Michael Jecks - The Outlaws of Ennor

‘Very well, boy,’ he agreed gruffly. ‘Come along, then.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

They walked on for some distance, avoiding teams of donkeys carrying goods back towards the castle. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

‘Hamo, sir,’ he said in a hurt tone of voice. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

‘I am sorry. Since the storm …’ Simon glanced down at him. Hamo was loping along at his side like a hound who distrusted the surroundings. His eyes were flitting here and there, his head was held low, and he kept a hand close to his sole means of defence, a knife in an old sheath at his belly. As they stood aside to let a larger cart go past he asked, ‘Why did you go to sea?’

‘My father was a seaman, but he died in a bad storm. My mother was able to make some pennies at needlework and spinning, but then she was struck down with a disease and died. I had no family left.’ Hamo shrugged. ‘What else could I do? Didn’t want to be a farmer, so I got out, walked all the way to Sutton Water, and Gervase took me on board his ship. Said he was saving me from the sodomites and fornicators who infested that place.’

There was sadness in the youngster’s voice, and Simon suddenly realised that where he had mourned for the loss of a friend, Hamo had lost in Gervase not only a friend, but a father as well.

There was no point in lying and pretending that Gervase could have survived. ‘Let’s go and pray for them all, lad,’ Simon said kindly.

‘You think they may be killed?’

Simon heard his words with disbelief. He turned to peer at Hamo. ‘What do you mean, killed ?’

Hamo allowed a small frown to pass over his features at frustration with this bailiff who appeared to be so dull-witted.

‘They’re still on her, aren’t they? Gervase would never have left his ship. Couldn’t swim. Anyway, he adored the Anne . He wouldn’t desert her.’

Simon followed the direction of his pointing finger, and felt his jaw drop. ‘By all the whores of Paris!’

Out beyond the little harbour, he saw the drooping vessel. Men were scurrying all over her, and a pair of large boats was towing her towards the safety of the porth while a small flotilla of boats waited, ready to ferry all the goods from her hold to the beach where donkeys were gathering.

‘What are they doing?’ Simon demanded in shock. Believing that the ship had foundered along with all the sailors, he was dumbfounded to discover it here, just off the shore.

‘They call it salvage. They’ve saved the ship, so they say, so now all her goods can be taken,’ Hamo said bitterly. ‘That’s why I came to find you. They’ll leave nothing for us, you’ll see.’

Ranulph de Blancminster climbed down the rope-ladder from the Anne with an agility that belied his weight and age. Soon he was in the boat beneath, and he gazed back at the ship with a measuring eye as he was rowed ashore.

It was certainly a good prize. Fully laden, with only a few tuns damaged where the rocks had started to breach the hull, for the master had been a clever and skilful sailor. He had ordered his men to plug the hole with bales of woollen clothing, tugging them into the gap in the wood by means of a rope running from the bales to the capstan. Held there firmly, the ship was more or less plugged, although it could only last a short while without serious repairs. Well, she wouldn’t get them here. Ranulph had already seen the familiar faces on the hills about the Porth, and he knew that the scavengers would descend as soon as his men left the ship. They’d rip off any decent timbers for lintels in their cottages, or for new doors, or for rafters. On islands which had no trees to speak of, the people depended in large part on the charity of the sea.

In any case, there was no guarantee that even the best shipwrights in England could save this poor beast. She had suffered so terribly that there was little point in dreaming of rescue. No, the sensible thing to do was to remove all valuables from her, and then break her. Her constituent elements could then be sold to Ranulph’s peasants.

When they reached the shore, he jumped down into the sand, splashing a great mass of water. He cared not a whit, but lumbered heavily to dry land, and then scowled as he saw Walerand waiting for him.

Walerand was not one of his favourite servants. There were many whom he distrusted, but that was a sad fact of life in the modern era. Men-at-arms used to be faithful retainers in whom a man could place all his trust, but those days were long past. Now a man like Ranulph had to take the dregs of society. It had been noticeable when the King’s Coroner, William le Poer, had been most enraged by Ranulph, that the most serious allegation which could be brought against Ranulph was that he habitually recruited outlaws and felons. So he did; and he would continue so to do. These islands needed defending, God knew, and the best men to defend them were those who were utterly reliant on the islands for their lives and had nowhere else to run. Who better than men who could not return to their homes on pain of death?

Some, of course, were more enthusiastic about violence than others, which was a cause for concern when their heavy-handedness upset too many locals. Yes, a man had to keep the population cowed, else they might take it into their heads to seize power for themselves. Still, there were some who scared everyone, thank God. When the locals had grown restive recently, Thomas had carefully let slip the tale of how he met Robert. Most people said that the gather-reeve was the worst of all the men on the island, because for all his apparently mild manners, the story of a crazed murder in a tavern had spread like a wild fire over the moors. None of the local peasants dared so much as answer him back when Robert went to collect the rents. He was the best man Ranulph had employed as a gather-reeve.

Walerand was a different matter altogether. The fool seemed to think that he was intelligent — which in itself was a proof of his dull-wittedness. When Ranulph had been his age, he wasn’t nearly so gormless. He’d been bold enough to come here, for a start, and offer the old King his three hundred puffins or six shillings and eight pence each year for the use of the islands, and he’d made them work for him. This place had been falling apart when he arrived, in 1306, but since then he’d made the peasants realise that they had to work to live, and they must all work for him. If they didn’t, they suffered.

If he had wandered about the place idly like this Walerand, he’d no longer be here. The old King, Edward I, didn’t suffer fools gladly. Not that he was about for long. His son soon took over, and although Ranulph despised him as a weakling who was unable to control even the Welsh Marcher Lords, let alone the Scots, Ranulph was glad that Edward II was King. While a weak King ruled in England, swayed by each gust of discontent in his realm, Ranulph could maintain his iron grip on his own little fiefdom.

‘My lord?’

Ranulph did not so much as look in Walerand’s direction. ‘What?’

‘I’m feared Robert has been murdered.’

Cryspyn remained in his seat as the man rescued from the shipwreck entered: with him were Isok and Tedia. The sight of the couple was enough to make the Prior feel the acid bubbling in his belly again. There was a pain there whenever he felt the pressure of his responsibilities, and Tedia, as he knew, had applied for a divorce on the basis of her husband’s impotence. Why it was, Cryspyn didn’t understand. He himself was not driven by lusts as once he had been, not since killing Sara’s lover; that had destroyed something in him. No, he was safe from the carnal desires, but that was different from being immune to the attractions of a young woman who was still in the flush of youth, and whose beauty had not faded from exhaustion, malnutrition and childbirth. Considering her objectively, he was sure that if Tedia had been his wife, he would have found it hard to keep his hands from her.