A Plague of Heretics

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Early the following morning Crowner John sallied forth in grim determination. The inquest on the previous day seemed to have cast a shadow over the city and, though the usual number of people were on the streets, there seemed to be a pall of unease hanging over them.

His object today was to descend upon those whom he thought most likely to be the perpetrators of the awful crime in Milk Lane. All had some connection with the cathedral, and it was towards the Close that he directed his steps on leaving the house. The two bailiffs working for the proctors were certain to be found there, and he assumed that the lay brother, Reginald Rugge, would also be in the vicinity. As to the weird monk, Alan de Bere, he would seek him later.

John went alone, as he hoped that Thomas was taking his advice and resting in his lodging, while Gwyn was up at Rougemont in case there were new deaths requiring attention.

At the small building which housed the proctors’ cells, he found both the bailiffs in residence, busy eating their breakfast bread and cheese and drinking small ale. Throwing open the door with no ceremony, he marched in and confronted them.

‘I see that unlike so many of our citizens, you made no effort to attend the inquest yesterday!’ he grated. ‘Perhaps you had guilty consciences?’

The two men stared at him with their food halfway to their mouths, indignation being swamped by anxiety that this menacing figure might do them an injury. Herbert Gale struggled to his feet and stared anxiously at the coroner. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Sir John!’ he muttered uneasily.

‘You know damned well what I mean,’ snarled de Wolfe. ‘A house is burned down and the whole family deliberately killed! Do you not think it strange that the householder was the one man left from your crusade against heretics?’

William Blundus glared up at the coroner from his stool. ‘We had nothing to do with that! You can’t come here unjustly accusing us with no evidence.’

Angrily, John kicked a spare stool across the room to relieve his feelings.

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! I am investigating four deaths, and I intend getting the truth from the most likely perpetrators, for which you are good candidates.’

Gale, the senior bailiff, had recovered much of his confidence and began blustering at the coroner’s intrusion.

‘We are just servants of the cathedral. Why should we take it upon ourselves to commit such a crime?’

John leaned forward and banged their table with his fist.

‘Perhaps because you were so dissatisfied with the release of the other heretics, you wished to mete out your own type of justice?’

The exchange carried on in this vein for some time and became more heated with every minute, but John could get no trace of a confession or unearth any incriminating signs. They obdurately denied both involvement in the deaths and his right to accuse them.

‘The canons shall hear of this!’ threatened Herbert Gale. ‘And the bishop when he returns.’

‘Then tell them to ask their Archbishop at Canterbury why he introduced coroners two years ago,’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘They will find that it was exactly to investigate events such as this.’

As he saw that at present he would get nowhere with these men, he marched out with a promise that he would be back as often as it took — an empty threat, but it relieved his feelings.

He made enquiries in the cathedral precinct and eventually traced Reginald Rugge to the cloisters on the south side of the great building. The lay brother was sweeping dead leaves from the garth, the central area of grass between the arcades on each side. When he saw the coroner loping towards him, he went rigid and gripped the handle of his besom as tightly as a drowning man grasping a floating plank.

‘You are supposed to be locked in the proctors’ cells!’ barked de Wolfe. ‘But for your convenient rendering of the “neck verse”, you would be awaiting trial for attempted murder before the king’s justices!’

Rugge had a hangdog look, laced with defiance, as he knew he was protected by the invulnerable ecclesiastical machine.

‘I was released on condition I stayed within the Close,’ he muttered.

‘And did you?’ demanded John. ‘Or did you just happen to sneak out on Sunday night with some naphtha and a flask of brandy-wine, eh?’

Rugge glared at him sullenly. ‘Where would I get such things? I don’t even know what that naphtha stuff is!’

‘Last week, I saw you trying to hang men with the same beliefs as the man that died in Milk Lane. Why should I believe that you didn’t make another attempt?’

Rugge’s temper flared up briefly. ‘Well, I didn’t, see! Though that blasphemer deserved to die, by rope or fire or any other means. A pity about his family, though no doubt they would have had the same evil beliefs.’

It took an effort for de Wolfe not to strike the man for his callous words.

‘You are the one with the evil beliefs, you cold-hearted bastard!’ he shouted, making several clerics walking in the cloister turn their heads. ‘If your guilt is proven, I will come to see you swing from the gallows and cheer at every spasm of your jerking limbs as your poisonous life is choked out of you!’

The lay brother went pale at the vehemence of the coroner’s words and gazed about, looking for someone to rescue him from this vengeful knight. A young vicar came hesitantly out on to the grass towards them, but John waved him away imperiously.

‘Rugge, I will fetch a priest from the castle, a priest with a copy of the Vulgate. And you will swear upon that holy book that you did not leave this precinct on Sunday. Is that understood? If you lie, then as a devout man of the cloth you know you will suffer eternal damnation!’

As several other figures under the cloister arches were now pointing at him and debating about intervening, John saw no point in provoking them further and left the garth. Outside, on the paths through the Close, he found that he was quivering with suppressed emotion, an unusual state for the normally phlegmatic coroner.

He felt that Reginald Rugge could well have committed this heinous crime, but there seemed no chance of getting him to confess. John wondered if the man confessed his guilt to a priest, whether any cleric might be so appalled that he would break the sanctity of the confessional. He knew this was a futile hope, but as he was in the Close he decided to seek the opinion of his friend John de Alençon, so made his way to a side door into the great church. It was the time of the morning when Prime, one of the early offices, was in progress, and he stood alone in the huge, empty nave of the cathedral to wait for a break between the prayers and chanting that endlessly praised God behind the ornately carved wooden screen that separated the nave from the quire.

As he waited, with only chirping sparrows for company, he looked up at the screen and recalled that it was exactly a year since he had had to climb up it, to retrieve the severed head of a murdered manor-lord, impaled on one of the spikes at the top. It seemed as if violence and religion were never far apart, even in Devon.

The distant chanting eventually ceased and a final benediction allowed the black-robed celebrants to file out of the chancel and disperse themselves in the crossing, where the two great towers flanked the axis of the cruciform building. John walked around the side of the enclosed quire and saw the archdeacon in conversation with several other canons and vicars, some young secondaries hanging around the outside of the group. He waited, and in a moment John de Alençon noticed him and broke away to come to speak to his friend.

‘I suspect I know what brings you here, John,’ he said.

His voice was subdued, and he looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was in earshot, as Canon Robert de Baggetor and William de Swindon were among those to whom he had been talking.

‘Yes, this abominable tragedy in Milk Lane,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘There can be little doubt that it was a deliberate assassination — and equally certain that it was because Algar was the only one of those heretics who stayed behind in the city.’

The grizzled-haired priest nodded sadly. ‘I only wish I could contradict you, John, but any other explanation seems unlikely. My heart is saddened by the thought that differences in faith could lead to such suffering.’

‘Not even differences of faith, for surely everyone concerned professes to be a Christian,’ replied the coroner bitterly. ‘It is over differences in how to pursue that faith which makes it all the more tragic’

‘I cannot believe that anyone connected with the cathedral could stoop so low as to commit this outrage,’ murmured the archdeacon. ‘But no doubt it is your duty to investigate the possibility.’

‘Where else would I look for candidates, other than those who have already plainly exhibited their hatred of these people?’ asked John with suppressed ferocity. ‘It is but a few days since a mob, egged on by the dictates of some of your colleagues, tried to kill a few harmless folk down on the quayside. Only the intercession of your ecclesiastical rules saved two of them from facing trial for murder. Can you wonder that I now come looking at these same people?’

De Alençon’s shoulders slumped and he gave a great sigh.

‘I appreciate your position, John. But what can I do to help? I am in an even more difficult position here, as you know. I am supposed to give a lead in defending the Church in this matter, though you know my heart is not in this particular persecution.’ He looked behind again and saw that the other priests and clerics were moving away. ‘I must go to chapter, John. There is no time now, but come to see me later.’

De Wolfe nodded, but then held up a restraining hand. ‘One question, John. If the perpetrator of this foul crime confessed to a priest, are there any circumstances where that confidence could be broken, given the outrageous nature of the crime?’

De Alençon laid a hand his friend’s shoulder. ‘The eternal question, John! The answer is “no”, as that confession is made to God. The priest is but a passive channel to the Almighty, then conveying back God’s absolution to the one confessing.’

‘Even if by allowing that man to stay free, it might permit him to repeat his crimes?’

The archdeacon groaned. ‘It would be a personal decision by the priest. I have heard of only one such instance and then the priest left his vocation, becoming a hermit, as he felt that he could no longer continue in office after breaking his vow of silence.’ He backed away and lifted a hand in farewell. ‘I must go to chapter, John. I will see you soon.’

The coroner made his way slowly out of the cathedral, unsure of what to do next. The illness of his brother hung over him all the time, like some dark cloud under which he had to go through the motions of daily life. Even thoughts of Hilda rarely entered his mind these past few days, it being filled with the horror of this multiple crime, as well as concern over his deteriorating relations with Matilda and her odd behaviour since the deaths of those children. He thanked God that at least the added worry about Thomas seemed to have receded and that faithful Gwyn, his rock in this turbulent life, seemed as stable and reliable as ever.

On the way out of the nave and again as he crossed the Close, he enquired of several clerks and lay brothers if they knew where Alan de Bere might be found. He went again to the proctors’ office, partly to annoy them with his persistence, but neither bailiff was there. He thought of trying St Nicholas Priory, in the backstreets near Bretayne, but decided it was a futile quest to seek Alan there, as he had been ejected by them a long time before. The only other people who might know of him were in the constables’ hut at the back of the Guildhall; though Osric and Theobald were there when he called, neither had anything useful to tell him.

‘Not a sign of that crazy bloody monk,’ growled Theobald, the fat constable. ‘No one seems to have laid eyes on him since he was taken from the castle gaol.’

De Wolfe turned to Osric, the Saxon with an emaciated body and a thin face to match. ‘Were there any sightings of a stranger in Milk Lane that night?’ he demanded.

‘I’ve asked everyone in the lane and up and down nearby Fore Street,’ he said nervously, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his scrawny neck. ‘Everyone is keen to help, but the trouble is they invent things in their urge to be useful. I’ve had reports of all manner of folk being seen there, from the portreeves to the bishop himself!’

John sighed. He had come across this warped imagination of witnesses before. ‘But nothing definite? The same person being seen by two different people, for instance?’

Osric shook his head. ‘As that neighbour told us, they go to their beds early there, with the morning milking to do. It’s a side street; not many people use it unless they come to buy butter, cheese or milk, and that’s in the daytime.’

Theobald put in a sensible question. ‘Where would anyone get this naphtha stuff, Crowner? I’d only heard of it as something used in warfare. Would it have to be a soldier of some sort?’

The coroner shrugged. ‘I know little about it myself. I heard of it being used at the siege of Constantinople, as an ingredient in this Greek Fire they shot from catapults. But who in Devon would possess it, God alone knows.’

‘We’ll keep asking around for this Alan de Bere, sir,’ promised Osric. ‘He must be hiding somewhere, unless he’s already left the city.’

‘I’ll question all the gatekeepers,’ offered Theobald. ‘But most are so blind or so stupid that they’d not notice if an elephant passed through!’

On this pessimistic note, John left and went back to his chamber at Rougemont, where Gwyn had news of a serious assault in Polsloe, a mile north-east of the city.

‘The Serjeant of the Hundred rode in to say that a woman there had been robbed, ravished and beaten. She’s been taken into the priory in danger of her life.’

‘Have they caught the assailant?’ demanded de Wolfe, already sickened by the increase in violence lately.

‘The hue and cry was raised and they seized two men. They’re locked in a cowshed waiting for you, with half the men of the village eager to hang them from the nearest tree.’

‘People are too damned ready to hang anyone they dislike,’ grumbled the coroner. ‘What do they think the king’s courts are for?’

Gwyn had his own opinion on that, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

An hour later they rode into Polsloe, a village which had a small house of Benedictine nuns nearby. John knew it well, not least because it was where Matilda had taken refuge twice, though she never stayed long enough to take her vows. They were met at the edge of the hamlet by the Serjeant of Cliston Hundred and the manor-reeve, who took them to the small barn where a couple of angry villagers were guarding two men locked inside.

‘Who are they?’ asked John, peering through a crack in the rough planking at the pair of ruffians sitting disconsolately on the floor, already feeling the gallows rope around their necks.

‘Strangers, passing through,’ answered the serjeant, a tall, muscular man named Thomas Sanguin, who was responsible for upholding the law in his Hundred, a subdivision of the county. ‘One claims his name is Martin of Nailsea, the other just David the Welshman. Both say they are ship-men, stranded at Exmouth and walking back to Bristol.’

‘Have they confessed?’ asked Gwyn.

‘No, have they hell! They deny everything, though they were seen running away from the woman’s house.’

‘Any stolen goods on them?’

Sanguin shook his head. ‘She had nothing to steal. A young widow, living on the parish, so they beat her and ravished her for spite, the swine!’

‘Will she die?’ asked John.

‘Best ask the nuns at the priory; they are caring for her. But the poor woman is beaten badly.’

John scratched his head as an aid to thought. Where victims were badly injured, they could be given into the care of the assailant, who would usually do all he could to keep them alive, for if they died within a year and a day of the assault, he would be tried for murder. However, a couple of rascally sailors were unlikely to be of much use to the poor woman, compared with the care she was getting at the nunnery, which was well known for its expertise in dealing with childbirth and women’s ailments.

‘Get them sent into the city. They can be housed at the South Gate gaol. The sheriff can decide what to do about them, depending on whether the woman lives or dies. I’d better go down to the priory to make enquiries.’

He and Gwyn went to the woman’s cottage on the way, a desperately poor place, where he was told that the woman eked out an existence after her husband died of poisoning of the blood caught from an injury in the fields with a hayfork that stabbed his foot. The single room was so barely furnished that it was hard to tell if an assault had taken place there, apart from the bloodstains on the pile of rags that was her bed.

‘Better keep those to show at the court, if it ever gets that far,’ said John to the serjeant. ‘Now I’ll go to see the woman — or at least talk to the nuns about her.’

The nunnery was in a compound behind a stone wall, with a gatehouse guarded by a porter. John knew the place well, not only from visits concerning his wife, but from several cases concerning women, where Dame Madge, a formidable nun who acted as the sub-prioress, had been of great help to him in matters of rape and abortion.

Leaving Gwyn at the gatehouse with the horses, he sought out Dame Madge and she came to the steps of the main range of buildings to meet him.

‘The woman is too ill to talk to you, Sir John,’ she announced firmly. A tall, stooped woman with a gaunt face, she was almost a female version of John himself, a humourless, no-nonsense person who spoke her mind and whose honesty was beyond question. He did not even attempt to persuade her to let him see the victim, but accepted her word.

‘Has she been ravished?’ he asked.

‘Undoubtedly and repeatedly,’ replied the grim-featured nun. ‘She has been damaged in her woman’s parts, as well as beaten sorely about the head and face. Her wits are disordered at the moment, but no doubt they will return.’

‘She will recover, then?’

Dame Madge nodded. ‘She is young and strong and her body will heal up. I am not so sure about her mind, after such an ordeal from those swine.’

‘They will pay for it, never fear, lady. I will see to it myself He sighed and shook his head at the amount of evil in the world.

Though sequestered in a priory, the nuns were always avid for news of the outside world, and he told the old sister of the evil calamity in the city two nights earlier. She crossed herself and murmured a prayer for the dead children and their mother.

‘There are sinful people about, Sir John. Though I cannot condone heresy, which eats at the fabric of our Mother Church, no one can approve of such random and vicious cruelty.’

‘It seems to have affected my wife very much,’ said John. ‘Though she was very active in a campaign to rid the city of these heretics, since these deaths she seems to have turned in on herself and has become silent and morose.’

Dame Madge gave him a sudden sweet smile. ‘Your wife is a strange woman, Crowner! We have had ample opportunity here to get to know her, from her two fruitless attempts to take the veil. I think she despairs of life, since her brother fell from grace — and you have not helped at all, sir, with your absences and your amorous adventures!’

De Wolfe nodded sadly. ‘We should never have married, sister. It was not of our doing — we were pushed together by our parents.’

The dame nodded but was unforgiving. ‘What the Lord has joined together, let no man break asunder, even until death itself.’

With this uncompromising finale, de Wolfe left the priory, with an assurance that the nuns would let him know when the woman was fit enough to be questioned. He rode back to the East Gate in silence, Gwyn knowing him well enough not to intrude on his bleak mood. At Rougemont, they returned the horses they had borrowed from the castle stables, and John went to bring the sheriff up to date on events. When he had told him of the latest crime in Polsloe and of the failure to make any headway with the Milk Lane fire, he went back to Martin’s Lane and waited for his dinner. Matilda was up in her solar at the back of the house, so John went to sit in Mary’s kitchen-hut in the yard, drinking ale and watching her gut some fish that she was going to spit-roast over the fire that burned red in its pit in the middle of the floor. She was a brisk, competent woman, and John was always impressed by the variety of good food that she managed to produce with such primitive facilities.

As she worked, he told her of the morning’s visit to Polsloe, and as usual she was angrily sympathetic to the victim’s plight.

‘You men are such evil creatures!’ she complained. ‘Look at the harm that has been done to women and children in the space of a few days. You treat animals better than that!’

Few would let a maid speak to them so frankly, but John and Mary understood each other far beyond the usual relationship of master to servant. He cocked his head upwards towards the solar stairs.

‘What mood is your mistress in today?’ he asked. ‘She seems oddly subdued since yesterday, hardly bothering to abuse me!’

Mary nodded as she slid long skewers through the herrings to place across the forked supports over the fire. ‘There’s something bothering her, that’s for sure. But her tongue is recovering, for I heard her shouting at Lucille not long ago.’

The wraith-like French maid lived in abject subjection to Matilda’s bad temper. Recently, when her mistress had gone into retreat in the priory, Lucille had been farmed out to Eleanor de Revelle, but when John’s wife had returned to the house she was reclaimed, as if she was some piece of furniture.

John sat drinking for a while, watching the cook adding herbs to an iron pot of hare stew at the edge of the fire and peeling onions to go with the fish. Suddenly, she looked up.

‘I hear the solar door opening. You had better make yourself scarce,’ she warned.

John took the hint, as Matilda frowned upon his fraternising with the lower classes — especially as she had a shrewd suspicion that in the past John had known Mary a little too well, in the biblical sense. Taking his jug of ale, he slid out of the hut, which faced away from the solar, and hurried around the house, through the covered passage that led to the vestibule.

When she lumbered into the hall, her husband was sitting by the fire, fondling his hound’s ears. She looked at him suspiciously but said nothing as she made her way to her usual seat, the hooded monks’ chair on the other side of the hearth.

From long practice, John was sensitive to her moods and detected that her recent preoccupied depression was now giving way to suppressed anger. She glared across at him as he sat with his ale-pot in his hand.

‘Are you not going to get me something to drink?’ she snapped, her small eyes dark and penetrating.

Relieved that at least she was speaking to him now, John went to the table, where he kept his wines, and filled a pewter cup from a skin of Anjou red. As he handed it to her, he took advantage of the slight thaw in her mood to tell her about the attack in Polsloe. ‘I went to the priory to see the poor woman, but Dame Madge told me she was too ill. She asked after your health, by the way.’

Matilda grabbed the cup and swallowed half the contents in one draught. ‘I suppose that old crone slandered me, telling you what a difficult woman I was when I was there!’ she said bitterly.

‘She did no such thing,’ retorted John indignantly, annoyed by his wife’s lack of charity in ignoring the plight of the ravished woman.

‘The world is full of evil people,’ she muttered obscurely, slipping back into silence until Mary came in some time later to set the table for their dinner. Most households ate directly off the scrubbed boards of their tables, but Matilda had long insisted on wooden or pewter platters to hold the bread trenchers and bowls for potage and stews. When the carrot and herb soup and the grilled herrings were finished, the cook-maid brought a dish of diced fat pork with winter-sweetened parsnips.

The pair champed their way through the courses in surly silence, until Matilda suddenly grunted and fished inside her mouth.

‘That useless woman — she could have broken my teeth!’ she snapped, throwing a small piece of bone down on the table.

John tried to be conciliatory, though he knew that his wife seized on every chance to denigrate Mary. ‘We should build a better cook-shed for her,’ he suggested mildly. ‘It’s very difficult for her to prepare food properly in that tiny place, where she has to live and work.’

Matilda took instant exception to his innocent remark. ‘You contradict me at every turn, John!’ she flared. ‘You always defend the woman — and don’t think I don’t know why! No doubt you employ your lechery on her at every opportunity. Lucille is not blind, you know; she sees plenty from that room of hers!’

The injustice of this accusation melted John’s restraint like the sun on morning frost, especially as he had not laid a lecherous finger on their cook-maid for several years.

‘You see adultery and fornication in every breath I take, woman!’ he shouted across the table. ‘For the sake of St Peter and all his angels, why did you not stay in that damned nunnery and not inflict yourself upon me?’

For answer, she grabbed her platter, which still had some pork gravy on it, and threw it across the table at him. It hit him on the shoulder, and a greasy mess slid down the front of his grey tunic. His quick temper was instantly ignited and he leaped up to yell imprecations at her, while she for her part launched into a screaming diatribe about the years of shame and humiliation she had had to bear from him. It was a familiar pattern for their differences, though the intensity was extreme. Even in the midst of this torrid exchange, John managed to feel a morsel of relief that her former abstracted mood had reverted to something more familiar.

At the height of their abusive exchange, a pale, frightened face appeared around the hall door as Lucille peered in, having heard her mistress’s voice from her den in the yard. Fearing that she might miss a summons and all the castigation that would follow, she peered in to enquire if she was required — but before she could open her mouth, John spotted her and roared at her.

‘Get out of here, you damned spy and carrier of tales!’ he yelled and threw an empty wooden salt-pot at her. It bounced off the draught-screens inside the door but had the desired effect as Lucille’s head vanished abruptly and the door slammed shut.

‘You not only persecute me, but my poor maid as well,’ screeched his wife, ignoring the fact that she made the ‘poor’ maid’s life a misery with her endless demands and scoldings. However, the interruption had dampened their ardour for fighting, and Matilda marched out imperiously, heading for her solar, where she no doubt would continue to harass Lucille. John slumped back into his chair, emotionally drained once more. He wondered how his life could go on like this, but as the anger receded so the problems that beset him began to flood back into his mind. His brother — how was he? He must get down there again very soon, as he had a permanent fear of the manor-reeve riding into Exeter to tell him that William was no more.

Almost guiltily, he again realised that no progress had been made at all on any of the murders of the past week or two. Most killings, certainly in the countryside that contained the majority of England’s population, were either solved almost instantly or never solved at all!

If a house were robbed and someone attacked, then in a village everyone knew within minutes who had done it, except in the rarer cases of some stranger passing through, as at Polsloe. But even there the sharp eyes of nosy old men and curious goodwives usually spotted something unusual happening.

Even in towns and cities, each parish or district had a village attitude and often knew exactly what was going on from moment to moment. It was the casual killings, the robberies with violence by outlaws on lonely roads or the gangs that sometimes came marauding through hamlets that left the rudimentary law-enforcement system paralysed. John felt that lately he had had more of his share of unsolvable crimes.

If he felt guilt about failing to solve a single murder, he had more of the same emotion concerning Hilda, who he felt he was neglecting with all the problems circling around him. He recalled that he had lost his former lover, Nesta, partly because his preoccupation with his duties had led her to feel shut out from a large part of his life.

But soon his common sense pulled him back to earth, and with a muttered curse at the world in general he hauled himself to his feet and went around to the yard to find Mary. After all, he consoled himself, it was just another row with his wife, one of hundreds over the years, though he could not recall her ever throwing a platter at him before. He went into the kitchen-shed to get Mary to swab off the mess on his tunic with hot water and a rag. She did so, clucking her disapproval at the spoiling of a good linen garment.

‘Lucille told me there was a fine row going on,’ she said severely, ‘but I could hear it from here — this household goes from bad to worse!’

‘I think she’s going mad,’ said John gloomily as Mary rubbed at his shoulder. ‘She wallows in self-pity and doesn’t have a good word for anybody or anything — except that bloody church of hers.’

He went back to the vestibule and threw on his cloak to hide the wet patch on his tunic, then went out into the lane. At a loss for a moment as to what to do next, he turned towards the High Street, deciding to go back to Rougemont. At the corner he saw the massive figure of Gwyn coming towards him, ploughing through the crowd like a ship breasting a choppy sea.

‘Crowner, I think I’ve found the bastard!’ he bellowed from several yards away.

‘Found who?’ demanded John as his officer came close.

‘Alan de Bere! Gabriel says one of his men-at-arms swears he saw him this morning coming out of one of those ramshackle huts on Exe Island. Shall we see if we can find him?’

They hurried down to Carfoix and then down the steep slope of Fore Street to the West Gate. Outside, the river ran sluggishly past, separated from the city walls by a wide area of grassy swamp and mud, crisscrossed by leats and ditches. This was Exe Island, sometimes flooded when there was a cloudburst up on distant Exmoor, though a number of poor wooden houses and shacks dotted its unstable surface. Near the walls, a row of slightly better dwellings formed Frog Lane, and at the northern end, where the river bent around, there were fulling mills and other small factories belonging to the thriving cloth trade.

‘Any idea where this soldier saw him?’ asked John, looking at the rickety footbridge across the river and the ford just below it.

‘He said not far from the new bridge,’ answered Gwyn, pointing to where a number of spans of a long stone bridge ended abruptly at the edge of the river. It was an ambitious project of Nicholas Gervase, but the money had given out before it was finished.

There were a few huts dotted about in that area, where some sheep and goats were cropping the sparse grass. The coroner and his officer made their way towards them, jumping across ditches filled with brown mud and turbid water. Some of the shacks were empty, but a few had forlorn families living in them, though none of the occupants admitted to knowing Alan de Bere. A few of the shanties had collapsed and others teetered on the edge of deep leats, ready to fall in at the next flood.

‘That one’s nearest the bridge,’ said Gwyn, pointing at a wooden hut with a roof of grassy turfs, which was almost under one of the stone arches of the unfinished bridge. They walked towards it and were within a dozen paces when the sacking that covered the door-hole was suddenly thrown aside and a thin figure shot out, obviously intent on making his escape.

‘That’s the swine!’ yelled Gwyn and set off in pursuit, with John close on his heels.

The more nimble fugitive, his monk’s habit tucked up between his legs and secured by a belt giving his long legs the freedom to go fast, might well have escaped had he not gone in the wrong direction. The doorway of the hut faced the river and de Bere had run straight ahead, being cut off by the deep main channel of the Exe. John and Gwyn fanned out on each side of him as he stood at bay on the bank and, converging, grabbed him almost simultaneously. He wriggled violently, but Gwyn threw him to the grass and planted a large foot on his chest.

‘You were released from the king’s gaol to be confined in the bishop’s cells,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘So how is it that you are lurking on Exe Island?’

The skinny man in his tattered habit glared up at the coroner, his pale blue eyes having a glint of madness. ‘You have no authority over me. I am a servant of God!’ he screeched.

‘Aren’t we all?’ answered John grimly. ‘You are a miserable little toad, and I want to know where you were on Sunday night.’

‘I was in this hut here, minding my own business.’

Gwyn slid the toe of his boot up until it was pressed against Alan’s throat.

‘You’re a liar. You were in Milk Lane setting a fire. Was Reginald Rugge with you, eh?’

‘I was not, I swear it!’ gurgled the man. ‘I had nothing to do with that.’

Gwyn pressed down harder and the renegade monk began to go blue in the face as he could not breathe.

‘You tried to hang those men last week — and the one who didn’t sail away was Algar the fuller,’ snarled de Wolfe, half-convinced that this was the man they wanted.

‘So you decided to get rid of him in another way, blast you!’ boomed Gwyn, screwing his heel into Alan’s chest.

‘I didn’t, I swear by God and the Virgin!’ gasped the monk. ‘It may have been Rugge for all I know. I’ve not seen him since we were let out by the proctors’ men. Father Julian wouldn’t let me go back to my hut at St Olave’s, so I came here.’

John sighed, as without proof his sense of justice prevailed over his revulsion for the man. He motioned to Gwyn to let the man get to his feet.

‘If I get any evidence that you were responsible for this mortal sin, I’ll see you on your way to hell personally!’ he threatened.

De Bere staggered to his feet, his face contorted in hate. ‘You have no right to hound me like this. The bishop will hear of this.’

‘That’s what your accomplice in crime said — and much good it will do you both,’ snapped John.

‘Can we take him back to Rougemont and let Stigand get some practice on him with his branding irons?’ suggested Gwyn, holding Alan’s arm in a grip of steel.

‘I wish we could, but some of us still keep to the letter of the law, thank God,’ answered de Wolfe. ‘You’d better let him go for now. We know we can always find him in some pigsty or under a flat stone!’

They were standing on the edge of a deep leat that ran under the bridge. As Gwyn released the man, John sent him on his way with a shove, which overbalanced him into the ditch. He fell face down into the glutinous mud and struggled up covered in filth.

‘That’s for trying to hang those men on the quayside last week!’ declared de Wolfe. ‘Now clear off, you evil bastard!’

De Bere scrambled up the opposite side of the leat, wiping mud from his face and spitting dirty water from his mouth. When he had moved a safe distance away, he turned and screamed back at the coroner. ‘You’ll pay for this, de Wolfe — I’ll get even with you yet!’

Back in Rougemont, John and his officer went into the hall to warm themselves at the firepit and to get something to eat and drink. They found a heated discussion going on between the sheriff and Sergeant Gabriel and came nearer to discover what the trouble might be.

‘I’ll have those two idiots in chains for a week,’ fumed Gabriel. ‘This is what comes of having milksops as soldiers, boys who have never seen a sword raised in anger!’

‘What’s the problem, sergeant?’ asked the coroner, but it was Henry de Furnellis who answered.

‘Those two bastards you saw at Polsloe, the rapists,’ he said bitterly. ‘They’ve bloody well escaped!’

‘And committed another crime already,’ added Gabriel, fuming with anger at the incompetence of his men-at-arms. ‘We sent two men to drag them back here to await trial in the gaol and what happens? Those two fools I thought were proper soldiers were overpowered and lost them!’

When the story was told in full, it appeared that Martin of Nailsea and David the Welshman while in the cowshed had managed to free themselves from the ropes that bound their wrists and ankles. They had armed themselves with baulks of timber prised from the stalls and, as soon as the two soldiers opened the door to take them away, had beaten them to the ground and ran away into the nearby woods.

‘Where they’ll no doubt remain as outlaws!’ glowered de Wolfe.

Gabriel shook his head. ‘No such luck! The swine came back into the city within the hour, for they attacked a merchant in an alley off North Gate Street, choking him near to death before stealing his purse and making off into the lanes of Bretayne!’

The coroner sighed at the futility of arresting people only to let them escape. ‘Are you looking for them now?’ he barked.

The sheriff nodded irritably. ‘It’s like a bloody rabbit warren, that Bretayne! Half the folk there are thieves themselves and they’ll readily give shelter to any evil brethren. But we’ll get them in the end, though it may take a day two, knowing that place.’

Though he shook his head in disgust, John was preoccupied with his other problems. The sergeant marched away, ready to give another roasting to his incompetent soldiery, while the sheriff joined Gwyn and the coroner in another pot of ale as they bemoaned the way the world seemed to be going to the dogs.