The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) (14 page)

It was a typical Dartmouth morning in late September. The rain was coming in from the sea. He pulled his cloak more closely about his shoulders as he surveyed the ships sheltered in the harbour, the men loading or unloading cargo, the heavy bales of merchandise almost bending them double. Some carried spices, some dyes, others hauled on ropes operating the hoisting spars, lifting heavier goods, the barrels of wine and salt from the King’s French possessions. The port was a thrusting little township with its own charter, and the scurrying men down there at the waterfront proved that the town was thriving financially.

Which was all to the good, because that meant more money for his master, the Abbot of Tavistock.

It was many years since Simon had first joined the Abbot. He had previously worked at the Stannary castle at Lydford, acting as one of the bailiffs who struggled to keep the King’s Peace over his extensive forest of Dartmoor, preventing the tinminers from overrunning every spare field, diverting every stream, thieving whatever they could in order to win more tin from the peaty soil, or simply threatening to use their extensive rights to extort money from peasants and landowners alike. One of their favourite games was to say that they thought they might find tin under a farmer’s best piece of pasture; only desisting when offered a suitable bribe.

Those years had been his happiest ever. He had seen his daughter grow to gracious maturity; he had buried one son, Peterkin, but his wife had conceived and now he had another to carry on his name. Yes, his life at Lydford, while busy and at times taxing, had been very rewarding. Which was why he now suffered like this, he told himself ruefully.

‘God’s Ballocks!’ he muttered, and turned to stride along Upper Street until he came to an alleyway. Here he turned and trod over the slippery cobbles down to Lower Street, and along to the building where he could meet his clerk.

The room where his clerk awaited him was large, and the fire in the middle of the floor was inadequate for its task.

‘Oh, Bailiff! A miserable morning, isn’t it, sir?’

Andrew was a Dartmoor man too, but there was no similarity between them in either looks or temperament. Simon was powerfully built, his frame strong and hardened from regular travelling over the moors. He was only recently returned from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela with Baldwin; during which period he had lost much of his excess weight. In contrast, Andrew was chubby. He looked much younger than his sixty-odd summers, and still had the twinkling, innocent eye of a
youth, whereas Simon’s expression was more commonly sceptical, having spent so many years listening to disputes and trying to resolve which of two arguing parties was telling the truth.

This clerk was born to write in his ledgers – and how he adored them! It was enough to drive Simon to distraction sometimes, the way that Andrew would smooth and clean each sheet before setting out his reeds methodically. He had been taught and raised as a novice in the Abbey, and his loyalty to Abbot Robert was not in doubt, but Simon wished that he could have had a more worldly-wise clerk instead of this stuffed tunic. He would have liked a man with whom he could dispute, who would have had new ideas and on whom Simon could have tested his own, but Andrew appeared content to be a servant, never offering advice or commenting on Simon’s decisions, merely sitting and scrawling his numbers and letters.

It was the latter which entranced him. Whereas Simon would admire a pretty woman, or sigh with contentment at the taste of a good wine, Andrew knew no pleasure other than forming perfect, identical figures. His numerals were regular in size and position, the addition always without fault, yet he strove constantly to improve. Simon could read and write, after his education at Crediton with the canons, but he saw these skills as means to an end. Records must be kept, and the only effective manner to store records was on rolls. But Simon didn’t like the idea of spending his entire life trying to make his letter ‘a’ more beautiful. If it was legible, that was enough. No, Simon was happier out in the open than sitting here in this draughty, smoke-filled cell with this pasty-faced, rotund clerk with his reeds and his inks.

‘This weather is nothing,’ Simon responded shortly, and then felt a wave of guilt wash over him at the hurt in Andrew’s eyes.
The man was only doing his best to be sociable, yet Simon snapped at him like a drunkard kicking a puppy. Andrew was necessary, and he was going to remain with him whether Simon liked it or not.

He was silent a moment, seeking some means of repairing the damage, but then, irritable with himself, he knew he couldn’t. There wasn’t the understanding in him to be able to make Andrew a friend. He was a servant, nothing more. Simon beckoned the clerk and led the way outside and down to the harbour itself, all the way cursing his miserable fate in being sent here.

What really stuck in his craw was the fact that he was only here because his master had wanted to reward him.

Lady Jeanne de Furnshill was stoic when her husband announced that he was going to have to leave again. ‘It hardly feels as though you have been home at all, my love,’ she said quietly. ‘Richalda shall miss you. As shall I.’

‘Yes, well, I suppose it is a part of the duty of a knight in the King’s service,’ Baldwin said shortly. He looked at her and smiled with as much sincerity as he could manage. ‘My love, I will be home before long.’

‘I understand,’ Jeanne said, with complete honesty and a simultaneous shrivelling sensation inside her breast. She’d known the loss of love before, and now she was to face it again. Perhaps it was something wrong with her?

Her first husband had been a brute and bully; convinced that she was barren, his love for her turned into loathing, and with that, he started to beat her regularly. At the time, Jeanne had sworn to herself that she would never tolerate another husband who raised his fist to her. Of course, Baldwin had not shown any indication that he could do so yet there was a new
coldness in his manner towards her, and she was sure that his love for her was fled.

Her sense of unease had been growing, and was confirmed when she joked about his interest in the pretty young peasant girl. His surly response then had shocked her, and she knew that things were no longer the same.

Rationally, she knew that ‘love’ was a commodity which was greatly overrated. A man like Baldwin would naturally find his feelings withering over time. It was perfectly normal for a man to seek younger, more exciting women when he had an opportunity. That was presumably the reason for his need to go to Exeter.

Yes, rationally she knew all this, and yet … she had thought that
her
man was different. She’d thought he still loved her.

He had only been home a matter of a few weeks. Before then, he and his friend Simon Puttock had been on a pilgrimage, during which they had encountered more dangers than Jeanne could have dreamed of. She had expected risks from sailing, from footpads, from the occasional burst of foul weather, but not all three – plus fevers, shipwreck and pirates as well.

When Baldwin returned, she felt as though her soul had been renewed, as if she had been waiting with her life suspended in his absence. She had missed him terribly, and when he walked in through their door, she threw down the tapestry on which she had been working, and hurled herself at him. She saw his eyes widen in surprise, then he staggered backwards as she thumped into him.

That evening had been wonderful. It was all but impossible to realise that he was truly home again, that she had him all to herself. He looked so happy, so brown, healthy, warm, kind and content, especially when he saw his daughter again, that Jeanne was entirely free from anxiety. Her man was home and she still
possessed his love. There was nothing more that she desired. Nothing she
could
desire.

And yet soon afterwards, within a day or two, she grew aware of a reticence on his part, and that distance had gradually grown into a gulf. The man whom she loved and with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life had slipped away somewhere.

She felt as though her heart would break.

Joel was in his workroom when Mabilla came storming in.

‘Joel!’ she burst out, her face red and tear-stained. ‘Was it you? Did you kill him just to stop him suing you?’

‘Eh? Wha—?’ He was in the process of cramping blocks of wood together in the tricky form of a war-saddle, where the seat rested some inches above the horse. Her sudden eruption into his workshop was an instant disaster. The second block fell from his hands, and the glued edges, gleaming nicely, fell into the grit and sawdust that lay all about on the floor.

‘Now Mabilla, what is the matter?’ he asked with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Oi, you lads, get that wood up and clean it outside. Go on, you nosy gits! Leave me and the lady alone. Vince, get a damned move on!’

‘Henry – did you kill him? Who else could have done it! Oh God, what will become of us?’

Joel saw her red eyes and the trickle of moisture that trailed down both cheeks. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Mabilla? I don’t understand.’

‘Why was he left there, in the chapel?’

Joel bellowed for his apprentice to bring strong wine, and then spoke softly to her. ‘Look, Mabilla, I’ve heard about Henry. I was going to come and see you and give you my condolences as soon as I could. I know his death was a terrible
shock – I can scarcely comprehend it myself – but
I
had nothing to do with it! He was my friend, for God’s sake! One row couldn’t turn us into enemies. Look, I was here all night – you can ask the apprentices if you don’t believe me. I didn’t leave the shop once.’

‘You swear? I thought, because he threatened litigation …’

‘It wasn’t me,’ Joel repeated.

‘Who else could have killed him?’ She turned her bloodshot eyes to him. ‘Joel, you were his oldest friend, please help me! I don’t know who to trust. Oh God, can I trust
anyone
!’

She was staring about her as though expecting an assassin to leap upon her at any moment. When Joel moved to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, she recoiled as though from a red-hot brand, and he lifted his hand away at the last moment, not actually touching her. She looked like a fawn startled by a circle of raches, petrified with terror.

‘Mabilla! I am terribly sorry to hear of his death. You know Henry was my best friend in the world.’

‘Even when he threatened to sue you? He told me all about it, that he came here and threatened to do so if the German sued him.’

‘He was an old friend. Old friends don’t kill each other over a matter of business.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I am terribly sorry, maid. You know that. I shall miss him dreadfully.’

‘You will miss him?
I
shall miss him – and so will Julia! She is in her bed still, paralysed with grief, and there is no one can help us. No! Get away from me! Don’t touch me!’ she shrieked, slapping at him with both hands when he approached her.

‘I only want to help, Mabilla. That’s all.’

‘Oh God!’ she said with a broken voice. ‘What shall become of us?’

‘What was he doing over there anyway, in the Cathedral grounds?’ Joel wondered aloud.

‘He was going to confess. He told you he wanted to confess, didn’t he?’ she said, and then suspicion flared afresh. ‘And you didn’t want that, did you? You’ve avoided censure from the Cathedral all these years, and then Henry threatened to bring it all out into the open – your murder of the Chaunter with him!’

Joel almost put a hand over her mouth. ‘Hush, woman! Look, I had nothing to fear. When he came here, he threatened me, yes, but he was drunk, maid. I didn’t think much of it. For the last time, Mabilla, he was my oldest friend. We’ve worked together for forty years.’

‘Ever since the Chaunter’s murder,’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘Yes, you were there with him, weren’t you? Was that why you killed him? You thought he could implicate you – just as William did!’

‘Oh, shit.’ Joel felt a sickening tug at his heart. ‘Poor Henry. He didn’t tell William that, did he? He didn’t tell William he was likely to confess to his part in the murders? Because if he did … that bastard Will would kill his own mother for the price of a pie, let alone to protect himself.
Did
Henry tell him?’

She looked at him again then, eyes raw from weeping, lips moist and swollen. ‘Oh God, yes, he did!’

Stephen the Treasurer strode along the cloister with a face as black as his gown, and it was some while before Matthew could make his presence known.

‘The fabric rolls, Stephen. You have to check them.’

‘I can’t, not now. You’ll have to do them yourself. There’s too much going on just now, what with this murder.’

Matthew reluctantly took back the proffered rolls. His canon had never before shown such distress and inability to concentrate. Certainly it was shocking to find a body in the chapel, but murder wasn’t so rare, as he himself knew. That the Treasurer should be so alarmed was strange. He threw a look over his shoulder towards the Charnel Chapel. ‘No one can think straight today.’

‘No. It is appalling to think that the man was lured here to his death.’

‘Lured?’

‘Why else should he have been here in the Close? Someone must have tricked him to come here,’ Stephen said.

‘He could have been here because of some business with other people, or maybe he was taking a short cut, or wanted simply to see the rebuilding works,’ Mathew replied reasonably.