Michael Jecks - No Law in the Land

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.’