Michael Jecks - The Malice of Unnatural Death

‘At my side, I think.’

‘I think that explains a lot,’ Walter said. He picked up his wooden spoon and began stirring again. ‘He knocked you down whenyou were near a place he knew would be safe for you.’

‘Him? Why’d he do a thing like that?’

‘Perhaps James didn’t trust you entirely, and sought to protect himself. Or …’ Walter paused, chewing at his inner lip.

‘What?’

‘I was just thinking — if he thought he was going into danger, and didn’t want to lead you there too, perhaps he sought toprotect you?’

‘If he thought it was dangerous, any man would have kept a friend at his side,’ Newt scoffed.

Walter shrugged pensively.

Newt shook his head gently, and offered to fetch a fresh loaf.

Outside the roads were icy, and he had to mind his step as his leather-soled boots slipped over the cobbles. The way to thebakers’ shops was easy enough, and he was soon standing in a small stall off Bakers’ Row where the scent of fresh loaves filled the air.

It was only as he walked back that he recalled something else. While they had been walking out from the inn, he had seen someoneat the mouth of an alley — a slim figure in dark clothes. The body itself was all but hidden, but he was sure that the figurehad a gaunt, sallow face.

And he was just as convinced now, as he recalled it, that James had seen him too.

Baldwin woke with a sense of gratification that he had managed to avoid any further contact with the good coroner.

When in trouble, Baldwin had always felt able to trust and rely on the coroner. He had been in some tight situations earlierin the autumn with Simon and Richard de Welles, and de Welles had always been a reliable and honourable friend. However, althoughhis strength and ability in a fight was not in question, Baldwin was perfectly aware that the man was ruinously hazardouswhen it came to drinking with him.

Almost any man alive could drink more than Baldwin. It stemmed from the time when he was a Knight Templar, many years ago. He had early decided that moderation would ensure that he was as effective as possible at performing God’s will and defendingpilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Abstinence in the heat had left him more capable during weapons training than thosewho had imbibed too strongly the night before.

In the event, of course, there had been no need to worry. He joined the Templars because they took him in, wounded, when hewas at Acre, trying to protect it from the massed hordes who sought to capture it. The siege of the city had marked him forever, and the fact that the Templars had saved him left him with a profound sense of debt. As soon as he could, he had taken the threefold oaths, firm in the resolve that he would fight and lay down his life, if need be,in the reconquest of the Holy Land to save it from the Saracens. It was an ambition that was to be cruelly crushed when the French king and the pope dishonourably perverted justice in order to persecute the Templars out of nothing more than theirown intolerable greed.

His order had been hunted and destroyed, so that their chests of treasure could be raided and plundered. Many of Baldwin’sfriends and companions had been tortured to death, some slaughtered, and all for declaring their innocence. There was no defenceagainst the accusation of heresy. They were not permitted to know the charges raised against them, nor who had levelled them. Instead they were invited to confess, and when they declared that they had no idea what crimes they could have been guiltyof, they were put to the torture.

That gross, obscene injustice had coloured the whole of the rest of his life. It left him with an enduring hatred — of politics,of greed, of unfairness.

There were many who had turned to ritual magic after the destruction of Acre. The fall of the city was a cataclysmic eventfor the whole of Christianity, for if God Himself had so turned His face from His own people, their sins must have been enormous. Some turned to flagellation, others to intense prayer, while a few sought solace in ancient learning. They tried to conjuredemons and bind them to themselves.

It was nothing new. It was rather like alchemy, and Baldwin had the same regard for both. He thought that they were nonsense.

From his early days in the Templars, he had studied when he might, and he had read some of the philosophical tracts written by Thomas Aquinas. He recalled that Aquinas felt that anyattempt to conjure a demon, for whatever purpose, was in effect forming a pact with that demon. It was heretical, and an actof apostasy.

For all that, though, men, and sometimes women, would try to make use of magic to achieve their ends. Since the apparent weaknessof Christianity was exposed by the fall of Acre, perhaps more fools had turned to these supposedly ‘older’ crafts. Baldwinneither knew nor cared. All he was worried about just now was the one man.

It was always possible, after all, that the fellow was less of a fool than he appeared. If he was not actually a dolly-poll,and instead was a shrewd man, he might have pulled the wool over Baldwin’s and Sir Richard’s eyes. It was not impossible. Baldwin was always unwilling to support authority against a churl because of his own experiences, but just because he hadonce had a miserable experience did not mean that all in authority were inevitably corrupt. Some were no doubt as honourableas he.

And even those, like the Sheriff of Devon, who were undoubtedly corrupt in certain spheres of their professional life, mightbe perfectly justified in prosecuting a man like Langatre, who was a self-confessed dabbler in the occult.

‘Rubbish!’ he muttered to himself. There was never any good reason for persecution. Never.

North-East Dartmoor

Simon woke with a pain in his hip where the unyielding soil had been an inadequate cover for a large stone. Busse was snoring gentlyat his side, but when he peered out into the cold daylight he saw Rob shivering at the fire, Simon’s spare cloak pulled tight,his arms wrapped about himself, a thin smoke rising from the twigs and tinder he had worked at.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Simon asked quietly as he crawled from their shelter. It looked quite solid still, he was pleased tosee. It gave him a feeling of quiet satisfaction to think that he had managed to construct that at short notice.

Rob nodded, but his face was pinched, and Simon could feel the chill air at his own back.

The landscape had altered over the night since Simon and the monk’s conversation. The snow had kept on falling, and now therewere a few inches covering everything. Usually Simon enjoyed the sight of snow. It was lovely to rise in the morning, lookout from the window and see all covered in the unmarked blanket of white. To see the trees bowing, to hear the branches crackingwith the weight, and then to see children skating on the ice of the ponds … it all made a man’s heart leap. Especiallywhen he could return to his own house and stand in front of his own fire to warm himself. That certainly helped.

Not all would view it in the same light, of course. Some, he knew, hated the snow and feared its arrival. Mostly it was theolder folks. Each year the winter would carry away the older, the more infirm and feeble. It was natural, but sad. And whenthe snow fell, there were other deaths too: men fell through the ice while playing on the ponds; children fell prey to thecold; some folks would drink themselves stupid and then die on the way home from a tavern, only to be found the next morningby a passer-by, lying at the roadside with their bodies frozen to the soil. Aye, there were plenty who had cause to dislikeand mistrust the weather, but for his part Simon loved it, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than the fresh, crisp airand the crunch of compacted snow underfoot when he was well prepared for it.