The Awful Secret (30 page)

He spent a couple of hours with Ralph Morin and Gabriel, checking the readiness of the soldiers for the morning. Everyone had taken off their mailed hauberks, which were hanging up on wooden poles thrust through the sleeves from side to side. The men were rubbing the steel links with handfuls of hay daubed with beef fat, to preserve them against rust, especially as they would be exposed to salt spray on the morrow. De Grenville was also out in the bailey, marshalling his armed men and knights. They had a motley collection of armour and weapons, but looked tough enough for the task ahead.

That evening, the hospitable lord of Bideford put on a good meal, which though hardly a banquet was a liberal entertainment, especially in the quantity of drink provided. A pair of minstrels at the bottom of the hall and two jugglers diverted the guests between courses. De Grenville’s lady and their two eldest daughters attended for the meal, then tactfully retired before the serious drinking began. As well as the sheriff, coroner, constable, Templars and abbot from Exeter, there were the Bideford knights, chaplain, steward, treasurer and several others from the borough seated along the long table, with de Grenville at its head.

John de Wolfe found himself placed next to Cosimo, sharing with him a trencher, which was kept liberally loaded with food by attentive servants. Though the coroner had grave suspicions of the Italian, he had little option but to be civil to him out of deference to their host, though he would have preferred his room to the Italian’s company. However, he was unable to be anything but blunt with the priest when conversation was inevitable. ‘In spite of the confidential nature of your business in England, which you so firmly put to us, I feel little doubt that those two errant Templars were your prime concern,’ he said.

The sly eyes in the olive face rolled up to meet his. ‘You may think what you will, Crowner. I’ll not deny that they formed at least part of my reason for venturing across the Channel from France. And I would dearly like to know the truth about Bernardus de Blanchefort.’

De Wolfe struck the point of his dagger into a slice of salted pork on the slab of bread between them and carried it towards his mouth. Before it vanished between his lips, he replied, ‘I told you the truth, that he waylaid me and told me he wished to make some kind of public declaration before the cathedral. Obviously he thought better of it and is now on his way to a safer haven somewhere.’ All of which was true, he thought, as he chewed on the pig meat – though not the whole truth.

Cosimo picked more delicately at the food with a thin silver poniard. ‘So where is he now, I wonder? He is a dangerous madman, who should not be loose in Christian kingdoms.’

John, though not over-concerned with religion or the future of his immortal soul, had, like most people, an ingrained wariness of priests, instilled in childhood by family and chaplains. He avoided outright lying to them but was willing to prevaricate a little. ‘I have no knowledge of where he might be, Abbot,’ he said, salving his conscience with the thought that Thomas had not actually told him in what village they were lodged.

The priest sucked at his food for a moment then spoke to the trencher, rather than to de Wolfe. ‘The whole edifice of civilisation in Europe depends on the stabilising influence of the Holy Roman Church. Without that framework of uniformity and constancy, the warring nations and tribes would tear themselves asunder inside a year or two.’

He nibbled at his meat, and, almost against his will, de Wolfe waited for the conclusion to this profound but obscure statement. ‘Anything that could damage that stability threatens the very structure of life as we know it in these western lands and could plunge us into the barbarism of Africa and Asia. And that stability rests on the basic beliefs of Christianity, of which the Roman Church has been the guardian for more than a thousand years.’

The sly eyes looked up, to lock with those of the coroner. ‘I will do anything to preserve that stability by preventing the serpent seed of disbelief from being planted in the minds of common folk. You may well bear a heavy responsibility on your shoulders, Crowner, for which you may have to answer in the next world, if not in this.’

With that barely veiled threat, the abbot turned back to his dinner and said not another word to de Wolfe for the rest of the meal.

With an almost full moon the previous night, the tide was high along the banks of the river and the knights and men-at-arms filed aboard the two knarrs on gangplanks that were almost level. The long wooden bridge across the river was immediately upstream to the stone quay that had been built to serve Bideford, and all vessels with fixed masts were obliged to moor on its seaward side.

The grey light of dawn was filtering through broken cloud and the wind was slight and south-easterly, ideal for getting out of the Torridge into its confluence with the Taw, which flowed from Barnstaple to the open sea beyond Appledore. The waterways were tortuous and ever-changing, the banks of sand and mud altering with every flood and storm, but with this spring tide the flat-bottomed boats had no fear of running aground within the next couple of hours.

The lord of Bideford was aboard the first knarr with his own men and half the Exeter soldiers, as well as the abbot. The remainder were with the sheriff, Templars and coroner on the second vessel. As soon as the men were aboard, the ship-masters cast off and the sails filled to press them seawards for three miles up the river.

De Wolfe stood with the other knights on the left side of the stern, leaving the opposite deck clear for the seaman grasping the steerboard, a large oar lashed to a post on the bulwark. In the centre was the ship-master, a scruffy individual in half-length breeches and a tattered short tunic. Bare-footed, like the other four of his crew, he kept looking up at the sky and muttering foul language under his breath. Every now and then, he would bark some almost unintelligible instruction to the steersman or the crew holding the sheets secured to each lower corner of the single square sail.

Within half an hour, the lively breeze had taken them to the main channel and as soon as they rounded the promontory of Appledore, they felt the swell coming in through the entrance to the open sea. Soon half of the land-lubber soldiers were ill and many hung over the rough fence of the bulwarks, retching their breakfast into the turbid sea.

‘Bloody fine fighting force we’re going to be!’ rumbled Gwyn contemptuously, standing like a rock, feet apart and hands behind his back. He was as much at home on water as on land and had little sympathy for those who were not.

De Wolfe himself, though not a bad sailor, disliked the rhythmic motion as they ran up to the bar between the final sand dunes. He was glad when the ships were in open sea, where the shorter, sharper pitching was less troublesome to his stomach. The sheriff was almost as green as his favourite tunic, but pride prevented him joining his men puking at the rail. Two of the Templars seemed immune, though Godfrey Capra became pale and noticeably silent.

Once outside the estuary, the two little ships ploughed on westwards, with a little northing to reach Lundy. Above them, the early-morning clouds were breaking up and patches of blue sky appeared and increased as the hours went by, a low pale sun gleaming intermittently in the east. Though de Wolfe considered the weather kind, the ship-master frequently looked to the west and scowled at the open ocean. He muttered now and then to the steersman and pointed to the far distance.

‘What’s bothering him?’ the coroner asked Gwyn.

The former fisherman had also been following the master’s concern. ‘There’s bad weather coming – but not yet. See that cloud on the horizon?’

John squinted to see a bank of solid grey far away, stretched low down in the western sky. To him it looked innocuous and he turned away when the ship-master again began gabbling in his thick local accent.

‘It’s Lundy already. See it ahead there?’ interpreted Gwyn. The air was clear and the dark line of the island rose like a distant whale on the horizon.

‘It’s three mile long, but less than one wide,’ explained the shipmaster. ‘We see it side on now from the east, but as we come to it from the south, it will foreshorten.’

The two knarrs hurried along with the brisk fair wind and the ebb tide, which was emptying the channel. In a couple of hours, Lundy was close enough to see the detail on the cliffs, which rose over four hundred feet at the southern end. Most of the men had now recovered from their
mal de mer
and were staring at this huge rock that rose out of the entrance to the Severn Sea. As they came even closer, the tip of the island was seen to hook out towards them in a broken promontory.

‘That’s Rat Island. The only good landing place is just around the corner from it – and Marisco’s castle is above it on the cliffs, at the highest point,’ explained the ship-master, pointing at the grey rocks. As the steersman leaned on his great oar and the crew adjusted the square sail, the knarr came round to weather the jagged promontory so that they could see the landing beach, a stretch of pebbles with a steep path winding up behind it. On the top of the cliffs, a low stone fortification was visible, but this sank out of sight as they got nearer.

The sea was fairly calm around the point and they glided towards the beach until the ship-master yelled at his crew once more. The yard rattled down the mast and lay on the untidy folds of the sail, as the knarr lost way. Pointing, the ship-master made it clear why he was keeping well off the shore. A line of men, several dozen in number, was spaced out just above the tide level and more were coming down the steep path from the settlement above. Even at that distance, the knarr’s company could see the glint of the weak sunshine on spear-heads and swords.

‘It looks as if we have a welcoming party already!’ growled Ralph Morin, looking like one of his Norse ancestors with an old conical helmet and his jutting grey beard. De Wolfe, who had been studying the landing site, raised an arm to point high up on the cliff. ‘Don’t worry too much about them yet, Ralph. Look up there instead.’ On a rocky spur above the path, they could just make out a contraption of wooden beams, with a few dot-like figures moving around it. All the fighting men knew what it was and their faces showed that they viewed it seriously.

‘A trebuchet – that could indeed be a problem,’ observed Roland de Ver. He spoke to the shipmaster and soon the other vessel came alongside. Their rails were roped together so that Richard de Grenville could join in the council of war.

‘Are these men on the beach going to oppose us?’ asked Brian de Falaise truculently. ‘If so, we should land in force and give them a thrashing.’

‘Easier said than done,’ retorted de Grenville. ‘We cannot beach the knarrs on a falling tide in case we wish to make a rapid retreat. And using the curraghs to land mailed soldiers is fraught with hazard. If they are tipped out, they’ll sink like stones!’

‘So why the hell did we come?’ demanded de Falaise harshly. He was itching for a fight but his lack of concern for his own safety was not shared so enthusiastically by the others.

Further discussion was interrupted by a loud splash and a fountain of water erupted from the sea ahead of them. It was many yards short, but the message was clear. The ships had been drifting towards the shore in the breeze and now the masters were hurriedly casting off the lashings that held the two knarrs together and setting men to haul at long oars over the sides. Though hopelessly inefficient, this halted the drift towards the cliffs and imperceptibly inched the boats back out to sea.

‘What range does that thing have?’ the sheriff demanded of John.

The coroner shrugged. ‘Impossible to tell, other than finding out the hard way, Richard! It’s high up, so its range will be greater and the fall of missiles more powerful.’

The trebuchet was an engine for hurling projectiles a considerable distance at an enemy. A long beam was pivoted vertically in a massive frame and a heavy weight fixed to the lower end. A large bowl at the upper end carried either one large rock or a collection of smaller stones. Several men hauled on ropes fixed to the top of the beam until it was horizontal, when it was released, the weight fell violently and the beam jerked back to the vertical, hurling the missiles forward over the edge of the cliff to fall on targets far below. Both the range and direction could be adjusted to cover all the approaches to the beach.

Frustrated, the knights stood on the decks of the two vessels, while the crews dropped two large anchor stones to prevent further drifting into danger. ‘We must at least try to parley with these swine to see if they’ll at least let us talk to de Marisco,’ snarled de Falaise. ‘And I’ll go if you wish, de Ver.’

John mischievously suggested an alternative. ‘Lundy is part of the county of Devon, so falls directly under the jurisdiction of our sheriff here. He must have the prerogative, as well as the honour, of going ashore first.’

De Revelle gave his brother-in-law a look that should have dropped him dead him on the spot and limped away from the rail, rubbing his left thigh. ‘Of course I would, but this old wound I suffered in the Irish wars makes it difficult for me to get down into one of those small boats.’

De Falaise, well aware of the coroner’s strategem, clapped de Revelle heartily on the shoulder. ‘Never fear, sheriff, I’m sure our ship-master here has some rope and tackle that will let us lower you over the side – and I’ll come with you.’

In the event, it was Roland de Ver who accompanied de Revelle, saying that, as leader of the Templars, it was his obligation to try to deal with William de Marisco over the rejected grant of land to his Order.

The crew and soldiers hauled one of the light skin-covered boats from the hold and dumped it over the side. The sheriff had been trapped into playing the hero and, albeit with ill-grace, got himself over the low gunwale into the curragh with no sign of a disabled leg. He held aloft a spare oar with a grubby white tunic, taken from the crew’s shelter, tied to the top as a flag of truce. While de Ver was climbing in after him, there was another shot from the trebuchet, but it fell far short.