No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27) (22 page)

‘I swear it!’ she hissed.

‘Very well,’ he said. He slipped the rope about her waist, but even as he did it, he was gentle, and he didn’t make any attempt
to touch her breasts, waist or thighs. It made her realise that he was according her as much respect as he might, under the
circumstances. Once it was round her, he tied it off, and then took the loop in his hand again.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You’ll know very soon. Sir Robert of Traci’s manor. You’ll be safe there.’

‘Why, though, sir? Why do you take me there? My family will be alarmed when I am missed. What have I ever done to you?’

‘You haven’t, mistress, but your father has. He has cut me with steel, and humiliated me before my lord. I won’t let that
happen again. No, I’ll see him in hell first,’ he spat.

‘But you don’t need me. Let me go!’

‘After so much effort? No, I don’t think so, mistress. Better that you come with me and we finish what’s been started.’

Edith wailed at him. ‘But
why
? You’ve already stolen our house,
you’ve taken away our family’s peace and comfort, and now you’ve caused me to be terrified! What is it all for?’

William atte Wattere eyed her. ‘Because, mistress, your father is an important man in the area. That’s why. He can settle
the dispute in Tavistock. And he will have to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if he doesn’t, you’ll …’

But he couldn’t finish his sentence. Instead he spurred his horse into a trot again, and they rode on. Not for much further,
Edith prayed.

Her head was already nodding. There had been no possibility of escape, even though the feeling had started to return to her
fingers quickly, once the ropes were taken from her wrists and the blood began to flow once more.

There had been some roads that had looked possible. The way down to Coleford was one lane she knew very well, and with the
low, overhanging branches, she might well have been able to lose her captor if she had been able to evade him at the outset,
but he had ridden past the lane between it and her, almost as though he knew she would make an attempt, his attention fixed
upon her the whole time.

She didn’t have the courage. If she’d spurred her beast, it was possible that she might have been able to escape by surprising
him and yanking the rope from his hands, but the likelihood was that he’d have caught her instantly, and then all she’d have
won would have been the rope about her wrists again. No, if she was going to bolt, she was going to have to do so at a moment
when there was the best chance of making good her escape. The next lanes were little help. All small, uniformly straggly,
difficult for him to chase after her, but also very tough for her to ride away at speed. And looking at him, she was filled
with an unpleasant assurance that the fellow would ride like the devil if he saw her making good her escape. She was as likely
to break her mare’s leg as he was his palfrey’s, and then no doubt she’d be forced to walk with her hands bound. No, she couldn’t
risk it, not on roads she didn’t know.

Before they could reach Bow, he took her along a back lane that curled round to the south, and thence up to a road that led
towards Nymet Traci. She knew this area. There was a strong house down here, she recalled. An old knight had lived there.
A good, kind fellow, she remembered – she had met him a few times when there was a
market at Lydford. Her father had always liked him too. Perhaps she could shout for help there as they passed. There was no
rope about her neck now. She felt safer than she had all day, and surely there would be someone who would think nothing of
riding to the aid of a woman in distress.

Soon they were in full view of it. A large stone-built house surrounded by a good castellated wall. ‘There you are, mistress.
The castle of Sir Robert de Traci.’

Rougemont Castle, Exeter

The gaol in the castle was a dark, foul chamber built beneath the walls on the eastern side of the grounds.

It was not often used. There were other little chambers that were more suited to the storage of felons and other criminals,
but those prisoners who held a particular importance – or, as Baldwin ruefully admitted to himself, perhaps value to the sheriff
– were kept here, near to hand, within the castle itself.

There was one advantage to being held in the castle grounds. At least the sheriff had shown that the prisoners here were of
significance to him. That meant that Peter was less likely to die from neglect or beatings. There were always a number of
deaths of prisoners in the city gaol: starvation, disease, dehydration and peine fort et dure were common causes, but less
likely for prisoners as important as those held here.

It was rare that action would be taken against prison guards who allowed their charges to die, unless they were astonishingly
harsh. For prisoners, death was normal and expected. The coroner would hold an inquest over any death, of course, and if the
warders were found to have been guilty of deliberately causing it, they could be arrested as homicides and potentially put
on trial – but they were unlikely to be convicted. After all, any juror accusing them could at some point in the future end
up in the gaol. There might well be some form of retribution for a juror who had tried to convict a warder. So prisoners would
die, and their deaths were invariably pronounced as being the result of natural causes.

Peter might have been treated better than most, but it did not mean that he enjoyed a luxurious existence. When Baldwin and
Edgar found him, he was sitting forlornly on the floor. There was no chair, not even a simple log on which to rest. The light
was poor, from a window high in the wall, and the atmosphere was cold and dank.

‘Master Peter?’ Baldwin said. ‘Are you well?’

The boy looked as though he was in his thirties. He had aged so much in such a short time that Baldwin almost didn’t recognise
him. In the last days, Peter had lost the fine, gentle appearance of privilege, and instead had taken on the mantle of poverty.
There was a haunted look in his eyes, and a line of what looked like dried spittle had trailed down his cheek from his mouth,
as though he had been screaming or dribbling with terror.

It was all too easy to imagine him utterly horrorstruck in here. As Baldwin looked about him briefly, he was struck by the
bleak foulness of the hideous little chamber. As he knew, it was in similar little chambers in France that his comrades and
friends had been tortured. The bestial level to which mankind could sink was a source of wonder to him – the more so the older
he grew. As a youngster, he had accepted man’s cruelties and injustices as natural, but no longer. The Temple had given him
a new life, the chance to witness how other societies lived, and how men could order themselves to exist alongside other races
and religions, without resorting to the madness of attempting to kill each other.

There was something entirely repugnant about torture, he thought. It served no useful purpose, for a man would confess to
anything in order to stop pain. He would lie about his faith, his family, his friends. The three great betrayals. Nothing
that was given by a torture victim could be trusted. It was worthless.

But the cruel enjoyed inflicting terror on their victims.

‘Peter, are you well?’ he asked again, more softly.

‘What do you want?’ Peter asked weakly. He was wincing, peering up at them with eyes that were mere slits, while trying to
push himself back against the wall.

‘Master Peter, it is me, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, and my good servant, Edgar. We are here to try to help you.’

‘Oh God! My Christ, thank you!’ Peter sobbed as he recognised Baldwin’s voice. ‘Can you get me out of here? Please,
please
, save me from this!’

As he spoke, he crawled forward on his hands and knees, and held his hands up to Baldwin.

‘Peter, stand. You are no creature that deserves to go about like this.’

‘You don’t know what they’ve … The sheriff says I’ll hang. Why?
Why does he wish to kill me, Sir Baldwin? I haven’t
done
anything!’

Baldwin looked down at Peter’s filthy, tear-streaked face and knew he couldn’t tell the lad about Edith. ‘Tell me, Peter,
is there any reason you can think of that could make the sheriff wish to hurt you? Have you met him? Spoken to him? Have you
ever spoken about him, or has your wife, for example?’

‘No! No, nothing at all, I swear it! I know nothing about the man. How could I? I was apprenticed to Master Harold in Tavistock
until just before I married, and since then I’ve been too busy here in Exeter.’

‘Do you have any family who could have had a dispute with him?’

‘No, I swear! He is neighbour to my father’s lands in Heavitree, but beyond that, I don’t think I have ever known him.’

‘Neighbour to your father’s lands, you say?’

‘He owns the little manor next to my father’s, yes, but that’s all. They’ve never had a dispute, so far as I know. It would
be hard: the sheriff has hardly been there in years. He’s proud of his connections in the king’s court.’

‘Does your father support the king?’ Baldwin asked softly. It was not a question that he wished to have overheard.

‘Of course he does! As do I!’

‘Is there any reason you can think of why the sheriff might wish to do you harm?’

Peter’s face was full of desperate enthusiasm. ‘No, not at all.’

‘Peter,
think
! Someone has caused you to be arrested. I do not believe that the sheriff has acted purely for reasons of suspicion against
you. There must be a reason why he would have done this.’

‘I know no reason! None! Why would he want to do this to me? I don’t know him! He’s only a neighbour of my father’s, neither
friend nor enemy to me!’

As they left the chamber, paying a penny to the guard outside for allowing them to visit, Baldwin stood frowning. ‘Edgar,
if the boy had done something,
anything
, to anger the sheriff, the man would not have let him make such a mistake. He’s too arrogant to do that. There must surely
be something …’

Edgar was about to comment when they heard a voice hailing them.

‘Sir Baldwin! I hope I see you well, old friend!’

Baldwin reluctantly fitted a smile to his face. ‘Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple! How very good to see you again.’

Jacobstowe

Agnes watched the men as they studied the land carefully.

The younger one, the bailiff, was methodical in the way that he searched all about the land, his face grim and frowning as
he walked up and down the area, looking for any clue, be it never so small.

‘You were here, then?’ he asked Hoppon.

‘I found him, poor devil. I walked up here because I had a fancy I could see something from my house, a little huddle of something.
When I got here, it was him, poor fellow. He’ll be missed, will Bill.’

‘But he was here. You went all the way up there,’ the bailiff said, pointing to the brow of the hill.

Hoppon’s face clouded with suspicion. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Your staff’s easy to see on this soft turf. It penetrated the grasses and stabbed down an inch or so when you used it going
up the hill there. You put more weight on it as you use it to help you uphill, I guess. And then coming back, you used it
less forcefully.’

‘Oh! Oh well, aye, I suppose so. I think I came here, saw him lying on the ground, and went up the hill at once to see if
anyone was still there. I was looking to make sure I wouldn’t be knocked on the head as soon as I crouched at his side. I
made sure that he was dead, and said a prayer over him, the Pater Noster, before going to Jacobstowe to fetch help.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Simon said.

Agnes could see that he was making sense of this senseless murder so far as it was possible. The bailiff asked a few more
questions, and the coroner demanded to know the details of how the body lay, and what the injuries were.

‘He was lying on his side, with his arms outstretched,’ Hoppon said. ‘He had a great bloody mess on the side of his head just
here,’ and he indicated the right side of his head above and in front of his ear. ‘His eye was almost hanging out, he’d been
hit so hard.’

There was a great deal more in the same vein, but Agnes was incapable of absorbing it. It was hard enough to come to terms
with the fact that her lovely Bill was dead, let alone the reality of how he had been killed, his head crushed like a beetle.
It made her sick in the pit of her stomach just to think of it. ‘He was away for so long. To think that he should have died
so close here.’

‘Mistress, I am sorry,’ the coroner said. He was a great hulking bear
of a man, Agnes thought. The sort a woman would go to for sympathy. From the twinkle in his eye, he might welcome approaches
of a different sort as well. But there was nothing in her that would reciprocate any advances. Her womb felt shrivelled. Her
soul was dry and unloving. All had gone when her man was killed. She longed for the sight of his killer dangling from a rope,
the hemp cutting slowly into his throat as he swung, legs flailing. She could know no pleasure until he was dead, whoever
he was.

But she was a mere peasant woman. A widow. She had no means of learning who could have done this.

‘Did you see a weapon?’ Simon was asking.

‘No.’

Agnes saw the bailiff nod and glance about him. It was plain enough that he didn’t expect a man like Hoppon to have seen much
in the way of evidence. The hill sloped away from this spot towards the river, and the bailiff wandered down that way, whistling
tunelessly, casting about him.

Hoppon scowled, but said nothing as the fellow kicked about some nettles at the bottom. They were old nettles, their leaves
brown, their stems withered and very tall, sheltered under a sprawling oak. Agnes watched as he walked around in them for
a few minutes, and then began to flatten the stems in a circle, stamping them down with vigour.

‘Here it is,’ he called. ‘Sorry, Coroner! A free weapon.’

‘Hah! So it is too,’ the knight called down. He peered at the clerk, who was standing a short distance away and wearing a
look of long-suffering tolerance sorely strained. ‘Hey, Mark, ye see that? The blasted deodand is worth nothing, eh? Oh, sorry,
mistress.’

Agnes scarcely noticed his words. As the bailiff clambered up the hill, a heavy, smooth river pebble in his hand, she could
not take her eyes from it. It was black and crusted with something in places.

‘This is the weapon,’ the bailiff said, tossing it lightly to the coroner. ‘Someone, I would think, was here behind him, and
clubbed him to death with that. It’s good and heavy – it would do the job in no time. Afterwards he just hurled the stone
back towards the river, where he probably found it in the first place. Lucky – if he’d dropped it here, in the open, nearer
the body, the blood would have been washed away, I expect. Down there, it was partly sheltered by the grasses and overhanging
branches.’

The coroner was turning the stone over and over, feeling its weight in his hand. ‘Plenty to break a man’s head there, yes.
Odd, though, eh?’

Bailiff Puttock nodded shortly. ‘I think so.’

Agnes asked, ‘What is odd?’

‘The weapon,’ Coroner Richard said, still studying the rock. ‘All the men in the party at Abbeyford were slaughtered with
blades – knives, daggers, swords or axes. All of them. And your old man … my apologies, your
husband
was killed with a rock, such as any man could pick up.’

‘We will need to discuss this, and what we do next,’ the bailiff said. He glanced at Agnes and smiled. ‘Mistress, this is
a sore, sad way to spend your afternoon. You will want to be home with your son, I am sure. Let’s take you home, and if there’s
a small inn or tavern in the vill, we can sit there and make our plans without troubling you further.’

‘You are good to me,’ she said. ‘But I only want to learn that my husband’s murderer is caught. Do not trouble about me.’

‘Well, mistress, it is like this,’ the coroner said. ‘We could carry on right now, searching all over this hillside and beyond,
but if we do, we’ll only make a mess of things because we’re tired and hungry. There’s no point doing that. Soon it’ll be
dark, and in truth, we haven’t eaten in half a day. My belly’s almost on fire with hunger, and I need a large flagon of wine
to recover my spirits. I know that you’re in a hurry to find the murdering bastard who did for your old— sorry, I mean, your
husband, but we need to keep our own bodies and souls together. So we’re going to return to Jacobstowe for now, and tomorrow
look at the way to carry on our investigation.’

‘I see,’ she said, and for the first time in the afternoon, she was aware of a heaviness in her throat, as though there was
a plum’s stone stuck there. It was a thick, sore sensation, horrible, and suddenly she felt only a hideous lassitude. A realisation
of the pointlessness of this attempt to find the killer. He was probably long gone by now. Drinking and carousing in some
far-off town like Launceston, or Exeter itself. There was no justice in the world. She would struggle on for some years, while
all about her tried to help, tried to aid her and her child, and perhaps some husband of a friend would turn up at her door,
offering her the sympathy of the bed in return for a cabbage or a bowl of broth.

She had no life now; she was an empty, futile figure. Perhaps a source of lust in the eyes of a few men, but mainly a pathetic,
lonely widow-woman who lived in her memories of what had been, and what might have been. A focus of shame, and perhaps of
pity. Nothing more.

Her thoughts were of misery and grim reality all the walk home. She could not switch her mind to any happy subjects. It would
be better if she had died, she thought. At least then Ant would have a father to protect him. There was precious little that
a mother could do. He would be better as an orphan, for then at least the vicar would see to it that someone in the vill would
take him in, and he might have a surrogate family to replace her and Bill. Poor Bill! Poor, darling Bill!