For the Love of Old Bones - and other stories (Templar Series) by Michael Jecks Page A

were at the body.  

    Ralph had a great swelling on his forehead when they pulled him out of the water in which he lay face-down.  
    ‘Perhaps he simply drowned?’ Peter murmured, and asked John to help him roll the body over. When John saw Ralph’s face, although he had helped lay out two monks and one lay brother, he felt a deep sadness. It was the sympathetic instinct of one man upon seeing how another had died.  
    Against the pallor of his face, the ugly, blue mark stood out like mark of the devil, and all the gathering stood studying it in silence for some little time.  
    It was Peter who voiced their thoughts. ‘It, um, looks as though he was struck down.’
    Nobody spoke. There was a curious atmosphere which John did not fully understand, as though all the men and the woman were waiting for someone else to say something. Peter was the only person who appeared unconcerned. He stood with his left hand cupping his hideously damaged jaw, his elbow supported by his right hand, a vague smile on his twisted face as he looked down at Ralph. ‘It would have been a heavy blow,’ he said.
    ‘To knock that bastard down, it’d have to be,’ Ivo Colbrok said.
    Peter sighed to himself and walked to the mastiff. ‘Hello, Rumon, old fellow.’
    The mastiff was apparently aware that his master was beyond help, and somewhere deep in his canine brain there was an understanding that these people were not here to harm his master, but to help if they may. Unlike most mastiffs, he did not threaten the folks about Ralph’s body, but sat back and watched with mournful brown eyes. When Peter went to him, the great head turned, but listlessly, as though the reason for his existence was ended.
    ‘Why did you ask us to come to this God-forsaken place?’ Ivo demanded, looking from Peter to the Reeve. ‘What good can we do here?’
    Reeve Miria was watching Peter, who stood patting the dog’s head. ‘We have to record what is here for the Coroner.’
    Eustace sniffed. ‘The Coroner won’t be pleased if we’ve messed the whole area about before he can come here.’
    ‘By the time Coroner Roger of Gidleigh can get here,’ Peter declared, ‘the body will have been eaten and rotted. I am happy to take responsibility for the corpse, but I must see how the land lay so that I can describe it to the Coroner. And then I and my novice here will mount guard until Coroner Roger arrives.’
    John thought that his words made good sense. He watched as Peter walked to the stream and stood gazing down. The waters flowed swiftly here, in a steep-sided and moorstone-lined cleft some three feet deep. Above was a stone clapper bridge, formed of a single flat stone that traversed the stream. It was not broad enough for a cart, but few carts travelled up here. This bridge had been thrown over the stream by the miners, who regularly sent their ponies down to Tavistock to replenish their stores, and it was only some two feet wide. Peter stood on it, bouncing himself up and down a little. ‘It’s solid,’ he said. ‘It didn’t topple and knock him into the water.’
    ‘Of course it didn’t!’ Reeve Miria said scornfully. ‘Since when did a moorstone block that size move.’
    ‘You haven’t told us what you want us here for,’ Ivo said shrewdly. ‘If you wanted only those who were nearest to the body, you’d not have called me up here, you’d just demand Eustace and some of the other locals. The Coroner’s rules demand that the people who are nearest and those who’re within the parish should be called to view the body. Yet I am a member of Tavistock’s parish, while Eustace is a moorman and comes from Lydford parish. Why?’
    He was demanding an answer from the Reeve, but the Reeve himself did not answer. Instead he looked over to Peter, who was now kneeling at the side of the stream, between the corpse and the waters. Hearing the question, he looked up. ‘You ask why?’ he enquired. There was a faint tone of surprise in his voice.