A Plague of Heretics

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

After the chapter meeting next morning, ten of the twenty-four canons stayed behind in the chapter house after the vicars and secondaries had left. The three keenest heretic-crushers had been joined by the other proctor, William de Swindon, as well as the precentor, the treasurer and three other prebendaries. The tenth was John de Alençon, who as archdeacon and the bishop’s vicar-general, could hardly absent himself. Henry Marshal’s chaplain and the legal deacon were also in attendance as Robert de Baggetor took it upon himself to lead the meeting without seeking any approval from the others.

‘We are in an intolerable situation!’ he boomed. ‘The cathedral, and indeed the Holy Church itself, has been slighted and insulted by the arrogant and high-handed actions of those barbarians in Rougemont!’

Though the archdeacon had intended to keep as low a profile as possible, this was too much for him. ‘Come, my brother, that is putting it too strongly!’ he retorted. ‘There was a major riot in the city, one man was injured and another almost hanged — what did you expect the law officers to do? Ignore it?’

‘The citizens were displaying their anger and abhorrence of the presence of those cursed unbelievers in the town,’ snapped Richard fitz Rogo. ‘They are not fit to live and if we, as guardians of the faith, failed to take proper action, then I do not condemn the townsfolk for taking the law into their own hands.’

‘A failure, I regret having to point out to you, de Alençon, was in no small measure due to your unhelpful leadership at the inquisition on Wednesday, archdeacon,’ added Ralph de Hospitali waspishly.

John de Alençon remained silent, not wanting to fuel the tirade by responding, but de Baggetor was unwilling to let the matter drop.

‘Not only have they arrested two men in holy orders, but they set the blasphemers free — and in fact assisted them in leaving by ship!’ he blustered. ‘How do you view that piece of defiance to the Church, archdeacon?’

Questioned directly in that way, de Alençon had no option but to reply.

‘There seems no doubt, according to eyewitnesses among the stevedores and ship-men on the other vessel, that Rugge and de Bere were the instigators of the riot and were central to the seizure and threatened execution of the alleged heretics, so is it at all surprising that the sheriff’s men arrested them?’

‘Not alleged heretics — they were self-confessed heretics!’ interrupted de Hospitali hotly. ‘They boasted as much before us on Wednesday.’

The archdeacon ignored this and carried on. ‘Those men had committed no civil or criminal offence and were quite entitled to go about their business until such time as the bishop’s court passed a judgement upon them. And part of that business was the right to take ship, if they so chose.’

This was too much for Robert de Baggetor, who almost exploded into loud speech. ‘Brother John, you seem suspiciously sympathetic to these wretches who defy the might of the Church of Rome! Are you losing your faith, man, to be so partial to the cause of those who would mock and seek to bring down the very structure that for over a thousand years has steered the unlettered common herd in the true path of Christianity?’

Pale with anger, the archdeacon turned upon his fellow canon. ‘I beg you, do not dare to question my faith and my devotion to the Church I have served all my life! But like our Saviour Himself, I seek to tread the path of justice and compassion. As yet, those men have been convicted of nothing and do not deserve to be hounded by a mob, half of them drunk, who wished to string them up from the nearest tree.’

He pointed a quivering finger at de Baggetor. ‘And whether you like it or not, those same men are avowed Christians, who merely wish to think their own thoughts about their faith and not be dictated to by the likes of us as to how their minds must function!’

De Baggetor laughed sardonically. ‘The next thing you will be advocating will be a translation of the Vulgate into English and then teaching the peasants how to read it!’ he sneered. ‘Would such a catastrophe please you, archdeacon? It would make us priests redundant as their means of intercession with the Almighty!’

William de Swindon, who seemed to be a late convert to the anti-heretic camp, broke in to stop this personal squabble between de Alençon and de Baggetor. ‘Let us direct our minds to the immediate problems, brothers. We seem to have lost those four men who came before us, though I understand that the fifth, the fuller Algar, chose to remain in the city, no doubt to defy us further.’

‘He will be attended to very soon,’ interjected Robert de Baggetor. ‘I have already given instructions to our proctors’ men to seize him and place him in the cells in the Close.’

The archdeacon, his sense of justice overriding his caution, objected at once. ‘At the end of that inquisition, I gave orders to the bailiffs that the five men be guarded from public assault. Now you are going back on our direction not to let them be interfered with.’

‘It was not our direction, brother — it was entirely yours!’ snapped de Hospitali. ‘Personally, I would have welcomed the crowd stoning them to death, as the Old Testament prescribed for those who denied the Lord God.’

The archdeacon could see that it was futile to again point out that the accused men had denied no one except the autocracy of Rome and were equally as good Christians as the entire chapter of canons. He was conscious that he had already put himself in a difficult position and there was no point in making matters worse.

The other proctor, William de Swindon, returned to his practicalities. ‘The other aspect is most urgent. We have two men now incarcerated in the castle gaol, who, however hasty their actions yesterday, are still in holy orders. I hear that they will be brought before the sheriff court and thence probably to the next Eyre of Assize, though God knows when that will be. Are we to let them rot there without protest?’

A gabble of indignation rippled around the circle of priests, but again Robert de Baggetor raised a hand and took over the proceedings. ‘By no means! I am sending our law deacon up to Rougemont this very morning, with a demand to the sheriff that they be released forthwith into our custody. They can be lodged in the proctors’ cells for a time, though I see no reason why they should not be dealt with very leniently, as they were only doing what they saw as God’s will.’

‘Who exactly are they?’ asked one of the canons who had not previously spoken. He was Jordan de Brent, the cathedral librarian and archivist, an elderly, amiable man, more immersed in books and manuscripts than with everyday events.

‘One is Reginald Rugge, a lay brother who helps out at St Olave’s Church,’ replied fitz Rogo. ‘The priest there, Julian Fulk, came to see me last night, entreating me to help in getting Rugge released.’

‘But St Olave’s is not part of our cathedral enclave,’ objected the archivist gently. ‘It is not even within the jurisdiction of our bishop, for it belongs to St Nicholas Priory, which itself is a cell of Battle Abbey in Sussex.’

There were some muted mutterings among the others about the old canon being more concerned with church history than current emergencies, but de Baggetor ignored them. ‘All the more reason for us to assist them, as it might take weeks to get any action from Sussex. This Alan de Bere is in holy orders and deserves our protection, whatever his affiliation. That goes for the other one, too.’

‘But everyone knows that he is half-mad!’ objected the precentor, Thomas de Boterellis. ‘A monk he may have been, but he is surely crazed, running around the city in a ragged habit, talking to himself!’

‘He still wears the tonsure and is one of our brothers,’ declared fitz Rogo, conveniently forgetting that Alan de Bere had been an embarrassment to the clergy for half a decade. He was obviously slightly deranged, but had been given a menial job in the cathedral to occupy some of the time in which he would otherwise be on the streets chanting some incomprehensible message of salvation and damnation that fermented in his disordered mind.

John de Alençon, who had no disagreement with this desire to retrieve the two men from the secular powers, felt on safer ground when he asked if they were going to plead ‘benefit of clergy’ to get them released.

‘Of course, there is no question of them not being eligible,’ snapped de Baggetor. ‘Rugge has some education, for all that he is now but a lay brother. He can read and write a little, and even the mad monk can easily deliver the “neck verse”.’

To prove they were entitled to plead ‘benefit of clergy’, the supplicant had be able to read, a prerogative almost confined to the clergy — but in fact if they could recite a short section of the scriptures, that was sufficient. As it might save them a hanging in the king’s courts, it became known as the ‘neck verse’, usually a few words from the fiftieth Psalm of the Vulgate, though many illiterates merely memorised the words.

The discussion in the chapter house continued about the details of getting the two men released and also about further action against suspected heretics.

‘We have had four of them snatched from under our noses, but there are many more lurking in the shadows,’ proclaimed Richard fitz Rogo. ‘The list compiled by our bailiffs contains another six names, and more will be unearthed as the days go by.’

De Baggetor turned to the bishop’s chaplain. ‘It is still urgent that we have a meeting with His Grace as soon as he returns to Exeter,’ he said aggressively, as if it was the chaplain’s fault that the bishop was so often absent. ‘We shall not let these other heretics slip through our fingers so easily!’

John de Wolfe needed to go to Stoke again to see how his brother was faring, but he knew that it would be a grave mistake not to be at home when Matilda returned. He rose at dawn and had his breakfast of honeyed oatmeal gruel, bread and cheese in Mary’s kitchen-shed, reassuring her that her mistress had agreed to come home that day. Like his maid, John’s feelings about his wife’s return were mixed — though she was cantankerous, sullen and bad-tempered, both of them were used to her being there, and the gloomy house seemed strange without her brooding presence.

‘Make something she particularly likes for dinner,’ John suggested to her. ‘That should please her after the dishes she probably suffered at her brother’s house, as he has a lousy cook!’

He wanted to go up to St John’s to see how Thomas was getting on, but again was afraid that Matilda might turn up when he was out.

‘Why don’t you go up to North Gate Street with old Simon and offer to carry her bundles home?’ suggested Mary. ‘That might put her in a better mood.’

As usual, she talked good sense, and John commandeered the old man who chopped their firewood and cleaned the pigs and privy. Marching ahead of Simon, he went through the streets, full of people doing their morning shopping at the stalls. As his servant was stone-deaf, he had no need to attempt any conversation and they arrived at the de Revelle house just in time to find Matilda leaving. Lucille was staggering under an armful of cloaks and gowns, but his wife had left behind a large bundle of her belongings to be collected later.

There was no sign of Richard de Revelle, for which John was grateful, and in silence they set off for Martin’s Lane, Matilda grasping his arm possessively to show the city that she was still married to the second most important law officer in the county.

The two servants trudged along behind as they pushed through the crowds in the narrow streets, Matilda using her free hand to lift her skirts up out of the ordure that covered the ground, especially where the central gutter was filled with a sluggish ooze of debris that included dead rats and an occasional decomposing cat.

When they reached the tall house in Martin’s Lane, John gallantly held the door open for her and at last got a muttered word of thanks. The weather was dull, though not particularly cold, but Mary had a good fire blazing in the hearth, and Matilda sank into her favourite monks’ chair with a sigh of relief.

‘John, send Mary with a hot posset for me,’ she commanded, knowing that for a time, at least, he would be polite and subservient. ‘Then I shall go up to my solar to make sure that that stupid Lucille puts my clothes properly in the chests.’

He did as he was ordered. When his wife had had her cup of hot milk curdled with wine and spiced with cinnamon, he announced that he must go to his chamber in the castle to attend to his duties, omitting to mention that he was first calling to see Thomas, which might have jolted her out of her present relatively benign mood.

At the little hospital, he found his clerk remarkably recovered and could only hope that his brother William might be making a similar improvement.

‘God must have listened to all the prayers for me offered up by so many good people,’ said Thomas brightly, crossing himself as he spoke. He was sitting on the edge of his mattress, but had been walking about the ward, visiting other sick people to deliver comfort and consolation in his usual selfless fashion.

‘Your colour has greatly improved, Thomas!’ said his master, giving him the present he had bought on the way, a fresh meat pasty from one of the cook-stalls. Certainly, the yellow colour of his skin had faded, though there was still a noticeable tinge in the clerk’s eyes.

‘I am almost well again, Crowner,’ agreed Thomas eagerly. ‘Brother Saulf, who has been kindness itself, told me that I may go home in the next day or two. I am now no danger to anyone else, he says, so I can return to my duties later next week.’

John shook his head at his clerk’s enthusiasm. ‘You came very near to death, Thomas. I am amazed that you have recovered so quickly. But do not strain your good fortune. You must rest until you feel quite well again. Gwyn and I can manage, though I admit we miss your prowess with a pen and parchment.’

Thomas wriggled with happy embarrassment at this rare praise, then went on to enquire after William de Wolfe’s health.

‘I am riding down there to see him after dinner and will be back tomorrow morning,’ replied John. ‘I fear that when I last saw him he had not made your miraculous recovery, but your progress gives me more hope.’

‘Brother Saulf was also surprised by the way the fever subsided and my colour faded,’ said the clerk. ‘Unfortunately, two of those poor people in here who also had the yellow curse died, but five more are recovering, two almost as rapidly as myself. The ways of the Almighty are certainly mysterious.’

John grunted. ‘It’s bloody mysterious why He sends the plague in the first place!’ he muttered, but not wanting to offend his clerk’s deep religious feelings he changed the subject and told Thomas all that had happened down on the quayside.

‘No doubt the cathedral will be clamouring for the release of these two scurrilous bastards who fomented the riot,’ he concluded.

‘I know of that monk Alan de Bere,’ said Thomas. ‘There is no doubt that his mind is unhinged, poor fellow. He was ejected from St Nicholas Priory several years ago for beating up another brother over some obscure point of religious belief. It was not the first offence, it seems, for he was originally in the mother house at Battle, but was posted out of there for some such similar offence.’

‘What about this Reginald Rugge?’ asked the coroner. ‘Do you know anything of him?’ Thomas was usually a mine of information about all things ecclesiastical, but this time he had little to impart.

‘I know the name and have seen him about the town — but your wife might know more, for he has some connection with St Olave’s. He helps the priest keep the place in order and assists in a lowly way at the Mass. I think he actually lives in a hut at the back of the church.’

They talked for a little while longer, though de Wolfe was a poor sick visitor, never knowing what to say. Thomas told him that the monks at St John’s had kept abreast of the outbreaks of plague in the locality, and it seemed that no new cases had been reported for a few days, raising hopes that the present epidemic might be over.

He left the priory after seeking out Brother Saulf to thank him for his care of Thomas and leaving some more money as a thank-offering, then went up to Rougemont. Here he found Gwyn playing dice in the guard-room with Sergeant Gabriel and a couple of soldiers. They chatted for a few minutes about the drama down on the quayside the previous day, and Gabriel confirmed that the Saint Augustine had sailed on the tide with the fugitives without any further interference.

‘What about those two troublemakers you have in the undercroft?’ asked the coroner.

‘Ha! The cathedral have already demanded their release,’ growled the sergeant disgustedly. ‘Some lawyer fellow from the cathedral is with the sheriff at this very minute.’

Hearing this, de Wolfe hurried across the inner ward to the keep and clattered up the wooden steps to the high entrance door. In the sheriffs chamber he found the weaselly deacon from the bishop’s palace seated across the table from Henry de Furnellis. The sheriff looked relieved to see the coroner walk in.

‘John, I’m glad to see you! It seems that the cathedral want me to release those two instigators of yesterday’s riotous assembly.’

De Wolfe had half-expected this turn of events, as he knew that the Church was jealous of their jurisdiction and objected on principle to the secular authorities dealing with anyone with the hair shaved from the top of their heads. But from sheer perversity, he did not want to make it easy for them and immediately objected.

‘How can that be, sheriff? These two ruffians are charged with serious offences. Encouraging citizens to become an unruly mob, to assaulting and unlawful imprisonment, to grievous bodily harm — and if they had not been stopped in time, to murder by hanging!’

He winked at Henry, out of sight of the deacon, and the sheriff carried on with giving the man a hard time.

‘Yes, that is indeed the case, Sir John! They must be brought before the king’s justices or his Commissioners, who will probably get to Exeter within the next few months or at most a year!’

‘That is not acceptable!’ squeaked the lawyer, a drab little fellow by the name of Roger de Boltebire. ‘The bishop will not countenance such a delay. These men are in holy orders and must be tried by a consistory court held by the bishop’s chancellor.’

John decided to persecute de Boltebire a little further by contradicting him.

‘Several years ago, Bishop Marshal agreed that he would renounce his ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the most serious offences — which these most certainly are.’

De Boltebire waved his hands vigorously in denial of John’s provocation. ‘That is not strictly true, sir. He said he would allow it for crimes committed within the cathedral precinct, which as you well know is outside the control of the city and county authorities.’

The sheriff shrugged. ‘Then serious offences committed down on the quayside, far away from the cathedral, are even more correctly dealt with by our secular courts!’

‘No, no, no!’ howled the deacon. ‘I am instructed to say that if you are unwilling to allow “benefit of clergy” in this matter, we will take it to the Archbishop in Canterbury!’

‘Who is Hubert Walter, also the king’s Chief Justiciar, the head of the legal system in England,’ said John mischievously. He knew this was a contest they could not win, once the bishop returned, but was determined to make the clergy work for their success.

But the decision was the sheriff’s, not his, and after a further period of wrangling Henry de Furnellis gave in, as John knew he had little choice.

‘But how do we know they are really in holy orders?’ demanded the coroner, awkward to the last. ‘Anyone can shave their head or put on a monk’s habit.’

There was a further argument about proving their literacy and being able to read the Vulgate, but by then Henry had tired of the game.

‘Take the damned fellows, will you! They’ve had a taste of prison down below, under Stigand’s tender care for a night, so that alone might curb their desire for rabble-rousing.’ Stigand was the evil, obese gaoler in the cells under the keep, a sadistic moron who revelled in inflicting the tortures of the Ordeal. Roger de Boltebire jumped to his feet, eager to leave these two big men who enjoyed baiting him.

‘I’ll send up the two proctors’ bailiffs to take them back under guard. They will be lodged in the cells in the Close.’

‘Sheer luxury compared with our accommodation here,’ grinned the sheriff.

While John was helping Matilda to settle back in Martin’s Lane, a man on remand for robbery with violence decided to turn ‘approver’, choosing to try to avoid execution by turning ‘king’s evidence’ against his accomplices, who had escaped when he himself was arrested by the hue and cry.

So the coroner spent the rest of the morning in the warder’s tiny room at the base of one of the towers of the South Gate, which acted as the city gaol. The few cells in the keep of the castle were for short-term prisoners and those to be subjected to the tortures of the Ordeal, but suspects awaiting trial at the burgess courts, the sheriff’s county court or the very intermittent Eyres and Commissioners’ courts were housed in the South Gate.

John’s function was to take his confession for eventual submission to the royal justices and, in the absence of Thomas, he had one of the sheriff’s clerks to make a record.

As the terrified man’s confession was punctuated by sobbing, screaming and grovelling on his knees before the coroner, the process took up most of the time until dinner, when John went back to Martin’s Lane. Treading delicately, he managed to survive the meal without any major outburst or denunciation from his wife, before announcing that he must go again to Stoke to visit his brother.

‘It is too late for me to go there and then return tonight,’ he said cautiously. ‘I will have to stay with my family and come back early in the morning.’

He expected Matilda to launch into her usual whining about being left alone once again — not that she ever relished his company when he was there, he thought bitterly. But she made no protest as she informed him that it mattered little, as she had an important meeting at St Olave’s early that evening.

‘Father Julian has called his congregation together to organise a protest to the canons about the shockingly lenient way in which those heretics were allowed to escape!’ she said in the strident tones of a determined campaigner. ‘We are going to send a deputation to demand proper action against this hateful seed of ungodliness that is being allowed to take root in our city! Some of the canons are of a like mind, but we need to influence the bishop into taking a firmer stand, as the Holy Father has commanded!’

Glad that his wife’s new-found crusade was at least turning her attention off himself, he encouraged her to tell him more.

‘Is this Julian Fulk’s own idea?’ he asked. ‘Or are all the parish priests being encouraged to do the same?’

She gnawed some more meat from the capon’s leg she was holding before replying. ‘The idea was suggested to him by our neighbour, Doctor Clement,’ she admitted. ‘He is a forthright man with increasing influence in the town, and no one else I know has greater devotion to the well-being of the Holy Church.’

De Wolfe held his tongue but thought that it was a pity that the physician did not use some of this enthusiasm to help the poorer people when they needed medical aid.

As soon as his wife had lumbered up to her solar to sleep off the effects of a large meal, John collected Odin from Andrew’s stables and began his journey down to Stoke-in-Teignhead. On previous trips he had seen no sign of footpads on the road, so he decided against taking Gwyn as an escort, as with Thomas out of action there was no one else to attend to any coroner’s business if some new case cropped up. With the weather cool, but dry and frost-free, the going was good, and he covered the thirteen miles to Dawlish at a steady trot in three hours, stopping once at an alehouse to water Odin and himself.

Riding resolutely through the little port without diverting to Hilda’s house, he reached the River Teign to find the tide had not dropped far enough on the ebb to ford across, so he led his horse on to the flat-bottomed ferry and paid a penny to cross to Shaldon with dry legs.

Soon afterwards, he was riding into Stoke, nestling in its sheltering valley, and turned into the manor yard with some trepidation, unsure of what he might find. He left Odin with one of the stable boys and hurried into the square-built manor house. His mother and her steward were coming to meet him, and from their expressions he knew that, unlike with Thomas, no miraculous cure could be expected.

‘How is he?’ he asked as soon as he had hugged and kissed his mother and sister, who had hurried out of William’s sickroom on hearing John arrive.

‘Very little changed, I’m afraid,’ said Enyd sadly. ‘The yellowness has faded somewhat and he is half-conscious some of the time.’

He followed them into the sickroom, where the steward’s wife was bathing William’s brow with scented water. His brother looked haggard and drawn, cheekbones standing out under stretched skin, giving his face almost the appearance of a skull. His eyes were half-open, but they were dull and failed to focus on John, even when he stood over him and spoke softly to him.

‘We had an apothecary over from Totnes yesterday,’ said Evelyn. ‘A sensible man, but he admitted there was little he could do. He said the actual plague seems to have receded, but that it must have damaged the balance of William’s humours.’

John sat on a stool alongside the bed for a time, holding one of his brother’s bony hands and talking quietly to him. He spoke of their boyhood together, their adventures in the surrounding woods and the ponies they had ridden, but William made no sign of understanding what he said. Eventually, John went back into the hall for a meal and to discuss domestic matters and the running of the manor.

‘So far, our steward, bailiffs and reeves have coped well, both here and at Holcombe,’ said his mother. ‘But soon there will have to be decisions made about the ploughing and what stock can be kept over the winter. Without William, we are not sure that we can make the right decisions.’

‘I will do what I can to help, Mother,’ said John. ‘But I am no farmer, God knows!’

He stayed another hour, but there was nothing useful he could do, apart from listen to the steward and bailiff as they tried to explain the rudiments of estate management to him. It was dusk when he set off again, this time aiming only to ride the few miles back to Dawlish. The tide had dropped in the meanwhile and he was able to ride Odin in the twilight across the river, between the sandbanks. Then slowly and carefully he traced his way back along the coastal track to Dawlish, thankful for a half-moon shining in a clear sky.

Hilda was surprised to see him turn up on her doorstep in the dark, but nonetheless delighted. When he had settled Odin in a nearby livery stable, he came back for another meal in Hilda’s kitchen, before spending a blissful night in her bed up in the solar.

Just as the coroner was sloshing his way across the shallows of the River Teign, back in Exeter two score parishioners were converging on the small church of St Olave. They assembled expectantly on the earthen floor of the nave, beaten rock-hard by generations of worshipping feet. Some were there because of their obedience to Father Julian’s summons, others from a burning antipathy to heretics — and the remainder out of sheer curiosity. Matilda was escorted in by Clement and Cecilia, whom she had met as they all came out of their front doors. She had a ready-made excuse for her husband’s absence, by explaining that he had to go to his manor to visit his very sick brother, which set Cecilia off on an anxious enquiry as to how William was progressing. Matilda had no real idea, but muttered some platitudes until she could change the subject.

‘I think it very virtuous of your husband to encourage our reverend father to call this meeting,’ she said earnestly to Cecilia. ‘I wish more eminent people in the city would show such public spirit.’

The doctor’s wife made no reply, but looked at Clement as if to pass on the burden of response to him, which he gladly took on.

‘I suggested it, rather than merely encouraging the good priest,’ he said smugly. ‘It is time that some firm action was taken, after the fiasco of that enquiry and then the blasphemers being allowed to walk free and vanish from the country.’

He assumed an expression of sad piety as he continued. ‘I regret to say that the law officers, including your husband Sir John, did not come out well from that episode.’

Matilda tried hard to conceal her anger, mainly directed at John. He had shamed her before this devout physician, who was gently, but pointedly, condemning her own husband. But some of her ire was kept for Clement himself, for being so insensitive as to publicly criticise her spouse. She tried to recover some merit for de Wolfe and regain her own lost face.

‘It is difficult for him, sir! He is a senior law officer, sworn to uphold the King’s Peace. Whatever his own feelings might be, he has to abide by the statutes set down by his masters in London and Rouen.’

‘I am sure Clement was aware of that,’ hastily broke in Cecilia, anxious to cover any embarrassment caused by the doctor’s gaffe. ‘The Church and the state are always uneasy partners, as old King Henry discovered at Canterbury.’

Any further awkwardness was thankfully erased by the appearance of the parish priest, who appeared from the tiny sacristy to stand on the single step that separated chancel from nave. Julian Fulk was a short, rotund man, unctuous in manner and full of his own self-importance, though secretly frustrated by his lack of advancement in the Church, feeling that he had the potential to be a canon or even a bishop and resenting being kept back in one of the smallest churches in the city. He seized every opportunity to make his presence known and saw this current heretic scare as another chance to make his name before the more senior figures at the cathedral.

Fulk raised his arms to command silence, the embroidered chasuble over his white alb rising like a pair of wings. Then a sonorous stream of Latin emerged from his mouth, which, apart from the physician, not a single person present could understand, but assumed it was a prayer.

Reverting to English, he asked for God’s blessing on those present and their families and added a profound wish that the yellow plague would now leave them in peace. Round-faced and completely bald-headed, apart from a narrow rim of sandy hair, the priest then launched into a tirade against those in the city and the surrounding countryside who were denying the right of the Holy Church to mediate with God on their behalf. There was nothing new in what he had to say, but he was a good orator and a number of the congregation began mouthing ‘Amens’ and other more earthy condemnations of the blasphemers.

‘The ease with which these disciples of the devil escaped any justice cannot be tolerated,’ declaimed Fulk as he wound up his exhortations. ‘Though the bishops, the archdeacons and the canons are the captains of our faith, we are the army they lead and we must impress upon them that we desire that this corruption in our midst is stamped out!’

After more in this vein, the portly priest made a beckoning gesture at the front row and invited Clement of Salisbury to stand alongside him on the chancel step.

‘We are fortunate in having not only a renowned physician in our congregation, a true disciple of St Luke in the healing arts, but one who is also a true soldier of Christ, unafraid to speak his mind and to demand the action we wish to see employed against these evil-minded heretics!’

He stepped to one side to allow Clement centre place, and the doctor threw out his arms as if to bless the audience and summon down the angels at the same time. Tonight he was soberly dressed in a long black tunic, without the central white apron that was affected by many physicians. His head was encased in a tight-fitting helmet of white linen, tied under the chin.

If Julian Fulk’s exhortation was forceful, it was nothing compared with the dramatic version which Clement delivered. Starting in measured tones, he rapidly escalated his passion until he was almost manic in his condemnation of anyone who diverged more than a hair’s-breadth from the tenets and ceremonies of the Holy Roman Church. Displaying a wide knowledge of the various types of heresy, he castigated Cathars, Waldensians, Gnostics and Pelagians, working himself up into a frenzy of denunciation that drew cries of agreement from the listeners. Matilda was afraid that her neighbour, red in the face, wide-eyed and with a trace of spittle at the corners of his mouth, might drive himself into an apoplexy. Glancing sideways at Cecilia, who stood alongside her, she saw that the wife was tight-lipped and rigid. Assuming that the younger woman was afraid for her husband’s health, she laid a reassuring hand on her arm, but then realised that the expression on Cecilia’s face was not one of concern, but disapproval or even hatred.

Surprised and concerned, Matilda took her hand away and turned back to watch Clement, who was coming to the crescendo of his diatribe, demanding that anyone suspected of heresy should be immediately arraigned before the bishop and subjected to the most rigorous penalties.

‘Excommunication, even anathema, is utterly insufficient!’ he thundered. ‘Those who undermine God’s holy institutions must be removed so that they can cause no more mischief! We all know and accept that if a lad steals a pot worth more than twelve pence, he is hanged! So is the price of a pot more important than preserving our beloved Church?’

He raised clenched fists over his head and bellowed his final words. ‘They must be expunged from the earth! In the days of the prophets, those who worshipped false gods were stoned to death — surely we must rid ourselves of this contagion, which is more dangerous than the yellow plague itself, by the gallows or the stake! Not let them sail away on the first convenient ship!’

To cheers and shouted support, he stepped down from the chancel, allowing the priest to return and hold up his hands for order.

‘Tomorrow, we will progress together down to the cathedral and stand outside the chapter house when chapter ends, so that we may respectfully approach the canons with our requests. We all know that there are many more blasphemers lurking in and around the city, and they must not be allowed to get away with their evil activities again!’

He gave a rapid blessing in Latin, and immediately many of the crowd clustered around Clement, showering him with congratulations and promises of support. Matilda noticed that a sizeable minority did not do so and quietly made their way out of the little church, looking uneasy at some of what had been said. She turned to Cecilia, who had made no effort to push her way to the front to join her husband among his circle of admirers.

‘The doctor is certainly an accomplished and forceful speaker,’ she said to Cecilia. ‘Though he is a renowned physician, he told us that he had once wished to take holy orders. I feel his sermons would have been outstanding.’

Clement’s wife turned a sombre face to Matilda. ‘And I feel that his passions and obsessions will one day be the death of him.’

In the early morning the little maid Alice stared at John coyly as she made them oat porridge and poached eggs, by now accepting that this menacing-looking man was entitled to sleep with her beloved mistress. Hilda walked him to the stable to watch his destrier being saddled, now becoming indifferent to any gossip that their affair might arouse among the neighbours.

‘I will go down to Stoke often, now that it seems likely that the plague has run its course,’ she promised. ‘I will try to help your mother and sister as much as I can, though I am no nurse.’

The handsome blonde rested her hand on his as he prepared to leave. ‘Don’t worry about matters down here, John,’ she said reassuringly. ‘I’ll make sure that my father keeps closely in touch with the bailiff at Stoke to make sure that they get any help they need from Holcombe.’

With a heavy heart at leaving behind all the people he loved, John hoisted himself on to Odin’s broad back and turned his head towards Exeter. He reached the city a few hours later, with some of the morning left, so he called at Martin’s Lane before going up to Rougemont. His main purpose was to prove to Matilda that he was back home, trusting that she would believe that he had made a swift journey from Stoke, rather than the shorter one from Dawlish. However, there was no sign of her, and Mary informed him that his wife had gone to the cathedral.

‘The mistress was full of this meeting at St Olave’s when she got home last evening,’ reported the cook-maid. ‘She even deigned to speak to me about it. It seems that Clement the physician was the leading figure. They have all gone off to petition the canons after the chapter meeting.’

De Wolfe glowered at her as if it was her doing. ‘Why is this damned doctor sticking his nose into Church business?’ he growled. ‘Let him keep to his pills and potions. The bloody canons have got enough power and money to look after their own affairs, without him meddling!’

‘From what your wife said, he wants to hang all heretics,’ replied Mary. ‘I gather from gossip in the markets that you and the sheriff are not looked on with much favour for letting those men on the quayside get away.’

John made a rude noise to indicate his indifference to public opinion. ‘Those rioters were just about to string them up from a tree when we rescued them! I only hope the one man that stayed behind is lying low, or his life won’t be worth a clipped ha’penny!’

He marched out of the house bound for the castle, intending to call in to see Thomas on the way. As he passed the door of his neighbour’s house, it opened and Cecilia emerged so opportunely that he suspected that she had been looking out for him since he had come from the stables opposite.

‘Sir John, can I detain you for just a moment?’ she asked in a low voice, but with an urgent ring to it. He bowed his head politely to her and moved across to stand with her on the doorstep. She did not invite him inside, and from her quick, nervous glance back into the house, she seemed not to want to speak within the hearing of her handmaiden.

‘Can I be of some service to you, mistress?’ he enquired courteously, always glad to be close to an attractive woman, especially if he could gain her favour. She wore no cover-chief, and her dark hair was plaited into two long ropes, each hanging down her bosom, the ends encased in silver tubes.

Standing in the cool autumn air, she wore a fur-edged blue velvet pelisse over a long gown of fine cream wool. John thought she looked delightful, and if he had not long left his lovely Hilda he might have been dangerously smitten.

‘It is a delicate matter, but I know you for a discreet and considerate man, with a well-deserved reputation in this county.’

Her large eyes regarded him appealingly, but he saw that there was nothing of the coquette about her manner, for she looked genuinely worried.

He waited expectantly for her to continue, but for a long moment she remained silent, as if summoning up courage.

‘I am concerned about my husband, sir,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Is he unwell — or in some kind of trouble?’ asked de Wolfe with a frown of concern.

‘His body is in good health, thank God. But my concern is for his mind and what trouble that may lead him into.’

John was puzzled — though he disliked Clement for a being a supercilious snob, he did not see him as either a madman or an evildoer. He waited for her to explain further.

‘As you may know from your goodwife, Clement is very much concerned with this problem of heresy in the city,’ she began in a low voice. ‘He has always been of an unusually devout nature, passionately concerned for our religion. But I fear that it has become an obsession and I am deeply worried about where it may lead him.’

He stood close to her and, though she was tall for a woman, he looked down into her upturned face, which was tight with suppressed emotion.

‘You are no doubt referring to this meeting last night in the church,’ he said. ‘I understand it was held mainly at your husband’s instigation, but I have no knowledge of what transpired there, apart from a few words Matilda offered to our maid.’

Cecilia sighed. ‘He virtually took over the meeting! After Father Fulk gave a strong, though reasoned condemnation of the heretics, Clement became an impassioned orator, designed to whip up the anger of the congregation against these misguided people. He even demanded that they should be killed, drawing on biblical images of stoning to death!’

She shook her head and de Wolfe saw tears appearing in the corners of her eyes. ‘I sometimes fear for his sanity, Sir John! Though he can be cold and calculating, especially in his dealing with his patients — and with me, for that matter — once his religious zeal is aroused, he becomes a different man!’

John resisted an impulse to put a reassuring arm around her shoulders, in case Matilda had chosen to appear at that moment. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked lamely.

Cecilia dabbed her nose with a lacy kerchief which she pulled from her sleeve.

‘He is leading this delegation of parishioners to demand that the cathedral takes sterner action against the heretics. He is there at the moment and I think your wife is also attending.’ She sniffed back her tears. ‘He wanted me to go with him, both to the church last night and now to the chapter house, but I refused. I do not want to be associated with a persecution that might lead to the deaths of people who only wish to follow their own roads to God. Clement was very angry with me, for not sharing his outrageous views.’

‘He has not offered you any violence, I trust?’ snapped John, his chivalrous senses at once alerted, but Cecilia shook her head.

‘No, nothing like that. But I know you are of a like mind to myself over this issue, though I must warn you that many voices are being raised against you for it.’

‘Is there nothing I can do?’ he asked harshly. ‘This distresses me greatly, to know that you are in such an unhappy situation.’

‘You are a friend of the archdeacon, I know. He is also known to be moderate in his views, even though as a senior churchman his position is difficult. I thought perhaps you could warn him of my husband’s extreme views and his somewhat unstable mind.’

John promised that he would use all the influence he had, though privately he was unsure whether John de Alençon was either willing or able to stand up against his fellow canons’ thirst for blood, which would be greatly reinforced by Clement’s obvious obsession and the groundswell he had whipped up among the public.

They spoke for another few moments, but then several groups of people came from both directions in Martin’s Lane and it became difficult to continue this clandestine conversation. With a whispered ‘thank you’ and a quick press of his hand, Cecilia hurried back into her house and the door closed.

John regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, then loped off towards the High Street.

When he walked into the ward at St John’s Hospital, he saw a complete stranger on the pallet that Thomas had occupied and for a sickening moment thought that his clerk might have had a sudden relapse and died. Then Brother Saulf hurried towards him from a nearby patient, his smile telling John that all must be well.

‘He has gone home, Crowner! He insisted early this morning that he was restored to health, apart from his still-yellowed eyes.’

‘Was he really fit to go?’ asked de Wolfe, concerned for Thomas’s well-being.

‘To be honest, there was nothing more we could do here except try to make him rest — and we desperately need the space for other sufferers.’

‘I suppose he’s gone back to his lodgings?’

‘Yes, I impressed on him the need to rest and take regular meals to restore his strength. He claims the cleric who shares his room will keep him fed.’

On his way up to the castle, John was determined to make sure than Thomas was looked after, so when he met Gwyn in the gatehouse chamber, he arranged with him for Martha or one of the serving maids at the Bush to go around to Priest Street twice a day with nutritious food. The Cornishman reassured him with a big grin of pleasure.

‘Don’t worry, Crowner, we’ll see the little fellow is well fed. God knows his scrawny body could do with some fattening up!’

It was a great relief to both of them to know that their clerk seemed out of danger and likely to be back at work very shortly, in spite of the monk’s exhortations to rest for a while.

They brought their minds back to the business of the day. In the absence of any new dead bodies, rapes or fires, Gwyn wanted to know what was to happen to the two instigators of the quayside riot.

‘The sheriff has had to bow to the demands of the cathedral and give them back to the bishop’s jurisdiction,’ said John bitterly. ‘Though, as usual, the bloody bishop is conspicuous by his absence and I doubt if he would be very interested in such mundane matters, when he has the politics of England to amuse him.’

The coroner rose from his bench at the mention of the two renegades.

‘They were to be collected from the castle gaol yesterday. If they’re still there, I’d like a word with the bastards before they leave. I still wonder if they were the ones who killed our three heretics.’

With Gwyn clumping behind him, he hurried down the stairs and out into the inner bailey, where a cold rain had begun to fall from a leaden sky. They strode across to the keep but, instead of climbing the wooden stairs to the hall above, went down a few stone steps to the undercroft, a crypt partly below ground which occupied the whole of the base of the keep. A gloomy, damp cavern with stone arches supporting the building above, it was part prison, part storehouse and part torture chamber. Ruled over by the sadistic Stigand, the gaol consisted of a few filthy cells locked behind a rusty iron grille that divided the undercroft into two halves.

As they reached the bottom of the steps, Gwyn bellowed out in the near-darkness, lit only by a couple of guttering pitch-flares stuck into rings on the walls.

‘Stigand! Where are you, you fat evil swine?’ The gaoler was not one of Gwyn’s favourite people.

There was some grunting and shuffling and the man appeared from an alcove formed by one of the supporting arches. This was where he lived, between stone walls slimy with green mould, the floor covered with dirty straw. He had a hay mattress and a brazier for cooking and heating branding irons and the torture devices used in Ordeals.

The gaoler shuffled across to them, his flabby face appearing to join his gross body without the need for a neck. Two piggy eyes surveyed them and his loose lips quavered as he saw the coroner and his officer, as he had suffered from their tongue-lashings several times in the past.

‘Are those two men still here, the ones who are going down to the cathedral proctors?’ demanded de Wolfe.

Stigand nodded, but said nothing, and plodded across towards the iron grille. This reached up to the low ceiling and had a gate in the centre, secured with a chain and padlock. They followed him, regarding with distaste the short and filthy tunic he wore over bare legs. His unshod feet were black with dirt, and his leather apron was spattered with dried stains, the nature of which John had no desire to contemplate.

A ring of keys hung from his belt; he took one to unlock the gate. ‘They are in the first two cells,’ he said thickly, speaking as if his tongue was too big for his mouth.

The two visitors went into the prison, where a short passage led between half a dozen crude cells, each with a door of rusty iron bars. Only the first on each side were in use and as soon as the coroner and his officer appeared, the occupants began shouting at them.

‘I thought you were the proctors’ men — where are they?’ demanded Alan de Bere arrogantly. ‘We don’t want you bastards. We want to be taken out of here!’

Gwyn poked a brawny arm through the bars and hit the renegade monk in the chest, making him stagger backwards into the filthy alcove, where the only furnishings were a stone slab for a bed and a wooden bucket for slops.

‘Watch your tongue, brother, else Stigand here might feel inclined to cut it out,’ he said amiably.

De Wolfe turned to the other side, where Reginald Rugge was glowering at them through the bars.

‘Talking of cutting out tongues,’ said John, ‘do you know anything about the death of Nicholas Budd? For if you do, your good bishop may be handing you back to us for hanging!’

Blustering, but uneasy at the prospect the coroner had forecast, Rugge loudly denied any knowledge of the bizarre killing of the woodworker.

De Wolfe swung around to Alan de Bere. ‘And you, monk, did you take a knife to his throat? Or was it Vincente d’Estcote you killed and left to be dropped into a plague pit?’

Rapidly, he went back to the lay brother. ‘And was it you who took a trip to Wonford and stuffed a murdered man into a privy?’

John knew full well that he was unlikely to get a sudden confession from these men, but he always felt that if you shake a tree hard enough something might fall out.

When their loud protests of innocence had subsided, he changed the direction of his provocative questions.

‘Right, if you are as white as the driven snow over those killings, then tell me instead who put you up to inciting this riot on the quayside, eh?’

Rugge grasped the bars of his cage and glowered at de Wolfe. He looked like some madman, with his tousled dark hair stiff with dirt from the cell, bits of straw sticking out at all angles.

‘Why should anyone put us up to it?’ he ranted. ‘It is a Christian duty to cleanse the world of such vermin, who are increasing like the rats they are, procreating new blasphemers!’

Alan de Bere joined in from the other side, beating on the rusty iron barricade in his frenzy. ‘We need no one to encourage us in our God-given task!’ he brayed. ‘The good canons and proctors do their best, but they are frustrated by such as you unbelievers.’

Rugge returned to the tirade. ‘Even the bishop and his archdeacon are little help. They are too concerned with the trivial rituals of the cathedral and the finances of their treasury to bother with the cancer that is rotting the Holy Church in the shape of these heretics!’

The coroner was not impressed by their fervent denials. ‘You were only too willing to murder those men on the wharf!’ he shouted back at them. ‘If I and other forces of law and order had not arrived in time, you would have hanged them out of hand! Is that the act of the Christians who you are so keen to defend? I thought that kindness and compassion was the code that they professed.’

Reginald Rugge had a ready answer for him. ‘Like the compassion you Crusaders showed at Acre, when you and your king beheaded almost three thousand Saracen prisoners?’

‘That was an entirely different matter; that was war!’ retorted John, but he felt uneasy, as it was an episode that had shaken his respect for his hero, Richard Coeur de Lion. ‘And anyway, as Mohammedans, were they not the ultimate heretics in your eyes?’

What promised to become a theological altercation conducted at the tops of their voices was interrupted by the sound of boots on the steps outside and calls for the gaoler. Stigand shuffled out through the gate and a moment later the two proctors’ bailiffs appeared, clutching their long staves. Herbert Gale also had a coil of thin rope in his other hand. Like his colleague William Blundus, he was not pleased to see the coroner and his officer.

‘These are our prisoners now, Sir John,’ grated the senior bailiff with reluctant deference to the coroner’s rank.

‘And you are welcome to them, for now,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘I suspect we may have the pleasure of their company here again, when the bishop decides to turn them over to the secular powers for sentencing.’

He said this more for his own satisfaction than in any hope of it being true, for he knew that the Church liked defying the king as a matter of principle, especially as Bishop Marshal was a supporter of Prince John in the latter’s striving to depose his elder brother from the throne of England.

He stood aside with Gwyn as Stigand unlocked the chains around the two cell gates and let the prisoners out into the passage. They watched as Blundus took the rope from Herbert Gale and tied one end around the wrists of the wretched monk and the other in a similar fashion to those of Rugge.

‘Come on, then, down to the Close with you!’ commanded Herbert Gale, grabbing the centre of the rope and tugging the two men out into the undercroft. With a smirk of triumph at the coroner, Alan de Bere followed, stumbling alongside his fellow prisoner. With William Blundus bringing up the rear, they climbed the steps to the inner ward and vanished.

Gwyn spat contemptuously on the ground. ‘Did you see the wink that bastard Blundus gave them as he tied them with those knots that a newborn babe could undo? I’ll wager they’ll be on the loose again before the sun rises tomorrow!’

At the dinner table John thought it politic not to mention to Matilda his meeting with Cecilia that morning, as it would only be asking for more sneers about his trying to inflict his lustful desires upon the fair lady. However, given what the physician’s wife had had to tell him, he wanted to know what Clement had been saying in the chapter house that morning.

For once, Matilda was only too ready to talk. ‘It was a great success, thanks be to the doctor!’ she effused. ‘Some of the canons were most receptive, and Robert de Baggetor actually apologised for the leniency with which those blasphemers were treated.’

Then she glared at him over her bowl of hare stew. ‘Your friend the archdeacon tried to play down the whole affair and came in for some criticism — and your name was bandied about, much to my shame!’

He ignored this and asked, ‘Did your delegation actually go into the chapter meeting?’

She shook her head sourly. ‘The archdeacon forbade it. He said that it was a private conclave of the cathedral. We had to stand outside in the cold and petition the canons as they came out.’

De Wolfe speared a leg of hare with his eating-knife and added it to the broth in his pewter bowl. ‘And what part did our neighbour play in this enterprise?’ he asked in a neutral tone, not wanting to arouse any more of his wife’s antagonism.

‘He was our leader, rather than Father Julian,’ she said proudly. ‘He was most eloquent, polite and deferential to the higher churchmen, but still firm and persuasive. He emphasised that the population of the city were the soil from which the cathedral and other churches were nourished and it was only right that their voices were heard.’

‘A courageous man,’ observed John dryly. ‘If he dared to voice opinions like that to most of the barons or the king’s court, they would have had him hanged for sedition and fomenting revolution!’

Matilda failed to recognise his irony and preened herself in the reflected glory of the outspoken doctor. ‘He is a remarkable man. I feel he is wasted as a physician, noble though that profession may be. He could have been a major cleric or an officer of state.’

‘And what was the outcome of his efforts?’ asked de Wolfe.

‘Four or five of the canons, including the two who are proctors, promised to press the bishop most strongly as soon as he returns. They will insist on his arresting all known heretics and those suspected of such evil leanings, to bring them before a properly constituted ecclesiastical court — and to demand the most stringent penalties allowed by the Papal edicts. They will also insist on the proper harnessing of the secular powers, as prescribed by the Holy Father and his Legates.’

She scowled at her husband even more fiercely. ‘So you and that lazy idiot of a sheriff will not be able to slide out of your responsibilities in future!’

Matilda suddenly seemed to realise that she was failing in her long-lasting campaign of ignoring her husband, after all the indignities and disappointments that he had heaped upon her. She fell silent and attacked an inoffensive boiled capon as if it was John himself, savagely tearing off a leg and gnawing at it to indicate that the conversation was at an end, but her husband doggedly pursued the subject, as he needed to know what was in store, especially if it led to more unrest, riots and even murders.

‘So what will happen until the bishop eventually arrives home?’ he asked with false innocence. ‘Have they found more heretical victims to persecute?’

She stared at him suspiciously but put down her chicken leg to take a drink from her wine-cup. ‘Canon William de Swindon, one of the proctors, told us that they will be sending out their bailiffs again, together with other agents, to seek informants who will trawl for unbelievers, both in the city and the county. They already know of one, the man who did not escape on that ship, no thanks to you!’ she snapped. ‘But they admit that until Bishop Marshal returns, there is little point in arresting him, as there is no competent tribunal able to try him.’

‘I suppose they mean that fuller, whose name I forget,’ he mused. Silently, he hoped the man would see the dangers and quietly leave the city, together with his family, if he had one. His wife made no reply, concentrating on her stew, her fowl and then the dessert that Mary brought in, a rosy almond cream with cinnamon and ginger.

After the meal, when Matilda had stumped off to the solar for her afternoon rest, John sat by his fire with a jug of ale, as the day had turned colder, though the rain had stopped. He mused that autumn had not yet seemed to make its mind up to turn into winter, the flurries of snow that fell a couple of weeks earlier having turned to cold rain and occasional fog. He threw on a couple more oak logs from the stack alongside the hearth, stamping out some glowing embers that flew from the fire on to the stone floor. That was one fad of Matilda’s that was useful, as she had insisted on having the hall flagged, instead of the usual reeds or straw scattered over beaten earth. At least, he thought, it saves having the bloody stuff catching fire every time a spark spits out of the fire.

When his ale was finished, he prodded Brutus, who was snoring near his feet, and together they went out into the vestibule. Taking his cloak from a peg, John went out into the lane and looked hopefully at the house next door, but there was no sign of Cecilia. Though he had no real designs on her, the sight and company of a beautiful woman was always pleasant. Turning the other way, he followed his hound as he zigzagged his erratic path from bush to grave-mound across the cathedral Close.

As they passed St Mary Major, one of several small chapels in the precinct, he looked towards the small building that housed the proctors’ men, but there was no sign of either the bailiffs or their prisoners. Like Gwyn, he suspected that their incarceration would be far from rigorous — and probably brief. He doubted whether they would ever appear before the Consistory Court to answer for their behaviour in leading a raucous crowd through the streets of the city — and in getting very close to lynching the heretics. With a mental shrug, he decided he had no interest in their fate, but he still suspected them of involvement in the deaths of the three murdered men, though neither had he eliminated the two proctors’ bailiffs as candidates for those crimes.

As they neared Idle Lane, Brutus was confounded, as from long experience the dog turned into the lane from Priest Street, assuming that his master was going to the Bush. Instead, de Wolfe carried on down the slope, where some of the small houses were given over to lodgings for the more junior clerics from the cathedral. Every canon had a vicar and usually a young secondary living in his house as part of his establishment, but a number had no such patronage and found accommodation in Priest Street.

Thomas, since his restoration to favour after his years in the wilderness, shared a room there, and now John went to call upon him to make sure that he was well enough to fend for himself. Leaving his dog outside, he found the little clerk in his small chamber, eating heartily of the food that Martha had sent around from the tavern. Gwyn and his wife had already been to see that Thomas was comfortable back at his lodging, and John was sure that the little fellow would lack for nothing until he was fully recovered.

‘Fresh mutton pasties, Crowner!’ he said proudly. ‘And a trout baked with chestnuts.’ He displayed a wooden platter now devoid of all but a few crumbs and bones. ‘Gwyn also sent a gallon jar of good cider.’ He hoisted it on to the small table and insisted that John joined him in a cup of the powerful liquid.

‘You have made a remarkable recovery, Thomas,’ he said, lifting the mug in a toast to his clerk’s continuing health. ‘But you must not tempt Fate by assuming you are utterly recovered.’

‘But I feel so much better, master!’ protested Thomas. ‘God must have decided that there are still tasks that I can usefully perform on this earth — and one of them is serving you to the best of my ability.’

John grinned at his clerk’s earnest devotion. He certainly had recovered so rapidly that even the sceptical coroner wondered if the Almighty really had taken a hand in the cure. Apart from the lingering yellowness in his eyes, Thomas looked as well as he had ever seen him, probably helped by the mild euphoria that deliverance from death had generated. John only wished that a similar miracle could be worked upon his brother.

After they had talked for a little while, Thomas asked if any progress had been made on the murders while he had been lying in St John’s.

‘None at all, to my shame and regret,’ admitted de Wolfe. ‘I have four prime suspects, those bailiffs belonging to the proctors — and the two crazed fellows who have used holy orders to escape their involvement in the riot. But there could be others in the city demented enough to kill out of religious zeal.’

He was thinking of the ease with which Julian Fulk and the physician had roused the congregation at St Olave’s into marching upon the cathedral chapter. If such a normally placid group of people could be so easily inflamed, then there might well be some others out there who would feel it their sacred duty to carry out God’s will in exterminating any opposition to the Church.

In a little while the coroner left his clerk with further admonitions to build up his strength by eating well and resting, though he suspected that the conscientious little priest would soon tire of inaction and wriggle his way back to his former duties. Brutus was glad to see his master emerge from the house and even happier to find him turning into Idle Lane. The Bush was one the hound’s favourite places, where Gwyn or Martha would always find him a bone or scrap of meat as he lay under a table while the others talked above him.

Over a quart pot, de Wolfe and Gwyn discussed a few cases that were pending at the next county court and began to think about some others that would need work on them if the threatened Eyre of Assize came to Exeter in the near future.

‘We really need Thomas back in action as soon as possible,’ mused John. ‘It’s not the same trying to use the sheriff’s clerks in his place; they don’t understand the system like him.’

Gwyn was more realistic about the likelihood of the royal justices getting to the city. ‘It takes them years sometimes. We’ll have to make do with the Commissioners for a bit, I suspect. They’re easier to deal with than these bloody barons, who want everything written down and presented to them in duplicate.’

As neither he nor the coroner could read, they were totally dependent on Thomas to keep their records and depositions in order.

De Wolfe told his officer what he had learned from Matilda about the deputation to the canons concerning the leniency they had shown the heretics. ‘We are in the cathedral’s bad books for letting them sail away — though I am not happy about the fate of that fuller who decided to brazen it out here. I hope we don’t find him in a back lane with his voice-box lying alongside him!’

Gwyn nodded soberly. ‘I hear from the gossip in the tavern here that the search for new heretics goes on. It seems that those damned proctors’ men have openly offered money to anyone who will lead them to any folk suspected of deviating from the straight and narrow path laid down by Rome. I even heard that they are going to question all those who do not regularly go to Mass on a Sunday!’

De Wolfe scowled at this. ‘That will include you and me, Gwyn! Maybe I’d better accompany Matilda to the cathedral in the morning. It might save my neck in the long run!’