The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) (2 page)

I had great fun thinking of the possible routes by which Simon and Baldwin might have returned from the Scillies to their homes
*
in Devon, but the main thing for me was the idea that they might become embroiled in the turbulent politics of their times. Not the greater politics which are so often portrayed – the disputes between the King and his most senior advisers – but the lower level of politics i.e. how Edward II’s arguments affected his realm, and how people even hundreds of miles away from his court in London could get caught up in national affairs.

These were fraught times. The famine was still a recent event, and all could remember the horror of it; everyone had friends or family who had died. In the aftermath, there was what we would now probably call stagflation, with economic failure. Many people fled from their old homes seeking new lives in towns and cities, although poor Richer in my story had a more pressing reason to leave his vill.

For a more in-depth look at the period, I can heartily recommend Michael Prestwich’s excellent
The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272–1377
– a well-researched book which helped me no end, and Ian Mortimer’s superb
The Greatest Traitor
, which starts with one of the key events in my novel, the escape of Roger Mortimer from the Tower of London.

For many centuries Mortimer’s life has been glossed over, with his period of control mentioned in one brief sentence between the death of Edward II and the accession of Edward III.
Since Edward III had a much more interesting reign even than his own father – since it encompassed the plague, the beginning of the Hundred Years War, and his fabulous military victories – it’s possibly no surprise that Mortimer has been left as a footnote to history.

But he was not merely some treacherous bandit who sought to overthrow his King and take power. Mortimer’s was a much more convoluted fall and rise. His ancestors had always been loyal servants of the Crown. It was his grandfather who, in 1265, found Hugh Despenser, a loyal supporter of de Montfort, King Henry III’s enemy, on the field of Evesham and killed him.

In years to come, the Mortimers remained devoted supporters of their Kings, and were always included amongst the royal companions – a situation which came to an end during the dismal reign of Edward II.

Early on, Mortimer had been a close associate of the King. His position was weakened when Edward grew infatuated with Piers Gaveston, but even during that period, Mortimer remained loyal, and was gradually given more power and authority. When the people of Bristol revolted during the Tallage of 1316, it was he who laid siege to the city and recaptured it. He was also shown to be a competent commander, both when he captured Llywelyn and halted the Welsh revolts, and during his Irish campaigns as well.

While Mortimer flourished as Lieutenant of Ireland, the power of his worst enemy, another Hugh Despenser, was growing apace in England. By 1321 Despenser’s authority was pivotal to the whole realm. Any man who wished to speak to the King and petition him had first to win Despenser’s support. And that meant money. He was an atrocious man, utterly without mercy when seeking his own advantage.

Mortimer, the monarch’s most loyal servant and warrior, was imprisoned in the Tower for raising his flag against Despenser along with the Marcher Lords. However, Despenser was not stupid
enough to believe that he ever would be safe while his most bitter enemy lived. He persuaded the King that Mortimer must be executed. When Mortimer heard that he was due to die in August 1323, he broke free on the first day of that month.

That famous escape led to a series of panicky messages, sent to all Sheriffs and other keepers of the law throughout the realm, to apprehend and hold Mortimer, whether dead or alive. On hearing of the man’s flight, the King had gone into a rage. Mortimer was one of his best generals – exactly the sort of man who could raise an army in rebellion and seek to wrest the kingdom from him. For Mortimer the spoils would be vast.

This was the land to which Simon and Baldwin returned from their pilgrimage to Compostela in 1323. Their country was rent by divisions: the King and his friends seemed all-powerful and undefeatable, while they ravaged the nation. Despenser was rapacious, grabbing lands, castles and treasure. He would capture anyone, even widows, in order to extort what he wanted. He set himself up as the ruler of most of Wales, controlling vast swathes of land, and with his mastery of the King, he not only took plenty of money in bribes, he also prevented any news which reflected badly on him from reaching Edward’s ears. In an environment similar to the Soviet state, all were suspicious of each other. Few would dare to state their opposition to the King because to oppose him was to invite death and destruction. King Edward II had already slaughtered his own cousin, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, and hundreds of others after the short-lived campaign leading to Boroughbridge.

Yet in a place like Cornwall, so far removed from the politics of the court, the peasants wouldn’t have worried themselves quite so much. They had their own battles to fight, making sure that the harvest was safely brought in, keeping weasels and stoats from their chickens, protecting their piglets from foxes and their lambs
from magpies and crows, praying, always praying, that God would not send another famine to devastate the land and kill off all their children.

This was a time of total insecurity. The King was weak, his nation under attack from the Scottish, from his own people, and from the elements. He gave his support to one group of thieves for whom the law meant nothing, at the expense of another. Because, make no mistake, Mortimer was little better than Despenser, just as Despenser himself was no better than his own predecessor, Piers Gaveston. When Roger Mortimer later grabbed the reins of power, sadly he was just as greedy and vengeful as Despenser had been.

However, at least he had the honour to have tried to live by his oaths to the King, until Edward himself turned his face to another. Who can tell what sort of a man Mortimer might have been if the King hadn’t first been disloyal to
him
?

Cardinham is, thank heavens, by-passed by the A30. The village is a pretty little place in green and rolling countryside with views to the moors of Bodmin beyond. From the moors east of Temple, the real isolation of the place can be imagined. During the winter, this area would be more or less cut off from all the rest of Cornwall, and even in summer, the roads and lanes must have been atrocious. Only carts or packhorses would have been available for transport; nothing in the way of decent wagons could have coped with the hills and the mud.

The church deserves a visit, and it’s pleasing to note that it lists the vicars and priests who have served the community there, going back to 12 September 1271 and Odo de Prydies. I have taken the liberty of inventing Father John because I have a deeply ingrained dislike of ascribing thoughts and feelings to real men and women who are long dead and unable to answer for themselves or threaten legal retaliation! To my mind, using real people in
books is a form of post-mortem slander and I always prefer to create new characters.

South of the main village, the castle’s remains stand on private land, but the raised mound of the motte can be seen quite clearly. My own description of it is based on guesswork because I’ve seen no detailed archaeological reports into how the buildings stood there, but I think there is some evidence for the layout I’ve suggested. It wasn’t a large place, but as a small fortress, I think it would have been pleasing.

North and east stand the church and buildings of Temple. This place was surely another of the small manors owned by The Temple, or the Knights Templar, and would have been a place of some solace to Baldwin. However, the priest living in so lonely an outpost would have been desperate for any form of companionship.

The search for more accurate information about English law and how the various Constables, Keepers, Coroners, Sheriffs and others managed to administer justice at the courts over the counties of the south-west, is ongoing, but I have to thank the scholarly works of Anthony Musson. His books
The Evolution of English Justice
and
Medieval Law in Context
are regularly pulled off my shelves.

All the persons described are figments of my imagination, but I have based these events on things which did happen in these areas. At a time of mounting dissatisfaction with the King, in the run-up to a civil war, all parts of the realm grew more lawless; even a small community in Cornwall would have become less manageable as Edward II’s power waned.

Naturally any errors in location and in facts are entirely my own.

Michael Jecks

Northern Dartmoor

August 2003

There were two happy men that day in Cardinham in the summer of 1323, and one who was fearful.

Serlo the miller had every right to be concerned. Although he feared ruin, he was about to be murdered, for reasons he could not begin to comprehend, and at the hands of one whom he would never have suspected.

Nicholas of Cardinham sat on his palfrey, eyeing the villeins at work in the castle’s fields with a profound sense of satisfaction.

From here, high on the edge of the moors leading up towards Bodmin in the Earldom of Cornwall, he could see for many miles in the bright sunshine. The golden, drooping heads of the oats in the fields bobbed in the wind like ladies moving to an unheard tune. Wonderful! It was a sight to make a man give thanks to God, and Nicholas, a religious man, did so gladly.

Although the calls of the sweating peasants were loud, he could still hear the larks trilling high overhead. With every breeze the leaves of gorse rattled dryly, their yellow flowers dancing. To this was added the mechanical hiss of the reapers. With every sweep of their scythes, dust was thrown upwards in clouds of fine mist. The music of men rehoning their blades with long stones sang in the air. Others were collecting the sheaves of oats, two to every man, stacking them in stooks while their womenfolk and children plucked gleanings from the ground and placed them in their aprons or cloths tied about their waists with thongs. They were welcome to their meagre
harvest; Nicholas had already seen to his lord’s profit, God be praised!

Although not tall, Nicholas had the ability to fill a space with his broad shoulders, immense right arm and neck of corded muscles. All men-at-arms had powerful bodies, but Nicholas carried his with a calm authority that went with his humility. Unlike so many of his friends and companions, he had not risen to the highest orders, hadn’t even made it to become a squire but now, at forty-six years old, he was content. He was respected enough to have been given this command, the Castle of Cardinham in the Earldom of Cornwall, in charge of twelve men-at-arms, some of them squires in their own right.

His hazel eyes rose to survey the landscape. Set in his leathery, sunburned face, they shone with intelligence and confidence. He was a man who had been tested, and who knew his own measure – and, more importantly, Nicholas was content with the result. At his age, after so many wars and battles, he would be a sad man indeed if he hadn’t been happy with himself.

The last years had been tough. The famines of 1315 and 1316 had been much worse in other parts of the country than down here, but people had still starved. Men found that their teeth became loose in their jaws, children grew peevish and irritable, many dying long before they should, and some folk had left the land altogether and sought their fortune in towns and cities. A few had returned at last, but only a few. Nicholas was short of manpower even now, but the men who had come back were not the sort he could count upon. They were more likely to cause trouble. And trouble
was
brewing – he could feel it in the way that the villeins watched each other and him. The King was close to war with the barons again. All knew it.

No matter. For now the most important thing was to get the harvest in. Oats might be viewed with less favour than other grains, but it was the only crop which thrived here in the
windswept, rainswept western part of the realm. Others merely drowned or were blown to pieces. Wealthier men from other parts of the country looked down upon this land; they chose to laugh at people whose staple diet was the same as their beasts’, but Nicholas didn’t care. Not today of all days.

So long as the food was safe for the winter, the peasants would be biddable. When the long cold nights and tedium of winter made them fractious, however, that was the time to worry. For that was when they started bickering and squabbling.

There was an unsettled atmosphere about the place at the moment. Had been ever since the King crushed the rebellion of his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster. Peasants rightly feared another war. If there was one, their most able-bodied men would be taken away, their food stores raided by the King’s purveyors, and those who remained would have more work to do. All suffered when war threatened.

He gave a curt nod to the castle’s steward, Gervase, who stood at the edge of the communal fields, staff of office gripped tightly in one hand as he surveyed the folk working, occasionally bellowing at a shirker. Then Nicholas pulled his mount’s head round with a sigh. It would have been good to remain here, but he needs must go home.

He had always enjoyed watching his men reaping the harvest, would even join in with their celebrations later as they drank their fill of the best ale and cider, and ate the meat from the ram which was already spitted and turning slowly over the fire. As usual it was watched by the ancient figure of old Iwan the smith, who scolded and threatened young Gregory, his six-year-old grandson, while the boy sweated, turning the great spit’s handle to keep the meat rotating. Gregory’s father was a farmer who worked down towards the Holy Well, a man called Angot who was even now honing his scythe, Nicholas saw. Angot wasn’t one of the manor’s tenants, so was likely here to earn some extra
cash. His own harvest hadn’t been very good, apparently: some of his seed had turned sour over the winter. Still, it meant that the grain here would be gathered in that bit sooner, which was all to the good.