The Butcher of St Peter's: (Knights Templar 19) Read online

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sir Peregrine.

  He could have grown angry with this fellow. It was pathetic. There were many men rather like Baldwin, he supposed, men who were not driven to treat the protection of everyone in the realm very seriously, but for his part he had seen the dangers. The Despensers had caused too much disturbance and bloodshed already. They had to be stopped.

  Perhaps Sir Baldwin’s attitude was an indication of the lethargy which affected the rest of the country. Or was it something else?

  Out at the southern gate of the city, there were spikes from which hung some blackened, wizened shapes. Not many, but enough. If a man took a close look at them, he could see the rough, sharp edges of the yellowed bones where they protruded through the leathery old flesh. That was what had happened to the last of the rebels after the recent civil wars. The King and his henchmen had captured all those whom the Despensers saw as a threat to their power, and had them slaughtered, from Earl Thomas of Lancaster down to the lowliest knight, simply because they had dared to stand up and declare that the King must control his advisers. Many a man might have been scared by the prospect of ending his life in front of a jeering crowd, only to have his remains dangle from a spike for the populace to contemplate as they went about their daily lives.

  Perhaps that was it, Sir Peregrine reflected, gazing at Baldwin again. Sir Baldwin de Furnshill was scared by the possibility of defeat. He was scared by the prospect of his own death.

  In the Black Hog, there was no question of defeat when the friars entered late that same afternoon.

  John was the older man, and as he gazed in upon the drinkers he smiled faintly. ‘These are the very fellows, Robert. Do you listen to me, and I will show you how to work them up to such a fair froth of emotion they do not even notice giving me their money!’

  He strolled among the men drinking there, his bowl held unostentatiously in his hand, as though it was of no great significance. It was there so that folks could put money in it if they so wished, but he was not here to make demands – not yet. He would seek his payment later, when they had all heard his talk.

  ‘Friends! Friends one and all!’ he cried as he reached the middle of the chamber. This being a small tavern, there was little enough space, and Robert could see that already he had managed to take a firm grip on their attention. He stood with a hand raised as though in declamation, his eyes covering the whole room, a sad smile on his narrow face, which wore an expression of mingled acceptance and affection. ‘Friends, do you know me? I am a shod friar, an ordinary man, much like you. Except I have taken vows, extraordinary vows. You know why? Because I was once like you. Yes? I grew up in a city much like this one, with the same people in charge, the same fellows who – ah – weren’t! I was apprenticed to a cutler. Can’t you just see me as a rich cutler?’

  There was a low rumble of laughter at that. The scrawny figure looked nothing like a rich burgess, especially when he puffed out his chest and tried to look solemn.

  ‘Yes, you can see me as a rich businessman, can’t you? But how much easier life would be if we always got what we wanted. Haven’t you thought that? Instead, there I was at mass one morning, listening to the priest up there in front, mumbling away, and it suddenly struck me, “This man hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s saying!” Haven’t you thought that sometimes? Yes! A parish priest will do the best he can, but really he’s no better than anyone else, is he? And you know as well as I do that he sometimes doesn’t understand the words he says. Often you reckon you understand them better than he does himself. Well, I thought that, and I thought, If the old fool’s supposed to be talking to God on my behalf, I think I’d prefer to talk to Him direct! So I waited and thought, and then went to the friary. And I’m here now, preaching the words of God to those who’ll listen.’

  He spoke for a lot longer in the same vein, and Robert caught a sense of how a preacher could stir men’s blood with a few words and ideas. That skinny, scruffy friar was reaching through the warm fug of ale, sweat and bad breath to convince them all that they should start to speak to God again. And if they didn’t want to go to their parish church, he could help them do it. He was a friar, and friars were allowed to hear a man’s confession, just the same as the parish priest. All they needed to do was pay a little money to him, put a few coins into his bowl, and he could help them. He was a shod friar, after all, a man with no worldly wealth. The friars had given away all their property so that they wouldn’t be distracted from their task of protecting souls.

  ‘It’s not like we’re canons, friends. We aren’t like those rich men in their great halls, with their nice new church they’re a-building. No, we’re honest, hardworking men like you. So long as we have enough for a crust of bread … and a sup of ale, too! That’s enough for honest men, isn’t it? Why should a priest crave more?’

  Robert suddenly realized what he was saying: that the canons and vicars in the cathedral were no better than parasites living off the backs of the local men here.

  A voice in the crowd called out, ‘He’s right. The vicar at my church is honest enough, but he’s less sense than my chickens. He preaches as well as he can, but he’s no good. Not as good as a friar, anyway. Vicar before him used to ask friars in to preach, but this one doesn’t care for friars. He’d prefer them to stay away, and he won’t offer them hospitality or food. Why is that?’

  ‘He is discourteous, friend,’ John said, holding up his hand to silence the rumble that passed about the room, ‘because he knows well that we would perhaps be more able to sway you than he. I do not say that he has a crime to conceal, but such things have been known.’

  ‘What crime?’ was the obvious response to that, and it came from four different voices. There was a cynical lack of trust in the clergy, who lived so well, who ate so lavishly, who wore the finest clothes … while at least friars tended to live among the people to whom they preached.

  ‘There are so many. Stealing money they do not deserve; why, did you know that even now, the canons of the cathedral are concealing the fact that one of their own vicars has stolen the money from the purse of a guest? A poor traveller whose only crime was to beg hospitality at the door of the Dean and chapter has had his savings taken.’

  ‘The culprit will be found and punished.’

  ‘Found, yes, and punished, true,’ John said, but there was an edge of harshness to his voice, and he nodded sagely as he peered around at the men grouped about him. ‘Punished to the full extent of the Dean’s rage, I have no doubt.’

  There was a sudden thoughtful silence. Men who had been grinning to hear him talk now lowered their gaze. Everyone knew that the courts were kind to vicars. They had the benefit of clergy, which meant that they couldn’t be subjected to the same punishments as men who lived in the secular world. There were no whips or brands or hangman’s nooses for the clerics in the cathedral close.

  ‘He stole six marks, so I’ve heard,’ John continued, peering at his audience from under beetling brows. ‘That would be death to any of you here, wouldn’t it? Aye, but this felon, he’s safe. Yes? He has friends in high places, I dare say. Do you know, the canons have tried violence and had to be chastised before? Last time it was when they attacked my own friary. You know our little house, the place behind the canons’ great palaces, in the angle of the wall towards the East Gate? The canons came in with their servants, and ransacked our church, striking down my friends in there, and broke the cross at our altar. And do you know why?’

  Robert shook his head slowly in admiration as John’s voice dropped and he lowered his gaze to stare at them all. A man shifted his feet on the rushes of the floor, and in the silence all could hear it. They were hanging on John’s words.

  ‘Because they wanted to steal a body; that’s why!’

  Arthur was mumbling and snuffling in his sleep, and Cecily was irritated enough to want to smother him with a pillow. God! Wouldn’t he ever stop that silly noise? Why should a fellow do that so much in the middle of the nigh
t, when all about him people were trying to get some sleep? Perhaps he didn’t realize, but it was the middle of the night.

  She should be more patient. Well, yes. That was easily said, but when Arthur was snorting and moaning like that, there was little a girl could do about it. And for goodness’ sake, surely she deserved a bit of peace herself? There was no reason why she should be expected to suffer this sort of torment every night.

  She kicked him, gently, to make him stir a little. Usually that worked well enough, but for some reason tonight it didn’t. So she pinched his arse, good and hard. That did the trick all right!

  ‘Ow! Ow …’ He sniffled to himself and blearily opened his eyes. ‘I was having a horrible dream,’ he said, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He always had a runny nose.

  ‘You,’ Cecily declared, ‘are revolting.’

  ‘ ’M not,’ her brother said with all the dignity his four and a half years could muster. ‘Mummy says I’m not.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and go back to sleep. And this time, don’t snore,’ Cecily hissed and threw herself over to face the wall.

  Arthur groaned to himself, just like Daddy, and rolled over too, tugging at their shared blankets.

  That groaning of his, it was nearly as bad as the snoring and sniffling. He always had a cold, Arthur did, and when he didn’t he was still grunting and groaning to himself. In Daddy it was endearing, because he was grown up, but a little boy like him, she thought contemptuously, a little boy like him shouldn’t make a noise like that. It was silly.

  That he was silly was less a subjective judgement than a conviction borne out by the facts. He was clumsy, noisy, rough and altogether too boisterous. And he was dim. He would believe anything she told him, which made for some amusement for her and her friends, but it also meant that he was amazingly annoying much of the time. And he had no idea that it was rude to stare. He would turn his big blue eyes on people and just stare and stare, and it made them uneasy. She’d told him once that if he kept doing it, someone would come along in the middle of the night and cut out his eyes so he couldn’t be so rude any more, but it didn’t work. He was more fascinated by the sight of other people than he was terrified by the thought of ghouls and monsters coming into his chamber at night.

  She wasn’t scared, of course. With the perspective that her additional five years gave her, she knew that although ghosts were all over the place, as her daddy said, they were probably too scared to come into a house like this with Arthur’s dry nurse about the place. And right, too. Iseult was enough to petrify even the most scary of ghosts into finding another house.

  There was a creak, and Cecily heard a board moving in the chamber overhead. She glanced up, and through the cracks in the floorboards she caught a flash of blue-white, then another. There was a third, and then a glimmering of yellowish light. Her father had lit a candle. She kept her eyes open, listening to the soft padding of feet. There was no door to her parents’ room, only an archway which gave onto the staircase. The steps were terribly steep and dangerous, and anyone on them must clamber cautiously down to the ground. She was aware of whispering and a glow of light, and then her father’s bare legs appeared as he slowly descended. Once on the ground, she saw him holding a little candle high over his head while he peered about. He had a sword in his right hand, and his face was black with suspicion. It was an expression that would stay with her for the rest of her life in her mares: his square, rugged, honest face with an anxious scowl graven upon it.

  She made no sound. When Father came down the stairs because of the children’s arguing or playing, he was invariably very cross and beat them. Tonight he walked near the bed but, to her surprise, although he glanced towards them it was a cursory look, and then he was crossing the room to the shutters. One was open, and as Cecily watched he pulled it wide and stared out into the night.

  ‘Well?’ It was her mother, Juliana, on the stairs.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Daniel said. ‘The shutter wasn’t fastened properly. I’ll make it firm now. You go back to bed.’

  ‘All right, darling. Be quick.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Cecily kept still and waited while he carefully slammed the shutters and slipped a peg over the bar to lock them. Then he stood surveying the room awhile, before turning and walking out into the hall.

  Quietly rolling over, Cecily listened. As usual the clearest sound in the room was her brother’s snuffling and snoring, but over it she was sure that she could hear her father’s steps in the hall, crossing over the rushes and stopping at the windows and doors, checking all were shuttered and barred, before returning to the solar. There he locked the door to the hall and appeared to hesitate.

  In the darkness, Cecily heard him muttering, and it was some little while before she made out what he was saying. Then she realized that he was praying for her and her brother; a quiet, contemplative prayer, as though he was really scared of something … or someone. ‘Please God, don’t let him hurt them. Not my little darlings.’

  It was tempting to call out to him and ask him what he was doing, but Cecily had been thrashed often enough for interrupting him at night. She knew he disapproved of her waking, even when it was he who had woken her. So instead she remained silent in the bed, watching and listening as he grunted to himself and made his way back up the stairs to his chamber.

  ‘Nothing. I told you it was nothing. Go to sleep,’ she heard him say in response to a mumbled, sleepy enquiry from her mother, and then Cecily heard him tumble into their bed again. There was a squeaking of ropes as the mattress took his weight, and then the boards moved again, and in the thin light of the candle upstairs she saw a fine dust falling gently.

  ‘Why were you so long, then?’

  ‘I feared there might be a man there, that’s all.’

  ‘Est?’ Cecily could hear that her mother was wide awake now. ‘He’s no threat, is he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why the sword?’

  He made no answer for a while. Then, ‘Go to sleep. We can discuss this tomorrow.’

  Cecily waited for the candle to be blown out, but for once her father did not heed his own stern injunction that all candles should be extinguished when the family was in bed. She was asleep before long, and her last memory was of the thin beam of light projecting between the floorboards.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Why do you hate him so?’ Jeanne asked again. ‘You loathed him at Tiverton, because he was so keen on politicking and took no account of the impact of his actions on other people, but he seems a better man now he is no longer at the castle.’

  ‘You think so?’ Baldwin asked. He was sitting in front of a polished copper plate while Edgar ran a razor over his cheeks. It was not the best time to be discussing the finer points of his feelings for Sir Peregrine.

  ‘I know it seems irrational, my love, and that isn’t natural for you.’

  Baldwin was silent awhile as he considered this. Jeanne’s question had annoyed him, although not for the petty reason that many believed a woman should accept her man’s decisions without question. Baldwin respected his wife as well as loving her, and he had married her for her independence and intelligence. He had no use for a slave. But her question had reminded him that he had chosen to detest Sir Peregrine a long time ago when they first met and Sir Peregrine tried to enlist his support for rebellion against the Despensers and the King; this was no mere irrational dislike. He waited until Edgar was finished, and then, with his face freshly rinsed and towelled, he stood, wincing slightly at the pain in his breast where the bolt had struck, and took her hand.

  ‘My sweet, I don’t think it is in him to change, any more than a dappled pony can become a chestnut. No, he is a dangerous person to know, and dangerous to talk to. At any time there could be another war, and I will not tie myself to a band which seeks to overthrow the King.’

  ‘You can’t believe he’d dare to seek that!’ she exclaimed with a smile, but there was no recip
rocal amusement on his face. ‘Do you?’

  He nodded. ‘It may seem far-fetched, but that is exactly what I fear.’

  ‘Could any man dare such action when the King has just proved his mastery?’ she wondered. ‘It would be rash indeed to attempt anything against the King or the Despensers.’

  ‘The Despensers are rich beyond the dreams of any men in the country – any men other than the Despensers,’ Baldwin said quietly. He disliked speaking of such matters in such a public place, but he needs must persuade Jeanne to be cautious. ‘But their avarice seems to know no bounds. They take much, but demand still more. Where their greed will end, I cannot tell. However, I do know that now Mortimer has escaped the Tower, he will become a focus for the disaffected. I would think that a host could soon be launching itself towards our shores.’

  ‘War again?’ Jeanne asked.

  ‘Without a doubt,’ Baldwin said. ‘But this war could be more vicious and damaging even than the last. This time, if Mortimer gathers an army to him, it will be infinitely worse. The men will have little to lose on either side. All those in Mortimer’s band will be aware that the King’s revenge will know no limits. If they attack him, he will try to crush them with the utmost force available to him. And that means that Mortimer will collect the most battle-experienced mercenaries he can find. If he succeeds and brings men here, and the forces clash … I do not wish to see it.’

  In his mind’s eye he could once again see that most appalling battlefield, the fight which had so directed the course of his life, the culmination of the Siege of Acre in the Holy Land. He had been only seventeen or so, and the sight of the bodies rotting and desiccating in the streets, while the heads of their comrades were flung over the walls by the ruthless Moors outside, and the population starved, would never leave him. Even now, the harsh thundering of drums could be enough to make him break into a sweat if the noise caught him unawares.