The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) (40 page)

‘Your expression, you know what that reminded me of?’ he said, and explained. In the moment after he finished, he saw his wife flush, then go pale, and he saw the sharp glance she threw at Gervase.

The man, he realised, as a fist clenched about his heart, whom he had always thought of as his friend.

Sir Jules looked greatly annoyed, Baldwin thought as he and Simon approached Roger and the Coroner at the grassy bank near the church.

‘I am decided. I shall continue with my inquest as soon as I possibly can.’

Roger looked at Baldwin with an innocent expression that the knight found entirely unconvincing.

‘What is the reason for your decision, Coroner?’ he asked, and then his face lengthened as he heard the man’s reply. As Sir Jules came to the end of his tale, Baldwin glanced at Simon. ‘This is interesting, Coroner,’ he said, and explained what Father John had told them after Jules had left. ‘Perhaps this confirms what the priest said – that Gervase has had many women, including Athelina, then Julia, but that he’s recently thrown her over. I’ve heard from others that he might have a new lover.’

‘Which could be Lady Anne,’ Roger murmured thoughtfully. ‘She could have insisted that he leave any other women.’

‘Which is fine,’ Simon said, ‘but the child said that the castellan was guilty. That makes no sense. If Nicholas heard evil rumours, he might kill the adulterous couple, but why slaughter the mere witnesses?’

‘I only repeat the child’s evidence,’ Jules said haughtily.

‘You seriously tell us that this child, this
infant
, was a credible witness?’ Baldwin asked. ‘Enough for you to insult a man of Nicholas’s stature? I find that more than a little surprising.’

‘You are attracted to an abstract problem, Sir Baldwin,’ Jules said with some asperity. ‘This, for me, is a prosaic matter. We have bodies: a man and a woman and three children. These are issues of record. I am not interested in justice, my duty is to record the facts so that when the Justices of gaol delivery arrive, they can assess the guilt or innocence of the men put before them by the jury. All the time I am bogged down with this matter, I am missing others. Better by far that I should move on to the next. Especially while a traitor to the King is wandering the countryside.’

‘So you will blacken the good castellan’s name in front of his lord’s peasants so that you can run off and look at other matters?’ Baldwin asked silkily. ‘Not to mention causing untold problems
at the castle. What if Nicholas has no idea of the adultery of his wife? What if she is not guilty of adultery and these rumours are nothing more than that?’

‘You say that, when both those who witnessed the steward and the lady rutting in the meadow are now dead? Surely it is this secret which is being concealed at the cost of so much death.’

Baldwin rolled his eyes. ‘God save me from logical Coroners! Good Christ in Heaven, man. Two people saw Lady Anne lying with Gervase; the two people have been murdered – therefore they were killed because Lady Anne lay with Gervase. It is the same as saying this moth has wings; birds have wings therefore this moth is a bird. It is not logical.’

‘You may not think so, but I disagree. I think it makes good sense, so I shall call my inquest now and finish the job.’

Baldwin licked his lips. ‘Please, give me a little more time before you take this action. It is too drastic. I require another day to find the truth.’

‘A whole day? Keeper, it’s impossible.’

Baldwin glanced at Simon. ‘At least talk with me for a little while. We can discuss the actual amount of time we have. Please, let me buy you a cup of wine to talk it through?’

Sir Jules threw a harassed look at Roger, who nodded encouragingly. Then, ‘Oh, very well, Sir Baldwin, but only one drink!’

When Nicholas suddenly strode from the room, Anne could see that something had upset him, and she had an unpleasant suspicion that he had read her look. She rose, sweeping away from Gervase, who had tried to engage her in conversation again, and rushed after her husband.

He had made his way to the solar, and had gone up to their bedchamber. He stood there now, head bowed, staring at their bed.

‘My love?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Was it here, in my own bed?’ he asked in a broken voice, and she felt her heart die and shrivel.

‘My love, I …’

‘Don’t lie to me! I saw your expression in the room down there. I should have guessed before, but you’ve always made yourself appear so loving that no hint of betrayal ever occurred to me. But I should have known. Why should a woman so young, so …’ he choked on the word. ‘So lovely! Why should you look at a grizzled old captain like me? Anne, I know it’s Gervase’s baby, not mine. Just tell me truthfully: did you pollute my bed as well as your body when you
whored
for him?’

‘I did not.’ She set her features into a steady, calm expression and sat on the edge of their tester bed. ‘I couldn’t. That would have been disloyal.’

‘Disloyal!
Madam, how much less loyal could you have managed? By St Peter’s bones, are you mad, or just taunting me? Are you a mere common stale, ready for any tarse in the castle? Have you fucked the guards as well as Gervase? Why stop there? Perhaps you sought the ostlers too – or the scavengers?’

‘Husband, please, listen to me,’ she said with a break in her voice.

She could feel her breast squeezing tighter and tighter as he spoke, spittle flying from his lips, pacing up and down the small chamber. He might harm himself, and it would all be her fault. It
was
all her fault. ‘Husband, please …’

‘I am no husband to you, woman. You are a whore, and the sooner you leave here, the better.’

‘Please, Nicholas, don’t do this to me,’ she whispered feebly. She felt weak, panicked and full of tension. Her very scalp seemed to tighten.

‘Think what you have done to me! You have betrayed me, betrayed any love we had for each other. Christ Jesus! I should draw steel and end your life now!’

He put his hand to his sword-hilt, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the blow to fall, but then she heard his grunt of contempt. ‘Open your eyes, whore! What do you want of me? More pain? You can wait for that. I shall have my revenge on you and him.’

‘What of
my
revenge?’ she whispered.

‘Yours?’ he sneered, and then his face hardened like rock. ‘You mean he raped you?’

‘I was betrayed by a man,’ she said. ‘He said he loved me, and then he left me for months, and I had no idea what had become of him. I loved him, but he was gone without a message to tell me he was alive. What was I to do?’

‘Remain chaste and honourable. That was what you were supposed to do,’ he grated.

‘My father left me, Husband. He never came back. And when we heard that he was dead, my mother died too, and I was an orphan. I was thrown from my vill, because there was not enough food to fill even one useless mouth. All I could do was walk, and I was taken in by a man – to live the most demeaning life I could imagine. I swore, when I left that place, that I would rather die than return. And then,’ she stood, walking to him slowly, ‘I found a man who loved me as much as I loved him. I loved, adored, worshipped him, and when I thought he might be dead, it was as though my father had died again, and I was forced to imagine life without him. I began to have dreams of returning to that hell-hole, where any man could buy me. Can you imagine what that made me feel? A whore. Yes, I was a whore. My honour gone, my shame permanent. Do you condemn me for trying to escape that?’

‘You should have waited for news.’

‘There was no news. You sent no message in months!’

‘You should have kept faith, woman! You should have trusted me, trusted our master!’

‘I suppose he would have taken the time to write to a woman who was merely the wife of a captain in his host,’ she said with a sneer in her voice.

‘And then, when I came home, you dragged me to your bed as though to prove your desire for me, when all you intended was to hide the fatherhood of your baby!’

‘No! I swear that’s not true! Husband, please believe me when I say that I love you, and I was so delighted that you returned, I was overwhelmed. I had to take you to my bed immediately.’

‘To the bed where you lay with him.’

‘No. Believe me, I—’

‘I can’t believe you!’
he shouted. ‘All you say is false!’

‘I still love you. Please, for my sake, for our child’s sake …’

‘Damn you, and damn it!’ he blurted, and as she put out a hand to him, he first knocked it aside, and then clenched his fist and swung it at her belly.

‘Masters? I have a message for Father Adam. Do you know where I can find him?’

Simon was squatting and throwing stones at a twig when the fellow arrived.

The newcomer was a young man, short and slight of frame, with a sunbrowned, oval face, and Simon did not recognise him. Roger didn’t either apparently, for he looked enquiringly at the fellow. ‘You aren’t from round this vill, then?’

‘No, I come from Temple. Father John sent me.’

‘Ah. Well, Father Adam’s up there in the church,’ Roger said.

The two watched as the youth made his way up the bank to the porch of the church, and then entered.

‘Did you learn anything from Nicholas at the castle?’ Roger asked.

Simon shook his head. ‘Only that he is the father of Richer,
and I see no reason why he should claim paternity unless it is true.’

Roger nodded, but just then the messenger came back from the church. As he passed them, Roger could see Adam peering out at them from the vantage point of the church’s porch, and the clerk had the impression that Adam wanted to talk to him. He asked Simon to wait a short while and walked to the open door.

‘Is that Bailiff outside still, Brother?’ Adam hissed from the shadows.

‘Yes,’ Roger said, and then he gasped as he saw the flash of a knife. He tried to leap back, stumbled on the step and fell, shouting, ‘Murder! Murder! He’s killing me!’

‘Not soon enough, you devil!’ Adam screamed, and rushed forward, the dagger gripped under his fist, ready to plunge it down into Roger’s breast.

Roger saw the silver-blue steel racing towards him and raised both hands to block it. As luck would have it, his wrists crossed, and the knife fell between his hands, caught in the scissor-like grip. Roger bleated, shoving his fists up over his head as Adam fell onto him, pushing the knife higher, the point scratching over his right eyebrow, and then Roger gripped his assailant’s wrist in both of his own and tried to wrest the knife from him. Adam responded by pounding Roger’s face and neck with his free hand, Roger shrieking at the top of his voice all the while. And then the clerk was sure that he must have fainted, because all became quiet, and the weight of Adam’s body grew lighter and lighter, as though Roger’s soul was passing away. He closed his eyes when he seemed to see Adam’s face receding into the darkness, and then he heard a chuckle and opened his eyes fully to see Simon standing over him studying Adam’s knife.

‘Don’t worry, clerk. He’s no threat to you now,’ he said offhandedly as he shoved the knife into his own belt and stood over the body of the priest.

‘Is he dead?’ Roger managed, climbing to his feet.

‘Nope. Not yet,’ Simon answered. ‘But I’d like to know why he sprang on you like that. Have you any idea?’

‘None,’ Roger said, his hand on his forehead at the scratch. If it had been an inch lower, it would have spiked his eyeball, he thought, and suddenly felt quite sick, leaning his back against the doorway.

‘Well, as soon as he comes round, we’ll ask him,’ Simon said.

‘Yes,’ Roger said, and then, quite elegantly, he fainted and sank slowly to the floor, a ridiculous smile fitted to his blanched face.

John finished the service and put away the vestments and sacramental vessels in his little ambry, then locked the door over the hole in the wall.

He was filled with a sense of looming disaster. There was little he could do to avoid it, bearing in mind Warin’s close questioning, but it was no help to be aware of the fact.

It had all started many years ago, when John’s grandfather had been a close ally of Sir Henry’s. The two men had been companions in the crusade of the last century, both going to the southern reaches of Christendom to fight the heretics known as Albigensians, and since then the two families had been close. John had known Sir Henry all his life, and counted him as a friend, although Sir Henry was much older. It was entirely due to Sir Henry that he had been granted this little post in the backwater that was Temple.

He had been given this position in early 1315 at the height of the famine. Yes, there had been hints of disputes even then, but the vitriol that later came to characterise the relationship between Earl Thomas of Lancaster and his cousin the King were less apparent in those famine years.

John remembered those times so clearly. Even to journey here had been difficult, with food for his pony rocketing in price as the rains fell. Harsh, terrible weather, it was.

And then life changed dramatically. Earl Thomas’s arguments with the King had grown more acrimonious, and the Earl himself had been captured and executed, along with his followers and supporters – many of them John’s friends. He felt sick again, just thinking of all those good men – comrades of his father, some of them. At least his father had himself died many years ago, at Bannockburn, when the Scottish made King Edward II turn and flee.