Michael JECKS - The Last Templar

“Black, stop!” shouted Simon, staring at them with a small frown. If this was the band, he thought, they would hardly ride so obviously along the king’s road. Surely they would have hidden here and ambushed us while we followed them, not come down the road as if they were out for a morning’s gallop?

The posse came out of the woods and grouped on the road to wait for the men to get closer, the horses seeming to feel their riders’ tenseness, stamping and blowing as they stood.

At last, when the group came closer, Simon felt his heart lift and he spurred his horse with a shout of joy. It was Tanner and his men.

Later, as the darkness crept slowly over them and even Black admitted that they could not continue, they all stopped in the shelter of a great pile of granite and made camp.

They had followed the tracks on an almost direct line south, bypassing several small hamlets as they went, and crossing a number of small streams that, each time they saw them, made them fear that the trail bastons would try to throw them off their track, but each time they found that the trail continued, as if the men they followed were convinced of their invulnerability and safety from attack. It was almost as if they were tempting the posse to chase them, and every now and then Simon felt concerned that this was exactly what they did want. Were they just leading the posse on into the moors so that they could turn and fight on their own terms? Were they leading them to an ambush? Somehow it did not seem likely, it seemed more probable that they were so sure of themselves that they had no fear of any group that might chase them.

At last, when the horses had been seen to and the other members of the posse were sitting resting sore legs and bodies in front of their fires and chatting desultorily, their voices making a soothing accompaniment to the spitting and crackling of the burning logs, Black and Tanner joined Hugh and Simon as they crouched in front of their own fire.

Simon lay on one elbow, the better to rest his thighs and backside as the others came up and sat opposite. “So, then, constable. What have you been doing since we split up?”

Tanner’s square face was serious and pensive as he recalled his journeys of the previous days. “We started off on the road to Barnstaple, and we stopped anyone we met to ask them about the killer of the abbot, but we had no luck. The trouble is, there’re so many roads leading off that one. Whenever we came up to one, we stopped and checked down it a little, but after a half mile, if we couldn’t see any sign, we went back and continued on our way. We checked the sides of the roads, but I’m fairly certain no one went off the roads that way. If we were behind them, they must have kept to the roads themselves.

“At the end of the first day we’d got as far as Lapford. We camped outside the village and carried on next day. We checked all the way up as far as Elstone, but we’d seen nothing by the time we got there, so we started back. Some of the men were tired out after all the riding, so I sent them back the way we’d gone, but I thought the trail bastons might’ve gone across country and we’d missed their tracks, so I took the others with me by some of the smaller lanes, heading south. I was going to go to the Oakhampton road and then back up to Crediton. Well, at the end of the second day we heard about the trail bastons over to the west of Oakhampton, so I thought: might be the same ones that killed the abbot. It seemed from their tracks that they were heading east, towards Crediton, so I sent one of the men back to tell you and came south quickly.

“We’ve been there since, searching, but some people we saw said they were heading east. Last night we heard there’d been an attack this way, so we came over to see whether we could help.”

Simon stirred. “It was lucky you told your man to look for me. I wasn’t at home, and he got one of the monks to come and find me.”

“Really?” said Tanner, looking surprised. “I didn’t tell him it was that urgent, it was just to let you know where we were.”

Obviously impatient with the long story, John Black interrupted and quickly ran through the journey up from Crediton and the scene they had seen that morning. “It was awful, Stephen. There was bodies all over the place, and they’d even burned two of them in their wagons.”

“Why, though?” said Simon pensively, making the other; look at him in surprise. “Why burn the bodies?”

Tanner shrugged. “Often happens, bailiff. They burn to torture, to find out whether there’s more money or not, they burn to get rid of evidence. And they burn for fun – they sometimes enjoy it.”

“It seems to fit in with the killing of the abbot, anyway,” said Black. “And Brewer.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Simon, morosely hugging his knees as he sat and stared at the flames. The others looked over at him, surprised at his curt denial of their assumption.

Black recovered first. “What do you mean? Of course it does, senseless killing and robbery, and done by men that enjoy burning their hostages. It’s exactly the same.”

“No, it’s not! One man murdered in his house, another taken hostage and burned to death, then travellers attacked on the road? There’s nothing similar between them!”

“I agree. Brewer was killed by someone else, even if the abbot was killed by these outlaws.” It was Hugh, sitting with his cloak around his shoulders and gazing at the ground in front of him.

“What do you mean, Hugh,” said Simon quietly, making his servant look up. He had a suspicious frown on his face, as if he doubted that his opinion was being honestly sought, and his eyes flitted over Simon’s face as if looking for confirmation that his thoughts were really wanted. At last, seeming happy with Simon’s expression of concentration, he continued, talking directly to him and ignoring the others.

“Well, the farmer was dead already, before the fire, you reckoned. The abbot and the travellers, they weren’t. They were all killed like they were being tortured. These outlaws kill, but they do it once they have taken everything they can, don’t they?”

“But the abbot was still worth money, he was worth a ransom,” said Simon musingly. “Why kill him? Why burn him? What were they doing, torturing him to find out which saddlebag his money was in? And surely the outlaws would have killed all the monks together, not just taken the abbot. Like you say, Brewer was killed before the fire started, if he was killed at all. That’s why all of the killings seem different to me.”

“No, with Brewer they just wanted his money. When they got it, they left. The abbot was taken as a hostage because they wanted what he had in his saddle, but then maybe they were scared off, maybe someone came along when they had burned the abbot and they had to leave in a hurry,” said Tanner dismissively.

Simon looked back at Hugh. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think that a small party of these outlaws saw the abbot and took his money. Taking a monk? It must have seemed like an easy target! What doesn’t make sense to me is Brewer being killed by the same band. But maybe they found his money, then killed him, and fired the house to hide what they’d done.”

“It’s possible,” agreed Simon grudgingly. “Although they have not been too careful about hiding their traces since then. But the abbot – why kill him like that?”

“Like I said, they were seen by someone and had to get away,” said Tanner.

“Had to get away?” said Hugh, his eyebrows rising in disbelief as he turned to the constable. “If it was two men, surely they’d have taken the abbot with them, not just killed him. They can’t have been rushed if they had time to burn him to death. And if someone did see them, whoever it was would’ve raised the hue and cry, wouldn’t they? I mean, if I saw a body burning in the middle of the woods, I’d”ve run home quick and got help.“