‘A good answer,’ Baldwin laughed, and glanced up himself. The ceiling was fabulously ornate, much more so than his own in Furnshill, with rich carving on some of the beams. It reflected the wealth and prestige of the dead squire. ‘It is worth studying, is it not?’
Alan recognised his voice. It was the man he had spoken to outside the church, the knight. He had a kind voice, Alan thought, not what he would have expected from a soldier.
‘Come on, boys. We don’t have all day.’
This was the other man, the bailiff. Alan nodded cautiously, and walked towards them both, Jordan behind him, too overwhelmed by the presence of such magnificent men to be able to think clearly, let alone speak.
‘Sir,’ Alan began, his eyes fixed on Baldwin, ‘I haven’t known what to do since the day our friend died. We were playing with him up on the hill, and I don’t know, but we thought it would be better if we kept quiet about what we saw up there.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Anney demanded on seeing her son.
Baldwin cast her a look. He was not content with her evidence, nor with her behaviour. Something rang false to him. For now he curtly ordered her to be silent, before turning to the boys.
Baldwin smiled encouragingly and motioned to him to continue.
‘Well, sir. We were up there that day. I’d got my sling, and so had Herbert, and we tried to get some birds, but we got bored, and all three of us started playing. Usually we play wars or something else, like hunting a wolf. That day I was the wolf, anyway, and Herbert and Jordan were trying to find me. Before they could, the priest caught me, and tried to beat me, but I got away.’
‘Do you know why he wanted to hit you?’ Simon asked.
‘No, sir,’ said Alan with a shrug. ‘He often thrashes me for no reason. This time, I ran and ran because he looked so angry, and I went down the hill and over the road. And while I was there, I-’
‘Shot me, you little sod!’ snarled Thomas.
Alan spun round and stared. He hadn’t seen Thomas sitting over near the fire.
Baldwin smiled at the almost comical expression of fear on the lad’s face. ‘You are safe in here, and I am sure that Master Thomas will not harm you. He wishes us to find out who killed your friend.’
‘Well, then yes, I admit it, sir,’ Alan said courageously. ‘Master Thomas was riding past, and I didn’t think he’d know where the stone came from.’
‘I used to be a boy, you know! I can tell where a stone comes from. I myself have fired…’ Thomas realised that confessing to shooting adults when he was a boy might not be fitting, and he suddenly shut his mouth with an almost audible snap.
Baldwin made no effort to conceal his smile. ‘So, Alan, after that, you went back up the hill again, and what then?’
‘I met Jordan and told him what had happened. Jordan and Herbert had been together up at the stream, and I asked where Herbert was. Jordan told me Herbert had gone to see what the priest was doing up there.’
Alan sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. ‘Sir, Herbert was very brave, he always had been, and never minded shooting the priest. I used to try to stop him, because I was scared of Brother Stephen, but he just laughed and carried on. Me and Jordan were worried, though, so we decided we’d go and get Herbert back before he could do something silly. We went up the hill.’
Simon looked at Baldwin. ‘This would be after Thomas had chased the lad who shot him.’‘
‘Oh, he tried to catch me,’ said Alan dismissively, ‘but I left him far behind. We got to the top of a bit of the hill, and down there by the stream, I saw the Brother. He was standing, staring into the water. Then I spotted Herbert. He was hiding behind a bush, his sling ready, and then he let it fly! He caught the priest right on the arse, and my, didn’t he jump! But when he turned, Herbert hadn’t hidden fast enough, sir, and the priest saw him, and ran after him. Well, I can outrun him, see, but Herbert wasn’t as quick as me. He was caught, and the priest pulled him down and began beating him with his stick, and when he broke that, with his hand.’
To Simon’s ears the boy was slowing in his speech. The bailiff thought at first that it was because he was coming to the end of his tale, but then he realised that Alan had more to say, but didn’t relish the telling.
‘Sir, then I saw the priest cuddle Herbert.’
‘Cuddle him?’ Baldwin narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
Alan’s face had grown pale as he blinked at Baldwin. ‘I know what happens, sir. I’ve seen men from the village with their girls down in the meadows often enough. And at the inn I’ve seen men with women. It’s the same as a stallion covering a mare, or a dog with a bitch. The priest had taken off his shoes and robe, but to do that to Herbert…’
The knight swallowed, nodded, and said harshly, ‘What then, Alan?“
‘Poor Herbert was crying. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what I could say to him. Me and Jordan came away, thinking we’d go home. It wasn’t right, sir! Only as we went back up the hill, we heard Herbert give a sort of cry, and I thought he must have fallen. Jordan and me went back, sir, but we couldn’t see either of them. They’d gone. All that was left was this, sir.’
And so saying, he brought out Brother Stephen’s missing shoe.
Simon and Baldwin ordered their horses to be saddled, as well as mounts for Godfrey and Thomas. Simon felt it was only sensible for them to have as many witnesses as possible. While outside Simon told the grooms not to allow Stephen to have a horse. On foot the man wouldn’t be able to get far if he attempted to escape. The bailiff almost wished the cleric would commit suicide before they could return.
He carried the shoe carefully, wrapped up in a cloth and thrust beneath his tunic. He was unhappy about this journey -it seemed to him as though he was participating in a peculiarly unwholesome enquiry, and it was one he would be glad to finish. Simon had been raised in the shadow of the growing Crediton Canonical church as it was being built, and he had an awe for men of the cloth. He rarely allowed it to alter his feelings towards clerics as men – he didn’t like some, while others he counted as particular friends, such as Peter Clifford, Dean of Crediton – and yet he could not help but revere them because of their unique position as God’s own representatives.
And now, he mused, as they trotted gently off towards the stream where the footprints lay, here he was trying to confirm the guilt of a priest, a man who was supposed to be their spiritual leader.
Baldwin’s thoughts ran along the same lines, but he was less concerned with proving the cleric’s guilt, and more with his own feelings. He was aware of a growing sense of the rightness of the matter as everything pointed more and more steadily towards the priest. It was almost as if he wanted the priest to be guilty of the murder, and that, he felt instinctively, was wrong.
He thought about his feelings for some while. It all stemmed from his treatment while he was a Templar, he knew, and that experience of injustice had influenced all his life from that point. He had trusted in the Pope and the Church, and both had betrayed him, the first from motives of personal greed, the second from an unthinking allegiance, assuming that whatever the Pontiff might decide had the force of a decision from God.
But Baldwin now had a great doubt. He had been prepared to accept every piece of evidence as pointing to the guilt of the cleric because he had wanted it to. It would satisfy his own desire for a personal form of revenge: visiting justice on one priest as the surrogate of the Church itself. And yet what if, by so doing, he was duplicating the injustice? A bitter irony, that: in trying to avenge the unfairness of his own treatment, he might himself be guilty of prejudice against another innocent party.
To reassure himself, he enumerated the indications of guilt to himself. There were many signs, from all that the witnesses had said. Anney, Godfrey, van Relenghes and Thomas had all seen the priest up on the hill. There was no doubt of his presence, and he did not deny being there. He admitted to grabbing Alan, and clearly he was already angry at that stage.
It would hardly be surprising if, on being used as a target once more, he should really lose his temper.
But enough to engage in the homosexual rape – of a young child? Such things were not unknown, Baldwin knew that well enough. There had been cases in Cyprus, where the Eastern ways held some sway, and it had been hinted at within the Templars. Sometimes particular knights would disappear from preceptories; likewise priests were often suspected. Baldwin sourly accepted that he could all too easily believe it of the slender, feminine cleric.
The boy’s death would surely have been accidental; perhaps the priest was as horrified as anyone else would have been when Herbert fell dead. Maybe that was it, the knight thought: Stephen swung a blow, not with the intention of killing, but with the aim of showing his anger. When he realised the boy was dead, he didn’t know what to do.
