The Traitor of St. Giles Read Online Free Page A

while Uther snuffled in the ferns that lined the roadside.
    Baldwin had been a Templar and survived the persecution of his Order. The experience had given him a loathing of intolerance of any kind. It was this that made him an effective official. Many times he had investigated murders and other felonies, convinced that an arrested man was innocent and fired with the determination to see justice prevail.
    But justice would go by the board if there was a new war. Baldwin had a gloomy certainty that no matter who won a war it was the peasants and poorer knights like himself who would lose all – perhaps even their lives. His wife had already been widowed once; Baldwin was not sure how she would cope with losing a second man.
    Suddenly, a black shape exploded skywards from his side, giving a harsh shrieking cry like metal scored with rough stone, and Baldwin’s mount reared. When he had the beast under control, he saw Uther, who had sprung the black grouse, chasing off after the bird, paws windmilling as he tried to equal its speed. Baldwin laughed for joy and spurred his mare on.
    A canter, then a gallop, and Baldwin tore past Uther, who lumbered at full speed staring up at the grouse, ignoring the land ahead. Baldwin too failed to notice the change in the grasses before him. Suddenly there was a splash and a jerk; Baldwin’s mare stopped dead, and the astonished knight found himself flying through the air. For a brief moment he saw the ground racing towards his face and then he landed with a splash in a foul-smelling bog.
    An hour or so later, when Uther had been installed for the night in the stable, a groom instructed to clean the mare and a servant called to fetch a clean robe so that Jeanne would not see the state Baldwin was in, many miles away Sir Gilbert of Carlisle was clambering down from the moored Despenser ship, clutching the leashes of his own two recalcitrant hounds. While the small craft rocked and bucked under the weight of the three passengers, the sailors took up their oars for the trip back to shore.
    It was cloudy and a thin wind was blowing a fine spray at them. Sir Gilbert’s coat of best wool was soggy, its smell reminding him of old, wet sheep. Compared with the foul odour of sewage and putrefaction that hung over London, it was almost pleasant.
    Before they set off an iron-bound chest was let down on a whip, caught by a sailor and thrust quickly at Sir Gilbert, who stowed it away between his feet. He rested his hand on it for reassurance.
    It was his own fault, he reflected; he had suggested this journey down to Devon. At the time he hadn’t realised the wind was blowing from the west. It would take an age for the old single-masted cog to beat up into the breeze; she was ever a slow ship, but tacking constantly would take an age, and Hugh Despenser the Younger had need of speed. He proposed that Sir Gilbert should land in London and make his own way to Devon using horses owned by the Despensers.
    So here he was, setting off for a long journey with his dogs and two guards for company, and this box. With a grim smile Sir Gilbert patted his dogs’ heads. With the wealth held inside he needed all the protection he could get.
    There was a sharp intake of breath from one of the sailors. Sir Gilbert ignored it: he wasn’t used to paying attention to the feelings of menials and servants. He assumed it was simply the gasp of a tired man pulling at oars. Shrugging himself lower into his sodden coat, he tried to protect his neck from the chill breeze. In his gloomy mood he thought there was a dull blanket of dampness over everything, even smothering the torches and braziers at either bank.
    It was only when he realised that the breath was hissing through the teeth of the nearer sailor, a swarthy, pox-scarred man with a shock of tawny hair and small, shrewd eyes, that Sir Gilbert glanced up. The man was staring over Sir Gilbert’s shoulder and after a moment the knight peered back as well.
    There, casting a