Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

The back door was open, and he entered the corridor, walking past the sleeping chamber and out into the inn itself.

‘What’s all this about?’ he demanded of a man leaning against the wall.

‘This man says he’s been sent by the King,’ he was informed. ‘There’s a Frenchman here abouts, he says, who raped a noble lord’s woman. He wants to hear from anyone who knows where this rapist is. There’s a reward in it for someone.’

Alred’s face wore the fixed smile of a man who has paid top price for a horse only to hear it bray. ‘You say they think he’s French?’ he asked, recalling that heavy accent.

‘Someone saw him in here, apparently. They say he would have been caught if some idiots hadn’t knocked down the man who was trying to catch him.’

Alred nodded and turned back to the door. His eyes unblinking as he went, he kept the smile fitted to his lips as he left the inn, strolled across the garden, and climbed out over the wall. Only when he was in the back lane again did he close his eyes tightly, clench his fists, and offer up curses to all those who sought to confuse the poor, honest pavers of England.

‘Lads, lads, I’ve got an idea,’ he said as he reached the hole in the roadway again. ‘I think we have to find that man we saved the other day. Um.’

The street to which they had been directed would have been a foul alley in Exeter, full of excrement and garbage, waiting until the autumn rains would wash all away down into the Shitebrook. In some areas there were scavengers who would come along with heavy brooms to clear the worst of the mess, but even in the most sanitary of cities, the heavy accumulation outside stables and barns in poorer areas would lead to drains being blocked.

Here in Dartmouth, though, people appeared to have more pride in their street. The kennel in the middle of the road was clean, with only a very few deposits that did not merit investigation, and Baldwin was impressed. Even the dogs appeared to be healthier than he would have expected. Perhaps it was the ready availability of food. Fish were abundant in the seas all about here, and their harvesting was a source of great benefit to the local population.

They had been directed here to the alley in Hardness by Simon’s clerk, who had to consult Simon’s servant Rob. The fellow seemed to have some interest in the mariners, as though he might one day choose to throw off his servile duties and offer himself to one of the shipmasters. Many youngsters dreamed of leaving England and finding adventure abroad, and Baldwin could understand that very easily. It was what he himself had done when little more than a boy, after all, when he joined the defence of Acre in 1291.

‘This it?’ Sir Richard boomed.

‘Stephen said it was where there was a green door,’ Simon agreed. He rapped loudly on it.

There was a moment of silence, and then the latch lifted and the door opened slowly to show a young girl of perhaps eleven, thin from malnutrition, her cheekbones prominent in her pale face. Her hair was caught up neatly under a coif, but her clothing was ragged and threadbare, her feet unshod. She clutched the door as a drowning man might cling to a timber, peering around it at the three men.

Sir Richard smiled in what he fondly considered to be a kindly manner, and bent down to her, saying, ‘Where’s your father, girl?’

His voice, although muted in comparison to his usual bellow, was enough to bring panic to her eyes. She shrank back, and for a moment it appeared that the door was about to be slammed in their faces.

As Sir Richard bared his teeth again, Baldwin quickly drew the Coroner away and squatted before the child. ‘Is Master Cynegils here? We would like to speak with him.’

‘Who wants him?’

This was from an older girl, perhaps of fifteen, who appeared now from the darkness, a child of two or so on her hip. She had similar looks to the first girl, and Baldwin was persuaded that the two must be sisters, with similar slanted brown eyes that were sunken and over-bright. It was the same look Baldwin had seen so often before, in the faces of those who were perpetually hungry. All too often children and women held that look, as though to be young and female was itself a cause of starvation. As it was. He knew full well that there were peasant women on his lands who would intentionally eat less than they needed when money or food was scarce, so that their husbands could go to their work with full bellies. When a family depended on a man’s labour, others must go hungry so that he could work.

From behind her there came a cracking sound and a loud wailing started, while a fresh young voice shouted angrily. The girl at the door showed some tension, bawling at them all to, ‘Shut up!’ before turning back to Baldwin with a questioning look.

‘I am the Keeper of the King’s Peace, this is Sir Richard de Welles, the King’s Coroner, and this is Simon Puttock, Keeper of this Port under the Abbey of Tavistock. We are learning all we can about the man who was killed.’

‘What’s my father got to do with him?’

‘I think we should discuss that with him , maid,’ Simon said.

She looked at him measuringly, then at Baldwin again. ‘I’ll take you to him.’

Telling her sister to keep an eye on the other children, and not to open the door in case they ran into the lane, the older girl passed the smallest child to her sister and pulled the door to behind her, eyeing Baldwin and the others suspiciously all the while.

She led them along the alley and the river, until the road curved sharply westwards again, up the hill to Tunstal. Here there was a grassy lane that led to a little beach. Here they found him.

‘Thank you, maid,’ Simon said grimly.

Cynegils was lying in a broken boat, one leg cocked over the thwarts, the other over the side of the craft. Near it lay a leather wineskin, and from the heavy snoring that made the timbers of the boat shake, it had only recently been emptied.

‘Father is a good man,’ the girl said defensively. ‘He was a good sailor, too, with his own boat — until it was wrecked in a storm. He was on shore, but the winds caught it and pulled it free of the anchor. Now he does what he can, but how is a man to earn enough for all his children when his trade’s gone?’

‘He could find a new master and work for him.’ Simon was unsympathetic. From the look of the man he had a strong conviction that the anchor was loose because the drunk hadn’t taken time to tie it off securely.

‘What do you think he’s been doing?’ she snapped. ‘How many round here will pay a man to fish for them when they can fish themselves?’

Sir Richard was unconcerned by the troubles of others. He stood beside the boat staring down at the slack-mouthed figure snoring in the foul water at the bottom of the rotten craft, then kicked the side heavily. The boat rocked under the buffet, a timber cracking, and the man inside jerked awake. He tried to spring up with his alarm, but the leg dangling outside the boat prevented him. It flapped and waved, and the man rose to the height of his knee, his face red with wine and exertion, eyes popping as he took in the sight of the three men, before giving a loud gurgle and belch, and falling back with an audible crunch as his head struck the timbers. He wailed.

‘Get up, man!’ Sir Richard called, and reaching down to grasp Cynegil’s shirt, he hauled him up and over the boat’s side, then let him drop. ‘This boat’s rotten. Someone should burn the damned thing.’

‘It’s all we have left!’ the girl retorted. ‘Some day, perhaps, we’ll be able to mend it and start fishing again.’

‘Child, that boat will never sail again,’ Simon said as gently as he could.