Read Online The Malice of Unnatural Death: by Michael Jecks - Free Book Online

parted. She turned to him, her head
thrusting forward slightly, her naked body tensing luxuriously under his hands. She arched her back and spoke breathily into
his ear.
    ‘Isn’t it time you were up? You haven’t forgotten today you have to go to the bishop?’
    There were words he could have used about the bishop that morning, but instead he gripped her a little more urgently. ‘Not
until later.’
    And it was much later that he managed to leave the warmth and comfort of his bed and make his way down thestairs of his solar, and out to his hall, all the while rehearsing in his mind how he might be able to refuse the offer which
the bishop had made to him.
    ‘Offer? Hah!’
    No, it was no offer. It was an ultimatum. Bishop Walter wanted Baldwin to go to London for his own reasons. Baldwin had no
idea what those reasons were, but Walter Stapledon had decided that he wanted Baldwin to attend parliament, and the good bishop
was determined. It was rare that he was ever thwarted in his aims. As Baldwin knew only too well, Stapledon, once a close
and trusted friend of his, was at the very centre of power in the realm, and as one of the king’s key advisers, the Lord High Treasurer. That was enough, in Baldwin’s eyes, to make him less trustworthy.
    Since the destruction of his order by an avaricious and unscrupulous French king and his lackey the Pope, Baldwin had been
less prepared to place his trust in the hands of such men. His faith in politics and the Church itself had been ruined by
his experiences as a Templar. Recently, since his friend Simon had introduced him to Bishop Stapledon, he had begun to change
his opinion, but then he had been forced to accept that the bishop had misled him intentionally, and now he was unable to
trust the king’s closest adviser.
    The bishop wished him to become a knight of the shire in London’s parliament, and Baldwin was determined that he would avoid
that fate. The idea of being sent away from his wife and child for weeks or months was unbearable. Only last year had he been
off on pilgrimage with Simon, and the sense of loneliness and desolation at being cut off from his wife was still a weight
on his soul when he thought of it. Better by far that he should not leave her again. Remain herein Devon, where he was content. He had no interest in or need of politics and its practitioners.
    Unusually for him, he demanded a warmed and spiced wine as he sat at his table, and sipped it slowly as he chewed on a slab
of meat, listening to the thundering of small feet from the solar behind him as his daughter woke and ran about the place. It was inconceivable that he could be tempted away from this house and his little girl again, he thought, and grinned to himself
as she burst through the door, her accustomed smile leaping to her face as she caught sight of him.
    He took her up in his arms and cuddled her closely. The two year old always enjoyed being hugged, and she threw her arms about
his neck, shoving her face into the point of his jaw.
    There was nothing, Baldwin told himself, nothing that could tempt him to volunteer for a parliamentary career. And fortunately
there was little likelihood that the freemen of Exeter would be willing to help the bishop in his ambitions anyway. No, Baldwin
reckoned himself safe enough.

Exeter City
    Robinet woke with a head that felt as though a man had taken to driving a hole through his skull by the simple expedient of
using a small awl and twisting it with determination, slowly.
    He cautiously opened his eyes and stared about him. The room was unfamiliar: a high ceiling, bare, white wooden beams, a smell
of fresh hay. It was no room in which he had slept before, clearly. The place was too new.
    Sitting up quickly, he winced at the pain at his temples, and reached up with a hand. As he felt his skull, he wasaware of a soreness and swelling above his ear, but then a rolling wave of nausea overwhelmed him, and he retched without
release for a few