Michael JECKS - The Devil's Acolyte

‘You don’t understand!’ she declared, pushing him away with both hands on his chest. ‘I fear that because you don’t believe in the spirit of the moors, you will leave yourself open to danger.’

‘We have talked about this before,’ he sighed, and indeed they had. His wife had been fearful before he went to investigate the murders in Sticklepath, and had tried unsuccessfully to stop him going then.

She followed him now as he walked from the room and returned to his hall, picking up his jug and sipping at the wine. ‘The Bailiff feels the same way as you do,’ Baldwin mused, ‘and I confess that I cannot laugh at Simon’s reactions any more, since witnessing how disorientated I became when the mist surrounded us at Sticklepath. I can sympathise with other people when they give respect to the moors – but they are only moors, not wild animals. I cannot pretend to be afraid when I am not.’

‘Baldwin, I–’

‘My Lady, I have spoken. I shall go with the good Coroner, and I shall help, so far as I am able, to solve whatever little riddle he puts before me. What is the reason for this visit, anyway?’

‘He said it was a murdered miner.’

‘There you are, then. It is likely a man killed in a knife-fight near the Abbey. There is no need for you to worry. It is probably nothing more than a quarrel over a woman in the middle of Tavistock, and no need to go near the moors. After all, that far south, in Tavistock, the moors don’t start until you travel half a morning eastwards.’

Her face was a little easier on hearing his words, but she still opened her mouth to speak again.

He held up his hand. ‘I shall be very careful, and I shall not take foolish risks, my love. But if the Coroner says that our good friend Abbot Robert wishes me to help, I can hardly turn him down, can I?’ He gambled a final comment, watching her carefully. ‘After all, if it weren’t for the good Abbot, you and I might never have met, might we? He has given me my most treasured possession – you . If I can ever help him, I must.’

Peter walked back to the Abbey, scarcely noticing the urchins begging at the street corners, the boys and girls who pointed at him and called out names. He had grown all too used to the condemnation of others since that dread attack.

Those days felt so far-off now. An evil time, it was as though after the ruination of the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem, God had decided to punish the impious. Hexham had been destroyed in 1296, and the Scots grew braver at this demonstration of their might. They were always raiding, riding ever further into England. Nor was it only the Scots. The man who tried so hard to destroy Tynemouth was the foul murderer Sir Gilbert Middleton and his ally Sir Walter Selby, two notorious English men. They and their followers, the shavaldours , were nothing more than marauders, killers who robbed and kidnapped, fearless of punishment from men or God.

It was five years ago now, in 1317 when they had committed their most barbarous, daring act. The two Cardinals, John de Offa and Luca de Fieschi, had been sent to England by the Pope himself in order to negotiate a settlement between the English King and the Scottish warrior, Bruce, the man whom the Pope himself referred to as ‘him who pretended to be King of Scotland’.

Except Sir Gilbert was furious still about the way that the English King was doing nothing about the devastation being wreaked upon his lands and upon those of the barons north of York. King Edward seemed to care nothing for the north country. He merely enjoyed himself with his singing and dancing, acting like a peasant with his hedging and ditching, and bulling his favourites at night. Pathetic, puny man that he was. He was no King of a realm such as England.

When Sir Gilbert’s cousin, Hamelin de Swinburn, was arrested for speaking sharply to the King about the abysmal state of the Northern Marches, it was no surprise that the furious Sir Gilbert chose to take the law into his own hands. He met with the Cardinals and their party riding northwards from York, near to Darlington, and robbed them of their money, their goods and their horses, and although he quickly released the two Cardinals to continue, more slowly, upon their way, he took Louis de Beaumont, Bishop of Durham, and his brother Henry hostage and ransomed them.

That act was their last. Sir Gilbert was entrapped by neighbours shocked by his sacrilegious behaviour; they had him fettered and sent to London in his chains. There he was condemned, and in January of 1318 he was hanged, drawn and quartered.

No one would have missed him. Certainly not Peter. After all, it was Sir Gilbert who had caused Peter’s wound a little while before he captured the Cardinals; unwittingly, it was true, but if Sir Gilbert had not distracted the Priory by attacking, Peter wouldn’t have been hurt.

It was because of Tynemouth. Sir Gilbert wanted to sack the castle there, to ransack the stores and take provisions, which during the famine years were more valuable to him than gold and jewels, although he probably wanted to see what plate and gold he could steal as well. Fortunately Sir Robert de Laval realised what was happening, and the castle and Priory were put on their guard. The Prior, a wise old fellow, commanded the monks to help Sir Robert’s men to demolish the houses which ran up near to the monastery and the castle, and Peter had been one of the first to volunteer to help. With the others, he had taken axe and bar to the old timber buildings, flattening them and clearing the space about the castle and Priory so that defenders could see for a good bowshot. There could be no unseen attack.

Praise be to God, the castle and Priory were saved and Sir Gilbert’s men were driven off in search of easier pickings. Peter and his friends and Brothers began to think that they were safe. That was when the Scots came.

The Armstrong clan had first arrived there six months before, but Sir Tristram de Cokkesmoor had all but destroyed them. They were feared all about the Marches. Brave they were, certainly, but Peter knew that their courage was only the outward manifestation of their pagan attitude to life and God. He had heard that border men, not only the Armstrongs, routinely demanded that their boy-children at their christenings were blessed with the exception of their right hands, that they might use them freely to kill.

There were many of them. Too many, when they arrived in the area. It was only the brutal raid against them, driven home with callous disregard for the understood rules of humanity, that shattered the clan before they could devastate the whole area, and yet some men escaped the slaughter. Even as Sir Tristram rode back with the heads of his enemies dancing at his saddle, some few remained and gathered together.

Wally had been terribly cut about and left for dead, probably because he managed to crawl away from the general bloodshed. Peter’s lovely Agnes found him, and the Scots lass bathed and cleaned his wounds, sitting up with him for hours while he slowly recovered.

And the reward for Peter? He lived to see Wally again, but the next time, Wally was with two others. Martyn and another.

If it hadn’t been for Sir Gilbert, the Priory might have had a chance. Usually, refugees from the raids bolted into the castle, fleeing from the blood-maddened Scots, but because of Sir Gilbert’s attack, there was no warning.

While Sir Gilbert’s men retreated southwards, pulling back towards their inevitable fate and Sir Gilbert’s own hanging, the small party of Scots who were all that remained of the Armstrong clan approached from the north, seeking plunder of any sort.

The few men left had banded together under one leader, who was known only as ‘Red Hand’, a name that terrified all the peasants because it meant death to any who crossed his path. He killed, it seemed, for pleasure. And beneath him were others who had grown to the nomadic, warrior culture of the March.