The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) (36 page)

Yes. That was what he wanted. Then he thought: his father was dead now, so he was master of the house. He was responsible for his mother, and he must protect her. He was big enough. He was nearly four years old.

Daddy was dead. So was Ham. He sobbed again and hid his face in his aunt’s rug.

‘There is no sign of Squire Warin or the man Richer anywhere,’ Baldwin said. ‘Have you sent them on an errand?’

Nicholas eyed him distractedly. ‘No. They may have gone out for some exercise.’

‘No,’ Simon said bluntly. ‘We’ve asked the grooms. All the mounts are there.’

They had gone to ask Ivo – against Baldwin’s better judgement – but all they had learned was that Warin and Richer had left the castle on foot. Sir Jules volunteered to seek them, and Simon and Baldwin gladly accepted his offer. Both were finding the Coroner’s company tedious. Baldwin, watching him leave with Roger, had a fleeting sense of compassion for the clerk, along with gratitude that it was not his task to look after the Coroner – and gladness that someone else was there to protect the young man from his blunderings.

‘I am concerned that Richer in particular might be in danger,’ Baldwin said. ‘He was known to dislike Serlo; if the Constable should take it into his mind to challenge him, or worse, attack him, there could be bloodshed.’

‘True,’ Nicholas said heavily. Since the death of Athelina, he had been prey to appalling doubts, and he was aware that his attitude must seem peculiar to these men. How could
they
understand!

‘Are you quite well?’ Baldwin asked.

Nicholas looked at him sadly. ‘I would see the boy safe, if at all possible,’ he said.

‘Boy?’ Baldwin asked, confused.

‘Richer atte Brooke.’

‘We shall protect him if we can,’ Baldwin said, but then he took a second look at Nicholas’s face. ‘But if you know something which may help us, you should tell us now. You
do
know something, don’t you? Tell us, please!’

Yes, I should. But how can I tell you the truth without earning your condemnation? Nicholas thought to himself. He rose from his chair, went to the door and called to a servant. ‘If anyone wants me, tell them they’ll have to wait,’ he ordered. ‘I want no one to come in here until I say so.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Go!’

Nicholas returned to his table and poured himself a mazer of wine. Standing with it in his hands, he began to speak, not once glancing at the other two men.

‘When I was a lad, I was a cause of shame and embarrassment to my father,’ he said at last. ‘He was a cobbler, a simple but cheerful soul who wanted me to follow him. I hated the thought of being apprenticed; instead I set my heart on higher things. So when the King’s Sergeant came asking for men to join his Host, I volunteered.

‘I’d always been a hearty lad, full of piss and wind, and when there was ale flowing, I was there, mouth agape to drink it. After taking my fill, more often than not, I’d get into a fight. Many’s the time I’ve been knocked sideways by someone bigger than me,’ he said nostalgically, ‘but I usually got my own back on the bastards.

‘Anyway, I left my home and went with the King. I fought well in his service, and I made my way through his forces. Lord Henry was my master, and as he grew from squire to become a belted knight, I grew with him.’

Baldwin nodded. ‘It is the way with warriors.’

‘Yes. Still more so when they have been involved in evil.’

‘What do you mean?’ Baldwin asked sharply.

‘When we were sent to subdue the Welsh, we had a hard time of it. They captured the King’s baggage train, and we spent a miserable few weeks in Conwy waiting for ships to come with food and drink. God bless the old bastard’s memory! The King was always a warrior first and politician second: he knew what it was to fight. When his supplies of wine were down to the last gallon, he insisted that it be shared among the men with him. While we waited, we were forced to go and seek provisions. We had to take whatever we could, before the enemy could starve us. You are a knight, you know what war is like!’

As he turned to look at Baldwin, he saw the cold expression on the other’s face. Baldwin looked like a man who had been turned to stone.

‘Yes, I have seen war,’ he replied, ‘yet I never robbed the poor unnecessarily. We always took what we needed at that moment, and left enough for them to survive.’

‘Enough? What is enough for a peasant?’ Nicholas cried. He flung an arm towards the south. ‘Look at them! They have a hard time feeding themselves when the weather’s good, let alone when it’s foul. There’s never enough to fill their bellies. They survive when they’re fortunate, but more often they starve. What we did was wrong, perhaps, but we were at war.’

‘You robbed them and left them nothing, then?’ Baldwin asked.

‘We took what we needed.’ He remembered the flames. When he closed his eyes, he could see them lighting his inner lids with amber vigour. The horror was still foul even after so many years.

‘We were told to fetch food from a vill a few miles from the castle. It should have been an easy job, but the land wasn’t safe. You know how these things go: occasionally sling shots, some arrows. A companion of mine suddenly fell, an arrow in his throat.
That kind of thing wears you down, and I never had a good temper. I was in charge of the
chevauchée
because I was the more senior man there, and I grew more and more bitter and vengeful. The people were spiteful. Rebellious to the last, damn them all!’

He paused for a moment, remembering. ‘We rode into the vill and as we entered, I saw some men with …’

Weapons. That was what he’d thought. They looked like the long bows which had been plaguing them all day, and he’d felt his bile rise to see these peasants flaunting their treachery. What could a man do? He ordered the charge, and spurred his horse on in a moment.

It was like a dream, or so it felt now; a slow-moving dream in which he wallowed onwards through treacle, his mace in his hand. The men turned and saw him, their faces blank in terror, and then one dropped his weapon and darted away, ducking under the lintel of a nearby cottage; a second slowly stepped backwards, appalled; the third stayed put, no fear on his face, only bovine resignation. And then the scenes came with a vividness that still woke Nicholas in his dreams.

The nearer man was felled by the iron mace, his skull so completely crushed that the spikes caught, and when Nicholas twisted it free, it pulled great slobbery lumps of brain with it. Blood dripped on his arm as he rode at the second man. He was still there, a look of pleading in eyes filled with tears. Nicholas saw his hands come up as though in supplication, but Nicholas knew no compassion. The mace swung, and the spikes raked down his cheek, puncturing his eyeball, which turned to a bloody mess in an instant. A second swing and his face dissolved: the steel hit his nose squarely, smashing his features.

His bloodlust was still with him. He threw himself from his horse and pelted into the cottage. There was a naked woman with a rug over her breast, but he thrust her aside and he stood, breathing like a horse after a gallop, until he heard the sobbing.

Pulling away a curtain, he found the two children hiding in a recess in the wall. They stared at him, eyes wild like dogs with the rage, the drooling disease that made men fear water even when they were dying of thirst.

He reached in, hooking out the first, slamming the figure to the floor with a blow from his mace, then grabbed the other, lifting the mace high over his head to kill, when the bare woman grabbed his arm.

Christ’s bones, but she had some strength, that woman! She grabbed him so hard, he thought he must have his arm wrenched from its socket, and when he turned to face her, he saw she gripped a knife. He shattered the hand with his mace, the spikes ravaging her wrist, tearing down her hand and pulling off her thumb and forefinger. Still she came at him, a terrible expression of hatred on her face, eyes quite mad, mouth spitting in that lunatic gibberish they called a language! He swung again, and the fury and hatred died with her.

Turning to the last, he saw that he was too late. The figure had snatched the dagger from the floor, and had already used it on himself, thrusting it into his own breast. Except now he could see more clearly as the red mist left him, Nicholas saw that this was no warrior but a slim girl. Probably the dead woman’s daughter. Only thirteen years or so. Not more.

The boy at his feet was the one who had ducked inside, but now Nicholas looked, he too was hardly more than a child. He was her son. The woman herself was older, more worn, but there was something about her; the sweat and stench of the cottage was not just from the odour of animals or rank humans, it held something else, and when he looked at her more closely, he saw that she had a disease.

‘We went into the vill, and they had some people there,’ he said at last. ‘I had ridden with the men for miles, with bowmen taking their chances at us all the long way, and when I saw three men
with bows in their hands, I thought these were some of those who had been attacking us. I rode them all down. A woman tried to protect one, too, and I killed her.’ He swallowed. It hardly expressed the reality of the slaughterhouse that was their home. ‘When I looked later, it wasn’t a weapon. They were all playing with wooden lances. Toys.’

‘You killed them for playing?’ Simon asked. His face registered incredulity.

‘We rode in, we saw what we thought were weapons, so we protected ourselves,’ Nicholas declared stiffly. ‘If it helps you, Bailiff, I have ever seen those faces before me in my nightmares. We fired the place once we had taken all we could.’ It was all he could do not to order that the vill be razed to the ground, he felt it to be so vile, but instead he ordered that the carts be filled, and while the sullen villagers watched, he took the first of the burning torches and threw it into the cottage, watching as the flames grew, the smoke rising, first green and yellow and foul, then thick and blue-black, the stink of burning flesh disgusting on the evening air. And they had left. But Nicholas bore the scars. He always would.

‘What has this to do with us now?’ Simon demanded harshly.

‘I left there soon afterwards. I grew ill with a sickness. Henry my lord was unwell too, and he and I left Wales to come here, to his home, to recuperate. It was here that I found some peace.’

‘With a woman?’ Baldwin asked, glowering.

‘She was willing!’ Nicholas protested at Baldwin’s tone, and then his eyes dropped. ‘When she conceived, I was delighted. My own child. And I saw to it that she and her family were looked after. When she decided to marry, I gave her money to help. Later, she and her husband and all their children died in a fire. Only my son survived, and he fled, but I was able to ensure that he wasn’t chased for being a runaway serf. Instead, I had him guided into the arms of Sir Henry’s retinue, where he was protected. He
learned his skills as a warrior, and later he could come home again.’

‘This was Richer?’ Baldwin continued relentlessly. ‘You are his father?’

‘He is my only child.’

‘Be glad you have another coming, then,’ Baldwin said remorselessly. ‘Because I swear, if I find he is the murderer, I shall see him hanged.’

Nicholas stared at him, wanting to demand sympathy, but couldn’t. After a moment, he looked away again, and prayed that Richer might be safe.

Warin was noble by birth, and certainly didn’t fear this rabble. They made him want to laugh. There was none among them whom he would be concerned about individually, he grew aware of their eyes moving from one to another, like a pack of dogs working up the courage to make an attack. That was less amusing.

He couldn’t really permit them to take Richer, no matter what he had said before. Richer was his servant, and no one was going to take him against Warin’s will. The squire was more than powerful enough to prevent a small group from lynching his man. Still, he must also be seen to be fair. He didn’t want to be thought of as harbouring a fugitive from justice. That was not the way to gain the respect of the peasants.

A strange place this, when tempers were hot. The alewife was serving with a face like a wet week in Wales, while men fingered their stubble or hunched their shoulders and glowered.

In the far corner was an old man, hard to see at the other side of the room, just a dark smudge with eyes that twinkled as the firelight caught them. Then he sat forward, and Warin recognised Iwan. The old smith didn’t look away, but met his gaze calmly, a massive pot in his hand. Then he smiled, but somehow he still looked threatening. It was the eyes, Warin’s father had once said: the eyes told you about the soul. Watch his eyes and you’d see the attack before his hands could move. Warin wouldn’t want to have Iwan as an enemy … at least not if Iwan was younger.

Richer was anxious: Warin could sense fear oozing from his pores like sweat. Couldn’t blame him. This was the most dangerous situation Richer had ever endured. Going into battle with friends at his side was one thing: sitting and waiting for a man who was sworn to see his destruction while on all sides his enemy’s friends fenced him in, that took courage.

And conviction, of course. Perhaps Richer wasn’t the murderer. Attacking a man in the dark was not his way – but the question was, would the people here believe that?

A sudden hush smothered them. The fire sparked, and Warin saw the smoke gust up and through the window. At the door, men moved aside, and there in the doorway stood Alexander.