Michael Jecks - The Prophecy of Death

‘Should we mark the body?’ Simon said.

Baldwin was still gazing down at the dead man. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘What is it?’

Baldwin leaned down and peered more closely. To Simon’s disgust, he took a hold of the body by the shoulder. A cluster of flies rose immediately, but Baldwin simply waved them away from his face as he stared at the body. ‘Just that it seems odd. His tabard is rucked up at the back, where he fell. And look: there is no hole in the tabard itself. Nor a mark on his throat.’

‘What of it?’

‘It is peculiar, that the man is dead, but his tabard is undamaged,’ Baldwin said with a frown.

‘Perhaps he was knocked on the head? Or struck by an arrow in his flank?’

‘There is no arrow,’ Baldwin pointed out. ‘And as for knocked on the head — perhaps, but if that was the case, surely if he was struck hard enough to kill, his head would show some sign of it. His skull would be broken.’ As he spoke, his fingers were moving over the man’s head. ‘No. No broken bones there.’

‘Then, what?’

‘I think he was killed, and then the tabard thrown over him.’

‘That is a large inference from so little, Baldwin.’

‘True enough. But it does at least suit the facts here,’ he responded.

‘What is the delay, Sir Baldwin?’ the Bishop shouted from the main roadway. ‘We have need of speed!’

‘I have a need to ensure that this body is marked well so that the coroner can find it, my Lord Bishop. Do you continue with the rest of the men and I and my friend here shall see to it and catch you up in a moment or two.’

‘Make haste, then, Sir Knight. Your duty is to me, do not forget. Not to a churl murdered at the wayside.’

His tone was sharp. The Bishop was irritated to be thus held up, and he held Baldwin responsible. Baldwin nodded, but said nothing.

As the two from Canterbury passed by, though, Simon saw John, the younger guard, grin and sneer at them, as though the death of one little man so far from anywhere was amusing. It chilled Simon’s blood.

Jack watched the knight and bailiff with the body as he rode on past them. It was plain enough that the bailiff was less than comfortable in the presence of the corpse, but that the knight was relishing his task. He was a sick kind of fellow, in Jack’s eye.

He had known a felon in France when he was first there, a short, ill-favoured man, marked with the pox, and who had a cast in his eye that made him appear still more foul. This man, Guillaume, took inordinate delight in torturing men slowly to learn whether they had more money or treasure hidden about them, or nearby. His favourite method was to slice open a man’s foot, and fill it with butter before setting it over a fire to roast. The screams of those who suffered under his care Jack could still hear in his dreams.

However, there was at least good reason for that: the men all wanted to learn where wealth could have been secreted. No, it was the other damage inflicted which set Jack’s belly roiling: once his victim had died, little Guillaume would set about mutilating the body for fun. Once he had emulated the Scottish leader, Wallace, and flayed a man so that he could use the skin as a sword-belt. It hadn’t worked, though. The leather was poorly tanned, and soon rotted.

Those days were black indeed. At the time Jack had been certain that his life would end soon enough. The effect of the famine and the death of all his family had served to destroy his faith in the world and in God. God couldn’t care for men if he could seek to destroy them in this manner. The loss of the Holy Land at the time of his birth showed that God had grown to despise His creation. Why else would He have given the Holy Land to pagans? No, God had decided that it was time to end the world, that was what Jack had believed back in those grim days, and Jack was content to watch it happen. He had little enough to live for. All he sought was a means of feeding himself each day, and without work, often the only way meant capturing a man and making him give up all he owned. He would die, but at least Jack and the others would live for a little longer.

Until he met his Anne-Marie. He had truly felt that with her, he could at last find some peace. The famine appeared to have ended, the cattle and the sheep began to wax fat on the grasses, and the people who had survived suddenly found that there was a superfluity of food for all. Men like Jack could return to little villages where their labour was desired and work for the good of others again, and in time perhaps forget that in harsher times they had been prepared to throw away their humanity and lower themselves to the level of beasts. But no matter how hard they tried, they would always find that the nightmares would return to them in sleep, and they would be forced to relive their past crimes and confront their victims once more.

At least his old companion, Guillaume, was dead. Jack had seen his head removed. But this knight could have been his student, pulling and shoving at the body with enthusiasm. From this distance, it looked as though he was enjoying the exercise.

Jack turned to the road ahead with his belly feeling uncomfortably hot, as though the acid was boiling and about to rise into his throat. He would watch out for this knight, too.

As he turned away, he noticed John was staring at him fixedly.

Jack truly did not like that man.

Baldwin set the man back down. ‘This is very curious.’

‘What?’ Simon demanded waspishly. Watching his friend pulling the corpse about like that was deeply unpleasant. He kept expecting a decomposing arm to be pulled from the sack of pus and gas that was the torso.

‘There is no obvious mark on his head or throat. Nothing that could have killed him.’

‘So?’

‘So, then, the wound must have been inflicted upon his torso to kill him. But in that case, you would expect him to have been marked through his tabard. Yet there is no such damage.’

‘Perhaps it was flying away in the wind? He was shot by an arrow underneath it while he was on a horse, and fell down here.’

‘Where is the arrow?’

‘The killer came here to get it, and in the process he found the man’s purse and other valuables. There! No wound on the tabard, a deadly blow that killed him, and it explains also why there is nothing of value about him.’

‘True enough. But if he was shot, surely the arrow would be broken as he fell,’ Baldwin wondered aloud. He broke off and studied the man’s hands for a moment. ‘Nothing to see there. He has been a man who has used his hands, but who hasn’t?’

‘When I’ve shot a deer, often it has fallen away from the direction of the arrow, as though punched by it,’ Simon tried. ‘The arrow remains uppermost.’

‘Yes. You are probably correct. Yes,’ Baldwin agreed. He strode to a nearby branch which had broken from its tree and lay on the ground nearby. Baldwin eyed it thoughtfully, then picked it up and set it over the body. He took the man’s tabard off, and fixed it to the branch with a leather thong he took from his pack, and then set the makeshift flag over the body, bound to the limb of a nearby ash.

‘That will do it,’ he said. Then he began to cast about him, studying the ground, carefully parting the grasses and weeds at the same time as prodding with a small stick into any deeper patches.

‘Do you think anyone will actually find his murderer?’ Simon said, gazing at the body.

‘The coroner will do his best to make a record, I’ve no doubt. When I found a dead king’s messenger in Exeter, I moved heaven and earth to find his killer and succeeded — but that was in a city. People are close, there. Here, in the wilds, anyone could have done this. That is the great fear of the countryside. A man may commit homicide with impunity, when he would be fearful of doing so in the town. In a town his offence will be more speedily noticed, and the perpetrator can be uncovered. In the countryside, his crimes may never be noticed. Finding this body was more by luck than good judgement. He said he saw something metal, didn’t he? I wonder what that was.’