Dispensation of Death: (Knights Templar 23) (2 page)

It is quite common for an author like me to begin his or her series in a specific location. After all, it makes life a lot easier generally, because the author only needs to research one area – be it a town or city – but there are also sound logistical reasons for doing so, because many types of book need the stability of the single location. They wouldn’t work accurately over a broader sweep.

Modern police procedurals are a perfect example: if you have a detective working for Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, it’s OK to have him working in Exeter and, at a pinch, migrate him to Plymouth. However, there are many practical and political problems about moving the same poor devil to the depths of Greater Manchester (where his life expectancy could also be significantly reduced).

For medieval stories there is a greater tendency to stick to a specific and well-bounded location – people didn’t tend to travel far. The average freeman, for instance, would rarely travel farther than twenty miles from home. Many did indeed go on lengthy pilgrimages, but for a medieval murder writer like me, I have to bear in mind the strict boundaries of authority, from those between the
Church and secular world, from one Lord’s manor to another’s, from county to county, among many others. It is more realistic to stay in one area.

The trouble is, my characters are living in ‘real time’, for want of a better description. Each murder they investigate has been set in a specific month and year, and the two fellows and their wives are growing older year by year. And now historical events are beginning to overtake them. It is because I want to be able to explain the politics of the time that I have been forced to make poor Sir Baldwin a Member of Parliament, a post which is uniquely unsuited to him, bearing in mind that he is honest, decent, and a man of integrity.

It was necessary, though. Sir Baldwin has to be involved in the great debates of the time, and the first of these was the discussion about the French territories, King Edward II’s requirement to pay homage to the French King, Charles IV, and the matter of who should be sent to negotiate with the French on Edward’s behalf.

There were many eminent diplomats at this time, but for any of them to untangle the dreadful situation was asking rather too much. For those who are interested, there are many books on this period which go into the affairs in more detail, but for the majority who want a taster, here goes!

There were several spark-points. The first was that the French King was angling to take over the remaining English possessions in France.

This can be a little confusing, but suffice it to say that the English had retained some French assets. These areas
operated under the English King’s laws, and he was the supreme judge, so if there was a dispute, litigants could plead in his courts. However, they were French territories which were held by the English King under the rules of feudal law. That meant he must go to his master, the French King, and pay homage for them.

In 1325 King Edward II did not want to.

There were some pretty good reasons why he didn’t. One was the journey. Travelling over the English Channel was not like climbing into a ferry and listening to massive diesels thundering deep below you and pushing you across. Men and women died on the crossings. When there was bad weather, or when the wind turned, a ship could be left bobbing about like a cork for days. And sometimes ships were thrown against rocks.

Now the King accepted his feudal duties, but even so, he had already paid homage several times during his reign – to the French King’s father, Philip the Fair, and to his brothers (I think) Louis X and Philip V. It was not his fault that the French kings kept dying with monotonous regularity – and he did complain about having to go yet again. However, it’s clear that much of his refusal was prevarication because he didn’t really want to swear fealty. To do so could have imposed restrictions upon his powers, and would have forced him to accept his subservience to the French. That would have been insufferable.

His reluctance was not helped by the fact that King Charles had recently overrun and confiscated the English possessions. The reason for this, the War of Saint-Sardos, is fairly convoluted, but can be simply explained.

I mentioned that the English courts held sway in the English territories. Charles IV needed a pretext to invade. One line of attack was to undermine the English legal system. So petitioners dissatisfied with losing their cases before the English courts were persuaded to take their cases to the French courts for a more sympathetic hearing. And the French King took to telling his English vassal, King Edward II, to overturn decisions already declared in King Edward’s courts. This was intolerable for the English, but didn’t directly cause the war.

The second line was much more problematic. In Saint-Sardos there was a priory which was a dependent house of the Abbey of Sarlat. The enterprising Abbot of Sarlat was content that his dependency was an indivisible part of his Abbey, and as such it was responsible only to the French Crown. It couldn’t be detached and held liable under any other laws. That was problematic, but then the Abbot decided to build a
bastide
, a fortified town, on his lands in Saint-Sardos, and the foundations were laid for the war.

It was clearly a deliberate provocation. To put up a castle in the midst of the King of England’s duchy without permission was tweaking his nose unmercifully – but worse than that, the locals considered themselves to be English too, and didn’t like the high-handed efforts of the Abbot. So the English reacted as they have done through centuries. A mob stormed the works, destroyed them, and when a French official remonstrated, he was hanged.

This was the ‘riot’ that caused the invasion of the Agenais. The town of Montpezat held out for some little while, as did La Réole, but soon it grew obvious that they
couldn’t survive, and King Edward II’s brother, Edmund, who was in charge of the army for the King, was forced to surrender. Shortly afterwards the castle at Montpezat was razed to the ground in punishment for holding out.

And as all this was going on, the English King and his wife were going through what may charitably be described as ‘a difficult time’, owing to the fact that she was the French King’s sister – oh, and the English King was having a homosexual affair with his chief adviser, Sir Hugh le Despenser, one of the most repellent and thieving politicians we have ever seen in our country.

Sir Hugh did not so much bend the rules as ignore them: he took what he wanted, by threatening the owners with murder if they refused; he stole from widows shortly after their men had died in the King’s service; he used torture to extort lands from the recalcitrant. In an age when many nobles and knights were little better than felons (look at the Folvilles, the Coterells, and the deplorable Sir Gilbert Middleton) Sir Hugh le Despenser stands out as a particularly nasty piece of work.

There is one more aspect of research which has given me some headaches – the layout and use of Westminster’s halls.

The Great Hall was already old by the time of this story. Built by the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus, it is the largest surviving stone hall in Europe. Now it is the only relic of the ancient palaces of Westminster. The other buildings were destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, which is why the current palace was built. However, the others must have been extraordinary.

South of the Great Hall was the Lesser Hall, which was
where early on the monarch performed his legal and administrative duties, as well as eating. Possibly built by Edward the Confessor, it would have been a single-storey hall until the time of Henry II, when a second was added. At the eastern wall was another hall, pointing towards the river. This was the Painted Hall, noted at the time for the magnificent quality of the pictures set about the walls, and also for its wooden ceiling with decorative
peterae
, flat panels with shields or rosettes carved into them. The chamber had to be redecorated after a fire in 1263, and in Baldwin and Simon’s time, this was the state bedchamber.

However the whole of this palace complex was rambling. There are no maps to show exactly what the layout was in 1325, where corridors and passages may have led, nor even how the roof of the Great Hall was supported. There may have been one or two rows of columns holding it up – we have no way of telling. So, as usual, I have had to read through many descriptions, try to make sense of archaeological works, and when all else failed, guess!

For those who want to learn more of the history of Westminster and its buildings, I can recommend ‘The Archaeology of Medieval London’ by Christopher Thomas, Sutton 2002; ‘Medieval London Houses’ by John Schofield, Yale 1995 & 2003; ‘Westminster Kings and the Medieval Palace of Westminster’ by John Cherry and Neil Stratford, ‘Occasional Paper 115’ from the British Museum’s Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities, 1995.

As usual with all my works, where there are any errors, they are my own. However, I have made some
conscious decisions to make this work of fiction a little more comprehensible, such as moving much of the action to the Great Hall rather than confuse the reader with references to other chambers and simplifying the Queen’s block.

I have invented the situations in this book. I have invented a murder – and put genuine historical figures in the frame. There’s a certain sense of guilt at suggesting that these people could have been responsible for such a crime; however, I am confident that the main political leaders of the time were so uniquely venal, ruthless, and violent, that even were they to be watching me over my shoulder, I doubt that they would feel unduly hard done by.

Of course, if any of them come to haunt me for my presumption, I will be happy to apologise profusely.

Michael Jecks

North Dartmoor

October 2006

Monday, Morrow of St Hilary in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II
¹

It was a grey, dank morning when the assassin floated quietly downriver to the house on the Straunde. He sat huddled in the back of the boat with his greasy, grey woollen hat pulled down low over his brow against the fine drizzle thrown against his face. With his chin resting on his breast, he was confident his face was hidden, but he still eyed the river traffic warily. Many craft passed up and down: barges and boats with gaily painted sheers flaunted wealth he could only imagine. Many stopped and pulled in to bump at private jetties, while above the noise of the oars and the wind, the shouts and curses of sailors came clear across the flat water.

It was alarming to a man devoted to remaining inconspicuous. There were officials here, fighting men with good vision, and if one of them caught sight of him now, that man might recognise him in the future. Best always
to be still, silent, a shadow in the corner of a wall – never a person who could be spotted and brought to memory by a guard at the wrong moment.

It had taken two days of hard travelling to get here. Two days, and the man at the hall up there towards London must have been keen to have paid him in advance, just to get him here. Very keen indeed if the cost of the rounsey be added to the account. It was a magnificent black stallion, a fast, powerful beast, with a richly ornamented saddle and bridle, and he’d climbed onto it with trepidation, for a man like him didn’t learn how to ride at an early age like a lord. He was born to a lower class. If he hadn’t managed to be born illegitimate, he’d have been a serf. Fortunately a bastard had to be assumed to be free – the law refused to condemn a man to serfdom unless there was absolute proof that the father was a serf, no matter what the status of the mother.

Yes, with the amount of money already advanced, this must be a serious commission. That was good. But there was a double-edged quality to money – too little and a man like him had to reject it with disgust. He had some pride still. Not much, but some. Still, if there was too much money, that would mean that the task was inordinately dangerous. There was no profit in an early grave.

They were passing by the King’s Great Hall now, and he allowed his eyes to study the Palace with the interest of a traveller, unaware that this was the place where he would die.

Westminster was a strange area. It was there at the bank of the river, almost an island, with the River Tyburn
just to the south of it, the new mill turning gently with the tide. Then there were the main buildings. This was where the King’s councils met, where he held his parliaments and met his people when he held court, but it wasn’t purely designed for law-giving and law-making. This had become the King’s home, too.

The boat swung into the river a little further to avoid the first of the landing stages, and looking down its length like an archer aiming down his arrow, he could see the chapel at the edge of the buildings. Then came a small block with pleasant lancet windows – the Queen’s rooms, so he had heard. Behind the chapel’s windows was a flickering light, and he thought how warm it must be in there, out of this chill wind.