‘I had helped Jan to lock and bar the gate, and was on my way to bed. It took me past the chapel here, and I saw that the door was ajar. I … I didn’t want to enter, sir.’
‘That is understandable,’ Stephen said drily. Not many would want to pass through the graveyard itself after dark and alone. No matter how often a man taught logic and common sense, local men would continue to believe the old superstitions; ghosts must wander about the world. The worst place was this charnel house with its concentration of mouldering bones. No doubt the older members of the Choir had been enthusiastically dinning terrible stories into all the others until they’d only go out at night in gangs of two or three. ‘Yet you did. Why?’
‘I thought that if someone had been in to steal the cross or plate, I should make sure that the Dean was told as soon as possible, sir.’
‘Most commendable,’ Stephen said. The fellow might be telling the truth at that. Or he might have gone in there to steal a gulp of Communion wine. It wasn’t unknown.
‘When I entered, I tripped over him, sir. It was dark and I just fell over him,’ Paul said, his eyes moving once more to the body which lay only a few feet from the doorway.
‘Quite – ah, yes,’ the Dean said at last. ‘Hmm. And that is how you got his blood on you?’
The Annuellar looked like he was going to be sick. ‘Yes.’
‘So how could this have happened?’ the Dean murmured to himself. ‘We shall have to investigate.’
‘The Coroner has been summoned, but I understand he is off at another death,’ Stephen said. ‘He may be away for a day or two.’
‘A sad loss,’ the Dean said.
There was no flicker of amusement on his face, but Stephen knew why his tone had such a depth of irony. The Dean and the new Coroner had never seen eye to eye. The Cathedral had its own rights and liberties, but the Coroner, who had been given his position to replace poor Sir Roger de Gidleigh, who had been killed during a rising early in the year, was ever trying to impose the King’s rules on the place. Issuing commands was no way to persuade the Dean that cooperation was to their mutual advantage.
‘Perhaps, then, we should be entitled to ask for assistance from another quarter,’ the Dean mused, and Stephen was struck, not for the first time, that when the Dean wished it, he could speak quite normally without his damned annoying hmms and hahs.
He eyed the Dean shrewdly. ‘What are you plotting, Dean?’
‘I plot nothing. I just – ah – wonder whether we ought to aid the good Coroner by asking for help from people who have already proved their use to the Church.’
‘You mean the Keeper.’
‘He did – um – help before,’ the Dean agreed.
When the call came, Sir Baldwin Furnshill was already in a foul mood, and the messenger who found him grooming his rounsey at the stableyard behind his little manor house was somewhat shocked by his reception. Baldwin was not by nature captious, but when the messenger arrived he was not his usual self.
That morning his wife Jeanne had in jest accused him of watching one of their servants over-closely, and he had denied it angrily – and guiltily. The young servant-girl had reminded him so much of the woman he had met while returning from pilgrimage in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, and the shame of his adultery still poisoned his soul.
It wasn’t his wife’s fault – he knew that. In God’s name, his crime was entirely his own responsibility. No one else could be blamed – certainly not poor Jeanne. Baldwin had been close to death, and when he recovered, he had seduced the woman. She was married, as was he, but they had both been lonely and desperate – she because her man was incapable of giving her children, he because of his brush with mortality. Both had taken comfort in the way that men and women will.
That was Baldwin’s view, after rationalising his behaviour over the weeks, and he was not of a mood to reinvestigate his motives just now, so when Jeanne joked at his apparent interest in the new maid, he had responded with anger sparked by his own shame.
‘What?’ he had shouted. ‘You accuse me of trying to get the wench to lie with me? I’ve been gone all these months, and now I’m home you seek to watch over my every gesture like a gaoler?’
He should have gone to her and comforted her, hugged her and reassured her of his love for her. That was what he would have done before, but today, even as her eyes reflected her shock and hurt, he could not do so. That would be hypocrisy, for he had been comparing the new girl with his lover, and the thoughts of her, with her long dark hair like a raven’s wing enveloping him as she gently moved above him were still too sweet. He couldn’t embrace Jeanne while thinking of another woman.
So she had turned and left the room with pain in her eyes that he should have sought to wipe away, and he, foolish and clumsy in his shame, went out to take comfort in the only way he knew, riding his horse until both had built up a powerful sweat and he had exorcised his guilt for a while. Now he was grooming the mount, swearing to himself under his breath while he wondered how to ease his wife’s feelings of hurt.
The relationship of a man with his mount was much more easy than that of a man with his wife. A woman could be demanding, petulant, irrational. Horses needed food and drink, but beyond that were biddable and easy to understand. How could a man understand a wife? Even Jeanne, the most quickwitted, intelligent and loving woman he had ever met, was still prone to ridiculous comments.
No, that wasn’t fair. Baldwin knew he was just trying to excuse his own behaviour. It was he who was at fault, not Jeanne. And suddenly he had a flare of insight as he brushed at the rounsey’s flank, and his brush was stilled in his hand.
‘Great, merciful heaven,’ he breathed.
When he had first met Jeanne, she was a widow, but she had often remarked that she never missed her first husband, because he was a bully and had lost his affection for Jeanne. He berated her, insulted her before his friends, and had taken to striking her – all because their marriage wasn’t blessed with offspring. Suddenly Baldwin understood that her pain this morning was because she thought that he might grow like her first husband, and with that thought he was about to go to her and apologise, beg forgiveness and plead with her to understand that he adored her still, when the clatter of hooves announced a visitor.
‘Yes, I am Sir Baldwin,’ he repeated testily when the rider held his message a moment longer than necessary.
‘I am sorry, sir. I had expected to find you in your hall at this time,’ the fellow said, eyeing Baldwin’s scruffy old tunic doubtfully.
Baldwin grunted and snatched the letter from him. Just then, a stableboy who had heard the noise, ran out to see who had arrived but slipped in a damp pile of leaves and fell on his rump on the cobbles.
‘Let that be a lesson not to take too much interest in matters which don’t affect you,’ Baldwin said as he slowly read the page. ‘In the meantime, fetch a broom and clear the leaves before a horse falls and breaks a leg.’ He read on. ‘Why does the good Dean ask me to attend on him in Exeter?’
‘It is a murder, Sir Baldwin. A man has been killed.’
‘I see,’ Baldwin said, and he had to make an effort not to show his relief at the offered escape. ‘Well, I shall have to loan you a fresh horse.’
‘This one will be fine to take me back to Exeter in a little while, sir.’
‘Yes, but you’ll need a fresh mount to get to Tavistock, lad.’
Simon Puttock, a tall man of seven and thirty with the dark hair and grey eyes of a Dartmoor man, slammed the door behind him and strode out into the chill air, pausing a moment to stare out over the harbour.
It was a typical Dartmouth morning in late September. The rain was coming in from the sea. He pulled his cloak more closely about his shoulders as he surveyed the ships sheltered in the harbour, the men loading or unloading cargo, the heavy bales of merchandise almost bending them double. Some carried spices, some dyes, others hauled on ropes operating the hoisting spars, lifting heavier goods, the barrels of w
ine and salt from the King’s French possessions. The port was a thrusting little township with its own charter, and the scurrying men down there at the waterfront proved that the town was thriving financially.
Which was all to the good, because that meant more money for his master, the Abbot of Tavistock.
It was many years since Simon had first joined the Abbot. He had previously worked at the Stannary castle at Lydford, acting as one of the bailiffs who struggled to keep the King’s Peace over his extensive forest of Dartmoor, preventing the tinminers from overrunning every spare field, diverting every stream, thieving whatever they could in order to win more tin from the peaty soil, or simply threatening to use their extensive rights to extort money from peasants and landowners alike. One of their favourite games was to say that they thought they might find tin under a farmer’s best piece of pasture; only desisting when offered a suitable bribe.
Those years had been his happiest ever. He had seen his daughter grow to gracious maturity; he had buried one son, Peterkin, but his wife had conceived and now he had another to carry on his name. Yes, his life at Lydford, while busy and at times taxing, had been very rewarding. Which was why he now suffered like this, he told himself ruefully.
‘God’s Ballocks!’ he muttered, and turned to stride along Upper Street until he came to an alleyway. Here he turned and trod over the slippery cobbles down to Lower Street, and along to the building where he could meet his clerk.
The room where his clerk awaited him was large, and the fire in the middle of the floor was inadequate for its task.
‘Oh, Bailiff! A miserable morning, isn’t it, sir?’
Andrew was a Dartmoor man too, but there was no similarity between them in either looks or temperament. Simon was powerfully built, his frame strong and hardened from regular travelling over the moors. He was only recently returned from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with Baldwin; during which period he had lost much of his excess weight. In contrast, Andrew was chubby. He looked much younger than his sixty-odd summers, and still had the twinkling, innocent eye of a youth, whereas Simon’s expression was more commonly sceptical, having spent so many years listening to disputes and trying to resolve which of two arguing parties was telling the truth.
This clerk was born to write in his ledgers – and how he adored them! It was enough to drive Simon to distraction sometimes, the way that Andrew would smooth and clean each sheet before setting out his reeds methodically. He had been taught and raised as a novice in the Abbey, and his loyalty to Abbot Robert was not in doubt, but Simon wished that he could have had a more worldly-wise clerk instead of this stuffed tunic. He would have liked a man with whom he could dispute, who would have had new ideas and on whom Simon could have tested his own, but Andrew appeared content to be a servant, never offering advice or commenting on Simon’s decisions, merely sitting and scrawling his numbers and letters.
It was the latter which entranced him. Whereas Simon would admire a pretty woman, or sigh with contentment at the taste of a good wine, Andrew knew no pleasure other than forming perfect, identical figures. His numerals were regular in size and position, the addition always without fault, yet he strove constantly to improve. Simon could read and write, after his education at Crediton with the canons, but he saw these skills as means to an end. Records must be kept, and the only effective manner to store records was on rolls. But Simon didn’t like the idea of spending his entire life trying to make his letter ‘a’ more beautiful. If it was legible, that was enough. No, Simon was happier out in the open than sitting here in this draughty, smoke-filled cell with this pasty-faced, rotund clerk with his reeds and his inks.
‘This weather is nothing,’ Simon responded shortly, and then felt a wave of guilt wash over him at the hurt in Andrew’s eyes. The man was only doing his best to be sociable, yet Simon snapped at him like a drunkard kicking a puppy. Andrew was necessary, and he was going to remain with him whether Simon liked it or not.
He was silent a moment, seeking some means of repairing the damage, but then, irritable with himself, he knew he couldn’t. There wasn’t the understanding in him to be able to make Andrew a friend. He was a servant, nothing more. Simon beckoned the clerk and led the way outside and down to the harbour itself, all the way cursing his miserable fate in being sent here.
What really stuck in his craw was the fact that he was only here because his master had wanted to reward him.
Lady Jeanne de Furnshill was stoic when her husband announced that he was going to have to leave again. ‘It hardly feels as though you have been home at all, my love,’ she said quietly. ‘Richalda shall miss you. As shall I.’
‘Yes, well, I suppose it is a part of the duty of a knight in the King’s service,’ Baldwin said shortly. He looked at her and smiled with as much sincerity as he could manage. ‘My love, I will be home before long.’
‘I understand,’ Jeanne said, with complete honesty and a simultaneous shrivelling sensation inside her breast. She’d known the loss of love before, and now she was to face it again. Perhaps it was something wrong with her?
Her first husband had been a brute and bully; convinced that she was barren, his love for her turned into loathing, and with that, he started to beat her regularly. At the time, Jeanne had sworn to herself that she would never tolerate another husband who raised his fist to her. Of course, Baldwin had not shown any indication that he could do so yet there was a new coldness in his manner towards her, and she was sure that his love for her was fled.
Her sense of unease had been growing, and was confirmed when she joked about his interest in the pretty young peasant girl. His surly response then had shocked her, and she knew that things were no longer the same.
Rationally, she knew that ‘love’ was a commodity which was greatly overrated. A man like Baldwin would naturally find his feelings withering over time. It was perfectly normal for a man to seek younger, more exciting women when he had an opportunity. That was presumably the reason for his need to go to Exeter.
Yes, rationally she knew all this, and yet … she had thought that her man was different. She’d thought he still loved her.
He had only been home a matter of a few weeks. Before then, he and his friend Simon Puttock had been on a pilgrimage, during which they had encountered more dangers than Jeanne could have dreamed of. She had expected risks from sailing, from footpads, from the occasional burst of foul weather, but not all three – plus fevers, shipwreck and pirates as well.
When Baldwin returned, she felt as though her soul had been renewed, as if she had been waiting with her life suspended in his absence. She had missed him terribly, and when he walked in through their door, she threw down the tapestry on which she had been working, and hurled herself at him. She saw his eyes widen in surprise, then he staggered backwards as she thumped into him.
That evening had been wonderful. It was all but impossible to realise that he was truly home again, that she had him all to herself. He looked so happy, so brown, healthy, warm, kind and content, especially when he saw his daughter again, that Jeanne was entirely free from anxiety. Her man was home and she still possessed his love. There was nothing more that she desired. Nothing she could desire.
And yet soon afterwards, within a day or two, she grew aware of a reticence on his part, and that distance had gradually grown into a gulf. The man whom she loved and with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life had slipped away somewhere.
She felt as though her heart would break.
Joel was in his workroom when Mabilla came storming in.
‘Joel!’ she burst out, her face red and tear-stained. ‘Was it you? Did you kill him just to stop him suing you?’
‘Eh? Wha—?’ He was in the process of cramping blocks of wood together in the tricky form of a war-saddle, where the seat rested some inches above the horse. Her sudden eruption into his workshop was an instant disaster. The second block fell from his hands, and the glued edges, gleaming nicely, fell into the grit and sawdu
st that lay all about on the floor.
‘Now Mabilla, what is the matter?’ he asked with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Oi, you lads, get that wood up and clean it outside. Go on, you nosy gits! Leave me and the lady alone. Vince, get a damned move on!’
‘Henry – did you kill him? Who else could have done it! Oh God, what will become of us?’
Joel saw her red eyes and the trickle of moisture that trailed down both cheeks. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Mabilla? I don’t understand.’
‘Why was he left there, in the chapel?’
Joel bellowed for his apprentice to bring strong wine, and then spoke softly to her. ‘Look, Mabilla, I’ve heard about Henry. I was going to come and see you and give you my condolences as soon as I could. I know his death was a terrible shock – I can scarcely comprehend it myself – but I had nothing to do with it! He was my friend, for God’s sake! One row couldn’t turn us into enemies. Look, I was here all night – you can ask the apprentices if you don’t believe me. I didn’t leave the shop once.’
‘You swear? I thought, because he threatened litigation …’
‘It wasn’t me,’ Joel repeated.
‘Who else could have killed him?’ She turned her bloodshot eyes to him. ‘Joel, you were his oldest friend, please help me! I don’t know who to trust. Oh God, can I trust anyone!’
She was staring about her as though expecting an assassin to leap upon her at any moment. When Joel moved to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, she recoiled as though from a red-hot brand, and he lifted his hand away at the last moment, not actually touching her. She looked like a fawn startled by a circle of raches, petrified with terror.
‘Mabilla! I am terribly sorry to hear of his death. You know Henry was my best friend in the world.’
‘Even when he threatened to sue you? He told me all about it, that he came here and threatened to do so if the German sued him.’
The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) Page 10