Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

‘No! He’s dead!’ he said. He set off again, and this time there was no desire to drop into the tavern. He walked straight past and didn’t stop until he had reached the jetty and could sit and wait for a rowing boat to take him out to the Saint Denis . His thirst had completely left him.

Simon saw his friend gape and enjoyed the sight for a good few moments before bursting out in laughter.

‘What, may I ask, is so amusing?’ Baldwin demanded coldly.

‘Your face, old friend! There you were, fully anticipating a dreadful scene, when you learn that the dead man is nothing at all to do with Bishop Walter!’

The Coroner too could see the funny side, and he slapped his thigh with delight at the thought that lumbered into his mind. ‘Ha! A good thing you didn’t jump into action and have the man’s body sent straight back to the bishop, eh? What then? He would have been alarmed to learn that you were collecting stiffs for him in case one suited him, eh?’

‘Most droll,’ Baldwin said coolly as he slipped a coin into the messenger’s hand and gave him directions to a stable. ‘Wait in the Bailiff’s hall until we return,’ he instructed him. ‘Rest and prepare to return, but I’ll have a message to take back, I expect.’ Then he turned to face Simon.

‘It’s good news that the nephew’s alive,’ Simon said.

‘Yes, but it does not help us. The man on the ship was killed here on shore, I am fairly certain of that. But he died before the fellow in the street. The ship sailed the day before our unknown died, surely. If only we knew who he was.’

‘No one recognised him at the inquest,’ Coroner de Welles shrugged. ‘I had thought that it was because the fellow was the bishop’s man, but of course if he wasn’t …’

‘Precisely.’

‘Could there have been a second man watching this Frenchman?’ Simon asked. ‘Perhaps the Frenchman noticed him and killed him, just as we thought had happened with Stapledon’s nephew?’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin muttered, unconvinced.

Coroner Richard put in shrewdly, ‘There’s one man who is bound to have more news on this — that wily little sodomite, Sir Andrew de Limpsfield.’

Baldwin nodded slowly. ‘Yes, that would make sense. He seems to have an unhealthy interest in the town.’

‘And he could well have had something to do with the capture of the cog,’ Simon mused. His eyes turned to the haven and the wreckage, and then he frowned. ‘What’s going on there?’

Baldwin and the Coroner followed his finger and took in the sight of the boats clustering about the cog.

‘Isn’t that the Saint Denis ship which was about to sail?’ Baldwin asked.

Simon’s face was darkening, and now he shifted his belt about his waist and glowered as he set off towards the shoreline. ‘Some bastard’s been trying to capture a ship at anchor in my harbour! I’ll have his balls for that!’

Pierre de Caen watched surreptitiously as Hamund sidled away, trailing after Sir Andrew and his henchmen. The abjurer looked like any other bystander in the crowd, just a scruffy churl clad in salt-stained woollen tunic with holed and patched hosen that flapped rather loosely about his thin legs, and Pierre was confident that he would be all but invisible in the throng. It would be interesting to know what Sir Andrew was doing here. How he knew that Pierre had come this way was a mystery to him. And it was a shock to learn that Sir Andrew had spread malicious rumours about him: to think that the man could accuse him of rape! It was an outrage!

There was no time for righteous indignation just now, though. Pierre joined the tail-end of the procession, head down, and made his way up the hill to the chapel at the top. He must pay his last respects to Paul Pyckard, the man who had saved his life.

‘Lads! Lads! Someone’s tried to catch the Saint Denis !’

Pierre heard the shouts, and was in time to see the last of the men scrambling up the ropes on board the great ship in the haven. He saw blades flash in the sun, and then the spray of blood from a man’s throat, and heard the angry growling from the men all about him.

‘It’s the men from Lyme again!’

‘Pirates!’

‘Murderers!

‘They’re taking Pyckard’s ship when he’s not even cold!’

The procession was diminished as men began to leave, hurrying down the hill, some men darting off down alleyways, returning a few moments later with a heavy-bladed sword, or an axe, or a long-bladed knife. Sailors were hastening along the shore towards the larger rowing boats, while others made for smaller ones, and soon there was a whole naval force making its way over the water towards the cog.

Up in front, Pierre saw Moses waver. The servant clearly wanted to go with the others, but he had a duty to see his master buried decently. Then Moses made a decision. He snapped an order to the pall-bearers and pushed the boy with the bell onwards, before running at full pelt down the hill to the shore. Pierre desperately wanted to join him. It would be so good to draw steel again, especially in the defence of the property of his brother-in-law, but he dared not. He couldn’t risk exposure, not now that everyone believed he was a rapist.

Instead, he thought to take advantage of the departure of the others. It would give him time to light a candle and pray for Paul in peace.

Hamo clouted Ivo over the shoulder, and in a few moments, his horn was sounding, and with it, men began to gather. Hamo explained what he had seen, and the sailors immediately grasped the seriousness of the situation. Axes, knives, cudgels and hammers appeared, and there was a general movement down towards the water’s edge.

Every boat in the area was grabbed and thrust into the river, and men tumbled into them, oars being shoved out and lustily pulled. In a few minutes there were almost fifty men in the river, pulling strongly for the cog.

On the Saint Denis there was a cry, then a couple of snapped orders. Hamo could hear them distinctly over the rush and hiss of water at the boat’s keel. He had his axe ready, and as the boats approached the three which were already tethered to the cog, he prepared himself to leap. His boat thudded heavily into one of them, and he sprang out and into it. There was a stout line running up the side of the ship, and he grasped it a few moments after another man, who shinned up it with natural agility, as though running across flat, level ground, Hamo holding it taut as the man went. Then he shoved his axe into his belt and climbed.

‘Hey, who are you!’

He heard shouting and then a scream, cut short, and then he was over the sheer and on the deck. Over to his left, he saw Dicken, who lay with his throat cut, rolling in the scuppers. Another man was sitting beside his body, his arm savagely wounded with a slash that began near his shoulder and finished a scant two inches above his elbow. He was trying to hold this immense flap of ruined flesh in place with his left hand, glaring balefully at the men before him, while beside him Cynegils stood with an expression of hatred twisting his features.

There were twenty or more of the intruders about the ship, and it looked as though they were searching for something or someone. None of them noticed Hamo or the first four others to arrive. Then a man stumbled and fell, dropping his sword with a clatter, and they were seen.

Their leader, a heavyset man in mail coat and wearing a steel cap, bellowed an order. Immediately eight of the men took up their swords and approached Hamo, one wearing a fixed, sneering grin, the others eyeing Hamo and the men with wary expressions. These changed to surprise, then alarm, as more and more men piled over the ship’s side to defend it.