29 - The Oath (16 page)

And that, Sir Laurence thought, would have been simply foolish. A man ruthless enough to kill the father had to be prepared to kill all in the house.

Near Salisbury

Baldwin and Thomas Redcliffe were riding abreast, while further back was Jack, today looking remarkably relaxed as he trotted along. Wolf was jogging along happily at the side of the road, sniffing occasionally at the grasses and brambles.

‘Another day and we should be in Bristol,’ Baldwin said.

They had set off almost as soon as Baldwin had spoken to Redcliffe at the inn yesterday, telling the innkeeper to release the felons. The bearded leader’s flank was giving him some grief, and it was plain enough that they would not be able to follow in a hurry. In the event, Baldwin and his companions had made good time after Winchester. The way to Salisbury and thence to the plains had been surprisingly clear of all other travellers, and Baldwin was glad of the views in all directions from up here on the clear grassland. Any man attempting to waylay them would find his task made infinitely more difficult by the absence of trees and other means of concealment.

‘I am enormously grateful to you, sir,’ Redcliffe said once more.

It was a refrain which Baldwin had heard too many times in the last days. He made no reply now, staring at the horizon ahead, but inside he raged with himself for agreeing to come all this way. Travelling to Bristol would add at least two days to his journey home, and he was desperate to get to Jeanne and make sure that she was safe. But as soon as he had admitted to the men in the shed that he was a Keeper of the King’s Peace, he had found himself bound. The men who had attacked Redcliffe had received his promise to release them, and no matter what he wished, he could not retain them without breaking that promise. That Baldwin would not do. Meantime, he had a duty to protect the King’s Messenger. Not that the fellow looked much like a messenger, in his opinion; he looked much more like a spy, and Baldwin had a healthy dislike of such men. Usually they were motivated by money, and he detested all forms of mercenary. Men who conspired and plotted were all untrustworthy, to his mind.

‘You are good to help me in this way,’ the man said.

‘I had placed you in a position of danger; it was the least I could do,’ Baldwin said.

‘But still very kind. Many would not have helped me.’

‘I wish I had realised the danger those men posed.’

‘I wish I had known myself!’ Redcliffe said. ‘I still wonder who it was who paid them.’

The fellows had all denied any knowledge of the man who told them to hunt Redcliffe. It made Baldwin wonder who could have had such a violent hatred of the man that he was prepared to pay a gang to murder him. It was possible that Redcliffe knew who this man could be, but he vehemently denied it when Baldwin asked him, and from his apparent shock when he heard what the men had said, Baldwin reluctantly had to believe him. He was the subject of someone’s irrational hatred, apparently. Well, such things did happen. Or perhaps it was merely that the Queen had heard Redcliffe was coming this way, and had set men to catch him. It would depend on the importance of the message he carried.

Redcliffe himself had suggested that it could be a past competitor in his businesses. Not only had he been successful as a merchant, he had been known as a good judge of horseflesh, and had three times travelled to Lombardy and Spain to buy destriers and other mounts for the King and his nobles. Were others perhaps jealous of his trading? he wondered.

‘I confess, I find it astonishing that you do not know who this murderous enemy could be,’ Baldwin said now. ‘Surely it was a man who saw you on your travels and set those fellows on you at the inn.’

‘There was no one I noticed.’

‘You are certain you have not offended any other fellows on your journey? I recall one man who felt himself offended.’ Baldwin recounted the tale of a murder some years before: in that case the murderer had been a parson, from Quantoxhead in Somerset. He had taken umbrage at a man who accidentally jostled him in the street. In a sudden rage, he declared that he would see the man in hell within a day, and was in fact better than his word. The fellow was found dead the same afternoon, his servant also murdered at his side.

‘The idea that a man should seek to have me killed is appalling,’ Redcliffe said with a shudder. ‘I have never been in such a situation before. It is most extraordinary to think that I could be the target of a killer.’

‘You have much to remember this year. Losing a ship, then being attacked while on pilgrimage, then this latest incident . . . It was Black Heath where you said you were robbed, was it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Those men: did they appear to want to kill you, or were they interested only in robbing you?’

‘Oh, they seemed solely interested in my purse. If they had wanted to, they could easily have slain me. They had me at their mercy.’

‘Did they get anything else?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Something that told them you were a King’s Messenger? You could have become the target of someone who seeks to support Queen Isabella against the King.’

‘No, only money,’ the man repeated.

Baldwin glanced at the purse at his belt: it was a very old, worn-looking leather one. ‘I am surprised your purse was returned to you,’ he remarked.

‘Yes. I was fortunate,’ Redcliffe said. ‘I found it later in the roadway.’ He put a hand on it as though protectively, although there was not much money in it, from what Baldwin could see.

‘And it survived the robbery, too. That was lucky,’ Baldwin said.

‘It is valuable to me, this purse,’ Redcliffe said shortly. ‘A sentimental object.’

Baldwin nodded. It was true that a man could become attached to a number of items. He had himself been most attached to his blue sword, now sadly lost in France; but he did find Redcliffe’s attraction to what was a simple leather purse to be a little surprising in a man who said that he had once been very rich. He would have expected such a merchant to be more attached to a richly embroidered purse, perhaps with gold threads, and a decoration of precious stones.

‘Are there many merchants in Bristol?’ he asked. ‘It is one of those cities which I have never before visited, only passed nearby.’

‘It is a great city,’ Redcliffe said enthusiastically. ‘Beautiful, clean, with excellent lands all about, and access to the sea from the Severn. There could be no better place in all the realm.’

‘You are proud of it, then?’

‘Very. I love Bristol. Even though I have suffered in recent years, I cannot blame the city. It is not, perhaps, so well-governed as some others, but it—’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh, we have the usual problems. There is a small number of men who will regulate all business to suit themselves, and they are not accommodating to others.’

‘We have a similar situation in Exeter,’ Baldwin said. ‘The Freedom is a jealously guarded liberty.’

‘So it is in Bristol. There are a mere fifteen men who control the working of the city. Nobody may do what he wishes without the approval of them all.’

‘You sound bitter.’

‘I was promised by one, a man I trusted, that he would help me by paying some of my debts and support my return to business, but when I actually needed his help, he turned upon me and demanded all his money back. It was he who ruined me after all my problems.’

‘Was he a friend?’

‘I should not speak too ill of him. It is not kind, for he is dead, but yes, I had thought him a friend. It only serves to prove that in business no man may be counted your friend. All may smile and allow you to join their mess, but when it comes to a matter of business, you must assume that each and every one will stab you in the back. Capon did not appear to care about my feelings. It was only a business transaction to him. He did not feel my pain when he forced me to sell my property and leave the city. He had won, I had lost, and that was all.’

‘You say he is dead?’

Redcliffe nodded, and related the story of the Capons and Squire William.

‘I have heard many similar stories,’ Baldwin said. ‘Yet it is difficult to comprehend how someone could take his revenge on an entire family . . . that beggars belief. But I suppose if he had been cuckolded, knew that his father-in-law was denigrating him . . . There are many men who would find that difficult to swallow. He must have felt entirely betrayed.’

‘Oh, I can imagine a man killing when he realised his wife had betrayed him like that,’ Redcliffe said, ‘but not the other deaths. The wife, maybe, while in hot blood, but that case was not a hot-blooded affair. It had been carefully planned. He slew the family with a gang of his henchmen. They were so subtle and careful that they all escaped the city before the hue and cry. It was only when the poor dry-nurse recovered herself enough to raise the alarm that people realised anything had happened.’

He shook his head, frowning slightly. ‘You know, Sir Baldwin, it helped me a little. I had not yet paid off the last of the money I owed him, and God’s body, but I had no reason to feel sympathy for him. Yet I do feel sorry that he died in that way. It was a hideous death. And the Squire was found in his manor near Hanham, denying that he had any part in the murders, the deceitful fellow.’

‘Men will deny their crimes,’ Baldwin said heavily. ‘Even when their lies are tested and proved false.’

‘As happened here,’ Redcliffe said. He glanced at Baldwin, who was turned in his saddle and now gazed over his shoulder at the way behind them. ‘You are worried, Sir Baldwin?’

‘There is one thing that concerns me,’ the knight admitted, turning forward once more.

‘You are worried that those fellows might follow us? I don’t think so. The way that you bested them in the bedchamber was surely enough to persuade them all to relinquish any ambitions against me. Hah! The bearded man would scarcely be able to walk with the prick you gave his side.’

‘No,’ Baldwin said slowly. ‘My thought was that, while you have been enormously lucky so far, and have travelled by curious routes, yet twice you have been discovered and attacked.’

‘I am surely the most unlucky of men.’

‘Or there is a man following you who has pointed you out,’ Baldwin said. ‘Someone so committed to his task that he is prepared to follow you for many leagues to rob you – or to kill you.’

Third Monday after the Feast of St Michael
²⁰

Near Hanham

Robert Vyke was woken by a kick to his belly, and he curled into a ball, retching on his empty stomach.

‘Get your arse up, you bladder of piss!’

Forcing himself onto all fours, Vyke managed to lever himself upright, taking tight hold of a metal staple in the wall. The pain in his leg was a fire that seared his soul, and the bruises from last night were sore and throbbing.

‘Let me speak to your Bailiff,’ he managed to croak.

‘Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for good,’ the man snarled. He was a big, bull-bodied fellow, short but incredibly strong, with a face that was red from cider, wearing a four-day beard of coarse black stubble. In his hand he held a short length of thick rope, that hurt like a cudgel when he swung it, as he had last night.

Once more Robert Vyke had good cause to curse his miserable fortune.

He had come here, to the nearest house, as soon as he had found the head. It was his duty and his responsibility to call up the posse to discover the perpetrator of this foul murder as soon as he could. The rule was that first finder must go to all the nearest houses, at least three of them, and announce that a body had been found. Then it was up to the local officers to demand that a Coroner be called, and that the jury gather so that the whole matter could be investigated and all pertinent details noted. All too often men who found bodies would run quickly in the opposite direction to avoid being attached, which meant you had to pay a fine to guarantee that you would come back when the Justices convened their court.

‘All I did was—’

‘You came to the wrong place if you thought you could kill a man like that and get away with it,’ the man spat.

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Robert said. His belly was a mass of anguish now, both from the beatings he had endured and from the hunger.

‘No one else here could have done it,’ the man said unsympathetically and swung his rope-end.

It caught Robert on the side of his jaw, and he felt blood begin to course down his face as the flesh was slashed open. Wordlessly, he stumbled forward, and almost fell into the hands of the men waiting outside.

Blinking in the sudden sunshine, he tried to grab at something to hold himself upright, but his hand missed the door’s lintel and instead he found himself snatching at thin air. With a cry of despair, he tumbled to the ground again, stifling a scream of agony as his bad leg slammed into a stone.

‘Get up!’ his gaoler said again, poised to kick, but this time a sudden command made him pause.

‘Stop! I know you are as dull-witted as the sheep in the pasture, Halt, but you will not kick that fellow again. It looks as though you’ve been using him for a game of camp-ball as it is, man. Dear God, have you killed him?’