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

taken his
     son and heir; that the men the king set to guard them both have all gone over to the queen’s side instead of his own; and
     that we were powerless to do anything to support him in his endeavours? I think we might merit a little protection ourselves.’
    ‘The king is a reasonable man,’ Bishop Walter said.
    From the sharp glance Sir Richard de Welles threw at him, Baldwin could see that he didn’t believe the bishop’s words either.
    ‘My lord bishop,’ Baldwin said, ‘I am sure that you are right, but I confess to some concern that the king’s favourite may
     deprecate our efforts.’
    The bishop looked away without comment. There was no need to speak, for the three all knew the nature of Sir Hugh le Despenser.
    It was left to Sir Richard to rumble, ‘I would not trust that man if he told me grass grew green.’
    Baldwin smiled to himself. ‘I cannot deny that I would feel happier were we permitted to merely ride homewards. The thought
     of explaining ourselves to the king and Despenser fills me with discomfort.’
    Abbeyford Woods, south of Jacobstowe
    Bill Lark had woken after an unsettled sleep to find that a root had seemingly planted itself in the small of his back, while
     his neck felt as though it had been broken.
    He stood rotating his head while grimly surveying the ground about him. Poor devils, he said to himself, not for the first
     time, as he began to wander about some of the trees, finding dry, dead branches low on the saplings and smaller trees about
     the coppice. Soon he had a couple of armfuls and could start to reset the fire.
    Last night it had begun to rain almost as soon as he had lighted his fire, and then the sounds of night creatures had kept
     him awake too, so he had slept at best fitfully. When he
had
slept it was more a case of dozing, so now he felt on edge and fretful.
    When he had his fire cheerfully ablaze, he spent a few minutes wandering about the coppice again.
    First he walked around the camp itself, eyeing each of the bodies. It was curious, he noticed, that none was near the edge
     of the trees. It was as if they had been moved inwards, away from the thicker woodland all about. That was enough to make
     him scowl pensively.
    Next he walked about the edge of the trees themselves. There were many tracks crossing and recrossing here, mainly horses’
     hoofs riding in towards the camp, and a few riding away. After making a complete circuit, he was forced to consider that there
     had been plenty of riders coming in, and that all had left by the entrance to the clearing, a muddied track made by the charcoal
     burners. So they had attacked from the woods, then departed by the roadway, either up towards Oakhampton or back towards Jacobstowe.
     There was even a set of boot prints leaving that way. Boots that had wandered about the camp. If he was right – and he was
     a moderate tracker – the boots overlapped some of the other marks on the ground, so this man had been here since the killings.
     Perhaps he had been here afterwards – but then again, he could have been one of the attackers.
    What did worry Bill was that he could see no sign of escape from the camp. There were no prints at all that he could discern
     in among the trees other than those horses riding in. That itself was not surprising, for the covering of leaves would make
     a man’s prints hard to see, but if there had been horses escaping, he would have expected to see evidence of their hoofs.
    Yes. It was clear enough what had happened. The fellows had been travelling, and had stopped here for the evening. A group
     of felons had found them, probably dismounted nearby, and then ringed them, shooting most of them down with arrows before
     wandering in and stabbing the survivors. Looking about him at the bodies, he wondered who these victims might have been.
    The man with the tonsure was the first to attract his attention. A clerk – perhaps someone more senior, an abbot or prior
     maybe. He looked