The Death Ship of Dartmouth: (Knights Templar 21) (5 page)

This Stephen was more pleasant than any of the others. Less cocky (in both meanings of the word) than his
immediate predecessor, he managed to look ascetic, while still reserving some spirit. Simon’s occasional irritable outbursts could reduce a weaker man to tears in a moment, but Stephen would listen, and if there was a rational cause to the explosion, would sometimes offer useful advice. If there was no good reason, however, he would just sit back with a puzzled expression that was somehow amused and condescending at the same time. At first this had made Simon ashamed, then it infuriated him, and now, after some weeks, it actually soothed him.

The fact was, there were many frustrations to this job. As well as Simon’s anger at being removed from the job he knew and loved, he missed his family. Especially after the return of his old servant, Hugh. And now, of course, he wanted to be nearer home and Tavistock since the death of his patron, Abbot Robert.

Abbot Robert. There was a man who would be sorely missed. Simon had all but idolised him. To those who knew him, he was a powerful force for good. For those who did not, it was hard to know where to start to describe him: kind, generous, worldly, and a man of business like no other Simon had ever met. He had taken on Tavistock Abbey when it was in a terrible state, and had been forced to borrow heavily to keep the institution afloat. That was many years ago, forty-odd, and in the time since, he had built Tavistock up to become one of the most effective and wealthiest convents in the whole of Devon and Cornwall. Simon had respected him hugely … and loved him. Abbot Robert had replaced the father who had died some years ago, and Simon felt the loss sorely.

Without a spiritual and businesslike head, the abbey was marking time, and all could feel it. Stephen here was in a similar position to Simon. Both knew full well that their position would be discussed at the highest level, as soon as the new abbot was confirmed in his post, but neither could influence the outcome. It left a man feeling peculiarly isolated.

If Stephen was not wearing the cloth, Simon could easily believe that his slender frame, large blue eyes and fair hair could be a sore temptation to many of the women about the town. From what he had seen of other clerks, not even the cloth itself would protect them from womanly ways. Not that Stephen’s predecessor had needed much tempting …

Ach! It was no good. There was too much on his mind to keep him concentrating on his work.

‘The ship, master,’ Stephen prompted him now. ‘She was found on the sea some miles out, just over the horizon.’

‘Yes – and?’

It wasn’t only his work, either. He had his daughter Edith to worry about, and her impending marriage, long-threatened and now imminent. Well, she was old enough, and her young man, Peter, was bright enough. Simon had persuaded her not to marry, though, until Peter had completed his apprenticeship to Master Harold, the merchant. Better not to have the expense and worry of a woman to support when he wasn’t his own man yet. Except that now Peter had succeeded in winning his position, Simon was still anxious. For some reason he could not accept that his little girl was old enough to be wed. Well, he would have to grow accustomed to the thought, and that was an end to it!

‘She is fully loaded,’ the clerk went on, ‘but there’s no one alive on board.’

‘What do you mean? She must have had a crew of ten or more!’

‘Eleven, Bailiff.’ Stephen shook his head a little, and then tilted it. ‘Let me send for the master of the ship that found her.’

Master Hilary Beauley called an order, gripping the nearest shroud as he peered ahead. He shouted again, and felt the ship begin to slow. Until now she had been racing ahead while he kept his eyes on the far distance, but now he was near enough, and he bellowed a third command down to the men at the halyards and up on the sail itself. Soon the great sail was rising as the men reefed it in, clutching great handfuls and hauling it up until only a tiny fraction of the canvas was catching the wind. The ship slowed in her majestic progress, and he could feel her begin to level out.

‘Get my boat ready!’ he bawled down.

This delay would hold up all those in the convoy. His was the first ship to return, but just behind him, he knew, were the others. The law said all ships were to travel in convoy, to protect them from raiders, but this particular convoy had not started out that way.

Pyckard’s ship had been first to leave the port. His little vessel had careered away, and it was only when it was already gone that the others realised what a march he had stolen on them. Beauley had set off immediately with his own ship, with Hawley, so he felt sure, a short way after him. From that moment, time was critical. If Pyckard’s ship
reached France a long time before they did, Pyckard’s merchants could make their own prices, and when the others arrived, their own cargoes would be less attractive.

Hawley had one of the fastest and best ships available, and since the concept of the convoy was already rent asunder, it was every man for himself. Each master knew that. Beauley could make good speed, but he must be overtaken by Hawley in the end.

So when Pyckard had gone, he quickly followed, desperate to beat his competitors. If he was to make his profit, he would have to be as quick and seamanlike as he ever had been.

‘Boat’s away!’

Beauley swung down and stepped lightly across the decking. He sprang up to the wale, the thickest strake at the top of the ship’s side, and let himself down the ladder into the boat. ‘Haul away!’

Sitting here in the rear of the boat, he felt a thrill of anticipation, which was only dulled by the lousy oar-strokes of the man in front of him. ‘Stop trying to look through the back of your head, man,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll tell you when to ship oars.’

Alred Paviour kicked at a pebble and glowered down at the body. This was one job he should have refused. A simple hole in the road, and a few other repairs, and he’d thought he couldn’t possibly lose; they were offering a fixed contract and it had seemed too good to turn down. But he’d always had a thing about sailors, and this damn town was absolutely full of them: great horny-handed, hairy-arsed, swearing
sailors reeking of fish and seaweed and other things he’d prefer not to guess at.

‘You might as well go to the tavern, master. There’s no point waiting here.’

Glaring at the watchman standing guard over his hole, Alred swore softly. ‘You know how much this is costing me?’

Aye. And every time he entered the tavern alone, it went quiet. People didn’t like strangers down here, and when you saw that almost all the men in the taverns were sailors, who’d be willing to cut your throat as soon as look at you, you realised that this was a very dangerous place. Never trust a matelot, that was the paver’s rule.

The watchman was sympathetic. ‘Nothing you can do about it. The Coroner’s been sent for. If you’re lucky, he’ll be only a couple of days.’

‘Even if he is, he’ll need a day to arrange his inquest,’ Alred grumbled. ‘I’ve seen them in Exeter. Bloody fools take a good time over their inquests, and all the while poor workers suffer.’

‘We don’t take so long here,’ the watchman said with a chuckle. ‘This isn’t some borough in the middle of a city where they can bugger about for days. We’ve got work to be getting on with down here. You wait and see.’

Alred nodded bitterly. A man of middle height, with grizzled hair and beard, his eyes were more used to laughter, but today there was nothing to laugh about. He glanced down at the corpse, shaking his head. This fellow must have been a lover, a son, a father, perhaps … and now all he had become was sport for others to gawp at.

There were plenty who kept coming to take a look. Two youngsters, a boy and girl of ten or so, were standing up at the edge of the hole even now, their mother or nurse with them, all three peering down, wide-eyed, at the dead man. Well, it was best that everyone who could might see him, so that someone could identify him when the Coroner arrived.

Turning, he made his way to the Porpoise further down Higher Street. It was a small alehouse of the sort he would normally avoid in Exeter, but here … where else would a body go? Blasted place was hopeless. In Exeter, there were attractions all the time: you could watch the baiting, see a duel, or go and watch the jugglers and fools at the market square. Ah, how he missed Exeter.

The alehouse did have one advantage, though: it was cheap. He walked in, stooping under the low lintel, and looked about him for the others.

‘That bloke said the Coroner should be here in two days, and he may be quick to come to a conclusion,’ he said when he had joined them.

Bill and Law were his helpers. Bill was a taller man, his eyes a pale blue, his features wrinkled from laughter and sunburned in a round face. Law was darker, with steady brown eyes set in a narrow face, and he was much shorter. Only sixteen, he had been apprenticed to Alred for two years now, and was bright and quick, if not strong enough yet to do much of the heavier work.

‘Two days? What do we do now, then?’ Law asked.

‘Wait until we hear, I suppose. We can’t go and do anything until we’re allowed. Oh, God’s ballocks! What a
mess! Why did we ever come here to this miserable midden?’

Law shrugged. His real name was Lawrence, but Bill and Alred had agreed early on that the shortarse didn’t justify so long a name. Now he leaned forward eagerly. ‘See that girl over there? She’s been making eyes at me for the last while. Reckon she fancies me!’

‘Law, she’d be more likely to fancy a hog,’ Alred sighed. ‘Your face looks like you’ve been rolled in a bed of nettles.’

‘It’s not that bad!’ Law protested, a hand going to his volcanic chin.

‘Don’t be too hard on the lad,’ Bill said. ‘It might just be that she’s got lousy eyesight.’ He burst out laughing.

‘There are many eye me up, I’ll have you know,’ Law said sulkily.

‘They’re desperate in a town like this,’ Alred chuckled, then sighed. ‘What are we going to do for money if we get held up? Christ’s pain! what made me take this job in the first place?’

Bill smiled, showing his uneven teeth. ‘Because you said we’d clean up in a little place like this. You said we’d charge them through the nose for everything they needed done and we’d live the high life when we got home again. You said the locals down here never saw anyone from the real world and had less sense than a peasant from—’

‘Yes, yes! All right!’ Alred said hastily, aware of all the eyes in the place going to him and his friends. Bill’s voice was penetrating. ‘But in the meantime we’re losing money. That road has to be repaved, and I agreed a fixed price for the job. If we’re held up, we won’t make a penny profit.’

‘You agreed a price for the job?’ Law burst out. ‘You always taught me that a fixed price was daft, that you’d never know if something was going to go wrong, and that you always need to be flexible in case of problems.’

‘Yes, well – this proves I was right, doesn’t it?’ Alred snapped, adding nastily, ‘And it was you supposed to put up the barriers, wasn’t it?’

‘I did! You know I did!’

‘They weren’t there this morning, were they? How do I know you put them up right? If it was that easy for some thieving scrote to nick them, you can’t have fixed them in place all that well, can you?’ He sank his face in his cup of ale.

‘It’s not my fault all this happened, as you well know!’

Alred grimaced, then: ‘No, it isn’t.’

Law grinned. ‘Come on, Alred. What are we?’

‘Don’t. Just don’t say it.’

‘What are we, eh, Bill?’

‘We’re paviours, Law. We keep people moving.’

‘What are we, Alred?’

‘Yes, yes, yes. We’re bleeding paviours. But that isn’t going to help us when …’

‘Hey! Is the paver in here?’ It was Stephen, the clerk.

Alred closed his eyes and screwed up his face. ‘See?’ he hissed. ‘And now I’m going to go and get stuffed for finding a stiff. I hope you’re pleased with your work, lad!
Yes
– I’m here.’

‘Come with me. The Port Reeve wants a word with you.’

Hamo the cooper was at his bench outside when he heard the boat returning to the shore. It scraped along the piles of
empty clam and oyster shells that shingled the beach, and the men inside jumped out, hauling her up the slope to lie out of the water. Hamo watched idly as Jankin took the great stone anchor and thrust the rope from the boat through the hole bored in it, and then Hamo returned to his work, shaving a stave to fit a broken barrel. Much of his work involved mending damaged vessels. He didn’t know what he’d do if sailors were more careful!

‘Come on, Henry, let’s be getting you out of there,’ a man called.

Hamo noticed that Henry Pyket was still seated on the thwart, his face in his hands.

‘Come on, Dad, eh?’

Jankin was a steady fellow, sound and as hard as oak in a fight, and Hamo was oddly affected to see how he went to the older man and placed an arm about his neck comfortingly.

‘Hey, Jankin, you want some help there, boy?’ he shouted.

‘We’re fine, I think, Master Hamo,’ Jankin responded, but he didn’t sound it.

‘Let’s help him out of there, eh?’ Hamo went over and said gently, ‘Henry, have you hurt yourself, man? Hit your head on a beam?’

‘We’ve all seen them, haven’t we,’ Henry said dully. ‘You’ve seen your share of dead men, I daresay, Hamo?’

‘We all have, aye. There isn’t the year we don’t see enough washed up on the beaches.’

‘But have you ever been touched by one?’ Henry gave a shudder of horror. ‘He was in there, he was, poor Danny, and
a-wavin’ like he was asking me to join him. It turned my stomach, it did!’

‘Danny? What was
he
doing in there?’ Hamo asked, bewildered.

‘He’s dead, Hamo. Murdered, like all the others.’

‘God’s teeth, you mean that’s the
Saint John
?’

‘There’s no one on board, I swear. Only Danny down in the hold, and he’s dead. All the other men have gone,’ Henry said with another shiver. ‘The ship’s cursed, Hamo. It must be. Sweet Jesus! It’s like the devil came up and took ’em all. Took ’em all down into the sea with him.’