Michael Jecks - The Prophecy of Death

It was no good. Baldwin bellowed for a priest, and was startled when one materialised from behind him. The fellow knelt immediately to give the King’s man his last questions and offer him salvation.

‘What now?’ Simon asked. He had his sword to André’s neck, while Thomas had his own at Pons’s.

‘Now,’ Baldwin said, looking from one to the other of his captives, ‘I think we tell the King that these two have slain one of his guest’s guards in broad daylight, such as it is, and in front of our eyes. I don’t think he will be enormously impressed. Do you?’

‘We are here with the Bishop of Orange. We demand to see him,’ Pons said. André was still looking a little bemused, shaking his head and blinking. His face had gone a pasty, yellow colour, and Baldwin was more than a little concerned that the blow to his head might have concussed him, but for now he was not being sick, and had not lost consciousness, so he reasoned that the man should be all right.

‘Shut up!’ Thomas grated, giving Pons a swift punch to the side of his head.

‘You may be assured that I will tell him all,’ Baldwin said, taking Thomas’s fist in his hand and preventing any more blows. ‘Meanwhile, unless you tell us what was happening in that tavern, I will be forced to go straight to the King to tell him you have killed a man in his own palace yard. He will not be sympathetic to you.’

‘We have nothing to say to you. Only to the Bishop,’ Pons said, giving Thomas a baleful look.

Baldwin was not loath to deliver the two to the King’s guards down at the steps to the undercroft near the chapel. He watched the two being led down, still demanding vociferously that they should be allowed to speak with their bishop, but to no avail.

‘What will happen to them?’ Thomas asked harshly. He thrust his sword away regretfully.

‘For now, little enough, I expect. Sadly, I think that even if the King tries to question them, the Pope’s man will have them escape risk of life and limb. They can sit in there for a while, though. Do you know them?’

‘No, but I know this other fellow. The one they killed. He was a friend of mine.’

‘He was with the Bishop too, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but he befriended me in Beaulieu.’

‘Yes?’ Baldwin prompted.

Thomas looked at him from the corner of his eye. This keeper was known to him by face, but he had no idea of Baldwin’s allegiance, and in this land it was dangerous to mention Despenser. If you were insulting about him to a stranger, you might later learn that the ‘stranger’ was a close friend of Despenser who’d told him everything. The first you’d usually know was when someone arrived at your house in the middle of the night with a flaming torch.

‘Friend,’ Baldwin said, ‘all I am trying to do is discover why your friend was murdered. If you don’t want me to learn that, tell me nothing. However, if you were his friend, please tell me all so that I can make sure his killers actually pay for their crime. If you don’t help me, they will probably escape. If you help me, I swear I’ll take the matter up, even if I have to go to the Devil himself.’

Thomas nodded slowly, and made up his mind. ‘Very well. I am called Thomas of Bakewell. I was brother to Sir John, who was killed at the coronation when a wall fell on him.’

‘I recall,’ Baldwin said. ‘A terrible accident.’

‘It was. I was there. Not only John died, of course, but he was the noteworthy figure. The others were all unknowns. But it was dreadful. I can remember lying beside him, choked by the dust and muck, and all I could do was reach to him as he died, poor John, but my hand was kicked away.’

‘Who would do a thing like that?’ Simon asked.

‘Despenser. He was furious. I think it was the way that the coronation had been allowed to be so disturbed. That was the first time I met him.’

‘You wear the King’s tabard,’ Baldwin noted.

‘Yes. The Queen saw me, and she was wonderful and kind to me. So from that day, I have lived with her household. I became one of her messengers a few years ago, and she has protected me even when her household was disbanded. She saw to it that I was given a job with her husband. Of course, that means I’ve had to see more of Sir Hugh le Despenser.’

‘And I imagine that would be painful for you.’

‘Yes. Especially since he seems to believe that I stole the oil from Canterbury,’ he explained.

‘Did you?’ Baldwin asked.

‘No! I was late back from my last journey, but that was simply because my horse went lame. I don’t know anything about the oil. What could I do with it? But Despenser took me aside, threatened me, ripped up all my belongings … if it wasn’t for Jack, I’d have had nothing. He was good enough to look after me. He lent me a blanket and food for the journey here. I don’t know what I’d have done without his help.’

‘Can you tell us where to find his pack?’

‘Of course. What about those two? Will they be safe in there? They won’t be released while we’re gone?’

‘They can wait there. They’ll need the order of the King to get released. They escaped one excess of violence back in Canterbury — they will not escape this one too.’

‘The pair seem inured to violence. Do you think they could have stolen the King’s oil?’ Thomas asked.

‘I fear not,’ Baldwin said. ‘They were with the Bishop’s entourage, so they arrived with us the day after the theft. Still, they are trying to hide something. Let us find Jack’s belongings and make sure they’re secure, and then we can search for their packs too, and see what they were carrying.’

It took them little time to get to the house where Jack had been staying. The Bishop and all his men had been put up in a merchant’s house just outside the palace walls, and when Baldwin and Simon hurried there, they found one of the other men from the Bishop’s retinue sitting outside, yawning widely. He had been on guard the night before, and blinked blearily at them as Baldwin explained why they were there.

‘Do you know them?’ Baldwin said, after describing the dead man and the two he had arrested.

‘Sounds like Jack and André and Pons,’ the guard agreed. ‘Those two bastards don’t surprise me at all. They’d slit your throat for the price of an ale, they would. Fools! And Jack’s dead? He was a good man, too. Hard, but competent.’

‘Can you show me all their baggage?’

Jack’s was very light, and it took little effort to go through it. There was nothing of any value, indeed little of any sort whatever.

Thomas sniffed and had to wipe at his eyes. ‘Everything he had, he shared with me,’ he said.

‘What of these other two?’ Baldwin muttered to himself.

Pons’s bag was a thin linen scrap which held a small knife for eating, a worn stone for honing it, and a skimpy shirt, also of linen. There was a St Christopher in lead, a pilgrim badge like those owned by Richard de Yatton, but nothing else which caught Baldwin’s eye. André’s roll was different, though. It had a small pouch, and when Baldwin looked inside, he found a ring. ‘Look at this!’ he said, holding it up.

‘A ring? What was he doing with that in his bag?’ Simon wondered.

‘There’s more,’ Baldwin said. Tipping up the bag, he found that there were two gemstones inside. One was a ruby, from the look of it. He sifted through the contents with a frown on his face, lifting up a soft woollen shift. ‘This looks a little too good for a mere guard, too.’

When they went back to the rolls, there was more. Carefully concealed inside André’s blanket Baldwin found two pewter plates, of the kind that would be very easy to sell or pawn for ready money. ‘Our friend appears to have been well-provisioned with money,’ he said.