House of Shadows (19 page)

Constable Hob looked at the monk with a speculative air, and Lawrence submitted to the question. He beckoned the man to walk with him, and they meandered over the damp marshlands away from the body and eavesdroppers.

‘You know something of this?' the constable asked.

‘I do not know…How did she die?'

‘She was stabbed.'

‘And then thrown in the water?'

Hob shot a look over his shoulder to see that no one could hear. ‘No. That's what we always say because sometimes the coroner will give us a lower penalty if it's clear that the body's nothing to do with anyone in the vill. This girl was stabbed right here, from the look of her. There's a dagger in her hand, so perhaps she killed herself?'

Lawrence looked back. ‘She had everything to live for. I cannot believe that.'

‘You knew her?'

Lawrence looked at him steadily. He knew Hob well. Quietly, he said, ‘I saw her married. I was witness to it. It was a match of love. Which is why it was not declared: they did not wish for her father to grow angry and harm them.'

‘It was a concealed marriage?'

‘They gave their vows in front of me and two witnesses. It was a legal match.'

Hob puffed out his cheeks. ‘This will be a…'

But before he could say more, there was a harsh bellow from a man nearer the river.

‘There's another body here!'

Morrow of the Feast of St George the Martyr
⁴
,
Bishop Stapledon's Hall, Temple

There was a roiling in Sir Baldwin's belly when he first saw the bishop's London home – not because of the house itself but because just south and east of it, like a giant peering over a smaller man's shoulder, he could see his order's chief preceptory in England. It made him want to bow and pray for his comrades who had
once inhabited the place. As it was, he was glad of the thin rain that fell so steadily. It persuaded him to keep his head down, so he caught only fleeting glimpses.

‘That's a huge place,' Simon said, seeing where his eyes were gazing.

‘A good size,' Baldwin agreed, but then realized his friend was looking at Bishop Stapledon's home.

Marching up to the gatehouse, Simon told the porter who they were and asked for the bishop. Seeing how Baldwin's eyes remained fixed on the building between them and the river, the man said: ‘It's the old Templar estate.' He spat into the street. ‘God damn the evil bastards.'

Simon knew Baldwin's background and hurriedly led him away. The knight's jaw was working, and he had a sour look on his face, like a man who had bitten into a sloe.

‘He knows nothing,' Simon said.

‘No.'

It was a flat statement, but it was clear that Sir Baldwin found no comfort in the knowledge. The sight of the preceptory was enough to bring back to his mind all the injustice of his friends' deaths. Baldwin was aware that many people here and abroad knew that the Templars were innocent of the obscene crimes of which they had been accused, but that scarcely helped in the face of such blind contempt. It made him aware of a quick loathing for the man. He could have swept out his sword and taken the fool's head off without a second thought.

‘Come, Baldwin.'

‘Yes. I am all right. He is just a cretin. He has no understanding of the truth.'

‘No,' Simon agreed soothingly. He could never confess it to Baldwin, but he found it hard to believe Baldwin's often-repeated assertions of his order's inno
cence. There was no smoke without a spark, was his view.

The bishop's main hall was an imposing chamber. On all the walls were pictures of saints, while in one corner stood a small row of bookshelves. Richly decorated books stood there, while on the opposite wall were more shelves, this time displaying a series of the bishop's best plate. Pewter and silver shone in the light from the enormous window in the south wall, and tiny motes danced as the two entered, ushered in by an obsequious clerk.

Bishop Stapledon, Walter II of Exeter, was sitting on a leather-covered stool at the far end of the room where the light was best. He was reading a parchment, spectacles held near his nose as he peered down, and when he looked up there was a peevish look about him, as though he had been reading disagreeable news.

Even as he stood and smiled in welcome, Baldwin found himself trying to remember when the bishop had last seemed truly happy. It was a long time ago – perhaps before he had been given the post of Lord High Treasurer to the king. So much had happened since, with the depredations of the appalling Despensers.

No man was safe from the intolerable greed of Sir Hugh Le Despenser. Once, it was said, he had confessed that he cared for nothing so long as he became rich. That he had achieved. Since he had launched his acquisitive campaign, he had become the richest man in the kingdom, save only for the king himself. In this cruel environment even the widows of men killed in the king's service were deprived of lands and money. One woman, Madam Baret, had been tortured with such irrational ferocity that she had been driven mad, all in order that Despenser could steal her property. Stapledon had once been a moderating influence, but now he could
surely
see that he had achieved little.

‘Sir Baldwin, I am glad to see you again. And you, bailiff. I hope your journey was not too arduous?'

‘It was almost relaxing,' Baldwin said shortly. He did not want to be here. If he were to look over his shoulder through the great window, he knew he would see the preceptory again. It was a constant reminder of hideous injustice. He could almost hear again the burning pyres as the Templars were roasted to death.

‘I wish my own had been,' the bishop said heavily.

‘Your journey?' Simon enquired.

‘The news at every stage,' Stapledon said. He shook his head, glancing down at the papers again, then set them on the table. ‘We are still so near to war with France…the queen has gone to Paris to deal with her brother, but no one can say how successful she may be.'

‘Which is why you asked me to come here to London as a member of the Parliament,' Baldwin stated.

‘Yes.' The bishop grunted to himself, then looked up through the window. ‘You know what has happened to that site?'

Simon quickly interrupted. ‘That was the Templars', wasn't it? The porter told us just now.'

‘Yes, it was. And it was to have been handed to the Hospitallers,' the bishop agreed. He dropped his gaze to his lap and fiddled with a loose strand of wool. ‘But now the king has given it all over to Hugh Le Despenser. He will enjoy it, I am sure.'

Baldwin did not need to listen carefully to hear the bitterness in the bishop's voice. He would have liked to have believed that its cause was the blatant nature of the theft of a religious order's property and not merely jealousy that it had not come to him. ‘Despenser is most fortunate,' he observed.

Stapledon shot him a look. ‘Perhaps. But now he has asked me to help
him
. Yesterday the daughter of one
of his servants was found dead. Out on the marshes between the Rosary and Bermondsey Priory.'

‘The coroner has been informed?'

‘A coroner will be there today, I believe.'

‘Then surely there is little I can do to help.'

‘You are here as a Member of Parliament, Sir Baldwin, but I would be grateful if you could help enquire into the matter. My Lord Despenser has requested an enquiry, and as an unbiased witness I would ask you to go and see what you may learn.'

 

Henry Capun hurled his drinking horn across the room. It struck the wall and shattered, throwing shards of green pottery in every direction. Two servants ducked, expecting his intolerable burden of rage to be expended on them, but as soon as it erupted it was gone, and all he knew was the return of that terrible emptiness.

She had been his little princess. He could still recall her birth. At the time he'd wanted a lad, of course. What man didn't? He was a knight banneret, a man of standing, and a boy child was worth more in his world. A boy could be trained to be a warrior; he could earn a father some rewards for being brought up in a good warrior's household. He might win new allies, hopefully gain a wealthy wife, and should always be a delight to his old father. A daughter? Nothing but a damned drain on a man's resources.

He had gone to see her soon after the midwives allowed him into his wife's chamber. God, he could remember that time. He had been slightly drunk. Well, fairly gone, truth be known. He'd not meant to do it, but when he got in there he'd looked at her, and when he heard he had a daughter he'd shouted with anger. His moods were always quick when he was that bit younger.

‘My lord, be silent!' the midwife snapped, drawing his daughter away as though fearing that he might kill her.

‘Don't command me, bitch! I wanted a boy, and she's given me
that
!'

‘Your child was in God's hands.'

‘In His hands, eh?'

‘Yes, and He sent you this babe in His mercy, perhaps to show you the error of your ways and give you a happier life.'

‘Leave your moralizing, gossip. I have no need of it,' he spat, and lurched from the room. But not before he'd seen his wife's face. She'd been very upset. Indeed, later that night, as he sat in his hall drinking morosely, he'd heard her weeping. That noise stabbed at him – in truth, he had always loved her, ever since he first clapped eyes on her in the company of his best friend.

To his chagrin, he had soon taken a liking to the child. She had a smile that struck at his heart. When she looked at him and gurgled, it made his mood lift. Later, when she was learning to talk, her attempts made him chuckle with delight. Her little mistakes were to him the very essence of joy.

Yet she was also a reminder to him of his callousness towards her mother. If he had not been so harsh on that first night, perhaps his wife would not have insisted on trying to conceive again so soon after Juliet's birth, and that might have meant that she wouldn't have…well, there was no point raking over dead soil. She had died in the next childbirth. Her womb wasn't strong enough so soon after Juliet, the midwife had said, the poisonous old…She'd seemed to have a reproving tone in her voice, as though accusing him.
Him!
The one man in the world who'd never have hurt his wife intentionally.

But Juliet grew too quickly. He blinked – and she had become a woman. A woman with the desires of all
women. And she committed the one crime she could neither help nor regret – any more than he could forgive.

She had fallen in love.

‘Oh, Christ Jesus!' he blurted, and covered his face with his hands.

 

Simon had been on many investigations with his friend. The two had proved themselves adept at seeking felons back in their own lands.

Here, though, he felt completely out of his place.

They left the bishop's hall and made their way along the paths that followed the line of the Fleet River, down to the Thames itself, and there Baldwin gazed up-and down-river before setting two fingers into his mouth and emitting an ear-piercing blast.

‘In God's name!' Simon protested, clapping a hand over his ear.

‘Ach, you have to get these men's attention somehow. Lazy devils, all of them,' Baldwin muttered almost to himself. But as he spoke he was waving, and soon Simon saw a man in a rowing boat leave a little group of boats a few tens of yards down the river and make his way against the current towards them.

‘Over the river, masters?'

‘We need to get to Bermondsey in Surrey,' Baldwin stated, grasping the prow.

‘That far? You realize how long it'll take me to work my way back upstream from there?'

Baldwin gave him a beatific smile. ‘No. Why don't you tell us as you row?'

 

The news of Juliet's death had struck the whole house dumb. Servants went about their business but with a quiet, nervous urgency, scarcely daring to speak to each other, the master's distress was so evident.

In the main chamber, where her mistress used to sit, her maid Avice sat staring at the needlework Juliet had been working on.

‘Avice? God's blood, wench, stop that whining.'

She looked up to see Juliet's brother, Timothy, in the doorway. ‘Master, don't you know?'

‘That she's dead? Yes. You expect me to play the hypocrite? No. She was an embarrassment to us all. And a cause of shame. Better that she is dead than carries on to do any more damage to us.'

‘Oh, master! But she was so…'

‘They found her with that man. She betrayed us.
Us!
Her own flesh and blood. She is better gone. Now, dry your eyes. I won't have all the maids in the house looking like mourners at a wake. Fetch me wine. I'll be in the hall.'

 

Simon hated boats. He always had. The damned rocking motion made his belly rebel at the best of times, whether it was calm or rough sea weather, but at least here the movements were moderately gentle. As though in sympathy, the drizzle had also stopped. In fact, he could almost have described the journey as soothing were it not for the continual swearing of the oarsman, who kept up a running commentary all the way over the river.

He appeared to have it in his mind to explain every little detail of the view to these obvious foreigners.

‘That there, right? That's St Benet Paul's wharf. Just here, that's St Paul's wharf. Serves the great cathedral there. See the spire? Fuckin' huge, eh? Then that river there, that's called the Walbrook Stream, that is. And that there's the great bridge. Never seen one like it, I dare say. Shit, look at the size of the fucker! Huge, eh? Like a…oh, right, and this here, just beyond that open land. That's the Tower.'

It was here that his voice grew quieter, as though the
mere mention of the name of the Tower was to bring misfortune.