By Sylvian Hamilton

by Max Gilbert

  'What was he in for?' Straccan asked the alehouse keeper.

  'His mates buggered off without paying their score.'

  'Why did he stay?'

  'Pissed.'

  Straccan hauled him up, so light a weight that he staggered back, braced as he was for something more substantial. He carried the body to the alehouse, laid it on a bench, fetched water and a rag, and wiped the blood and muck from the face. A darkening lump was swelling from the edge of an eyebrow up into the hair. The man groaned, tried to sit up and was violently sick. It was a couple of days before he could stand again, and meanwhile he lay on straw in the stable-loft at Straccan's charges.

  When Bane emerged from the nightmarish vertigo that had kept him, kitten-weak, on his back, Straccan packed him on his led mule and rode to Peterborough. At the abbey gate he said, 'This is as far as I go.'

  'I'm in your debt,' Bane said.

  'Forget it.'

  'I'd like a chance to work it off.'

  'I don't need any help,' Straccan said curtly.

  'Roads aren't safe. Two's less like to be set upon than one.'

  'I can take care of myself.'

  'Expect you can, Master. So can I, when I'm sober.'

  'Anyway, I wouldn't want a piss-artist around.'

  'I'm not,' said Bane, stung. 'It was rotten bad beer!'

  'That's what they all say,' said Straccan. He took the mule's leading-rein, rode in under the arch of the abbey gates and didn't look back.

  His business there took longer than expected, for His Reverence the Abbot, abed with gout, would see no one until he felt better. Three days later when Straccan rode out again, an insubstantial figure detached itself from the mud-splashed wall and limped barefoot after him. Near the town gate the rider stopped and let the man catch up. The swelling over his eye had gone down but that side of his face was all bruise, the same yellowing purple as the threatening morning sky which promised storm.

  'What are you called?' Straccan asked.

  'Hawkan Bane.'

  'Well, Hawkan Bane, you don't owe me anything.'

  'No? Reckon you owe me, then.'

  'What?' Straccan laughed. 'How's that?'

  'You saved my life. I'd've probably died. They'd've let me lie in the mud and drown, if I didn't freeze first. So it's up to you to look after me now! On Tuesday I ate my coat and yesterday I ate my shoes. Now all I've got left's this shirt, and if I sell that for food too, I'll go bare-arsed. So I'm your responsibility!'

  'I never heard such crap in my life,' said Straccan, 'but I admire the cheek of it, I suppose. What use could you be to me?'

  'I can do things. You'd be surprised.'

  'Surprise me.'

  'I can cook. I can mend, tend livestock. I'm skilled with wounds, fevers and such. I can read and write a little, and reckon. I can kill your enemies and entertain your friends.'

  Straccan snorted. 'Sounds like a reference for a wife! Can you really read and write?'

  Bane bent and wrote in the mud with his finger: God, Kynge, Engelond. Straccan peered at the words as the mud absorbed them into itself again. 'Fair enough,' he said. He nudged his horse gently with his knee and it walked on slowly, with Bane holding the stirrup and limping beside. 'So what did you do before you were brought to such straits?'

  'I've travelled,' said Bane. 'I was a soldier.'

  'Where?'

  'France. I was with King Richard at Gisors. I was left for dead there. The night-frost stopped me bleeding to death and a woman helped me –one of the scavengers that loot the dead after any battle. But she took a fancy to me. She was all right.'

  'I was there,' said Straccan. 'My horse was badly hurt: I thought he'd die, but he didn't. I took a pike-thrust through the thigh. It's still stiff in foul weather.'

  'A horseman?' Bane was startled. 'What were you, a sergeant?'

  'No. I am a knight. And must be on my way, so go you yours, and let go my stirrup.'

  'Let me along of you for a week! If you still don't want me, then I'll go my way!'

  Four years later he was still with Straccan.

  Bane's travelling kit contained the essentials: spoon in its case, provender, cup and water bottle, fish-hooks and line, a change of clothes, spare shoes, bandages and salves, and an inventive collection of concealed weapons as well as the short sword worn at his back, the dagger in his belt and the axe strapped to his saddle. There were also some less usual items including a flute and small bagpipes. His rangy bony cheap-looking horse would attract no attention, and Bane himself, a small skinny figure cloaked and hooded in drab greys and browns, would pass as nigh invisible. His peculiarly elastic countenance could assume at will the appearance of a man much older, with sucked-in cheeks and puckered toothless-looking mouth. So that the old man seen in one village was obviously not the much younger fellow met with further along the road.

  He made first for Holystone, to learn all he could of the dead man, his appearance and the circumstances of his end. The stableman, Martin, fetched a sack and tipped it out.

  'This is what he was wearing. Bailiff's son Tom, he looked at it all, before he went.'

  Bane fingered the small pile of clothes: leggings, boots--the boots looked new, the soles dirty but with scarcely any wear--a torn and bloodied tunic and jerkin, a knitted bonnet, a rough frieze cape with thistle-burrs caught along its hem. 'This is all he had?'

  'There's his pack,' Martin said, taking a satchel from a hook on the wall. 'Just a spare pair of shoes and a tunic. There was some bread, and some bacon and cheese.'

  'What happened to that?'

  'We ate it. Me, that is, and Oswyn the scullion. There's a bottle, too. This one.' He unhooked a thonged pewter flask. 'It had ale in it.'

  ‘I take it that's empty now too.'

  Martin gave him a scornful look.

  'Was it good ale?'

  'Aye, it was.'

  'And was the bread fresh or stale?'

  'No more'n a day old.'

  'Good cheese?'

  'Oh aye.'

  'Local cheese?'

  'No. From east of here, I reckon. Like they make in Trundle. They sell it there on fair days.' And, with pride, 'I've been there!' 'A travelled man.' Bane picked over the coins in his purse and put a pie-wedge silver piece in Martin's ready hand. 'Did you tell bailiff's Tom about the food and the ale?'

  'No. He never asked.'

  While Bane rode east then north, as his enquiries led him, Straccan sent to his agents in France and Italy concerning the relics of Saint Thomas, and awaited replies. It was his habit to ride around his farm every morning, and now she was at home he would set Gilla on the saddle before him. On this mild wet morning they halted to watch men clearing the rubble of collapsed walls where the new stables and mews were planned. In their straw rain-capes the men looked like little mobile haystacks with arms and feet. Straccan rested his chin a moment on top of his daughter's head and smelt the sweet herby scent of her soft hair.

  'You've had your hair washed,' he said, fingering a fine fluffy strand which curled and clung to his fingers.

  'Adeliza washed it last night. She washed hers first and then mine. Her hair is so long she can sit on it. Will mine grow like that?'

  'If you don't cut it.'

  'The nuns cut their hair, they cut it all off, short as yours.'

  'They have to. They're not supposed to be vain.'

  'But they are married to Our Saviour! Wouldn't you think he'd like them to be pretty?' Straccan opened his mouth but she hurried on. 'And that's another thing! How can he have so many brides? There are seventeen nuns at Holystone, and hundreds more all over the world.'

  'You'll have to ask Mother Rohese to explain, when you go back,' said her father, feeling the firm ground of precise earthly matters turning to treacherous theological quick-clay beneath him. 'Mother Rohese is too important, she's always very busy. Dame Januaria says good Christians don't ask questions, that questions are the tools of the devil.'

  Straccan felt even more at sea.
'I suppose it depends on the questions,' he said.

  'Yes, but if no one tells you what you want to know, how can you find out, if you don't ask?'

  Chapter 6

  For Sir Richard Straccan, Knight, at Stirrup, near Dieulacresse, into his own hand, read the superscription, and Straccan cracked open the seal with his thumbnail, holding the letter to the window's light. From his Paris agent, encoded, it began without preamble and tackled all essentials.

  The item in question is an especial treasure of the king in his Chapel Royal. There is no possibility of it being sold. The chapel is never unattended. The relics are locked in, under, and behind the altar. Masses are continually sung, at least two attendants always present. The doors are guarded.

  The letter continued with a list of relics dispatched earlier that week in the vessel Sainte Foy, together with several orders from clients and a short list from the pope's agent of minor relics for sale.

  It was three more weeks before the reply came from Rome. He read it and sent for his clerk. 'His Holiness no longer has the finger of Saint Thomas. He gave it to His Grace of Canterbury.' Peter whistled. 'Langton's got it! Is he still in Rome?'

  'No. He's in Becket's old hideaway, Pontigny. I'll have to go. We might come to an agreement. If ever a man needed money, our exiled archbishop must!'

  'I thought the Holy Father was his friend.'

  'Since boyhood, I believe. The pope will sprinkle archbishoprics and relics among his cronies, but he hates to part with true coin!'

  'You be careful,' Peter said. 'The king'll take a dim view of anyone known to visit Langton.'

  'This isn't politics,' said Straccan. 'It's only a petty piece of business.'

  Looking across the muddy tidal river down to the town and the grey sea beyond, Bane let his horse crop and sat with his back to a boulder out of the wind. A huddle of heather-thatched roofs, liberally blotched with seagulls' droppings gleaming white, spread out from the castle which crouched threateningly over the River Tweed. The tide was in, the river busy with boats, and two large merchant galleys lay at anchor below the castle, with several smaller vessels by warehouses along the waterside. The town embraced the castle closely. While Bane watched, carts and riders and people afoot moved in and out of the town. The offshore wind spread the chimney smoke thinly out over the sea.

  Berwick looked busy, peaceful and squalid. Scars of its old sufferings showed. Gangs of repairmen clustered here and there along the castle walls, new stone patching looked raw and pale. Seagulls swarmed in the air like bees, circling and screaming, a continual raucous din as they swooped on rubbish and rose triumphant, small birds pursued by larger. Everything and almost everyone below was splashed with their droppings.

  He had watched the town since early light, seen the fishing boats go out, the tiny distant guard on the castle walls change, the morning rush of farmers into town with milk and produce. Travellers departed in their various directions. Some had passed him, going south. With Nottingham, York, Durham, Newcastle and Alnwick now behind him, Bane had covered more than two hundred miles since leaving Holystone.

  At Nottingham, he'd found a woman who remembered the dead man for his outlandish speech. 'A foreigner,' she said. 'Welsh, or Irish, or something. Yes, he drank here, and I filled his bottle for him –he tried to drive the price down! I told him, there's an Interdict on, you know!' No, he had no horse. He had asked for a shoemaker.

  The shoemaker, primed with a quarter penny, delivered his information. He had taken the man's boots in part exchange for a new pair. The old were worn out, and no, he didn't have them any more, he'd reused the salvageable leather, which was just common stuff. He didn't recognise the workmanship; they weren't local boots. The man said his mule had broken its leg at Newark, and he'd had to walk thereafter.

  At Newark, Bane found the farrier who'd bought the mule and still had its harness. 'Not English work,' the farrier said, running a grimy thumb along the stitches. 'Foreign, that is.'

  'Any idea where he came from?'

  'No. But I picked up the mule on the Doncaster road.'

  At Doncaster his luck seemed to run out until by sheer good chance he sat at dice with the off-duty gate guards, one of whom remembered winning two shillings from a traveller whose description was very like the murdered man, and who had been a sore loser.

  'Quite a tasty little fight we ad,' the guard said cheerfully, 'till one of me mates dropped a sack over im, and we bundled im into the lock-up for the night. Went off next morning swearing murder.'

  'Murder's what he got,' said Bane. 'Where'd he come from, do you know?'

  'York.'

  York was a big place, and Bane, asking about a tall man, probably foreign, riding a grey mule, learned nothing for two days but then found a blacksmith who had shod the mule. It had cast a shoe a mile or so outside the city. The blacksmith was talkative and had a good memory. The man had paid him with a Scottish coin and asked about the road ahead. He was going to Doncaster.

  'I know where he went. I need to know where he came from,' Bane said.

  'Dunno where from, but he'd come through Durham,' said the blacksmith. 'Prayed at Saint Cuthbert's shrine, he told me so, for a safe journey.'

  'Saint Cuthbert wasn't listening,' said Bane.

  At Durham he tracked him to a brothel, where a disgruntled whore remembered him for his roughness and the false coin he gave her.

  'A foreigner,' Bane said. 'Welsh, Irish, or something.'

  'Scottish,' said the girl.

  'Are you sure?'

  'My mum was Scottish. Course I'm sure.'

  'Did he say where he'd come from?'

  'He said I wasn't a patch on the whores in Newcastle, and they charged less for the pleasure of him,' she said, and spat. Bane gave her a penny. 'It better be real.' She scowled.

  'It is, never fear. I'd give two more if you'd had his name.'

  'Oh, that. Grimmer, or Grimmon, or something like,' she said. 'Gimme my tuppence.'

  Newcastle was cold, dark, foggy and reeked of fish. Its whorehouses were nothing to write home about and its whores had seen better days, but at the eighth establishment Bane struck lucky. His tall Scot with the grey mule was remembered unlovingly. The man's name was Crimmon, and he was from Berwick.

  Wondering if he was going to have to traipse right to the very top of Scotland, Bane had set out for Berwick and now sat watching the town as it yawned and got up in the morning. Scratching the bug bites from last night's bed, he hoped to find a stable to sleep in tonight. Years of experience had taught him that prized horseflesh lay cleaner and sweeter than Christians. When the morning rush in and out of the gates was over, he rode down and entered the town, asking for the sheriff.

  'Crimmon, you say? That's all, just a name?'

  'Just a name. He rode a grey mule.'

  'Why are you looking for him, English? What's he done?'

  'Got himself murdered. The Prioress of Holystone thought his kin should know.'