ‘You get his name?’

  ‘I think it was John.’

  ‘No need to worry about proving he was local, then. Just a murdrum fine and the usual amercements,’ Sir Richard grunted.

  ‘He was with another man too.’

  ‘Aha. You interest me, Sir Baldwin. Who was this other man?’

  Huw sat at the side of the road and pulled his boot off, staring at his foot with wry discontent. The hole in the side of his boot had grown, and mud had stained his toes red, as though he was bleeding from a cut. It also let in stones, and he tipped the boot up, watching pebbles and muddy water dribble out.

  The weather was atrocious this year. Nearly as bad as the famine years, when all the crops withered where they were planted, the rain flattening them to
the ground, drowning the grain and leaving many people to die of starvation.

  At least the downpour had eased a little over the morning. Now he was more than a part of the way to the place he thought John had mentioned. Somewhere called Sandford. From the look of it, it was well named, he thought sourly. There was indeed a shallow little ford here, with a wooden bridge for those on foot. Hardly any point in his worrying, though, with this hole in his boot.

  A loud thudding of hooves made him look up. Even this close to a large town like Crediton, no traveller could afford to be complacent, not with the numbers of cutthroats and club gangs who roamed the lanes, always seeking out the unwary. And status meant nothing. There were all too many noblemen who behaved in the same manner, stealing anything they might from those who passed near their castles.

  All the same, these didn’t look like outlaws. They were not clad in bright armour, but they were on horseback, which together meant well-to-do and less likely to attack. He hoped so, anyway, because it was clear that they had seen him from the way that they slowed and pointed.

  No one was safe in this God-forgotten land, Huw told himself as he pulled his boot on again and slowly made to stand up as they approached.

  ‘You are Huw? The triacleur?’

  ‘I have been called that. Not that I have much in the way of medicine with me just now, friends,’ he said, observing how two of the men had their hands near their long-bladed knives.

  A third held a billhook in his fist, and he pointed it at Huw. ‘He’s a bit past your medicine now, you Welsh git.’

  ‘Who is? Friends, I don’t know what you mean,’ Huw said, his hands held up in a placatory manner. ‘I stayed overnight in Crediton, and have only just been in a position to set off to meet John.’

  ‘Who, you say? Your mate, the pardoner. You killed him.’

  ‘John is dead? It was nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Tell it to the Keeper!’

  To Baldwin’s secret astonishment, the coroner sank three quarts of Hob’s best ale before sitting at the table, belching gently and patting his belly. ‘Ach, there’s nothing so good as a fresh ale on an empty belly. Nothing except a haunch of meat on top of it anyway,’ he added, eyeing the capon roasting over the fire.

  ‘Do you never suffer from an indigestion? Liverishness? A sore head?’ Baldwin enquired rhetorically. He had never seen the vaguest indication of Sir Richard feeling out of sorts.

  ‘Me? What do you take me for? Some milksop youth? Eh?’

  Baldwin smiled to himself. ‘What do you think of this killing, then?’

  ‘The entry is clear enough. A man slid himself inside from under the eaves.’

  When they had looked about the chamber, the hole at the rear of the room was immediately plain. The cob had fallen away a little, and the thatch pulled apart to leave space for a man to enter.

  ‘He was so drunk he probably never heard his killer enter,’ Baldwin said. ‘Hob and Ulric both said he was well in his cups and had to leave the room before they went home.’

  ‘So someone entered afterwards and killed him, before cutting his hand free,’ the coroner said, and belched.

  ‘Yes,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘Come along, then – why burn his hand?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  They had found the hand, scorched and blackened, like some wizened relic, lying in the furnace under the copper.

  Coroner Richard grunted. ‘If he thought a little fire like that would do more than singe the hair from the fingers, he was a thoroughgoing idiot,’ he concluded.

  ‘No man would think a little fire like that would have destroyed the hand. It wasn’t thrown there to be destroyed, not on a little fire of twigs and shavings. No man would think it would work for that,’ Baldwin said.

  ‘So why put it there?’

  ‘I can hear horses,’ Baldwin said, climbing to his feet.

  They had sent the reeve and some men in the direction of Crediton on horseback to see if any news could be discovered about the triacleur, but that was only a short while ago. There had been no time to ride all the way to the town, let alone enquire. And yet here they all were, riding at a trot, with a bedraggled man hurrying behind, his hands bound with a stout rope that was gripped in the reeve’s own hand.

  Baldwin and the coroner walked out to stand near the tree where their horses had been hitched. A trio of young boys were rubbing their horses down and seeing to their water and feed. Baldwin had paid them earlier. His training as a Templar had taught him always to see to the comfort and health of his mount before his own. He walked over and patted his old beast, muttering to him as he gazed along the road at the approaching riders.

  They drew up in the market area, and Reeve Ulric clambered down, yanking his prisoner forward. ‘Here’s your man, Sir Baldwin, Sir Richard. A Welshman,’ he added, spitting the word.

  Before Baldwin or Sir Richard could comment, a priest appeared, striding down the lane from the church. ‘Is this the man? Is this the killer?’

  ‘We don’t know it,’ Baldwin said coolly before turning to the man again. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘I am innocent, Sir Knight. These men found me on the road coming here. They saw me and brought me, but I don’t know why.’

  ‘You say you don’t know what’s happened to the pardoner, eh?’ Ulric snapped.

  There was a flash of fear in the man’s eyes, Baldwin saw. ‘I don’t know what happened to my friend.’

  ‘You call him your friend?’ Hob said. He was behind Baldwin, and now he stepped forward. ‘Sir Keeper, this man was no friend to the pardoner. The pardoner told me last night that this fellow, who had walked with him all the way from Wales, had said he would see the pardoner in hell before the week was out. They argued, and the pardoner had hoped that they might make amends to each other, but now it’s obvious what happened. This Welshman broke into my tavern to murder my guest in his sleep.’

  Baldwin looked at the man they were all accusing. He was a tatterdemalion, it was true. His hosen were beslubbered with mud, his coat stained and marked, his cloak ragged where thorns had tugged at it – but a man’s appearance after a long journey could be deceptive.

  He cast a glance up. The sun was hidden behind clouds, which hurried across the sky with a smooth urgency, but there was no sign of serious bad weather. If anything, it seemed warmer. He looked across at the coroner.

  ‘Do you wish to open your inquest?’ he asked.

  ‘May as well, I suppose,’ Coroner Richard said, amiably enough. ‘You, man. Yes, tavern-keeper, you. What’s your name? Hob? Fetch more wine. Priest? You’ll have to clerk for me today. I’ve lost my normal ink-dribbler. Ulric? Gather the freemen of the vill here. Come on, man! I don’t have all day even if you do!’

  Sir Richard cast an eye around and shot a look up at the sky ‘Bring me a bench,’ he said. ‘We shall begin our inquest here.’

  Baldwin ordered that the man’s hands should be unbound as soon as the coroner and he were sitting. There was no need to worry about Huw escaping from here, for he clearly would have little chance of outrunning the men of the vill. Instead, Baldwin allowed him to rub his wrists where the hemp rope had chafed, and let him take his stand near them both. Ulric stood near at hand, watching the triacleur suspiciously and hefting his billhook, while two men went and fetched out the body. They stripped it naked, before rolling it over and over in front of all the freemen of the vill so the wounds could be noted.

  The coroner called out a list of the injuries, examining them closely, pulling the head back to show the depth of the wound in the throat, lifting the arm to show where the hand had been cut away. Letting it fall, he turned to the prisoner.

  ‘Well, Master Welshman, what do you have to say?’

  ‘I can give no story at all, good Knight, for the simple reason that I’ve no idea what had been done to my old friend. All I can tell is, I was in Crediton last afternoon, and there were many saw me there. One fool had a loud shouting match with me, dema
nding to know what I was selling, and saying I was selling poisons. That’s why I’ve no bag with me now. I was forced to run and lost all my wares. It was not a good day.’

  ‘Where did you go after that?’

  ‘I found a hayloft over near the church. I don’t know whose.’

  ‘Did anyone see you there?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘What of this morning? Did any man see you rise and leave?’

  ‘I was careful no one did! What would they do to a poor pilgrim of the roadway like me?’ Huw demanded hotly, staring about him at all the grim faces. ‘A stranger and foreigner in a strange land is always suspected, no matter whether he be innocent or guilty. Foreigners are easy to blame, Sir Knight.’

  ‘That may be true. The guilty are also easy to blame, Triacleur,’ Baldwin noted. He chose not to comment on the fact that a man with so sour a face might expect to be viewed with suspicion.

  ‘He is the murderer,’ Reeve Ulric said. ‘Listen to him! You can hear the guilt in his voice.’

  ‘I hear nothing of the sort,’ Baldwin said. ‘Only a man in fear of his life. A justifiable fear, I have to say.’

  ‘Slipping into a room in the middle of the night – that’s a Welshie trick,’ the reeve persisted.

  ‘You have experience?’ Sir Richard said at last. He had been sitting with his chin on his fist, elbow on his knee, eyeing Huw with a wary lack of enthusiasm, as he might study a rabid hound.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You sound like a man who speaks from experience. Were you in Wales?’

  ‘I fought there for the last king, God save his memory! Edward the First took me and seventeen others from about here with our lord.’

  ‘You fought, eh?’

  ‘We fought much, yes. Pacifying that country was hard work. But we did our duty, although only seven of us came home again.’

  ‘A shame. I have been involved in battles too.’