Michael Jecks - The Malice of Unnatural Death

‘Not at all. The man opened his tunic and stabbed him through the heart.’

A good job for someone, Baldwin told himself. Somebody would win these clothes, and at least this way they were undamaged.‘The body was in the rubbish there?’

‘Yes. Well concealed, too. If it wasn’t for the hog finding him, he’d still be there now. Might have been there for a yearor more, the way the lazy bastards about this town leave their trash all over the place. Look at the stuff here! Blasted disgrace! Wouldn’t let it happen at Lifton, I can tell you.’

‘I think that a hundred like Lifton could be easier to maintain and police than a city the size of Exeter,’ Baldwin murmuredpatiently. ‘So you say he was fully covered in the stuff?’

‘Apart from his hand and the forearm. The hand was pretty badly chewed, as you can see.’

Baldwin nodded and peered closely at the hand. It made him frown. Certainly it looked as though it had been mangled by theteeth of a hog — the forefinger and middle finger were gone, and there were deep lacerations in between the bones where thehog’s teeth had sunk through the man’s flesh … but then Baldwin stared again at the stumps where the man’s fingers hadbeen removed. ‘What do you make of this, Coroner?’

‘Hey? Hmm. Didn’t look so closely at the thing. It didn’t kill him, and the hog had been chewing pretty well at his hand. Why?’

He leaned over Baldwin’s shoulder as he spoke and then his brows rose and he tutted to himself. ‘I think I am perhaps themost stupid rural coroner whom the king has ever had elected to post. Who could have done that, then?’

Baldwin was still studying the clean cuts where two fingers had been snipped from the hand. ‘Anyone. Someone who is used tobutchery, or a man who is used to skinning, or a cook … the number of men who could be practised in this kind of neatwork are too numerous to count. More interesting is why someone would have wanted to do such a thing to him.’

‘Torture, you think?’ Coroner de Welles guessed. ‘Punishment, for something the fellow had written?’

‘Those are both perhaps possible,’ Baldwin said. But in the back of his mind he was recalling a story he had once heard ofanother case, when a man’s finger was removed. It had been carefully cut from a living man’s hand for use in maleficium .

Baldwin was not superstitious, and he often laughed at Simon Puttock’s credulity, but even in broad daylight, with the noiseof people pushing and shoving their way past him on the road only yards away, he suddenly felt a sharp chill at the thoughtthat there could be a sorcerer working here in the city.

Exeter City

John was exhausted after all his efforts the previous day and night. He had many of the implements, but he still needed some more. Only a complete fool would try to conjure a demon without adequate protection, after all, and he had desperate need of allthe requisite tools of his trade. Sadly, almost everything had been left behind in his flight.

It was enough to make a man spit with fury. To know that all his tools, gathered carefully over the years, were sitting probablyin that idiot sheriff’s chamber in Coventry was infuriating. But complaining over that which could not be altered was at bestfutile. Better that he should forget it and find something similar.

There must be somewhere he could get hold of the things he needed.

Baldwin shook his head. There was something unpleasant — he would not use the word ‘evil’ — about this affair. He stood bythe messenger’s body, studying the area all about.

Once, when he had been at Acre, he had seen a man hit by a crossbow bolt, and he had been transfixed with panic and fear. The man was a burly fellow, clad in mail for the most part, with a shining helm which he had taken from another man who had died in an earlier attack. Somehow, Baldwin had felt that the fellow radiated invincibility, and he hadedged nearer and nearer to him, hoping that if there was an attack this man’s aura of authority and power might give Baldwintoo some protection. And then, suddenly, the man had gasped as though punched in the chest.

Baldwin had turned in time to see him flung backwards, arms flailing, under the impact of a massive bolt. It passed almostall the way through his body, and hurled him back to be slammed against a wall some yards behind and pinned to it.

Such a large bolt must have been fired from an enormous crossbow. Yet there was no sign of the man who had fired it, no signof the weapon’s presence.

Time, for a while, seemed to stand still for Baldwin. Struck mindless with terror, he was paralysed, and all he could do wasstare about him with his mouth agape, as though waiting to be executed. And then a Welshman behind him gave him a shove, andas he stumbled forward he heard a swift thrumming, and saw three, no four, arrows fly up over the castle’s wall at a windowin a tower. And he heard the scream, saw the fresh bolt fly from the window, and thump harmlessly into the wall above the Welshman, some yards over the dead man’s body.

He had the same impression of danger here as he had felt that day. Something was not right here. It was almost as though hewas being watched, and someone was lining up a great siege crossbow bolt with his chest even as he stood here.

To distract himself from these unpleasant reflections, he pointed up another alley. ‘What is that man doing there?’

The coroner followed his pointing finger. ‘Him? He’s a watchman. There’s another dead man up there. He can’t be anything to do with this fellow, though. He was dead the day before.’

Baldwin’s brow furrowed, and he glanced down at the body at his feet, then back at the alley again. It was a strange coincidencethat on consecutive evenings men should have been murdered in this area. ‘Were the neighbours all asleep for both deaths? Was nothing heard?’

‘Both late at night. I’ve found men and women who walked past that spot, for example, quite late at night, and no one appearsto have seen him lying there.’

‘Nor this messenger?’

‘No, not him either. They were attacked by thieves who wandered about late at night.’

‘One of them was a man who enthusiastically robbed a messenger of an important letter,’ Baldwin pointed out. ‘Let us go andview the other body as well.’

‘Hah! You don’t care that the bishop has commanded us to find his roll?’

‘If we are to find it, we’ll need some hints as to who took it, and why, and if the bishop won’t help us, maybe that man will.’

The coroner nodded amiably. ‘You know, there are times I think you must be soft in the head, old chap. The fellow’s dead .’

Langatre was a serious practitioner of the mysterious arts, and when there was a knock at his door he would always insistthat his servant Hick should go and answer it. It was not dignified for a man of Langatre’s status to perform such a menialtask. Far better that he should have his boy go. Apart from anything else, it enhanced his position in the mind of many of his clients if they could see that he was able to afford his own staff.

This afternoon he was trying to brew some potions. When the door was struck, he was in the middle of straining the fluid froma concoction made from roots and yew berries. It stank, and he was not keen to handle anything made from yew, because allwas poisonous, whether the bark, the sap, or the leaves. Still, the mixture smelled very potent, and he had often found thatthe efficacy of his spells was aided by the odours of the mixtures he sold with them.

They were worthless, of course. He knew that perfectly well. The real benefit to those who paid him was in the chanting thathe alone understood. When a woman came to him and begged for help in keeping her man’s love, or winning it, he would use asweet-smelling fluid; when it was a farmer who wanted a neighbour’s herd to suffer, the odour was not so pleasant. Eitherway, it was not the liquor that achieved the result: it was his intellectual efforts later. His prayers would work adequatelywithout hoaxes designed to fool people, but some didn’t believe in his efforts unless they had concrete proof in the way ofa small bottle of foul-smelling and probably poisonous juice to go with it. He sometimes despaired of people, he really did.