Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

‘True enough,’ Baldwin agreed. ‘So who else should we suspect? We know of William and Joel.’

‘And this fellow Thomas,’ Simon pointed out. ‘He would seem a likely candidate — especially as he was guilty enough to leave the city in the first place, and now since his return all those who could have known him have died. First Henry, now Nicholas.’

‘And we have heard that Udo was angry about being refused the right to marry Julia Potell,’ Baldwin recalled. ‘It is possible, I suppose, that the friar was a witness to Henry’s murder by Udo, and then Udo was forced to return to remove him too, although …’

‘Yes, Baldwin?’ Simon asked after a moment or two, but his friend shook his head.

‘Nothing.’ Baldwin could not confess to his strange loathing for the Charnel Chapel. There was something bad about the place, he felt. And surely that had coloured his judgement. ‘I only think that the murder of the Chaunter could have something to do with this. Why else would Henry have been left in the Charnel Chapel, and why should Nicholas have been killed there, his body later moved …’

‘Putting the body near the Cathedral would shove all the blame and suspicion onto Thomas,’ Simon said musingly. ‘It would be a shrewd move to distract us towards him.’

‘Perhaps it would,’ Baldwin said.

‘So we have to consider William, Joel and Thomas because they were all involved in the original attack,’ Simon concluded. ‘And Udo because he had his own motives … Right! What shall we do now, Baldwin? Should we report to the Dean first?’

‘All we have is speculation, so no, let’s go to Joel first.’

‘You don’t want to see Sir Peregrine, do you?’ Simon grinned.

‘He would see me choose between the Lord Hugh de Courtenay and the King,’ Baldwin protested, ‘and I will not. I have enough allegiances already: my family first, my King second.’

‘Sir Peregrine will try to persuade you otherwise?’

‘Sir Peregrine is a loyal servant of Lord Hugh. He sees the King as a spendthrift and wastrel who will plunge the country into chaos if he is not restrained. The last few times I have seen him, he was trying to forge alliances against the King with the Marcher Lords, but now that they have been destroyed and the rebel leaders killed or exiled, I do not know what he plans. All I do know is, I do not wish to be thrown into a new plot against the King. He has shown his disdain for convention when he captures traitors. I’ll have no part in that.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Simon said. ‘Still, we’ll have to see Sir Peregrine at some point. I think that we should go now.’

Baldwin grunted but did not argue further. He knew that Simon was correct, but Sir Peregrine was the sort of knight who could put a man in danger’s path unintentionally, and a man who was forced into confrontation with the King was likely to pay for his temerity with his life, his possessions, his lands, everything. Baldwin did not value his own life too highly, but he did value his manor, and the fact that it represented the only means of support he could leave for his wife and daughter. He would not risk them.

Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple smiled as the Keeper and his friend entered the Dean’s hall. Dean Alfred was talking quietly to Stephen and Matthew, studying their rolls of accounts, and he waved to Simon and Baldwin, motioning towards Sir Peregrine and the jug of wine.

Sir Peregrine sipped from his mazer, then rose to offer his hand to both. ‘Sir Baldwin, it is a delight to see you again. And Bailiff Puttock, I am pleased to see you looking so well. I have heard from the Dean that you both undertook a pilgrimage. I congratulate you on the success of your journey. You must tell me all about it.’

The Bailiff did look well, in fact, Sir Peregrine thought, slimmer and with his face bronzed from the sun, although there was a new reticence about him. Still, that was to be expected. Sir Baldwin would have warned him off.

That idea made Sir Peregrine smile wolfishly as he took his seat again. The two were clever enough. Certainly Sir Baldwin was remarkably quick. Some reckoned he could see through a man’s eyes into his very soul, and he was rumoured to be one of the most respected Keepers in the whole of Devon and Cornwall. Still, he didn’t look so bright today. His eyes were duller, his posture a little stooped, as though he was feeling his age. No matter, he’d be an excellent ally for Lord Hugh, if Sir Peregrine could win him over.

There would be another war sooner or later, and there was no telling how many would die. The King’s friend, Despenser, grew ever more voracious in his rape of the kingdom. The bastard had sewn up government to his benefit. No one could speak to the King without Despenser’s approval, which meant paying him. Now it was impossible for any man who had been robbed by Despenser to win justice, because the Despenser refused to allow them to plead their case before the King.

This situation had been going on for years, but the mood of the country was growing restless. The man was a tyrant, and his reign could not last for ever. Since the Battle of Boroughbridge, at which the forces of Earl Thomas of Lancaster, the King’s cousin, had been entirely destroyed, the knights who had been in his party chased through the kingdom and, when captured, slaughtered, their bodies separated and sent to all points to be displayed as the limbs of traitors, people had said little. There was nothing to be done against an all-powerful King, especially one who was prepared to wallow in the blood of his enemies; but now that the Despenser was ravaging all territories, he had succeeded in uniting the realm against the King. Even those who had not yet been on the receiving end of the Despenser’s anger and demands for their lands or wealth, knew that it could only be a matter of time.

‘Have you viewed the bodies, Sir Peregrine?’ Baldwin enquired.

‘I have seen that of the saddler. Unfortunately, the friar’s body has been removed. I shall have to visit the Friary to see that. They insisted on burying him on their own lands. And the mason has been buried, too.’

‘Mason?’ Simon asked.

‘Saul: the man we told you of. A rock fell on him while Thomas was up on the scaffold,’ Dean Alfred explained. ‘He was — um — squashed. A horrible sight. We could have his remains exhumed, of course,’ he said, glancing at the Coroner, ‘but it seems a little drastic. There were many witnesses, and all said it was an accident. Nothing was stolen from the man, and there was no suggestion that anyone had anything but praise for him. He never started an argument or any — ah — form of dispute. Never had a fight.’

‘Who was there when the rock fell?’

‘My Warden of the new Fabric here was on the scaffolding,’ the Dean smiled. ‘But he hardly knew poor Saul, did you?’

Vicar Matthew shook his head. ‘It was a straightforward accident. Thomas was taking the walls down, and one stone fell. It utterly crushed Saul. But there was no reason for Thomas to want to see Saul killed. And he has displayed the most clear and unambiguous proofs of his sadness to have caused the death.’

‘That is true,’ the Dean verified.

‘Was it the falling rock that so damaged Thomas’s hands?’ Baldwin asked curiously, thinking of the linen wrapped about each of the man’s palms.

‘Yes. The rope stripped the flesh from his hands when he tried to stop it falling,’ said the Dean.

‘So he was holding a rope? It must have been a restraining rope,’ Baldwin mused.

‘Yes,’ Matthew said. ‘It was to stop the rock from swinging, and in order to be able to pull it away from the wall as it descended.’

‘I shall have to see what sort of fine his burial too will require,’ Sir Peregrine said with a smile.