The Tolls of Death: (Knights Templar 17) Read Online Free PDF

like so damaging as the other wounds, the scars of swords and axes that marked his torso, but in this light it showed up livid and vicious. It made him look curiously threatening, a harkening back to the great civil wars of the past century. Even his beard was an anachronism. No one wore smart, trimmed beards nowadays, but Baldwin was proud of his. Once he had been a Templar knight, and in that Order it had been illegal to shave.
    ‘Simon, this beard is a mark of respect to those of my Order who lost their lives when the French King betrayed us,’ he had explained to his old friend. ‘If I allow it to grow wild, it would be a mark of
dis
respect. I will not allow that.’
    To Simon’s disgust, he had even purchased a pair of small scissors from a cutler passing through the vill this morning. It was a well-made tool, Simon could acknowledge, like a small pair of sheep shears, with two sharp blades connected by a horseshoe-shaped spring that held them apart until the fingers squeezed the cutting edges together, but simply unnecessary. He could as easily have bought a pair in Crediton when he got there, but no, he needs must have his beard kept trim.
    The sea was now a chill grey mass, occasional waves sparkling gold, while the ship lay, a black shell in the shadow of the hill in whose lee she sheltered. Simon winced at the sight of her and shivered in recollection of the night before.
    Roaring drunk, the shipmaster had deserted his post at the tiller and fallen in a stupor after finding a bottle of burned wine. This powerful drink, apparently made by monks boiling wine andcooling its steam somehow – a process Simon neither understood nor cared about – had completely ruined the man after only a pint, and yet Simon had seen him consuming a quart of wine the day before! Without a helmsman, the ship had struck a sand bar, breaking her mast, and for the second time this year, Simon had thought that he was about to drown.
    The memory was enough to stiffen his resolve. ‘
You
sail if you must, Baldwin, but my journey continues on foot.’
    The knight made a great show of puffing out his cheeks and shrugging. ‘If you feel so certain …’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Then it is fortunate indeed that I hired the best of the inn’s horses. Otherwise another might have secured them!’ Baldwin said, and laughed at Simon’s expression.
    On the Sunday following this conversation, Serlo the miller left his house to walk the short distance to church, leaving his wife Muriel to prepare their tiny sons Ham and Aumery for the Mass. Serlo needed to speak to his brother Alexander, the Constable of the Peace, about some business, and the church was the usual place for men to discuss their trades.
    He shrugged himself deeper into his thin tunic. The summer was nearly over now and autumn held the land in its fist. Last night there had been a slight frost, and the chilly atmosphere suited his temper. Since the arrival of Richer and his squire, Serlo had noticed people in the vill watching him. He didn’t need their fingers pointing to know that he was the object of all the gossip in the place. Damn them all! Too many remembered how Richer ran away as soon as his family was discovered dead, and many recalled the rumours at the time, that Serlo had been there at the house before it burned down. Rubbish, of course, but throw shit against a wall and some would stick.
    He glanced into the fields nearer the vill and then at thelowering clouds. If it were to rain, the stooks could be ruined. The grain would get damp, and if it wasn’t properly dried it would not last the winter, which would mean disaster for everyone. Some men were already recalling the last war, when the stocks for half the winter were stolen by the King’s Purveyors. Christ’s bones, the weather here was as inconsistent as a woman’s moods.
    His wife Muriel was always whining, demanding money as though all a man need do was wave a hand and coins would come sprinkling from the