The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18)

by Michael Jecks

  He couldn’t even look at the happy clerk who sat scratching with his damned reed all day. Instead he had muttered an excuse and left the room. There was an alehouse three doors away, and Simon entered to find some refreshment. He had a couple of good, meaty pies, with three quarts of strong ale to wash them down, but even that didn’t improve his mood. The town was fine; in reality it was moderately more comfortable and pleasant than his last home, with access to food, drink and luxury items which were never seen in Lydford, and yet the work was dull in the extreme, his companion was a pedantic, boring old woman, and …

  No. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault. Simon knew that before he’d started his second quart. Rather, it was Simon himself and Simon’s family that were worrying him.

  Meg was a good, loyal wife, and she’d never have held Simon back, but she was most unenthusiastic about moving all the way down to the southern coast. She had taken a while to get to know anyone in the small, insular community of Lydford, because the folk there had viewed her as a foreigner, and worse, the wife of the stannary bailiff. Nobody would trust a woman who possessed the ear of the man who could have any of them thrown in gaol. It had taken all her skills of diplomacy to wheedle her way into the homes and some hearts at Lydford, and the idea of having to do so again here in Dartmouth was daunting.

  His son was no trouble. Peterkin, or Perkin, depending upon Simon’s mood, loved the idea of living by the sea. Any boy would want it! What, turn up the chance of meeting men who’d been abroad, who’d seen strange monsters and endured all that the sea could throw at them? They were romantic, exciting men, these sailors. That was what Peterkin thought. Given the chance, he would have been leaping about on boats, chatting to sailors, learning all the crafts to do with the port and generally getting under everyone’s feet in the process. Sadly, though, his sister Edith hated the thought of coming here. She was a young woman now, and her fiancé, Peter, a young apprentice, lived not far from Lydford. She had no wish to be farther away from him than necessary. That was why she’d wailed and moaned and complained about the prospect of being sent into exile so far from her home. Peter couldn’t go with them – he was apprenticed to a successful merchant, Master Harold – so that was that.

  Which was why Simon was so lonely. He had spoken to Meg and they had discussed the move unemotionally and come to the only sensible conclusion: that it would be better for them all if Simon were to come to Dartmouth alone for a short while, to see what he thought of the place, to make friends if he might, and prepare the way for his family to join him. Perhaps Edith would break with her lover and be glad of a change of scene, perhaps Simon would meet other families with whom Meg might strike up friendships – and perhaps Simon could conceive of a means of depriving his son of too ready access to the shipping that lay in the port. The last thing he desired was for Perkin to find an ally who would let him travel to Guyenne or beyond without Simon’s knowledge. Sailors could be a dangerous breed.

  He rolled over in his bed. There was a growing rebelliousness in his gut, and he remembered the rest of the day with sudden clarity.

  After his lunch, he’d returned to his work, but boredom had served to sharpen his mood. He was incapable of listening to the clerk without snapping in response; no matter what Andrew said, Simon couldn’t like him, and his temper was not improved by the fact that he knew he was being unreasonable. In the end he grunted an apology, claiming his bowels were giving him trouble, and he walked out. But he couldn’t face the empty house where he was living, so he returned to the alehouse.

  It had been filled with sailors and lightermen, all the human detritus that would wash up in a port’s drinking rooms, and Simon was shouldered roughly as he entered, although a sharp whisper that passed about the place soon stopped that. When people realised that this was the man who could impose harsher tolls, or who could order that an entire cargo be pulled aside and held until he had inspected each and every bale of goods, they were happier to leave him in peace.

  He hated this job, as he hated his loneliness. Already this year he had spent months away from his wife during his pilgrimage, and being apart from her again was terrible. He wanted to see Peterkin, to see Edith, and especially to have his wife with him once more to warm his bed. This separation was the worst thing in the world.

  It was also leading to this lethargy. His lying abed was not merely the result of too much wine and ale last night, it was also the reluctance to return to that cell-like room, listening to the scritch, scratch of that blasted clerk Andrew’s reed.

  The work was weighing down his spirits. He would give anything – even most of his treasure – to be back home again at Lydford with Meg and his children. Here in Dartmouth his mind was turning to mash and his heart was losing all sense of proportion. He found it difficult to break out of his torpor, and he hated himself for his idleness. It was so unlike him.

  When he heard the cheerful whistle from the hall beneath him, he tried for a moment or two to cover his head with his arms, but then he had to admit defeat as the smell of smoke started to fill his little chamber. Reluctantly, he rose, pulled on his shirt, tunic, cote-hardie and a thick lined cloak, heavy woollen hosen and boots, and made his way to the ladder.

  ‘Morning, Master Simon.’

  ‘Hello, Rob,’ Simon sighed. Rob was a young servant whom he had hired on arriving here. A merry fellow with sharp eyes that spotted everything, Rob was dressed in a faded tunic with a leather jerkin. His head was encased in a hood that surrounded his throat, always a good idea in this chill weather.

  ‘Did you sleep well, Master?’

  ‘I slept,’ Simon grunted.

  ‘I heard your snores would have woken a sleeping dragon!’

  ‘Then it’s lucky there aren’t any dragons around here,’ Simon snarled. ‘Now get me some bread and stop wittering!’

  ‘You had a good evening in the tavern?’ Rob asked innocently. He was stirring at a thick broth of oats over the fire, crouched down and keeping his eyes on the pot, but Simon was suddenly sure his whole attention was on him.

  ‘Who told you I was there?’

  ‘All the people here know it. They say you’re in need of some company.’

  Simon grinned briefly. It was not the first offer he had received since moving here: a couple of sailors had offered their sisters, another, perhaps more enterprising, his wife, if only Simon would turn his back while certain vessels arrived in the port or nearby. Simon had made it clear that he had no need of women. He was content with his wife.

  ‘Tell them to mind their own sodding business,’ he said harshly, and maintained a diplomatic silence as Rob ladled some of the porridge into a bowl for him.

  Wymond was at his tanner’s yard first thing in the morning, same as usual, and he inhaled deeply as with a broad smile he surveyed his little empire.

  There were pots and great chambers cut into the ground, filled to the brim with his leathers. He was proud of his rise from impoverished child to this position of importance. Even the members of the Freedom would deal with him as an equal. There was no one else who produced such good quality leather as he, because no one else had such a splendid area for the work.

  Exe Island lay at the western edge of the city, and the river flowed all about it, which gave access to a plentiful supply of water. Others had set themselves up as tanners, but some had done so in the daftest places. Old Mart up in the High Street, for example. He had to spend a fortune every year to get water hauled up to his shop in carts. What was the point? He fancied himself important, living up there in the middle of the town, but all it really won him was the passionate hatred of all his richer neighbours, who couldn’t stand the smell of him, or the worse stinks that permeated his hall and seeped out to annoy all and sundry. It was mad to work as a tanner in the middle of a city like Exeter.

  Whereas out here, away from people, you didn’t upset anyone and you had as much water as you could wish for. And all tanners needed lots of it.

  He walked about his e
state and chose which pits he would work on later. There were some hides which had been resting in his warming shed. They’d been sprinkled with urine before being folded up together. They were left here to help the hair roots rot so they could be scraped off more easily. He checked them, and rubbed a couple with the ball of his thumb. Only a few hairs came away: they could do with at least another day.

  Shutting the door to the shed, he walked off to the next skins. In the bating tanks, where the leather went after scraping, the skins were immersed in a warm mixture of dogs’ dung. Some tanners swore that birdshit was the best softener, but Wymond was sure that it was the dogs’ dung that gave his leathers their natural pliability. All the leathers he’d seen which had used chicken muck tended to be a little more brittle; not quite so pleasant to handle. For his money, he’d stick to dogshit – it wasn’t as if there was any lack of it!

  The last area of his domain was the tanning pits: it was here that the final result was stored. The first pit was the handling pit, where the fresh leathers would be turned and stirred for days in a weak oak solution, until they reached a uniform colour. Then they were taken out and stored in the other pits, the great ones, where the leathers rested in a fresh solution for at least a year and a day, before being removed ready for smoothing with a setting pin – a long, blunt knife – and then dried slowly in a dark shed with a free flow of air. Tanning was not a fast process.

  There were several jobs to do today. He had some skins ready for the handling pit, and he’d get his apprentice to start the stirring and mixing process. First, though, Wymond had a fresh cartload of cattle hides to clean. They’d been brought from the butchers after the slaughtering yesterday, and he had to immerse them to wash away the loose blood and dung. If any had been brined, the salt would also have to be removed. He busied himself with that, feeling the thickness of the pelts, pulling away odd lumps of fat from the skins, before thrusting them into the Exe’s fast-flowing waters. Down here he had constructed his own little leat, and at the far end he had installed a metal grate. The skins went into the river and were caught by the grate. There he could pummel them with a club, like a washerwoman with her linen, until the worst of the dirt and muck was cleaned off.

  He was finished, and was reaching into the chilly waters to rescue his skins, just as his son appeared.

  ‘Vin, what are you doing down here?’

  Vince glanced at his father with a half-apologetic smile. ‘Maybe you’d offer me a job if I needed one?’

  ‘No, boy! You’re going to be the big master at the city, you are,’ Wymond said loudly. He reached out to his lad and ruffled his hair affectionately. ‘You’ll be Mayor, or master or somesuch! You learn your joinery, lad, and when you have, we’ll buy you a small shop to start trading, and get you working to make as many saddles as will fill the whole of Devonshire. There won’t be a place for anything other than my son’s saddles! Ha ha! With my leather, your wood and Jack’s work to finish the saddles, we’ll all be rich, eh?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘There’s something the matter, isn’t there, boy?’ Wymond said.

  He was a medium-height, thickset man with deep brown eyes that were mostly hidden in among the wrinkles about his eyes. Looking at him, Vince suddenly realised how old he was. Although Wymond still worked as hard as ever he had, his black hair was turned grizzled, with wings of white at either temple. His face was as square as Vince’s, but the jowls drooped on either side like a mastiff’s, and his face was as brown and rugged as his finished goods. As he put his arm about Vince’s shoulders, the boy tried not to pull a face as he caught the smell of old flesh, rotten meat, dung and urine. It was the odour he had grown up with, and he had never been so grateful for anything as he was for the chance of leaving that stench behind. He recalled with a shudder all those days when, as a lad, he’d been sent out before the rakers to find any decent-sized lumps of dogshit, bringing them back in his old bucket, carrying it two-handed because it was so heavy and he was so small. The smell of dogs could still make him want to heave even now.

  ‘Did you hear about the German who fell from his horse?’ Vince began.

  ‘Yeah. Showing off, I heard. So what?’

  ‘Well, I think it was one of my saddles that broke. It was one of the cheaper frames that was supposed to go to—’

  ‘You sold off a duff one?’ Wymond said sharply. ‘Christ, what were you doing? Flogging off crap to your mate Jack so you could make a few pennies at your master’s expense?’

  Vince glowered. ‘No! I was told to make them by Joel himself. He was selling them to all and sundry to get hold of some extra money. I had to knock them up, and then take them round to Jack’s master for him to make up. But they were supposed to be sold off for market. They shouldn’t have affected anyone in Exeter!’

  ‘What does your master say?’

  ‘He threatened to thrash me, said that the saddle frames were my responsibility and that I must have sold the wrong one to Henry.’

  ‘Then you deserve a thrashing, you arsehole,’ Wymond said, and he slapped Vince about the cheeks with a brawny hand. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, playing at being a master, when you’re still an apprentice? You need your head bashed to get some God-damned sense into you, do you?’

  ‘Stop it!’ Vince said, putting his forearms up to protect his face. He couldn’t force his father to stop – Wymond was stronger than him – but he didn’t have to take so much punishment. ‘It wasn’t me, it was him. He’s been an arse just recently, since Henry visited.’

  ‘Henry? Someone told me he was dead,’ Wymond said.

  ‘That’s right. Some bastard shoved a knife under his ribs in the Charnel Chapel – the one dedicated to St Edward.’

  Wymond’s eyes narrowed, and he looked away. He rested his arm on his son’s shoulder again as though nothing had happened. ‘That sodding place,’ he said. ‘Nothing good can ever come out of there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because my brother and others died there, Vin. My brother, your uncle, was murdered there, and they built the chapel to try to atone for their crimes, but they couldn’t. It’s builded on shame and lies and the blood of decent men.’

  Baldwin had been relieved to find himself back at the Talbot Inn before curfew the night before. Curfew might not mean that all men must be at their homes any longer, but it did mean that the hour was late, and it was the time when certain people with sharp knives and hard cudgels would take to the shadows, preparing to knock some sound financial sense into those foolhardy enough to walk without protection and with over-filled purses. A city like Exeter attracted people of all sorts, and along with the legitimate businessmen were always some who’d be looking for an easier means of earning their income.

  Among these, he always felt, were the beggars, and when he walked back to the Cathedral the following morning, he noticed with interest the one-legged figure squatting at the side of the Fissand Gate entrance. He recalled the fellow from the last journey he had made to Exeter, investigating the murder of the boy-Bishop’s glovemaker. At the time, he recalled that his wife had been impressed with this man.

  His wife. The thought of Jeanne drove everything else from his mind, and he walked past the begging bowl without noticing.

  The sun was feebly trying to penetrate thick clouds overhead, and the gloomy light lent a dreary aspect to the Close. At other times, it must have appeared bright and cheery, Baldwin considered as he glanced about him. The houses along the Canon’s way were all limed oak and whitewashed cob. Flags fluttered near the Fissand Gate entrance, there was a pleasing colour to much of the reddish-brown stonework and those, together with the green turf, would have been delightful on a bright summer’s day; especially when the Cathedral’s western front was complete, with all the saints and patrons of the Cathedral carved in stone and set in niches about the wall. Their painted figures would brighten the whole area, with marvellous crimsons and greens, yellows and golds. Baldwin had no idea what the
image screen would look like when it was done – and it would not be completed for many years after his death – but he had seen enough at other cathedrals to know how it would likely appear.

  Today the place was grey and dismal, however. It wasn’t only the lack of bright sunshine; there was a pall that hung over the area, as though the dead man’s soul had permeated every stone with his misery and pain, and was calling out for revenge.

  It was not just an impression of supernatural despair; the building looked depressed with its cloak of scaffolding, the spars and timbers projecting upwards like the exposed ribs of a putrefied corpse. Where there should have been good pasture, now all was trodden mud, and the whole of the precinct was a building site, with rocks strewn liberally about the place, and masons gradually forming sense from chaotic hunks of stone. Working benches, saw-pits, smiths hammering at red-hot iron formed a fiendish din, and Baldwin felt as though he would like to turn around and leave the place.

  But he couldn’t. He squared his shoulders and strode to the Dean’s house. Dean Alfred was already waiting for Baldwin at his door, and he welcomed the knight politely, if solemnly, before leading the way to the chapel.

  A porter was at the door, and he stood aside on the Dean’s signal.

  ‘We have to keep it guarded for the Coroner,’ Dean Alfred said, and pulled a heavy key from beneath his robe. He slipped it into the lock and turned it. His eyes lifted to meet Baldwin’s. ‘I wish you luck,’ he said quietly. ‘We must find this murderer, Sir Knight, before he can kill again. Godspeed.’

  Baldwin nodded, thrust the door wide and stepped inside.

  As Simon reached the hall, he could already hear the scritching of the clerk’s reed as he stood at the door.