Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

‘Clearly he has spent some time in the water,’ Sir Richard said. He had always disliked examining drowned men. The bodies with their flaccid flesh, white and loose like cheap leather gloves, made even his resilient stomach turn a little. Better to have a man spitted on a lance with his entrails dangling, than a whitened corpse like this.

He prodded the chilled flesh with a reluctant finger. ‘Like a slab of fish, eh?’ he called unsympathetically to the clerk taking notes. Stephen winced at his lack of tact, but continued writing.

Sir Richard stood upright and glanced about him. Seeing Hamo standing near the jury, and Alred Paviour nearby, he beckoned to them both. ‘HOI! Over here, you two. You can help with this fellow.’

These two were older and had experience of corpses. Few who had survived the famine of nine years before were not used to the sight and smell of the dead. Taking the man’s arm, they heaved him over and over in front of the jury.

‘Right, did you all see those wounds? A clear stab in his breast, with a blade about an inch and a half wide at the hilt. Doesn’t go right through him, even though you can see the mark where the cross actually bruised him. Clearly it was thrust in as hard as possible. This man was found on board that ship the Saint John , so I’d think he was killed by the pirates and thrown down into the hold where he was partly concealed by the bale.’

‘I have a question for you, sir,’ a voice called.

Sir Richard turned and surveyed the faces before him. The speaker stood with a youth who must surely be his son, their faces were so alike. ‘Who are you, sir?’

‘My name is known here, sir. I am the master of the ship which found and rescued the Saint John . My name is John Hawley.’ He gestured at the body. ‘It was my master shipwright who found Danny in the hold.’

Sir Richard glanced over at Henry, who nodded. ‘Master Hawley asked me to go and see if there was damage to her under the waterline, and I stumbled over the poor soul in the hold.’

‘What of it then, Master Hawley?’ Sir Richard rumbled.

‘There were other good men aboard her, Sir Richard, some of them from this town, and I’d like to know what happened to them .’

‘Find the ship that fired your cog, and you’ll be part of the way there,’ Sir Richard said, but Hawley’s words had already started a rebellious murmuring among the jurors.

‘It was the men from Lyme did it,’ one asserted. ‘They’re thieving sods at the best of times. They even took a privateer on its way back to port with a good haul, didn’t they?’

‘They help other ports agin us, too.’

‘Not long since they had a battle with us on the high seas.’

Sir Richard held up a hand for silence. ‘No more of that! No more, I say! There are no other bodies, and unless you can produce a written authority for me to investigate a suspicious death without a body, I can do nothing. All I can do is hold an inquest on the body that is here. Now, does anyone have anything further to say about this body here?’

‘There is one thing, Sir Richard,’ a smooth voice said from behind him.

‘Ah, Sir Baldwin! I trust you are still in God’s safe hands?’

‘I appear to be remarkably healthy, I thank you,’ Sir Baldwin smiled, bowing. ‘You know my friend Simon, of course?’

‘Yes. We met yesterday,’ Sir Richard said.

‘You asked whether there were any questions about this corpse. I think there is one thing I should like you to consider,’ Baldwin said. He had walked past Sir Richard, leaving Simon at the Coroner’s side. Baldwin stood a moment contemplating the corpse, then he motioned to Hamo and Alred to turn the body over.

‘I believe that this death was nothing to do with the rest of the ship. It doesn’t look like piracy to me.’

The Coroner joined him. ‘Why?’

In answer, Baldwin gestured to John Hawley. ‘Master Hawley, you are a seaman of experience. Most of you here will know what it is to fight on board a ship. When pirates attack, they will use enormous violence and force to subdue their victims, will they not?’

‘That was my question: whenever I have been at war on the sea, the wounds have been ferocious, the attacks bloody. Yet this man has only one accurate stab wound on his breast.’

‘Quite so,’ Baldwin said. ‘I think that this is no victim of the men of Lyme or any other pirates out at sea, Sir Richard. This man Danny was stabbed to death, and then set in the hold to make it appear that he had perished with the rest of the crew.’

It was hard now to remember the happier times. There had been many of them, it was true, but Pierre knew that if he was captured, he would never know happiness of any sort again. His end would be slow and exquisitely painful.

Casting his mind back, he tried to recall when it all started. Surely it was not really ten years ago when he had caught his first glimpse of her? Yes, it must have been: the Year of Our Lord 1314.

In those days, all he had known of her was that she was a slim, tall, and utterly beautiful woman. He didn’t think further than that. He was a lowly page and she was a foreign visitor, but there was something about her that called to him, and he could remember now stopping and taking a second look at her as he left the hall to replenish the jug of wine he was carrying. He was a mere servant at her table, and yet when he saw her glance at him, he felt his heart must stop. The thrill of adoration stabbed him with a spark of lightning that was so intense, it hurt.

She could only have been fifteen at the time, and he, still learning the craft of the warrior, was a scant year older — yet their positions were so very different. He knew that there could be no hope of his ever attaining her. She was as impossible to touch as the moon or the stars. Or, rather, the sun, because were he actually to touch her, he would burn in an instant. She was so lovely, so perfectly built and proportioned, no man could be near her and be unaffected.

The second time was the next year, when she was again visiting France, and he had at last begun the great journey. He had risen from page to squire in that time, and now he was gaining a reputation for courage, so when he took his seat at the table, others wished to introduce him to the guests. And so he met her.

That she was so well spoken was no surprise, of course, nor were her delicacy or intellect. Still, there was something else about her that finally sealed his love. It was the luminosity in her eyes. He couldn’t describe it any other way: she had a sparkle that made a man warm as soon as her gaze lighted upon him. He felt that look so often, he began to wonder if he had caused offence, and it was only when he saw how she blushed to receive his own adoring looks that he realised his feelings towards her were reciprocated.

Ah! The joy, the splendid delight of knowing that she felt the same towards him … and the horror when he at last understood their plight. To remain in proximity, their love unrequited, their whole existences so close and yet never being permitted to share even a brief kiss, let alone a more passionate consummation. Even the memory of their first and last kiss was enough to make his blood course like a galloping stallion through his veins, and when he closed his eyes and imagined what she must appear like in her bed, naked, welcoming … it was a torture!

But all torture will end. Sometimes there will be a period of release. Thus it was for them. They had met once by accident, and from that moment they both appreciated the danger they were in. They could not remain in the same household.

Pierre could do nothing that might hurt her. He, who loved her most, could not expose her to the same dangers as those his own family had inflicted on the women in the Tour de Nesle. Instead, he had gone to the mistress of the household, Queen Isabella, and pleaded with her to be released from her service for a while. With a pretty display of regret, she acquiesced, provided that he carry some little messages for her, and so here he was.