Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

When Rob arrived at the Bailiff’s place of work, Stephen was already sitting at his desk and eyeing a set of new figures with a dubious expression on his face. The numbers were very precise, and he distrusted any figures from sailors which were precise. To his mind, that spoke of dishonesty.

‘Bailiff’s off questioning. Says you’re to get on with things,’ Rob said as he placed the pies carefully about the hearth.

‘Good. I shall. And you should return to your home and clear it up. I have heard that you leave it in a terrible state. Do you never do any work?’

‘Me?’ Rob demanded indignantly. ‘I’m always working. Look at my hands, almost completely worn away, they are. And all this for next to nothing. I tell you, if I could get on a ship, I’d sail away tomorrow. Any berth would do. I’d be better than most in climbing aloft, you know. And I can-’

‘Clear off home, boy. Get on with your work and leave me to get on with mine!’

‘You? Don’t know what work is, you don’t,’ the boy called derisively as he slipped quickly from the door, leaving it open.

A small gust blew in, lifting the corner of Stephen’s roll, and he irritably set a pebble on top before rushing to the door and staring down the road at the disappearing back of the servant. ‘Little monster!’ he muttered, and turned back to the chamber.

As he did so, he caught sight of a face in the alley, and felt his heart quicken. It was the man from the gaming room who had made Strete stop. An unremarkable man, short, almost squat, with the complexion and the rolling gait of a sailor, but with a shaven jaw that looked odd.

It was as he peered at the man that he was noticed. The sailor glared at him aggressively as though about to demand what the clerk was so interested in him for, but then he spun on his heel and hurried away.

The clerk slowly closed the door, wondering what had been so odd about the man, and then he realised that the fellow must only recently have been shaved. The flesh of his jaw was pale and smooth.

With that little conundrum settled, he returned to his desk.

Cynegils had passed a miserable night. The floor was damp, unyielding rock, and he had huddled shivering in the corner, wondering what latest misfortune could visit itself upon him.

When the trapdoor above him opened, the light flooding the cell all but blinded him, and he had to cover his face with a hand. There was a rattle and thump, and he saw that the gaoler had let the ladder down into the chamber.

‘Come on up. Apparently you’re free.’

Cynegils remained where he was for some heartbeats. The idea that he could be sprung loose had been so far from his mind that he found it hard to accommodate it. ‘Me?’

‘GET UP HERE, MAN!’

The raucous tones of the Coroner were not to be ignored. Cynegils groaned as he eased himself upright and hauled himself up the ladder to the chamber above.

‘Father!’ His daughter was there; she had been weeping.

‘I wouldn’t get too close, Edie,’ he said. The stench of the prison was on him, a foul miasma of decay, fear and excrement.

‘Who ordered you here?’ Simon demanded.

‘A knight — Sir Andrew, he called himself, off that ship, the Gudyer , in the haven.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He was at the inn last night. They took me in the street at Hardness, and dragged me to the inn, and when he was done he had me brought here.’

‘By what right?’ Simon asked in a low voice.

Cynegils shrugged. He had no idea. A man of his low status was fodder for any powerful man who chose to snare him. They needed no reason.

Baldwin glanced at Simon. ‘This man needs to be away from here. He’s a sailor. If there were a ship with a master who swore to keep him from ale while he was at sea, he should be safer.’

‘You want me to find him a place on a ship?’ Simon asked with some disbelief, staring at the noisome figure before him.

Edith was about to fall to her knees and beg, when she saw the Keeper shoot her a look.

‘I feel sure that he needs all the protection he can find,’ Baldwin said. ‘So do his children. Find him a berth on a ship and pay all the money to this excellent girl. Oh, come on, Simon! There must be a ship somewhere that needs another hand.’

‘Come with us, then,’ Simon said. ‘You can bathe and change your clothes, and then we will ask Stephen what he would recommend.’

‘And then ,’ Baldwin said grimly, ‘I think we ought to go to this Sir Andrew and enquire by what right he seeks to arrest men here in Clifton and Hardness.’

‘Why are you here?’

The soft voice cut into Hamund’s thoughts as he sat with his back to the Saint Denis ’s planks. He looked up at the Frenchman’s dark features and sighed. ‘I killed a man who has powerful friends.’

‘All men seem to have powerful enemies in this country now.’

‘I fear you are right.’

‘How did it happen?’

Hamund looked away, and his gaze was attracted to the sky. Even there she haunted his thoughts: he could see her sweet face in the clouds. ‘My master died, serving his lord, and that same lord now covets his lands. So, he has ordered my master’s widow to go. He will have her evicted so that he can take possession. The man sent to tell us was a foul, cruel brute, and I was disgusted. So I went to the inn where he was staying, and I killed him.’

‘In an inn?’

‘Yes.’

‘My friend, you have inherited your English race’s talent for subtlety.’

Hamund frowned. ‘You would have stabbed him in the back on the open road, I suppose?’

‘With a man who could do that to the widow of a comrade, I would have challenged him on the road, and I would have killed him,’ Pierre said, but then he grinned. ‘Or perhaps I should have paid another to do it … Footpads are so cheap, I believe, since so many have lost their homes. It would be good to give one of them some real employment.’

Hamund was not inclined to trust this foreigner, and he didn’t know whether the man was speaking with genuine sincerity or was being flippant. ‘Rapists are not usually considered so subtle.’

‘Rapists?’ Pierre’s face hardened in an instant. ‘If I ever meet a man who accuses me of that, I shall castrate him!’

‘You didn’t rape a lady?’

‘On the Gospels, I swear it,’ Pierre said.

‘Then why do they hunt you down?’

‘I loved a lady who was as far above my station as the moon is above the earth!’ Pierre exclaimed, and then his voice dropped. ‘You have loved. You know what it is to love and leave the object of your desire. My lady was honourable, and would not consider leaving her household for fear of the shame. And I would not torture so sweet a creature by remaining. So I thought to leave the country and return to my native land where I may find some peace.’

‘I am sorry. You are in the same position as me, then.’

‘Yes.’

Hamund shook his head slowly and sadly, but then his eyes narrowed. ‘But why are they chasing you? Did they realise you were in love with this lady? You didn’t-’

‘Neither of us committed adultery,’ Pierre said flatly. ‘I would have, but she would not. She is honourable. No, they chase me because I am French, my friend. I think that all Frenchmen will be pursued from the realm before too many weeks have passed.’

‘Our Queen is French.’

‘And that is why the King harries all her countrymen. He despises her, and would see her shamed. He is a cruel man, this King of yours.’

‘Not of mine,’ Hamund said sadly. ‘I have no liege now. I am outlaw.’

Pierre glanced at him, and saw to his surprise that the fellow was weeping with silent despair, the tears trickling steadily down his cheeks. It was an odd sight. Pierre had seen many men cry with pain, or heard them sob with sorrow, but never to his knowledge had he seen a man give himself up to hopelessness in such a manner. For a while he stared, and he became prey to a sudden whirl of thoughts. First loathing and disgust that a man could display such weakness at all, let alone in front of a stranger; then plain contempt. And yet even as he sought to look away he seemed to hear his own lover’s sweet voice and see her thick brown tresses, and he felt the prickling at his own eyes to think that he would never see her again either.