Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

‘I think that there are many issues for Simon in a good port like Dartmouth,’ Baldwin murmured. ‘Both to guard against men who would leave the country, and to prevent others from entering.’

‘Hmm, I see. Well, at least you are here,’ the Dean said as he grabbed his black tunic and hoisted it up over his lap before sitting. ‘Please, take a seat.’

A servant entered and brought wine and bread with some cheeses. Only when he was gone did the Dean look at Baldwin seriously again.

‘Well, Sir Knight, this is a pretty mess which I have had arrive before me. I am not sure what to do about it.’

The Dean was a lean, ascetic-looking man, once he allowed that habitual expression of amiable confusion and his bumbling manner to drop. This was a man in control of vast estates, as well as one of the largest building projects in the country and many hundreds of men. The Bishop was theoretically in charge, but Bishop Walter was a politician, and he spent most of his time with the King. No, it was the Dean who dealt with all day-to-day matters.

‘Who was the murdered man?’ asked Baldwin, cutting some cheese. ‘Was he to do with the Cathedral?’

‘No. He was a saddler.’

‘And he was found in the Charnel Chapel? How was he killed?’

‘Stabbed. Anyone can find a knife during a dispute.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘And you think that might be what happened?’

‘It’s the only explanation I can think of.’

‘When was he found?’

‘Last thing at night. The porters had locked their gates, and an Annuellar happened to notice that the door to the chapel was open. He tried it, found the body, and called for help.’

‘Did anyone see the saddler enter the Close? You have many gates here.’

‘Janekyn up at the Fissand Gate reckons he might have seen the man enter, but he must see hundreds every day. He couldn’t swear to Henry having passed him yesterday.’

Baldwin ruminatively chewed at a piece of dry bread. ‘There appears little for me to go on. If a tradesman is murdered, any number of men could have killed him — a fellow who felt that he had been unreasonable in a negotiation, a man who wanted to remove a competitor, perhaps a simple cutpurse whose theft went wrong … the possibilities are endless. I don’t honestly know that I can be of much aid.’

‘I should — ah — be most grateful if you could look into the matter nonetheless,’ Dean Alfred said. ‘This body was found on Cathedral land. I don’t want a Coroner to come blundering about my Close, accusing all and sundry of murder, without my trying to discover the truth first.’

‘I should be pleased to do all I can to help the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral,’ Baldwin said with an inclination of his head.

‘Thank you. It would be an unpleasant thing, to have a heavy-booted Coroner galumphing about the place,’ the Dean mused, picking at a chip on his cup. ‘They are — um — rarely conducive to prayer, in my experience.’

William made his way back from the Talbot Inn to the Priory, slipping on a small turd at the entrance to an alley as he cut through towards Water Beer.

‘Damn all brats,’ he muttered, scraping it off, and had to stand still a moment while the shaking overtook him.

He hadn’t always been like this. When he had first gone into battles, he had been scared. Of course he had! No one without a brain could first enter the fray without appreciating his danger. It was one thing to stand face to face with some bastard whose sole desire was to shove an eight-pound lump of sharp metal into your face when you were alone in a road or field, and quite another when the two of you were yelling and screaming at each other with thousands of others on either side. It was only worse when arrows and crossbow bolts rained down on you from the sky, and the roar of massed destriers’ hooves could be felt through the thin leather of your boots and you wondered whether the fuckers were behind you or in front, and you didn’t care, you couldn’t take your eyes off the wanker in front, because as soon as you did, his sword would open you up like a salmon being gutted.

War wasn’t fun. Will could talk a good story, but at the end of it all, a winner was the man who ideally lost marginally fewer men who were still capable of chasing after the enemy and slashing and cutting them to pieces as they tried to flee the field. That side was the winner. And to them went the spoils — which were usually a couple of boxes of coin, which would go nowhere towards satisfying warriors who’d lost their mates in the last mêlée.

Still, after a while, when Will got to be in charge of a small force, it became safer, and anyway, he got used to it all. And it was fun. And Christ’s Balls, it was a good life. All that time in taverns and alehouses and pillaged halls, drinking until everyone was fit to burst. Yes, those were times worth living for. There was nothing like it. The rush as you realised that your side was victor again, the thrill of finding the wine and the women and taking them both until you were sated; that was living, boys. That was life.

He’d had many good times, and even when there was a disaster, he’d invariably managed to be safe from real danger. The only time he’d been close to harm was when the Queen had been left to her own devices, and the Scots had invaded again, sneaking round behind the King’s men and threatening to cut off their defeat.

Will had been with the King during that campaign in the summer after Boroughbridge. For some reason, Edward II, who was intelligent and brave enough in his own right, was an abject failure whenever he tried to attack the Scots. Will couldn’t understand it at all. Still, there it was. When Edward was flushed with his success at Boroughbridge, and all thought he couldn’t fail so long as he had his men at his side, just then, the Scots surprised him at Blackhow Moor, and the King and his favourite fled. Isabella, Edward’s wife, was deserted at the Abbey at Tynemouth, and she had to make her own way past the Bruce’s men to escape. Luckily, Will had been there with her, and he had been able to join her on her boat which threaded its way past the blockading Flemish craft there to support the Scots.

The Queen lost two of her ladies-in-waiting during that flight. It was a sore grief to her, and Will saw her weeping over them long into the night, but that was nothing compared to what might have happened had they been captured. When Edward I, the King’s father, had invaded Scotland, he captured the Bruce’s sister and his mistress. Both were held in wooden cages for three years, on the walls of Roxburgh and Berwick Castles. Isabella knew, as well as any of the men and women with her, the sort of fate she could expect, were she to be captured by the Bruce. At the very least she would be humiliated and shamed.

William knew that she had seen how little her husband cared for or about her during that flight. That he made no effort to save her was shameful, and it proved to her beyond doubt that her man considered her as nothing more important to him than a chest of gold with which to buy influence. She was, after all, the daughter of a French King.

It was soon after that war that Will had developed this strange malady. He’d been bled for it often enough, but still it would come back. It was a weakness that sometimes affected him when he had taken a shock. The first episode occurred after a brisk fight just before he boarded the ship with the Queen, when a mace caught him on the helm, and he was felled like an ox. Another man from his force found him and took him off to the boat, throwing him aboard, still stunned. It saved his life.

But since then, and he assumed it was caused by that blow, he found that if he had a sudden shock, his heart started to race, his breath grew short, and his head felt light — dizzy. It was damned strange and inconvenient, but he must learn to cope with it.