‘Oh God!’ she said with a broken voice. ‘What shall become of us?’
‘What was he doing over there anyway, in the Cathedral grounds?’ Joel wondered aloud.
‘He was going to confess. He told you he wanted to confess, didn’t he?’ she said, and then suspicion flared afresh. ‘And you didn’t want that, did you? You’ve avoided censure from the Cathedral all these years, and then Henry threatened to bring it all out into the open — your murder of the Chaunter with him!’
Joel almost put a hand over her mouth. ‘Hush, woman! Look, I had nothing to fear. When he came here, he threatened me, yes, but he was drunk, maid. I didn’t think much of it. For the last time, Mabilla, he was my oldest friend. We’ve worked together for forty years.’
‘Ever since the Chaunter’s murder,’ she said, her eyes blazing. ‘Yes, you were there with him, weren’t you? Was that why you killed him? You thought he could implicate you — just as William did!’
‘Oh, shit.’ Joel felt a sickening tug at his heart. ‘Poor Henry. He didn’t tell William that, did he? He didn’t tell William he was likely to confess to his part in the murders? Because if he did … that bastard Will would kill his own mother for the price of a pie, let alone to protect himself. Did Henry tell him?’
She looked at him again then, eyes raw from weeping, lips moist and swollen. ‘Oh God, yes, he did!’
Chapter Eight
Stephen the Treasurer strode along the cloister with a face as black as his gown, and it was some while before Matthew could make his presence known.
‘The fabric rolls, Stephen. You have to check them.’
‘I can’t, not now. You’ll have to do them yourself. There’s too much going on just now, what with this murder.’
Matthew reluctantly took back the proffered rolls. His canon had never before shown such distress and inability to concentrate. Certainly it was shocking to find a body in the chapel, but murder wasn’t so rare, as he himself knew. That the Treasurer should be so alarmed was strange. He threw a look over his shoulder towards the Charnel Chapel. ‘No one can think straight today.’
‘No. It is appalling to think that the man was lured here to his death.’
‘Lured?’
‘Why else should he have been here in the Close? Someone must have tricked him to come here,’ Stephen said.
‘He could have been here because of some business with other people, or maybe he was taking a short cut, or wanted simply to see the rebuilding works,’ Mathew replied reasonably.
Stephen stopped and looked at him with keen eyes. ‘See the rebuilding? Everybody of any age in this city has seen the rebuilding works all their lives. We of the Chapter are the only people who truly care about the works, Matthew. And as for a short cut — he lived out on Smythen Street, I’m told. This wouldn’t have been a short cut in any direction.’
‘Then he was here for business,’ Matthew said. ‘After all, who could have wanted to lure him here, as you suggest? You are not suggesting that a member of the Chapter was so angry with a faulty saddle that he killed him, are you?’
‘No,’ Stephen said, ‘but why should he have been killed here if it was nothing to do with the Chapter?’
Matthew shrugged and was about to turn away when the Treasurer clutched his arm. ‘I have just had an awful thought! He was found at the Charnel Chapel, the very place where John Pycot’s men killed Lecchelade …’
‘I know,’ Matt said unemotionally.
‘My apologies — I forgot you were hurt in that attack too.’
‘It is nothing. I recovered well enough. Now, what of this saddler?’
Stephen’s face was paler than usual. A man who adored his ledgers and accounts, he was already pale, but now as he glanced at Matthew, he seemed almost translucent. He shook his head emphatically, a hand going momentarily to his brow. ‘Nothing, nothing. It’s my shock at this killing. Nothing more. No.’
Baldwin went up to his solar as soon as the messenger had set off again, and stood at his chest for a long time before he could work up the enthusiasm to open it.
He had wanted only to return here, but his infidelity had made his homecoming a hollow reward after his travels. All the time in Galicia and Portugal he had looked forward to once more being able to hold his wife in his arms, but then he had almost died, and his arms had embraced another. It shouldn’t have affected him, but it had. He felt as though his marriage had been shredded by that one act.
His sword was on top of the chest, and he pulled the blade out partway to peer at the cross carved into the peacock-blue steel. The smith had used a burin to etch the shape, and then hammered gold wire into it. It formed a Templar cross, to remind himself always of where he had come from, and the men with whom he had lived.
Baldwin had been a Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, a Knight Templar, almost from the moment of leaving Acre when it fell in 1291, until 1307 when the knights were all arrested on the orders of the French King. It was the injustice of the capture, torture and murder of his companions which had led to his returning to England afterwards, determined to seek a quieter life in the Devon countryside and avoiding contact with any men in positions of power. He detested politicians after the French King’s betrayal of the Templars purely for his own benefit, and he couldn’t trust even the Church, for the Pope himself had left the Templars to rot in gaols, then aided the King in stealing all their possessions.
That was, perhaps, the guiding treachery which lighted his path thereafter. The Pope had been the ultimate leader of the Templars. They owned fealty to no man, no man on God’s earth, other than His vicar, the Pope. No baron, earl or King could command a Templar knight; only the Pope himself. Yet he had deserted them to their fate. The accusations levelled against the Order were so vast and all-encompassing that few of the men could present a case for their defence, yet they were not permitted the advice of even one lawyer. Their destruction was assured.
So Baldwin returned to learn that his older brother was dead, and he was the owner of the small manor of Furnshill near Cadbury in Devonshire. Except he was not to be allowed to wallow in his feelings of hurt and misery. Soon after his arrival, he met Simon Puttock, and shortly thereafter he was given the post of Keeper of the King’s Peace as a result of Simon’s lobbying.
He had been content here in Furnshill, he had been happy as a Keeper; yet there was something that now, when he looked back over his life, seemed to be gnawing at him. Partly, he supposed, it might be due to his marriage.
When he had joined the Knights Templar, he had taken the threefold vows. The Knights were warrior monks, and although they lived as men-at-arms, they also lived apart from the secular world. They had a Rule which had been written for them by Saint Bernard himself, and Baldwin had adhered to it. He had sworn before God, accepting his Order’s harsh demands of obedience, poverty — and chastity. When he had left the Order, that had been the most difficult to adhere to, but he had recognised his loneliness, and he felt that in the absence of a Grand Master to obey, his other vows might equally be considered redundant.
That was fine, but still he had qualms. And these had magnified a hundredfold since his adultery. It made him feel less a man, more a beast. If only he had resisted … but he had not. And now, perhaps, he should confront the whole sin.
His marriage, although built upon love and, until now, mutual trust and respect, was surely foul in the eyes of God? Other Templars had managed to escape the fires and find their ways to alternative Orders, some joining the Benedictines or Cistercians. Provided that they went to an Order whose Rule was more stringent than the Templars’ own, they were permitted, once the French King had raped their treasury and stolen all he could from their preceptories, to go into another House. Those who refused and lived were likely to be found begging on the streets of Paris.