The Malice of Unnatural Death: Read online

‘Yes, it was chewing at something, and I saw the blue and thought to myself that it looked like cloth. So I chased the brute away, and saw this fellow’s arm. I thought, “That’s not right,” and pulled at it, and there was the man. So I raised the hue and cry.’

  ‘Very good. Did you recognise the man? Have you ever seen him before?’

  ‘Not likely, sir. I’m the night watchman for this area. He’s not the sort of man I’d expect to see down here at night. It’s drunks or men wanting the stews I tend to see. During the day, I try to sleep,’ he added with a sidelong glance at the coroner.

  ‘So do I, my man!’ Coroner de Welles said, and laughed long and hard.

  ‘In the time while you were raising the hue and cry, did you leave the body alone? Could someone have got to it and searched it?’ Baldwin wondered.

  ‘You mean, have a look in his pouch? No, I don’t think so. When I found him, I pulled his arm free, and tugged hard enough to know that the whole body was there. Soon as I felt that, I stopped pulling, and left him instead. If anyone had tried to get into his pouch, they’d have had to clear all the muck away from him. No one had, though. When I got back, he was still just as covered in stuff as when I left him.’

  ‘Was he absolutely cold when you found him?’

  ‘Yes. Stone cold. But it gets cold here at night.’

  Baldwin nodded, his eyes going to the brazier. ‘Do you keep that going all night, then? Somewhere you know you can come to get a warm-up when you need it through the dark hours?’

  ‘Well, yes. There’s nothing to say that a watchman has to freeze,’ Will said truculently.

  ‘No, I was merely wondering how long you have to spend on your patrol, and how long back here indoors to warm up again. It could have a bearing on when the man was killed.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Because it is mightily unlikely that he was murdered and dumped in that pile of rubbish during the day, isn’t it, Will?’ the coroner added.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, my fellow, the damn roadway is full of people during the day, isn’t it?’ the coroner explained testily. ‘How could someone walk round there and happily throttle a man in broad daylight?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, “Oh”, as you say. So how much time do you spend outside compared with inside?’

  Baldwin was struck by the man’s evident nervousness as the questioning continued. He was not the kind of man to impress as a reliable witness.

  ‘I don’t spend much time indoors – I would lose my position if the city’s receiver thought I wasn’t doing my job.’

  Baldwin wondered if that might be a cause of his nervousness: the simple fear of being thrown out from a job like this. It might not be lucrative – judging from how the man lived it could scarcely be less so! – but nor was it strenuous, and the man had an easy enough time of it. ‘We will not discuss your strengths or otherwise with the mayor or his men,’ he said briefly.

  ‘Well, perhaps I do take some breaks when the weather really is bad. Last night it was so cold, I had to keep warming myself at the brazier. Few nights ago, some men had lit a fire in the street near the bishop’s palace gate, but there was nothing yesterday, and by the time I’d walked up there I was perished.’

  ‘What area do you cover from here?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m supposed to walk from here up South Gate Street, then up along the lane towards the Bear Gate, before turning back towards here again, coming down to the Palace Gate, straight on south to the wall, then up the alleys between the Bear and Palace gates. Sometimes I go the other way about, for the variety.’

  ‘So, you would occasionally have to come back here after walking the circuit. I suppose when it was that cold, other people would hardly be about much anyway, would they?’ Baldwin said. It was clear enough what the man was up to. He’d walk around the perimeter of his patch, then stop back at his hovel to warm himself and forget about criss-crossing the smaller alleys and lanes.

  ‘No one in his right mind would be out on a night like last! It was terrible. All the puddles had frozen. God’s teeth!

  This morning when I tried to break the ice in my bucket, I couldn’t: the water was frozen right to the bottom!’

  ‘So a sensible man would have spent much more time indoors, then,’ Baldwin said. ‘I suppose that you saw absolutely no one while you were supposed to be walking your rounds.’

  It was there: a not-so-subtle shift in the man’s stance, and then his head dropped a little, and his eyes moved away.

  ‘In the night, you sometimes see shadows and imagine a man, I suppose.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the keeper’s question,’ Coroner Richard pointed out forcefully.

  ‘Did you see someone?’ Baldwin pressed him.

  The watchman shook his head hopelessly, and Baldwin suddenly realised that this was the aspect that had made the man so nervous: it was nothing to do with the fact of being indoors when he should have been walking his territory, it was something else – a man he had seen while out on his walks.

  ‘Who was it, man?’ Coroner Richard demanded. ‘It’ll all come out in the end, but the fact that you forgot to mention it before won’t look good unless you make up for your forgetfulness now, and quickly!’

  ‘When you’re out, you can imagine things, yes? I wasn’t sure if I saw anyone at all. It was a shadow, that’s all. Just a moving shadow in the moonlight. There was only a brief glimpse …’

  ‘Where was this “brief glimpse”?’ Baldwin asked patiently, but with a hint of steel in his voice.

  The man sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘I was up past Palace Gate, walking down this way again, and it was towards the middle of the night. I know because of the cathedral bells. They were tolling for Matins when I saw it, so it must have been …’

  ‘Get on with it,’ the coroner growled.

  ‘Well, I was past the entrance to the little alley, the second after South Gate Street, when I saw something down in the alley. I looked down it, because I wasn’t sure I’d seen anything, holding my torch up high, and I was almost sure that there was a flash of paleness.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Coroner Richard snapped. ‘Be precise, man!’

  ‘I thought it meant that there was man down there, that I’d seen his face,’ the fearful watchman explained. ‘My torch could light quite some few yards well enough, especially with the moon’s light falling down in the alley too. I thought it was a man in dark clothing.’

  ‘But you didn’t go down the lane to check?’ the coroner said accusingly.

  ‘That was it: I did! I was really scared, sir, but I did go in. And I thought I saw a man, but then he disappeared, and when I got there, there was nothing. Only …’

  ‘Spit it out, man, in God’s name!’ de Welles blurted.

  ‘There was a cat. A black cat. It yowled at me as I approached, and I almost stained my hosen at the sudden noise. Christ alive! If you could have heard that sound down that alley!’

  ‘I have heard cats before,’ Baldwin said wearily. ‘In many alleys. Even, occasionally, in houses. You were startled, then?’

  ‘Startled? I was terrified, sir! I had seen a man, and now he’d gone and here was this cat! I tell you, I turned and fled the place!’

  ‘Because of a cat?’ Baldwin asked scathingly.

  ‘There are some say …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Baldwin said impatiently, ‘sorcerers!’

  Will didn’t meet his eye. ‘Necromancers can change themselves into cats,’ he agreed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Exeter City

  He had seen her. God in heaven, but she was beautiful! Her face was like the Madonna’s, and her gentle gait was enough to make a man sigh for jealousy that another could possess such perfection.

  She hadn’t seen him, of course. He couldn’t let her. Not yet. Better that he wait around here and observe. With a caution that was entirely unnatural, and yet he was learning to use most cunningly and quic
kly, he set off after her, his long legs covering the ground easily.

  Her path was leading straight along the High Street towards the Carfoix. He allowed her to move on a little, and then he gave her some moments to continue while he apparently lounged idly, all the while watching the people hurrying about. He looked at faces, wondering whether here there was someone who was taking too much interest in him or not.

  No. All appeared safe. He quickly set off again.

  It would be easy to overtake her whenever he wanted. All he needed was for the streets to become a little quieter and then he’d have her.

  Warwick Gaol

  It was enough to make him weep with despair when they came to tell him that his master was dead.

  Robert le Mareschal had taken his life in his hands when he finally submitted to the voice in his head that told him to confess his crimes, praying to be treated leniently for attempting to rectify his earlier errors.

  He had gone to the Sheriff of Warwick, Simon Croyser, and told the whole story. How he and his master had been approached by twenty-five men of Coventry, how they had offered John of Nottingham twenty whole pounds sterling, offered Robert himself another fifteen. A fortune! And for it, they were to use their skills to assassinate the king, his friends Sir Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, Sir Hugh le Despenser his son, Henry Irreys, the Prior of Coventry, the prior’s cellarer, and Nicholas Crumpe, the prior’s steward. And they had chosen the poor Sir Richard de Sowe as well, for a trial of their skills.

  It was the sight of de Sowe’s petrified expression that had persuaded him in the end. The man had done nothing to harm John of Nottingham or Robert, but John and the others had picked him to be the test of their abilities. If they could kill Sir Richard de Sowe, they would have a proof of their strength. That was their reasoning.

  But when he saw de Sowe dead, the reality of what he was doing was suddenly brought home to him. This was not some abstract scientific experiment, it was murder.

  Croyser acted immediately. Robert le Mareschal was held and kept in a dungeon below the castle, and news of his capture and the events which he said had led up to the death of Sir Richard de Sowe were sent to London. And within a matter of days, the king’s men were back, and the arrests began.

  That was all some while ago. He didn’t know how long. Long enough for his hair to grow rank and greasy; long enough for his clothes to rot in the dank chamber; long enough for his muscles to cramp and shiver. His teeth ached; his flesh crawled with creatures that nipped at him.

  He could weep to think that all was thrown away. The death of de Sowe had been dreadful, but the man had been a liar. He deserved some sort of punishment. Dear Christ, though, the man had suffered …

  Robert stood and made a slow perambulation, going as far as his leg-iron permitted him. It wasn’t far; the chain secured to the ring in the wall only allowed a short walk. As he went, his arms wrapped about his torso, he kept his head huddled down in his shoulders.

  There was a rattle of locks, and he turned slowly to face the door, his flesh creeping at the sound. The arrival of a man here was invariably the precursor to pain. The keeper of the gaol was a brutal man with no sympathy, only a hatred for all those who lived under his power. And he had an especial loathing for traitors.

  In here there was almost no light, for the only pale imitation of the sun could curl and twist about many passages before reaching these depths, but as Robert le Mareschal peered at the door he was sure that he could see a glimmering orange light. The glow appeared to grow nearer, and Robert was tortured with conflicting emotions: an urgent, sensual desire to see that torch or candle, whatever it might be – to see it and hear it crackle, imagining that he could warm himself by its flames – that would be so good! And then there was the opposing terror that whoever it might be, he was coming here to inflict some torture on Robert’s weakened frame.

  There were steps now. Loud, confident paces that marched along the flagged corridor, until they had grown so loud, their echoes were a torment to his ears. They must pass … they must pass … they would go to another cell …

  But they stopped outside his door, and looking up at the barred hole in the door Robert saw the glittering of the sheriff’s eyes. Croyser spoke.

  ‘All taken. John of Nottingham was first, but the others are all secure now.’

  ‘Thanks to God!’

  Croyser looked at him with contempt in his eyes. ‘You pray to God after what you’ve done? You summoned the devil and sold your soul to kill a man. And would have killed your own king, no doubt, if fear of your punishment hadn’t stopped you.’

  ‘No! I summoned no demons! And I did tell you of the plot!’

  ‘Yes, you did, didn’t you? And all, I suppose, because you’d rather risk being hanged than suffering the death that the king might plan for you.’

  ‘What will happen to them now?’

  ‘The others? They’ll all try to plead innocence and ask for sureties to help them escape from prison. They’ll only be here a short while, I expect.’

  ‘And my master? How is he?’

  ‘I thought …’

  There was a sudden doubt in the sheriff’s voice. Robert le Mareschal felt a griping in his belly that was not due to the thin pottage he had eaten that morning. ‘He hasn’t escaped? If he has escaped, he can make an image of me and kill me!’

  ‘Well, he has escaped in a way, I suppose.’ The sheriff grinned nastily. ‘His body’s here, but his spirit’s escaped, I suppose you could say. More than you will do.’

  ‘All I did was make mommets and obey my master,’ Robert declared.

  ‘You made the figures very realistic, too, didn’t you? So realistic even I could recognise my king when I saw it. No, you only came forward because you thought you’d make a safer pact by selling your companions to the king than by killing him. What was it, did someone else hint that they’d give you up?’

  ‘I’ve already told you …’

  ‘Yes, you’ve told me what you want me to hear. You haven’t told me everything, though. Not by a long shot. But you will, you will. I’ll have you shrieking in agony and begging to tell me all. We are skilled in the use of our devices here, and the king is upset to hear that you helped make the imitation of him so that you could kill him by your maleficium.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done anything to him! I couldn’t!’ Robert pleaded. He had surrendered himself as soon as he could when he realised that the attempt must be discovered: the thought of the punishment that would come to a man who had dared to make an attempt on the life of the king had petrified him with fear.

  ‘You’ll have to convince him, not me. And not only him. You know, I don’t think that the good king’s friends are happy either. From what I’ve heard, the Despensers are also distressed to think that you and your master could have taken money from these malcontents and traitors to kill them. I don’t know, but I rather think that Sir Hugh le Despenser will want to be involved in your punishment personally. And God help you if he does!’

  Exeter City

  It took Baldwin and the coroner only a short while to walk up South Gate Street towards the area in which the watchman had seen the shadow, but it took considerably more time for Baldwin to persuade the coroner to enter the lane with him.

  ‘You are seriously suggesting that there could have been a man in here who had the skill to change himself into a blasted cat to escape that poor excuse for a guard?’

  ‘Of course not! Yet he may have seen something which was out of place, even if he did succumb to superstitious nonsense shortly afterwards.’

  ‘I think we’d be better served fetching ourselves a pie for our dinner.’

  ‘Come, it will take little enough time,’ Baldwin said.

  With a bad grace the coroner gave in, and Baldwin was grateful for his company as they walked along the busy lane towards the Bear Gate.

  ‘He did say the second alley after the main street?’ Baldwin confirmed, his nose wrinkled at the ste
nch. ‘I can understand why he would be reluctant to enter this noisome little trail.’

  It was a narrow gap between houses like so many others, and yet here the width was much reduced. As Baldwin took a first tentative step in, he felt as though the houses were all leaning in towards him, their upper storeys bending down and blocking out the sky.

  Oddly enough, once the two men had walked about ten paces, the whole area brightened. Here there was a curve in the alley, and now it ran straight towards the south. The sun was up in the clouds there, brightening a thinner layer of cloud, and the alley appeared less repellent than it had at first because once they were away from the entrance, it widened somewhat. However, the odours of excrement and urine were all-pervasive. A scuttling ahead showed where a rat was scavenging, and the sounds stopped as the two drew nearer.

  ‘I cannot imagine why any man would want to come down here.’

  ‘For a fellow making good his escape, it would be as good as any,’ Baldwin considered. ‘Look at this place! No one is here during the day, so it must be guaranteed to be deserted at night. Say you had killed a king’s messenger, and you had to escape. The South Gate would be shut, so where else could you go? This would be the ideal route to take, I should say.’

  The coroner lifted his boot with an expression of distaste and stared at the sole. ‘So long as he didn’t mind being covered in the ordure of the centuries, damn it! Look at that!’ He began to scrape the muck from his boot on a step.

  ‘The rat would explain why there would be a cat up here,’ Baldwin continued, walking on a short distance and peering about him. ‘I dare say this would be a cheerful hunting ground for any feline. And the appearance of a man suddenly coming up the alley from the gate might startle a cat so that it decided to bolt for it, and that was how it met with the fearful watchman.’

  ‘Perfectly logical,’ the coroner agreed.

  ‘And the watchman said he thought the man looked like a sorcerer. Let us go and visit the fellow, eh?’

  Lady Alice reached the house late in the afternoon, with Sarra as chaperon, only to find it encircled by a small group of gawping men and women. There was a beadle she recognised outside, a scruffy little fellow whom her husband had once said he suspected of half the crimes in the city, except he’d never managed to catch him.