The Tainted Relic (30 page)

The outlaw heard a gasp and a sudden sob, and turned his head to see an old man and a woman sitting not far from him. The distraction was enough. Adam flicked his falchion’s point up and the outlaw felt it enter his belly, tearing through his bowels and snagging on his lowest rib. There was no pain, not yet. That would come later.

He put his boot on Adam’s fist and trampled it as hard as he could, pushing the blade away from himself, and when he was free of its encumbrance, he pulled his sword out of Adam, and whirled it around in a fast, slashing sweep. There was a fountain of blood, and in its midst he saw the uncomprehending expression in Adam’s eyes as the head rose as though balanced on a column of crimson, and fell to the ground.

Baldwin and Simon were about to settle on their benches when the man arrived. ‘He’s back, Sir Baldwin!’

Jonathan was dozing on a bench, and Simon kicked him awake before the three followed the watchman out into the road.

Baldwin was relieved to be out of the tavern and doing something. He had remained there idly for too long after reading de Beaujeu’s words, and the memories that his words brought were painful. All those good, honourable men had died, and for what? There was no reason. The Templars had been created to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land. Dedicated, answering only to the Pope, they couldn’t believe that the pontiff could betray their trust, but he had. He had sided with the avaricious French king to bring about their ruin, and many had been slaughtered, some tortured to death, others burned on pyres as recusants. Since then the warrior-monks had been given the choice of life in a harsher Order, or eviction. Many finished their days as beggars on the streets of Paris.

At least, he reflected, de Beaujeu had not lived to see the destruction of all he had believed in.

Their way took them along the High Street almost to the hospital, and then down the alley. This dark gulley between the buildings was always gloomy, but tonight there seemed to be some excitement. Up ahead there was the noise of many voices, as though there was a gathering of some sort. Baldwin was at first glad, for he thought that the noise would conceal their arrival. But then he realized that the noise emanated from the house where Adam lived, and he felt his optimism fade.

The house was bright with candles. A wailing and sobbing came from within, but the men had to battle their way past the plug of intrigued bystanders in the doorway. Once past them, Simon groaned in revulsion, while Baldwin could only stand and stare in sympathy.

On the floor before them, the old woman lay cradling her dead son’s body in her lap, trying to hold his head on the neck, rocking backwards and forwards as though to help him sleep.

Joseph grunted when he heard the knocking. He had just dozed off, and almost fell from his stool. As it was, it gave an ominous creak as he shifted his weight; he must tell the prior and acquire a new one soon. This really was past safe use. Before long the thing would break, and then where would they all be if Joseph broke a wrist or an ankle?

‘Yes, yes. I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he responded testily as the knocking came again. He pulled the door open. ‘Whatever is the urgency at this time of night? I…Come in here, my good fellow. What on…who did this?’

The outlaw walked inside and limped to the stool. ‘It was my own foolishness, I think, Brother. I am a cretin. And I fear that I am dying. Please–would you hear my confession?’

‘Not until I’ve had a look at your wounds,’ Joseph said. He helped the man up again, and walked him to a bed before stripping him and helping him to lie back. Fetching water, he bathed the wounds. Seeing how the wound entered the right, lower part of his abdomen, and clearly rose up to exit his body higher, on the left-hand side, he said, ‘You were stabbed very cruelly here.’

The outlaw nodded grimly. ‘It is a grievous wound. I…I feel it. I cannot live.’

Joseph sucked his teeth. There was a lot of blood seeping from both wounds, and there was the odour he recognized, the smell of bile and bowel solids. This was a man who was dying, there was no need to conceal the fact. And better that he make no attempt to do so. A dying man had the right to time to reconcile himself, and prepare himself to meet the Maker.

‘I thought so. The man I had brought here. Is he still here?’

‘You had…you mean the wounded fellow? He is still here, yes.’

‘Can he speak yet?’

‘Er, no. No, he is still unconscious. I think that the wound was very deep. It is not certain that he will live.’

‘Then I have a tale to tell you, Brother. And when I have told it, you can tell him too, and maybe the others who’ll ask about me,’ the outlaw said. ‘Know, then, that my name is John Mantravers, of South Witham,’ he began.

Simon and Baldwin had completed their work at Adam’s house when there was another call on the cool night air, and the two men stared at each other before running into the alley with the sergeant and Jonathan.

‘What is this call for?’ Simon burst out as they began to run along the alley northward towards the High Street. They turned left, heading to Carfoix, listening to the shouts and horns.

‘Down here!’ Baldwin shouted as they passed South Gate Street. They ran down this, and then realized that they had overshot the lane they needed. Turning back, they found the dim entrance, and were soon pelting along it. Simon kept to the rear, so that he could assist Jonathan, who was suffering from a stitch.

The house looked familiar, and Simon stared at it. In the dark it was hard to see where they were, but then he realized: it was Moll’s house. This was where they had found Will’s body the day before, but then they had approached the place from the other direction.

A man stood in the alley, a towel at his mouth. There was a pool of vomit near him. ‘I knew her, knew her well, you know? She was always a kindly wench, if you paid her well. I was due to see her tonight, but I was late. I couldn’t help it. I opened the door when she didn’t answer. I just thought she was angry because I was late…’

The words washed over Simon as he pushed the man out of the way and followed Baldwin inside.

The abode was pathetic. There were the tattered remnants of an old blanket hanging at the window in an attempt to make the place more homely, but to Simon it served only to emphasize how mean and unlovely this life had been.

On the floor were plain rushes, moderately recently spread but unfresh. From the beams dangled fresh herbs and some flowers, but their soft perfume couldn’t hide the sourness of sweat and sex–nor the metallic odour of blood.

It was that which made Simon want to gag. From the dark and gloomy alleyway they entered this place by the rotten door, which scraped its way over the packed earth of the threshold. The darkness made Simon think of hell. There was a foulness about it, as though the air itself were poisonous, and he wondered whether he would succumb to one of the diseases that bad air could bring. Beyond the uneven planks of the door, there was a short passage. Once this might have been a moderately pleasant house, perhaps even the residence of a wealthy trader or professional, but now it had become rotten, decayed. Walls were cracked and unpatched. The lime wash was all but gone, leached away inside and out. Overhead he could see more sky through the holes in the roof than he could through the window.

After the short corridor was the room itself, but Simon couldn’t take stock. His eyes were drawn to the thick spatters of blood on the walls, and then to the ruined body on the floor by the palliasse. He swallowed at the sight. An arm, broken at the elbow, lay oddly twisted. The bodice of her tunic was open, ripped from the neck to her navel, and her blood had run between her breasts. Thick trails ran down her chest and stained her skirts.

Simon had once seen a man’s head smashed by a maddened carthorse’s hoof, and this looked much the same. The right side of Moll’s head was stove in, with a mess of hair, shards of bone and grey filth filling the cavity. It made Simon sick to see, and the smell added to his deep revulsion.

‘She has clearly been beaten savagely,’ Baldwin murmured, and Simon was conscious of a curious quiet about him.

‘Why would any man do this?’ he muttered.

‘Why indeed?’ Baldwin agreed as he began his study of the body and the surrounding area. ‘It is a display of brutality–much like the corpse of Will outside her door.’

Jonathan officiously barged past the group of neighbours huddled at the door and stood near Simon. The bailiff could hear him swallow as though with difficulty, like a man with a mouthful of dry bread and nothing to drink to ease it down. ‘The poor soul.’

A sergeant in the doorway hawked and spat. ‘She was only a whore, Brother.’

Jonathan turned slowly and fixed the man with a look of withering contempt. ‘Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, my son. And she was praised by the Lord for her kindness.’

‘You stick to what you know from your books, Brother,’ the sergeant said unabashed. ‘Me, I’ll stick to what I know. Moll was a nice enough girl, but she was still a whore and there’s nothing more to be said.’

‘Shut up,’ Simon ordered, sickened both by the sight of the young woman and by this man’s casual attitude towards her death. ‘Where’s the man who found her?’

The fellow from outside was brought in, and he stood anxiously wringing his hands, seemingly looking all over the room except at Moll.

‘Who are you?’ Baldwin asked.

The man threw a nervous look over his shoulder. Then he seemed to sag as he recognized some faces. ‘I’m called Peter from Sidmouth.’

Baldwin and Simon questioned him for some while, but he had witnesses who confirmed that he had been at a tavern with them. Before that, he had been at his stall in the market, and plenty of people vouched for his presence all morning and afternoon. It appeared he was innocent of any crime.

‘There is no sign of the weapon,’ Baldwin said. ‘It must have been a heavy club of some sort. The killer took it away with him. Find that, and we’ve got a murderer.’

Simon nodded, then called, ‘Did she have any special customers recently? It could have been a new gull did this to her.’

‘I saw her with a new man,’ a man said. He said his name was Jack, and his voice was quiet as he took in the sight of the ruined body. ‘No one should do that to a maid!’

‘Who was this new man?’ Simon asked.

‘I don’t rightly know,’ Jack admitted. ‘He was in the Rache the other evening, and I saw him talking to her there, but I didn’t think much of it. Why should I, knowing how she earned her crust? He was a tall bastard. Tall and rangy, dressed all in black. His cloak had seen better days. Oh, he had good black boots, too.’

‘You remember him clearly, this man? Can you describe his face?’

‘Easily done. Skinny face, like he’d lived in it a while. Dark eyes, very intense. You know, the sort that don’t blink hardly at all? That was how he looked, like he was looking through you all the time, not bothering to see the outside. He was looking at your soul.’

Baldwin joined them, wiping bloodied hands on his tunic. ‘You would say all that from a glimpse as you entered the tavern?’

‘I caught sight of him, and you don’t forget a man’s face like that. His eyes were on me as soon as I was over the threshold. And anyway, I was looking about me carefully.’

‘Why?’ Simon asked.

‘Well, that daft sod Will had left just before me, and I was going inside for a pot of ale when bloody Adam came out in a hurry and nearly knocked me down. Clumsy git. He was always like that, even before he left the city. He can’t help it. I think he never realized that life is different when you get older. When he was a youngster he was always good with his fists, and as he grew up, his mind was set on using his fists or a dagger to resolve any problems.’

‘Could he have killed a woman like this?’ Simon asked.

Jack stared, gaping, but although his head shook slowly, his eyes were drawn back to the body on the floor, and his expression hardened. ‘He knew her, certainly.’

There was an angry muttering from the doorway as the men watching realized what had been said, and the sergeant had to thump the butt of his staff on the ground and bellow to silence them all.

Baldwin thought. ‘It is possible he had a part in this murder, and also the death outside Moll’s door, too: Will’s murder. Moll’s death could have been committed to silence a witness.’

Simon glanced about the room. ‘If she saw something, perhaps it was the man she was with in the tavern?’

Glancing at Jack, Baldwin considered. ‘Jack? What do you say to that? When did Moll leave the tavern?’

‘I don’t know. A little while after me, I suppose. I saw her with the man at the corner of the tavern and when I left they’d gone. I don’t know when they walked out–didn’t seem important at the time.’

‘Will had gone, and a short time later Adam hared off out. Perhaps that is the explanation,’ Simon suggested. ‘Maybe Adam killed Will, and then came here to kill off the only witness: Moll.’

‘The killer surely returned to murder the witness,’ Baldwin agreed. He looked at the sergeant in the doorway. ‘But who killed Adam?’

‘There was one other person I saw up here earlier,’ the sergeant said with a frown on his face. ‘That girl, Rob’s friend, Annie. She was here.’

‘Do you have any idea why she might have taken such an irrational hatred to this girl that she could do this?’ Simon asked.

‘Moll was a whore. She could have stolen Annie’s lover.’

The man was already in a great deal of pain, but the jug of burned wine at his side was helping. His brow was very sweaty, but Joseph applied a cool cloth to ease his pain as best he might.

‘It’s my duty…must get it to the bishop…’

‘What is the relic?’ Joseph asked calmly.

John Mantravers sat up agitatedly. ‘The relic! De Beaujeu’s cursed relic! I have to take it to safety!’

‘Be calm, my son, please–sit back, calm yourself,’ Joseph pleaded.

‘It’s cursed! All who touch it will die! I must take it! My sin, ach, my crime! God, help me!’