The Poisoned Chalice

Chapter Twelve In which Crowner John is called out of a banquet

The refectory in the Bishop’s palace, between the cathedral and the city wall, was crowded with gaily dressed folk and filled with a hubbub of conversation, laughter and the clatter of dishes. The hall was only large enough to hold a hundred people, so the company was very select. The following evening, there would be room for many more at the banquet at Rougemont, where the sheriff and burgesses were to entertain the Justiciar. Tonight, Hubert was in his archbishop mode, sitting in the centre of the top table between Bishop Marshall and the Archdeacon of Exeter, John de Alecon.

Ranged on either side were the three other archdeacons of the diocese, the Treasurer and the Precentor, then military and civic officials, which included Richard de Revelle and his wife, Lady Eleanor, John de Wolfe and Matilda. The two Portreeves and the castle constable Ralph Morin were next, together with a mixture of county nobility, abbots, canons and burgesses. The other trestles, arranged as spurs from the top table, held as many of the lesser notables, rich merchants, guild officials and minor clergy as had been able to wheedle invitations for themselves.

Matilda was in ecstasy at their favoured position, visible at the top table to all those present, which included some of her women acquaintances. She was too happy even to notice her husband’s glumness and boredom, as she sat next to one of the senior canons, Thomas de Boterellis, who was the Precentor responsible for the music and order of services at the cathedral. He was a fat, waxen-faced priest with very small eyes – and no friend of John’s, having been on the Bishop’s side in his support for Prince John’s rising. Across the table, at the end of the nearest spur, Matilda had the priest from St Olave’s and the Master of the Guild of Cordwainers, so she could combine religious talk with gossip about the latest fashions in shoemaking.

John was isolated from anyone he knew, other than Matilda, and wished he was within speaking distance of Hubert Walter. Instead, he was seated next to a fat little canon who, with wolfish determination, ate everything that was placed within reach and had no time for conversation.

The coroner looked past his wife to where the two bishops were sitting at the centre of the table. Both had changed out of their elaborate vestments, which they had worn during the Mass, and were now in comparatively plain though rich garments. Each wore an embroidered cream surcoat over an alb and their head-gear was a puffed round cap, with a pair of decorated tails hanging from above the ear to the chest.

John stared at Hubert’s strong face, weathered on a dozen battlefields, and compared it with the narrow, long-chinned features of Bishop Henry Marshall, whose face had a curious smooth symmetry as if it was a sculpture. He had no doubt of the Bishop’s genuine devotion to the Church, but wondered if the ambitious politician-Archbishop had a similar passion for religion – or whether he took the office of head of the English Church merely as a means to secular power. Hubert Walter had been a senior court official and a baron of the Exchequer since the days of old King Henry, but had never had high office until Richard the Lionheart first made him Bishop of Salisbury, then his lieutenant at the Third Crusade. Hubert’s efforts to negotiate the King’s release from incarceration in Germany had earned him the twin appointments of Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar of England.

John would dearly have liked to talk to him about what happened in the Holy Land when Hubert had remained there in charge of the English army, after John and the King had begun their ill-fated journey home. He hoped there would be time for reminiscing tomorrow, after their meeting to iron out the differences between the sheriff and the coroner over jurisdiction in criminal cases. John looked again around the noisy hall and contrasted the well-dressed and over-fed congregation with most of the population outside, the majority of whom lived in poverty-stricken and squalid conditions, like those in Bretayne – and Bearded Lucy on Exe Island.

The thought of the old crone brought his mind back to the current problems – he still had the nagging feeling that Lucy had been holding something back and he resolved to look into that again in the next day or two. That sent his eyes roving again, to confirm that neither Godfrey Fitzosbern nor his wife Mabel were at the banquet. He presumed that Godfrey was lying low after the events of the last day or two – and presumably Mabel had carried out her threat to leave him.

There had been no sign of Fitzosbern at the cathedral service either, when Hubert Walter celebrated the Mass and then preached a sermon. It must have been a hard decision for the silversmith to shun such an event as this, when he was such a prominent member of the guilds in the city. John had half expected to see him there as an act of defiance against the rumours that beset him.

The evening wore on and John had eaten all he wanted and drunk more than he needed. No one could leave until the Bishop and his chief guest rose from the table, so he was stuck between the strident tones of Matilda and the gargling of the insatiable canon who, deprived of more food, was consuming vast quantities of the Bishop’s best wine.

Suddenly, the coroner caught sight of a familiar figure standing just inside the doorway that led from the palace courtyard. For a second he thought the wine was playing tricks with his sight, but it was undoubtedly their maid Mary standing there, her eyes roving the hall. Their gaze met and she waved vigorously, then beckoned urgently.

John, glad of a diversion as long as it didn’t mean that his house was on fire, pushed back his chair and struggled along the narrow gap between the seated diners and the wall. Pushing aside a servant balancing four large jars of ale, he reached the doorway. Mary, a blanket enveloping her head and shoulders, pointed a finger towards the outside. ‘You’d better come back to Martin’s Lane straight away,’ she said cryptically. John wondered why she didn’t say ‘come home’, then looked back and saw that the eagle-eyed Matilda had noticed his absence. She grimaced across the hall and beckoned to him pointing with a ferocious scowl at his empty chair then gesturing up the table at the bishops. He ignored her and followed his maid servant out into the cold air of the courtyard. ‘What’s going on? Not another ravishment or miscarriage?’

Mary grasped his arm in her firm grip. ‘No, but I think that Godfrey Fitzosbern has been poisoned.’

They hurried across the darkened pathways of the cathedral Close, stumbling over rubbish and heaps of fresh earth from half-dug graves. Gwyn of Polruan and Gabriel, the sergeant-at-arms, were following them. John had known that they had been enjoying the banquet from inside the palace kitchens and had called them out to come with Mary and himself to this new emergency.

As they walked the short distance across to St Martin’s Lane, Mary explained what had happened. ‘I was carrying logs through the passage into the hall when I heard this noise from the street. I thought it might be another fight next door, as it was the other night, so I went outside to look.’

They reached the gate and passed into the lane, where the farrier’s rush lights burned.

‘It was Master Godfrey again, but this time he was crawling on the ground outside his door, making a strange croaking noise.’

Now passing John’s own house, they came in sight of a small group of people clustered around the open door to the silversmith’s shop.

‘I went to him, but he was unable to speak, just grasping my skirt and making these strange noises and holding his throat. I ran to the end of the lane and called a man passing on the High Street. He came with me and we dragged Master Godfrey inside his front door out of the cold. Then I ran for you, I didn’t know what else to do.’

John pushed past the few onlookers and, Gwyn and Gabriel close behind, led Mary into the shop. Only one of the usual tallow dips was burning, but the occupant was easily located by the rasping noises he made as he breathed. Godfrey Fitzosbern was stretched on his side on the floor, his arms and legs twitching slightly. His eyes were open, but John had the impression, even in the poor light, that they were unseeing.

‘What is it, Fitzosbern? What’s wrong?’ he demanded, kneeling alongside the man. There was no answer and the coroner repeated the words much more loudly. This got some reaction, as the victim turned his head, though his eyes failed to focus. He made some noises in his throat, then slumped back again, unresponsive, apart from spasmodic twitching of his fingers.

‘Get me that lamp,’ ordered John, and Gabriel reached for the little dish with a floating wick. John held it close to Godfrey’s face and saw a clammy pallor, with beads of cold perspiration on the features.

‘What’s wrong with his neck?’ asked the sergeant, pointing to an angry red line of swelling across the throat. This surrounded the slight cut he had received from Hugh Ferrars, but now it was obviously inflamed and going septic.

John tried to communicate again with the sick man, but only incomprehensible gargling noises came back. The twitching began again and the trembling of the fingers was more obvious.

He looked up at Mary, huddled anxiously under her blanket shawl. ‘Did he say anything sensible to you?’ he asked.

‘I could make out only one or two words among the groans and muttering. He said, “Burning, it’s burning”, and “poisoned”.’

John’s black eyebrows rose. ‘No doubt about him saying poison?’

‘It was definite. When he said it, he pointed that shaking hand towards his throat.’

John knew that his maid was a level-headed and reliable woman and he took what she said without question. ‘He has this suppuration of the wound in his throat. Maybe the poison from that is sufficient. But we can’t leave him here.’ He stood up. ‘The monks of St Nicholas will be aghast when I take them another patient or corpse within these few days.’

Gabriel had a suggestion. ‘I know the prior at St John’s and it’s nearer than St Nicholas’s. Why not take him there? There are three brothers who are skilled in caring for the sick.’

Just within the East Gate was a very small monastic house which had come to be known as St John’s Hospital, from the labours of the four celibates who lived there.

‘We’d better move him quickly, while he’s still alive,’ suggested Gwyn. He looked around the room and, with Gabriel’s help, lifted the hinges of the inner door from their wrought-iron pintles and laid it flat alongside the twitching silversmith. Two of the onlookers were recruited and Fitzosbern was lifted on to the planks and carried away at a trot, around the corner into the main street and away up to St John’s.

De Wolfe sent the remaining bystanders about their business and closed the front door. ‘Well done, Mary, you’re a good, sensible girl,’ he said. ‘Now I’d better get back to that bloody banquet or all my good work with Matilda will have been for nothing.’

Several hours later, he was back inside the silversmith’s house with Gwyn. The festivities at the Bishop’s Palace were over and, as he had been absent barely a quarter of an hour, Matilda made no great complaint, especially when he regaled her with this new piece of drama from next door.

After seeing her up to the solar and the attentions of Lucille, who would dismantle her finery to allow her to get to bed, he collected Gwyn, who was drinking ale with Mary in her hut in the back yard. ‘Let’s see what’s been going on in the house next door. Maybe we can tell if he really has been poisoned or whether this is some sickness from that neck wound.’

As they entered the absent Fitzosbern’s premises, Gwyn had a question. ‘If it is suppuration from that neck wound and he dies, would that not make Hugh Ferrars liable for unlawful killing?’

‘It’s for a jury to decide, but it seems very likely. Let’s not run ahead of ourselves, we must see what’s here.’

They looked around the shop, where there was nothing untoward to be found. The workbenches held the usual clutter of tools and metal, and the table that displayed finished wares was bare of anything as the valuable stock was locked up for safety every night.

‘There is light upstairs,’ observed the Cornishman, putting his head through the now doorless opening to the back workroom. They went through the pungent fumes from the ever-burning furnace, each holding aloft a tallow light, which showed nothing out of the ordinary in the downstairs area. Climbing the wide ladder, John rose into the living space above, which was deserted.

‘Does he not have servants?’ queried Gwyn.

‘The maid went with Mabel when she left him, so the gossip says, and my wife is always abreast of the latest tittle-tattle,’ replied the coroner. ‘There was a kitchen servant, but God knows where he is. Drinking in some tavern, I expect.’

They looked around the room, holding up their lamps, as only one candle still burned, the stump guttering in a silver candlestick. Another room was partitioned off at the front, in which was a large bed. In the main room, John saw a half-eaten meal on a silver-rimmed wooden platter with a silver chalice alongside. ‘What’s this? The chair is overturned and there’s a soiled knife on the floor.’

Gwyn picked up the platter and looked at it closely. ‘Half a roast fowl, much of the leg eaten. Carrots and cabbage with it, some spilled on to the table,’ he reported. John, meanwhile, had picked up the elaborate goblet, which looked as if it was better suited to a church altar than a dinner table. It appeared to be half full of red wine, some of which had been splashed on to. the table near the base of the chalice. He sniffed at the contents, but could detect nothing unusual. Dipping the tip of a finger into the deep rose-coloured liquid, he gingerly touched it to the end of his tongue, but again could taste nothing but wine.

The coroner thought for a moment, looking around the room. ‘We had best keep this food and the wine, to see if some better examination can be made of it,’ he decided.

‘Did the wine come from there, I wonder?’ asked Gwyn, pointing to a small grey-stone jar with a wooden stopper, that stood on a shelf nearby.

John took the flask and removed the bung, sniffing at the contents. He shook it and estimated that it was about half full. ‘We’ll take this as well – and this.’ He picked up a small round wooden box, alongside the wine jar. There was some cabalistic inscription on the lid and inside was a brown fibrous powder that had a faint herbal smell.

Gwyn looked at the specimens they had collected. ‘So what do we do with them now?’

‘I’ll keep them next door until the morning, then I’ll take them to an apothecary to see what he makes of them.’

Gwyn’s blue eyes looked frankly at his master. ‘Not to an apothecary’s apprentice?’ he asked pointedly.

John sighed. ‘I already guess how my brother-in-law’s mind will work. If this is a poisoning, then Edgar of Topsham will be the prime suspect, after the threats and attack he has made on Fitzosbern.’

Gwyn gave one of his grunts. ‘For once, it is hard to blame the sheriff if he comes to believe that. Edgar is the obvious choice.’

John led the way back to the steps, taking the flask and medicine box, while Gwyn followed with the platter and chalice.

‘We had better go up to St John’s, to see if we are dealing with a murder or just an attempted one.’

The priory, tucked just inside the massive East Gate, was but a series of rooms attached to a small chapel. Living quarters for the four monks, a tiny refectory and a kitchen were adjunct to several cells and a larger room that acted as the hospital. It was always full of sick people from the poorest section of the town, but Brother Saulf, a Saxon who was the elder monk under the prior, had shifted a patient out of a cell into the main ward so that Fitzosbern could be accommodated.

When the coroner arrived, the silversmith lay on a pallet, deathly pale, still clammy and sweating. As John went into the cell with Saulf, the patient suddenly vomited and retched, a stream of almost clear fluid gushing from his mouth and nose. Saulf knelt to wipe it from his lips and nostrils and tipped the man’s head to one side to see if any more could escape. Then, to John’s surprise, he picked up a pitcher from the floor and bending Fitzosbern’s head back, poured a generous amount of fluid into his mouth.

There was a spluttering and coughing, but the monk clamped the man’s jaw shut with his hand so that he was forced to swallow, though he seemed almost to suffocate in the attempt. A moment later, he retched again and more fluid shot from between his lips to join the mess on the floor.

‘If it is a poison, then the only hope is to cleanse it from his belly with copious draughts of salt and water,’ explained the middle-aged brother, justifying his heroic treatment.

‘Do you think he has been poisoned?’ demanded the coroner.

Saulf looked up from clearing his patient’s mouth. ‘I cannot tell. It may be some bad food he has eaten or it may be some foul substance that he has been given. The symptoms of so many poisons are the same – collapse, pain in the throat, vomiting and purging.’

‘Will he live?’

‘That is in God’s hands. It’s too soon to say. He might be perfectly well in the morning – or he might be dead.’

Gwyn leaned against the door post behind John. ‘Has he spoken any sensible words, to say what happened to him?’

‘Nothing but groans, apart from a whisper I caught, which sounded like “burning, burning”.’

De Wolfe stood looking down at the victim, who still had trembling of the hands and feet and occasional twitches of the limbs. ‘What about that throat wound? He was cut by a sword edge two nights ago, but it was a trivial injury at the time.’

Saulf touched the swollen red line with a finger, expressing several beads of yellow pus. ‘It could be the cause of his hoarse attempts to speak and maybe his collapse from purulence in the blood. Yet he has no fever, he is cold and damp. And I fail to see why he trembles and jerks in this way.’

They stayed a few moments longer, but it was obvious that, whether Godfrey lived or died, he was not going to enlighten them that night about what might have happened to him in Martin’s Lane.

John thanked the monk and promised to return first thing next morning, leaving the silversmith to the mercies of the brothers and their God.