The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

‘Yes.’

It was a short ride.

Baldwin’s road followed the River Creedy, curling around eastwards for some way, before leaving the manor’s park and rising up again. The church was prominent before him, with a scattering of little cottages about it, some with smoke rising from holes in the thatch to give a welcoming appearance in this thin rain. It pattered on his cloak as he rode, and he pulled his hood over his head, musing on the dean’s words as he left the church.

‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ Baldwin had said, tugging on gloves while waiting for his horse.

‘You are always welcome here.’

‘One thing, though. You have heard of the matter of Henry of Copplestone’s troubles. Why do you not compensate him for his losses?’

Peter had been still a moment, and he would not meet Baldwin’s eye. ‘What did you think of young Arthur?’

Baldwin was baffled, but if his friend chose to change the subject he would not embarrass him by harping on. ‘He seemed a pleasant enough fellow. Quite efficient and organized.’

‘One must always be aware of younger canons,’ Dean Peter said. ‘They can be more prone to temptations than older men. And he is very aware of his name.’

It had been a curious comment to make, but Baldwin’s horse was being brought to him even as Peter spoke, and in a few minutes Baldwin had mounted and was trotting from the church’s precinct.

The journey was mercifully short. Sandford was fortunate in its location. The lands to the south and west were fertile, with the good, red soil of the area, not that much could be seen now. Everywhere was smothered with plants. Beyond there were orchards, with apples, pears, some cherry trees and others. Here at the side of the road was the vill’s coppice, and men were in there in the rain, hacking away, and only stopping when they saw him. Some stood still and eyed him suspiciously, dark eyes peering from beneath brims.

The road rose up the next hill, but before the crest was a track that passed off to the left. This was a narrower way that suddenly widened into a broad triangular market space. Uncobbled, it was muddy where the grass had been trampled. A road led up to his right from here, up the hill to the church, while another wound off to the left. That, he knew, led to West Sandford and beyond. Simon’s old farm was itself off in that direction. But directly ahead of him was the tavern.

It was not a large building. Little more than a cottage built of cob and thatch on top of a raised mound that sloped steeply down to the muddy roadway. Once it might have been a longhouse, a Devon farmhouse with one area for family living and a second for animals. No longer, though. From the piles of broken timbers and the heap of small stones, it looked as though there had been a structural failure, and the end wall replaced with fresh stones and cob to seal it.

Even had he not known where the murder had been committed the day before, Baldwin would have been able to guess. All about the door to the tavern were the vill’s men and women. Baldwin rode to the edge of the road where a small oak stood, and tethered his mount to a low branch before making his way to the men.

The reeve here was a quiet, usually cheery fellow of middle height, with an open, red face like a ripe apple. Unusually for this area, he had blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, which he kept wedged under a woollen cap, but now he removed it as Baldwin approached, holding it in his two hands. ‘Sir Baldwin, I hope I find you well?’

‘I hope I see you well also, good Ulric.’

‘I am well enough, Sir Knight.’

‘And your wife?’

‘She thrives, Sir Baldwin. And yours?’

Baldwin continued with the lengthy introductions, although he was keen to see the body. There was much for him to be working on when he returned home, and the unpleasant dampness dribbling down his back was a reminder that it would be good to get indoors and out of this downpour, thin though it may be. And yet he would need this man’s help. Ulric was the reeve for a wide area about here, responsible for the vill here at Sandford, and the hamlets at West Sandford, and some five miles all about. Ulric knew all the men personally within that area, and he would be essential as a helper. But Baldwin knew that Ulric had one failing: the man was a menace for the correct behaviour. He would panic if there was the faintest hint of impropriety. For him, to hurry through the greetings would be an insult to him and to the visitor.

At last, when Baldwin felt the man should be content with the health of his wife, his children, his hounds, hawks and stables, he felt ready to ask where the body lay.

‘He’s not been moved, Sir Baldwin. Just in here, if you please.’

He led the way into the tavern. It was a small room, only shoulder height at the walls, but rising up into the thatch overhead. At the middle was a series of planks laid over the beams that held the roof trusses together, which Baldwin knew would be the tavern-keeper’s bed. It was a scant foot over his head, and Baldwin only hoped it was safe. It didn’t look it.

Ulric continued through the building to where a second low door stood ajar.

Inside was a small storeroom and brewhouse. The further wall held a waist-high furnace, with a copper fitting tightly into the stonework over it. A series of barrels lay off to the left, while sacks of grain hung from rafters nearby, off the ground to prevent them growing damp or getting attacked by rodents. The room held the warm, sweet odour of malt, mingled with the more obvious scents of death. And the smell Baldwin recalled so well – burned human flesh.

Baldwin had seen deaths of all kinds in his life. He had witnessed the easy deaths of older men and women, he had witnessed executions, he had seen the slow, agonizing death throes of those dying of starvation, and brutal slaughter during ferocious battles before he began to investigate murders. But when he saw who had died here, he felt a pang of regret. It was rare that he would meet a murder victim only a short while before his death, and when Baldwin met this man, all he had done was insult him.

‘Where’s his friend?’ he said as he squatted near the body.

‘He had none here,’ Ulric said. ‘He came here alone, and died alone.’

‘No? I saw him in Crediton, and there he was travelling with a Welshman.’ Baldwin looked down again. ‘It was a hard death.’

Ulric shook his head sadly. ‘There are few easy ways to die, but whoever did this…’

The body was lying near a wall. Gagged with a cloth, his cheeks were distended, his eyes staring madly in a face that was grey and bloodless in the cold light. His left hand had scrabbled madly in the dirt of the floor, while his legs had been held still by a sack of grain dropped on to them. A trickle of malt had run out and now mingled with the blood that had puddled on the ground.

But the right arm was what took Baldwin’s attention.

‘Have you seen his hand?’ Ulric asked in a fearful undertone.

Baldwin glanced at him. Where the hand had been there was only a bloody stump. Nothing more. ‘Where is it?’

‘Sir Baldwin! Hah! In God’s name, I am glad to see you. How is your wife, eh? The daughter still growing strong and fit? I’ll be bound your little boy’s nothing less than a chip off the old block, eh? Let’s hope the little devil doesn’t have to rest his head on one himself before he’s twenty, though, eh? Ha! No need for the headsman’s axe there, eh?’

This was all delivered at a volume that would have drowned the hucksters at Exeter’s market. Baldwin could almost feel the words assaulting his ears as Coroner Sir Richard de Welles threw his reins to a boy, lifted his leg over his horse’s neck, kicked his other foot free of the stirrup and sprang to the ground as lightly as a man fifteen years younger.