Michael Jecks - The Outlaws of Ennor

Simon at once went to them. ‘I had thought you were both dead! How did you come to survive that last blow?’

‘It was all very well for you to flee,’ Sir Charles said with a certain hauteur, ‘but not everyone knows how to swim, Bailiff.’

‘You should have told me! I could have helped you!’

‘To find a lingering death clinging to a spar?’ Sir Charles said with a faint smile. ‘Far better, I thought, to tempt fate and hope that the ship might survive.’

‘I thought we all agreed it was going to sink.’

‘Yet, as you can see, it didn’t. We arrived here safe and sound.’

‘In most ways,’ Paul grumbled.

‘I am deeply sorry,’ Simon said. ‘Why have they treated you in this way?’

‘Aha! That, I think, I can answer easily enough. It was probably,’ Charles said with a judicial consideration, ‘the way I held my sword to the back of Ranulph Blancminster. Apparently he is the local lord. I thought from his behaviour and arrogance that he was a mere official, or maybe even another pirate. Sadly, I now learn that he is the Lord of the Manor and demands full payment from any vessel which suffers damage about his shores.’

‘Can he do so?’ Simon asked.

‘He can from my master,’ Paul interjected bluntly. ‘His men saw my master shoving his sword-point at the man’s back. That was when they knocked him even more bloody stupid than he normally is.’

‘It was,’ Sir Charles confessed, ‘a rather extraordinary sensation, to be so beaten about the head that I collapsed on the spot. Yet it was interesting in its own way.’

‘As interesting as having an adder bite your arse,’ Paul said scathingly as his master gingerly touched his scalp.

‘No … there was nothing of the serpent about de Blancminster,’ Charles said thoughtfully. ‘He was less of a fighter, more of a merchant. I think all he was doing when he first appeared on our ship was assessing its value. He had no idea how many men there were on board at the time.’

‘He soon learned, though,’ Paul added, and then he spat. ‘And now he knows, he doesn’t want anyone who could cause him trouble to survive.’

‘What do you mean?’ Simon asked.

‘He wants the full value of the ship for himself, doesn’t he? That means no survivors.’

‘I am sure he isn’t so cynical,’ Simon said, but with a hesitation in his voice as he recalled Blancminster’s features.

‘He wants what he can get, Simon,’ Sir Charles said. ‘I understand such men. I thought I had a pirate on the ship, which was why I pulled out my sword — and I was proved right. From the moment he arrived on board, he was looking at the value of the thing. Paul says that as soon as I was down, he went about the Anne from stem to stern, checking all the wines and goods in the hold, and he took the ship’s records with him when he left.’

Simon suddenly remembered the documents Thomas had been working on when he went into his room at the castle. The parchments spread over the trestle-table could well have been a ship’s manifest.

‘As soon as he realised how much the ship was worth,’ Paul confirmed, ‘he took the lot with him and ordered her to be taken into port.’

‘He could surely not leave her without mast or sail,’ Simon said reasonably.

‘He could have asked permission before taking her,’ Sir Charles said flatly. ‘And as soon as I am free of these chains, I shall ask the good Blancminster to meet me for a discussion of the rights and wrongs of his behaviour.’

‘It may be better not to,’ Simon said thoughtfully. ‘He is powerful enough here on his own territory. It would be easy for him to arrange for you to disappear.’

‘If he killed me, he would have to answer to the King’s Coroner soon enough. You and Paul would report his actions!’

Simon looked at him, but it was Paul who caught Simon’s expression and gave a low whistle. ‘You reckon he’d do that? He’d kill all of us to keep us silent?’

‘From his behaviour so far, I wouldn’t think him incapable of it,’ Simon said.

‘I don’t care!’ Sir Charles said. ‘He must be taught manners.’

‘He has many men here. He could easily kill you.’

‘The King’s Coroner …’

‘He is the Coroner.’

‘So much the better. He must be a man of honour, then,’ Sir Charles said.

He stood and Simon saw that he was smiling again. It was a look which Simon distrusted. When the pirates had attacked the ship, Simon had seen Sir Charles. Beforehand, waiting for something to happen, he had been grim, a shadowy, angry man pacing the deck; as soon as the pirates’ grapnels had caught the ship’s side, Simon had seen him wielding his sword. He had been smiling, as happy and innocent-looking as a child, but this child was a berserker in knightly clothing. Sir Charles used his blade to take off one man’s hand, then was back, a club in the other hand, to beat at a second. He smiled as he fought, as though the whole of his soul was thrilling to the power and authority of the steel in his hand.

Seeing that same smile again, Simon left the cell and returned to the fresh daylight, unhappily convinced that if he wished to see his home and his wife again, he would have to ensure that Sir Charles not only escaped from the cell in which he was incarcerated, but that he was kept away from Ranulph de Blancminster until they were safely off the islands.

Simon’s concerns were nothing compared with those of Thomas who, once he returned from the inquest, spent the next hour sitting in his room with his records, assessing the cost of his latest venture should his ship not arrive.

If all was well, the Faucon Dieu should have arrived back at Ennor at any time over the last four days. True, sometimes the French port officials could be difficult, requiring a larger bribe than usual, or there could be a dispute with a clumsy dockyard worker — like last year. Then the master of the ship had arrived in port with a consignment of pottery, and because the lazy drunk had been abed when the dockers arrived, no one had shown them the ropes. When one snapped and a number of pieces were shattered on the hard stone flags, the dockers had accused the ship of maintaining poor ropes, as well they might. They wouldn’t want to have to pay for their incompetence, would they? The master had suffered a large financial penalty for that gaffe. It was normal procedure for all ships always to display their ropes so that this sort of thing couldn’t happen.

To lose one load of pottery, that was one thing, but Thomas now feared that he could have lost much more. Of course, as he reminded himself every few minutes, it was more than likely that the ship was held up in port and couldn’t make the sailing he expected, so they were simply late, but somehow he didn’t feel reassured.

Pirates were always a problem, especially with shipping to and from the British ports in Guyenne, but things had been quiet for a while. Now, though, Thomas had heard that the Anne had been chased by what must have been a Breton ship, from the sound of things. Pirates didn’t tend to travel far: they preyed on ships close to their home ports. So, if the Bretons were up to their tricks again, no cargo was safe, and Thomas was unpleasantly aware that he had overextended himself on this voyage. It wasn’t insured, and if the vessel was caught, he would be in serious trouble.

It was curious the way that this affected him. After the first few anxious moments, he could almost study himself like an observer from a distance. The problem was one about which he could do nothing. Could he fly to the ship to see that she was all right? Of course not! The only thing he could do was sit and wait, and meanwhile ensure that his work was all done. Except he couldn’t. It was impossible to concentrate on anything while his mind was tormented with the fear that he had lost everything he’d built up over the last years.