The Malice of Unnatural Death: (22 page)

In his mind’s eye he was there again. He could see the streets, wet with the thin sleet falling, smell the woodsmoke from
a hundred fires, but the whole was tilting as he stared. The wine he’d been drinking was strong, and there had been plenty
of it, and now he felt sickly as he stumbled over the cobbles.

At his side, James, who seemed more competent on his legs. Watching all about them as though fearing an attack – although
perhaps it was only the natural caution of a man who feared that the watch might see them and try to arrest them for being
out after curfew.

‘He was carrying a message from the bishop. It was a reply to a message from the king, I think. He’d have left that night
if he’d had a chance, but the bishop was so slow in composing his note that he only received the message as dark was falling. Too late to do anything then. He had been
going to ride off at first light. And then, I think, I was hit on the head. I seem to remember it now, a blow, and then I
was falling.’

‘To get here from the Noblesyn you’d have gone along the High Street, and then carried on westwards,’ Walter pointed out.
‘You woke up nearer the South Gate, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Perhaps I’d got lost … or James led me the wrong way?’

‘Perhaps he did, at that. Where was he when you fell?’

‘At my side, I think.’

‘I think that explains a lot,’ Walter said. He picked up his wooden spoon and began stirring again. ‘He knocked you down when
you were near a place he knew would be safe for you.’

‘Him? Why’d he do a thing like that?’

‘Perhaps James didn’t trust you entirely, and sought to protect himself. Or …’ Walter paused, chewing at his inner lip.

‘What?’

‘I was just thinking – if he thought he was going into danger, and didn’t want to lead you there too, perhaps he sought to
protect you?’

‘If he thought it was dangerous, any man would have kept a friend at his side,’ Newt scoffed.

Walter shrugged pensively.

Newt shook his head gently, and offered to fetch a fresh loaf.

Outside the roads were icy, and he had to mind his step as his leather-soled boots slipped over the cobbles. The way to the
bakers’ shops was easy enough, and he was soon standing in a small stall off Bakers’ Row where the scent of
fresh loaves filled the air.

It was only as he walked back that he recalled something else. While they had been walking out from the inn, he had seen someone
at the mouth of an alley – a slim figure in dark clothes. The body itself was all but hidden, but he was sure that the figure
had a gaunt, sallow face.

And he was just as convinced now, as he recalled it, that James had seen him too.

Baldwin woke with a sense of gratification that he had managed to avoid any further contact with the good coroner.

When in trouble, Baldwin had always felt able to trust and rely on the coroner. He had been in some tight situations earlier
in the autumn with Simon and Richard de Welles, and de Welles had always been a reliable and honourable friend. However, although
his strength and ability in a fight was not in question, Baldwin was perfectly aware that the man was ruinously hazardous
when it came to drinking with him.

Almost any man alive could drink more than Baldwin. It stemmed from the time when he was a Knight Templar, many years ago. He had early decided that moderation would ensure that he was as effective as possible at performing God’s will and defending
pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Abstinence in the heat had left him more capable during weapons training than those
who had imbibed too strongly the night before.

In the event, of course, there had been no need to worry. He joined the Templars because they took him in, wounded, when he
was at Acre, trying to protect it from the massed hordes who sought to capture it. The siege of the city had marked him for
ever, and the fact that the Templars had saved him left him with a profound sense of debt. As soon
as he could, he had taken the threefold oaths, firm in the resolve that he would fight and lay down his life, if need be,
in the reconquest of the Holy Land to save it from the Saracens. It was an ambition that was to be cruelly crushed when the French king and the pope dishonourably perverted justice in order to persecute the Templars out of nothing more than their
own intolerable greed.

His order had been hunted and destroyed, so that their chests of treasure could be raided and plundered. Many of Baldwin’s
friends and companions had been tortured to death, some slaughtered, and all for declaring their innocence. There was no defence
against the accusation of heresy. They were not permitted to know the charges raised against them, nor who had levelled them. Instead they were invited to confess, and when they declared that they had no idea what crimes they could have been guilty
of, they were put to the torture.

That gross, obscene injustice had coloured the whole of the rest of his life. It left him with an enduring hatred – of politics,
of greed, of unfairness.

There were many who had turned to ritual magic after the destruction of Acre. The fall of the city was a cataclysmic event
for the whole of Christianity, for if God Himself had so turned His face from His own people, their sins must have been enormous. Some turned to flagellation, others to intense prayer, while a few sought solace in ancient learning. They tried to conjure
demons and bind them to themselves.

It was nothing new. It was rather like alchemy, and Baldwin had the same regard for both. He thought that they were nonsense.

From his early days in the Templars, he had studied when
he might, and he had read some of the philosophical tracts written by Thomas Aquinas. He recalled that Aquinas felt that any
attempt to conjure a demon, for whatever purpose, was in effect forming a pact with that demon. It was heretical, and an act
of apostasy.

For all that, though, men, and sometimes women, would try to make use of magic to achieve their ends. Since the apparent weakness
of Christianity was exposed by the fall of Acre, perhaps more fools had turned to these supposedly ‘older’ crafts. Baldwin
neither knew nor cared. All he was worried about just now was the one man.

It was always possible, after all, that the fellow was less of a fool than he appeared. If he was not actually a dolly-poll,
and instead was a shrewd man, he might have pulled the wool over Baldwin’s and Sir Richard’s eyes. It was not impossible. Baldwin was always unwilling to support authority against a churl because of his own experiences, but just because he had
once had a miserable experience did not mean that all in authority were inevitably corrupt. Some were no doubt as honourable
as he.

And even those, like the Sheriff of Devon, who were undoubtedly corrupt in certain spheres of their professional life, might
be perfectly justified in prosecuting a man like Langatre, who was a self-confessed dabbler in the occult.

‘Rubbish!’ he muttered to himself. There was never any good reason for persecution. Never.

Simon
woke with a pain in his hip where the unyielding soil had been an inadequate cover for a large stone. Busse was snoring gently
at his side, but when he peered out into the cold daylight he saw Rob shivering at the fire, Simon’s spare cloak pulled tight,
his arms wrapped about himself, a thin smoke rising from the twigs and tinder he had worked at.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Simon asked quietly as he crawled from their shelter. It looked quite solid still, he was pleased to
see. It gave him a feeling of quiet satisfaction to think that he had managed to construct that at short notice.

Rob nodded, but his face was pinched, and Simon could feel the chill air at his own back.

The landscape had altered over the night since Simon and the monk’s conversation. The snow had kept on falling, and now there
were a few inches covering everything. Usually Simon enjoyed the sight of snow. It was lovely to rise in the morning, look
out from the window and see all covered in the unmarked blanket of white. To see the trees bowing, to hear the branches cracking
with the weight, and then to see children skating on the ice of the ponds … it all made a man’s heart leap. Especially
when he could return to his own
house and stand in front of his own fire to warm himself. That certainly helped.

Not all would view it in the same light, of course. Some, he knew, hated the snow and feared its arrival. Mostly it was the
older folks. Each year the winter would carry away the older, the more infirm and feeble. It was natural, but sad. And when
the snow fell, there were other deaths too: men fell through the ice while playing on the ponds; children fell prey to the
cold; some folks would drink themselves stupid and then die on the way home from a tavern, only to be found the next morning
by a passer-by, lying at the roadside with their bodies frozen to the soil. Aye, there were plenty who had cause to dislike
and mistrust the weather, but for his part Simon loved it, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than the fresh, crisp air
and the crunch of compacted snow underfoot when he was well prepared for it.

And that was the trouble. Today he and his companions were not ready. ‘Rob, go and see how the horses have fared,’ he said.
‘I’ll attend to this.’

The lad walked away without even a sharp comment about masters who preferred to hog the fire, which showed Simon just how
jaded the lad was feeling. He set to with determination. The fire had been banked up well last night, and the embers were
still good and warm, so he set about rekindling it. The tree which had supplied so much of their needs last evening was of
little use. All the fine twigs were hidden by the snow. Instead he walked about the encampment seeking small sticks, and soon
had found a fair collection, getting himself thoroughly smothered in snow in the process. He bound them together into a faggot
and bound it tightly together with green withies wrapped about
it, and put it onto the hottest part of the fire, kneeling down and blowing steadily to waken the sparks. Soon he could feel
the warmth, and there was a hissing and spitting as the twigs began to take the heat.

He had brought a clay pot with him – he fetched it now, and filled it with the wine left in his skin. Setting it in the midst
of the fire, he hoped the pot would warm gradually and not shatter.

‘Ho, Bailiff, and a fine morning to you,’ Busse grunted as he thrust his head from the shelter. ‘In God’s name, but this is
a cold dawn!’

‘As a whore’s heart,’ Rob muttered. ‘Horses are all right, master. All stood together, and kept their heat in.’

Simon nodded, but his mind was already on other matters. ‘Prepare them, then. We shall leave here as soon as they are ready.’

Rob nodded, too cold to argue. It was Busse who protested as the boy walked back to the mounts. ‘But should we not break our
fast? Surely it would be foolish to set off without something in our bellies?’

‘Brother, I fear it would be more foolish to remain here in the open. We’ll soon start to freeze. Better to ride on and see
how soon we can find a house. A farm or cott. It matters little where we shelter, but we must get moving – if only to keep
ourselves warm.’

‘How long will it take us to reach Exeter?’

‘With luck, if the weather off the moor is more clement, we might reach the city soon after noon. It depends upon the mounts. If they can cope, we should hurry. It is only one league to the edge of the moor, I’d guess. Maybe a little farther. And there
are roads down there, which will make the going easier.’

‘Thanks
be to God.’ Busse began to settle himself on the ground.

‘Brother, there isn’t time.’

‘I am a man of God. I have to pray at first rising.’

‘Look on this as a special dispensation, Brother. There isn’t time.’

Busse looked at him long and hard, and then began to pray, muttering a hasty
Pater Noster
, and adding sarcastically, ‘I hope that is not too slow for you?’

Simon shrugged. He had retrieved his pot, and now he sniffed at it. About to take a long swallow, he remembered his manners,
and offered it to Busse. The monk drank with his eyes closed, as though this was the finest drink he had ever tasted. As well
it might have been, Simon reckoned. When the pot came to him, he sipped slowly, rolling the warmed wine about his mouth and
feeling the sensation of heat strike at his belly. It felt as though every inch of the liquor’s journey to his stomach was
distinct, and every particle of his being thrilled to the sensation.

The rest was saved for Rob, whose need was the greatest of all of them. Today, when they mounted, Simon lifted Rob up before
him on the horse. In this weather it would be better for him to ride and keep his feet out of the snow. Simon was happy that
he would soon be able to lead his little party off the moors and down into the warmer lands that encircled them.

It was a thought that had clearly occurred to Busse too. ‘Will it be this cold and snowy all the way?’

‘No. Usually the moors catch all the worst weather. We used to live north of Crediton, and there we could be enjoying a bright
sunny day, and when we looked to the
south we’d see Dartmoor with clouds above. Often in the spring we could be working in the warm, but Dartmoor would have snow. You could see it like a white coat lying on top. So I am hoping that when we leave the moors we should find the way a great
deal easier.’

Busse nodded, but Simon could feel the man’s eyes on him, and he was struck with that anxiety again – not fear exactly, but
just the faint nervous premonition that this man could be dangerous to him.

He could have cursed brother John de Courtenay.

It had been a miserable night for Master Richard de Langatre.

He had spent evenings in poor dives before now, what with one thing and another. There had been a deeply unpleasant little
cell just outside Oxford where he had been incarcerated for a couple of days before the error of his arrest had come to light,
but notwithstanding that, this had to be the very worst pit in which he had ever been forced to spend a night. The walls were
dank and mouldy, the floor a foul mix of substances which were best forgotten, the toilet facilities non-existent. Not even
a pail!