Read Online The King of Thieves: by Michael Jecks - Free Book Online Page B

made it harder to find a witness to the arrival of the man. It
     would also serve to make it difficult to …
    ‘I am the king of fools!’ he said suddenly.
    Saturday before the Feast of Mary Magdalen
*
    Lydford, Devon
    In his own property, Simon Puttock, lately Bailiff to the Stannaries of Dartmoor, and more recently the representative of
     the Keeper of the Port of Dartmouth, until the Keeper’s death, breathed in deeply as he drained his first quart of ale that
     morning, sitting on his chair in front of the fire, feeling the warmth seeping into his body.
    The previous evening had been unseasonally cool, and he was happy to be here – all the more so because when he went out for
     an early morning ride, a brief shower of rain had left him sodden and uncomfortable. He was painfully aware that he smelled
     like a drowned ewe, and was keen to have his clothes dried. Worse, earlier in the year a bully called William atte Wattere,
     working for Sir Hugh le Despenser, had assaulted him, cutting him about the left shoulder and hand. Both wounds still stung,
     although they seemed to be mending. However, as he looked about him in his hall, he had to reflect that he had known worse
     mornings.
    His wife squatted near him, adding wood to the faggots on the fire. Her rounded figure was straining against the material
     of her simple tunic, her fair hair already straying from her wimple.
    ‘You know, Meg, life is good,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘All I need now is a good woman to sit on my lap, and …’
    He lunged, but Margaret had already squeaked and darted out of arm’s reach. ‘You have work to get on with,’ she objected.
    ‘No. I am without work.’
    ‘Until you know who has won at the Abbey, you have little to do for the monks, you mean. There is plenty to be getting on
     with here, and as soon as they make up their minds …’
    ‘They already have,’ Simon growled. ‘That is the trouble. Robert Busse has decided that he has won the abbacy, and John de
     Courtenay has too. It makes it all a little difficult to see who will actually take the throne. Meanwhile, the abbey’s funds
     are all taken by the King while they battle it out. The pair of them must be mad.’
    ‘That’s not fair. You know full well that the one who is causing the trouble is John de Courtenay. Robert Busse won the abbacy
     in a fair election. It’s just that John de Courtenay won’t accept that he lost.’
    ‘Perhaps, but neither is doing the abbey any good. And meanwhile, here I am, wasting away as the time passes,’ he said mournfully.
     ‘So come and squirm on my lap, woman!’
    ‘No!’
    He had just attempted an experimental swoop when they were both stilled by the sound of hoofbeats. ‘Oh, Christ’s cods,’ Simon
     muttered. ‘Does this mean there’s been a decision about the abbacy?’
    ‘It doesn’t look like an abbey’s messenger,’ Meg said, patting her straying fair hair back under her wimple.
    Getting up and walking over to her, Simon admired his woman again. She was five years younger than him, and apart from the
     natural ravages of time at her face, it was hard to see that she was already some four and thirty years old. Even the three
     birthings, and the miscarriages between, had not dulled her spirit, nor the shine of her hair, and for the resthe found her body more comfortable now than he did before. He slipped his arms about her waist and rested his chin on her
     shoulder as he peered through the slats of the unglazed window. ‘The fellow is looking about like a lost man,’ he commented.
    ‘No, now he has seen us here.’
    It was true enough. The man had asked a passerby for directions and now he had kicked his scraggy old mare into an amble and
     was riding towards them.
    From the look of him, he was a lowly lawyer’s clerk. Simon had seen enough of that sort when he was a Bailiff, listening to
     cases in the gaol at Lydford. All kinds of pleaders would turn up there, trying to make a living from