The Malice of Unnatural Death

by Michael Jecks

Genres: General Fiction; Medieval; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

Roger Mortimer was once the King’s most able commander, but now he is his most hated enemy. Escaping from the Tower, Mortimer made his way to France and has hired an assassin to murder the King – but others have the same idea.

As the body of a local craftsman and that of a King’s messenger who was carrying a dangerous secret are found in the city’s streets, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and his friend, Bailiff Simon Puttock, are asked by the Bishop to find out who is responsible. But when murderers can use magic, no one is safe…

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Soundings

Print pages: 544

Sample

When I try to think what actually led to a story’s forming in my mind, it is often remarkably easy. Usually the court records
or coroners’ rolls lead me to a basic plot, and then the format of the story, the characters, and sometimes the location,
can be conjured up.


This story was a little different. I had been hunting about for some little while for a decent concept for book 22 in the
series, because I felt very satisfied with its predecessor, The Death Ship of Dartmouth. That book seemed to me to have a strong story, with some excellent action and fresh characters, and I wanted something as
strong – but different.


My problem was that the next important piece of history would not be until early 1325, which was some months after the last
story. I needed something to fill in the gap. By sheer good fortune, as so often happens, a strange little snippet led me
straight to a new plot and the book.


I happened to read in Alison Weir’s book Isabella, Queen of England, She-Wolf of France a paragraph in which she mentioned a curious assassination attempt. The Despenser was alarmed in late 1324 and early 1325
to learn that Lord Mortimer was paying a necromancer to try to murder him with magic. This, apparently, put the fear of God
into him, and he even went so far as to write to the Pope to apply for special protection – to which the pontiff somewhat testily responded
that if the man would confess his sins, behave better and stop making enemies, he’d find he felt more at ease with himself. I paraphrase, but the letter’s meaning was clear.


It put me in mind of a short paper produced by that marvellous historian, H.P.R. Finberg, called The Tragi-Comedy of Abbot Bonus, in West Country Historical Studies (David & Charles, 1969), which described the dispute between John de Courtenay and Robert Busse, two monks who contested
the abbacy of Tavistock in 1325. In that case, Courtenay complained about Busse’s election to the top job for a number of
reasons, but one was that he had been visiting a necromancer in Exeter to make sure that he won the post.


That was enough to give me my starting-point. I began to look up necromancers in other books, and soon gained a lot of useful
material, especially from Norman Cohn’s brilliant study Europe’s Inner Demons, published by Heinemann Educational and Sussex University. From that I learned much about how magicians would conjure spirits. However, it was a visit to the library and a quick look at the Selden Society books, Volume 74: Select Cases in the Court of the King’s Bench part IV, that fleshed out the story of the Despenser murder attempt.


The case was exactly as set out in my story here, so I won’t perform the tedious act of repetition. Suffice it to say that John of Nottingham never, to my knowledge, escaped from Coventry and Warwick, and I have taken the unforgivable step of suggesting
that poor Sheriff Sir Simon Croyser was guilty of trying to free a felon in order to fulfil his ambition of killing the king. Oddly enough, though, other aspects of the story are correct, such as the mysterious illness and subsequent death of Sir Richard de Sowe. His death would appear to have been enough to make Despenser tremble.


As well it might.

From my point of view, only one thing was important here, though, and that was the fact that there was a story begging to
be told. I just had to sit down and let the characters tell it their own way.


The subplot of the poor servant girl is one that has been in my mind for quite a while now. I first came across the sad story
of Jen when I was reading Elliot O’Donnell’s A Casebook of Ghosts many years ago.


This fascinating book is the record of a ghosthunter, or purports to be. He came from a long line of illustrious Irishmen,
and asserted, I seem to recall, that being the seventh son of a mother who was herself the seventh in her brood he was more
than usually prey to ghostly visits. Whether or not this was so, it is certainly true that he was a keen researcher of strange
phenomena, and an avid collector of stories from eye-witnesses.


Many of the stories are pleasantly gruesome, as one would hope. However, the story of the young maidservant was peculiarly
sad.


He told (so I remember) of a young servant who became infatuated with a guest at the country house in which she worked. All
too often in those days, visitors would come to spend a significant time with the family: you need only read Wodehouse to
get a feel for the relaxed atmosphere of such places. The young visitor, so O’Donnell wrote, was probably entirely unaware
of the effect he had on the young, malleable heart of the servant girl. Without doubt, he was moderately courteous to her,
as a public school educated young man would have been to the servants in his host’s house, but that was almost certainly all there was to it.


But she convinced herself over a matter of weeks that he was utterly enraptured by her. She began to dream of the day that
he would leave, how he would take her away from the drudgery of her miserable working life, and elope with her. They would
marry in splendour, honeymoon in Europe, and return to a small house of their own, where they would raise their little family. All this was in her mind.


And when he left? He thanked her, along with all the other staff, and gave her as he gave all of them, a small gratuity. A
coin.


She, apparently, was appalled, and stood rooted to the spot, staring at the coin, but then, as the coach door shut behind
him and the horses were whipped up, she was heard to shriek. The coach moved off, and she launched herself after it, to the
surprise of the others standing by to wave off the young gentleman. No one had any idea of the fixation she had with the man,
and to see her fling herself down the driveway after the carriage must have had a terrifying impact. In those days, madness
was viewed with horror.


So the upshot of the story was that the girl spent the whole of the rest of her life bemoaning the fact of his departure,
predicting his imminent return, and keening to herself in the local lunatic asylum. And in all that time, she never once let
his coin leave her hand. Such asylums in those days were not pleasant, and it is sad to consider this poor young woman walking
amongst the insane, between those who stood screaming in shackles and the others who lay in their own mess, with no possibility
of a cure. It would be many centuries before anyone began to think of psychotherapy.


It was said (which is why Elliot O’Donnell heard of it) that when she died she still had that coin in her hand, and an unscrupulous
pair of gravediggers saw it and tugged it from her clenched, dead fist. But they were then hounded by her wraith, which sought
her coin all over the asylum and in their homes, and made their lives a misery. The two returned it to her grave at the earliest
opportunity, and the ghastly visitations ceased.


I can treat the story slightly flippantly now, but when I was eleven years old, reading that while listening to Neil Young’s After the Goldrush, it had a significant impact on my impressionable little mind. Neil Young’s voice and tracks from that album still have a
nostalgic effect upon me.


The story may or may not be true, but I do believe that young girls, young women, call them what you will, can occasionally
form these intense bonds with the concept of a man or a future. This is something which I have never seen in a male of a similar age. Perhaps it’s a gender thing.


So the idea of a young girl who formed an entirely mistaken view of how a social superior regarded her was something that
stayed with me for a long while – and I am glad to have exorcised it at last!


I should also apologise to certain other people in this story.

Not only have I unfairly slandered Sir Simon Croyser, who, for all I know, was a perfectly honourable man who served his king
with diligence (although from the sheriff’s records, that would make him unique), but I have taken liberties with the movements
of Sir Maurice Berkeley. He was most certainly on the run at this stage, although whether he ever approached Exeter is pure
speculation on my part. The fact that he had a sister and she was married to Sir Matthew de Crowethorne, however, is not speculation. That
is the purest fiction!


Finally, by way of an acknowledgement, I should mention the marvellous Jonny Crockett and his team at Survival School in Devon. Without Jonny and his lads, I would never have learned the pleasures of camping without a tent at minus four degrees, of shelter-building,
fire-making, and, of course, pulling two pigeons inside out with my bare hands.


Sadly I missed the delights of toasted woodlice, but no doubt that experience is yet to come.

If you would like to experience a genuine survival experience, you can contact Jonny at www.survivalschool.co.uk. I can highly recommend them.


And that is enough on how this story came together. As usual I am enormously indebted to my agent, Jane Conway-Gordon, and
all those at Headline who helped make this book reach the shelves, and as always any errors are entirely my responsibility
– unless they were caused by faulty typesetting, poor editing, over-zealous copy-editing, inefficient proof-checking or other
failures by other people.


Michael Jecks

Northern Dartmoor

May 2006

Friday before the Feast of the Holy Cross in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Edward II1

At the root of that murder there was no jealousy or hatred. If anything, it was murder in the interest of science. A new weapon
must be shown to be effective before it can be used with confidence. That was why Sir Richard de Sowe died: to prove that
they could kill him.


In choosing him, the necromancer had selected a local man whose health it would be easy to ascertain. Sir Richard was a secular
knight in the pay of the king, but he had not harmed John of Nottingham. No, his death was due to his proximity.


Not that Robert le Mareschal cared about that. No, as he stood in the dark room, the seven little figures illuminated by the
flickering flames of the cheap tallow candles all about them, he didn’t even think about the man whose death they were planning. He felt only the thrill of the journey: the journey of knowledge.

It had always gripped him. There was nothing like learning for firing his blood. He had early heard about the use of demons and
spirits to achieve enlightenment, and that was why he was here now, to learn how to conjure them, and have them do his bidding.


The room was warm, with the charcoal brazier glowing brightly in the corner, but for all that, he suddenly felt a chill.

It was as he was holding the figure of de Sowe that it happened. He was thrilled with the experiment and aware of little else,
but as his master told him to take the lead pin there was a sudden icy chill in the room. It almost made him drop the doll,
but fortunately he didn’t. John was a daunting man, tall, thin, with cadaverous cheeks and glittering small eyes that looked
quite malevolent in the candlelight, and Robert had no wish to appear incompetent in front of him.


‘Thrust it into his head,’ John said in that quiet, hissing voice of his.

Robert le Mareschal held the pin in his hand and stared at the figure. Glancing at John, for the first time he realised what
he was about to do: kill a man. Until that moment his thoughts had been on the power of magic, but now he was faced with the
truth. The pin was a three-inch length of soft lead. No danger to anyone, that. Press it against a man’s breast and the lead
would deform and bend.


‘I showed you what to do. Warm it in the candle, then thrust it into his head.’

The necromancer was wearing a simple black tunic with the hood thrown back, and Robert could see the lines about his neck. In this light, his ancient flesh was like that of a plucked chicken, and Robert felt repelled. But the penetrating eyes were fixed upon him, and the gash of his mouth above his beard was uncompromising.


Robert warmed the pin and then, as quickly as he could, he pressed it into the head of the wax model.

When he had been young and attempted something dangerous for the first time, Robert had found that his heart began pounding
and his throat seemed to contract; then, as soon as the trial was over, he returned to his usual humour.


Not tonight. It was after midnight when he pushed that cursed pin into the model’s head, and the moment he did so the horror
of what he was doing struck home. His heart felt as if it would burst from his breast, and he shivered and almost fell.


John of Nottingham took the doll from him and observed it, smiling to himself, holding it gently in both hands almost as a
father might study his first son. ‘Now, now: you mustn’t drop it, Robert. You could hurt him!’


Jen finished her work with a feeling of anxiety lest she might have failed in her duties, but when she was done beating the
bed’s pillows into submission, ensuring that they were plumped nicely, and making them as soft and appealing as she knew how,
and had almost finished tying back the beautiful, woven drapery about the bed, she heard the door open, and gaily called,
‘Nearly done, Sarra. Leave me a moment, and I’ll be out.’


‘I am glad to hear it.’

Spinning, her mouth agape, Jen saw that the woman there in the doorway was not her friend Sarra, but the lady of the house.
‘Oh! Oh, my lady, I am sorry, I . . .’


‘Do not have eyes in the back of your head. I know that.’

Madam Alice looked at her with that emptiness in her eyes that Jen had already come to recognise. In her opinion, a servant was
little better than a beetle. Jen curtsied, then hurriedly made her way from the room, all the while under the woman’s silent
gaze. She felt she was some unappealing, if necessary, feature of the woman’s household.


‘I didn’t see her coming, Jen; I couldn’t warn you,’ Sarra said in a whisper as Jen closed the door behind her. ‘Are you all
right?’


‘Of course I am – what do you think?’

‘No need to snap! I was only making sure that you weren’t upset by her turning up like that.’

Jen looked at her. ‘I don’t know why you all get so upset by her. She’s the lady of the house, but she seems perfectly all
right to me. She’s just a bit too self-absorbed, that’s all. She isn’t airy-fairy like some, but that’s no bad thing.’


‘She doesn’t talk to us at all.’

‘She’s spoken to me. She did just then.’

‘What did she say? She always ignores me,’ Sarra said.

‘Nothing. Just that she didn’t expect me to know it was her. She was fine. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.’

‘Wait till you’ve been here a bit longer, then you’ll understand.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ Jen agreed, but she couldn’t see why. The mistress was not friendly, but no one expected a great lady to
be friendly, not really. Better to be ignored for most of the day, because while you were ignored you weren’t looked upon
as a pest. The servants who lasted were the ones who could seemingly move among the family of the house without disturbing
them. Jen intended being the best of all the servants here.


‘Sarra! Sarra, come here. Now, you stupid draggle-tail!’


‘Oh, saints preserve me! Coming, Steward,’ Sarra called. With a sidelong glance at her friend, she hurried into the hall.

Jen continued on her way. She was new to this place, whereas Sarra had been here for at least a year already. But the girl
who had helped Sarra had suddenly fallen prey to a disease, and wilted away in a matter of days until she could no longer
do her work. She’d been sent home to rest, and in the meantime another girl had to be found. Sarra had recommended her friend Jen, and after a brief interview with the cold-eyed steward of the household, she had been employed.


That was two days ago, and now she was here, living in unfamiliar surroundings with all these new people. It was enough to
make any girl of only seventeen years anxious, especially as she was determined to please her new master and mistress.


‘Jen, come and help me,’ Sarra called, and as Jen walked to help collect up cups and dishes from the table, she almost bumped
into her new master. She looked up at him for the first time, and as she met his laughing dark eyes she felt a curious stirring
in her heart. It was only with an effort that she managed to pull her eyes away from him, and hurry to help Sarra at the table.


Robert le Mareschal slept fitfully. When they had put away the dolls and packed up the potions carefully, he had waited until
his master had returned to his chamber before falling on his own cot. He was exhausted, the weariness more than the mere tiredness
of muscles or eyes that he was accustomed to. No, this was something much deeper. It was almost as though all the energy in his body had been sucked from
him.


As the night wore on, he found himself waking regularly, each time drenched in sweat and fearful, as though he had just had
a nightmare. And yet if a mare did visit him, it left no memory of his dreaming. In the morning he felt drained, and yet in
his mind he was perfectly clear about his actions and the potential results. If the dolls worked, there would be an end to
a dreadful tyranny, and that was surely better than leaving matters as they were.


John of Nottingham had explained that the religious teaching about the devil and his demons was based on a lack of understanding
and the Church’s own bigoted animosity towards any kind of learning that was not founded in their own limited understandings. For his part, John asserted that he was as Christian as any man in Coventry. ‘Look to the world outside the church, Robert,
and you find that there are more truths in this world than priests could ever comprehend.’


However, in the morning, as Robert walked the last few steps to Richard de Sowe’s house, his courage began to fail him. From
the street outside he could hear the hoarse screams from the shuttered window.


Robert tried to boost his quailing spirit by reminding himself that there was a splendid irony about de Sowe’s fate. John
of Nottingham had a dry, acerbic wit, and Robert attempted to emulate it now. He reminded himself that throughout his life
this man Richard de Sowe had been content to take what he could at every opportunity, willingly using force to steal from
those weaker or poorer than he. So now the irony was, that his life was being ripped from him without the motivation even of theft. There was no revenge in this – nothing. The assassination of Richard de Sowe was nothing more than an experiment. If John and Robert achieved his death, it would
be the proof of the process and other victims could be worked upon.


But this first, slow death was hideous. Even as he listened to the demented screaming from the solar, he felt appalled to think of what he had achieved.


‘Please, in God’s name, help us!’ a servant blurted, and Robert jumped. ‘Are you all right, Master Robert?’

‘I am fine! Don’t interrupt my considerations!’ Robert snapped, and saw the man’s eyes drop as though cowed; but even as le Mareschal turned away, the thick black gown swirling about his feet, his cloak flapping, he was sure that he could feel the
man’s eyes on him weighted with loathing, as though he knew what Robert had done. It made his heart shrivel. The penalty would
be fierce if he was discovered.


At first it had been the thought of what he might learn from his master that had prompted him. To take up a position with
a necromancer was daunting only for a man who was not determined to learn all he might. For a man like Robert le Mareschal,
the fact that Master John plainly knew much about succeeding through his use of magic was enough to lure him. With the knowledge
he would glean here, he would be able to follow his own ambition. Only after that came the desire for money.


Fifteen pounds! That was Robert’s payment, all in silver, simply for helping his master as he may. At the time it had seemed
an enormous amount of money, and all of it just to help him to learn his master’s arts. The men were paying John of Nottingham
to assassinate some other men, that was all. Many of the foul churls from about the priory here at Coventry, those who scraped a living by their skills at begging from the doorman, would have accepted far less to overtake
the knight and slip a knife between his ribs, but that was not the point. Any man might kill another in a brash and bloodthirsty
manner: the art here was to do so without anyone’s realising. To kill a man without touching him; to kill him while murderer and victim remained miles apart – therein
lay the skill.


The payment had been made in part, along with the seven pounds of wax and two ells of cloth, and soon afterwards Master John
began instructing Robert in how to form the bodies. One was larger than the others, and wore a small crown encircling his
head. A second was shorter, a more corpulent fellow; the third taller, more slender, with a hawkish, cruel set to his features;
another squat and fat . . . seven in all. Each wonderfully, if simply, fashioned to indicate whom they represented . . .


There was a lengthy shriek from the solar, and Robert crossed himself. The man was enduring the torments of the devil in there.

‘Come with me! You have to help us! He doesn’t recognise any of us – no one! Please!’ Robert recognised the shouting figure: Henry, Richard de Sowe’s steward, a short, thickset man with an almost bald head and gaunt, anxious features. Henry grabbed Robert’s arm and all but dragged him indoors, turning into the little hall, and striding through it to the stairway beyond. He mounted the stairs two at a time, gripping the rope to heave himself upwards, all the while clutching Robert’s sleeve,
while the apprentice panted reluctantly behind him, and then they came into the room.


It was a spare chamber lit by clusters of guttering candles and a large charcoal brazier. Over the burning tallow Robert could smell the sourness of urine: the knight had lost all bodily control. The windows were fastened and shuttered to keep
unhealthy odours from the sick man, but within the place there was an overwhelming, unpleasant stench. Robert had smelled
enough dead and rotting flesh to recognise the foulness of decay.


When he had discussed the commission with Master John, it had seemed almost a game. The idea of killing a man from half a
mile distant had seemed – well, almost laughable. It was ridiculous. Even when they had taken the down payment, Robert felt
more like a mischievous student than the accomplice to a murder. Now he was being confronted with the fruits of his labours.


Steeling his heart, he took two paces into the room.

Sir Richard was straining, every muscle taut, as though the bed was drenched in a burning acid. He was a man in agony, bound
to the posts of his bed with thongs, and gripped by four of his strongest servants, who tried to prevent his thrashing too
vigorously and hurting himself still more. They gazed at Robert pleadingly, hoping that he might procure a swift release from Sir Richard’s anguish. Which indeed he would.


‘How is he?’ Robert asked now, and Henry looked at him as though he was mad.

Sir Richard de Sowe’s teeth were bared. Every sinew showed, from his neck to his skinny calves, and his red-rimmed eyes darted
from one to another of his retainers like a torture victim surveying his tormentors. There was blood at his mouth, at his
wrists, at his ankles. It had sprayed from his lips to spatter the breast of his stained linen shirt. With every jerk and
twitch of his body came a relentless moaning, like a dog’s whining anguish when its back was broken. Richard de Sowe knew, in that small space where rational thought still survived, that he was dying. Yet when his servants
glanced at him, he flinched as though not recognising any of them.


Robert recoiled as Sir Richard’s gaze flicked towards him. ‘My Christ!’

With the shutters firmly closed, the only light came from the tallow candles, but their fumes were those of animal pyres. It made the chamber a charnel house.


‘He was fine yesterday,’ the man who held Richard de Sowe’s head mumbled. ‘What could do this to him?’

‘Perhaps his humours are disturbed,’ Robert blurted. ‘Let me go to . . . I can ask Master John of Nottingham. He will know
. . .’


Henry released Robert’s sleeve, as though recognising at last that the fellow before him was as unable to help his master
as he himself. He held Robert’s eyes for a long moment, before a gasp and shriek from the bed drew his attention once more.
‘You ask him. Me, I’d think it more likely that only the devil himself could answer for this.’


As soon as he heard of the death, John de Courtenay knew that at last he would receive the reward he had craved. There was
no sorrow, no sadness at the ending of a life which had been so full of generosity and goodness, only a boundless relief. At last that God-bothering, cretinous obstacle to his advancement had been withdrawn.


For the rest of his life he would recall this moment: where he sat, how he felt, what the weather was like. Abbot Robert Champeaux
was dead!

He was in his chamber, feeling the somnolence that came from a well-filled belly and a seat positioned comfortably close to the fire, while in his mind he contemplated the days to
come. There was the promise of good hunting. Since the abbot had been warned to keep his hounds away from the king’s deer,
he had enforced a strict code of abstinence among his brethren, but not even a forceful nature such as old Abbot Champeaux’s
could effectively command obedience while he was confined to his own bedchamber. While he had been laid up with this last
illness, his face grey-green in the thin light from his window, shaking like a man with the ague, it was clear that he could
not enforce his rules.


Some had been fearful, and had thought that the abbot might recover at any time. They had drawn up terrifying pictures of
him in their minds, a grim-faced old man leaning on a heavy staff as he always had, with great white eyebrows that scowled
so a man might be frozen from thirty paces. Many a newly tonsured brother had cause to dread his chastisement; they had all
experienced the rough edge of his tongue when they had fallen short of his high expectation. The abbot was a strong-willed
man, and punished any transgression that might affect his monastery with ruthless determination.


John de Courtenay had held no such terror of Abbot Robert. The man was, when all was said and done, only a monk; while he, John de Courtenay, was the son of Baron Hugh of Okehampton and Tiverton. Yes, he owed the abbot his obedience and respect,
but that was all.


And with any fortune, the election for the next abbot would be uncontested. Who could hope to stand in the path of the son
of Baron Hugh de Courtenay?


And in the guest room of the great abbey devoted to St Ecgwine, the man who slept on the floor as far from the door as possible
turned over and was still, listening raptly to the heavy breathing and snoring of the others in the room. He closed his eyes,
his breast rising and falling gently, but even as he teetered on the brink of sleep his fist remained clenched firmly about
the dagger’s hilt.


There were too many men who wanted him dead for him to dare to give himself up entirely to the sleep he so desperately craved.

It was the problem he had been trying to avoid, but he couldn’t any longer. The abbot here knew his secret and wouldn’t betray
him, but unless he was prepared to take the tonsure he could not stay. And he was not going to become a celibate.


There was only one place in the country where he could be safe. Perhaps he ought to go there . . .

To Exeter.

Thursday before St Edmund’s Day in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Edward II2

Some months after John de Courtenay and Robert le Mareschal contemplated deaths which must affect them dramatically, the former
glad to hear of one demise and the latter actively pursuing another, a man whom both knew was himself contemplating murder.


Standing in the gloom of the alleyway, close by the Fissand Gate to the cathedral close in Exeter, he smiled to himself without
humour as he watched his quarry. Leaning against the dark walls, he was just a blur in the twilight. There was no torch or
brazier here to touch his hooded face with flickering beams. Positioned in the angle of a projection in the wall, even his
outline was concealed.


When the object of his attention moved farther away and joined the crowds in the main street, he pushed himself away from
his place of concealment and followed on his long legs, his thick woollen cloak snapping at his shins.

Over the years Robinet of Newington, known as Newt by his friends, had covered many leagues with that determined lope, his narrow
features squinting into the middle distance as he strode over the old greenways. The smaller paths of this area, the great
roads that led over downs, the pilgrim routes over to Canterbury – he had seen them all. His cloak showed the effects of a
hundred rainstorms and had faded in the sun; his boots were made of good Cordovan leather, but their paint was scratched and
worn away from great use, and although when new they had been identical, neither designed for left nor right, over time they
had moulded themselves to fit his fee