The Medieval Murderers - Sword of Shame

It was some years since Denis had first come here, back in the days when Sir Humphrey was still the master of the castle, and his older son was yet a squire. He and Roger had got on better in those far-off days before that cursed sword arrived and reminded Sir William of the actions of his appalling ancestor. What on earth had persuaded Sir Humphrey to name William after the Sir William de Tracy who had committed the murder? It was enough to turn any poor devil’s head.

In William’s case it had made him appreciate the true depths of his family’s disgrace. Recently even catching sight of the sword would make Sir William shudder. Denis had seen him. It was as though there was a malevolent spirit about the thing that would tear at William’s soul whenever he came near.

Not only his soul, from the way Madam Alice was crying.

Again his hand went to the door, and he hesitated for a moment, but then he raised the latch.

‘My lady, I’m sorry, I thought that the hall was empty.’

Alice had jerked away from the table where she had been sitting with her head bent. Now she swept away the tears with a hurried rub of her hand, her back to him. She sniffed and took a deep breath, then turned to face him with a brittle smile on her face. ‘Ah, Denis. Did you want me or my husband?’

‘Neither, lady. I sought my penner-I put it down somewhere about here, I think. Have you seen it?’

She shook her head shortly. ‘Not here, no.’

He grunted. ‘Ah, there it is on the table. And how are you this fine morning?’

She smiled, but her face was blotched, her eyes damp. ‘I am well, I thank you. The weather makes all seem good, doesn’t it?’

He nodded, and pointedly looked away so that his attention would not cause her shame or embarrassment. ‘Sir William is still upset? He has not spoken to me today.’

‘Upset? No, not today. He is gleeful!’ She looked at him wildly. ‘Now the sword is gone, he says he will go to the convent-and that I must to a nunnery as a dutiful wife! My God! What about me? He never thinks to ask me what I want!’

The next day Baldwin and Simon ambled their way along the lanes towards the hundred of North Tawton accompanied by Roger de Tracy.

‘Come, then, Baldwin. What made you decide to come all this way?’ Simon whispered.

‘It was an intriguing conundrum: I can see no earthly reason why they should demand my assistance now,’ Baldwin confessed. He wore a puzzled expression at the memory of the conversation with the brother of Sir William de Tracy. ‘If they were keen to find some felon who had stolen their property, I should have expected them to come to me as soon as they knew the thing was taken. But they waited a week. And now, when the coroner’s already been there and buried the body, they come and ask for help. What help can I be? If the sword could be found, surely the coroner himself would have found it. Yet now, when all is done, they ask me to go along and seek their sword for them. It makes little sense.’

‘Some swords can be valuable,’ Simon said.

‘I am a knight,’ his friend snorted. ‘I know the value of good metalwork. But why did they wait so long?’

‘Perhaps as he said, they just didn’t notice it was missing?’

‘Aye. That’s a possibility. And then they called me because they could think of nothing else.’

‘They must have heard marvellous reports of your abilities,’ Simon said lightly.

‘Perhaps. And asking me to waste my time is acceptable to a poorly rural knight like this Sir William.’

‘Ah, I shouldn’t be too hard. Not all rural knights are thick as a peasant with cow muck between his ears,’ Simon said happily, and ducked quickly under the gloved fist that flew at his jaw.

‘Next time you won’t duck quickly enough,’ Baldwin growled, ‘to be missed by this example of a rural knight.’

‘I shiver in my boots.’

Baldwin chuckled, then called ahead to their guide. ‘Master de Tracy, what led you to come to me?’

Roger had clearly anticipated that question. ‘It is an important sword. Our man of law was most keen to have no stone left unturned in seeking it. He demanded that I come to you to find it. Denis has heard great things of your skills at uncovering the truth. Of course we had thought to enlist the help of Sir Richard de Welles, but you know some coroners can be so preoccupied with money that their thoughts can become blurred. We thought that the coroner from Lifton would be more free of such motives, but it became clear that he had his own interests in pursuing our sword.’

‘What would they be?’

‘It is ancient. Many men would covet a weapon with such a history.’

Baldwin muttered something under his breath.

‘Sir?’ Roger asked, blankly.

‘My companion was marking what you said,’ Simon said with a grin. Better that Roger didn’t hear Baldwin’s sour ‘Fools, the lot of them.’

Roger nodded uncertainly, unsure how to take these two men. The last thing he wanted was to have the sword found again in a hurry, but he wasn’t sure that Denis’s faith in this Keeper was well-founded.

Baldwin looked bright enough, but more likely was used to brute force rather than intellect. He was a rangy fellow who looked as though he’d been in plenty of battles. His frame was as broad as any fighter’s, and there was a scar that reached down his cheek almost from his eyebrow to his chin that hinted at a dangerous past; but this friend of his, the bailiff, seemed altogether too light-hearted, as though he could not treat any matter with any seriousness. ‘It’s a very important affair to us,’ he said, looking at the bailiff.

‘I’m sure it is,’ Simon said affably. ‘So! This man who was killed: Walter Coule. He was reeve to Sir John de Curterne, you said?’

‘Yes. Sir John is our neighbour. We used to be friends with him when we were all younger. In those days, he was the third son, but the family suffered a number of set-backs. The eldest fell from his horse and drowned in the river, the second was crushed by an ox in their stable, and Sir John took the manor in his turn.’

Baldwin nodded and crossed himself. For a parent to lose a child was appalling, and he feared always that his own precious Richalda might fall prey to an accident. No one could prevent deaths, but it did not make the loss any easier for the parents. Sir John’s family had been unfortunate, but crushings by large beasts were common, as were drownings, whether in rivers or wells.

‘And Coule’s body was found on whose land?’ Simon asked.

‘On ours. But that means nothing. He could have been dragged there.’

Baldwin grunted at that. It was all too natural that a body might be moved. A murderer would remove a body so that any evidence which may exist would be divorced from the corpse. Then again, the vill in which a murder took place would be fined: often innocent villagers would move a body so that they would not be punished for the breaking of the King’s Peace. If evidence about a murder was lost because the actual location of the murder was never found, it made the investigation that much more difficult.

‘You said this Coule was unpopular?’ Baldwin demanded after a moment’s reflection.

‘Many had reason to dislike him. He was grasping; he took as much as he could from the peasants on the estate, and they detested him. It made for a lot of trouble. If he exacted more than he should, the peasants complained bitterly, and only last year they took up sticks and attacked the poor devils sent to collect the grains and dues he had demanded from them. Sir John had to arm his men and suppress his own peasants!’

Baldwin studied his laughing face with an expression that could have been carved from moorstone. ‘Open revolt?’