Michael Jecks - The Malice of Unnatural Death

He had run to the house, but by the time he got there there was nothing. Just a smoking wreck.

It was a friend who had managed to get him this job. Others had told him not to take it, because his house had been aroundhere, not far from the gate itself. That was why he liked it, though. He walked down there at every opportunity, past thealley where his children had died, where his wife had lived with him happily, before that dread evening. It was his dailypilgrimage.

The gap where his house had once stood remained, shut away behind a wooden paling fence. Now, as he wandered down the alley,he saw the broad gap where his family had once lived. It made him feel — not sadness exactly, more a sort of emptiness. He had long ago grown accustomed to the fact of their deaths; that was something any manmust learn to cope with. But passing the space he was reminded again that it seemed out of place, as though he still almost expected his house to reappear.

This month was always hardest. It was at this time of year that his children had died, and the chill in the air, the nakedtrees denuded of leaves, the ice in the lanes, all reminded him of them.

He couldn’t help but stop and stare at where the house had been. Leaning on his staff, he gazed hungrily, as though the intensityof his regard could bring them back to life. But nothing could. Turning to continue on his way, he stumbled, and nearly fellheadlong.

Over the body in the alley.

When the keeper of the gatehouse heard the pounding on his door, his immediate thought was that his blasted son had been onthe sauce again, and he threw off his bedclothes with an angry curse at the thought of what the damned fool could have beenup to this time.

Old Hal was not a particularly ill-tempered fellow. Certainly, many would agree that he tended towards a melancholy humourat the best of times, but more often than not he could be amusing, and good company when a group got together in the tavern. His jokes were risqué, his songs filthy, his mind invariably lewd, so men got along with him enormously well — provided thatthey never mentioned his good-for-nothing son Art.

Art. It was ironic that he and Mabel had named the little devil after Hal’s grandsire, for if ever a man was unlike his namesake,it was Art. Where old Art had been reliable, responsible, honourable and dedicated, young Art was the opposite. He wouldn’twake on time, he was always late and blaming others for his failings, and when he did turn up of a morning, it was invariably with a headache and a pathetic, shaking demeanour. Twice in the last month Hal had been calledto have him released from the gaol after drinking too much and fighting. He hated to think what else the little bastard hadgot up to without being discovered.

‘Why do you fight?’ Hal had demanded after the last escapade.

‘It’s not that I want to … when I’ve had too much ale, it just happens.’

‘You’d best stop now, before someone stands on your head too hard,’ Hal had said unsympathetically, looking at the wreckagethat had been his son’s face. Now it was a mass of bruises and scabs. The trouble was, Art was born with more sense than henow had. He couldn’t assess odds, apparently. If he was drunk and his dander was up, he’d pick a fight with a man in armour.

Reaching the door, Hal threw aside the bar and pulled it wide. ‘What’s he done this … oh, Will? What is it? Christ alive,man, it’s hardly daylight yet!’

Will entered hurriedly, and from the look on his face Hal knew it wasn’t good news.

‘Murder — there’s been a murder!’

South Dartmoor

Simon Puttock’s journey to Tavistock was eased considerably by the memory of Stephen of Chard’s face the night before whenhe realised that Simon’s recommended inn was a place frequented by gamblers, sailors and whores.

Even this early, a little after dawn, his mood was sunny because he would soon be seeing his children and his lovely Meg. It seemed such a long time since he had last been with her. That was when he had first heard of the death of his friend and mentor, Abbot Robert. Even now the memory was depressing. Strange to think how close a man could grow to his master.

With uncanny timing, his own servant’s whining voice intruded on his thoughts. ‘Is it much farther, Bailiff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Many miles?’

‘Boy, be quiet! It is a long way, and the more you chatter, the longer it feels. Enjoy the views and the air, and hold yourtongue.’

If it weren’t for Rob trailing along with him, he would have been enjoying this perfect morning. As it was, he was constantlyaware of the lad behind him, muttering and complaining under his breath as he stumbled along after Simon, the reins of thepackhorse in his hands. Rob was little more than a lad, only some thirteen summers or so, but as hard and devious as onlythe illegitimate son of a sailor could be. He was sharp-eyed, with dark eyes set close together in a narrow, weaselly face. His accustomed expression of suspicious distrust reminded Simon of a small ferret who was forever seeking the next rabbit. He was clad in a simple tunic, a leather jerkin and a cowl, and barefooted like so many who live near the ships. Boots costmoney, and when sailors disdained such wastefulness, many of their children had to learn to do without too.

In the middle of the summer the journey was an easy one. In winter even a man like the obnoxious Stephen could make the distancesafely by keeping to the larger roads, but only slowly. Stephen had apparently taken two days to cover the thirty or moremiles between Tavistock and Dartmouth. Simon was disinclined to take his time. He was keen to learn the reason for being calledback, and still more so to see his wife. That was why he avoided the lower roads that encircled the moorland, and in preference made his way along the muddiedtrackways until he reached the open heights, and then took his way north and west until he met up with the Abbots’ Way, thegreat path marked by enormous stone crosses that guided a man safely across some of the most treacherous parts of the moors.

This was land where a man could breathe, Simon thought as he stopped his mount to wait for Rob to catch up and gazed abouthim. From this hill, he could see nothing but rolling countryside on all sides. He had joined the Abbots’ Way near Ter Hill,and westwards he could see the first of the three crosses that showed the safe route past the Aune Head’s mire. The path herewandered north of that, then curved to avoid the Fox Tor mire a short distance farther on. The bogs were deadly, and all toooften the ghostly shrieks and wails of animals who had blundered into a mire would be heard as the terrible muddy waters graduallyenfolded them and smothered them. No matter how often Simon crossed and recrossed the moors, he would never get used to thosecries. They sounded like tortured souls screaming out from hell.

But Simon adored this landscape just as much as any lord would love his deer park. For Simon it was the picture of a modernworking environment, with the smoke rising from the miners’ camps, great trenches dug to show where the peat was being harvested,and rubble all about where great hunks of moorstone had been dug up and roughly cut to size. All over the moors people workedthe land. It might not be so fertile as some of the valleys nearby, but to Simon these open, rolling hills were as near perfectionas anywhere in the country.

Not that he would ever admit to such thoughts in front of his old friend Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, of course. Baldwin would merely scoff at such views.

‘Where’s the nearest inn?’ Rob demanded, gazing about him with unconcealed disgust.

‘Probably about ten miles west.’

‘Christ’s ballocks, what a privy!’

Simon clenched his jaw and dismounted. He would lead his old horse for a while to rest him.