No Law in the Land: (Knights Templar 27) Read Online Free PDF

was not
     his choice to be bailiff for the hundred, but he had been chosen and elected, and there was no escape from responsibility.
     This was his year.
    The way was already growing dark as he left his house and took the long road that led almost like an arrow south to Oakhampton.
     Fortunately it was a popular route for men going to the market, and he could travel at some speed. There were other lanes
     that were not so well maintained, and where the way could be blocked by any number of fallen trees or thick glutinous mud
     in which a man could almost drown. From his perspective, any such areas were dangerous. A robber man might wait at the site
     of a pool of mud, hoping for a chance to waylay the unwary as they stepped around it, while a tree blocking a path might have
     been deliberately placed there. These were not good times for a man who needed to travel, he told himself.
    It was fortunate that there was not far to go, and before it was fully dark he was in the coppice.
    He knew that many would be affected by the sight that greeted him, but he was too old to worry about the presence of the dead.
     He had seen enough corpses in his time. Some years ago, when he was himself scarce grown, he had buried his own parents, both
     dead from some disease that struck them during the famine years, when no one was strong enough to fight off even a mild chill.
     Aye, he had buried them, and others. The sight of death held no fears for him.
    Still, there were some scenes he did not enjoy, and while he wandered about the bodies, it was the sight of so many wounds
     in those who were surely already dead that made him clench his jaw. It made him consider, too, and he looked about the ground
     with an eyetuned to the marks left by the raiders. Horses had left their prints, and the occasional boot, he saw. So this was no mere
     band of outlaws; it was a military force, if he was right.
    He gazed about him with a stern frown fitted to his face, and as the rain began to fall again, he hurried to collect some
     dry timber to start a fire.
    Time enough for thinking later.
    Third Tuesday following the Feast of the Archangel Michael
*
    Hythe, Kent
    Sir Baldwin de Furnshill sniffed the air as the little ship rolled and shifted on the sea.
    A tall man in his middle fifties, he was used to travelling. In his dark eyes, as he looked at the quayside, there was only
     gratitude that he had once more successfully and safely crossed the Channel. The journey had become only too familiar to him
     in the last few months, and he was hopeful that now he might leave such wanderings and return to his wife and family, to the
     life of a rural knight.
    ‘Bishop, I hope I see you well?’
    ‘Ach!’ Bishop Walter II of Exeter gave him a sharp look. His blue eyes were faded, and he must peer short-sightedly now, his
     eyes were so old and worn, unless he had his spectacles with him. Some ten years Baldwin’s senior, at four-and-sixty, the
     bishop had not enjoyed a good voyage. ‘I begin to sympathise with Simon.’
    ‘He is still at the prow, I think.’ Baldwin smiled. Simon had always been an atrociously poor sailor, and spent much of his
     time at sea bemoaning his fate as he brought up all he had eaten for a day past. This time he had attempted a popular sailor’s
     cure, by drinking a quantity of strong ale, but that had only served to give his belly more fluid to reject, and since then
     he had spent the entire day and night leaning over the side of the ship, while sailors darted about to avoid tripping on him.
    ‘Poor fellow. I shall go and offer a prayer for his speedy recovery,’ the bishop said.
    ‘Ha! Rather, pray for all our health,’ Sir Richard de Welles said, joining them. ‘No tellin’ what chance we have of getting
     home.’
    ‘Now we are all safe at England, there seems less need,’ the bishop said wanly.
    ‘Safe, eh?’ Sir Richard said. ‘When we have to travel to find the king and tell him that his wife has left him and