‘That was what he said,’ William agreed comfortably.
‘You mean he lied to me?’
‘Sir Knight, the man had a choice of slipping a noose about the neck of a friend and companion over many years; probably the man who had stopped another from cuckolding him. Yes, I think Isok guessed, and I think he was so emotional that day when we saw Luke’s body, because he feared we might otherwise guess. So he put the blame on someone who knew nothing about the currents around here. It was a shrewd throw.’
Baldwin was silent a moment. So it was not only Mariota who had sought to protect his tribe: even Isok, who was ridiculed by his own tribe, still sought to defend his folk, trying to conceal the killer from Baldwin.
Simon belched. ‘There is …’
‘Speak!’ Baldwin said.
‘I don’t understand why David killed the Prior. If he killed Cryspyn to deflect attention from himself, as though to direct all blame upon the Prior, why then did he flee the islands? Why not leave Cryspyn alive and simply bolt?’
‘Because David and Cryspyn detested each other,’ said William. ‘Cryspyn knew what sort of man David was: a pirate. David had fought against the Prior’s interference for all his tenure as reeve. This was his last cast against the man who had meddled in his affairs for so long.’
‘Does anyone on these islands stoop to telling the truth?’ Baldwin asked bitterly.
‘Yes. But only to those whom they have known all their lives. Not strangers and foreigners,’ William said pointedly.
‘They trust you.’
William gave a wolfish smile. ‘And how do you think I come by such good quality wines?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
The decking rolled gently as they made their slow way up the northern channel from St Nicholas, through the deep water, and then started to corkscrew in earnest as they passed the northernmost tip of the islands. The shipmaster set her prow southwards as soon as he could, and the ship began her journey.
As they passed the dismal rock to the west of the islands, two figures knelt and begged on the slippery green-coloured stone. Both were bedraggled and sodden, their hands red where manacles had rubbed their wrists raw overnight, and their pleading was the more poignant for the way that they tore at their hair and begged with reedy, thin voices.
‘Aye, they won’t last above another tide,’ the master said. He was a short, hook-nosed man called Henry with an entirely bald pate and a thin scatter of black hair above his ears.
‘Poor, miserable devils,’ Baldwin muttered. ‘Give me the noose any day rather than this protracted and cruel death.’
‘Think that’s cruel? You should see some of the foreign ways of killing, Sir Baldwin,’ Henry said.
‘I have. I never thought to see their like on English soil,’ Baldwin said shortly.
‘Perhaps. But I say, they are welcome to their death. They asked for it by the way they tried to steal cargo and ships. They cost men dear in effort and treasure.’
Baldwin nodded. Henry’s tone showed his malice towards the two. Any sailor must detest pirates, but perhaps those who preyed upon their own countrymen were hated most.
‘Bastards!’ Henry muttered.
Turning away, Baldwin went to seek Simon. The cries and desperation of the two surviving Breton pirates was too heart-wrenching.
Simon was at the prow. He heard Baldwin’s steps, but didn’t turn. ‘You know, if you stand up here and keep your eyes on the horizon there, it doesn’t make you feel so sick. I could almost feel all right up here.’
‘Certainly it is preferable to being down below,’ Baldwin agreed.
‘How long will it take to sail all that way?’
‘I don’t know,’ Baldwin said. ‘The master reckoned anything from a half-day to nightfall, depending on the winds.’
‘Winds I can bear,’ Simon said sourly. ‘It’s the storms I despise.’
‘Forget such things, old friend. Concentrate on seeing your wife again,’ Baldwin said.
‘I shall. Although I still cannot forget that poor cabin-boy’s body,’ Simon said.
‘Nor me,’ Baldwin said, but for different reasons.
They had attended the church service in memory of the dead only two days after the capture of the pirates’ ship and the recovery of the Prior’s treasure. First the monks had set Cryspyn in a vault beneath the altar, showing their very genuine grief at losing so close a friend. When the rough slab had been set over him, the other bodies were taken outside. The gatekeeper and novice were buried in the monks’ own cemetery within the priory’s precinct, while the others, including Hamo, were carried out to the vill’s graveyard just outside.
While Simon stared down into the shallow, short hole dug for the boy he felt he had betrayed, Baldwin could not help but stare across the gulf at Tedia. She stood chastely, hands before her apron, hair bound up, eyes downcast, and yet Baldwin could not help but remember the sweet taste of her, the soft roundness of her breasts, the tough corded muscles of her arms and thighs. He must bring his mind back to the burial as the priest intoned the last prayers.
Afterwards Simon clearly wanted to be left alone, musing at the graveside of Hamo. Baldwin left him there and made his way to the beach, avoiding Tedia’s home. On the beach he sat staring eastwards, his heart heavy.
He desperately wanted to be away. Being here was tearing at his souclass="underline" the discovery of the murderer, David, the ferocious pirates, the acquisitive and immoral master of the islands, Ranulph, with his clear ambition to absorb even St Nicholas into his demesne, all repelled Baldwin. The islands had never looked so beautiful, but he felt like a man whose soul had been wrenched from his body.
It was not only the murders and the unnecessary deaths, nor the subsequent escape of the murderer. No, it was the loss of his own hope and happiness.
When he and Simon set off from Galicia, he had thought that their adventures were at an end; he had had no idea that they would be blown so far from their course as to arrive here on these islands. All he had hoped for was a short trip to Dartmouth or a similar port, a canter to his home, and the opportunity of sinking into the arms of his wife. Now Jeanne seemed much further away even than she had while he was in Galicia.
Tedia had kept away from him. That made him feel the prickings of guilt too. He dared not consider how his wife would view his behaviour. Perhaps she would understand the loneliness and longing he had felt: she had lost her family to outlaws, so maybe she would comprehend how worried and battered he had been, thinking that Simon was dead. All alone, he had made love with a woman who sought the same comfort and compassion as he did himself. Yes, perhaps Jeanne would understand … but Baldwin would never be able to tell her. This was one more secret he would keep. The secret of his own shame.
Later, when he returned to the priory, the sight of Simon made him feel a renewed guilt.
His old friend’s eyes were red from weeping. His face was marked with soil where he had rubbed tears away, and as Baldwin looked at him, he thought that Simon had never appeared so vulnerable.
‘I don’t know why, Baldwin,’ he said at last, ‘but I feel as though I have just buried my son again.’
‘Peter is long dead,’ Baldwin said gently. Simon’s first son Peterkin had died of a fever many years ago. At the time, Simon had been ashamed. He once told Baldwin that the sound of pitiful crying had gradually scraped at his nerves to the extent that he was glad when they slowly grew quieter, until at last they stopped. ‘Hamo would have been proud to call you “Father”, Simon.’
‘I would have been happy to call him “son”,’ Simon said, and let his face drop into his hands as he started to weep again.
Now at least the sunshine and the fresh breeze were giving him a new vigour. He looked more like the Simon whom Baldwin had known so well for so many years.
‘I suppose this is the last leg of our pilgrimage,’ Simon said musingly. ‘I had not expected it to last so long, nor to have been so moved by the things that happened. God’s feet! I hadn’t expected so many things to happen!’