Michael Jecks - The Outlaws of Ennor

Tedia walked on a short way while he watched her. She was still studying the ground, keenly seeking his blade. They had turned back and were wandering roughly southwards, and the sun, lower this late in the summer, reflected off the water. For a moment, as she passed before it, the light shone through her threadbare tunic, and Baldwin was captivated.

She was a slim, dark-haired girl. Her dress hinted at the soft curves of her breasts, her legs were long and firm, while her belly was rounded enough to look like a pillow fit for a king to rest his head on. As he watched her, feeling the breath catch in his throat, she lifted a hand to ease a long tress of hair behind an ear, and he caught a glimpse of the woman as a whole: she was as unspoiled as the beaches, as beautiful as the islands, as calm as the seas. Her neck was long and elegant, her face in profile was as gentle as that of the Madonna herself.

He saw her glance towards him. ‘Are you quite well?’

‘I …’

‘So this is the stranger, Tedia? How are you now, Sir Knight?’

To his intense annoyance, aware of a furtive sense of guilt, Baldwin found himself confronted by a man some six to eight years younger than himself, a man with a thick shock of unruly black hair and eyes that were a clear blue like a sky glimpsed through clouds on a chilly winter’s day. His face was strong, with an angled jaw that dropped to a narrow chin. The nose was broken, and he had at some time won a great scar on his cheek that had sliced deep and almost reached his ear.

There was something about him that appealed to Baldwin. This man, he felt instinctively, was no brute. The reflection somewhat abated his desire to hit him.

Tedia was at Baldwin’s side in a moment. ‘Sir Baldwin, this is David, the reeve.’

Reeve David studied the knight cheerfully. ‘I am glad to see you looking happier than you did, Sir Knight. Last time I saw you, you were snoring fit to wake folks on the mainland.’

‘I think even my snores would not reach so far,’ Baldwin said with some sharpness.

‘It’s not too far,’ David said, glancing southwards.

Baldwin realised that he was referring not to England, but to the main island, Ennor, and the idea struck him as quaint. It was endearing how people who lived so far from the shores of England could look upon Ennor as the nearest place of any meaning. What, he wondered, did the people of Ennor look to? Was it the next wave-tossed island to the east? When he looked towards the south-west he could see some rocks projecting beyond the westernmost shore of Ennor, and he wondered whether they were the beginning of another island which was only visible from Ennor itself. He wondered, too, how many islands made up this little scattering of land in the vast sea. It was unsettling to think how far it might be to another place. There was nothing to the west, of course, but eastwards, how far would it be to the Cornish coast? Many miles, he guessed.

‘What are you doing here, Tedia? Helping your guest to recover?’

‘He has lost his belongings and wondered if they might be here.’

‘Have you found any of them?’ David asked.

‘No. But I have given him some air, which is good. And shown him Ennor in the daylight — the good knight had a desire to see for himself how close the island is.’

‘Did he?’ David said, looking at Baldwin, who managed to fit a suitable expression of bland disinterest on his face. ‘And what does he think of the place?’

‘It is a strangely attractive little land: rocky, but green. It looks fertile,’ Baldwin answered honestly. ‘It appears a pleasant enough place.’

‘Yes. That’s a fair summary,’ David said. ‘The islands all have their own atmosphere. Here on St Nicholas, we have more variety, with our western hills and the eastern rocks. North we have a wild sea, while here in the south, is this gentle landscape. Ennor has soft sandy beaches all around, apart from that odd spur there, west from La Val. There the sea can be violent.’

‘The seas all about here can be violent,’ Baldwin said. He touched his hip, and was about to mention his sword again, but decided not to. His face was still sore, as was his shoulder, where he had been pounded against a rock, or perhaps a piece of wood had been hurled at him while he lay in the water. Either way, it was a proof of the viciousness of the sea when roused, and yet there was a curious lack of any damage where his sword had hung. He’d had a good strong scabbard, with a belt that was more than up to the task of holding it in place, so it seemed most peculiar that the entire thing should have disappeared. As he recalled, there had been no weaknesses in the leather of his belt.

He could have understood his sword falling from the scabbard and being lost in the sea, but to lose the scabbard and belt at the same time was quite impossible: of that he was sure. Yet he was equally certain that the thing dangled at his hip all the while he was on board the ship. In fact, even as he thought of pirates and the attack, he had a feeling, no more than that, of being washed over the side of the ship.

While he was engaged in his thoughts, the other two were talking.

‘Yes, there’s a ship in the harbour,’ he heard David say. Tedia smiled and chuckled to herself, and Baldwin wondered why.

‘What sort of ship?’

‘A great cog. One of those which travels between Guyenne and London. Probably got blown this way by the same storm which blew you here.’

‘I hope that there are some survivors, then.’ Baldwin felt choked up at the memory of all those good men who had been aboard the Anne when they had set sail, in particular Simon: the honest, bluff Bailiff who had been Baldwin’s first friend when he arrived home at Furnshill after so many years of travelling. It seemed that his entire life had been composed of losses: first all his friends and comrades in the Knights Templar, and now Simon. With that thought, he wondered whether he would ever recover his ease of spirit. In large part he knew that it had been caused by his friendship with Simon. He was the counterbalance to Baldwin’s depression. At least he still had his wife and daughter. They must be his consolation — and yet a man who had been a member of a warrior band would always regret the loss of his comrades. There were bonds between men who had fought side by side in battles and survived which were stronger even than those which held a man to his woman.

‘There are some, I daresay,’ David said, more seriously. ‘If a whole ship is saved, there must usually be some folk who are kept hale and hearty.’

‘I shall pray so,’ Baldwin said fervently. The sea was a cruel mistress, he thought. A sudden hope sprang into his heart. ‘This ship … I do not suppose it could be mine?’

David gave him a look of surprise. ‘But surely yours broke up? That was how you came to be in the water.’

‘I suppose so, but I cannot recall what happened, nor how I came to be thrown into the sea.’ Baldwin frowned. There was something that niggled at his memory: what, he wondered, if the ship had not been thrown upon the rocks? Could he have somehow been separated from it?

‘Anyway, there is something else to occupy minds on the mainland today, from what I’ve heard,’ David said. ‘Oliver from La Val rowed over earlier with some puffins for the Prior, and he told me: a man was murdered during the night of the storm.’

‘Who?’ Tedia asked, but she already knew the answer and a deathly chill flowed from the roots of her hair down to the tips of her toes.

‘The tax-gatherer. That pox-marked, bile-infested son of a heathen, Robert.’

Baldwin was shocked to see how the woman was affected by this news, but assumed that it was another proof of her softness and femininity. Any decent woman would be upset to hear of a senseless killing, he reasoned. From a professional interest, he enquired, ‘How do they know it was murder?’