Michael Jecks - No Law in the Land

Barnstaple

It was no good. He had done his best. Now Roger couldn’t even remember the faces of all the men whom he had stopped and asked for work. One, he recalled, had had an empty eye socket and a beard that was entirely white, apart from a darker stain at the edges of his mouth. The sight was odd enough to make Roger stare at first, until he saw the old sailor pick up a rope and begin to work on it, pausing only to thrust it into his mouth. The tar was the cause of the staining, he realised.

That was the only face he remembered now, as he stood on the harbour wall staring longingly out to sea. There was a slight inshore breeze, which was throwing some spray into his face, and when he closed his eyes, he could sense it like icy darts flung at his cheeks. The way the fresh wind tore at his clothing and tugged his hair made him feel alive again, as though his feet were about to shift with the roll of the decking that should have been there.

But there was no decking. There was no ship. All the mariners he had spoken with had refused him with as much alacrity as a master rejecting the pleas of an abjurer. He was foreign, unwanted, distrusted. There was nothing else for him to do.

He threw one last glance out to sea, to the grey roiling waters with the white tops, and shivered as though someone had walked over his grave. There was an odd sensation in his belly and bowels; it felt as though God had sent him a warning that he would find no peace if he turned away and sought his fortune elsewhere.

‘What else would you have me do?’ he muttered. ‘Starve to death up here?’

With a firm rejection of the northern seas, he set his shoulders and began the long march southwards. Plymouth had been no good to him, but perhaps he would be luckier in Dartmouth. He would try it.

Fourth Thursday after the Feast of the Archangel Michael *

Exeter, Devon

They arrived at the gate in a flurry of noise and excitement as night was falling.

At first Simon and Sir Richard had been happy enough to keep at the gentle trot that had been enough to bring them over the broad plains east of the city. Wolf, too, looked as though he would appreciate a more sedate promenade, ideally with opportunities to investigate the various holes that dotted the hedges and walls about here, but Baldwin would have none of it.

‘We’ve made excellent time to get here so quickly,’ he declared, and lashed the flanks of his mount, making the beast rear. ‘Come, fellows! Let us hasten to my home and rest there!’

‘Baldwin!’ Simon protested. ‘It’ll be dark before we get even remotely close to your home. It is now nearly sunset. We shall have to stay in Exeter the night.’

Baldwin looked ahead at the sun starting to sink down below the hills westwards, then up at the clouds looming overhead, before reluctantly nodding. ‘I suppose we’d be unlikely to make it home tonight.’

‘Not even a remote chance,’ Simon said. He shifted in his saddle. ‘We’ve made excellent time in the last four days. I don’t intend to break my neck for the sake of saving a few hours tomorrow morning. Much though I’d like to see Jeanne and Richalda and little Baldwin, not to mention my own family, there’s no point flogging our way over the country in the dark.’

‘True enough,’ Baldwin agreed. The potholes could be lethal in dim light. There was a man last year who had seen a hat floating in a puddle in a roadway, and when he lifted it, discovered the owner was still wearing it. The poor fellow had already drowned. There were so many little holes in the road, and occasionally they would grow more vast as a result of sudden rainfall, and the unwary would die. Even much shallower holes held their own risks, for they could break a horse’s leg, throw a rider, and result in the deaths of both.

Sir Richard sucked at his teeth. ‘There’s usually a room at a little tavern I know,’ he said hopefully. ‘Excellent ale, better wine, and the food’s acceptable too. I’d-’

Simon hastily interrupted. ‘I am sure that my daughter would be happy to give us some space in her home.’

‘Your daughter?’ Sir Richard asked.

‘Yes. Edith married on the morrow of the Feast of Gordianus and Epimachus, *and lives now with her man in Exeter,’ Simon said. ‘Peter is a keen merchant. Was apprenticed, but now he’s working with his father, who’s a merchant too. With any luck he’ll be allowed to enter the Freedom of the City, and then who knows? My grandchildren may be born into the city themselves, and have all the advantages.’

Baldwin smiled at his expression. ‘You would like that, wouldn’t you, Simon?’

‘Like it? The idea is wonderful,’ Simon said, a little more sharply than he intended. He tried to cover his tone with a chuckle and an apologetic grin. ‘You come from a knightly family, Baldwin. You can’t quite appreciate the difference between being born a free man and being born a serf. The idea that my grandchildren will have the benefit of being born in the city is marvellous. I’d never have expected that.’

‘Then let’s go and see her house,’ Sir Richard said. ‘Any daughter of yours must be a sight to behold — especially if she has access to her own wine cellar,’ he added hopefully.

St Pancras Lane, Exeter

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ Baldwin asked for the third time.

‘I have only heard where the house is, I haven’t been here before,’ Simon said.

He was rapidly growing alarmed. Edith had told him that her house was down this lane, he was sure. The place, she had said, had a limewashed front, with two large windows and a second storey that hung over the street. It had been the home to her husband Peter when he was younger, but Peter’s parents had built a new house further east, nearer the Guild Hall, and had given their older house to Peter and his wife. He was their only son, after all.

‘Well if you can’t find it,’ the coroner said happily, ‘there’s a very excellent-looking tavern over there. Perhaps they have a room that we could share, eh? God’s blood, but a haunch of meat and a jug of good strong Guyennois wine would go down very well. There’s a gap there where my belly used to be. My brain’s telling me all’s well, but my heart reckons some evil bastard’s cut my throat.’

‘It must be here,’ Simon said.

The three were standing near the line of houses on the eastern side of the road, and now he looked up and down again. ‘If we don’t get there soon, we’ll be breaking the curfew.’

‘Talk of the devil,’ Sir Richard said, jerking his head.

Approaching them with a scowl that would have graced a mastiff was a tall, gangly fellow. He wore a leather jerkin, his hood was over his ears, and his waxed cloak rustled noisily. Yet although he was not the most prepossessing figure, the staff in his hands was a tool to be reckoned with. ‘You are out late, masters.’

‘Aye,’ Sir Richard said. ‘We are a little confused in our ways, I think.’

‘Confused, eh? Perhaps you’d like me to help unconfuse you?’

Baldwin glanced at the others. They were all cloaked against the chill, and he wondered whether the lad had realised that two of them were knights. Certainly his tone was not respectful. If anything, he sounded peevishly suspicious. Even as Baldwin turned to glance back, he saw the lad was gripping his staff more truculently. It was pointing at Sir Richard — which did, at least, demonstrate to Baldwin that the fellow knew how to spot the most dangerous of the three.

‘Friend,’ Baldwin said, ‘please be calm. This man here is the father of a mistress who lives along this road, but we have not visited her home before. She only married earlier this year.’