The Sanctuary Seeker (26 page)

‘What have you to say to that?’ John demanded, with a dangerous softness.

Gervaise de Bonneville jumped in defensively. ‘This is nonsense! Every man in England has a knife. Thousands of them have come back with the Crusading armies … and many knives are damaged. You are building a false story out of trivial coincidences.’

John ignored his intervention, continuing to stare at Baldwyn. “I asked you, what do you have to say?’

Hard black eyes bored back at him from an obstinate face. ‘As my master says, it is ridiculous. I have had that dagger for at least two years.’

He took it back into his hand and studied it closely.

John was unperturbed. “I doubt if you can produce witnesses to prove that?’ His voice rose in an accusing crescendo. ‘I say it is the weapon of Hubert’s man, Aelfgar!’

By now, a few people had stopped at a discreet distance to wonder what was going on.

Baldwyn, his face above the jet beard becoming reddened in anger, shouted back, ‘I tell you the knife is mine! How can it belong to this dead man? I told you, I’ve never heard of Aelfgar of Totnes!’

There was a dead silence. Then John spoke, with a sinister restraint after his previous roar. ‘Totnes? Who said anything about Totnes?’

Baldwyn stood, his head lowered, looking from one to the other like a baited bull between two dogs.

Gervaise opened his mouth to speak, but before he could attempt to defend his squire the dark man gave a snarl and pushed the coroner in the chest.

Caught unawares, John staggered back and Baldwyn ran towards the stables. Gwyn leaped after him and before he had gone five paces, jumped on his back and brought him crashing to the ground. Gervaise stood transfixed, but John had regained his balance and rushed to help Gwyn secure the runaway.

As he got to the heap of flailing bodies, Gwyn gave a roar and grabbed his own upper arm, where blood was flowing through his fingers. ‘The bastard’s stabbed me!’ he yelled, and ducked as the same blade that they had just been examining, flashed past his ear.

Not for nothing had the two from Exeter been fighting-partners for a dozen years. Trapped because his legs were intertwined with the fugitive’s, Gwyn made sure that he dodged the knife, confident that his master would speedily settle the affair. He was right. With a metallic rattle, John drew out his sword and, using the flat of the blade, crashed it down on the black hair of the knife-wielder. Baldwyn had no protection on his head and, though the sword was not a full-size battle weapon, its thirty inches of steel was heavy enough to stun him.

Gwyn clambered up and brushed the dirt from his front.

‘Are you badly cut?’ asked John.

His officer looked into the rip in the sleeve of his woollen jacket. He dipped a finger in and examined the blood that came out. ‘No, nothing but a prick. My fault. I didn’t expect him to knife me, the swine.’ He aimed a kick at the prostrate body, which was beginning to groan and show signs of revival.

‘Tie him, we’re going back to Exeter with him.’

While Gwyn lashed the wrists of the groaning Baldwyn, using the belt of the dead man as an appropriate form of bondage, the coroner went back to the new lord of Peter Tavy, who stood white-faced and almost paralysed at the turn of events.

“I think your squire killed your brother and his henchman, this Aelfgar - or if he didn’t kill them himself, he was present when it happened.’

De Bonneville pulled himself together and regained his haughty poise. ‘Well, I do not. And this business of the dagger is rubbish. You come here, on our day of grief, disrupt the mourning, interrupt the preparations for the funeral of one of the most respected lords in the West Country and then you make accusations against my squire, who is a friend as well as a servant.’

Gervaise was made of sterner stuff than John had thought and rapidly recovered his composure to turn defence into attack. ‘My brother must have been killed by some damned outlaws on his way home. And you’ll regret hinting otherwise, Coroner. I have influential friends, from the Bishop to the sheriff, and from our abbot here to others in Winchester. Release my squire at once. Perhaps I will then take a more lenient view of your over-enthusiasm.’

John bared his teeth in a sarcastic leer. ‘A good try, young man. But explain to me how your Baldwyn has a dagger belonging to a murdered man and how he knew he was from Totnes, when he claimed never to have heard of him?’

“I cannot speak for what Baldwyn knows or doesn’t know - or what he may or may not have done. But I cannot believe he is an evil man.’

However, banking on the influence of his powerful friends in high places, Gervaise made no further objection to the coroner continuing with his legal processes. ‘You are making an error, sir, but if you have to seek better counsel over this in Exeter, I cannot stand in your way.’

Amid increasing confusion and excitement, the near hysterical Martyn now rushed out from his father’s death-bed. While his brother attempted to explain and to reassure him, the groggy Baldwyn was hauled on to a horse, tied to the saddle horns and led away, roped to Gwyn’s mare, for the first lap of the long journey, via a night’s stop at Sampford Spiney.

In which Crowner John attends a trial The next afternoon, Gwyn lodged Baldwyn safely in the castle gaol, under the tender care of Stigand. He was lodged in a cell next to Alan Fitzhai, where he could hear the groans and curses of the mercenary, who though apparently now out of danger of death, was in constant pain and misery from his septic scalded arm.

The squire from Peter Tavy maintained a sullen, smouldering silence, as if he was bottling up his anger for a vengeful explosion once he was released - his master had promised that the full force of nepotism and undue influence would be mobilised for him, if this mad coroner persisted in trying to hang a murder charge on him.

The same mad coroner reached home and, to keep Matilda safely in her new state of tolerable temper, told her the whole story of the last two days’ events.

Matilda listened to his tale in silence. Then she asked, ‘You’ve arrested this squire. Now what are you going to do with him? And what of Gervaise de Bonneville? With his family connections, it’s surely very dangerous even to suggest that he was aware of what his squire might have done?’ He was strangely pleased that she took such a perceptive interest in his activities - he had been afraid that she would fly into an indignant tantrum at his audacity in tampering with the affairs of a notable county family.

‘This Baldwyn has accused himself, with his stolen dagger, the slip over Totnes - and, most of all, his attempt to run.’

‘But what about Gervaise? He had no dagger and he didn’t attempt to escape. You’ve no reason to suspect him.’

John imitated his brother-in-law’s nose-tapping routine.

‘Motive, Matilda, motive! Baldwyn had no reason to kill either of the two men except on the orders of his master who, with his elder brother dead, now inherits the whole of the de Bonneville estate.’

Matilda shook her head slowly. ‘You be careful, John. I know that house, they have powerful friends.

They can make things difficult for you.’

Before he could show any appreciation for her rare concern, those difficulties began in earnest. There was a loud knocking on the street door, and before a flurried Mary could reach it from the yard, there was the sound of feet in the vestibule. The inner door to the hall was thrown open and Richard de Revelle burst in, closely followed by Precentor Thomas de Boterellis and Portreeve Henry Rifford. ‘Matilda, forgive us, but we must speak urgently to this husband of yours!’ The sheriff’s normally urbane voice was tense with rage and apprehension.

‘The Bishop is extremely distressed!’ brayed de Boterellis and, not to be outdone, the portreeve huffed and puffed about the outrage felt among the town’s burgesses.

John got up from his chair and stood between the visitors and the fire, as if protecting his hearth from the intrusion. ‘Couldn’t this wait until the morning, sirs?’

he grated. “I am taking my ease in my own home, not holding a public meeting.’

The sheriff crossed the flagstones ahead of the other men and wagged a long finger under John’s nose.

‘You’ve gone too far this time, de Wolfe! Starting a sword fight outside a death chamber and dragging an innocent squire away in bonds. Even worse, you pull the lord of a manor from his dead father’s side before the body is even cold to insinuate that he has knowledge of this killing!’

The other two twittered in the background, the words ‘scandal’, ‘Bishop’, ‘outrageous’, ‘city fathers’, ‘insane’ and ‘poor Arnulph’ figuring frequently.

The lean, dark figure before the hearth listened for a moment or two, then flung up his arms above his shoulders. ‘Be quiet, all of you, damn your eyes!’

The sudden eruption of this gaunt figure, who looked like some Old Testament prophet putting a curse on the Amalachites, instantly silenced the trio.

“I presume you burst into my house to complain about my arresting Baldwyn of Beer? Well, I see it my duty to take on the tasks that the sheriff of this county should be performing in apprehending criminals. This man tried to flee when accused and wounded my own officer in the attempt. His actions betray his guilt and he must be tried for his crime.’

‘He is squire to the new lord de Bonneville, for God’s sake!’ retorted the Precentor. ‘The Bishop is livid with anger that you should so upset his friends at the time of their grief.’

John snorted in derision. ‘The King and his ministers and judges have sworn to dispense law and justice without fear or favour, principles set down by the two Henrys … and the Saxon kings before them, for that matter. Are you telling me that there is a different law for the Bishop’s friends?’

There was a pause, as no one wanted to commit himself by answering that question directly, but the Sheriff blustered his way through it. ‘All right, Crowner, you shall have your trial. It shall be tomorrow, to make this poor man’s incarceration as short as possible. Gervaise de Bonneville and his brother rode on your heels to bring us this outrageous news and to complain to the Bishop, who by good fortune is staying in his palace this next week to receive Walter the justiciar. So Henry Marshall will personally attend the court, together with all men of good will who wish to see redress for this shocking thing that you have done.’

He turned and marched out, forgetting even to wish his sister goodnight.

At the third hour after noon the next day, the court hall in the inner bailey of Rougemont Castle was filled to overflowing. Though the sheriff’s weekly court was always busy, either with litigants, witnesses or curious onlookers seeking entertainment, the word had somehow got round that a major confrontation was likely at the trial of Baldwyn of Beer.

The arrival of Bishop Henry Marshall and a bevy of his minions was a bonus for the audience, as no one could remember such senior clerics attending this secular court before. It must be an unusual matter that brought out the Bishop on this damp, cold afternoon.

The proceedings were brief and predictable. Sir Richard de Revelle courteously greeted the Bishop, who wore a long crimson cassock and a skull-cap, and settled him in a large chair at the side of the dais behind which assembled the Precentor, Treasurer, John de Alecon, a few canons and some lesser clergy.

On the other side, Gervaise and Martyn de Bonneville sat on smaller seats, looking strained and annoyed.

The sheriff flopped into his own chair, set squarely in the middle of the platform, with Ralph Morin, several bailiffs, sergeants and a few men-at-arms scattered behind him.

De Revelle cut an impressive figure, in his bright blue tunic with a short green cloak thrown back over one shoulder, fastened on the other with an ornate gold brooch. His black breeches were crossgartered above stylish shoes with long, pointed toes. Above his hard, tight-lipped mouth, his narrow moustache had been freshly clipped.

John de Wolfe, entitled - indeed, obliged - to be present at every non-ecclesiastical court, stood grimly at the back of the dais, as Thomas de Peyne lurked in the shadows with his pen and parchment.

Gwyn, a wide rag bound with unnecessary prominence around the slight wound on his upper arm, stood on the edge of the crowd near the stage.

The drama began when Baldwyn of Beer marched in from the keep, behind a single helmeted sergeant.

Significantly, he had no chains and was not dragged in by a pair of guards, the usual mode of entry for criminals. He stood in front of the sheriff’s judicial seat and folded his arms, looking both defiant and confident.

The court clerk, an older, grey-haired man with the air of a schoolmaster, walked out to the open space in front of the dais to read out the charge from a parchment, itself couched in ambiguous terms.

‘Baldwyn of Beer, squire to Sir Gervaise de Bonneville of the honour of Peter Tavy, you have been accused of being involved in the death of one Aelfgar of Totnes.

Do you confess to your guilt?’

Baldwyn stared at the clerk. ‘Of course not. I am not guilty. In fact, I had never heard of the man.’

‘What is the evidence?’ asked the sheriff, in an affectedly bored voice.

Gwyn stepped forward and, in a stentorian voice, related the facts about the dagger missing from the corpse, the knife in Baldwyn’s sheath that did not fit and the identical tear in each scabbard from the damaged blade.

Gervaise stood up and interrupted. ‘What nonsense this is!’ he said, in a tremulous but aggressive voice.

‘Every man in the land has a dagger. Half of them do not fit their sheaths and the other half have a damaged blade. This is but a fairy-tale!’

John pushed through to the front of the platform.

‘This Baldwyn also named the dead man as being from Totnes - yet that name had passed no one’s lips. How could he know that of a man about whose very existence he denied any knowledge?’

Baldwyn looked up, his gaze passing from his master to the Bishop, then back to the sheriff. ‘It must have been said by someone, or how else could I have heard it? I tell you, I know nothing of this man. Why should I? I live in Peter Tavy and rarely leave it, except to accompany my lord Gervaise. Someone dropped the name in my hearing.’