Chapter Fifteen
Janin was pouring some water into a dish preparatory to washing his face, which still felt sticky and rough from the previous day’s journey, when he heard the soft footsteps behind him. Turning, he saw the Irishman. He gave a short, piercing whistle, and Ricard and Philip both stirred and grunted themselves awake.
‘So you decided to come back, then,’ Ricard said grimly. ‘Where were you last night? Another French bint?’
‘I am lucky to be popular,’ Jack said easily.
‘There was a murder last night. You hear about that? Strange how things happen when you aren’t around,’ Philip said.
‘Coincidences. I find them refreshing. Your boy. He is not here — you haven’t lost him, have you?’
‘Never mind him. He’s safe enough,’ Ricard spat. ‘What do you mean, refreshing? You realise …’
‘You realise that the man responsible is an English knight called Furnshill? He was there, his dagger was found in the man’s breast, and it was only his position as a guardian to Queen Isabella that saved him from arrest.’
Ricard glanced at his companions. ‘That true?’
Janin shrugged. ‘How would I know?’
‘Well, just stay back with us, so we don’t have to be suspicious about you at least,’ Ricard said flatly. ‘We don’t need all this shite. It’s bad enough we were forced into coming away.’
‘Forced into coming here? You were persuaded to bring me, but someone made you come as well? Who did that, then?’ Jack asked. There was a smile on his face, but no reflection of it in his voice. That was as cold as the ground all about.
Janin shivered. ‘It was before we met you.’
‘And it’s none of your business,’ Philip added.
‘No problem. I was only interested. After all, we musicians need to keep together, don’t we?’
As he smiled and moved away, his feet as quiet as a cat’s, Ricard exchanged a look with Janin. ‘I really, really don’t like him.’
Robert de Chatillon knew he had to prepare the tent to be taken down. His eyes were drawn all too often to the shrouded body on the table, considering all the messages which must be composed and sent hither and thither. He managed to persuade the two churls to leave the place at last, and could begin to start work.
No sooner were Arnaud and the old man gone than he heard someone else scratching at the canvas.
‘This is the tent of Enguerrand de Foix?’
‘What do you want, Sir Baldwin?’
‘You know my name?’
Robert gave a dry smile. ‘I think that there will be few people in the camp who don’t recall your name by now, sir knight. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to strike camp and prepare my dead master’s body for the journey. There is much work for a man whose master has been murdered.’
His shot hit the mark, he saw. The bearded knight coloured slightly. Not with anger, but a kind of shame.
‘When your master died last night, I had been fired on by a charge of that powder you use for gonnes and cannons.’
‘You have my sympathy. Was that an excuse to kill him?’
‘I killed no one. I was attacked. Someone tried to kill me, then took my dagger and stabbed your master while I was blinded.’
‘So you say someone was out there to kill him and waited until you happened by? I don’t think-’
‘Or, more likely, they set the charge and only fired at me because I came by at an inopportune moment.’
Robert stopped at that. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Tell me about this charge, and maybe I can find out why — and who!’
‘They aren’t the same, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The powders. You couldn’t use cannon powder in a device made for your hand. It would burst out of the barrel without exploding. I have seen it. For a smaller gonne, you need smaller grains of powder.’
Baldwin was holding the board on which the charge had been laid. ‘Which was this?’
Robert decided there could be no harm in telling him. ‘It was the finer type.’
‘You can tell that without even looking at the board?’ Simon snapped.
Robert had kept his eyes on Baldwin. Now he looked at Simon without emotion. ‘Master, it is easy to see. I can see each flake marked on this knight’s face.’ Still, he took the board and studied that too for a short while.
‘Can you see anything on the board that could help find the man responsible?’ Baldwin asked.
‘Well, it’s possible, I suppose. Certainly the grain was fine, just like our own stores. When the charge went off, did you see it go up, or just out in one large puff of smoke and flame?’
Baldwin gave a half-grin. ‘All I remember was the flash. It was like a gush of hellfire rushing towards me.’
‘I think you are lucky, then. The man who set this did not know what he was doing, if he intended to kill. He should have set the charge in a pot, or a small barrel. Then the explosion would have been constricted, and that would have given it more force.’
‘Why?’ Simon asked.
‘It makes the gonne work better if the charge is held back.’ Richard went to the rear of his tent and returned with a barrel. ‘Watch.’
Simon had heard of this powder, but never seen it. As a fine trickle poured from the small wooden barrel, he eyed it without enthusiasm. It was just a dirty, black, uninteresting powder. ‘It looks like fine, dry soil.’
Robert glanced at him as he set the barrel aside and tapped a bung into it. ‘You think so?’ He took a spoon and carefully scooped a small amount onto Baldwin’s board. Then he walked to the rack in the corner of the tent, at which were set some polearms and de Foix’s swords. From here he took up the long stick Simon had seen before. This he brought to the table, and scooped another spoonful of powder into it, using a funnel of leather.
The gonne was about eighteen inches in length. At the back it must have had a socket, because the long hazel stock protruded from the rear end. The gonne itself had been made like a barrel, Simon saw, with strips of steel staves gripped tightly by some heavy steel bound about them. He presumed the whole had been fired in a smith’s forge, because he could see that the metal appeared to have welded together. Underneath the barrel itself a forged hook protruded.
‘What’s that for?’
‘If you’re firing near a tree or a wall, you can hook that over so that the gun doesn’t knock you down. Now, see this?’ He had a shred of linen. He wrapped this around a little pebble he had in a leather purse, and pushed it into the barrel on top of the powder. Taking a pinch of powder, he wandered outside, strolling to the limit of the camp. There was a fire, with two guards warming their hands by it. Robert stood at the side of it, then set the stock under his right arm and sprinkled a little powder into a dimple on top of the barrel near the stock itself. Then he asked Simon to pick up a glowing stick from the fire.
Simon took up a long branch with a well glowing tip, and stood in front of Robert.
‘It might be better if you stood behind me,’ Robert said, gently pushing Simon aside with the barrel. He took the branch, blew on it to make the coals glow, cast a look around at the others, and set the tip of the branch to the dimple.
Intrigued, Simon was peering at the gonne. There was a sudden flash, a whoomph as a cloud of smoke burst upward, and then a loud boom that made Simon step back hurriedly. Clearly in the dim light he saw a tongue of yellow flame lick out, at least six feet, and a thick blanket of fog sprang out, hiding everything from view.
‘Mother of Christ!’ he heard one of the guards shriek as he sprang back. For his own part, Simon was reaching for stronger words.
‘That, you see, is how it reacts when you put a flame to the powder when it is confined. It explodes and the bullet shoots off into the distance,’ Robert said.