Michael JECKS - The Traitor of St Giles

Sherman couldn’t hold his look. He dropped his gaze. ‘I swear I didn’t. I heard horses coming through the trees. It was late, dark, and I thought my wife must have gone in to hide from me.’

‘It wasn’t her?’

‘No, I rode in because I thought my wife must be there, hiding from me. I’d heard the noise and thought it was her. But while there I heard men shouting. I realised it wasn’t Cecily or the Coroner, so I left. I didn’t want to have a blade in the back.’

Baldwin watched him as he looked up.

‘That’s all I know, Sir Baldwin.’

‘Did you see anyone else beforehand – on the road on the way there? Was there anyone you knew?’

Reluctantly he nodded. ‘Sir Peregrine. I saw him before I went up that road. He was riding back to Tiverton in a hell of a hurry.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘The priest. He was up ahead of me on the way to Templeton. No one else.’

‘You never saw the Coroner or your wife?’

‘No.’

Baldwin had been watching him carefully and noticed the slight hesitation. He was lying again. Baldwin was about to press him further when the door opened.

‘Baldwin?’ Jeanne peered at him anxiously. ‘There’s been a murder – that servant of the knight. Simon wants you back at the castle.’

‘We must go,’ Baldwin said.

‘ You must, Husband,’ she retorted. ‘Simon sent Petronilla to keep me company, so you can go back with the messenger.’

Avicia Dyne was in the castle’s gateway, peering through from the darkened corridor beneath the gatehouse itself, staring into the yard, but she could see the group of men. They were playing, one man laughing and throwing his ball into the air, then hurling it to his friends. Each of them caught it and sent it on until the Coroner saw her. Roaring with laughter, he beckoned her over, and she saw him take the ball and hold it behind his back. He smiled and waggled his eyebrows as she fearfully came closer, and when she was almost before him, he brought his hands around and threw it at her: Philip’s head.

She awoke with a start, a feverish sweat breaking out all over her body once more. This was the fifth time she had woken, but now she could see daylight at the window and the rough doorway. Exhausted with her grief, dull from sleeplessness and despair, she slowly rolled over and pushed herself up from her low palliasse. Her day must begin.

Sniffing, she rolled her mattress into a cylinder and bound it before setting it against the wall. Fetching a bowl she tried to force down some oatcakes, but her appetite had utterly failed her. Without her brother, her very last relation, she had little desire to live.

She could remember leaving the castle as if it was a dream. When she had come down from her room, most of the men had left, and her brother’s body was already gone, taken out to a room where it could be held until a place was allocated for its burial. She didn’t care where he would be installed. It was irrelevant: God would save him; He would recognise Phil’s innocence.

Shuddering, she then thought how she and her brother had always believed the words of the priests: that a corpse must be anointed to save it from being taken by the Devil. Lucifer was always on the lookout for a new soul, they were told. But God was stronger, she reassured herself; He would surely not leave Philip in Hell for a crime of which he was innocent.

She was aware of the tears coursing down her cheeks once more and dripping from her chin. It was as if she had no further energy for depression. She was drained of all emotion. There was nothing left.

Nothing but hatred.

Avicia had not heard the conclusions of the inquest, all she had seen was her brother’s beheaded body lying amid the dirt. She knew that Carter and Lovecok had executed her brother but she couldn’t blame them. They had acted as they had because the Coroner had persuaded Philip to confess. Yet he was innocent. She knew it .

Sweeping her bowl aside, she knocked it to the floor and put her face in her hands. She felt so weak: useless and feeble. She couldn’t see what to do. Then she had an idea. She couldn’t go to the Coroner, and the previous day she’d seen that the Keeper and Bailiff didn’t believe her, but there were two others who had an interest now. Harlewin le Poter’s lies had made two men murder an innocent.

Slowly she lifted her head. Andrew Carter and Nicholas Lovecok had killed Philip believing in his guilt. If she told them the truth they would have to have Harlewin arrested simply to rectify their fault.

Filled with a new resolve, she stood and wiped her hands on her apron. She would speak to Andrew Carter. He would help find justice for Philip and his daughter.

Simon supervised the rescue of the body. It wasn’t easy to haul the waterlogged figure free. William Small the sailor lay at the bottom of the castle’s steep hill in deep water, and if there hadn’t been a tree trunk stuck across some ancient boulders further down, he could have been halfway to the sea by now. Not only was the bank very steep, making it tricky to lift him out, his clothing kept snagging on the bushes and brambles which predominated here, and none of the men appeared eager to join William in the water to get him out.

In the end Simon himself, swearing and contemptuous of the feeble efforts of the castle’s staff, slid down the bank and, with Edgar’s help, lashed a rope around the corpse’s chest. Throwing this to the men still on the bank, he had them pull while he and Edgar manhandled the stiffening body from the water. Aylmer sat mournfully on the bank and watched. He sniffed once at William’s body, then walked away to lie down.

‘Not a handsome sight,’ Edgar commented, looking at the body.

‘No,’ Simon agreed.

Sir Peregrine had watched their efforts with sardonic amusement from a little further up the bank. Now he slid down the incline to join them. To Simon’s private resentment he didn’t lose his balance and tumble into the water, but instead joined them both at the body.

‘Christ Jesus! What’s happened to him? He looks like he’s been beaten to death!’

Simon couldn’t help but agree. Although much of the blood had been washed from the face, the swollen jaw and temple where William had been kicked or punched stood out distinctly compared with the pale almost translucent flesh.

‘Where is he?’ Harlewin bawled from the top of the hill. Baldwin appeared at his side. It took some little time for the two of them to join the others. Baldwin himself almost skidded into the water, which would have lightened Simon’s mood and given him some comfort after his display of horsemanship the day before, but before he could grin, Edgar caught his master’s arm and rescued him.

‘What’s all this, then?’ Harlewin said, squatting at William’s side. ‘Good God above, but he’s been in a war, hasn’t he? It’s amazing what a fall can do.’

‘He has been badly beaten,’ Baldwin said, examining William’s head. ‘The jaw is broken and the head has been clubbed.’

Harlewin peered sceptically, then gazed behind them to the castle’s wall high above them. ‘You think so? I reckon he could have taken a pot of wine too many up on the wall and stumbled.’

‘Quite. Only…’

‘What?’

‘How do you explain this stab-wound?’ Baldwin asked politely.

The Coroner let his attention drop to the one-inch-long wound that Baldwin pointed to. He scowled. This was guaranteed to annoy Lord Hugh, and Harlewin didn’t like to have his Lordship irritable.

It was definitely murder. The wound was in the top of the left side of the torso, a little below the collar-bone. Harlewin poked his finger into the hole, but it was plain enough that the wound went straight down to the heart.