Michael Jecks - The Outlaws of Ennor

‘Any man with sense could have killed them and not thought it a crime!’ Isok said.

His quiet violence was impressive. His tone was calm and undemonstrative, but Baldwin could see the way that his hands were pulling at the boat’s ropes as he spoke, and how his knuckles whitened with the effort. There was enough anger and frustration in those hands to kill a man, Baldwin thought. Easily.

Ranulph de Blancminster rode back into his castle with a curt glower at all who greeted him, his customary response to any form of friendliness from his staff or his peasants alike. He had no trust in men apart from his own very small and specific circle of family and one or two friends. Only one or two, though, and even among them his trust was limited.

No warlord should ever totally trust those about him. Blancminster knew full well that, just as Walerand was keen to take on the duties so recently discarded by Robert, there were plenty of men who would be glad to own the licence to Ennor Castle — as he himself had been when he had seen the opportunity to take the place after the De Wika family. Thomas was a very ambitious man, he knew. He suspected that it was Thomas’s ambition which had led the Sergeant to try to take the customs money of the Manor for himself. Ranulph knew all about that, of course. Only a fool would think that he could get away with stealing from Ranulph on a small island like this without being discovered.

He himself wasn’t born on this island. Like other Lords of the Manor, he had come here from the mainland, in Ranulph’s case from Benamy, near Stratton in Northern Cornwall. His brother had inherited, there was nothing for him to achieve by remaining there, so he had snatched at the chance of moving to the little group of islands and making a new life for himself. With any luck he would be able to found a new dynasty on this group of rocks in the middle of the seas. But that pleasing thought did not blind him to the realities of his situation.

Ranulph cantered into the castle’s broad yard, his rounsey rearing as he drew him to a halt. He could feel his two daggers move in their sheaths under his sword-belt where he kept them hidden. When he had the horse under his control again, he stared at the men in the cobbled yard.

The men were a mix of his own servants and peasants. From the look of them, they had been moving the Anne ’s cargo about the storerooms. Thomas was never satisfied unless he had all stowed as efficiently as the master of a ship. Wines and ales would remain down by the shore in one of the lock-up sheds, apart from a couple of tuns of each which would be brought up for tasting, while the more easily transported goods would be moved up here to the castle itself. Even now he could see Thomas standing at the top of the stairs which led to the keep. The Sergeant was talking to a man with thinning brown hair, whose face was burned the colour of old chestnut by the sun. When he moved, Ranulph saw he had the bandylegged gait of a sailor.

Swinging himself from his horse, Ranulph stood a moment while grooms scurried to take the horse from him, and then, ignoring Thomas, he crossed the busy courtyard and climbed the steps which gave onto the walls, standing and staring thoughtfully over his estates.

It was a novel Manor. No one else he knew had anything like this. On all sides he was bounded by the sea, and from here he could see both the north and south coasts. On a fine day like this, he would be able to see the whole of his estate practically from the top of the keep, a heartwarming sight.

Many would have thought this a perfect location. Ranulph was more sanguine. He knew that the King, Edward II, was weakly and incompetent. The stories of the man’s profligacy abounded, especially in Cornwall. There all were astonished at the generosity of the King, giving his earldom of Cornwall to the appalling Piers Gaveston at first, and then, in a deliberate act of reconciliation, to his wife, Isabella. Not that it would help matters between them so far as Ranulph had heard. She was as bitter now as only a Frenchwoman of nobility could be, learning that her husband had rejected her. Worst, from her perspective, was the fact that he had not rejected her for another woman, but for a succession of men, if rumours be true. The latest was this Despenser puppy, another upstart who saw a way to wealth by pleasing the King’s loins and flattering his imbecile fancies.

That was Ranulph’s reading of the situation on the mainland, and for his part, he was more than delighted with his islands here in the sun, west of Cornwall. Most Manors throughout the country had boundaries which met other men’s lands; here Ranulph had no such problems. Other lords meant disputes, questions about a man’s loyalties, fights among staff when they met in adjoining towns, and in the last analysis there were too many risks when a man was called to support his King or the most powerful barons in the land. True, the King had quashed Thomas of Lancaster and seen to his execution — a forceful means of chastising an errant cousin! — but that meant nothing. Up and down England, more men were preparing to take Earl Thomas’s place, jockeying for the chance to remove Edward’s adviser and lover, Hugh Despenser, and his equally rapacious father, because whosoever was lucky enough to get those two out of the way, would have an immediate line straight to the King, and could control all power within the realm.

Ranulph was not stupid enough to think that he could win such a position. He knew that other men would take the laurels and power, and he was content with that, provided he was not called upon to help any of them. Getting involved in fights against the King was dangerous, and Ranulph enjoyed the sensation of having his head on his shoulders too much to want to endanger that satisfactory union.

It was strange to think that the disloyal and treacherous Earl Thomas had, by a curious quirk of fate, the same name as Ranulph’s Sergeant. Perhaps treachery was inherited with a name? At least there were no neighbours here who could bribe Thomas to make Ranulph’s life more politically confusing. Any shenanigans like that stayed on the mainland, and the folk there were welcome to them!

For Ranulph, looking out over his estates from here was a pleasant reminder that here there were no bickering neighbours to discontent him. Here, all was apparently calm. He had a sea, which could be more or less troublesome, and peasants, which could be worse.

He also had Thomas and Thomas’s men.

The steward was a fool. Soon Ranulph would have to remove him, but he’d have to do so carefully. Thomas thought that he had hoodwinked his master. Ranulph would enjoy seeing his reaction when he accused him of the crimes he knew he had committed.

In the meantime, although the men in the castle had been hired by Thomas, Ranulph was content that they would obey him and his money when he had a need of their obedience. Thomas had picked them from the detritus which tended to wash up in the ports and docks of Cornwall and Devon because, as the Sergeant was so fond of pointing out, what other sort of man would be happy to move all the way out to the islands? No man wanted to be exiled to a tiny plot of land so far from England. No man in his right mind, anyway. So they had to recruit the idiots and the callow, the feeble, or the wicked, and the wicked were best, because they were strong, they were fearsome, and they kept the peasants quiet. There was no doubt that they scared the living shit out of the folk who lived here, and from Ranulph’s point of view, that was one thing that Thomas had proved to be correct about: the peasants here were an aggressive, suspicious, greedy mob who needed a firm hand to rule them. That was why he had given Thomas a more or less free rein to control them.