Sir Baldwin de Furnshill sniffed the air as the little ship rolled and shifted on the sea.
A tall man in his middle fifties, he was used to travelling. In his dark eyes, as he looked at the quayside, there was only gratitude that he had once more successfully and safely crossed the Channel. The journey had become only too familiar to him in the last few months, and he was hopeful that now he might leave such wanderings and return to his wife and family, to the life of a rural knight.
‘Bishop, I hope I see you well?’
‘Ach!’ Bishop Walter II of Exeter gave him a sharp look. His blue eyes were faded, and he must peer short-sightedly now, his eyes were so old and worn, unless he had his spectacles with him. Some ten years Baldwin’s senior, at four-and-sixty, the bishop had not enjoyed a good voyage. ‘I begin to sympathise with Simon.’
‘He is still at the prow, I think.’ Baldwin smiled. Simon had always been an atrociously poor sailor, and spent much of his time at sea bemoaning his fate as he brought up all he had eaten for a day past. This time he had attempted a popular sailor’s cure, by drinking a quantity of strong ale, but that had only served to give his belly more fluid to reject, and since then he had spent the entire day and night leaning over the side of the ship, while sailors darted about to avoid tripping on him.
‘Poor fellow. I shall go and offer a prayer for his speedy recovery,’ the bishop said.
‘Ha! Rather, pray for all our health,’ Sir Richard de Welles said, joining them. ‘No tellin’ what chance we have of getting home.’
‘Now we are all safe at England, there seems less need,’ the bishop said wanly.
‘Safe, eh?’ Sir Richard said. ‘When we have to travel to find the king and tell him that his wife has left him and taken his son and heir; that the men the king set to guard them both have all gone over to the queen’s side instead of his own; and that we were powerless to do anything to support him in his endeavours? I think we might merit a little protection ourselves.’
‘The king is a reasonable man,’ Bishop Walter said.
From the sharp glance Sir Richard de Welles threw at him, Baldwin could see that he didn’t believe the bishop’s words either.
‘My lord bishop,’ Baldwin said, ‘I am sure that you are right, but I confess to some concern that the king’s favourite may deprecate our efforts.’
The bishop looked away without comment. There was no need to speak, for the three all knew the nature of Sir Hugh le Despenser.
It was left to Sir Richard to rumble, ‘I would not trust that man if he told me grass grew green.’
Baldwin smiled to himself. ‘I cannot deny that I would feel happier were we permitted to merely ride homewards. The thought of explaining ourselves to the king and Despenser fills me with discomfort.’
Abbeyford Woods, south of Jacobstowe
Bill Lark had woken after an unsettled sleep to find that a root had seemingly planted itself in the small of his back, while his neck felt as though it had been broken.
He stood rotating his head while grimly surveying the ground about him. Poor devils, he said to himself, not for the first time, as he began to wander about some of the trees, finding dry, dead branches low on the saplings and smaller trees about the coppice. Soon he had a couple of armfuls and could start to reset the fire.
Last night it had begun to rain almost as soon as he had lighted his fire, and then the sounds of night creatures had kept him awake too, so he had slept at best fitfully. When he had slept it was more a case of dozing, so now he felt on edge and fretful.
When he had his fire cheerfully ablaze, he spent a few minutes wandering about the coppice again.
First he walked around the camp itself, eyeing each of the bodies. It was curious, he noticed, that none was near the edge of the trees. It was as if they had been moved inwards, away from the thicker woodland all about. That was enough to make him scowl pensively.
Next he walked about the edge of the trees themselves. There were many tracks crossing and recrossing here, mainly horses’ hoofs riding in towards the camp, and a few riding away. After making a complete circuit, he was forced to consider that there had been plenty of riders coming in, and that all had left by the entrance to the clearing, a muddied track made by the charcoal burners. So they had attacked from the woods, then departed by the roadway, either up towards Oakhampton or back towards Jacobstowe. There was even a set of boot prints leaving that way. Boots that had wandered about the camp. If he was right — and he was a moderate tracker — the boots overlapped some of the other marks on the ground, so this man had been here since the killings. Perhaps he had been here afterwards — but then again, he could have been one of the attackers.
What did worry Bill was that he could see no sign of escape from the camp. There were no prints at all that he could discern in among the trees other than those horses riding in. That itself was not surprising, for the covering of leaves would make a man’s prints hard to see, but if there had been horses escaping, he would have expected to see evidence of their hoofs.
Yes. It was clear enough what had happened. The fellows had been travelling, and had stopped here for the evening. A group of felons had found them, probably dismounted nearby, and then ringed them, shooting most of them down with arrows before wandering in and stabbing the survivors. Looking about him at the bodies, he wondered who these victims might have been.
The man with the tonsure was the first to attract his attention. A clerk — perhaps someone more senior, an abbot or prior maybe. He looked too well fed to be someone lowly. Bill had to turn away from the man’s ravaged features. Clearly this was a man who had made himself enemies in life, unless someone was convinced that he was carrying more goods about him than he was admitting. But that was daft. No one would kill a man in this manner when all his goods were to be taken anyway. Unless they thought he was keeping something back. Treasure, or information?
Close by was another man. This looked like a fellow who was more used to the bow than the pen. A mace or club had crushed the whole side of his face, making a foul mess of blood, bone and brains. At least his death would have been swift. Not like the monk.
The brutality of those two deaths was shocking to a man like Bill, but so was the number of the other victims. No gang of outlaws would kill so wantonly. Not in Bill’s experience, anyway. He sat back on his haunches near the fire and stared around him. Just there, to the east, through the trees, he could see a long area of open pasture, and some cows munching contentedly with sheep walking round and round. There was the song of a blackbird not far away, and he could hear a cock crowing — no, it was a hen calling: ‘An egg, an egg.’ All seemed so normal, so sane, if he didn’t look at the ground around him. This was his land. His country; his responsibility. And someone had desecrated it.
The idea of a band of murderers was alarming. Outlaws infested many parts of the country, and there was no reason why Devon should be exempt from their predations, and yet he didn’t get the impression that this was some random attack on a band of travellers. There was something too precise about it. The men who had committed this obscene act were surely not just robbers, they had not suddenly sprung in upon the camp and massacred the people in a rough melee.
He had seen that kind of attack before. Usually there were a very clear series of indications. As the first men appeared, people would bolt, some flying hither and thither through the trees, seeking some kind of safety, and then the bodies would be more spread about. Here, it would seem that the camp had been attacked from all sides simultaneously. That spoke of discipline and organisation. The men who did this had a purpose. And he would make it his job to discover that purpose, if he could.