Michael JECKS - The Abbot's Gibbet

Will Ruby was furious when his apprentice broke the little knife. The thin-bladed tool was one of his favorites, and he always used it when he had any fiddly jobs to do, such as cutting up young coneys or hares. The fool should never have tried to use it to pry apart the bones of a goose’s neck. It was no surprise that the blade had snapped in half – it was far too weak for a job like that.

There was a cutler in the fair, and Will decided to go and see what the man had on offer. If there was anything like his old knife, he would buy it. He’d made enough already to be able to afford it, and he felt he deserved a present after the two consecutive shocks of finding the headless body, and then being attacked. He gingerly touched the lump on his head. It was still sore, but at least no harm seemed to have been done. No harm other than losing his favorite knife because of letting the apprentice look after things while he went to rest his headache, anyway.

The route to the cutler took him past the cloth-sellers, and he nodded and smiled at the people he met, most of whom he knew from his shop. It was always best to appear to be cheerful and friendly; customers preferred to deal with happy men rather than morose ones.

A small crowd was gathered at one point, blocking his passage. Everyone was staring at one particular stall. Ruby followed their gaze and stopped dead.

The watchmen huddled round the merchant’s awning, Long Jack with a tourniquet bound above his elbow. At his nod, the men cautiously entered. Ruby frowned when he heard a high scream, then curses, and a boy was dragged out between two men, Long Jack following with a knife in his hand.

“What’s all this about?” Ruby asked his neighbor.

“It’s the man’s stall, the one who’s been arrested. I reckon those swine are going to make sure they get as much money as possible now the owner’s gone.”

“What about the boy?”

“He wanted to protect his master’s stuff, daft little sod.”

Two members of the watch had the boy gripped hard between them, stretching him over a barrel. Another stood with his club in his hands, watching the crowd with a sneer, while Long Jack untied his heavy leather belt. He raised it and brought it down on Hankin’s back.

Ruby could see the agony in the lad’s strained muscles as the leather cracked on his frail body. But no one stirred in the crowd as Long Jack raised his arm again, preparing to strike. There was merely a hushed expectancy, and then a kind of mass sigh as the belt came down on the child’s thin form.

Ruby knew the watchmen. They had extorted money from him for the past three years at fair-time. All the traders knew how they made money for themselves, but there was no one to complain to. The Abbot must know how they abused their position, but he took no action, and there was hardly any point in a portman trying to stop them if the Abbot would not support him.

The strap rose again, and Ruby saw the sweat break out on the boy’s face. He looked as if he was pleading with the crowd, begging one of them, any of them, to help him, but all those he stared at glanced away, with a kind of shame. Ruby felt his headache renewing its force, the pain increasing with each lash of Long Jack’s belt.

Then he could bear it no longer. The pain in his head, the agony on the boy’s face, the sense that the port was being overrun with injustice in the form of watchmen who used violence for no reason, that the town was degenerating into a cesspit of murder and felony… made his blood suddenly boil.

He growled – he actually growled! The sound made him feel a sudden animal delight in battle, and he leapt over the trestle. Grasping the belt from the watchman, he kicked the man’s legs away, and he fell. Ruby was already on the others. For a moment, they stared as he screamed abuse, as dumbfounded as a farmer who sees his mildest pig become a mad boar, but when he laid about him with the belt, they moved. The guard with the club caught the full weight of the buckle over his forehead, and collapsed like a pole-axed steer, but by then the other two were already out of range. They let the lad fall, weeping, and withdrew to a safe distance, one laying his hand on his knife.

Ruby dropped the belt and knelt by Hankin, murmuring to him softly, and the two men glanced at each other. They were about to rush at the butcher when a voice made them stop.

“Bugger this! Let’s get the bastards!”

The watchman drew his knife. “Who dares attack us? You?” he asked, pointing with his dagger at a grim-faced cobbler.

“Yes, me.” And before the other could respond, the cobbler had thrown himself forward. The watchman stepped back, but his sneer of contempt changed to a look of concern as he realized that the cobbler was not alone. The crowd, which had averted its eyes as the boy was thrashed, had seen the hated watchmen forced to retreat by the brave actions of one man. Now, even as the cobbler jumped into the fray, his neighbors followed, and instead of one headstrong opponent, the watchman found himself faced with thirty moving forward inexorably. He waved his dagger uncertainly to hold them at bay while he fell back, his friend at his side.

But before they could move far, the cobbler had gripped the man’s arm, immobilizing his knife-hand, and the mob moved in, grabbing both men and dragging them to the awning poles. The two were lashed to it, and Long Jack and the guard were hauled and bound to another. Then, while all four howled with impotent fury, they were thrashed with belts, and when the traders got tired of that, they fetched rotten fruit and pelted the bullies with it.

Ruby was oblivious to all this. Cradling Hankin’s frail body, he carried him past the screaming watchmen and was about to return to his own stall when he was stayed by a hand on his arm.

“Is the child all right?”

“Yes, brother.” Ruby had not spoken to Hugo before, but recognized the friar. “Beaten, but not too badly.”

“Why did they do it?” Hugo asked, shaking his head.

“They knew his master was locked up.”

“Who? The man who owns this stall?”

“Yes, friar. Hadn’t you heard? It was Jordan Lybbe, the outlaw. He’s been arrested – everyone thinks he must have murdered poor Torre.”

“Jordan Lybbe an outlaw?” Hugo repeated with horror. “But he can’t be!”

Simon studied the club speculatively. A man dressed as a monk had robbed men in the town and attacked Ruby. It was possible that Peter had been the thief. If so, maybe it was for the best that he had taken this way out of a disgraced life.

Catching sight of the Abbot’s face, Simon was sure that he had already reached a similar conclusion without seeing the club. His face was pained, but set into a firm blankness, and the bailiff wondered what he had heard in confession when Peter had demanded his talk the previous evening. Baldwin had been interested in the lad even then, Simon knew, and the bailiff wondered at the acute suspicion his friend had shown.

Simon didn’t want to add to the Abbot’s sorrow, but he was the warden’s own bailiff. He could not allow this evidence to be hidden. “Sir?”

Abbot Champeaux turned to him enquiringly, and when he saw the club his eyes widened, and he cast an involuntary glance at the body which told Simon he had guessed the same.

“What is it?” Baldwin asked, grunting as he got to his feet. “Ah – a cudgel, and a solid one at that. Where was it?”

As Simon explained, the knight listened carefully. “It was there?”

The bailiff nodded. “He must have been sickened by what he had done, and tossed it away from him. Or maybe he dropped it there as he came into this alley, filled with his determination to end himself.”

“Perhaps,” Baldwin said, but without conviction. “Why here?” he wondered, squatting by the wall. “Let’s suppose it was his.” He walked to the entrance to the alley, swinging the club, and let it fall. It struck the damp soil of the alley and fell over. “It couldn’t have fallen from his hand, then.”