Michael Jecks - No Law in the Land

Road to Oakhampton

They had left Sir Peregrine when the sun was already past its zenith by a good half-hour. He had plenty of business to conduct himself, and was keen to get at least as far as Crediton before nightfall. That should not be any trouble, but Simon and Sir Richard still had many miles to go.

‘What did you think of his words?’ Sir Richard asked.

‘I think that he is plainly alarmed by the way the law is becoming so disdained,’ Simon said. He jogged along in the saddle for a few moments, thinking again about the way Sir Peregrine had commented upon the murders in the area. ‘I was shocked to hear of the murder of the reeve, I confess. Most wandering bands would avoid harming a man such as he, if they can avoid it.’

‘Aye. But the buggers are all over the place now. Indolent, idle and armed. It makes it all more problematic. If there’s a gang that is prepared to kill twenty-odd people, that is a crime to be pursued, certainly.’

‘Yes,’ Simon agreed. ‘Who would do that, too? A madman, surely.’

‘No. Certainly not. An armed band desperate for money or food, perhaps, but certainly not a fool. They were clever enough to kill the whole lot, so there could be no witnesses, and then they took all that was worthwhile.’

‘From what Sir Peregrine said, the clerical fellow had been wealthy,’ Simon recalled. ‘Rings and all the trappings. What kind of man would have stayed out in the wilds when there must be dozens of taverns along that road?’

‘A man who feared being trapped?’ Sir Richard wondered. ‘I have often kept out of the smaller, less salubrious establishments while travelling, in case I may be set upon.’

Simon looked at him. Sir Richard had never, to his knowledge, avoided the meanest, foulest drinking dens. More commonly he would cheerfully declare that the better deals for wine or ale could be found in them. And then he would berate the keeper of the tavern until the very best drinks and foods were brought out for him. ‘I had noticed,’ he said with careful moderation.

‘How far do you reckon we may travel today?’ Sir Richard asked after a little while.

‘I hope that by dark we should have reached Lydford,’ Simon said.

He was not happy as they rode, though. For all that he had a most redoubtable companion in the figure of the coroner, this was one of the first times while passing through Devon that he had been aware of a sense of urgency and nervousness. Each great tree appeared to cast a curious shadow. At one point he was close to shouting a warning at Sir Richard when he saw a shadow suddenly shift, and it was only the quick realisation that it was in fact the movement of a branch causing it that stopped his voice. This was ridiculous! For him, a man in his middle years, to be so skittish in the face of fears was foolish in the extreme.

‘I have heard of other families that live outside the law,’ Sir Richard murmured.

‘Sorry?’ Simon asked, jolted from his reverie.

‘This man Sir Robert de Traci and his appalling son. They sound dangerous to me. A man and his son who can work without the law. That makes a deadly combination.’

‘The sheriff would appear to have allied himself with them,’ Simon observed.

‘Aye, well, there’s many a sheriff — and judge — who will do that. I have heard of one sheriff who captured a fellow and kept him in gaol, torturing him until he confessed to some crimes, then forced him to name his friends as accomplices, just so he could fine them. Others will all too often take bribes to persuade a jury to go one way so that a guilty man will walk free — or to convict and hang another just so the guilty can pay him for his freedom. Cannot abide that. The thought of an innocent man being punished while the guilty is left to commit another crime is disgusting.’

‘I don’t know this man from Bow. Nor the sheriff,’ Simon mentioned.

‘Sir Robert’s been there a while. Surprised you haven’t met him yet.’ Sir Richard explained how the knight had been a member of the king’s household until he allied himself with the king’s enemies, and after that had been outlawed. ‘I had no idea he’d been restored to his former positions.’

‘Surely the king wouldn’t give him back his lands and life if he had been a traitor?’

The coroner grunted in response to that. ‘Enough others have been pardoned for all their crimes.’

‘I have tended to avoid these parts in recent years,’ Simon said. ‘Living on the moors, then down at Dartmouth; and recently I’ve been away so much that Bow doesn’t seem a natural place to visit.’

‘Aye, well, by the sound of things you should continue to avoid the place,’ was Sir Richard’s considered comment.

They dropped down into Oakhampton in the middle of the afternoon, much to the delight of Sir Richard, who, in the absence of a full wineskin, was growing almost morose. Then they took the Cornwall road past the castle, and on to the road south.

Simon would have liked to have left the roads, and at Prewley Moor he cast a longing glance to the moors themselves, but he was forced to agree with Sir Richard that it would have been foolhardy. There was no need to leave the roadway here. It was a good trail, with cleared verges for almost all the route to Lydford, and when they were approaching the town, they would be perfectly safe in any case. Better by far to keep to the road and make their journey more swiftly.

It was still an hour before nightfall when they trotted gently into the town where Simon had lived for such a long while. He cast about him as they went, fearing that they might even now be assailed by the men of Sir Hugh le Despenser, especially William atte Wattere, but for all his fears, there was no sign of anyone. Only some loud singing from the tavern as they passed, and the occasional barking of a dog, told them that people still lived here.

‘This is my house,’ Simon said as they reached the long, low building. He stopped a moment and looked at it, feeling a distinct sense of alienation. The place had been his for such a long time, it was most curious to think that it had been taken from him so swiftly and easily. There was a shocking ruthlessness in the way that Despenser had gone about it, searching for a weakness in Simon’s life, and then exploiting it without compunction. He had learned about Simon’s lease while Simon was abroad on a mission for the king. A little pressure on the leaseholder was all that was needed, and Despenser owned the place. The most powerful man in the land after only the king himself was not the man to make an enemy.

So Simon had lost his home, but more importantly he had also lost his peace of mind. Any pleasure in his possessions was now marred by the realisation that they could be taken from him at any time. He had no control over his own destiny.

Of course a man always knew that the most valuable asset he owned, his life, could be snatched away in a moment. It took only a freak accident, a whim on the part of God Himself, and a man’s soul was taken from him. Sometimes it was malevolent fate that men blamed, sometimes the evil in others, but Simon had been raised and educated at the Church of the Holy Cross and the Mother of Him Who Hung Thereon, the canonical church at Crediton, and the teachings of the canons there had influenced his life and thinking ever since.

His life was not something Simon had ever bothered to trouble himself over. He had a simple faith that because he was a Christian, when he died he would be taken up to heaven. There was no point troubling himself over the world and worldly things when the real life was yet to come. And yet he found more and more that the things he cared about most deeply were all too easily taken from him. Perhaps it was because of this, he thought, staring at the house. Such a solid, massive structure, so permanent, it seemed impossible to think that it could be taken from him in a matter of days, no matter what he tried to do to keep it. There was an inevitability about such things. Those things he loved most dearly, they were themselves the very things he would find being targeted by an enemy such as Sir Hugh le Despenser.