The Poisoned Chalice

Chapter Fifteen In which Crowner John hears a confession

As the coroner expected, Godfrey Fitzosbern was inflamed beyond measure with the proposition that Christina be brought to confront him, but after some reasoned argument, his mood subsided to grudging acceptance.

John had left his own house after one of Mary’s substantial breakfasts and went next door. The silversmith was not in his shop, only the two workers, who looked furtive and subdued when they saw the law officer. The old man who had been looking after the house since Mabel had left with the maid took the coroner upstairs to Fitzosbern’s living quarters, where he found the guild-master still in his night-tunic, sitting slumped on the edge of his bed.

He looked pale and ill, a shadow of his usual self – no longer the bouncy, well-dressed man-about-town, who always had a smile and a smooth word for the ladies. John noticed that his hands had a marked tremor when he held them out.

He began by enquiring after his health since leaving St John’s, which set Godfrey into indignant ranting. ‘I’m sick, de Wolfe, damned sick! Poisoned by that bloody madman son of Joseph. When I’m recovered, I’m going to bring an appeal against him for attempted murder.’

‘But the apothecary said that there was no poison in that food and wine.’

‘Nonsense! Of course I was poisoned! Within minutes of taking them, my mouth began to burn, my throat was tight, my belly was in spasm and my heart was thumping like a lunatic drummer.’

John shrugged. ‘There was no sign of poison. Nicholas of Bristol showed me a rat and a cat that had been fed with them. They suffered no harm at all.’

Fitzosbern sat on his bed, his head in his hands. ‘Did he give them any of that herb powder? It was either that or the wine.’

‘Why not the food? That fowl may have been corrupt before it was cooked.’

‘It was never in the apothecary’s shop where that crazy boy could contaminate it.’

John pricked up his ears. ‘So are you saying that the wine came from there?’

‘Of course it did! Nicholas gave me the powder for my neck wound and said to wash each dose down with this special wine, which had a medicament in it to enhance the goodness of the herbs.’

John wondered why Nicholas had not mentioned the wine – though if it was innocent of any toxin, it did not matter.

Godfrey looked up at him. ‘Did you come here only to enquire after my health?’

When the coroner explained the proposal to bring Christina to confront him, the expected violent objections materialised. It took a long time for him to convince Fitzosbern that the only way to lift the cloud of suspicion was to show that the girl had no recollection of his being the assailant. If he was innocent, as he steadfastly maintained, then it could only be to his benefit.

Eventually, Godfrey reluctantly agreed, on condition that no one else from the Rifford family was present, and no one from the Topsham family either. They arranged for her to come at the twelfth hour and John left, casting a last suspicious look at Alfred and Garth as he went out through the hot and smoky workshop, where the smelting hearth was now in full spate.

His next call was at the Rifford house, where he explained the arrangements to Henry and Christina. old Aunt Bernice would take her to Matilda, and John and his wife would lead her next door. Edgar was at the house, and both he and Christina’s father were reluctant to be left out of the deputation to Martin’s Lane, but John insisted that Fitzosbern would not cooperate if they came.

The coroner went from there to his chamber in Rougemont Castle and listened to Gwyn and Thomas as they told him of a few new cases that needed his attention. The rest of the morning was spent in viewing the body of a boy who had fallen into a mill-race down near the river, and was recovered drowned on the downstream side of the woollen mill.

When John returned home, he was chagrined to find his brother-in-law there, with Matilda and Christina. The sheriff had somehow heard of the identity venture and had marched down to protest, still in his role of protector of the guild-master. ‘By what authority do you think you can do this?’ he demanded, standing in John’s hall with his smart green cloak draped over one shoulder, to show off his yellow surcoat.

‘Because I am enjoined to record the Pleas of the Crown, Richard, and rape is undoubtedly a crime serious enough to be brought before the King’s Justices, not the shire court. So I am perfectly entitled to pursue my investigations, to be enrolled for the royal judges, when they come.’

As this was the deal proposed by Hubert Walter only the day before, de Revelle could hardly prohibit it, but his face conveyed the bad grace with which he gave in to the coroner. ‘Let’s get on with the farce, then. Fitzosbern is threatening to appeal everyone who is against him, for assault, attempted murder and God knows what!’

Matilda and Christina sat near the fire, listening to this exchange with concern. ‘If this will cause Edgar and my father more trouble then perhaps I should not go through with it,’ said the girl tremulously.

John held up his hand. ‘It is part of my enquiry. No harm will come of it.’ He turned to the sheriff, partly with the intent of diverting his antagonism. ‘My officer discovered yesterday that Adele de Courcy had been recommended to the apothecary Nicholas as someone who might rid her of the child. He denies it, of course, but we found elm slips in his shop, which he claims were for another purpose.’

The sheriff’s eyes lit up, he was certainly diverted by the news. It gave him a possible route to get back in favour with the de Courcys, and especially the Ferrars clan, who were accusing him of being ineffectual in finding the truth about Adele’s death. ‘Was there any clue as to the identity of the father?’ he demanded.

‘No, not a word. And we have no proof that Nicholas was involved, only that the old hag the woman first consulted told her to try Nicholas as a last resort.’

The cathedral bell boomed out the noonday hour from across the Close and they moved out of the coroner’s house to visit the silversmith. Once again, the two craftsmen almost cowered behind their workbenches as the sheriff and coroner strode past them, half convinced that they had come to rearrest them. But the party walked on into the back room, still filled with heat and the acrid fumes from the furnace that glowed red on one side.

‘Come up, if you must,’ said a voice from the stairs at the back. The lower half of Fitzosbern, now dressed in a sombre tunic, could be seen going back up to his living chamber. They all followed, Matilda solicitously supporting the anxious figure of Christina. Upstairs, the silversmith stood defiantly in the centre of the room, his back against his dining table.

‘What do you want of me? Let us get this nonsense over as quickly as possible to avoid embarrassing these ladies more than necessary,’ he snapped. Though he was still pale and had trembling fingers, he looked better than he had a few hours earlier.

‘This is the crowner’s idea, Fitzosbern, not mine,’ said Richard de Revelle, immediately backing out of any responsibility that might rebound on him.

John took the arm of the beautiful brunette and led her forward to face Fitzosbern. ‘Take your time, Christina. Look at this man from various angles. Listen to his voice, shut your eyes, and see if any memories come back to you.’

The guild-master snorted in disbelief. ‘What nonsense this is, de Wolfe! She has seen me around the town for most of her life – and recently she has been to my shop half a dozen times. We have stood together and touched hands while I fitted her bracelet. How in God’s name can she not recognise me?’

Privately, John had sympathy with his views, as this was not like picking out a stranger from a crowd. But he wanted to settle her recollections once and for all, to satisfy Joseph, Edgar and Henry Rifford.

At a sign from the coroner, Godfrey turned himself through a full circle, a sneer of contempt on his face at these antics. Then Christina walked round him, and did it again with her eyes shut.

‘Say nothing now, my girl. We will discuss it outside,’ commanded John.

Suddenly, Christina burst into tears and sank to her knees in abject distress. Matilda rushed to her and pulled her up, her arms around her, cooing into her ear. She gave a nasty look to her husband and even her brother, as representing everything masculine who battened upon poor women, then guided the sobbing girl to the stairs and took her back next door.

John was strangely touched by his wife’s tenderness, something she had never showed him in the slightest degree. As the unexpected motherliness suddenly blossomed in the hard-faced woman, he wondered what she might have been like if they had had children.

‘Have you finished this stupid game?’ demanded Fitzosbern dropping heavily on to a bench.

‘Let’s hope this is the end of the matter,’ said Richard, in a placatory tone. ‘I think I have some other avenues to follow in this matter.’

John had no idea what he meant by that, but they followed the women back to the house next door where they found Christina, red-eyed and sniffing, slumped on a settle near the great fireplace, with Matilda still comforting her.

‘I hope you’re satisfied, upsetting the poor girl like this,’ she grated. ‘All to no purpose, I’ll be bound.’

John went over to Christina and looked down at her. ‘Well, any impressions at all, Mistress Rifford?’ he asked gently. She sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a kerchief pulled from the wide sleeve of her red surcoat. ‘It is as he said – I know him so well, especially from visiting his shop, as I did on the night … the night it happened.’

John was disappointed, but not in the least surprised. ‘So there was nothing at all?’

‘No, not really,’ Christina answered, so slowly that the keen ear of the coroner picked up a small element of doubt.

‘Wait a moment – are you sure there was nothing?’

The girl looked up at him, her lovely face framed in the white linen circle of her gorget and headband. ‘I told you before, I saw no one, he was behind me. But just now, something … not a sight, it was when my eyes were shut.’ She shook her head in despair. ‘Maybe it was imagination.’

‘What, Christina? What was it?’ he asked urgently.

‘A smell – no, not even a smell. A sensation in my nose. I don’t know what it was, I can’t tell. But something reminded me – and upset me.’

She promptly burst into tears again and the newly discovered maternal spirit in Matilda fiercely drove the two men away.

The fortnightly shire court was due to be held on the next day, Friday, and John spent the early part of the afternoon in his cramped office, getting Thomas to go through the cases that were due to be heard. Though presided over by the sheriff, except when the King’s Justices were in town, the coroner was entitled – and usually obliged – to be present for a variety of reasons, either financial or administrative.

As his reading ability was still negligible, he depended on Thomas to record all matters as they came up, then to relay them back to him in the court. As the crook-backed little clerk droned through the list of fines, amercements, attachments, securities to attend trial and other odd jobs that came to the coroner, Gwyn stood at the window opening, carefully touching up the edges of their swords on the soft sandstone of the sill. He regretted the rarity of chances to use his own weapon, these days, compared to when he and Sir John had so often been in the thick of fighting, but he kept his blade sharp in the hope that some unexpected combat might come along.

A few moments later, while the coroner and his clerk still worked their way through the court list, Gwyn’s rhythmical honing was interrupted by the sound of shouting down below. From the narrow window slit, when the shutters were fully open, a view could just be glimpsed of a few yards of the road leading up to the steep drawbridge below. The yells of protest and the deeper answering commands of soldiers drew his eye to a tight group of people who rapidly passed his narrow line of vision.

The Cornishman, his unruly hair looking like a hayrick in a gale, turned to the coroner. ‘That’s odd. Gabriel and a couple of his men have just brought in those two men from Fitzosbern’s workshop – and I’m sure that young Edgar and his apothecary master were with them.’

De Wolfe looked up quickly. ‘Brought in? You mean they were under guard?’

‘Looked like it, especially from the noise they were making.’

John got to his feet and picked up his mantle from where it lay across the table. ‘What’s that bloody man up to now? Maybe that’s what he meant this morning when he said something about following other avenues.’ He slung the cloak over his shoulders and made for the stairs. ‘You’d better come with me, Gwyn – and you can check through the rest of those tasks for tomorrow, Thomas. I must go to see what new mischief the sheriff is planning.’

They tracked the prisoners to the undercroft of the keep and found them herded together in the cold and dismal area outside the gateway to the gaol. The place always reminded John of a cave in which he had once hidden during a French campaign, with a musty smell of old dampness, and water slithering down green walls. At the back of the low hall, under one of the arches of the vaulting, the obese gaoler, Stigand, was stoking a small fire with logs.

The sergeant-at-arms was in charge of the party, looking slightly awkward as he knew of the difference in views between sheriff and coroner over this affair. ‘Sir Richard himself sent the orders to bring them in, Crowner, not more than an hour ago,’ he said apologetically.

Of the four detainees, the only one to be voluble was Edgar of Topsham, whose voice Gwyn now recognised as that of the protester he had heard from the window. Struggling vainly in the grip of a soldier, his dishevelled fair hair fell even more into his eyes than usual. ‘He promised my father that this was all over!’ he shouted at John. ‘This is the second time that the sheriff has dragged me here. What does he hope to gain from it?’

There was a new voice from behind them, as Richard de Revelle had come in unnoticed, together with Ralph Morin, the castle constable. ‘I hope to gain the truth at last for my patience has run out with these milk-and-water methods.’ He turned to the coroner. ‘The failure of Mistress Rifford to give any credence to these unjust accusations against Godfrey Fitzosbern, and that news you gave me about this apothecary here, make me determined to resort to more effective methods.’

The words sounded ominous in the dank, echoing vault.

‘I fail to see what you hope to achieve, when there is no useful evidence from anywhere,’ retorted John, who had a good idea what the sheriff was planning.

‘I hope to gain confessions, Crowner! Your methods of seeking a solution to these crimes that have plagued Exeter this past week and more have led nowhere. So now let me try my way, if you please.’

He turned imperiously towards the two workers from the silversmith’s shop, who stood cringing behind the apothecary and his apprentice. Their forebodings of this morning, when the law officers came into their workshop, seemed to have come true with awful rapidity. ‘Alfred and Garth, I seem to remember you are called that,’ he began menacingly, ‘I suspect you, either one or both, of being the ravisher of Christina Rifford. Will you now confess to that crime, eh?’

Both broke out into a cacophony of denial, Alfred falling to his knees on the cold slime of the floor, pleading with his hands outstretched. The sheriff impatiently gestured to the guards and they silenced the two men, dragging the older one to his feet and giving the boorish Garth a clout over the head to close his mouth.

‘Right, we’ll see if we can loosen your tongues in a little while. First, I want to deal with you, Edgar of Topsham.’

At a sign from Morin, Gabriel pushed forward the young apprentice to stand right before de Revelle. He began his usual loud protests, but the sheriff slapped him across the face with a gloved hand. ‘Be silent when I speak to you, boy. Your father is not here now to threaten me.’

John, silently observing his brother-in-law’s tactics, felt that he was building up trouble for himself, unless he knew something of which John was unaware – which he doubted.

‘I am sure that our master silversmith was poisoned, whatever the leech here says, and I’ll question that opinion very soon. It’s thanks to our good brothers at St John’s that he failed to die – but attempted murder carries the same penalty as one that is successful.’ He leaned forward to put his face close to Edgar’s – the young man was as tall as the sheriff and their noses almost touched. ‘I think that you gave that poison to Fitzosbern – you, the one who repeatedly threatened him, publicly said you wished him dead and who attacked him on his own doorstep.’ His voice rose to a crescendo, reverberating from the uncaring stone walls. ‘Who else is a better candidate for murder, eh?’

Edgar flew off into his usual denials, this time tinged with terror as he saw the way things were going. But the soldier behind him gave him a kick in the back of the knees that sent him sprawling before the sheriff.

Richard stepped back a pace and looked down at the young man. ‘If you refuse to confess, then the law approves a process called peine forte et dure to encourage the memory – and no one need be a scholar to know what those words mean.’

Edgar, on his hands and knees in the mire, looked up in unbelieving horror. ‘You cannot torture me – my father will petition the King, he told you so himself.’

‘The King is over the seas. It would take your father months to get there and find him – if he ever returned, as his ships seem prone to sink. And we are here today. I do not have months to spare.’

John felt it was time to intervene. ‘Attempted murder is a Plea of the Crown, like rape. You cannot take it upon yourself to deal with the matter in this summary fashion.’

Richard sneered at this. ‘Wrong, Sir Crowner! Fitzosbern has appealed Edgar for attempting to kill him and it will be heard in the shire court tomorrow. No jury of presentment has sent the matter for trial by the King’s Justices, so the Crown has no say in the issue. And today I am not trying the case by the Ordeal, I am merely seeking evidence in the form of a confession by the accepted means of peine forte et dure. So you have nothing to do with it, John, until you attend his trial by battle or declare him an outlaw if he should escape.’ He stood back triumphantly.

John chewed over the words in his mind but could find no valid objection in law, much as the Crown authorities disliked the King’s courts being bypassed by these residual old laws.

De Revelle waved a hand in the direction of Stigand and his fire. ‘Take him over there. That offensive old swine should soon have his branding irons hot enough for his purpose.’

Now screaming, rather than objecting, Edgar was dragged by two soldiers across to the archway, where the flabby gaoler was wheezing with the effort of thrusting some heavy iron rods into the red heart of the fire.

The sheriff sauntered over, leaving the two silver-workers trembling with awful anticipation of their own fate as they stood between their own guards. Nicholas of Bristol, who had not uttered a word since being brought in, stood pale-faced but impassive as he watched what was going on around him, his mouth hanging grotesquely as spittle leaked out unheeded.

At the fire, Ralph Morin was speaking in a low voice to Gabriel, his sergeant, then went to talk quietly to the sheriff, who shook his head impatiently. Like John de Wolfe, Morin thought this afternoon’s adventure ill-advised – not because they had any particular aversion to torture, which had been an accepted method of law enforcement for centuries, but because he thought that it was a mistake to use it against the son of such an influential person as Joseph of Topsham.

Gabriel, acting on his commander’s instructions, stepped up to Edgar and, with a single movement, ripped his tunic from neck to waist and pulled the torn cloth from his shoulders.

Now shrieking and twisting in the grip of two soldiers, who impassively held him by each arm, Edgar was pushed nearer the fire, as Stigand pulled out an iron and examined the red-hot cross-piece at the tip with professional interest. He spat upon it and heard the sharp sizzle with apparent approval.

‘I ask you again, and for the last time, Edgar of Topsham,’ intoned the sheriff, ‘do you confess to poisoning Godfrey Fitzosbern?’

‘Jesus Christ help me! How can I confess to something that never happened?’ screamed the young man, as the repulsive-looking gaoler, satisfied with the heat of his iron, advanced on with the glowing cross aimed at his left breast.

‘We have plenty of irons – and a good fire,’ observed Richard, casually.

The branding iron was close enough for the few hairs on the young man’s chest to begin shrivelling, when a shout came from behind. ‘Stop that! It was not him. He knows nothing of it.’

Stigand hesitated and the sheriff motioned him to go back. Everyone turned and looked back towards the entrance, where Nicholas of Bristol stood between his two captors.

‘Let Edgar go free. I will confess to the poison – and much more besides.’

In the approaching dusk, John walked with Nesta along the top of the city wall, between the towers of the South Gate and the Water Gate. She had wanted some air after a heavy day in the tavern and they strolled along the rampart behind the battlements like a pair of young lovers, she holding his arm. The weather had improved and, though cold, there were breaks in the cloud towards the west, where the setting sun threw a pallid pinkness over the countryside. Nesta had a green scarf wrapped over her head and a thick dun woollen cape down to her feet. ‘They’ll hang him, of course?’ she asked, as they stopped to look at the sunset.

‘Most likely – or perhaps instead they will use combat or the ordeal. Someone will have his life, one way or the other,’ agreed John, slipping his arm around her. ‘But it’s a strange situation, and depends on what happens with Fitzosbern.’

They stood silently for a moment, looking down on the vegetable gardens inside the wall, which belonged to the houses in Rock Lane. To their right loomed the huge mass of the cathedral, and elsewhere within the walls, tightly packed houses of all shapes and sizes threw up smoke into the evening sky, punctuated by the towers of the fourteen churches.

‘I don’t understand all this, John,’ she said, at length.

He began to explain the complexities of the day. ‘Allegedly the silversmith was going to appeal Edgar for attempted murder, according to de Revelle, though I don’t know whether to believe him. Then, when Edgar was about to have a false confession burned out of him, Nicholas couldn’t bear it and confessed himself.’

Nesta squeezed his arm. ‘He must have been very fond of the lad, to give his life for him.’

‘I think many apprentices brew up a father-feeling in their masters. Anyway, the bloody sheriff couldn’t lose – he says he knew that Nicholas would confess before Edgar was tortured, but again I don’t believe him. I think he was just lucky, for if he had branded Edgar, Joseph would have gone berserk and caused much trouble for de Revelle.’ He paused and hugged her tightly. ‘If the apothecary had stayed silent, Edgar would have made a false confession and been convicted. Now the sheriff has Nicholas instead, but I don’t think he cares who it is, as long as he has someone.’

They turned and looked over the new battlements, away from the city to the south and east. Almost thirty feet up, they could see for several miles across country, their eyes following the diverging roads to Topsham and Honiton. Just below them were hedged fields going down into the little valley of the Shitbrook, named since Saxon times for the town’s effluent that escaped under the wall into the stream.

‘What exactly did Nicholas confess to, John?’ asked Nesta.

‘He said that he had put extract of wolfsbane, sometimes called monkshood, in the wine he gave Fitzosbern. It should have killed him, but presumably he didn’t swallow enough.’

John’s mistress shivered a little, he wasn’t sure if from the cold or the thought of being poisoned.

‘So his so-called test for poison was false?’

John gave a lop-sided grin. ‘The jest was on me, my love. Only a fool like me would take a suspected poison to the poisoner for analysis!’

‘He never gave the cat or rat any of it, then,’ she said.

‘No, and his dramatic gesture of drinking the suspect wine was play-acting. He’d naturally emptied the poisoned chalice and refilled it with good liquor.’

‘But he couldn’t have known that the silversmith was going to come to his shop that day,’ she objected.

‘It must have been an opportunity taken on the spur of the moment. He hated the man and here was a chance to dispatch him. It could have been attributed to the effects of his neck wound, in which case the blame would have fallen on Hugh Ferrars. I’m sure the last thing Nicholas contemplated was that his apprentice would be accused.’

They walked on further towards the mass of the South Gate, above fields of Southernhay.

‘And you said that he did it because Fitzosbern was virtually blackmailing him?’

A gust of wind moaned from the east and John pulled his black leather hood more tightly on to his head. The long point at the back balanced his great hooked nose and made him look more than ever like some great bird of prey.

‘It was like this. Nicholas claims that Fitzosbern was the father of Adele’s child. She had been seduced by him when she visited to order her wedding jewels. Nicholas says that he boasted that Adele wasn’t at all keen on Hugh Ferrars, it was to be a marriage of convenience forced on her by her father.’

‘A seduction by Fitzosbern of one of his lady customers – that surely must have a counterpart with poor Christina?’ said Nesta worriedly.

The coroner shrugged. ‘That’s another matter. God knows, there’ll be trouble in plenty when the first part becomes known to the Ferrars family and de Courcy – whether it’s true or not!’

They reached the mass of red masonry that was the side of the South Gate, under which was the town gaol run by the burgesses. Instead of going down the steps to the ground, John and Nesta turned and strolled slowly back the way they had come.

‘I still don’t follow why Nicholas wanted to kill Fitzosbern. He seems such a weedy, inoffensive man, a bit like his apprentice.’

‘When Adele came, at Bearded Lucy’s suggestion, to see Nicholas, he refused to consider interfering with her womb. He told her he had had terrible trouble in the past because of that and had sworn never to help women again.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Adele went in desperation to Fitzosbern, saying that if she had the child – or even when her swelling was noticed, as it soon must be – there would be a scandal that would undoubtedly swallow him up as well. It would probably cost him his life, if she knew the Ferrars, she said. So he came to Nicholas and threatened him with exposure and ruin if he refused to procure Adele’s miscarriage.’ Nesta stopped and turned against John, burrowing under his cloak to cling tightly to him, her head against his chest. ‘How could he ruin him?’ she asked, her voice muffled as she cuddled up to him.

‘Nicholas had for a long time been trying to advance himself in the Guild of Apothecaries, but Fitzosbern, as a senior guild-master in Devon, had been opposing him. He even tried to get him thrown out of the guild, which would mean he could no longer stay in business.’

She raised her pretty round face, but still clung to him. It was a welcome change to get away from the tavern and have him to herself. Dallying with a fellow in the twilight made her remember the carefree days of her youth, even though, that was little more than a decade ago. She spun out the time by keeping the story going, though, as an ardent if discreet busybody, she was keen to hear it anyway.

John pulled her tightly to him and carried on with the tale. ‘In looking into Nicholas’s worthiness for being a guild member, Fitzosbern sought opinions from other masters all over the West Country. He found that the leech had been forced to leave Bristol some years ago, because he was under suspicion for being an abortionist.’

‘Nicholas admitted all this?’ Nesta sounded incredulous.

‘He had no choice, once he was launched on his confession. He knew he was doomed so he seemed ready to expurgate himself. Fitzosbern discovered that he had run away from Bristol, evading appeals from damaged women and their families – and the indignation of his fellow apothecaries. He lay low for a year or two, then appeared here in Exeter.’

The Welsh woman shivered again and they began walking back towards the steps near the Water Gate. ‘So unless Nicholas did the deed for Adele, Godfrey threatened to expose his past sins in Bristol?’ she observed.

‘Yes, he had little choice. Though with those elm slips in his shop, I wonder if he is as innocent as he makes out. Maybe he helps other women in Exeter, too. Anyway, the attempt went horribly wrong and she died, which gave Fitzosbern an even greater hold over him.’

‘What actually happened to poor Adele?’

‘He wasn’t very forthcoming on that, but it seems there was massive bleeding almost straight away. She had come to his shop after he had sent Edgar home for the night. He emphasised that, to keep the lad in the clear, and I believe him.’

‘So how did the body get to St Bartholomew’s churchyard?’

As they started down the steep steps, John going in front in case she slipped on the uneven stones, he replied, ‘The lady died of a bloody flux within the hour, he said. He waited until after midnight, then took his pony from the stall in his garden and draped the body over its back, covered with a blanket. He led it through the small lanes in Bretayne where few people are likely to ask questions, then slid it off behind the wall of St Bartholomew’s.’

They walked silently between two garden plots into Priest Street and then into Idle Lane, where the timber and thatch inn stood to welcome them.

‘What happened to Edgar after all today’s excitement?’ she asked, as they stopped at the tavern door.

‘He was released and went home to his father. He was desolate at the thought of Nicholas never leaving gaol, except to go to his death.’

‘And Fitzosbern? What of him now?’

John followed Nesta into the warmth of the inn and helped her off with her cloak. ‘I’m not sure if he has committed any offence at all. Maybe inciting Nicholas to induce a miscarriage is a crime, but he can deny that if he wishes. There’s no proof apart from the leech’s word.’

‘The sheriff doesn’t seem much bothered about proof, it seems,’ observed Nesta, with bitter sarcasm. She led the way to a table near the fire and motioned to Edwin to bring some ale. A few regular patrons were in the tavern, but after the bustle of the Archbishop’s visitation, it was quiet at this early hour of the evening.

They sat talking for a while, the locals already aware of the day’s drama concerning the best-known leech in town – John often marvelled at the speed with which news travelled in Exeter.

As it grew dark, he rose reluctantly to his feet, his head almost brushing the rough-hewn beams that supported the upper floor. ‘I’d better be on my way, Nesta,’ he said, in the mixture of Cornish and Welsh which they used together when alone. ‘Mary is cooking boiled beef tonight and my dear wife will be agog to hear the latest scandal straight from the horse’s mouth.’

She saw him to the door, where he kissed her goodbye and set off in the gloom for Martin’s Lane and married bliss.