Lady Jeanne, his wife, was a tall, slender woman with red-gold hair and the clearest blue eyes he had ever seen; to him she was the very picture of perfection. Her face was regular, if a little round; her nose short and too small; her mouth over-wide with a full upper lip that gave her a stubborn appearance; her forehead was perhaps too broad. And yet to Baldwin she was the most beautiful woman he had seen.
When they first met, he had been filled with reticence; his affection for her had felt wrong, because he had taken the Knight Templar’s threefold vows: of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Sir Baldwin had felt confused, knowing his desire for Jeanne was unchaste, and it had taken some time for him to come to terms with his new position as a married man.
And now he had more or less accepted it, the kingdom was threatened by the greed of a few lords. He reined in at the top of the hill looking south towards Crediton and Dartmoor, surveying the sweep of the land while Uther snuffled in the ferns that lined the roadside.
Baldwin had been a Templar and survived the persecution of his Order. The experience had given him a loathing of intolerance of any kind. It was this that made him an effective official. Many times he had investigated murders and other felonies, convinced that an arrested man was innocent and fired with the determination to see justice prevail.
But justice would go by the board if there was a new war. Baldwin had a gloomy certainty that no matter who won a war it was the peasants and poorer knights like himself who would lose all – perhaps even their lives. His wife had already been widowed once; Baldwin was not sure how she would cope with losing a second man.
Suddenly, a black shape exploded skywards from his side, giving a harsh shrieking cry like metal scored with rough stone, and Baldwin’s mount reared. When he had the beast under control, he saw Uther, who had sprung the black grouse, chasing off after the bird, paws windmilling as he tried to equal its speed. Baldwin laughed for joy and spurred his mare on.
A canter, then a gallop, and Baldwin tore past Uther, who lumbered at full speed staring up at the grouse, ignoring the land ahead. Baldwin too failed to notice the change in the grasses before him. Suddenly there was a splash and a jerk; Baldwin’s mare stopped dead, and the astonished knight found himself flying through the air. For a brief moment he saw the ground racing towards his face and then he landed with a splash in a foul-smelling bog.
An hour or so later, when Uther had been installed for the night in the stable, a groom instructed to clean the mare and a servant called to fetch a clean robe so that Jeanne would not see the state Baldwin was in, many miles away Sir Gilbert of Carlisle was clambering down from the moored Despenser ship, clutching the leashes of his own two recalcitrant hounds. While the small craft rocked and bucked under the weight of the three passengers, the sailors took up their oars for the trip back to shore.
It was cloudy and a thin wind was blowing a fine spray at them. Sir Gilbert’s coat of best wool was soggy, its smell reminding him of old, wet sheep. Compared with the foul odour of sewage and putrefaction that hung over London, it was almost pleasant.
Before they set off an iron-bound chest was let down on a whip, caught by a sailor and thrust quickly at Sir Gilbert, who stowed it away between his feet. He rested his hand on it for reassurance.
It was his own fault, he reflected; he had suggested this journey down to Devon. At the time he hadn’t realised the wind was blowing from the west. It would take an age for the old single-masted cog to beat up into the breeze; she was ever a slow ship, but tacking constantly would take an age, and Hugh Despenser the Younger had need of speed. He proposed that Sir Gilbert should land in London and make his own way to Devon using horses owned by the Despensers.
So here he was, setting off for a long journey with his dogs and two guards for company, and this box. With a grim smile Sir Gilbert patted his dogs’ heads. With the wealth held inside he needed all the protection he could get.
There was a sharp intake of breath from one of the sailors. Sir Gilbert ignored it: he wasn’t used to paying attention to the feelings of menials and servants. He assumed it was simply the gasp of a tired man pulling at oars. Shrugging himself lower into his sodden coat, he tried to protect his neck from the chill breeze. In his gloomy mood he thought there was a dull blanket of dampness over everything, even smothering the torches and braziers at either bank.
It was only when he realised that the breath was hissing through the teeth of the nearer sailor, a swarthy, pox-scarred man with a shock of tawny hair and small, shrewd eyes, that Sir Gilbert glanced up. The man was staring over Sir Gilbert’s shoulder and after a moment the knight peered back as well.
There, casting a great white bow-wave, was a small ship, a galley-type, moving speedily towards them. ‘What is it?’ Gilbert asked.
‘It’s that whoreson Badlesmere, I’ll bet. Whoever it is, they mean to catch us – board us or ram us.’
The vessel was closing fast now, and instinctively Sir Gilbert pulled the chest up to his lap, cradling it protectively as he might a child. When he next looked over his shoulder their pursuer was scant yards away.
An order was grunted. Without warning the sailor and his mate behind him lifted their oars from the water; the other men on the opposite side hauled. Sir Gilbert was no expert seaman and he was thrown bodily to one side, almost losing his grip on the box, while one dog yelped in alarm, ears flat back in fear, and the other stood scrabbling on the slippery wood trying to remain upright. The boat lurched once, then again, and there was a loud crack as the ship struck their side, knocking him from his seat.
A man sprang down, axe in hand. Sir Gilbert was on his back in the bilgewater and could only stare up in horror. He saw the axe swing and embed itself in the head of one of his guards: the man shrieked. A kick sent him overboard as a second boarder leapt down. The first pirate made a hideous gargling sound deep in his throat and Sir Gilbert saw him clutch at his neck even as a warm, fine spray settled on his face. Then he saw the knife’s hilt showing. All at once the pock-marked sailor was up. He grabbed his dagger from the one, shoved, and in an instant both boarders were over the side.
‘What…?’ Sir Gilbert managed, clambering to his seat and gazing about him in the murky light.
‘They tried to overhaul us; we slipped aside before they could ram us,’ the sailor grunted, once more at his oar. ‘They’ll need to tack to come back at us. Can’t do that in a hurry, so they’ll try to land some men to catch us as we moor. We’ll just have to beat them to it.’
They ran the boat scraping up a shallow ramp and one of the crew waded to land and held the boat while the others helped Sir Gilbert out. There was no need to help the dogs: Aylmer jumped quickly from the boat and hared to the top of the ramp away from the water, while Merry stepped lightly onto land and stood there sniffing at a wall.
‘Wait here,’ said the sailor and darted silently across the yard to a gate in the encircling wooden fence. Soon he was back, the knife in his hand shining in the light of the torches. ‘It’s safe enough.’
Sir Gilbert glanced at his remaining guard, who hefted the chest. The sailor glanced at it, his face twisting with sympathetic amusement. It was the same expression that Sir Gilbert had seen other sailors wearing as they watched lubbers clumsily moving about the ship.
‘What?’ he demanded sharply.
‘You’re in London, Sir Gilbert. You may be on the Surrey and Kent side, but this is still London, where sluts, cutpurses, horsethieves and footpads mingle. What are you going to do? Walk up to an inn, bold as a cock, and ask for a horse, holding your little box at your shoulder?’