Michael JECKS - The Abbot's Gibbet

“Yes,” Baldwin agreed, thinking of Jeanne’s bright smile. Somehow he was sure she could never be as cruel as Holcroft described his wife. He pushed the picture from his mind. “I think we should see to Elias now, don’t you?”

Edgar was sitting at a bench, a mug of ale in one hand, a small pastry in the other. He had an air of contentment. The knight kicked his seat. “Eating? I thought I told you to watch Elias?”

“He’s there,” Edgar said, pointing with his pie. “He’s not once been out of my sight.”

Baldwin looked. Elias was standing chatting to a bearded man and a friar. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

As they approached, the bearded man faded into the crowds, but the friar remained. Baldwin walked straight up to the cook.

Elias stood resolutely. His face had taken on the same mulish aspect it had held before. “Yes, masters? Do you want to buy a pie now?”

“Elias, we have been to your house, and we found something in your yard.”

Baldwin watched him closely as he said this. If there had been even the faintest stiffening of his features, the most momentary movement of his eyelids or twitch of his hands, Baldwin would doubt his strengthening conviction that the cook was innocent, but there was nothing. If anything, Elias looked amused.

“Well, I don’t have to clear my yard when there’s a fair on. You can’t amerce me for that!”

“We found a head buried in your yard, Elias. Torre’s head.”

Elias caught at the trestle-top and gaped. “Torre’s head in my yard? Sir, I had nothing to do with it – I didn’t kill him. Why would I kill Roger? We never had a cross word. Why, even the night he died, I was sitting with him. Ask Friar Hugo here, he was there with us.”

Baldwin motioned to Edgar. “I’m sorry, Elias,” he said stiffly. “There’s nothing else I can do. With the body in your alley and the head in your yard, we have to arrest you. I do this with the Abbot’s authority.”

“Speak to the friar,” Elias begged desperately.

“Friar?”

Hugo had seen much of England on his travels, and he was wary of knights. Many of the men he had met who bore swords were little more than robbers themselves, and some openly committed felonies. Yet the tall, dark-skinned man before him looked different. There was no ostentation to his dress, and Hugo got the impression that compassion, not violence, lurked behind the shrewd dark eyes.

“Sir, he’s telling the truth. I had gone to the tavern with Roger Torre, and this cook joined us.”

“Was this before compline?”

Hugo bobbed his head shyly. “Sir, I had been there some while with Torre, and by the time Elias arrived I had drunk quite a lot of ale.”

“Then it’s no good, Elias. Your alibi is too weak. Edgar, take him to the jail.”

Baldwin watched while the protesting cook was taken away, held between Daniel and his servant, and when they were out of earshot, he looked at the friar again. “Before you protest, friar, I agree. I don’t think he is a killer – but what will the mob think when they hear the head was found in his yard?”

“I see. It seems harsh to jail him just because of the mob doubting his word.”

“Better to be harsh now than see him hanged by hotheads,” said Baldwin. “And now, is there anything you can tell us about that evening? You say you were with Torre – did you see anyone threaten him, or overhear anything which might help us find the killer?”

Hugo gave him an apologetic look. “Sir, the ale in that tavern is very strong. I’m not used to such powerful drink, and for most of the evening I wouldn’t have been able to hear someone talking to me directly.” He quite liked the look of this knight, but he wasn’t going to speak of the other man – not yet. If he was wrong, Hugo didn’t want to see an innocent man sent to the gibbet on his evidence. And what evidence did he really have? Just the fact that he thought he recognized a face from years before.

No, he decided. He would wait and consider, and if he became certain, he would tell the knight. Not until then.

With a quick glance after the cook, he walked away.

Baldwin watched him go with a feeling of anticlimax. He was sure that the friar knew something, and that he had been close to telling the knight. “No matter,” he muttered to himself. “I will find out another way.”

Peter dithered in the street. He knew he shouldn’t be here, but after hurrying back to tell the Abbot about the head, Champeaux had sent him off to find Baldwin, and he was dawdling on his way. He had much to consider.

His vows were to be made soon, and after that he would be committed to God. Once he had entered the gates of the Abbey that last time, he would be lost to the world. From then on, he would no longer be of the material, corporal world, but part of God’s kingdom. His body would have been left at the Abbey gates; only his soul would enter.

All he had ever wanted was to be a man of God, but now secular interests were distracting him.

The monks of the Abbey were a mixed bunch, ranging from the completely other-worldly, whom he could hardly understand as their thoughts were so concentrated on the life to come, to the frankly dishonest. These last consorted flagrantly with the people of the town, chatting to them through the Abbey’s gates when they could, and sharing ale and gossip; some of them dallied in alehouses and taverns when they should have been at their work. It confused the young man, whose vision before coming to Tavistock had been of a dedicated community serving God and God alone. Here, under the relaxed management of Abbot Champeaux, the monks appeared to work as hard to earn money as they did to earn their place in Heaven.

No matter how often he tried to tell himself that the behavior of the others was irrelevant, that it was for him to live as he knew he should, looking to the future in Heaven, interceding for the people of the world, and praying for those who had already died that they might be granted entry to Heaven and not hurled into the pit – he sometimes had doubts.

He had been told that doubts were necessary. It was only through facing doubts that a man of God could recognize his own failings and come to that state of grace in which he could serve his Lord fully. One had to confront one’s weaknesses before one could give up the world and live solely to pray and save souls.

But Peter was assailed by doubts of a virulent nature. He had thought that his weakness was his laziness, that he might find himself unable to wake in the middle of the night for the service of nocturns, or, worse, might fall asleep in the middle of them. This dull aching desire was something he had never considered.

Yet it was there, and now it appeared to be taking over his entire concentration. Where before there had been only the bittersweet adoration of his God, now he found his thoughts always turning from his duties toward the gorgeous, scented figure of Avice Pole.

He shook his head harshly, like a dog drying itself. This was all wrong. He was about to dedicate his life to God, and every time he tried to consider the great burden he was taking on, Avice Pole’s face insidiously intruded. The way that she held her head, the way she walked, the slight narrowing of her eyes as her mouth widened in a grin, all were indelibly printed on his mind, and he was finding it harder and harder to shake them free.

A door opened, and he felt an overwhelming urge to flee as he recognized Avice, as if she was sent to lure him from his vocation.

She came out with a maidservant – and she looked at him with a kindly warmth.

Peter felt his heart dissolve into molten lead. It was heavy with longing, burning with lust for this woman. For a moment he wondered whether the stabbing agony was proof of his own death, but then the instant red-hot flush that scorched his cheeks made him realize that dying would be preferable. It would not be so embarrassing.