A Friar's Bloodfeud: (Knights Templar 20) (37 page)

‘Did I miss one?’ A skinny man with a leering face suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Baldwin eyed him a moment, the puppy in his arm. He was about to pass it to Simon when Edgar stepped up to the skinny man
and punched him with full force in the belly. The man’s eyes bulged, his mouth formed a perfect ‘O’, and he collapsed to his
knees, gasping desperately for breath.

At the blow all the men in the area stopped their work, and a few picked up swords and daggers. Baldwin shifted the puppy
to his left hand and drew his sword. ‘Keep back! Sir Geoffrey, if you value your honour, tell them to keep away.’

Sir Geoffrey raised a hand, and his men returned to their labours. Meanwhile Baldwin went to the choking man on the ground,
and put the point of his sword on his throat. He hissed, ‘You should be grateful. If I’d reached you first, I’d have killed
you for what you did to that bitch and her litter. If I hear of you again, I shall seek you out and throw you into the gaol
at Rougement Castle.’

Baldwin was quiet on their return. Only when they were almost at Fishleigh did he turn to Simon and mutter, ‘I could imagine
that band of felons doing anything.’

Simon said nothing. His friend was still cradling the mewling puppy, and every so often his serious dark eyes would move to
the little creature. Simon knew full well how fond Baldwin was of dogs, and seeing them abused was merely proof to Baldwin
of the bestial nature of the men Sir Geoffrey led.

At the manor, they called to the doorman for Sir Odo.

‘He’s not here, sir. He’s ridden off.’

‘Where to?’ Simon demanded.

‘I think he’s gone to Lady Isabel, sir.’

‘Do you know why?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Doesn’t he have enough to cope with up here?’

‘He forgot to tell me, sir,’ the gatekeeper said snidely. ‘No doubt he will when he gets back.’

They rode on towards Iddesleigh as dusk was falling, and now Simon saw that his companion was meditating more on the murders
than on the actions of one brutal felon towards a litter of pups.

‘What would he be doing with the lady?’ Baldwin said as
they began the climb up to Iddesleigh. ‘I have a suspicion I have missed a crucial point, Simon.’

‘What could we have missed?’

‘Why a man like Odo, used to warfare and the spoils of war, is here in a quiet rural backwater without any of the benefits
a man like him would expect. Just like Sir Geoffrey.’

Friar John gave a groan when he saw the bodies at the altar. His light mood left him, and he walked slowly across the nave
to Lucy, sinking slowly to his knees and bowing his head in prayer.

Hugh had scarcely noticed him. In his mind there was only one thing here that mattered, and that was the figure of the priest
as he clambered to his feet.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Matthew demanded, not angrily, but in surprise. And then he recognised Hugh, and his eyes widened.
His hand went to his breast, and he tottered slightly. ‘
You!
But you were dead!’

‘Don’t think so,’ Hugh said. He took his billhook from his belt and hefted it in his hand. ‘My wife is, though, and the lad.’

‘What are you doing? This is a church, man. You mustn’t threaten people in here!’ Matthew swallowed hard. Then a flare of
resentment came over him, and he stepped forward between Hugh and Nicholas, who remained sitting at the altar, gripping the
cloth with a despairing determination. ‘You won’t hurt him, man! He is safe here; he has claimed sanctuary.’

Hugh glanced at the man. ‘It’s not him I want. It’s you.’

Matthew felt as though the tiled floor had moved suddenly. ‘Me? Why?’

‘You were there. In the lane outside my house, weren’t you? Who were you with?’

‘I don’t know what you … in the lane?’

‘The day of the camp ball game. You were out there in the dusk, arguing with a man. Who was he? What were you arguing about?’

‘That night? That was just old Pagan, the steward to Lady Isabel and Madam Malkin. I remonstrated with him because he was
drunk, that was all.’

‘He was drunk?’ Hugh scowled. He twitched the billhook in his hand and let his gaze fall away from the priest. When he came
here, he had hoped to learn something that would make sense of Constance’s and Hugh’s deaths, but there was nothing to be
learned from what Matthew said. Hugh had pinned all his hopes on being told that the man out there in the lane had some reason
to harm Hugh or his wife, but it was just a drunk wandering in the night. Nothing.

Friar John wiped his face free from tears. There was important business here for him, and he must try to contain his grief.
First he had to learn who might have been responsible for his sister’s death; second he must help Hugh – whether that meant
protecting him or preventing him from killing another man. He sniffed, wiped his face briskly with a hand, and walked over
to join the others.

‘So Pagan was drunk that night? What was he doing so far from his home? If he lives down with those women, shouldn’t he have
been there with them instead of wandering the lanes in the dark?’

Matthew looked at him in surprise, not expecting a friar to take a part in this inquisition. ‘It is not my place to ask such
things – but I think he sleeps away from them. He has his house up east of here.’

‘Near Guy the charcoal burner’s place?’ Hugh asked.

‘Yes. I assumed he was making his way home from there. He used to live with the family while Ailward was alive. After that,
of course, Lady Isabel rightly considered it more fitting that he should sleep at his home again.’

‘That was the night Ailward died,’ Hugh muttered.

‘Yes. Bless his soul!’

‘My wife saw him earlier that day. Said so to me,’ Hugh muttered, straining with the effort of recollection. ‘She said he
was there with … with a man-at-arms from Fishleigh. Together.’

‘That is preposterous,’ Matthew said easily. ‘No one from Monkleigh gets on with anyone from Fishleigh.’

Friar John smiled calmly. ‘Do you really believe that a man who was born here as a squire’s son would not be able to get on
with men from the lowliest peasant to the lord of the manor next to his own?’

‘It’s different here,’ Matthew said. ‘If Sir Geoffrey knew that Ailward was fraternising with men from Fishleigh, he would
be so furious he’d …’

‘Yes?’

‘He’d kill them,’ Matthew said slowly, with dawning shock. ‘But you can’t think that!’

‘Why on earth not?’ John said.

‘Sir Geoffrey is no low felon. He’s a knight!’

John said nothing, but glanced at Nicholas. ‘What are you doing here? Claiming sanctuary for what?’

‘Sir Geoffrey attacked me with a whip, and then he accused me of murdering that woman there.’

John’s eyes glittered, and he had to stop himself from stepping nearer. ‘And did you? On your oath, mind. Father Matthew,
do you have the Gospels?’

Only when Nicholas had set a hand upon the holy book and sworn that he had not harmed Lucy did John feel his blood begin to
cool.

‘That is good. So why should he seek to accuse you?’

‘He wants a scapegoat. I’m easiest for him because I am known to our master, and Lord Despenser could install me in his place.
He sees me as a threat to his position, so he seeks to discredit me.’

‘Do you know who could have killed the girl?’

Nicholas shook his head with certainty. ‘No. It was nothing to do with me, that’s all I know.’

‘Were you involved in the attack on the sergeant of Fishleigh?’

Hugh looked at John when he asked that, then shrugged and turned back to Nicholas.

‘Yes. I was there.’

‘And later at this man’s house just east of here?’

‘No. There were no men from Sir Geoffrey’s hall involved in that.’

‘How can you know?’ Hugh grated.

‘I was one of the men first back from Fishleigh, and all the rest came back later in one group. If there’d been another attack,
I’d have heard. I made sure I heard everything in the household.’

Emma was sitting in the bar with Richalda when the door opened. She threw a look behind her and saw Baldwin, Edgar and Simon
walk in, grim-faced. They glanced at her, Baldwin with a glowering mien which softened as soon as he took in the sight of
his daughter playing with Emma, and then they all went to a separate table and sat, Baldwin calling Jankin’s wife over and
passing her a tiny bundle, asking that she keep
it warm and feed it milk. No one told Emma what it was or why it should be cosseted, and she refused to demean herself by
asking.

It was that sort of behaviour that Emma found so intolerable about these people. She was human, wasn’t she? Didn’t she have
feelings too?

Yes, she did, and there was no reason for her to be ignored by these high-and-mighty men just because they seemed to think
that they were so superior to her. They weren’t. As her old mother had told her, all men and women were the same: all had
to crouch to defecate in the morning. ‘If there is any man who seems arrogant, my girl, just you imagine what he’d look like
when he’s doing that,’ she had chuckled.

Not that her mother had said ‘defecate’. She was more … earthy than that.

Emma saw Deadly Dave walk up to the door. He glanced at the bar, then saw Baldwin, and his face stiffened. When he saw Emma
he was red of face, like a man flushed with embarrassment. He licked his lips as she averted her face, and she heard his steps
going to the bar, and his voice asking quietly for an ale.

Baldwin and Simon were talking in low tones, and she idly tried to overhear what they were saying, but she could make nothing
of their words. In the end she gave up trying. Instead she concentrated on Richalda. A fresh ale appeared at her side, and
she nodded and gruffly muttered her thanks, wondering where Jeanne was. Probably asleep again. She was always sleepy when
she was pregnant.

As she had that thought, she heard the door open again, and she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see her lady.

‘
God’s tarse!
’ she shrieked, leaping up. Her bench went over, spilling her ale across the floor, and she grabbed
Richalda to her enormous bosom, cuddling the child and backing away.

Baldwin sighed, ‘Woman, sit down. He’s no ghost. He never died.’

There was a sudden change in the weather after Humphrey left Hugh and John at the ford on the way to Iddesleigh. As he trudged
up the hill westwards before turning east towards Meeth, a colder wind struck his face, stinging at his cheeks. Then he found
that there were fine pinpricks of rain on the wind, making him blink and shiver. His eyes kept fogging as tiny drops caught
on his eyelashes, and he pulled his robes closer about him in the vain hope that they might keep him warm.

He could not help but glance behind him, reflecting on all that had happened to him since he first saw the easy target, as
he had thought. Isaac. The old man had been as innocent and gullible as he had hoped, and yet …

There were some odd comments, some quiet ways he had of looking at a man that made him seem more aware than Humphrey would
have guessed. Perhaps it was only that he had a certain stillness, his eyes focusing somewhere else while he listened to a
man talking … but that wasn’t because he was clever, it was because he had to concentrate. His eyes were bad, and so was
his hearing. He was easy enough to fool into taking Humphrey’s word that he had been sent from Exeter, after all. Others had
been more suspicious, like Matthew.

Matthew had been the sort of man who might have written to the bishop to demand whether an assistant had been sent to help
Isaac or not. He wasn’t the sort of fellow to take a man’s word if he mistrusted him. No, he must
have written … and yet there had been no summons to Exeter.

He can’t have written, and Humphrey reckoned he knew why. Isaac had talked him out of it. The old man must have realised that
he had a good thing going. All the while Humphrey was there, he had food ready at the right times, he had his rooms swept,
he had the vegetables and grain looked after. It was a comfortable existence, and Humphrey himself was undemanding. It wouldn’t
have occurred to Isaac that Humphrey could have lied.

Except that wasn’t entirely true. Isaac was no fool. He usually spotted irregularities and curious behaviour. He did in the
case of Hugh’s family, guessing that Hugh’s wife was a nun before anyone told him. He was sharp enough in that sort of way;
he had a peasant’s wits. But he hadn’t figured out Humphrey; hadn’t guessed that Humphrey was a threat and could rob the chapel
in a moment.

That he hadn’t was only because – well, it was just
because
, that was all. There was no point in robbing the place. And it didn’t feel right, not while Isaac was lying in there like
a guard.

‘He knew all along,’ Humphrey breathed. Dejectedly, he gave up trying to convince himself otherwise. The priest had known
what sort of man he was. He had not been reported to Exeter, because Isaac had stopped Matthew writing; he had been given
free access to the chapel and all its riches because Isaac knew he could trust him. In a few short months Humphrey had been
given his soul back. After the killing he’d thought he’d never know peace again, but Isaac had showed him how to live. He
had saved him.

The rain started to fall more seriously, and he glared upwards. ‘All right. I’ll stop,’ he declared, and instead of
continuing to Meeth, he stopped at the ruined house. The roof wasn’t entire by any means, but there was enough to protect
him from the worst of the weather, and at least there was the remains of the little family’s fire. He could rekindle it and
have a warm place to rest the night. And while there he could muse over his life. He had a great deal of thinking to do.

He was almost at the place when he glanced over towards Fishleigh. There were many torches in the hall’s yard, he saw. And
then he saw them begin to move. It was too far away to be certain, but he thought that they were taking the road towards the
ford that led to Iddesleigh.

It was a large force, he saw, and he wondered why they would all be riding that way at this time of night.

Hugh walked in and sat with his head lowered. He knew that Simon was at his side, and he heard voices speaking, but somehow
they made little sense. Suddenly he felt as though there was a great dizziness washing over him, and he must fall, but he
managed to keep himself upright with an effort.

There was an arm about him, and he looked down to see that it was his master’s. Simon was holding him. Hugh wanted to speak,
but Simon’s eyes were brimming, and Hugh didn’t know why. He sniffed. There was a heaviness in the middle of his breast, and
he found that he couldn’t speak, or at least, not without his voice quaking with sobs.

‘Hugh, I thought you were dead,’ Simon said. He closed his eyes and squeezed Hugh’s shoulder. ‘I am so glad, Hugh, so glad
to see you’re well. And so sorry to know that Constance and little Hugh … that they were killed.’

‘Is there anything you can tell us about that night?’ Baldwin asked.

Hugh could only shake his head, incapable. It was just as if he’d been storing up the misery and loneliness for the last days
and now all his grief was overwhelming him. Surely his heart must burst!