Pilgrimage of Death Page 6

  ‘It means…’ I began.

  ‘It means that he has been murdered,’ the franklin said.

  ‘It is often the case that the bursting of the heart upsets the body’s equilibrium and causes strange marks to appear on the skin,’ said the doctor, unwilling to have his medical opinion overturned by anything as obvious as mere physical evidence.

  ‘And that there was an attempt to disguise the fact that murder had been done,’ I said quickly, before the franklin had the chance to speak again.

  The landowner glared at me, then turned to the knight.

  ‘It is not the first time that such a ploy has been attempted,’ he said. ‘If you have read your history, you will know that King Edward II was killed in just such a manner.’

  ‘And what manner might that be?’ asked the knight, who was clearly neither a reading man nor a historian.

  ‘In the manner described by the miller himself in his own tale,’ the franklin said. ‘In the manner in which the clerk, Absalon, treated the student, Nicholas. A piece of hot metal has been thrust up his arsehole.’

  ‘Yes, it is possible that is what has occurred here,’ the doctor conceded reluctantly. ‘If the movement of the miller’s planets has dictated that he be on the cusp of…’

  ‘Saving your learning, it was the hand of man, not the movement of the spheres, which caused this tragic death,’ the knight told the doctor. ‘And murder is the business not of science, but of the king’s justice. We must do our duty and inform the town beadle of what has occurred.’

  *

  The town beadle looked down at the body of the miller, ran his eyes up the dirt-encrusted thighs to the scorched arsehole, then turned to face us again.

  The beadle was a large man with a massive stomach. A crop of grey hair sprouted from his ears in such abundance that, if harvested, he could have stuffed a pillow with it. His eyes were like a pig’s and his nose resembled a snout, yet from the way he carried himself he seemed able to ignore all these imperfections and to regard himself as a fine figure of a man.

  ‘A murder has been committed here,’ he said with some gravity, as if, until his official pronouncement, the knight, franklin and I had all been under the impression that the miller had died a natural death.

  It seemed to me that this beadle would need some guidance with his investigation, and that if any of us should lay out a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow, it should be the man who first suspected foul play.

  ‘I have a question,’ I said.

  The beadle raised his eyebrows, which were as bushy as fat hairy caterpillars.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘In order to commit this murder, the killer must first have…’

  But I was allowed to get no further with my question, for the franklin, deciding that he should be the layer of crumbs, stepped between us.

  ‘Where might a man obtained the hot brand with which to carry out such a deed as this one?’ he asked.

  ‘A hot brand?’ the beadle mused, showing plainly that such a thought had not already occurred to him. ‘Why, he would obtain it at the forge which is just down the street.’

  The franklin smirked at me, as much as to say that though I had stolen a march on him earlier, he was already snapping at my heels.

  ‘You and I must go directly to the forge and question this smith,’ the franklin said to the beadle.

  The beadle scratched his vast belly thoughtfully.

  ‘Saving your presence, good sir, I am the representative of the law of the land in this town,’ he said. ‘I do not need strangers to attend on me while I go about my business.’

  ‘And saving your presence, the miller was one of my travelling companions, and I wish to know who robbed him of his life,’ the franklin countered. ‘Besides, I am not unfamiliar with matters of this nature. I am one of His Majesty’s justices of the peace.’

  ‘And so am I,’ I said.

  And so I was - though it was clear to me that the news did not please the franklin.

  The beadle considered for a moment.

  ‘Very well,’ he conceded, ‘you may both attend on me, but….’

  ‘I also wish to be in attendance,’ the knight interrupted, ‘for though I have never performed such a function on English soil, I have dispensed enough justice elsewhere in my time.’

  The beadle sighed. ‘Very well, you may all three attend on me. But any questions which may be asked will be asked by the town beadle, not by some traveller, however eminent he may be.’

  ‘Agreed,’ the knight said.

  And the franklin and I nodded our agreement, though the franklin’s nod, I could not fail to note, lacked both enthusiasm and sincerity.

  *

  The smith was a brawny young man with a blinded left eye and burn marks on both of his broad arms.

  ‘When did you light your forge?’ the beadle asked him.

  ‘At the usual time,’ the smith answered.

  ‘And at what time might that have been?’

  The smith shrugged. ‘I do not go by the o’clock,’ he confessed, ‘but yet I do know enough to always have my forge burning brightly by the time the first cock crows.’

  ‘And did any man come to do business with you before that cock crowded this morning?’ the beadle asked him.

  ‘Yes,’ the smith admitted.

  ‘What manner of man?’

  ‘A stranger.’

  ‘And what was the nature of his business?’

  ‘He said that the axle on his cart had broken. He asked me to go with him to where the cart lay.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And did you come upon the cart?’

  ‘No. For when the stranger led me to where he said he had abandoned it, it was no longer there.’

  ‘And what explanation did he give for that?’

  ‘First he cursed loudly, then he swore that the cart had truly been there and that it must have been stolen. He asked me where you lived, sir,’ the smith nodded to the beadle, ‘and I told him. He said he would report the matter to you, and ask you to raise a hue and cry.’

  The franklin looked questioningly at the beadle.

  ‘I was awakened by the boy from the inn, telling me there had been a murder,’ the beadle said.

  ‘And no stranger came to you before that time to report that his cart had been stolen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Once the stranger had set out in search of the beadle, you returned to this forge, did you?’ the franklin asked the blacksmith.

  ‘Yes, I…’ the smith began.

  ‘I am the king’s representative here. I will ask the questions,’ the beadle reminded the franklin.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ the franklin replied, with the ill grace of one who, on his own estates, is always deferred to.

  The beadle turned to the smith. ‘Once the stranger had left you, did you return to your forge?’ he asked, repeating the franklin’s question.

  ‘I did,’ the smith agreed.

  ‘And did you discover that anything was missing?’

  ‘I did not think to look.’

  ‘Look now.’

  The smith glanced around his forge. ‘There was a ploughshare blade over there,’ he said, after some time had passed. ‘Now it is gone.’

  A ploughshare blade would have been exactly the right sort of instrument to use in the miller’s murder, I thought, but unlike the franklin I kept my promise to the beadle, and held my peace.

  ‘Describe this stranger to me,’ the beadle said.

  ‘He was a tall, thin man with red hair,’ the smith said. ‘He had a broken nose, a scar cut deep into his left cheek, green eyes and he walked with a limp in his right leg.’

  I read the relief in the knight’s and franklin’s eyes, for no man likes to believe he is travelling with murderers, and the stranger the smith had described did not remotely resemble any member of our company. And perhaps I would have shared in their relief if, like them, I could ha
ve trusted the smith’s words.

  But I could not!

  For even the most observant of men would have been hard pressed to provide such a perfect description as that one-eyed smith gave of a stranger he had seen only briefly in the half-light of morning. Nor could I accept that an uneducated man such as he could have produced such a fluent – if flat-toned – speech. There was only one possible explanation for these inconsistencies – that the smith was not so much describing what he had seen as he was reciting what he had been made to learn by rote.

  ‘Tell us more about this man,’ the franklin said.

  The beadle scowled at him. ‘I think I have heard quite enough already,’ he said, a note of warning in his tone. He turned towards the smith. ‘You may now return to your work. But if you see this red-haired man with a limp appears again, you must send for me immediately. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the smith replied.

  But I knew there would be no such summons, for how could he possibly see a man who, I was now convinced, had never existed?

  *

  The beadle joined us for breakfast, and ate with the gusto of a man determined not to let a mere murder – even one involving a cauterised arsehole – in any way spoil his appetite.

  ‘I have the power vested in me to detain you here at my pleasure,’ he told us pompously, ‘but I can see little point in exercising that power in this particular instance.’

  ‘But the murderers…’ I began.

  ‘The murderers?’ the beadle repeated, displeasure filling his broad face. ‘Who is to say there was more than one?’

  ‘Logic informs us that there must be,’ I replied.

  ‘And pray what logic might that be?’ the beadle asked, sneering.

  ‘It required at least two men to commit the act of theft from the smithy,’ I explained. ‘The first to lure the smith away from his forge, and the other to heat up, and then steal, the ploughshare in his absence. Besides, the miller was not a man to go to his death quietly. While one of his assailants inserted the murder weapon in his arsehole, a second would have been needed to hold him down.’

  ‘I am not an educated man, as you seem to be, so I am forced to admit that there may be some truth in what you say,’ the beadle replied, looking at me with great dislike. ‘But there is one thing that even a simple soul like myself can be certain of – whether there was one murderer or a hundred, whoever killed the miller will now be far beyond the reach of a hue and cry.’

  ‘For what reason do you think the miller was killed?’ I asked.

  ‘There are only two reasons a man may be killed,’ the beadle told me with great authority and assurance. ‘The first is that he has offended his murderer - but the murderer’s description does not fit any of your company, and the miller had not been in Dartford long enough to cause offence to anyone who lives here, so we may rule that motive out.’

  But could we? I found myself wondering. There had, after all, been a time when the miller had been missing, since, as a reaction – perhaps! – to the reeve’s insults, he had stormed out of the inn’s common room long before the curfew bell. Who was to say where he had gone – or who he had offended - after that?

  ‘And so we are left with the other motive - that the miller was murdered by a robber,’ the beadle continued, glaring challengingly at me. ‘I am sure that even a cultured man such as yourself must agree with that.’

  ‘Much as I would wish to, my conscience will simply not allow it,’ I said.

  ‘And why not, pray?’

  ‘If the killers had been robbers, why should it be a miller they chose as their mark? There are those on this pilgrimage with far more of value to steal than he could ever have possessed.’

  ‘Millers are well-known to be richer than they should be,’ the beadle said. ‘A dishonest miller – and is there any other kind? - can soon amass a small fortune. And because they are so untrustworthy themselves, they find it impossible to trust in the nature of others, and so like to keep their wealth close at hand. Perhaps the miller was one such man. Perhaps he had a fortune in coinage on his person. He may even have been carrying gold.’

  ‘But how would a stranger know that?’ I persisted. ‘How would a stranger even know that he was a miller at all?’

  ‘He could have heard it from others of your company. Perhaps the miller had a loose tongue when he was in drink, and bragged about it himself,’ grumbled the beadle, with a growing lack of conviction.

  ‘Besides, if the motive were robbery, why kill him in that particular way?’ I pressed on.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ the beadle growled.

  ‘Why go to the trouble of duping the smith and stealing the ploughshare, when all that was called for was to cut his throat?’

  ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us,’ the beadle said.

  ‘Only a murderer who wished the cause of death to go undetected would take the trouble which this killer or killers did. And why should a thief care whether or not the true cause of the miller’s death was detected?’

  ‘I am not a criminal myself, and so, unlike yourself, I have little idea of how the mind of a criminal works,’ the beadle said nastily. He turned, in appeal, to the knight and the franklin. ‘It is my true belief, as beadle of this town under the grace of God and His Majesty the king, that the miller was killed by strangers, and that their reason for killing him was robbery. If you agree with me, instead of with your clever friend, then you may go on your way. If, on the contrary, you choose to believe - as he so obviously does - that there is more to this than meets the eye, then you must stay here while there is further investigation.’

  The knight and the franklin exchanged glances.

  The knight, it was plain, had no desire to be detained in Dartford longer than was strictly necessary.

  And as for the franklin, he found himself in a dilemma. He, too, seemed convinced the murder was more complicated than the beadle was prepared to admit, yet he could not argue that case himself without acknowledging that there was at least some foundation to my own theories. And that was an acknowledgement he was loath to make.

  ‘I believe that you are right, sir,’ the knight said to the beadle. ‘I believe the miller was killed by robbers. Or if not by robbers, then by some person who is now far away from here.’

  I could have argued further myself, but I did not. For though there were many questions still unanswered, I too wished to get away from the town. Besides, whilst I did not accept the beadle’s theory for a moment, neither did I wish to believe that the miller had been killed by one of our company. So I persuaded myself – weakly and foolishly - that the murder would be remain one of life’s many unexplained mysteries.

  It was only later, as we travelled along the road to Rochester, that I began to seriously wonder if the killer was one my fellow pilgrims – and not until the next day that I knew for certain that he had to be.

  *

  Though I would be lying if I were to claim that any of we pilgrims truly mourned the miller’s passing, yet I would telling as great an untruth were I to say that his death had left us completely untouched. We were, in fact, a sombre, serious group as we rode out of Dartford, unaccompanied, unlike the previous day, by the hideous wailing of the dead man’s bagpipes.

  We had been riding for nearly two hours when our host slapped himself heavily on the forehead in frustration, and demanded to know why we were all as dull as a winter’s day.

  ‘It is true that one of our party is no more, but is that a reason to look so mournful?’ he asked hopefully. ‘For do we not all believe that by the spilling of His own precious blood, Jesus Christ redeemed us all? Therefore, I say we should rejoice, for our friend the miller is even now basking in celestial bliss!’

  It was not a picture which instantly commended itself to me. It would, in all truth, have been easier to imagine that brute of a man, the miller, slowly roasting on a spit in hell. And looking around at my fellow pilgrims, I could see that the same thoughts we
re passing guiltily through their minds, too.

  ‘Therefore let us not mope and whine like sick puppies,’ the host said enthusiastically. ‘Let us, instead, turn our holy journey into a jolly jaunt.’

  He surveyed us all, looking for a face which showed evidence that its owner was likely to respond to his pleas.

  ‘You, good sir, you sergeant of the law,’ he continued, ‘you, above the rest of us, should know the value of a contract. Well, have you not all made a contract with me – each to tell his tale? And have I not the right to demand my payment now?’

  The man of law, a grey-haired serious man, nodded gravely.

  ‘Indeed you have the right to call us to account,’ he said. ‘I claim to be no Geoffrey Chaucer, but that is perhaps all to the good, for by Christ’s nails, I would not inflict on you as much as he has tried, with his endless versification, to inflict on us all.’

  The mention of my name, coming as it did out of the blue, shook me considerably. Was it possible that though I was calling myself ‘Thatcher’ the sergeant had discovered my true identity? One glance at his face was enough to assure me that he had not. There was no sign of recognition there - merely a look of disgust at the thought that any man should spend as much of his time on writing poetry as this fool Chaucer seemed to have done.

  My apprehension having been replaced by relief, that relief now turned to anger, and I felt an almost overwhelming urge to ride closer to the man and beat him soundly around his legalistic head. That I did not do so is a credit to my own powers of self-restraint, and has nothing at all to do with the fact he was considerably taller and heavier than I was!

  In my Tales I give a full account of the sergeant at law’s tiresome, laboured story, but I feel under no obligation to do the same here in my who-hath-done-it. Nor, I must admit, do I even feel an inclination. For any man who fails to recognise the value of a great poet does not deserve to have any such space devoted to him. Suffice it to say then that his tale was one of constancy, and that, with the true and soaring imagination which only lawyers such as he ever seem to attain, he called the heroine of it Constance.

  As the man of law’s tale progressed – if progressed is the right word for his dreary account – I found my mind turning towards matters of self-examination. My rage had now abated, but I began to wonder what I would have done if it had not.