The Last Templar (34 page)

“Yet you told him to leave the area? You told him to run?” asked Simon, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

Stephen stared back fearfully. I… like I said, it can’t have been Roger… but the Carters, they’ve been saying he was there, that they were going to tell you they saw him. I thought you’d think it was him if he didn’t go away. It was for the best, sir, it just seemed unfair to think…“

Baldwin leaned forward as well, his elbows on his knees as he stared hard at the man. “And what time did the two Carter boys leave the inn that night?”

“The Carter lads?” The thought seemed to strike horror into his voice. “The Carter boys? But they—”

“Answer the question!” rasped Baldwin.

“Not long after, I suppose. His voice was low once more, as if he was scared that he might say too much if he raised his voice. ”Not long.“

They left the horses at the inn and wandered down the lane towards the Carter house. Hugh had been sent to fetch John Black, so there were only the three of them when Simon rapped hard on the door.

Baldwin seemed to understand something was wrong, but left Simon scowling down in pensive gloom, as if he knew what the bailiff suspected. When Simon caught his eye, he thought he saw an expression of near relief, as if the knight was glad to have been discovered. It made the bailiff feel even worse, and it was with a growing anger that he waited for the door to open. It creaked open a short way to show a tired young woman, dressed in a dark tunic with an apron. She looked as if she had been cooking, and from her hands came the scent of fresh-baked bread to tantalise them. Smiling, Simon asked, “Are Alfred and Edward here?”

Her eyes seemed confused as they peered up at him. She could only have been a little over five feet tall and she seemed smaller as she stood diffidently wiping her hands on the apron. A couple of strands of light brown hair strayed from under her wimple, and one curl was twitching with the breeze just under her eye. Her eyes still on his face, she caught at the hair and pushed it back. “Yes,” she said. “My brothers are here. Why?”

“Could you ask them to come to the door, please?”

She seemed reluctant, but then Edward appeared and smilingly asked the three to enter, and join them indoors, pushing his sister aside as he opened the door wide.

Simon and Baldwin followed him through into a wide and noisesome room. The farmhouse contained all the human and animal members of the farm during bad weather. Some semblance of refinement had been attempted by fencing off one side, so that the animals and humans were separated, but it did not help much. In the family area there was a large fire, roaring in its clay hearth with the smoke rising to the rafters and slowly leaking out to the open air through the louvres. There was only one sign of modernisation in the room - a platform had been built on stilts, with a narrow ladder leading up to it. Obviously this was a separate solar for the family, away from the stench of the farmyard below.

With the animal smells and smoke the atmosphere was disgusting. The ordure from the beasts assailed the nostrils, the bitter tang of the smoke caught in the throat, and the atmosphere was altogether brutal, attacking the senses with vicious sharpness. The light from the thin windows was pale, and shafted down to illuminate small pools of dirt on the floor, struggling on the way to fight past the thick smoke.

Coughing, Baldwin beckoned to Edward and Alfred and went back to the clean air at the front of the house. It was with relief that he managed to pass out through the front door again.

Once in the open air, Simon said, “About the night that Brewer died. We want to ask you some more questions. You both said that you were looking after your flocks.”

Edward seemed to catch his breath, freezing in an instant to become as still as a statue, his face fixed into a mask of fear. His brother was not affected. His thin features gazed back at the bailiff with what seemed to be a sneer fixed to his lips.

“So?” he asked. “Is there something wrong?”

At first Simon gazed at him in simple dislike - the man clearly cared nothing for the death of Brewer, although that was hardly surprising in view of the farmer’s unpopularity. But then all the anxieties of the last few days, the tiredness, the horrors, the pain and fear, suddenly caught hold of him and focused in an unreasoning rage against Carter.

In his arrogance, this little man seemed almost to be taunting the bailiff over his inability to find the killer of Brewer. It felt as if he knew too of Simon’s suspicions about Baldwin, as if his patronising smile ridiculed Simon’s efforts, and the fury blazed white-hot in response; it insulted not just him, but all the others as well - it demeaned the old fanner, the abbot, the merchants, the poor, broken, solitary girl on the moor, even those in the posse and the trail bastons who had died. The bailiff had seen more death and destruction in the last few days than ever before, and the brutality, the senseless butchery, that he had been forced to witness had left its mark. A blind loathing gripped him, almost choking him with its intensity.

With a snarl, he reached forward and grabbed the young man by the throat of his smock, twisting the cloth as he pulled it toward him, yanking the man off-balance as he dragged him forwards.

His action caught even Baldwin by surprise. All of a sudden the knight found himself gazing at his friend with a new-found respect. Simon, he could see, had hauled the boy three feet against his will with one arm, and the knight found himself trying to control a smile as he lifted his finger to scratch at his ear. This bailiff could be a right bastard to have a fight with, he thought to himself.

And now Simon was speaking to the Carter boy through gritted teeth, his voice low and venomous, eyes bulging. “We know you lied to us. I am in no mood for games! What did you do after you left the inn. Did you go straight to Brewer’s house? Kill him as soon as Ulton had gone? What happened?”

“We did nothing!” The boy was averting his face; they were so close their noses almost touched. “We came home!”

“Why did you lie to us?”

His voice was almost a whine now, wheedling to persuade the bailiff. “We didn’t think it mattered. If we’d told you our father might have found out, and he’d have thrashed us for not looking after the sheep when we were supposed to.”

“What time did you get home that night?”

“We told you. We told you it was about eleven.”

“You’re lying!”
Simon bawled the words into the now fearful face. “You’re lying. You left the inn a little after Brewer. You left the inn just after the innkeeper threw him out, just after Ulton took him by the arm and helped him to his house, didn’t you? You followed them because you were so angry at his attitude at the inn, because you hated him, because he had money, because he hit out at you. You hated him, didn’t you?”

“No, no I—”

“You watched while Ulton put him in, didn’t you? You went in after him, didn’t you? You killed him, and set fire to the place so no one’d think it’d been a murder, didn’t you?
Didn’t you?”
Bawling, he stared into the fixed, terrified face.

“Simon, Simon,” murmured Baldwin, touching the stiff arm that held the petrified villein. “Calm yourself, Simon. Too much choler can be bad for the health. Now,” this to the shaking boy, now released as Simon turned away in disgust, who stood feebly stroking the side of his neck above the smock where the cloth had burned the skin red with a trembling hand. Shrugging, the knight grinned as he decided that a slight bluff could be risked. His voice reasonable, he said, “Alfred, we only want the truth. Nothing more. Did you know that Cenred saw you that night?”

The boy’s eyes were huge in his sudden horror and he shouted, “No!” Mouth hanging open, he stared at the knight, his gaze fixed with an awful intensity. “No! He can’t have!”

“Oh, I know you ducked back into the trees quickly, didn’t you, eh? But yes, he saw you. So I really think you’d better tell us the truth.”

At last Edward seemed to shake himself. He glanced at his brother with an expression of withering - what, scorn? Pity? Baldwin could not be sure, but there was something there that implied almost disgust with his younger brother. He began talking quietly, as though he was repeating the tale for himself, reminding himself rather than telling it to his audience. As he started, Baldwin noticed Edgar and John Black walking up towards them, and quickly motioned to them to wait, so as not to interrupt.

“Yes, we followed them back. It’s true.” His voice had an empty quality, and Baldwin thought it was as if he was absolutely exhausted. “Alfred was mad at him for hitting him. It wasn’t a bad thump, not as bad as our father would have given us for not seeing to the sheep, but then Alfred never really did get hit like that, did you? Not being the little one.” He looked up at Baldwin. “We didn’t do it, though. He was already dead when we got there. Roger must have killed him.”

Staring at him, Baldwin was sure he was telling the truth. He seemed to have conviction in the way he stood there, his eyes fixed rigidly on Baldwin’s face, his body stolid in the way that his legs were set a little apart, almost as if planted and rooted in the earth. Baldwin could see that he was not pleading or asking for belief, it was as if he knew that he would be trusted if he told the truth, and now he was doing so for that reason.

“Yes, we went up there and waited in the trees until Roger went away. We saw him scuttle out of the door and run down the hill. And that was when we went up. I didn’t want to go, but Alfred wanted to hit him back. He wasn’t happy that Brewer had hit him in the inn and got away with it. I went to the door and knocked, but as I did Alfred heard someone coming, so I ducked down and he ran away, over to the other side of the road. It was Cenred, but he walked past like he’d seen nothing. So I knocked again when he’d gone. Alfred came up, but there was no answer.”

“What then?” said Baldwin, shooting a quick glance over at Simon. The bailiff stood, head bowed, listening intently but quietly, as if ashamed of his previous reaction.

“Alfred walked in. The door wasn’t locked. I followed. Brewer was lying on the floor, near his mattress. The fire was low, and we couldn’t see much, but Alfred went over and kicked him, and Brewer did nothing. It scared us, we understood something must be wrong. I lit a candle from the fire, and then we could see. Brewer was stabbed - four, five times in the chest.”

“Yes, so what then?”

“We started to get out, but then Alfred wanted to see if it was true about the money. He wanted to see if Brewer really did have the money to buy us out, so he wanted to look.” Edward could not prevent the sneer from appearing on his face as he stared at the knight. “I let him. I’d had enough, I told him. I left him to look while I put Brewer back onto the bed - I don’t know, it seemed more respectful to leave him there. Well Alfred found Brewer’s purse and a wooden chest, and he took them. Then, when we were going to leave, he said, ”If it’s known he’s been murdered, we’ll be the obvious ones to think of.“ People would hear about the argument, the fight. They’d be bound to think it was us that killed him. So we thought we’d better hide the killing. It wasn’t as if it would hurt anyone else, after all. Brewer wasn’t going to care. And if it was never known there’d been a murder, there’d be no need for anyone to think we’d done something. So we set fire to some hay and left it burning.”

Of course, Simon thought - all that ash on the ground, it was from a hay store in the house. “And then you went home? You left the place burning and went home?”

“Yes. But then, when you seemed to realise that Brewer
had
been killed, we knew we had to do something. We thought if Roger heard we’d seen him helping Brewer home from the inn, he’d run away. You’d have to know it was him then. Whatever he said when you caught him, you’d know he’d done it.”

Baldwin nodded contemplatively, then spun to face Alfred. “What was in the box?”

“Nothing! Only a few pennies, and the same in his purse.”

“Bring them!” Then, to Edgar, he said, “You wait here. Take the purse and chest when he comes back, and keep them here. You’d better keep the Carters here as well. Is that alright, Simon?”

“Yes. For now, I think, we need to have another talk with Roger Ulton.”

Chapter Twenty-two

The dilapidated house stood as if forlorn as the four men walked up to it. Baldwin thought it looked like a ruin, like a destroyed castle after the besieging force has left, with the broken dark wood of the roof beams standing out like the burned and blackened remains of an attack from Greek fire. The picture was so clear in his mind, recalling so many past battles, that he involuntarily shuddered. Even the way that the corner of the far wall had fallen seemed to remind him of the way that a corner tower could fall after mining or catapult attack, and he half expected to see bodies on the ground as they came closer.

Simon and he left Hugh and Black behind as they walked up to the door and knocked. When it opened Roger Ulton himself stood before them.

“Bailiff, I—” He stopped as he saw the knight and then caught a glimpse of the other men behind, pausing with his mouth open in despair.

“We know all about it, Roger,” said Baldwin gently. “The only thing is, we don’t know why. What did he say to you to make you kill him?”

Wordlessly Roger went back in and they followed him inside. The pale and skinny man seemed to fall back as they walked in, as if he could fade away in the darkness of the house, his waxy features disappearing in the gloom. The hall had a fire glowing gently in the hearth, with three benches nearby, and Ulton fell on one, staring up at them.

“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes wide in his fear, but also, Baldwin felt, in a genuine disbelief. “I had been with Emma, and she told me she didn’t want me any more. I walked around until it was time for me to go home, so that my parents wouldn’t guess -I was hoping to talk her round later. But when I walked past the inn, Stephen almost threw Brewer at me. I couldn’t refuse to help him.

“But he kept going on and on about money and things. He kept telling me that I was useless, as bad as the Carters, not as good as his own son, who’s a merchant. He kept telling me I had hopeless parents - they couldn’t even keep their house up. He told me the best I could do with women was Emma, when anyone else would get someone better. He kept going on and on, even after I’d put him inside the door. I turned to leave when he said that he could buy Emma if he wanted: he could buy houses like my parents”, he said he could buy anything. I just had to shut him up. I… I don’t really know what happened. One minute he was sneering at me, next he was on the floor…‘