The Manor of Death Page 28

  Their shocked surprise was almost ludicrous as they saw more than a dozen armed soldiers swarm out of the hatch and advance upon them with raised weapons.

  'Back, get back aboard!' screamed the first man across the gunwale, but it was too late. John saw that the leader was Martin Rof, and he ran at him with a roar, his own sword upraised. The master of The Tiger was no coward and parried John's blow with a clash of metal, as Gwyn and Morin forced other men back against the thick wooden bulwark that ran around the deck.

  There was a cacophony of screaming and yelling and the sound of weapon on weapon. Morin had engaged the mate of The Tiger, a huge man with a bald head, who was wielding a dagger and a short stabbing spear. The constable was thankful that he had worn the heavy hauberk, as the mate's pike had a longer reach than Ralph's sword and was bruising his chest and belly with every jab. Gwyn had felled another ruffian with the first swing of his ball-mace and was chasing another back over the rail, while John was dealing with the shipmaster. Martin Rof was swinging his sword desperately as he backed to the gunwale, obviously seeking to get back to his own ship, but John used his yard of steel two-handed and battered down Rof's defence by sheer force. The last swing caught the bearded shipmaster across the forearm, and with a scream he dropped his sword and dagger to clutch his wounded limb, blood pumping from between his fingers.

  He tried to get up on to the rail, but de Wolfe grabbed him by the neck of his tunic and pulled him to the deck, where a kick in the head kept him down. When John looked around, the battle was over, and indeed several of the soldiers had not struck a blow, as they so outnumbered the half-dozen who had clambered aboard. Gwyn stood over a dead man, and Ralph had soon overcome the bald mate by chopping his spear-shaft through with a mighty swing of his broadsword. However, the man had leapt back aboard The Tiger, where those of the crew who had not climbed across were desperately hacking through the ropes from the grapnels, allowing the vessels to drift apart.

  'The sods are getting away!' roared Gwyn, leaping up on to the rail.

  Fearful that he would jump across and be left alone on the other ship, de Wolfe yelled at him to stop, but Gwyn's innate good sense overcame his fighting spirit and he contented himself with hurling insults and abuse at the rapidly retreating vessel. He was joined by the crew of the St Radegund who ran back from the safety of the port side to jeer across the widening strip of water at the shocked remnants of the pirate gang.

  'The swine have made off, Crowner!' said the shipmaster angrily.

  'Not all of them, Angerus,' replied de Wolfe, pulling off his iron helmet to wipe his brow. 'We've got two of them dead here and another three captive, including their leader.'

  Martin Rof lay groaning in the scuppers, still bleeding on to the deck. Ralph Morin, wincing at the bruises that were forming on his own belly, prodded Rof with his boot. 'Better not let him die, I suppose! We may need his confession to nail those others in Axmouth.'

  As their blood-lust subsided, the defenders took stock of the situation, while the crew went to haul out their spare steering oar to replace the one that had been shattered. None of the men-at-arms had suffered so much as a scratch, so complete had been the surprise they sprang on the pirates - it was only their constable who had sustained a few bruises.

  'Where can The Tiger go now?' asked Ralph, looking across at the receding cog as the remnants of her crew struggled to regain control.

  'Not back to Axmouth, that's for sure,' replied de Wolfe. 'Every man of her crew who survived must live there, and we could soon find them and hang the lot if they try to go home.'

  'Perhaps they'll join the other rogues in Lyme or Dartmouth,' suggested Ralph. 'Or even take the cog over to Flanders or Brittany, though I doubt they've got the brains to do that, without their master here.'

  'The Tiger belongs to that merchant in Exeter,' observed Gwyn. 'He'll not take kindly to losing a valuable vessel. I should think they'll beach it somewhere and vanish into the woods.'

  They went to look at the men they had vanquished and confirmed that two were dead, including the one whose head Gwyn had crushed. These they tipped overboard without ceremony, and John decided that, being miles out to sea, they were not within his jurisdiction and he needed to hold no inquests upon them.

  Two other seamen. had deep sword wounds, one in the neck and the other in the chest. They had both lost a lot of blood and he suspected that they would both eventually die, especially if suppuration set in. Martin Rof had started to recover from the kick in the head and his arm seemed to have stopped bleeding. A rough bandage was wrapped around it by one of the ship's crew, and to be on the safe side John got Gwyn to lash his ankles together to prevent him from getting up.

  By now, Angerus had shipped the new oar and had got the vessel under way again. 'Where are we bound, Sir John?' he asked. 'The Axe or the Exe?'

  John looked at the castle constable. 'I suppose we had better get back to Topsham or Exeter?'

  Morin stuck out his forked beard like the prow of a ship and nodded. 'Not much point in confronting the Axmouth villains with only these few men. We need to go down there with a large sheriff's posse - and the sheriff himself, if we can get him away from his clerks.'

  The shipmaster brought the St Radegund about and they began clawing their way back westwards.

  'The wind has moved more southerly, so with luck we'll just catch the evening tide to get upriver,' observed Angerus. 'Otherwise we'll have empty bellies by the morning if we have to stay out here all night.'

  As they crawled across Lyme Bay, John went to the three wounded men lying with their backs up against the bulwarks. 'You'll all hang for this, of course,' he observed pleasantly. He opened his hand and showed them some pebbles that he had taken from the 'treasure' boxes.

  'There's the silver you're going to die for! As you've nothing left to lose, except your lives, you may as well tell us what's been going on in Axmouth. Confession is good for your souls and, though you'll get a priest before the end, you can tell me as well.'

  The one with the neck wound, a young man of about eighteen, began to cry, but Martin Rof summoned up enough strength to spit at the coroner. 'Go to hell, damn you!' he growled.

  'I think you'll be there well before me, captain!' retorted the coroner. 'Now, who killed that poor lad Simon Makerel - and why?'

  Martin turned his head away contemptuously, but the youngest man was desperate to grasp at anything that might save him from the gallows. 'It was him, sir, the shipmaster here! I saw him do it, as did half the crew. He caught the boy outside the tavern and dragged him around to the yard, where he strangled him with a length of rope.'

  'You're a bloody liar! Keep your mouth shut!' snarled Rof.

  'Tell me more about it, boy,' commanded the coroner.

  'He was going to tell the Keeper about it, poor lad,' John told the sheriff later that evening. They had just caught the tide and decided to ride it all the way up to Exeter, rather than stop at Topsham. The prisoners had been taken up to Rougemont, using the soldiers from the ship as escort. The two badly wounded men were carried on litters, but Martin Rof's ankles were freed, so that he could walk. All three were locked in the foul cells in the prison below the keep, then John, Gwyn and Ralph Morin went up to eat in the hall above. Henry de Furnellis came out to keep them company and sat with a quart of ale while they made up for their sparse rations that day with food from the castle kitchens. He was regaled with their account of the dramatic scene out in Lyme Bay.

  'This Simon Makerel was so conscience-stricken about the killing of the entire crew of that cog they pillaged that he decided to tell the Keeper of the Peace about it, after first confessing to his parish priest in Seaton,' explained de Wolfe. 'Unfortunately, he also disclosed his anguish to the young fellow we have down in the cells, who in turn was worried that he would suffer himself if Simon split on them. So he told the mate, that bald-headed swine who gave you those belly bruises, Ralph!'

  'But the mate didn't kill the boy,' said Henry.
>
  'No, he went straight to Martin Rof with the news, and the shipmaster waylaid Makerel in the village that same night and strangled him like a chicken, in front of some of the crew as a warning. He got the mate to bury him behind that bush, but unfortunately for them he was found quite quickly, thanks to the priest's dead dog.'

  'Have you got that confession in writing?' asked the constable.

  'I'll get Thomas to take it in the morning. I don't think the man will die for a day or two. I suppose I'd better ask Brother Saulf to have a look at their wounds tomorrow, just for the sake of Christian charity, but it seems a waste of time as they are going to hang anyway.'

  As John tipped his wooden bowl to his lips to drain the last of the mutton stew, de Furnellis turned to Ralph. 'What are we going to do about Axmouth now? Unless this man Rof confesses, we really have no proof that the people onshore are involved.'

  'But they must be, if we now know that The Tiger and her crew - which all belong to Axmouth - were taking stolen goods back there,' protested de Wolfe.

  De Furnellis still looked worried. 'I'll wager they'll say they thought the stuff was legitimate cargo from abroad. We need to get these three men to confess as much as possible, especially the shipmaster.'

  'The young one would turn approver, given half a chance,' replied John. 'But I'm not sure he knows much; he's little more than a ship's boy.'

  Ralph Morin was more blunt in his approach. 'Turn Stigand loose on them, that'll loosen their tongues,' he growled.

  Stigand was the grossly obese moron who acted as gaoler and occasional torturer down in the undercroft. He carried out the various 'ordeals', such as walking barefoot over nine red-hot ploughshares or picking a stone from the bottom of a barrel of boiling water, to distinguish innocence from guilt. In addition, he always relished the chance of applying a little torture to extract confessions. The previous sheriff, John's brother-in-law Richard de Revelle, was quite willing to give Stigand his head if it meant solving a case more quickly, but Henry de Furnellis was usually loath to use him unless all else had failed.

  'Let's see how much we can get out of them tomorrow,' he advised. 'Then we have to decide what to do about Axmouth. You think that cog won't have sailed back there?'

  John and Morin shook their heads. 'There's nothing there for them now, except their families. And I'll wager that the bailiff and the portreeve would give them short shrift, wanting to distance themselves as much as possible from Martin Rof and his pirates, now that they have been exposed.'

  Gwyn had been silent while his superiors were speaking, but now he raised a matter that had so far not been mentioned.

  'What about the owner of The Tiger?' he asked. 'How could he not know that the cog was being used illegally? If she was out at sea robbing other ships, she couldn't be doing her normal trading work. And with a hold full of stolen cargo, there would be no room for her own legitimate goods.'

  There was a pause while the other three considered this new angle.

  'You've certainly got a point there, Gwyn,' muttered Ralph. 'It depends, I think, on how closely this Exeter merchant, whatever his name is, keeps an eye on the comings and goings of his ship.'

  'Robert de Helion is his name,' supplied de Wolfe. 'It seems this agent of his, Henry Crik, handles all the details. I know de Helion owns a number of ships, so maybe he doesn't keep a close watch on them all, as long as his money keeps coming in.'

  The sheriff nodded. 'That would be easy enough, topping up any loss of charter fees from the proceeds of piracy. So maybe we need a stern word or two with this Henry Crik, as well as with his master in the city.'

  It was getting late and soon the coroner decided to go home, weary with the excitements of the long day and the sea air. Gwyn insisted on walking back with him to Martin's Lane, mindful of the arrow that had just missed his master and the darkness of the city streets, lit only by occasional pitch flares around the castle and the cathedral Close.

  They arrived at his door without mishap and Gwyn turned to go back to Rougemont, where he would bed down with his soldier friends.

  'Let's hope those pirates don't die before the morning,' he said cheerfully. 'Stigand would be so disappointed. '

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  In which Crowner John goes campaigning

  When John went to the castle gaol next morning, he found the new prisoners alive, but only just, as far as one was concerned. The man with the chest wound was gasping for breath, and the hole between his ribs where a sword had entered was bubbling a mixture of blood and air at every laboured movement of his chest. Though he was inevitably going to be hanged, John could not see him suffer this much, especially lying in a filthy cell.

  The prison was in the undercroft, partly below ground so that the main floor of the keep was raised above it for purposes of defence. It was a dank, dark cavern, the arches vaulting the roof green with mould. Half the place was for rough storage, divided from the other part by a rusted iron grille, in which was a gate that led to a dozen foul cells. They held only a stone slab for a bed and a dirty bucket on the rat-infested straw that covered the earthen floor.

  When Gwyn and Thomas accompanied the coroner to the gaol, Stigand opened up the gate for them and waddled ahead to unlock the cell. He wore a filthy tunic, covered by a long leather apron spattered with stains, some of which appeared to be dried blood.

  'He'll be dead by morning, Crowner,' he advised confidently as he threw open the blackened door to reveal the prisoner lying on the slab. He was panting for breath and his. lips were almost violet in colour. 'A punctured lung, no doubt about it,' he added with the confidence of a physician.

  John tried to speak to the dying man, but he was unresponsive.

  'You'll get nothing from him in this world, sir,' grunted the gaoler. 'But the other two should last until they swing.'

  John, who like everyone else loathed Stigand, scowled at him. 'Nevertheless, I'll get Brother Saulf up here to look at him and if he so recommends we'll have him carried down to St John's. Now, let's have a look at the others.'

  He left the cell and went next door where Martin Rof was sitting on his slab, contemplating the insect life that crawled in the dirty straw. He had rags wrapped around his arm but seemed alert and truculent.

  'It's the bloody Crowner, by Christ! I need you visiting me like a dose of the pox!'

  Gwyn gave him a clout across the ear which knocked him sideways on to his bed. 'Keep a civil tongue in your head when talking to a king's officer, damn you!' he growled.

  The shipmaster pulled himself up and glowered at the men in his cell. 'My tongue has nothing more to say to him,' he sneered.

  De Wolfe towered over him, though Gwyn stood ready to intervene if the man became violent. 'You're going to hang, so you may as well tell me. Who else is involved in your pirate venture? Is the owner of the vessel in on this?'

  'Sod off! I'll not betray my friends,' answered Rof defiantly.

  'We'll find out soon enough, whether you tell us or not. I'm just curious as to whether your master, Robert de Helion, was party to the misuse of his cog?'

  This seemed to touch a sensitive chord. 'He had nothing to do with it. He's a good man, so don't go persecuting him.'

  John was satisfied with the reply, in that if he could confirm that the ship owner was ignorant of the situation, then this agent Henry Crik must be implicated. He put this to Martin Rof, but got only a mouthful of abuse in response. The same happened when he tried to discover if the bailiff and the portreeve were part of the criminal conspiracy in Axmouth.

  'What about the prior's man, this Brother Absalom?'

  Rof raised a dirty, blood-streaked face, his dishevelled dark hair sprouting stalks of straw from the floor. 'That slimy toad? I wouldn't know, but if he was I'll bet the prior is getting a cut!'

  He refused to answer anything else, apart from offering a string of blasphemies, and for the time being John gave up his questioning.

  'Perhaps a few days in that hellhole will soften hi
m up,' suggested Gwyn as they moved to the next dismal room, where the young man with the neck injury was curled upon his stone bench, sobbing into his hands. A soiled cloth was wound beneath his chin, bloodstained at the edges. As soon as Stigand turned the rusty key, he pulled himself up, then sank to his knees in front of John as the coroner entered the cell.

  'Mercy, sir, save me! I don't want to hang!' he sobbed. 'I didn't want to be a pirate; I was just part of the crew. I had no choice!'

  'You were one of the first over the rail, waving your sword!' snapped de Wolfe. 'You didn't seem so reluctant then, did you?'

  The young man raised his terrified face to the coroner, his hands held up clenched in supplication. 'I'll turn approver, sir; I'll testify against the others!'

  'We've got to catch the buggers first,' grunted Gwyn practically.

  'And I don't think we need an approver, thank you,' added John. 'We've plenty of eyewitnesses, including myself.'

  The sailor burst into tears and sank to the floor, face buried in the filthy 'straw.

  'But you can tell me who onshore was involved, as your captain seems to have lost the power of speech in that regard!'

  The man looked up with a flicker of hope in his face, and John felt somewhat false, as he knew that whatever he was told this lad would inevitably be pushed off a gallows ladder with a rope around his injured neck.

  'What do you want to know, sir?' he gabbled.

  'When pillaged goods were taken back to Axmouth, who dealt with them?'

  'They were unloaded and put in the warehouses, sir, the same as any other cargo.'