The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) (27 page)

The stream was loud down here. On the left the trees were taller than at other places, fed from the constant supply of water, and the bushes and ferns in among them were thick and impassable. It was a pleasant, secluded area, she reckoned, just as the mill’s setting was pleasant – but not as a place to live. She liked being in the centre of things. It was alarming to be so far from people, isolated. Although it was only a half-mile from her house, she felt that this valley might have been a hundred leagues away. It was so green, so damp, so noisy with that stream … she could have been anywhere.

There was a place where the ground was stirred, and the soil was black with moisture. She hadn’t noticed this place before, but it was a strange thing about this trail: every so often a patch of dampness would appear. Today she scarcely noticed this new one.

The mill stood, as she had expected, silent; the wheel was stationary, and from inside came not a sound. All she could hear was the chuckle and slap of the water, and the regular snorting of the old sow demanding her food, unaware of her crime. There were chickens scrabbling, too, but since they were all youngsters from Letitia’s last brood, she knew that none were laying yet. The fox had got in among Serlo’s last flock one night when he had been drunk again. Luckily not all the birds had been killed, but those which hadn’t had been traumatised and wouldn’t lay again. They had to be culled. At least they could be eaten. Those which the fox had killed and left had to be thrown away. If a man ate a chicken which had been killed by a fox, he would become very ill indeed.

‘Serlo! Wake up!’ she called, walking into the house, but there was no sign of him there. She went to the sleeping area, but the bed was as it had been the day before, when she had come in here to find Muriel wailing and keening, rocking her dead child.

The memory made her shiver. Thank God that little Aumery was safe at her house now. She put the basket down then crossed the yard to the mill itself. Pushing open the door, a sense told her that there was something wrong, but her rational mind ignored it. She felt the chill in the place, but told herself that was the water nearby. Mills were always cold. She could smell the tinny odour – must be the grease Serlo used to keep the machinery working. She saw the blackened mess on the floor: her brother-in-law was a lazy devil who hadn’t cleaned the place in ages. She heard the scatterings of the rats’ feet, and tutted; she had reminded Serlo time and again to purchase a cat to keep the vermin from his grain stores.

Only when she had walked right inside did she see his legs by the machinery, and the mashed-up mess that was his head. Even then her mind refused to respond. It was only when she was halfway home that her mouth sprang open as though of its own volition, and she began to scream and scream and scream …

Warin was already awake and had been out on his destrier for a five-mile ride before Simon had heard the first sounds of morning. Now returned, he left his mount with one of the stable-hands and strode towards the hall.

‘A good day, Squire.’

Warin turned and gave a slow smile. ‘I thought it was my duty to be the man who sprang upon you, Richer.’

‘It’s good to know there are times I can still make you jump,’ Richer said, and let himself down from the wall on which he’d been sitting. ‘Had a good ride?’

‘Fine. I think he’ll need a new shoe on his for’ard left hoof. It’s coming loose.’

‘The smith here’s a good lad,’ Richer said. ‘I am sorry for last night. I don’t know what the matter was with my head.’

‘Is it better now?’

Richer pulled a face. ‘After one of my migraines, it feels as though another threatens for days afterwards.’

‘Let’s hope there isn’t another, then,’ Warin commented. ‘Later today we should practise with our weapons.’

‘Not today, please. I am still a little enfeebled.’

‘Yes, today. You need your practice and so do I.’

Richer pulled a face and was about to respond when there was a sudden commotion behind them. A young lad had run to the gate and was gabbling to the gatekeeper.

‘I don’t care. I got to speak to the Coroner – I got to!’

Sir Jules had tied on his sword-belt as soon as the lad, Iwan’s grandson Gregory, had told him of the body.

He found it hard to believe: five deaths in a matter of days. To have another corpse on his hands was far more than he had bargained for. ‘I’m not up to this,’ he muttered to himself as he followed the boy to the vill.

‘Sir?’ Roger enquired.

‘Nothing.’

There was no way he’d admit to his clerk that he didn’t feel up to the task ahead of him. A knight always knew his own mind and his abilities as well as his responsibilities. Jules was fully aware of his duties. He had been given them by the Sheriff, his father’s old friend, and he had intended to show himself competent, but that was before all these deaths. A hanged woman and her dead sons, that was all he had anticipated here; now he had a scalded brat and a dead man as well. There was something evil at work here in the vill.

For a moment he wondered about asking Roger for his advice. There were cases of demonic possession, he recalled. Sometimes a woman was found to be a witch, or a man was discovered to be possessed. Terrible thought. It quite made his hair stand on end to think that he could be looking into a case like that. ‘Oh God, please help me,’ he murmured.

‘Sir?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

As the lad took them through the middle of the vill and down the lane to the track that led to the mill, Sir Jules could hear Sir Baldwin muttering away to his friend behind him. Christ’s pain, it was bad enough having Roger here with him, watching his every move without those two coming along for the ride. Good God, what had he done to deserve this?

Sir Jules felt he had good reason to be discontented. What had been described as a pleasant little job with good remuneration, when the good Sheriff had offered it to him – as a mark of respect to his father, true, but Jules wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth – the idea had been that this little sinecure would provide some welcome additional funds. For a young knight, that was always agreeable. And to be fair, there weren’t that many knights in Cornwall who could take on the task. Especially since the last cull. Kings would keep removing all Coroners
en masse
from their duties just because of the odd complaint and accusation of fraud. Of course there was fraud! How else was a man to survive?

But he had three poxed experts on his tail now. It was not enough that he should be forced to actually view these bloated corpses, now he was lumbered with a team of men who actually wanted to find the murderer or murderers, rather than taking the fines and forgetting about it all.

He felt very small and insignificant, but also under a great deal of pressure. He was only a young man. Most fellows his age would have been lucky to have been made squire, but here he was:
a full, belted knight. And in the presence of three men who were clearly more experienced and capable than he. It was a miserable position in which to be placed.

The mill loomed ahead, a squat black shape seen through the trees. He splashed on through the little puddles, feeling his head sinking on his shoulders like a tortoise. He’d seen one once when he was a lad, and the sight of the creature pulling legs and head into its shell in such a cowardly fashion had made him laugh at the time; it had certainly never occurred to Jules that he could ever liken himself to that same tortoise. He knew even then that he was to rise to greater heights than any of his companions.

It hadn’t happened though, had it? All through his training he had been a competent, unadventurous but skilful enough fighter, whether with lance at quintain, with sword, or staff. Yet as soon as the targets began to fight back, his martial spirit dimmed. There were men he fought who would think nothing of slaughtering him for an insult. Now, for him to take offence at some fool’s words and draw his sword, that was one thing. Many a peasant had learned to apologise to him, when a six-pound piece of sharpened steel was held at his throat, but when a similar, unrebated block of steel was held at Jules’s own neck, when it was flashing and gleaming in silver-white circles whipping in close to his face or his belly in the ring, that was when his ardour started to fade. To practise at weaponry was one of the duties of a warrior, but it was disquieting that a blade could lop off an arm without effort.

No, his warlike spirit was dissipated in the reality of a hot, sweaty metal suit on a dusty training ground. More, it was pounded out of him as his body was hurled to the ground by an opponent’s lance; it was drawn from him as he lay on his cot at night with tears streaming at the futility of his calling, as the bruises worried at him, the sores chafed and the blood of his wounds stung him. As his love for display and glory had faded, so had his father’s contempt for the King grown. Now even his father insisted that he
shouldn’t risk his life in challenges and duels, which was why he had been given a job in which his brain could be used, rather than his arms.

Except he wasn’t as clever as his father thought. He was as incompetent a Coroner as he had been a knight.

‘Sir Jules! Wait one moment.’

‘Yes, Sir Baldwin?’ He was glad to have his thoughts interrupted, but he couldn’t help a slight petulance as he stopped and turned to face the man.

Sir Baldwin was staring down at the dark puddle in the roadway.

‘It may be nothing, Sir Jules. It may be nothing.’

Roger the clerk was already down on one knee, poking a finger into the soil. All the path here was wet, as Jules could see for himself, and he wondered what could have intrigued the two. As Sir Baldwin dismounted and crouched, Jules caught sight of a similar look of bafflement on the Bailiff’s face. Simon shrugged as though to say, ‘Best not to ask what they’re doing. They’ll let us know in good time.’

Baldwin and Roger were rubbing their fingers together and sniffing them. Both stared at each other for some while before standing again.

‘Well?’ Jules asked.

‘It’s hard to be sure. The soil is dank and smelly here, but I think that there’s lots of blood,’ Baldwin said.

Roger had found something else, and he held it up now. ‘Look.’

‘A clot,’ Baldwin acknowledged. ‘You are observant, Clerk.’

‘I take that as a compliment,’ Roger smiled, ducking his head. Then his face hardened. ‘If a man was killed here, the water seeping through the soil would have washed most of the blood away before long. There must have been a great deal of blood here in which case, and not too long ago.’

Jules was staring from one to the other. ‘What made you notice this? I can see nothing on the ground even now.’

The clerk gave an apologetic little cough and pointed to his legs. When Jules looked down, he saw that the calves of his hosen were tinged pink.

‘We saw it when you splashed through the blood, Sir Jules.’

The knight stared at him for what seemed a long moment, and then stepped into the river to wash his hose.

It was sad to see how crestfallen Jules was when he saw the state of his hosen, Roger thought, but the man was a fool. Most Coroners were, apart from the ones who had agreed to the position purely for the profit they could make. Those were the truly contemptible ones, the men who’d sell their office and their honour for a few shillings, perhaps even seeing to the execution of an innocent man and the ruin of his family to line his own pocket. And letting the guilty go free, more to the point.

Roger had firm opinions on the law; he thought that the realm, indeed the whole of Christianity, could only function when criminals received their just reward. If the guilty could buy freedom from punishment, the King’s law was a nonsense and the poor must lose faith in it. When that happened, the country would fall into anarchy.

Roger was a thoughtful man. He considered many things: why the sky was blue, how the stars were held in the sky, how a plant knew to grow upwards, instead of upside-down … there was much to study and wonder at in the world. Yet he was unceasingly astonished by the failure of other men to look at things with the same attention to detail.

Sir Jules here, for example: a man born to wealth and power, clearly not one of those mad fighting spirits who’d take a lance to a stranger as soon as shake their hands, but nonetheless, he was not nearly observant enough for his post. The job required a man who would look carefully at the facts of a case, someone who would listen and weigh the evidence before leaping to judgement.

There could be much to listen to today, he thought.

Sir Jules had reached the mill’s door, and was waiting for them. Roger allowed Baldwin to go before him, and then followed. The Bailiff was polite and stood away so that he could enter, and Roger smiled to himself. The man plainly wasn’t that keen on corpses.

The room was dark, the night’s shutters still locked in their wooden runners. Sir Baldwin walked slowly about the place, reaching up and unhooking their strings. All were vertical-drop shutters, held up over the windows by a cord with a loop that hooked over a nail in the wall. As Baldwin pulled the strings, they dropped in their channels to rest on the floor, and daylight began to flood the place.

It was, like all mills, immensely dusty. As the sun’s rays slanted inside, each window created a bright shaft of whiteness, a cone filled with tiny motes moving in the warmth. Baldwin’s passage took him down the longer side of the room, walking away from the doorway, disappearing as soon as he was beyond the second window, hidden by the whiteness. Then he slowly returned, and Roger saw his shape form like that of a wraith, walking in the shadows between light-shafts, reappearing as he stepped into sunlight.