Michael JECKS - The Last Templar

Black was sitting in front of the fire and watching Margaret stirring at a pot as Simon entered. The bailiff walked quickly to his wife and kissed her perfunctorily before eagerly turning to Black and nodding to him as he walked over and sat down on a bench close by. “Any news?” he asked, trying to control his excitement and keep the hope out of his voice.

“Not much, I’m feared,” Black said slowly, taking a long pull at the jug of ale Margaret had given him. “We’ve been all over from Crediton to Half Moon and nobody on the road remembers anyone on a war horse, or anyone in armour. There were several farm horses went by, but none with a man like a knight riding. We did that this morning, and then I sent some of the men down south to ask at some of the bartons down that way while I took the rest up around here. Same thing, so far, though I’ve yet to hear from a couple of the lads I sent down near the moors. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for any sign of a man going into the woods by the side of the roads, but there’s no signs at all, not as far as I can see. Trouble is, the roads’re so messed up since the rains, and we’ve had so many travellers using them, it’s next to impossible to see any tracks at all in the general traffic. They seem to’ve just disappeared. Have you heard any news from Tanner yet?”

“No. No, nothing. I… Thanks, my love.” Simon gratefully took a jug of beer from his wife and took a deep draught as she sat beside him to listen. “I hope we’ll hear something soon, but God only knows how long it’ll take to check all the roads to the west.”

“Aye. Trouble is, with the time and everything, they may’ve finished him off at night. They could’ve made off in the dark. Maybe no one did see them,” said the hunter gloomily.

Simon nodded slowly. “I know. And if we find no trace to follow, we might never find out what really happened and who did it.”

“What do we do if we hear nothing from Tanner’s search?”

“Keep searching. Tell people farther afield. There’s not much else we can do, is there? If we can’t find any trace of them, we’ll have to assume they’ve gone somewhere else and won’t attack anyone round here again.”

“Aye.” And with that monosyllabic response, Margaret felt that Black allowed himself to sink into a brooding melancholy. He seemed downcast by his inability to track the killers and by the thought that there was little more he could do unless Tanner brought fresh news from his search. She was repelled by this depression, it seemed ridiculous to her that he should be so despondent when there was still hope. Simon sat quietly, glaring at the mug in his hand.

After waiting in silence for some minutes she had to try to lessen the strain of the silence. She broke into their meditation with a voice that sounded a little high and unnatural even to her own ears. “Did the monks help?”

Simon nodded slowly and pensively, and Black said, “I heard you’d been over to Clanton Barton again to speak to them. What did they have to say?”

“Not much, really,” said Simon with a small frown as he thought again about his conversation with the monk. He quickly told them what he had learned. “At least we know the abbot’s name now. He was called Oliver de Penne.”

“Oliver de Penne? Never heard of him,” said Black, ruminatively shaking his head.

“No, neither have I. I’m sure he was not from around here, I think he must have been as French as his name suggests.”

Black puckered his brow restlessly. “It just seems odd that he should have been killed like that.”

Simon’s face registered scowling concentration, and then his wife saw his brow clear as he stared past Black’s shoulder to the wall behind, musing. Glancing back at John Black again, she saw that the hunter’s face showed a mounting exasperation and dejection, as if he was already almost thinking that they had lost, that they would never find the killers, and when she looked back to her husband she could not help a brief flare of pride at the contrast.

Margaret had married Simon not because she had realised that he would become a powerful man in the shire, but because she could see in him the same incisiveness that her father had possessed. As a farmer’s daughter, she had been raised as a pragmatist. Whether the decision to be made was to cut the crops now or tomorrow, or to build a new byre or not, her father had instilled in all his children the same common-sense principle: always decide what was needed first. He used to say that it was useless to try to do something if you weren’t even sure what it was. Only when the objective was chosen and clear could it be tackled.

It seemed to her now that they were trying to make cob without straw. They had no information, so how could they expect to be able to decide anything? And yet Black had almost given up already; he seemed to have decided that they were defeated. How could he feel like that when they had not even explored some of the possibilities? She rose and returned to her stirring.

“So how much do we really know about this abbot, then Simon!” she asked thoughtfully, her back to the men.

“His name, Oliver de Penne; his position as abbot at Buckland; and the fact that his horse was a grey mare. We know he had money with him.”

“And?”

“He had spent time in France – with the pope at Avignon. It appears that he was popular with the last pope, but, if Matthew’s right, not with this one. He seems to have been an arrogant man, and prone to fighting, from what David and Matthew both said. Beyond that, not very much.”

“And he was scared of being waylaid, from what you saw?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Hmm.” She carried on stirring thoughtfully. Turning she saw her husband’s gaze resting on her and she smiled before continuing, “He was taken into the woods where no one would hear, and burned at the stake?”

“Yes.”

The hunter winced, his eyes screwed into thin slits with his distaste at his thought, as if expecting to be told his idea was nonsensical. “Bailiff, I can’t help thinking… well, look, we can’t imagine that it was any normal robber did this to the abbot – it wouldn’t make sense, would it? No, so we’re left with this strange killing, maybe there’s some kind of meaning behind it? Now, it strikes me that it’s the way they kill heretics in France.”

“Yes. Thank God we haven’t sunk so low in England. The king won’t allow the Inquisition into the country.”

“No, but do you think this could be something like that? He was French, from his name.”

“It’s possible, I suppose.” Simon stared bleakly into his drink.

“After all, it’s almost like someone’s trying to make a show out of the death, if you see what I mean.”

The bailiff stared at him. “You’re saying he could have been killed to make some sort of a point?”

Shrugging, the hunter said, “Well, I can’t see any other reason to kill him like that. Can you?”

“No. No, I can’t,” said Simon, frowning thoughtfully at his wife’s back. He shook his head. This was getting him nowhere – he knew nothing about these things. Could Baldwin help? He was only recently back from France.

Then, startled, his eyes focused sharply and he drew a quick breath as his mind considered a new possibility – could Baldwin have been involved somehow? He was recently back from France, he had Edgar as a perpetual shadow, he was a knight – could he have had something to do with the abbot’s death? Had Baldwin and the abbot known each other before?

It was with a small sigh of relief that he remembered the day he had first seen the monks and then mentioned them to the knight at Furnshill. No, of course it could not have been Baldwin, if so he would surely have expressed some interest in the travellers when Simon spoke of them. As the bailiff recalled, the knight had not shown even a passing curiosity, he had dismissed them and gone straight on to talk about his new estates.