‘He was an honourable man,’ William said softly, and Baldwin saw that there were tears in his eyes. ‘He was always good to me. I think he knew how hard it was to live with guilt. He had been guilty of a crime himself.’
‘Yes. He told me.’
‘And that guilt ate at him. There was not a single day he didn’t suffer.’
‘Simon, is there a note on his table?’ Baldwin asked. He knew his friend preferred to avoid intimate encounters with death. While Simon went and scanned the desktop, Baldwin pulled up a stool and stood on it, trying to untie the rope while William supported the body from below. The rope was too tightly bound, held with Cryspyn’s full weight, so Baldwin took out his knife and cut Cryspyn’s body down. William took the full weight of the sagging figure, and two monks hurried forward to help him lower their dead master to the floor.
‘Nothing here,’ Simon called. ‘Strange, I would have hoped he would have left us some clue as to why he did this.’
‘So would I,’ Baldwin said. ‘But sometimes a man’s heart is too full and bitter. He must have guessed that we’d return to charge him with the murders, and he wished to have nothing to do with the shame that would bring to him and his priory.’
‘Perhaps,’ William said. ‘Yet I would have hoped he would have tried to explain. It will make his death more — incomprehensible — and that will lead to rumours and foolish speculation.’
Simon had rejoined them. ‘I would have expected a note. Perhaps he was in too much of a hurry.’
‘He had little time,’ a monk offered. Baldwin recognised the man as the new gatekeeper.
Simon had lifted the rope and was staring at it with a strange expression. ‘Baldwin, look at this.’
Baldwin took the rope and studied it. ‘What of it?’
‘The knots are so precise. Was Cryspyn ever a sailor?’
William said, ‘No,’ as the gatekeeper continued: ‘Yes, he had little time after David left him.’
‘When was David here?’ Baldwin demanded.
‘He came just before you,’ the gatekeeper stammered, shocked by Baldwin’s sudden ferocity. ‘He was there until after you ran out to find William here.’
Simon and Baldwin exchanged a horrified look.
‘He was there in the hall when we spoke,’ Simon said. ‘He heard you accuse …’
‘And decided that the best course for his own defence was the death by suicide of the Prior,’ Baldwin finished for him. ‘The man’s a devil!’
Brosia was at her cottage shaking out her bedding when they arrived. She cocked an eye at them, hastily bundling it up and thrusting it in through her doorway. ‘Good day! Can I offer you-’
‘Where is your husband?’ Baldwin rasped. He glanced inside the cottage, and he saw Mariota. ‘I hope you are proud, woman! You have cost another good man his life!’
‘No. Not me. I have merely protected the man I had to,’ she said. ‘I am an islander, and I’ll always protect an island man over any other.’
‘He heard your words and instantly murdered the Prior! I said, where is your husband, Brosia!’
‘He is down at the boats, I suppose … why?’
‘Ask her!’ Baldwin spat, pointing at Mariota.
His anger at Mariota’s deceit was already fading as they hurried along the grassed track to the beach. He shouldn’t blame her: she was a hardy islander. This was her way of life, the way of life of all the people here. They were weak against the powers of Ennor, the priory, and most of all the weather. All they had was each other. Mariota was protecting her tribe. Tedia would have done the same.
There was a lurch in his heart at the thought of her, but it was lessened. Now the memory of her was already fading. More in his mind was Jeanne, her smile, her calmness, her warmth. ‘My God but I miss her!’ he breathed.
William led the way to the shore. There, up on a hillock of grassy sand the three gazed out over the flat expanse. There was no sign of David, and when Baldwin stared out to sea, there was nothing. Not a single sail showed itself on the flat calm water.
Up to the north of the beach there was a group of men working on a boat. ‘Come,’ Baldwin muttered, and they pounded along at the edge of the sea where the sand was firmer. Soon they were with the men. ‘Where is David?’ he called.
‘He’s just gone to sea. Should be back at nightfall,’ one of the men replied without looking up from his work.
‘Gone!’ Baldwin breathed.
‘Perhaps he will return,’ Simon suggested.
‘No,’ William said. ‘I think he has decided to imitate Tedia’s man. He has made his choice. He knows what would happen to him here, if he were discovered. No one would want to suffer the penalties given to a felon. He has gone.’
‘He has escaped,’ Baldwin agreed bitterly.
‘Perhaps he has, for now,’ William said, ‘but there is a higher justice, and he can’t evade that.’
They began their return to the priory.
‘One thing,’ Simon said, ‘which I still don’t understand, is why Thomas was so keen to accuse the men here of piracy.’
William shrugged, but then cast a sharp look at Baldwin. ‘Perhaps, if you could swear, both of you, to keep this secret, I can enlighten you.’ Having received their assurances, William chuckled to himself. ‘You ask why? It’s because it takes one to recognise another. Thomas was a pirate of a sort. He would rob any man to make his money — well, in that way he was a true islander. There is not enough land here for men to make their livelihoods. They can win fish from the sea, it’s true, and they can try to farm, but there isn’t enough land. We have to import food from elsewhere all the time. And when fishermen can’t earn enough to support their wives and children, what do you expect them to do? Roll over and accept death? No, they go out and take whatever they can on the seas.’
‘So Thomas truly believed that his ship had been attacked by islanders?’
‘I expect so. Why else should he want to attack them? And he had been under pressure. His own ship was late in, and he thought that he might be financially ruined. If the islanders had taken his vessel, he thought he should get his lost goods back. That meant robbing the robbers.’
‘And David was their leader,’ Baldwin stated.
‘Yes. It was why poor Cryspyn hated dealing with him. It gave him a pain in the belly to have to deal with the man whom he knew was every day planning the destruction of ships. Yet Cryspyn had no proof with which to accuse David.’
They had reached the priory’s walls, and they stood a while under the gateway. There seemed little to say.
‘So why do you think David killed them?’ Baldwin asked.
‘That is easy. I think he suspected that Luke was having an affair with his wife, Brosia. He hated that kind of behaviour, and he distrusted other men about her. Strangely, I don’t think he ever sought to blame her for their attentions. He never realised how she tempted them.’
‘And Robert was killed for the same reasons?’ Simon guessed.
‘I think so. He was trying to climb into Isok’s bed, and David could see that as well as any of us — including Isok himself. David was proud of the people here. He would have hated to think of some foreigner — still worse the thieving gather-reeve — taking advantage of Tedia. I think he went off to the other island with the hope of scaring the man off, but then events overcame him.’
‘Mariota was there and saw it all,’ Baldwin said.
‘Yes, I daresay. I only saw Robert’s body and the figure of Cryspyn striding off through the water. I did guess that he might have been the killer, but then commonsense came back to me.’
‘In what form?’ Baldwin asked.
‘I saw David’s boat putting out from the next beach,’ William smiled.
‘I don’t understand why David put Luke in a boat and let him drift like that,’ Simon said, eyes narrowed.
‘I expect he hoped that the boat would be taken by the sea.’
‘Isok was certain that no local man would believe that the sea would do such a thing,’ Baldwin reminded him.