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.
Chapter Fourteen
In which Crowner John goes to sea
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.