A Plague of Heretics

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Partly because of his half-serious remark about going to Mass, but mainly because of his revived hope in the power of prayer to affect the course of his brother’s sickness, John volunteered to escort his wife to the cathedral next morning. She grudgingly accepted, mildly surprised that for once she did not have to nag him into this duty.

The nine devotional offices each day were for the benefit of the clergy in their endless glorification of God and, except on high festival days, they were not concerned about the participation of the public, considering this to be the responsibility of the many parish priests. However, Masses were said for the locals before the small side altars, and so on Sunday morning de Wolfe found himself standing alongside Matilda in the base of the massive North Tower. This formed one arm of the cruciform plan of the cathedral begun by Bishop Warelwast some seventy years earlier.

There were two altars against one wall, one dedicated to the Holy Cross and the other to St Paul. A small crowd had gathered before the latter, and they joined the back of the score of townspeople as the Mass began. The celebrant was a vicar-choral, aided by a secondary and another lay brother. John stared at him for a moment, hardly believing what his eyes told him, for the man was Reginald Rugge, whom he had last seen only the day before in the cells under Rougemont’s keep.

Unable to say anything to his wife, he suppressed his annoyance with difficulty. The sight of this near-murderer, who should have been hanged or left to rot in chains in a dungeon, being allowed to serve at the altar as if he was the epitome of devotion and innocence, made him grind his teeth in frustration. Presumably, the other bastard, the mad monk Alan de Bere, was also at liberty somewhere, even after the promise that they would be incarcerated in the proctors’ cells.

But he tried to dismiss the aggravation and concentrate on the actions and incomprehensible Latin of the priest, for it was for William’s sake that he had come today, to offer up his stumbling prayers for his brother’s recovery.

After the taking of the Eucharist, he marched Matilda back to the house, not a word passing between them, though she held his arm when in public view, in the usual possessive way she had, showing that she had a knight of the realm and a king’s officer for a husband. As soon as they were in the vestibule, she dropped her hand from his elbow as if it had become red-hot and yelled for Lucille to come and help her out of her cloak and pelisse, ready for dinner.

John would like to have gone down to Canon’s Row to talk to his friend John de Alençon, to learn what was happening about the heretic issue and the likely stance the bishop would take when he eventually returned — but he hesitated to do that when Matilda was around, as the archdeacon was certainly not in favour with her anti-heretic faction at the moment.

Mary soon arrived with the first remove, a small cauldron of steaming vegetable potage which she ladled into pewter bowls. Fresh bread sopped up the fluid, then she arrived with a ‘charlet’, a hash of chopped pork and egg, with milk and saffron, served on a bread charger. When this was demolished by the silent but hungry couple, the cook-maid brought her ‘Great Pie’, a small version of one usually served at Christ Mass. Under the crust, a mixture of chopped beef, chicken and pigeon was cooked with suet, spices and dried fruit. This was washed down with ale, but when a slab of cheese was produced, a jug of red wine from the Loire helped it to end the meal.

For once, Matilda could find no fault with the food and wordlessly pushed past Mary at the door, stumping up to her bed for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to go to St Olave’s. John followed her example, snoring before the hearth after he had finished what was left in the wine jug. Exhausted from his frequent journeys up and down to Stoke, he slept for hours.

When he awoke, to his surprise it was getting dark and he could hear his wife’s voice berating Lucille about some offence against her hair or her dress. There was a narrow slit in the wall between the solar and the hall, high up to the side of the stone chimney-piece, which allowed a restricted view downwards and some sound, when the voices were shrill enough. He gathered that she was being got ready for yet another foray to praise the Lord at her favourite church in Fore Street. Shaking himself fully awake, he called softly to the dog and slipped out of the house, grabbing his cloak as he went, for there was a chill wind outside.

He made his usual journey down to the Bush and spent a pleasant couple of hours talking to Gwyn, Martha and a few drinking friends who were regulars at the alehouse. Some had been old soldiers, and John liked nothing better than to relive past campaigns in Ireland and France with them. Even Edwin forgot his religious mania for a time, to join in with reminiscences about the battle of Wexford, where he had lost his eye and damaged his foot.

Outside, a chill east wind had come up, but the taproom of the Bush was warm and snug, the atmosphere being a heady mix of woodsmoke, spilled ale and unwashed bodies. Martha brought him a trencher bearing a pork knuckle, with a side dish of fried onions, and after he had chewed off the succulent meat, he dropped the bony joint on to the rushes under the table, where Brutus slavered over it for the next hour.

This convivial evening was suddenly disturbed by a man bursting in through the front door, a familiar figure to John and Gwyn. It was the beanpole shape of Osric, one of the constables, obviously in a state of agitation as he stared around in the flickering light from the fire and the few rushlights on their sconces.

‘Crowner, there you are!’ he cried. ‘There’s a fire started in Milk Lane. You’d better come quickly!’

De Wolfe jumped up at once, as did Gwyn and a number of the other men. Fires in the city were a very serious matter, as many a town had been razed to the ground from a single house going ablaze. Part of the coroner’s remit, irrespective of whether there were deaths, was to hold inquests into fires with a view to trying to prevent similar ones in the future.

The men hurried out, jostling through the door after the coroner, and began jogging to the end of Idle Lane, then up Smythen Street towards The Shambles. Darkness had fallen several hours earlier, and the pulsating glow from the fire was plainly visible over the roofs to the left. Before they reached The Shambles, Milk Lane branched off to the left, meeting Fore Street just above St Olave’s Church on the other side.

As they ran, Osric was alongside John and panted out what he knew of the conflagration. ‘It’s in one of the dairy houses, halfway along. Thank God they are well spaced out because of the beasts, so there’s less likelihood of the fire spreading!’

Milk Lane was named after the half-dozen cottages that kept cows and goats in their large yards, the tenants — or usually their wives — milking the animals and selling dairy products around the city streets. The beasts were fed with hay and cut grass and often taken on halters down to Bull Mead or Exe Island to crop the grass on the common land.

As they reached the corner, they saw a low dwelling well ablaze, with a crowd of people outside doing what they could to quell the flames. There was little water available, other than what could be carried in wooden and leather buckets from a couple of wells, but half a dozen men were dragging down the blazing thatch with long rakes.

As they hurried up to the cottage, Gwyn looked up at the sparks and shreds of burning straw that were flying into the lane.

‘This damned wind is making it worse!’ he shouted. ‘Better if those men threw some water on to the thatch of the houses opposite. It’s too late to save this one.’

Osric raced off on his long legs to divert some of the men with buckets, while John and his officer ran into the garden, keeping upwind of the flying embers. Cattle were lowing and goats bleated in fright, but those belonging to the burning house had been taken out into adjacent yards to keep them safe.

‘Is there anyone inside?’ he shouted to one of the neighbours labouring to pull off the burning straw.

The man, his hair singed and face blackened, came up close. ‘It seems so, but we can’t get near enough to get in until this thatch is taken down!’

He was right, as over the front door, the only entrance, a cascade of flame dripped down from the low roof.

‘I’ll try a window,’ boomed Gwyn and lumbered off around the back, dodging sparks and handfuls of burning straw. He saw that a low shed, used as a dairy, projected from the back wall, but it had no door and was well alight. In each side wall of the cottage was a small window opening, firmly blocked by heavy shutters barred on the inside. John came after him with another man, and they cast around for some way to get into the building.

‘Use this as a ram!’ hollered de Wolfe, pointing to the ground. A stout feeding trough, made of long planks nailed together, lay on the earth. In a moment he and Gwyn had lifted it up and smashed one end against the shutters on the nearest window. These were strong and the bar inside must have been even stronger, but half a dozen blows shattered both the trough and the window frame. Gwyn tore at the splintered wood with his big hands and pulled the whole structure down on to the ground. He stuck his head into the ragged aperture, but withdrew it instantly, coughing and gasping, his eyes running with tears as a blast of hot, suffocating air rushed out to meet him.

John pulled him out of the way and shoved him back to recover his breath, while he grabbed an empty oat-bag that was lying on the ground nearby.

‘Bring that bucket here!’ he yelled to a man who was bringing water to throw on the fallen thatch. Dipping the coarse cloth in the bucket, he wrapped it around his head, with only a slit for his eyes, and advanced on the window. The burning straw above gave plenty of light, and in the moment before his eyes filled with tears he glimpsed several bodies lying inert on the floor inside.

Forced to draw back, he grabbed Gwyn’s arm as he pulled off the soaking bag.

‘There are people in there — at least one is a child!’ he gasped. ‘We must get in straight away!’

Two other men heard him and instantly set about knocking down the house wall. The window was set between two oak uprights that stretched from ground to eaves, the wall below being made of cob, a mixture of lime, mud and straw plastered on to a framework of woven wattle. The men ran to the front gate and rocked out one of the posts, a length of tree trunk the thickness of a man’s thigh. Using this as a heavier battering ram than the trough, they rapidly smashed the brittle wall from between its supports, making a doorway out of the window.

Gwyn, the ends of his red hair and moustache singed from his earlier attempt, was first through, and he dashed in and grabbed the smallest body from the floor. A rain of burning and smouldering thatch floated down on him, but the main structure of rough rafters and hazel-withies was still intact, though beginning to burn through. As he came out with the inert little body, John and three more neighbours ran in and took out a larger child, then struggled out with two adults.

All were laid on the earth well away from the burning cottage, immediately surrounded by a ring of concerned men and women.

A quick examination in the flickering light soon confirmed the worst — all were undoubtedly dead. The wives began sobbing and wailing, especially over the pathetic bodies of the two children, a boy of about three and a girl of four years.

‘They haven’t been burned to death, thank God,’ muttered Gwyn, trying to wrest some comfort from the tragedy. ‘Look, they have no burns worth talking about, apart from what’s fallen on them from bits of roof straw.’

John, saddened as much as any of them, nodded. Experience had taught them the signs of fatal burning, thankfully absent in these bodies.

‘Look at the faces of the mother and father,’ he murmured to one of the rescuers. ‘Pink, that’s what they get when they breathe in these noxious fumes.’

He stepped back and turned to the shocked neighbours, all the wives — and some of the men — openly crying at the tragedy. ‘These are the folk who lived here?’ he asked, just to officially confirm who they were.

A grizzled man wearing a smith’s apron nodded. ‘I live next door to them. My wife also keeps a couple of cows. These did the same, though Algar was a fuller, just as I am an ironworker in Smythen Street.’

John stared at him. ‘Algar the fuller? This is the man?’ He pointed down and then bent to get a better look at the face in the poor light, as the flames were now dying as all the thatch was pulled down.

‘Yes, that’s Algar, God rest his soul, even if he did have some strange ideas.’

‘The same Algar who was hauled up before the cathedral canons last week?’ persisted John.

The smith looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do you think there’s some connection, then?’

De Wolfe rubbed some smuts from his eyes. ‘I don’t know, but I’m damned well going to find out!’ he said grimly.

The inquest held next day was different from almost all the others that John de Wolfe had held in Exeter. This was mainly because of the size and mood of the crowd who attended. Usually, it consisted of a dozen or a score of reluctant jurymen, plus the immediate family, unlike in the countryside, where the whole village turned out to watch and listen.

On this Monday afternoon, well over a hundred people gathered in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s. This was the nearest available burial ground to Milk Lane, as the canons had denied burial of a self-confessed heretic in the cathedral cemetery in the Close. This in itself had angered many townsfolk, given the tragic circumstances of the four deaths, especially of two children and their mother.

The little church, in whose yard the mound of soil was still fresh over the plague pit, also had a crude mortuary, an open lean-to shed built against one wall, where the corpses had lain overnight. The coroner and his officer arrived and were surprised by the large crowd who had assembled — and by the sight of none other than Thomas de Peyne, complete with his writing pouch, ready to record the inquest.

‘You should be in bed!’ protested de Wolfe. ‘What are you doing here?’

The clerk was unrepentant. ‘I am almost completely recovered, Crowner,’ he said firmly. ‘This awful event needs a proper record made, and you said yourself that the sheriff’s man was not satisfactory.’

Grudgingly, but with some concealed admiration, John muttered that as he was now there he might as well make himself useful. Gwyn fussed around getting him a stool from the church and a box to set his parchments on, then they got on with the proceedings.

The sheriff appeared, another unusual event, together with Ralph Morin and Brother Rufus from the castle.

It was noticeable that no one from the cathedral was present and that the only cleric, apart from Rufus and Thomas, was the incumbent of St Bartholomew’s.

The horror of the fire also brought out the two portreeves, Hugh de Relaga and Henry Rifford, as well as a number of the burgesses. The reason for this unusual interest was made obvious when, as soon as Gwyn had bellowed out the official call to order, the coroner began the proceedings.

‘This is an inquest into both the cause of the fire itself and the causes of death of the four victims,’ he boomed, standing up on an old grave-mound with his back to the wall of the church. ‘Such verdicts are usually of accident, but in this instance I have no doubt that you, the jurymen here assembled, will find that it was murder!’

A rumble of anger, shock and dismay passed like a wave over the deep half-circle of faces ranged before him, even though many either knew or suspected the fact already.

‘We must enquire into the deaths of Algar, a fuller of Milk Lane, together with Margaret his wife and his children, Peter and Mabel.’

The jury, eighteen men who had been at the scene the previous night, were ranged in the front of the crowd. They stared at this tall, dark man with an intensity driven by the anger in their hearts, and hung on his every word.

‘As you well know, myself, my officer and the city constables were at this conflagration last evening and we were there again this morning. We found certain evidence that makes it certain that this was no accident!’

His voice was harsh as he made it carry over the crowd, and they responded by a low growl of anger at what he was telling them.

‘Firstly, in spite of the damage by fire, we found a baulk of wood the length of my leg, jamming the only door, so that it could not be opened from the inside.’

He waved at Gwyn, who came to his side bearing a scorched length of timber, as thick as an arm. The coroner grabbed it and waved it in the air. ‘The bottom of this was set in a crack in the stones of the path so it could not slip, and the upper end was jammed under the middle cross-member of the door. It could not possibly have got there by any other means than deliberate malice.’

He handed the wood to the nearest juryman, who looked at it and passed it along to his companions.

‘When I entered the burning house to help retrieve the victims, there was a definite smell of naphtha, and this can be confirmed by Gwyn of Polruan, Osric the constable and several of you jurymen.’

He paused and Gwyn again handed him something.

‘This morning, when we searched the yard, we found this earthen jar against the fence.’

De Wolfe brandished a rough pottery flask of about a quart capacity above his head. ‘It smells strongly of naphtha, and there were a few drops of an oily liquid smelling strongly of that fiery substance still inside.’

Naphtha was a distillate imported from the Levant, an ingredient of ‘Greek Fire’, a highly inflammable substance used in grenades and naval warfare. John passed the jar to the jury, who sniffed it and muttered over it as it went along the line. But he had not yet finished with his indictment.

‘Inside the cottage, when we were able to enter it this morning, were the broken remains of yet another flask, lying in a corner.’ Gwyn provided a small wooden bucket, inside which were some shattered shards of a finely made pottery flask with a narrow neck still intact.

‘This can only be a container for brandy-wine, an expensive concoction from France, which has much pure liquor in it and is very easy to ignite.’

He beckoned to the next-door neighbour, whom he had designated to be the foreman of the jury, and handed him the bucket. ‘Tell me, from your close knowledge of Algar, was he likely to have brandy-wine in his house?’

The tone of his voice suggested the answer he wished to receive, but the man had no need of prompting.

‘By God’s truth, sir, not at all!’ he said firmly. ‘Algar was an abstemious man and also without any riches to spend on liquors. What they drank in that house was weak ale and good milk!’

The dramatic part of the inquest was over, but for form’s sake John called several of the neighbours to describe the suddenness of the fire late at night and the rapid conflagration of the straw roof, which made any approach to the front door impossible.

‘I think that incendiary stuff was thrown up over the front of the thatch. That broken flask must have fallen through when the roof came down later,’ claimed the foreman harshly.

‘Would most folk in Milk Lane be in their beds at the time the fire started?’ asked John.

‘Indeed so, sir! We are all milking people, with work to do before dawn, so we get abed very early. That is why the fire was so well ablaze before anyone noticed last night, as we were all asleep ourselves.’

There was no more relevant evidence, and the growling crowd had little need of anything further. John had one last order to make, a poignant and pathetic one.

‘It is part of the king’s law that the inquest must include a viewing of the cadavers by the jury. However painful this must be to you men who knew this family as neighbours and friends, you must see the bodies and confirm who they are and observe any wounds or other significant appearances. You will see that though there are numerous surface burns, there are no other injuries and that the skin of the victims is pink, showing that they drew down noxious gases into their lights before dying. This may be some consolation, as this can obliterate their wits and render them virtually dead before the fire reaches them.’

With a mixture of reluctance and suppressed wrath, the jury filed past a handcart which Gwyn pushed out of the mortuary shed. On it were four still figures, shrouded in clean linen, the wrappings turned back to expose the faces.

The man lay next to this wife, and nestled in the crook of each of her arms were her children. All the faces were tinted pink like ripe cherries, together with scattered burns from fallen thatch. There were sobs from some of the men and outright wailing from women in the crowd, who had a more distant view of the pathetic remains on the handcart.

De Wolfe watched impassively as the men returned to their places before him, though there was cold fury in his own heart at this atrocity. He scanned the crowd as he waited, identifying those from the castle and Guildhall — and was surprised to see Matilda at the back, attended by Lucille and Cecilia. At dinner he had told her briefly of the calamity and the findings of incendiary devices and the blocked door. She had listened in silence, but he sensed that it was not the silence of her usual indifference, but from horror and dismay. He had not known that she intended to come to the inquest, but there she was at the rear of the crowd, along with so many others who had come because of the killing of two innocent children and their mother.

When the last juryman had shuffled into place, John’s deep voice again boomed out over the crowded churchyard.

‘The duty of a coroner is to determine who, where, when and by what means persons came to their deaths — and where necessary to send any persons suspected of causing those deaths to the king’s justices for trial.’

He paused and glared around as if to deny any contradiction.

‘The first four of those tasks is not difficult in this instance. We well know who the victims are, we know where and when they died and we know they died from the effects of fire. As to who caused their deaths, at this stage that remains unknown, except to God himself.’

He pulled himself up on his mound to his full height, his grey-black cloak stretched over his bony arms like some great bat or avenging angel.

‘But I and your other law officers will not rest until we have discovered what evil person did this cowardly deed — barricading the door and throwing combustibles to ensure that a man, a woman and two innocent children would be done to death!’

Another throaty growl of angry agreement rolled across the churchyard as he continued.

‘It is not the business of a coroner to probe into why certain acts were committed, but in these hideous and appalling circumstances I feel obliged to say something of what I and probably many of you must feel about the matter.’

There was a mutter of agreement as he went on speaking, an expression of cold ferocity on his long face.

‘No one traps a man and his family in his house and then deliberately sets it alight, just because he is a fuller! You know as well as I do that events in this city in the last few days have shown the animosity that many folk have to those whose religious views do not sit well with their own.’

There was silence at this, and John could almost feel the guilt that crept over the crowd. He continued remorselessly.

‘As King Richard’s coroner, I am not interested in the whys and wherefores of that dispute. I am here to uphold the law, as is your sheriff and his officers. On the quayside last week, only good fortune allowed us to intervene in time before several men were hanged. I do not want to know if any of you were involved; that episode is past!’

Again there was silence, with only the shuffling of feet and sideways glances to indicate the unease that pervaded the crowd.

De Wolfe’s voice suddenly became louder and took on a harsher tone. ‘But all of you — and I include myself — should be ashamed to live in a city where an evildoer took the lives of a goodwife and her two infants, over the issue of how Jesus Christ should be worshipped. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about this. There can be no other motive for this foul act, other than to destroy a man for his beliefs, uncaring whether innocent children and their mother perished with him!’

He glared around the subdued crowd, as if challenging any other explanation.

‘God knows, I am no saint, not even a devout enough Christian, yet I remember something of the Gospels. Did not the Good Lord say “Suffer the little children to come unto me”?’

He raised his fists in the air in a final explosion of frustrated anger.

‘Is this how whatever fiend did this terrible act brought little children to Him? Killing innocent mites in the name of some argument about how best to worship God? He must be found and made to pay for his sins!’

De Wolfe reached the crescendo of his wrath and suddenly his arms dropped to his sides as he slumped into despondency.

‘Jury, consider your verdict. I challenge you to find any other decision than wilful murder, though unfortunately against a person or persons unknown!’

At supper that evening Matilda was unusually subdued. Though it was now normal for her to ignore her husband, especially at mealtimes, John sensed that this was something different. She was not snubbing him with her usual air of dislike and discontent, but seemed more pensive and abstracted. He realised that the inquest had affected her, as it had many people, due to the cruelty of the deaths, but as a childless wife who had never shown any maternal interest, he had never expected her to be so distraught. His attempts to talk to her were met with a shrug or a shake of the head, and he soon abandoned any attempt to lighten her mood.

John had escorted her back from St Bartholomew’s, together with Cecilia from next door, and whereas Matilda remained in frozen silence, the physician’s wife, tears still wet on her cheeks, quietly praised his handling of the inquest.

‘It was a terrible thing, Sir John, but you said what needed to be said. I think it has jolted the consciences of many who heard it, and hopefully dampened this hysteria that has been pervading the city these past few weeks.’

De Wolfe was afraid that this might have inflamed Matilda’s defence of the anti-heretic faction, but she remained silent, almost as if she had not even heard the words.

When supper was over, to which unusually his wife failed to do justice, she called for Lucille and soon made her way out again, cloaked and hooded. Breaking her silence, she informed him that she would be at St Olave’s, praying for the souls of the victims from Milk Lane.

Equally unusual, John did not feel like going down to the Bush that evening and slouched in front of his fire, drinking ale and then wine. He felt depressed by all that was going on: his brother’s illness, the lack of any progress over the increasing number of murders associated with the heresy issue — and now his wife’s strange moods. He wondered sometimes if she was losing her mind, as a result of her brother’s repeated falls from grace, the disappointment over his own abandonment of the Westminster coronership and, not least, his own infidelities.

As he drank more and more, he slid towards sleep, his thoughts churning in his mind. Would William live or die, could the miracle of Thomas be repeated? How would he cope with Stoke and Holcombe if he did die? Who killed the four heretics? Was it the same assassin in each case?

Mary came in later to add logs to the fire and shook her head sadly at the sight of him slumped on the settle, a mug of ale spilled on the floor where it had slipped from his hand as he snored the evening away. ‘This household is falling apart,’ she murmured to Brutus as she mopped the flagstones with a rag. ‘Things can’t go on like this. I can see me out of work and living with my cousin before long.’

The hound opened one watery eye to look at her, but made no reply.