The King’s Justice

by E. M. Powell

  PRAISE FOR E.M. POWELL

  ‘The plot moves swiftly. As a stand-alone novel, this book more than holds its own. A great follow-up to the first two books in the series – and highly recommended.’

  —Historical Novels Review

  ‘E.M. Powell has created an immensely likeable pair in Stanton and Barling, in this exciting new medieval mystery series. Action-packed and laced with sly humour . . . I was completely riveted by The King’s Justice.’

  —Mary Lawrence, author of The Alchemist’s Daughter

  ‘E.M. Powell’s medieval murder mysteries are like mead: sweet, potent, and seductively addictive. One sip and you won’t be able to stop reading.’

  —Jane Holland, bestselling author of Girl Number One and Lock the Door

  OTHER TITLES BY E.M. POWELL

  The Fifth Knight Series

  The Fifth Knight

  The Blood of the Fifth Knight

  The Lord of Ireland

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by E.M. Powell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542046015

  ISBN-10: 1542046017

  Cover design by Ghost Design

  For Stephanie, sister second to none

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Note from the author

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  List of Characters

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The City of York, 12 June 1176

  Pit or punishment: Hugo Stanton couldn’t tell which excited the folk of these hot, crammed streets more.

  Three men accused of vicious murder but who would not confess. Innocent, they’d claimed to King Henry’s travelling justices, sitting in the court in the high keep of the city’s castle.

  The men’s claims mattered not.

  Today, under this cloudless early-summer sky, the water would judge them. Each would be lowered into the brimming pit in turn, as recounted by the very few who’d seen the ordeal before. Sinking would tell of a man’s innocence. Floating would have him hauled out to the gallows to be strung up to die.

  Every soul in the place wanted to witness the awesome power of the King’s law for themselves. York’s many inhabitants thronged every approach to the cathedral, where the ordeal pit had been dug next to its soaring height. People pushed, called out, their numbers swelled by the hundreds who’d arrived with the mighty royal court.

  ‘Move aside there!’ came a yell from Nesbitt, staggering beside Stanton. His fellow messenger of the court liked ale as much as Stanton did. ‘Make way for the King’s men.’

  Stanton’s chest tightened as Nesbitt’s drink-edged, curt orders worked with only the mention of Henry’s name. People shuffled aside on the waste-clogged cobbles to make space as best they could.

  The King’s men.

  Scant words for the huge retinue, led by the justices, that had arrived here two weeks ago, of which Stanton was but one lowly member. Henry had sent them across the land to make sure all followed his law. Those who didn’t were being punished, and punished hard. His justices were making sure of it.

  ‘The King’s men,’ shouted Nesbitt again.

  Though a mere messenger, Stanton was indeed one of them. And to the very depths of his soul, he wished it were not so. His gaze met lowered looks of respect, of fear, on sweating faces as he passed by, and he silently cursed those who wore them for fools.

  Nesbitt clapped him hard on the back, sending him into a stagger. ‘Step on, young Stanton. We’ll be late for the ordeal.’

  ‘Get off me.’ Stanton steadied himself as much as he could with his ale legs. ‘The accused men won’t be going anywhere.’

  ‘Course they won’t. But we want to see it all, eh?’

  ‘Don’t care what I see today. All I care about is that I’m not sat in the court looking at the justices.’ Stanton grimaced. ‘Nor listening to them. Too much talk for me.’

  And what talk. The cases about land had had his head nodding as the three justices droned on and on in the packed, stuffy keep.

  Then had come a man, a grieving husband and father, to appeal the murders of his loved ones. With him, as Stanton had come to learn was needed by law, a jury of presentment: twelve men who swore before God that those suspected of the crimes were of wicked character. No one had seen the terrible deeds take place, but they could describe what had been found.

  Stanton had tried, failed, to close his own ears.

  A young girl. Her mother. Ripped clothing. Knives. Throats. A silver ring brooch taken. The man wept as he gave his account of his discovery of the worst of horrors, which, mercifully, few would ever have to face.

  Yet Stanton had. Only three short months before, when he’d seen the woman he’d loved lying slaughtered before him, murdered because of the King, God rot him. Stanton’s tears might have dried, but his loss still burned hot and fierce within him.

  In York’s court, the justices paid no heed to the men’s protests that they were innocent. The King’s law would be followed, they announced. The ordeal by water would bring the necessary final proof of guilt or innocence. Proof with God’s judgement.

  Now that day had arrived.

  Nesbitt wheezed a laugh. ‘There’s a lot of talk with the law, Stanton. Not much else, if you ask me.’ He shoved forward into the press of bodies again with another loud shout. ‘King Henry’s men. Make way, there.’

  ‘Make way.’ Stanton added his call, though he’d have cut his drunken tongu
e out rather than use it for Henry’s name.

  ‘Some flowers for you, good sir?’

  Stanton halted at the young female voice beside him.

  ‘Flowers?’ She held out a few thin bunches of blooms.

  The way she boldly met his eye told him she wasn’t just offering wilting petals. He’d sampled a good number of the city’s many whores, though he’d not seen her before. He shook his head and set off again with stumbling steps. ‘Not now.’

  ‘It wouldn’t take long’ – she fell in beside him with a sure tread, her sharp gaze still on him – ‘for a fine young servant of the King such as yourself to buy what I have to offer.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Sir. Please.’

  He caught a note of desperation in her terse reply.

  The drooping blooms she held told him she’d been out for many hours already without much success, despite the crowds. While she looked clean enough, the girl’s weak jaw made her plain, and her mud-coloured wool dress hung on a skinny frame. Her one beauty was plaited brown hair that lay thick as a rope over one shoulder.

  Stanton fumbled his belt pouch open and the girl stared in naked want as he sought out a coin. ‘Here.’ He placed it on her ready palm, and her bitten-nailed fingers closed around it. ‘Now be off with you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She flashed a smile that didn’t reach her hard eyes. ‘Sir.’

  The bell from the looming cathedral boomed out a first solemn peal. A roar rose up in response.

  ‘Stanton!’

  He hardly heard the shout over the noise. He looked over.

  Nesbitt beckoned over a sea of heads. ‘Move your backside, man.’

  Forget this girl. It was time.

  Time for the pit.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Have they come out?’ Stanton pushed into the gap created by Nesbitt’s muscle in the heaving crush outside the cathedral.

  ‘Not yet,’ replied Nesbitt. ‘The doors are still closed.’

  People stood three or four deep in front, but now Stanton could see clean over the tonsured head of a squat monk.

  ‘God’s eyes.’ He pulled in a sharp breath at the sight of the ordeal pit before him. Guards edged the open space where it sat, keeping the crowd at bay. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is.’ Nesbitt grinned. ‘Took many men many hours to dig and fill. And all for this one day.’

  Stanton shook his head. ‘It must be twenty feet wide.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Nesbitt. ‘And it’ll be twelve feet deep.’

  A large wooden platform covered about one third of the huge pit, its planks fresh and pale and still smelling of sap. Despite the clear blue sky, the water beneath had no shine or sparkle. It sat muddy and dark and still.

  ‘Long way down, then.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Nesbitt again. ‘Better down than up, though.’

  Sinking into that murk, unable to help yourself. Down and down as the water filled your mouth, your nose, your lungs. And that was the fate of the innocent? A shudder passed through Stanton. ‘I suppose.’

  Nesbitt stretched to his full height. ‘The doors are open. They’re coming out.’

  Others took up his shout with yells, calls and whistles of their own.

  Folk surged in an excited wave at Stanton’s back, the hot, sweating bodies of strangers ramming his ribs against the protesting monk in front.

  ‘Move back, curse you.’ Nesbitt thrust out sharp elbows to loud swearing. ‘You’ll have us robbed of our life’s breath.’

  Stanton shoved back too, his pulse fast from the crush and what was about to happen.

  York’s Archbishop came into view and stepped slowly up on to the platform. Under his pointed mitre, his face shone scarlet from the heat of the day and the weight of his richly embroidered robes. Henry’s three justices followed, familiar to Stanton from the court: the lofty Ranulf de Glanville, the shorter Robert de Vaux and the rounded Robert Pikenot. He’d hardly noticed their black robes in the gloom of the courtroom. Here, in the hot glare of the sun, they could be large crows looking for carrion.

  Hands, fists, voices rose up with praise for them, for the King.

  Then came the loudest shouts yet. The accused were here.

  ‘By the name of the Virgin.’ Stanton’s mouth fell open. He’d seen these men in the court, standing before the justices. Tall men. Broad men. Hard-faced men all. Not poorly dressed but roughly dressed. The kind of men who it was easy to believe had robbed and killed an innocent woman and her daughter. But now? Now they filed on to the platform, heads down, one man sobbing in fear. And they were stripped naked, nothing except a loincloth keeping each man from shame.

  ‘Yes!’ Nesbitt thumped Stanton on the shoulder. ‘I’ve got a wager on all three being guilty. They look like it to me.’

  ‘Get off.’ Stanton shoved his fist away. ‘If you had fleas, you’d put money on which one jumped the highest.’

  Nesbitt wheezed a laugh again, but cut it short as the Archbishop slowly raised his hands and held them wide apart.

  All other voices dropped, the recent clamour a pounding echo in Stanton’s ears in the sudden quiet. Only the prisoner’s deep sobbing carried on.

  The justices joined their hands and bowed their heads.

  ‘Lord, our God,’ said the Archbishop, eyes aloft. ‘You, who are the most righteous judge. You judge what is just and your right judgement transcends all others. We beseech you to bring your holy blessings down on this water. That if the man placed in it is innocent, it will receive him in your holy name. That if he is guilty, it will reject his sin.’ He dropped his gaze to the dark water and moved his right hand in a sweeping blessing. ‘In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ chorused the justices and the crowd in a sombre rumble.

  Stanton tried to join in and found his mouth had dried.

  The Archbishop stepped back as de Glanville pointed to the first one. ‘Bind him.’

  A huge roar met his words and the press of people at Stanton’s back grew stronger as the guards moved in on the accused man.

  ‘First one going in.’ Nesbitt’s sight was locked on the platform. ‘My luck’s in, I can feel it.’

  ‘Don’t think you feel much, Nesbitt.’ Stanton’s hoarse reply got no reaction as around him people yelled and prayed in equal measure.

  The man was now trussed tightly on the ground, bent double, his arms crossed and wrists secured to his opposite ankles. More rope tied his feet together, while a last sturdy loop circled his waist.

  De Glanville raised a hand for silence. He got it in an eye-blink, his clear voice addressing the man. ‘You have a last chance to confess, to cleanse your soul. God already knows your heart.’

  The man said nothing, made no sound except the panting of his breath, his air cut short no doubt by the twisted position of his body, and, Stanton was sure, by his fear of what was to come. Stanton’s own heart thudded hard, fast. This man’s must be about to leave his chest.

  ‘Very well.’ De Glanville nodded to the guards.

  In one swift movement, they dragged the bound prisoner to the edge of the platform.

  De Glanville was saying something, but no silence this time, only a wall of noise as the guards did their work.

  A long rope threaded through the waist rope, attached to a wooden cross-beam. Hard hauls on the rope. The man rose in the air, a bundle of bound limbs, swinging high over the surface of the water, his loincloth soaking in abrupt terror.

  Then the rope ran loose. A low splash. And he was in. In.

  Yet more people shoved to the front, frantic for a better view.

  Stanton craned his neck to see through the heaving, clamouring throng before him. He didn’t need to. The shouts, the screams told him.

  ‘He floats!’

  ‘God be praised!’

  ‘Guilty!’

  A shrieking woman lurched to one side and he could see. See the curved back of the bound man bobbing on the
surface of the water, listing to one side, then to the other, whether caused by the man’s struggle to breathe or attempts to sink, Stanton couldn’t tell.

  Another thump to his shoulder. Nesbitt again, jumping in glee.

  Stanton didn’t respond, couldn’t take his gaze away from the hideous shape that still bobbed and span in the water.

  De Glanville nodded to the guards. Swift, strong hauls on the rope again.

  Accused no longer, the guilty murderer broke the surface, muddy water streaming from his upended body, his mouth, his eyes bulging in wordless terror as the water continued to choke him. The guards lowered him hard on to the platform. More water spewed from him as he gasped and wriggled for air.

  ‘God’s blessed water has rejected you.’ De Glanville looked down at him from his imposing height. ‘You are guilty of the two murders of which you are accused. You will hang today.’

  A fresh outburst greeted his words.

  ‘May you burn in hell!’

  ‘Praise the Almighty, praise him!’

  ‘Praise King Henry. God keep our holy King.’

  ‘Hail the King! Hail his justice!’

  ‘Hail him indeed.’ Nesbitt gave Stanton a broad wink. ‘His Grace’s justice will be putting coin in my pocket.’

  ‘You’re going to hell too, Nesbitt.’ It would freeze over before Stanton shouted for the King and his justice. He’d seen it fail, and fail badly. And yet. His eyes went to the bereaved widower, the man who’d lost his wife, his daughter. The widower’s hands were clasped in silent, reverent prayer. Prayers of thanks, no doubt.

  De Glanville pointed to the second, sobbing prisoner. ‘Bind him.’

  As the guards moved in as one, the man broke into screams. ‘No! No! I beg you!’

  Yells and shouts filled the air as hundreds of voices raised as one.

  Now the man was fighting those who held him, his pale, naked limbs thrashing at the hands that grabbed him. ‘Let go!’

  Stanton shook his head as shouts and jeers spewed from those around him. Fighting was useless. The man was trying to fight the full might of the King’s hand.

  A heavy blow from one of the guards had the man subdued enough so they could bring him under control.

  Stanton palmed the sweat from his own face, his pulse still fast, faster still as the stunned man was bound, hoisted for the ordeal. He could no longer hear individual words, just wave upon wave of frenzy.