Michael Jecks - Dispensation of Death

Baldwin nodded. If a first-finder didn’t raise the hue and cry by the manner which was accepted in that part of the country, he would be fined. ‘Has anything been taken from him since you first found him?’

‘I don’t think so,’ the fellow said tremulously.

Baldwin attempted a calmer, gentler manner. ‘Was there anything you noticed about him in particular?’

‘What, other than the way his prick had been hacked off and shoved in his mouth, you mean?’ Ralph blurted out, and he had to clap a hand over his own mouth and run from the hall again, almost knocking over Earl Edmund as he entered.

Earl Edmund of Kent was unused to being thrust from the path of a lowly cleric, and he turned to bawl at the man, but Ralph had already fled.

‘What is the matter with him ?’ he demanded. He pushed his way through the crowds, and entered the Great Hall, then stopped dead when he saw the body on the ground. ‘What in God’s name is this?’

‘Who are you?’ Baldwin asked coolly, his eyes on the corpse.

‘I am Edmund, Earl of Kent. Who are you — and what are you doing here?’ To Kent’s surprise, the fellow was kneeling beside the dead man, behind the throne. And when there was no reply from him, Edmund burst out: ‘Will someone tell me what’s happened here?’

That earned him a frosty look from the Bishop. ‘A man, my Lord Earl, has been murdered.’

Baldwin straightened up and turned. ‘I am Sir Baldwin de Furnshill,’ he said. ‘The good Bishop has asked me to exercise my skills to learn what has happened. My Lord, do you know many people about this court?’

‘Quite a few, I suppose. I don’t know the servants.’ He walked up to stare at the body before him. ‘Don’t know him. What is that in … good God!’

‘Yes. He was killed, and then, I think, that was done to him,’ Baldwin said. ‘Too many people have already been in here, not that there would be much to discover here, I dare guess. Steps on stone are difficult to follow. You see this? There is no sign that he has had his hands bound behind him. If I feel his head … no, there is no indication of any swelling there, so I can infer that he was not struck down before this was done to him. What killed him, then?’

His hands were moving over the body as he spoke, and as he ran them over the man’s chest, he drew his mouth down into a moue of surprise. ‘Somehow I anticipated a simple murder from an opponent. Perhaps …’ He turned the man over and felt his back. ‘Ah, here. One … no, two … three deep wounds. One at least must have pierced his heart, and the others would have struck his lungs. From the look of him, I would expect that the one through the heart killed him, though.’

‘Why?’ the Earl asked.

‘If he was drowned in his own blood, I’d expect to see much more of it about his mouth,’ Baldwin answered shortly. He was up from the body already and investigating the area behind the tapestry where the corpse had been secreted. ‘There is some blood here, Simon. Not much, though. The moisture appears to be water,’ he added, smelling the fabric. He frowned, head set on one side. ‘But I can smell wine too.’

The Earl had not noticed the Bailiff and servant, and was startled when he heard Simon respond from behind him.

‘You think he wasn’t killed here, then?’

‘He certainly wasn’t killed right here, no. He died somewhere else and was pulled here. Someone cut off his privy member and shoved it into his mouth, and then rolled him away and out of sight.’

‘Could this man be the assassin who tried to kill the Queen last night?’ the Earl wondered aloud.

‘Come now. There is no certainty that anyone tried to do such a thing,’ Despenser said smoothly. He had entered from the screens area, and now he stepped slowly and crisply along the flagged floor towards them. ‘A man struck down a maid,’ he explained to the gathering. ‘Unfortunately, the Queen was there, and saw the whole unhappy event, but that doesn’t mean that the attempt was on her life. It could as easily have been on my own wife’s life. My dearest Eleanor was with the same party, after all.’

He had reached the body and stared down at Jack’s bloated face with the repulsive second tongue, and pulled a grimace of disgust. ‘Whatever must … he have done, to deserve that? It is a repellent act.’

‘Yes — why would someone desecrate him like that?’ Stapledon asked in hushed tones.

‘The normal reason is because of intemperate behaviour,’ Baldwin said. Then, seeing the blank confusion on Simon’s face: ‘Come now, Bailiff, you must have seen such things before? An adulterer discovered in the act, or a sodomite? There are many in the world who seek to punish others for their genuine or perceived misdemeanours.’

‘Adultery and sodomy are hardly mere “misdemeanours”,’ the Bishop protested.

‘Perhaps. But the man who could commit an act like this would put more fear in me than either of those,’ Baldwin said.

Ellis wiped the tears from his eyes and barged past the guards into the open air. His mood was one of deep, black loneliness. Ever since his childhood, he had been with his sister. Oh, she’d left him when she married, and he didn’t see her every day, but that didn’t matter. When their parents were gone, when the women he loved left him, he knew that Mabilla was there, somewhere. She was the rock to which he clung when life’s waves washed over him.

And now she was gone. Taken from him.

In all his years, he had not wanted anything. He was Sir Hugh’s man because they both recognised something they needed in the other. For Sir Hugh, it was simple: loyalty and obedience. He knew that no matter what the task, Ellis would take it on if Sir Hugh asked him. Sir Hugh used him as a last bulwark against the world. When there was a problem in the vast estates he owned, when a man stood in his path, it was always to Ellis he turned.

But Ellis needed his master just as much. Sir Hugh gave him more than a bed and food. Ellis Brooke was an intelligent man, and he did not exist purely for violence. He craved more — the opportunity to see a plan developed and moulded to fit Sir Hugh’s needs, and then to be allowed to execute it perfectly. It was not the simple financial reward he sought, it was the personal fulfilment of seeing an intricate design succeed.

There were men on all sides discussing the body found in the Great Hall, and now he bent his steps that way. He arrived a few moments after the others had left and, ignoring the guards at the door, he marched across the hall, his hand on his sword-hilt, until he reached the body.

‘Jack, aye,’ he muttered to himself, then angrily dashed the tears from his eyes once more.

The two most important people in his life were his master, Sir Hugh le Despenser, and his sister Mabilla; and now he must avenge one. Walking out into the Green Yard, he stared about him, wiping his nose with his sleeve. With Mabilla gone, he was unsure what to do next, but he was convinced of one thing.

Nothing and no one would stand in his way as he tried to make her killer pay.

They had withdrawn to a smaller chamber, and Baldwin eyed the others as they waited for a servant to bring them ale. He was tempted to send Rob away, but the lad was keeping quiet, and while he behaved himself, he saw little need to evict him. One single interruption, though, and he’d boot him out.

‘So no one knew the man?’ Simon said reflectively, into the silence.

Baldwin saw Earl Edmund glance quickly at Despenser before shaking his head. ‘ I don’t consort with assassins.’

Simon frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘He must be the same man who launched an attack on the Queen. I think we ought to be thinking about who might wish to harm her.’