The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21) (47 page)

‘I don’t know. I don’t think he cared that much. He planned to give most of it away anyhow.’

‘Ah, of course – the salvage for Master Hawley. He’d have been shocked to learn that the good shipman did not want any part of a false salvage. Hawley must have been sickened and angry to be fooled.’

‘He was angry,’ Moses conceded. ‘He came here early today to demand to know what had happened.’

‘You told him?’

‘I have nothing to conceal.’

‘Tell us all, then.’

‘My master wanted to punish the two who had tortured and killed his wife. She was ever a kind, generous woman. All spoke of her beauty and calmness. Yet they raped her and planned to throw her overboard at dead of night. When the ship struck rocks, they thought that they had the perfect story to tell. Only two others survived that night – Adam and my brother. All the others perished.’

‘So his punishment was to take them to the middle of the sea and kill them there?’

‘Afterwards. First they prepared the ship for the sailing, and only when all was ready were they brought back here for a last talk with my master. And then he told them he knew all about their rape and murder.’

‘How did they react?’ Baldwin asked.

‘They denied it like the cowards they were. Adam and some others worked on them, and they knew what would happen to them when they reached a certain place in the sea. There Beauley was to meet the ship and take off the other crew, and put them ashore farther up the coast.’

‘So the two were hanged? Stabbed? What?’

Moses looked at Simon coolly. ‘They were taken in the ship to a place far from land and thrown into the water with a rope about their necks. They were lifted from the water and then dropped in. I think they lasted several duckings.’

Simon shuddered. Unable to breathe in the water, they must have wished for a friendly hand to pull them up, but the only help they received was from a rope at their neck. A hideous death.

‘You think me little better than a murderer?’ Moses said. ‘I would have seen them die a slower death than that if I could. My brother told me of their crime. They must have realised what he had done, so they killed him too.’

‘Your brother?’ Coroner Richard said sharply.

‘Yes, Daniel was my brother.’

‘And the man in the road? What of him?’ Simon demanded. He walked to the sideboard. Receiving a stern
look from Sir Richard, he poured two mazers and took one to the Coroner.

Moses glanced away. ‘My master and I were looking for Sir Pierre, Master Pyckard’s brother-in-law, when we saw the stranger in the road. He was accosted by that repellent fellow Cynegils, and we overheard him discuss spying on a stranger.’

‘Did you hear him mention Sir Pierre by name?’ Baldwin asked.

‘No – he only asked about “the foreigner”, but that doesn’t signify. What of it? There was only one foreigner in town that night. My master was unwell already, and he said he wouldn’t see his wife’s brother killed by some foul servant of a thieving reptile like Despenser. So he took a rock and knocked the man down. He fell without a sound, and my master hit him again thrice. It was close to the hole in the road, so I removed the trestles at one side and we rolled him in to make it look as though he had come by an unhappy accident.’

‘Do you know who he was?’ Simon asked.

‘I didn’t introduce myself before my Master killed him,’ Moses said with a touch of scorn.

Coroner Richard drained his mazer. ‘He was Guy de Bouville. Sir Andrew knew him. He worked for Despenser.’

‘And Despenser wanted Sir Pierre dead because he was French and a friend of the Queen,’ Moses said. ‘That was what Sir Pierre told us.’

Baldwin frowned. ‘Although Sir Andrew denied knowing of a man here already when he arrived in town. Just as he denied piracy with Pyckard’s ship.’

‘Hah! At least that denial was true,’ the Coroner chuckled. ‘He told me that this de Bouville chappie was man-at-arms to a fellow called … what was it? Flok?’

Baldwin blinked. ‘Flok?’

‘You’ve heard of him?’

‘Flok was the man whom Hamund Chugge murdered. It was the reason for Hamund being sent here as abjurer,’ Baldwin said.

‘Good God!’ Simon said. Then: ‘You said Odo and Vincent killed your brother, but you also say that they were held before sailing. How do you know they killed him?’

‘Who else would have done it?’ Moses snapped. ‘They realised who must have told my master about his wife’s murder, and punished him for it.’

‘If that was the case, they would have fled, surely,’ Baldwin said.

‘Eh?’

‘If you were guilty of a woman’s murder, and heard that her husband, the man whom you worked for, knew of your actions, would you wait to sail on his ship, with his men aboard? Or would you flee instantly?’

‘I don’t know how evil men like them must think. I don’t pretend to understand them. They were condemned from their own mouths, anyway. They said that Madam Kena was just like the French whore, or somesuch.’

Baldwin grunted with disgust. ‘They sailed regularly for their master?’

‘Of course.’

‘How many French whores do you think they will have used in their lives?’

Moses shook his head in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, they were not guilty of the murder,’ Baldwin said more confidently. ‘Your master heard of the story your brother told, but that was entirely wrong. Just as the murder of the man in the road was wrong.’

‘He was asking about a foreigner,’ Moses began.

‘He was asking about a short fellow by the name of Hamund Chugge, who killed his master. De Bouville was here to avenge him. An abjurer will be told in public by which roads he must go to a port. I think this de Bouville was looking for Hamund to kill him. Instead your master killed
him
.’

‘Oh, dear heaven.’

‘And in the same way, I do not think your brother died because of Odo and Vincent. Another man killed Danny.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘The only man who could tell the truth about Mistress Pyckard’s death was your brother. Perhaps if he had noticed one more detail, he would have been aware of another man who could have killed her.’

‘Who else was in the crew of the
Saint Rumon
, fifteen years ago? And were any of them on the
Saint John
as well as Odo and Vincent?’ Simon urged. His head was hurting again, and he touched the lump where the hammer had struck.

Moses thought about it.

‘Most of them were strangers. Master Pyckard wanted as few men as possible from about Dartmouth, because it would be hard to have them reappear when their families
had thought them dead, so he hired strangers from another town.’

‘But there
were
two men on the
Saint John
from here?’ Baldwin insisted.

‘Two, yes. Ed and Adam. But Ed was too young to have been working on the
Saint Rumon
.’

‘But Adam was on her, wasn’t he?’ Baldwin demanded.

‘Well, yes.’

‘And Adam was keen to help torture Odo and Vincent, wasn’t he?’ the Coroner rumbled. He had returned to the sideboard, and now he waved a full mazer. ‘I don’t know about these two, but I think you killed the wrong men.’

‘No … that’s not possible,’ Moses said, but he had taken a step back as though struck by a physical blow.

Baldwin was pensive. ‘I still don’t understand. When the
Saint John
sailed, your master had given instructions for her to be fired as though she had been raided?’

‘Yes. It was always his plan.’

Baldwin frowned. ‘And Adam knew of that?’

‘He knew the ship must be afire when Master Beauley arrived, yes. Although he didn’t realise that he was only to make a poor job of it. I know that the day they sailed, my master was keen to send me to explain that the ship was
not
to be burned to the waterline.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I think Adam said something to Odo and Vincent about leaving them in the ship to burn to nothing, and my master thought he didn’t appreciate that the two were to be thrown into the sea. The ship wasn’t to be harmed, after all.
Perhaps he thought he was to destroy the whole thing, now I think of it.’

‘Where is Adam now?’ Baldwin demanded. ‘He is the final link in the chain.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Moses declared. He had paled under the onslaught, but he stood with an attitude of defiance, a hand stroking the wooden chair’s back.

‘Essay a guess,’ Sir Richard said. He drained his mazer, peered into the jug and when he saw it was empty, set it down with a sigh. Taking hold of his sword, he walked over to Moses. ‘But be quick, eh?’

The house he directed them to was another not far from Cynegils’s own in the street at Hardness. It was a shabby building, much like the other, but there was no sense of misery about the place. This was not a home filled with hunger, but one where the master was regularly employed.

‘Think he’s in?’ Sir Richard asked Baldwin in what he fondly imagined to be a discreet whisper.

Baldwin rolled his eyes at Simon, and then nodded his head once; Simon returned the nod, and then they nodded a second time, a third, and both launched themselves forward.

‘I expect he’s out, wouldn’t—’

Hearing the splintering crunch as the two men hit the door together and burst through it, the Coroner was quiet for a moment. Then he sniffed disdainfully and stepped forward to the doorway. ‘Proud of yourselves?’

‘He’s not here,’ Simon declared, coming back from the rear of the house. ‘He could have got away over the fence.’

‘We shall have to seek him in the town, then,’ Baldwin said. ‘We could fetch Ivo, I suppose, but he’s as much use as a kettle made of ice.’

‘You two are so impatient all the time,’ the Coroner
stated, eyeing them reprovingly. ‘Why don’t we just go to where he’s bound to be?’

‘What are you on about?’ Simon asked a trifle wearily.

‘Good God, man! He was brother to Danny’s wife, wasn’t he? And he was friend to this man Ed, whom we were told was also saved from the ship. Is this Ed in the town?’

‘He lives with Widecombe Will’s family,’ Simon said.

‘Well, I should check both houses. Adam is going to be hiding himself, isn’t he? So let’s flush him out!’

He had left Ed with his wife. The lad was gormless, thick as the oak of a keel. All he saw was that he was alive. He didn’t care about anything else. Even though Adam had tried to persuade him to lie low, remain hidden, disguise himself as Adam had, shaving, washing, changing his hair, wearing different clothes, the fool could think of nothing but dipping his wick in his woman.

Adam was content that he had survived. It hadn’t been easy to think of a story to save himself. When the
Saint Rumon
had foundered, he’d thought it was a miracle of good luck when he found a spar and floated away, washing up safely on the sand. Only one or two men could have witnessed what had happened, and he was sure that they were dead. Later, when he’d seen Odo, there had been only praise from the latter for managing to survive, and from Vincent too. No one had spotted him with Pyckard’s strumpet.

She’d been good. He had wanted her for months, ever since he first saw her, but he couldn’t do anything about it, except take the occasional whore from the stews to slake his
desire. Then Pyckard had sent him to escort her over to France. And he had done what he’d wanted for ages.

It’d been easy. She was weak from vomiting, and hardly even noticed when he walked in. He’d thought she might even want him, as when he’d put a hand on her back, she hadn’t recoiled or anything, just stayed there, kneeling over the basin. He rubbed her, his hand going lower and lower, and when she finally realised what was happening, she tried to jump up and away. Only his hand clenched over her skirts, and he pulled her back, slapping a hand over her mouth when she tried to break free. He kept his hand there while he lifted her skirts and forced his other hand up. Her eyes widened in horror, and they stayed like that all the time until he had finished. Just staring at him. And all the while there was that moaning, low in her throat, like a dog with a broken back. A keening sound that made him ashamed.

That was when he knew he couldn’t let her live. Master Pyckard would see him hang for this. He took his knife and stabbed once, carefully, in her breast. She’d thrashed, her body spasming in death. But still her eyes were on him. Accusing.

He’d been going to throw her over the side when it was dark, but the squall flew up and he’d had to leave her body there and go to help the others. And then the wave came, and the wreck, and that would have been the end of it, had Danny not remembered something crucial, years later.

Pyckard had never suspected Adam. Why should he? Adam was his best sailor. The old skinflint never guessed how much the jealousy tore at him. Adam should have been a merchant. At the least he should have been granted more
the profits from the sailings he made, risking
his
life,
his
health, so that Pyckard could make money. And he made tons of it. Without his wealth, he couldn’t have afforded to win Amandine, either. It was only fair that the man who helped Pyckard get the money that won him his bride should share in the spoils. And since Pyckard wouldn’t share his money fairly, Adam took his wife. Simple as that.

Danny’s tale had made sense to everyone, especially when told by that tub of lard Strete, and Adam had volunteered to look into it. First of all, though, he’d made sure that Strete understood that Pyckard and Adam knew it was Odo and Vincent. Then he went with two others and snatched the pair of them from outside a tavern. It took some effort to make them confess, but first Vincent and then Odo admitted killing her, just to stop the pain. They’d been held for a day and then brought to the ship. Meanwhile, Adam had Danny taken there too, and while he was aboard, Adam sought him out. It was easy to kill him. Danny was the only remaining person who could accuse him. And he died quietly.

The damned fool, Pyckard. He had agreed to let the ship be burned, and Adam thought hiding Daniel there in the hold would be safe enough, but no! His master had to try to save the ship so that his profit wouldn’t be lost, didn’t he! So the ship returned home under Hawley’s crew, and the body was soon discovered. If not for that, Adam might have been able to return and live happily enough, but now he had only danger at every step.