A Plague of Heretics

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

To say that consternation gripped the company would be a gross understatement. The locum coroner’s eyes bulged and he made fluttering gestures with his hands.

‘Sanctuary? You can’t claim sanctuary. You are a juror in the middle of an inquest!’

‘Is this, or is this not, a properly consecrated House of God?’ asked John coolly. He looked towards Brother Rufus for confirmation.

‘It is indeed,’ said the priest. ‘The chapel of a royal castle, under the direct control of Canterbury.’

Unlike most castles, Exeter had been built by William the Bastard as a penalty for the Saxon town’s revolt of 1068 and had remained in the possession of the Crown ever since, rather than of some local baron.

‘But you are a knight, the county coroner and the dead person is your own wife!’ spluttered Aubrey de Courtenay.

‘And where, may I ask, does the law lay down that any of those prohibit the gaining of sanctuary?’ said de Wolfe.

The other man’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, but he could find no answer. By now, a few people were coming back into the chapel, wondering at the delay. The first was de Revelle, and Aubrey found his tongue again.

‘De Wolfe refuses to come out, Richard!’ he exclaimed. ‘He says he is claiming sanctuary.’

A thunderous expression came over de Revelle’s face. ‘Impossible! Drag the man out! He is trying to ridicule the law!’

The stout monk advanced on him angrily. ‘You’ll not violate sanctuary in my church, sir! Recall what happened after Thomas Becket!’

Henry de Furnellis now hurried in from the porch. ‘John? Is this true?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You have thought of the consequences?’

De Wolfe nodded. Now that the die had been cast, he felt calm and resolute, knowing that there was only one way forward.

‘I need time to discover who is the true culprit, Henry. These vultures are only intent upon condemning me, without seeking any other explanation.’

The Dorset man was still trying to deny John’s right to sanctuary. ‘You are still part of a coroner’s jury. I command you to come out and take your place in the inquest,’ he protested.

‘I decline your kind invitation,’ answered John sarcastically. ‘I am well aware that the verdict was decided beforehand by you and your cousin’s husband here.’

‘Then I shall have no option but to continue without you,’ huffed Aubrey. ‘That will deny you the opportunity to say anything more in your defence.’

‘Why, is this a trial, then?’ snapped de Wolfe. ‘And does anyone think for a moment that anything I say will have the slightest impression on what you have already decided?’

Richard de Revelle, who had just railed against John’s right to sanctuary, suddenly reversed his attitude. ‘Let him stay here, Aubrey,’ he said gaily. ‘It proves his guilt, for why else would he abandon the chance to maintain his innocence? Only the guilty run for sanctuary, so he has condemned himself by his own actions!’

He pulled at de Courtenay’s arm, but as they went to the door Aubrey called over his shoulder. ‘On your own head be it, de Wolfe! I am going to complete the inquest forthwith.’

Henry de Furnellis, John de Alençon and Ralph Morin remained in the chapel with John and the chaplain.

‘Archdeacon, is sanctuary valid in these circumstances?’ asked the sheriff, his drooping features heavy with concern.

De Alençon nodded. ‘I see no reason why it should not be. As de Wolfe has said, there is nothing that prevents it. Sanctuary is denied only to those committing sacrilege against the Church.’

‘But how can you go about proving your innocence when you are cooped up in here, John?’ boomed Ralph Morin.

‘I have forty days to think of something,’ replied de Wolfe. ‘If I stay out there, those bastards will see that I get thrown into some gaol or other to await trial God knows how far in the future!’

‘We had better get back and discover what mischief those two have managed to perpetrate,’ growled de Furnellis, leading the way back out into the inner ward. Aubrey de Courtenay was just finishing haranguing the jury, before ordering them to consider their verdict.

‘The poor woman clearly was strangled in her own home,’ he cried with a flourish of his hand. ‘She was still warm when the hue and cry saw her, and her husband, John de Wolfe, was present in the room, waving a dagger about and claiming he found her dead.’

He stopped and glared from one end of the jury to the other.

‘You have heard that he regularly quarrelled with his wife and that his brother-in-law has heard him threaten to kill her. His next-door neighbour, a physician and his wife, both of impeccable character, told you that they had heard altercations through the shutters. The dead lady’s maid heard voices raised in anger at about the very time that she must have been killed.’

He reached the climax of his damning speech, gesturing with outflung arms. ‘John de Wolfe has not denied those facts — and who else would or could have strangled her? It flies in the face of reason to think otherwise! And now he has sought sanctuary — is that the act of an innocent man?’

He dropped his hands to his sides as his histrionics ceased. ‘Now you must debate among yourselves as to how Matilda de Wolfe came to her death. This is not a trial and you are not judging anyone’s guilt — that is the task of the king’s justices when they next come to this city.’

The outcome was both inevitable and rapid. After a few moments’ muttering, the man appointed foreman, a pastry-man from the High Street, stepped forward, still wearing his flour-dusted apron.

‘We find that the poor lady was murdered and that her husband can be the only man responsible.’

Aubrey de Courtenay nodded his approval. ‘Then I so pronounce my verdict,’ he said pompously. ‘That Matilda, wife of John de Wolfe, was killed with malice aforethought on the twelfth day of November in the seventh year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King Richard. And the jury name the said John de Wolfe as the perpetrator.’

He drew a deep breath, as he had never done this before to a knight of the realm and a king’s coroner.

‘I therefore use my power as a coroner to commit him for trial before the royal justices and command that he be kept in close custody until that time.’

There was an urgent murmuring among the crowd, broken by a stentorian voice from Henry de Furnellis, Sheriff of Devon. ‘How can you commit him, when he is in sanctuary?’ he demanded.

De Courtenay shrugged. ‘That is now your problem, sheriff! My jurisdiction ceases at the end of an inquest. He either emerges from that chapel and is arrested, or he stays there for forty days and is then starved to death — unless he confesses his crime and abjures the realm, in which case you will need me to come back to take his confession.’

He walked away from his chair as if distancing himself from any further involvement, but Richard de Revelle hurried towards him and began to speak urgently into his ear. The Dorset coroner stopped and beckoned to the sheriff, who from the look on his face would like to strangle Aubrey himself.

‘What is it now?’ he growled.

‘I have been reminded of your close friendship with the accused. I demand that you will not let your personal feelings allow him to escape from sanctuary — nor from your prison, if and when he emerges to be arrested.’

‘If he shows his head outside that chapel door, you are entitled — indeed, obliged — to hack it from his shoulders!’ added Richard de Revelle with obvious delight.

Henry glowered at the two men. ‘I need no reminding of my duties, thank you!’ he snarled.

De Courtenay wagged an insolent finger at him. ‘I’m sure you don’t, but I shall be kept well informed of any mishaps and I will see to it, through my noble family if needs be, that the Curia Regis be immediately made aware of any failure to keep this man in custody!’

With this last threat, he walked away with Richard de Revelle to fetch their horses. Then they rode away to Richard’s house to stay the night before his return to Lyme next morning.

‘Bastards!’ was Henry’s succinct comment as he watched them vanish through the gatehouse arch.

‘Can you not look the other way when John takes a walk one night?’ suggested Ralph Morin, who admired de Wolfe as much as he detested de Revelle.

The sheriff sighed. ‘I dare not. Richard will be watching like a bloody hawk! I’ll wager he’ll station one of his servants here in the bailey during the daytime, to check that John is still here.’ He spat on the ground, livid that de Revelle seemed to have got the better of them at last. ‘As the king’s officer in this county, I have sworn on oath to uphold his peace. Even for such a good man as de Wolfe, I could not break that obligation — and I know that John would not wish me to.’

‘I suppose something will turn up,’ said Ralph with an optimism that he did not really feel.

That evening was a very strange one for John de Wolfe. As the early dusk approached, the castle bailey lost its daytime bustle and an eerie quiet fell over Rougemont. The gawking crowd from the inquest had dispersed, as John was no longer on show, and soon he was left alone in the empty chapel.

Brother Rufus had brought him a fresh loaf, some cheese and a jug of ale, then went about his business. Gwyn and Thomas had stayed with him for a while, then the Cornishman went off to the Bush, promising to bring up a decent supper when Martha had finished cooking. Both men seemed somewhat ill at ease, unsure how to react to this new situation where their master was virtually a prisoner and accused of murder. The possibility of him being guilty never crossed either of their minds, but they needed time to adjust and to work out how they might best help him prove his innocence.

It was indeed a bizarre situation, locked in a stone box with only his murdered wife’s corpse for company. He wandered over to the bier, a wooden stretcher with four legs, normally kept hanging by ropes from the rafters at the back of St Martin’s Church, from where it had been borrowed.

‘Matilda, what’s to become of me?’ he murmured, getting the same lack of response that he usually received when she was alive. ‘I never wished this upon you, even when you were at your most obnoxious. We have our fathers to blame for this, God rest their interfering souls!’

As their parents had pushed them into a marriage which neither desired, it was little wonder that two such different personalities as John and Matilda had never found contentment, let alone loving happiness.

He sighed and ambled back to sit on the stone ledge that ran around the walls. Normally, worshippers stood on the packed earth floor, but for the old and infirm there was this comfortless resting place. It gave rise to the expression ‘going to the wall’, to indicate where failures ended up, John thought wryly.

He chewed listlessly at some of the bread and drank an earthenware cup of Rufus’s ale. Sanctuary seekers were entitled to be fed by the parishioners, an obligation that was often resented, especially in times of hardship or famine — which accounted for the number of ‘escapes’ from sanctuary, as the villagers were often eager to look the other way when they were supposed to be guarding the unwelcome inmate of their church. The law was hazy about the right of access to the sanctuary seeker by family and others — in this case, there was little likelihood of anyone challenging it, as apart from Richard de Revelle no one really wanted their Crusader coroner locked up.

As well as Gwyn and Thomas, Henry de Furnellis and Ralph Morin had been in to visit him, followed by John de Alençon. His friend the archdeacon said some prayers over Matilda’s body and told John that she would be moved to the cathedral next morning, to lie before one of the side altars.

‘Whatever her faults, John, she was a genuinely devout woman and will have no problem in finding her place in heaven,’ he said solemnly. ‘Tomorrow I will begin making arrangements for her funeral and have no doubt that you will be able to leave this place for that, even if I have to get a special dispensation from the bishop, who returned today.’

Typically, he did not ask John whether he was guilty or innocent, but offered to take his confession at any time he cared to give it.

‘My only confession would be to having murderous intentions upon whoever did this awful act!’ de Wolfe had replied angrily.

Now, sitting upon the cold stone ledge, his mind roved over all the events of the previous day, since he had discovered his wife’s body in their hall. Who could have done this? This was the question that drummed endlessly in his mind.

Why Matilda, who, though she had been the bane of his life, was never a threat to anyone else? In fact, her public face in church and in the social life of middle-class Exeter was one of devout respectability and even gracious affability.

Over and over, he went through the catalogue of potential suspects. Top of his list was either Reginald Rugge, the fanatical lay brother, or Alan de Bere, the equally malicious monk. Both were crazed religious extremists and had grounds for hating de Wolfe for breaking up their riot and their attempt to hang the heretics, as well as for getting the pair of them arrested afterwards. But why kill Matilda, unless they felt that it was an easier option than trying to harm the formidable coroner himself? He suspected one or both of them had set the fire that killed Algar and his family, but what relevance could that have had to Matilda’s death?

His thoughts moved on to the two proctors’ bailiffs, Herbert Gale and William Blundus. Again they were possible suspects, though God alone knows what possible motive there could have been. Of the two, John disliked Herbert Gale the most, as he sensed that he had a cold, unemotional nature that had little regard for human life.

This led him to once again review the other men who were so violently opposed to the survival of anyone with heretical leanings. The canons themselves, especially Richard fitz Rogo, Robert de Baggetor and Ralph de Hospitali — and possibly the other proctor, William de Swindon — were the motivators of this campaign against the Cathars and the latter-day Pelagians, but try as he may, John could not bring himself to see any of those as murderous arsonists and stranglers.

There was one person left in his catechism of suspects. What about Richard de Revelle? It took a wide leap of the imagination to accept that a man could kill his sister, even in the course of a violent quarrel. But in recent months their relationship had become very strained, as Matilda had become progressively disillusioned about her brother. Formerly, he was the apple of her eye as her successful big brother, who had become rich and been made sheriff of the second-largest county in England. But disclosure of his various scandals had shown her that her idol had feet of clay. His involvement in the treachery of Prince John against the king, his dishonesty in dealing with the county finances and various other sins, including personal cowardice, had turned her against him. This situation had been made worse by the fact that her own husband had been largely instrumental in exposing Richard’s failings.

But to kill his own sister? It was unthinkable — yet he had turned up at the very moment that John had discovered her body. A coincidence or clever planning? Could de Revelle have been so devious, cunning and evil as to arrange this as a means of at last getting even with his hated brother-in-law, who had so shamed him before all their peers?

He shook his head in bewilderment, unable to focus any longer on the problem. Walking to the door, he looked out into the twilight, where the first stars were appearing in the clear, cold and windy sky. A lone sentry stood a few yards away, a token posted there by Ralph Morin, though as there were two more in the guard-room of the gatehouse, the only exit to the inner ward, it seemed unnecessary. If John had ideas of escape, he would have to think of a better plan than just walking out under the portcullis.

A figure was striding over the drawbridge across the dry moat, and from its rolling gait, a legacy of his fisherman youth, John recognised Gwyn, clutching a basket no doubt containing Martha’s supper. He suddenly realised that he was hungry, in spite of the vicissitudes of the day, and soon he was sitting with his officer at the back of the chapel, devouring a meat pie and a couple of capon’s thighs, washed down with a wineskin of Anjou red.

‘No doubt you’ll hear from Stoke and Dawlish tomorrow,’ said Gwyn consolingly. ‘I saw Andrew at the stables and he said he sent his most reliable man down on a good horse.’

After he had gone, Rufus the chaplain held a late service for half a dozen men-at-arms and several of their wives, but John stayed discreetly at the back of the nave, virtually invisible in the dim light from half a dozen rushlights placed around the chancel. Rufus wished him goodnight after a simple prayer, then John lay down on the floor, wrapped in his cloak and two blankets that Gwyn had brought. Used to far worse sleeping places on many a campaign, he was quite comfortable, and even the knowledge that Matilda’s cold body was only twenty paces away did not deter him from sleeping dreamlessly until dawn.

True to his word, Archdeacon John de Alençon came soon after dawn with his nephew Thomas and a covered wagon drawn by a black mare. They all said prayers over Matilda’s body, Thomas being very concerned that she had not received the last rites before her dying breath. Then several lay brothers from the cathedral carried the bier out to the wagon and John was left alone again.

During the morning, all his usual friends came in to talk to him and keep him company for a while, but he was fretting to get news of his family in Stoke-in-Teignhead and of Hilda in Dawlish. He expected either the bailiff or reeve from Stoke to come and possibly the reeve from Holcombe, Hilda’s father, whom he had known for almost all his life.

Around noon, he was waiting for the dinner that Gwyn had promised to bring him, spending the time in anguished thought about how he could possibly track down his wife’s killer. If no other means offered itself, he decided he would somehow break out of the castle and go into hiding in the city, though with his distinctive appearance that would be very difficult. Even his height alone, apart from his black hair and great hooked nose, made him stand out in a city where virtually everyone knew him by sight. He was morosely contemplating these problems when a voice hailed him from the doorway.

‘John, I’ve brought you your dinner!’

His head jerked up and delight filled his face when he saw Hilda coming across the nave, with his mother close behind. Lurking near the door were Gwyn and Thomas, holding back from this family meeting.

Hilda, grasping a basket in her hands, stood aside while Enyd de Wolfe rushed forward and hugged her son to her breast. Though a tough, resolute woman, there were tears in her eyes, as there were in Hilda’s, when she in turn fell into John’s arms.

When the emotion of the moment had passed, they sat on the stone ledge, with John between the two women.

‘Gwyn and Thomas have told us all the details of this ridiculous arrest,’ began Enyd, but her son cut her short.

‘First, I must know about William. I am almost afraid to ask!’

His mother’s face broke into a smile, though tears appeared again in her eyes. ‘Dear Thomas’s fervent prayers, added to ours, have been answered, John!’ she said. ‘You brother is recovering, though slowly. His wits returned yesterday and his bladder functions again for the first time in weeks.’

Overjoyed, John grasped Enyd around the waist and kissed her fervently, then turned to give several more kisses to Hilda.

‘That news puts all my troubles in the shade,’ he boomed. ‘Hear that, Gwyn and Thomas? William is on the road to recovery!’

‘It will take some time,’ warned his mother. ‘On Saturday a White Canon came from the new Torre Abbey, learned in physic. He confirmed what Thomas had said, that with the yellow plague, many die, some recover quickly and others take weeks or months to get back to health.’

Immensely relieved by the news, John allowed them to pass on to Matilda’s death and all the drama that had followed, which again reduced the two women to tears of concern over his present precarious position.

‘What can you do to destroy this vile accusation?’ sobbed his mother. ‘That evil man de Revelle — I would like to tear his heart out!’

‘Maybe I will, if you can’t get out of here to do it yourself, John,’ said Hilda, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve. De Wolfe recalled that this was the stalwart woman who the previous year had gone looking for her husband’s assassins and had actually killed one of them with her own hand.¹

His mother soon insisted that he begin eating the game pie and grilled trout that the good Martha had sent for him.

‘She is a wonderful woman. You are lucky to have her for a wife, Gwyn!’ she said. ‘We are staying at the Bush until this nonsense is settled.’

John soon learned that the two women had ridden all the way on horseback, shunning any form of cart or litter. With a bailiff and a reeve as escort, his mother had travelled from Stoke across the Teign on the Shaldon ferry and stayed with Hilda the previous night, coming on to Exeter that morning.

When the food had been eaten and every detail of the story recounted, John made them tell him again of the way in which William had showed signs of recovery and the degree to which he was improving.

‘He is now quite rational in his speech, thank God, though very weak,’ said his mother, crossing herself in unison with Thomas, who stood behind, smiling benignly. ‘He recalls almost nothing of the many days that he was delirious and without speech, but already he is planning the crops he wants planted in the spring! Evelyn has stayed behind to care for him; otherwise she would have been with us.’

After an hour Enyd pleaded fatigue, though she looked as energetic as ever, but she made Gwyn and Thomas escort her back to the Bush for food and rest — an obvious ploy to leave Hilda alone with her son.

The two sat side by side on the cold stone, holding hands, the most they felt able to do in this consecrated place.

‘What will become of us, John?’ she asked quietly. ‘I know you can hang for this unless the real killer can be unmasked.’

‘That will never happen, Hilda my love,’ he said with a confidence that he did not fully believe. ‘I have forty days’ grace, but I shall not stay in here for long. Henry de Furnellis is in a difficult position and I would not wish to get him into deep trouble by allowing him to connive at my escape. But I will manage it, never fear. I have given no promise not to try.’

Neither of them wished to mention the obvious consequence of Matilda’s death, that he was now a free man. With her body as yet unburied and John committed to trial for murder, it was a forbidden subject, yet both of them knew that the possible outcome hovered unbidden over them.

Eventually, he reluctantly sent her away to join his mother at the Bush, with her promise that she and Enyd would come again that evening. All his friends came one by one during the rest of the day, including Mary, who brought Brutus up to see him at the door of the chapel. His first news for every visitor was the recovery of his brother, not a discussion of his own predicament. He even joined Brother Rufus on his knees at the altar in solemn and genuine thanksgiving for William’s escape from death.

Henry de Furnellis came to see him late in the afternoon and again pleaded for John’s understanding of the difficult position in which he had been placed by Aubrey de Courtenay.

‘He is strongly under the influence of Richard de Revelle, who detests me for replacing him as sheriff,’ he said bitterly. ‘Though God knows I did not seek the bloody job! All I want is a quiet life down at my manor, but if I put a foot wrong over this affair he will see that I am dishonoured and ruined.’

Once again, John tried to assure his friend that he knew the problem and he forbade Henry to take any risks with his honour and reputation. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I will miss any opportunity to find a way out of this damned place!’ he added vehemently.

They went over the same old ground again, trying to think of possible suspects and ways to flush them out, but made no progress.

‘I suppose I could re-arrest those two swine we had here in the undercroft, if they poke their noses outside the cathedral Close,’ suggested the sheriff. ‘Then I could set Stigand on to them and see what he can wring out of them with his persuasive instruments!’

‘That will get you into trouble with the bishop, Henry,’ warned John. ‘Best let things lie for the moment. I’ll think of something. I still have Gwyn and clever little Thomas to work for me on the outside.’

When Henry had gone, John sat slumped on his flinty ledge as yet another dusk began to creep over the city. He rubbed his chin, where a black stubble was forming, as he had missed his weekly wash and shave on Saturday. His black hair, worn long at the back, was greasy and tangled, and he felt generally grubby and unkempt. ‘Forty days of this and I’ll be looking like some wild hermit from a cave on Dartmoor!’ he muttered to himself.

In desperation he began plotting how to escape from Rougemont, the fortress on the hill. John had noticed an old Benedictine habit belonging to Rufus hanging in an alcove at the back of the chapel. He thought he might pass himself off as the chaplain, if he padded his belly with a blanket to imitate the fat monk’s figure and pulled the hood well over his face. Getting past the sentry at the gate was the problem, but maybe Gwyn could cause some sort of diversion to distract him, such as a fire at the other end of the inner ward. He decided to broach the subject when the Cornishman brought up his supper that evening. But once again Fate had other plans.

Mary was seated in her kitchen-hut at the back of John’s house, thinking what she might take up to him tomorrow for his dinner. When she had visited him earlier, she demanded to be allowed to feed him, as well as the supply from the Bush.

‘I am your cook, Sir Coroner!’ she claimed, using the title she employed when she was annoyed or sarcastic. ‘You house me and pay for the food we eat, so I am going to feed you.’ Her mild impertinence was a cover for her deep concern for him, as well as for her own future if he ended up swinging at the end of a rope. She sat fondling the old hound’s ears and trying to decide between another meat pie, which was easier to eat at the back of a church, or a grilled fowl in a basket.

As she sat in the fading evening light, she gradually became aware of a moaning sound nearby. Brutus pricked up his ears and padded out of the shed, his head cocked on one side as he listened.

‘What is it, lad?’ she asked him, as he stared at the high wooden fence that separated their yard from the one next door. The dog gave a deep woof and went to the bottom of the fence and scratched at the rough boards. Mary put her eye to one of the narrow cracks but could see nothing in the poor light. Then the sound came again, a gasping croak, followed by more soft moaning.

Unable to see over the fence, the cook-maid turned and ran up the wooden steps that led to the solar, the room that projected high up from the back of the house. Halfway up, she peered over into the next-door yard and saw someone lying on the ground, moving feebly. Mary shouted down, but there was no response. As she hurried back down the steps, Lucille emerged from her cubicle underneath, disturbed by the footsteps and the shouting.

‘What’s happening, Mary?’ she said fearfully, her nervous nature already stretched to its limit by all the recent troubles. The two women were not good friends, as Mary knew she had often carried tales to Matilda, but the present upheaval in the household had submerged their differences.

‘It looks as if Mistress Cecilia has been taken ill. I hope by every saint in the calendar that it’s not the plague!’

The dark-haired cook jogged around the side passage to the vestibule and went out into Martin’s Lane, Lucille following timidly in her wake. Mention of the plague had abruptly dampened her willingness to help, but she felt obliged to see what was happening.

Mary ran to the front door of the doctor’s house and saw that it was wide open. At the threshold, she called out, as a servant had no right to barge in to someone else’s dwelling, but there was no response. With Lucille close behind, she stepped straight into the darkened hall, as there was no vestibule as in the de Wolfe house.

The door to the yard was at the back of the large chamber, and a faint rectangle of light showed that it, too, was open. Mary made towards it but was pulled up by a piercing shriek from the French woman behind her, who had veered off slightly to her left and tripped over the legs of a body on the floor.

Their eyes now better used to the gloom, Mary saw that Cecilia’s young maid was crumpled on the rushes. When she knelt near her, she was relieved to hear her still breathing, though in a jerky, snoring fashion. She smelled blood and, feeling with her hands in the girl’s fair hair, found a sticky patch, already swelling under her fingers.

Lucille was blubbering with fright, but Mary was made of much sterner stuff. She rose to her feet and shook the maid by her thin shoulders.

‘Stop that stupid noise, girl!’ she commanded. ‘Now run over to Andrew in the stables and tell him that someone has been attacked and to raise the hue and cry. Hurry, damn you!’

She pushed Lucille towards the door and bent over the maid again. There was nothing she could do for her in the dark and moving her might cause more damage. The unexpected finding had momentarily driven from her mind the fact that there was someone else moaning outside. She sped to the back door and went out into the yard, where there was still some twilight.

‘God preserve us from more bodies!’ she muttered as she saw yet another figure lying on the cold earth, between the privy and the well. ‘At least this one is still moving.’

Once more, she dropped to her knees. This time alongside Cecilia, for it was the mistress of the house who was sprawled face down on the dirt, making harsh, guttural noises, alternating with pitiful moans. Mary tried to lift her up but only managed to roll her on to her back, where her croaking breaths became more laboured. Squatting on the ground, Mary hoisted her shoulders up and cradled her on her lap, feeling powerless to do any more for the ailing woman.

‘At least it’s not the damned plague,’ she murmured distractedly. ‘But is someone trying to assassinate all the women in Martin’s Lane?’

Thankfully, there was the noise of boots in the hall and Andrew, the red-headed farrier from across the lane, appeared with one of his stable boys.

‘I’ve sent for help. The constables and some neighbours will soon be here!’ he announced tersely. His groom held a lantern, a pair of candles behind a window of thin horn, which was enough to dimly illuminate the scene. By its flickering light they could see that Cecilia’s face was congested and puffy, with a speckle of blood spots in the whites of her eyes. Mary pulled away her cover-chief to release a cascade of black hair and, in case it was impeding her breathing, loosened the silken gorget which ran from ear to ear under her chin.

‘Look at her neck!’ exclaimed the farrier. ‘Covered in bruises, poor lady!’

Mary recalled that it was the second time in a few days that she had seen marks like this, then her mind soared! Surely two such stranglings, not fifty paces apart, must have been made by the same attacker? And that could not be John de Wolfe, as he was incarcerated in St Mary’s Chapel!

Her elation was promptly interrupted by Cecilia, who grasped the arm that was supporting her and began croaking unintelligibly.

‘You are safe now, mistress,’ soothed Mary. ‘Help is coming soon, then we will get you to bed.’ She almost added that they would also send for a physician, until she realised that the only doctor this side of Bristol was the woman’s own husband.

In spite of Mary’s reassurance, the injured woman persisted in trying to speak. Putting her ear closer and telling Cecilia to whisper instead of trying to croak, she managed after several attempts to make out a few words.

‘Clement … my husband … tried to kill me … just as he killed poor Matilda!’

John de Wolfe was sitting on his ledge in the garrison chapel, thinking rather selfishly that they were late with his supper tonight, as his stomach was rumbling. For the moment he was dwelling more on his hunger than on his serious predicament.

It was now virtually dark and he had lit one of his thin rushlights from the single candle that burned on the altar, sticking the grease-soaked reed between two cracks in the masonry.

Suddenly, he heard running feet echoing in the gatehouse archway and some indistinct shouting. Before he could get to the porch, the bulky figure of Brother Rufus burst in, shouting for him.

‘John! Gwyn has just come up from town, seeking the sheriff. He told me to tell you that your next-door neighbour has been attacked!’

‘What! Clement the physician?’

‘No, it’s his wife! Their maid is injured as well.’

‘Did Gwyn say who did it? What the hell’s going on?’ demanded de Wolfe.

The chaplain shook his head, dimly seen in the gloom. ‘I don’t know, your man didn’t stop. He was heading for the keep to get Henry de Furnellis.’

‘Henry’s not there. He told me he was going back to his house,’ exclaimed John, agitated that something important was going on and he was not a part of it. He fumed for a moment, then pushed past Rufus to get to the door.

‘I’m going out and to hell with the consequences!’ he snarled. ‘I must know what’s happening out there.’

The monk grabbed him with a very strong arm. ‘Wait, John! If you break sanctuary, you may pay for it with your life. I’ll go and find out what all this is about, before you do anything rash.’ He vanished and, moving quickly for such a big man, hurried over to the keep. At the foot of the wooden stairs that went up to the entrance, he met Ralph Morin clattering down, Gwyn close behind him.

‘We must collect the sheriff from North Gate Street and get down to Martin’s Lane as fast as we can!’ shouted the castle constable.

As the three men set off across the inner ward, Ralph yelled at a passing soldier and told him to collect Sergeant Gabriel and half a dozen men, to follow them down to the town.

‘De Wolfe was on the point of breaking out when he heard the news,’ panted Rufus, his bulk beginning to slow him down. ‘I managed to stop him, but not for long, I suspect!’

Morin stopped dead near the gatehouse. Tugging at his forked beard, he made a decision. ‘He can come with us now! I’ll vouch for him. I’ll say he’s my prisoner under parole.’

Gwyn shot towards the chapel and immediately emerged with the coroner, who had been standing in the porch in a fever of anxiety.

‘We’re all going down to find Henry,’ snapped Morin, starting to jog again. ‘Officially, you’re my prisoner, John, so please don’t make a run for it!’

‘Why the hell should I do that now?’ retorted de Wolfe. ‘It sounds as if this might vindicate me, though I’m still not clear what’s happened.’

‘Nor am I, so let’s find out!’ growled Ralph.

They trotted down the hill and along the High Street and when they reached the corner of Martin’s Lane they heard and saw a crowd of people milling around outside the two houses that stood side by side opposite the livery stables.

‘Gwyn, go to the sheriffs house and drag him out,’ commanded Morin. ‘Tell him what you know and bring him back here as fast as you can.’

With John and Rufus at his side, Ralph pushed his way through the throng, where Osric and Theobald, the city constables, were trying to organise a hue and cry from the disorderly crowd. Inside Clement’s hall, a couple of local matrons were bending over the young maid, who was still unconscious.

‘She’s had a bad blow on the head, poor lamb,’ said one. ‘We’ve sent for Richard Lustcote the apothecary, but I think she should be taken to the monks at St John’s.’

A few candles had now been lit, and John, who suddenly became a coroner once more, suspected that by the look of the large bruise on her jaw, the girl had been punched in the face and had then fallen backwards, striking her head.

There was cry from outside the back door, and de Wolfe recognised Mary’s voice. He hurried out ahead of Morin and the monk, to see his cook-maid sitting on the earth in the gloom, still cradling the head and shoulders of Cecilia of Salisbury.

‘She has been throttled, John!’ said Mary, forgetting the ‘Sir’ in her agitation. ‘But she seems in no danger, though her voice has almost gone. But she managed to tell me that she cannot remember anything since he attacked her.’

‘He? Who’s he?’ demanded John, almost demented with mixed rage and relief.

‘Yes, what evil bastard did this?’ bellowed Ralph Morin from behind him.

‘She says it was her husband,’ answered Mary in a voice choked with emotion. ‘And she said that Clement also strangled my mistress, may God curse him!’

An hour later some order had been made out of the chaos in Martin’s Lane. The apothecary had examined both Cecilia and her maid, who was slowly showing signs of regaining her wits. Richard Lustcote decided that neither would gain anything by being carried off to St John’s Priory and that bed rest and some soothing potions would be the best treatment.

John had sent Gwyn down to the Bush to fetch Enyd and Hilda and soon they arrived, weeping tears of relief at his sudden deliverance from the accusation of murder. His mother clutched him to her breast as if she wanted to crush him back into the womb that had borne him, while Hilda braved his black stubble to give him tender kisses of thankfulness. Once they had vented their emotion, they willingly agreed to help tend to the two victims in Cecilia’s own house.

Instead of a solar, there was a bedroom partitioned off the hall, and here the lady of the house was gently laid on her couch. Lustcote applied some soothing balm to her bruised throat and gave her a honeyed draught to ease her battered voice-box. The maid normally slept in the warm kitchen-shed, as they had no live-in cook, so after her head wound had been cleaned and bandaged she was laid there, under the watchful eyes of a benign neighbour.

John had looked at the damage to Cecilia’s neck while Richard Lustcote was anointing it and saw typical finger bruises and nail scratches on the skin.

‘Almost exactly the same as those on Matilda’s throat,’ he told Henry de Furnellis when the men were standing around the fire in his own hall next door, drinking some ale after all the commotion. A dozen neighbours and a few men-at-arms had gone off around the city streets as the hue and cry, this time looking for Clement the physician.

‘Why the scratches, as well as the blue bruises?’ asked Brother Rufus, who did not intend to miss any of this drama.

‘From fingernails,’ explained de Wolfe. ‘Usually from the victim trying to tear away the strangler’s hands.’

‘Why should her husband want to kill her, for Christ’s sake?’ demanded Henry de Furnellis. ‘And why kill Matilda, as she claimed?’

John shrugged, though he badly wanted to know the answer himself. ‘When she can speak more easily, no doubt all will be made plain. In the meantime, where is that murderous bastard?’

The sheriff for once looked optimistic, a rare mood for him. ‘We’ll get him, never fear! I’ve sent soldiers down to each of the city gates, to make sure that tonight no one goes in or out. Hopefully, not a mouse can leave the city, so he must be in here somewhere.’

Leaving the women to look after the victims, they decided to join the hunt and, after placing a man-at-arms on the door, dispersed to join the various groups who had formed the hue and cry about the town. By now, the city grapevine had alerted almost the whole population; one of these was Thomas, who hurried up just as John and Gwyn were leaving.

His peaky face was creased in smiles when Gwyn explained that their master was now free from suspicion, and he crossed himself repeatedly as he murmured a prayer of thanks for John’s deliverance.

‘We’re off to look for this damned doctor now,’ rumbled Gwyn. ‘You’re the clever one among us — where do you reckon he might be hiding?’

‘Have you tried the place where he holds his healing consultations?’ suggested Thomas. ‘I think it was in Goldsmith Street.’

They hurried to the lane near the Guildhall, but found it was one of the first places that the men of the hue and cry had thought of. Theobald, the fat constable, was still standing outside the shop when they arrived.

‘Osric told me to keep watch in case Clement came back,’ he explained.

‘Came back? So was he here before?’ snapped de Wolfe.

Theobald waved a hand at the premises behind him, which was a former cordwainer’s shop with a wooden shutter on the front which was lowered to form a display counter.

‘The door was open and there’s some disorder inside, bottles and pills scattered on the floor, but no sign of the doctor.’

Thomas had a quick look inside the single room and came out nodding. ‘Looks as if he was searching for something in great haste,’ he reported.

The coroner looked from face to face. ‘Now where do we look?’ he asked angrily. He had collected his sword from his hall and was swishing it aggressively, as if practising to lop off the head of the man who had slain his wife.

As usual, it was Thomas who had the best suggestion. ‘The physician is a very devout man, perhaps abnormally so, by all accounts,’ he observed. ‘So perhaps he has taken himself to a church to seek absolution for his many sins?’

‘Perhaps he’s also seeking sanctuary!’ said Gwyn with unconscious irony, after de Wolfe’s recent manoeuvre.

The coroner rasped a hand over his bristly cheeks as he thought of the various places Clement might have gone to.

‘Not the cathedral, it’s too obvious and too many people hanging about there. But what about St Olave’s; he is very friendly with that poxy priest, Julian Fulk.’

For want of any better idea, they set off down the High Street and across Carfoix to the little church at the top of Fore Street, founded by Gytha, the Saxon mother of King Harold. Outside, de Wolfe hesitated and beckoned to his clerk.

‘Thomas, I can’t go storming in there with a naked sword and I’m not leaving it in the street. You’re a priest. You go in and see if there’s any sign of him.’

He waited with Gwyn at the edge of the road, listening to the cries of other searchers lower down towards the West Gate. The fitful light of a gibbous moon appeared through a gap in the clouds and illuminated another group of men coming out of Milk Lane almost opposite, their tramping feet echoing in the night air.

Then their attention was jerked back to the church as Thomas’s face appeared in the doorway, looking even paler than usual, given the poor light.

‘You’d better come in, master!’ he said in a very subdued voice. ‘Sword or no sword, this is more important.’

John and his officer followed the clerk into the bare nave lit only by a pair of candles on the altar.

As Thomas led them towards the chancel step, he began intoning, ‘Domine, requiem aeternam dona eis, et lux perpetua luceat eis.’

A moment later they saw the outline of a man spreadeagled across the step, his arms outstretched as if in supplication to the cross on the altar table. De Wolfe bent and grasped the back of his hair and lifted the head to see the face.

It was Clement of Salisbury, his features contorted in a final grimace of agony, his mouth twisted into a rictus of pain. Smashed alongside him was a small pottery bottle, a trickle of dark liquid still seeping down a crack in the chancel step, just as the physician’s life had seeped away a short while earlier.

Next morning the main participants assembled again in the hall of Clement’s house. Mary had brought in pastries, ale, cider and wine from her kitchen, and they sat around the large table where some time ago John and Matilda had eaten supper with the physician and his wife.

‘How is the young maid today?’ asked the sheriff, who sat at the head of the table.

‘Recovering, thank the Blessed Virgin,’ said Enyd de Wolfe, who had appointed herself chief nurse. ‘She has regained her senses but has a severe headache and her face is sore from that bruise. The apothecary, bless him, has given her a strong draught to let her sleep today.’

‘The poor child must have had a heavy blow to the face,’ added Hilda, who sat next to John and held his hand under cover of the table.

‘My husband hit her when she tried to stop him assaulting me,’ whispered Cecilia. She had insisted on leaving her bed when the others came, saying that it was her throat that was afflicted, not her legs or brain. She wore a heavy blue brocade surcoat over her nightgown, the collar turned up over a swathe of bandage that Richard Lustcote had wound around her neck to hold his poultice in place.

‘Don’t strain your throat, dear woman,’ advised Enyd solicitously, but Cecilia said that whispering was not a problem.

‘I want to expose all the facts of this terrible matter, so that no one carries any further blame,’ she breathed earnestly. ‘The fault lay entirely in this household, I fear, for my husband was quite mad, though I did not fully realise it until last night.’

The others listened in horrified fascination as she slowly and quietly revealed the extent of Clement’s obsessions.

‘He did not move to Exeter to set up a better physician’s practice,’ she said. ‘We were forced to leave Salisbury because of his behaviour.’

‘In what sense, lady?’ asked Brother Rufus in a gentle voice.

‘His obsession with religion, which he must have had all his life, grew more extreme there. His first choice was to become a priest, not a doctor, but his parents would not allow it. Perhaps even then they suspected his strange notions.’

‘Which were?’ prompted Thomas, fascinated by this story of religious distortion.

‘That the perfection of the Church was established by the early founders in Rome and this was the only thing that mattered. Adherence to their precepts was the salvation of the world and any deviation from their rituals was the work of the devil.’

‘But many priests, especially in the higher orders, would fully agree with that!’ objected Rufus mildly.

Cecilia coughed and paused a moment to rest her voice, Enyd patting her shoulder and offering her a cup of watered wine.

‘Not to the exclusion of every other topic,’ she continued after a while. ‘He preached at me continually, always on the same theme of the purity of the Church of Rome and the need to be always vigilant against its enemies and detractors. It became so monotonous that I tried to turn away from God, but he punished me for it.’

‘Punished? You mean by force?’ asked Hilda aghast.

For answer Cecilia pushed up the loose sleeves of her surcoat and exposed her arms. They bore many yellow and green bruises, some of considerable age.

‘He often pulled and punched me, if I dared disagree with his ranting or was reluctant to go to devotions with him. But he took care to mark me only where it did not show in public’

‘The bastard!’ muttered John. ‘Who would have guessed it?’

‘The people in Salisbury, for a start,’ replied Cecilia. ‘Though he was an effective physician, as long as he was paid well enough, he could never resist preaching at his patients and became unpopular as a result.’

‘Was that cause enough to leave?’ asked Rufus.

‘The end began when he struck one woman who told him to leave religion to the priests and stick to prescribing pills!’ replied Cecilia. ‘The last straw was when he refused to treat a sick infant when he discovered it had not yet been baptised and it later died.’

‘And you say he was violent towards you — did he ever try to strangle you, like last night?’ asked Henry de Furnellis.

‘No, it was always shaking and striking,’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘And he would also punish me by his strange ways in the bedchamber,’ she whispered, her pallid face flushing as she dropped her eyes in embarrassment.

The sheriff hurried to cover up her distress by changing the direction of his questions. ‘We need to know why he tried to kill you and how that was connected to the death of Lady Matilda next door,’ he said gravely.

Enyd held up her hand and then gave Cecilia a cup of warm honeyed milk. ‘She is talking too much, important as it is. Give her a moment’s rest, please.’

Mary, who was hovering in the background, occupied the break by handing round the platter of pastries filled with chopped meat and herbs and refilling empty cups from the jugs that stood on the table. Soon, Cecilia finished her soothing draught and handed the mug back to John’s mother with a grateful smile.

‘It all happened so quickly last night,’ she continued. ‘Clement had claimed he had a sore throat since the previous evening and had bound up his neck with a length of flannel, just as I am now!’ She smiled wanly at the ironic similarity. ‘Last evening he came in from his work and said he was going to apply more liniment to his throat, so went into the bedchamber. A few moments later I happened to walk in on him and found him with his tunic opened at the neck, as he pulled off the long strip of flannel.’

She stopped and stared down at her hands on the edge of the table, as if reliving that cataclysmic moment in her life.

‘And then?’ prompted John gently.

‘I saw that the skin of his neck was covered in scratches, running downwards under his chin and jaw. I knew what they were; they were made by fingernails clawing at his neck. Instantly, he tried to cover them up again with the cloth, to hide them from me, so I knew they came from some wrongdoing. My first thought was that they were from some woman’s passion in love-making, but then they should have been on his back and chest, not under his chin.’

There was a silence, partly from further embarrassment at the carnal nature of the explanation, but also because Cecilia’s eyes had again filled with tears.

‘I was afraid to challenge him on his infidelity in case he began beating me, but he started ranting about heretics, claiming that this was all their fault. If it had not been for them and the need to exterminate every one, he raved at me, he would not have been in this predicament!’

‘What did he mean?’ asked the sheriff mystified.

De Wolfe was quicker off the mark in his understanding. ‘Was he confessing to having set the fire that killed the fuller in Milk Lane?’

Cecilia started to nod, but the movement hurt her neck and she grimaced before replying. ‘Yes, Sir John. Without my even asking, he started to complain about the forces of the devil being against him, when he was trying to perform God’s work in ridding the city of those who denied the omnipotence of the Holy Church. Those were his actual words!’

She shuddered as she recollected that awful moment. ‘He said that as he was leaving Milk Lane after carrying out his duty as ordained by the Almighty, he saw Matilda de Wolfe standing in the doorway of St Olave’s and was sure that she had recognised him.’

John groaned with dismay as he heard this, recollecting his wife’s strange mood the following day, which must now be put down to her suspicions of the physician. For God’s sake, why did she not confide in him? he agonised.

Enyd offered Cecilia another cup, but she shook her head.

‘By now, my husband was advancing on me, his hands reaching for my throat, as he knew he had fatally compromised himself.’ Her whispers were vibrant with emotion, and John’s mother slipped a comforting arm around her shoulder.

‘But my wife?’ croaked John. ‘What had happened?’

‘Clement said that he could no longer bear the suspense of waiting for her to denounce him and went into her house to confront her. She admitted she had seen him slink out of Milk Lane immediately after the fire had started. Not sure of his guilt, she was going to tell her husband the next day, as it was her duty as wife of a law officer.’

De Wolfe groaned at the explanation. Matilda was prepared to follow her conscience, in spite of her antipathy to him — but she had left it too late.

‘So he silenced her, just as he tried to silence you?’

Cecilia sobbed and Enyd held her tight. ‘He came for me and I ran in here, but he seized me by the throat. My poor little maid heard the commotion, ran in and tried to pull him off, but he felled her to the floor. He ranted that I was a heretic at heart, avoiding church when I could and refusing to join their petition to the canons. I shook him off and ran into the yard, trying to escape, but he followed … and that was the last I remember until you kind people revived me. He must have thought that he had left me dead!’

‘She has had enough now!’ said Enyd de Wolfe firmly. ‘We’ll put you to rest for a while, my dear.’

As the other women went to settle Cecilia on her bed, the men continued to sit around the table in a subdued mood.

‘What happens now?’ asked Ralph Morin, who had been a silent listener to this drama. ‘Where does John stand in this?’

Henry de Furnellis poured himself a pint of cider and drank half of it before replying. ‘Legally, he’s a sanctuary seeker and stands committed by a coroner’s jury to trial before the king’s judges,’ he said. ‘But as that idiot de Courtenay was so grossly influenced by Richard de bloody Revelle, I intend ignoring his verdict in the light of what has happened since.’

‘The facts will have to be put before the Justices of Assize, as a matter of record,’ said John doggedly, even though it might be to his disadvantage.

‘I hope so — otherwise that persistent troublemaker de Revelle will wriggle out of it once again,’ growled Morin.

Thomas de Peyne ventured a suggestion, which was always worth heeding. ‘The Chief Justiciar knows the situation in Devon very well, sir. Should not a letter be sent to him, explaining what has happened? As he’s Archbishop of Canterbury as well, the fact that this grew out of a heresy problem makes it all the more relevant.’

Archbishop Hubert Walter was an old Crusader and knew John de Wolfe better than most other men. It would be a good insurance against any repercussions over this affair, and the sheriff approved of the idea.

‘The next time I go to Westminster with the county farm for the Exchequer, I’ll take such a letter — and see Hubert myself to explain what’s been going on here.’

They sat drinking for a moment longer, then Gwyn opened up a different aspect of the drama.

‘What about these other killings?’ he grunted. ‘Are they all down to this doctor fellow?’

De Wolfe reflectively scratched a flea bite on his head. ‘Maybe we’ll never know! With Clement’s confessed guilt about my wife and to burning that family to death, as well as attacking his wife and her maid, everyone will be happy to lay all other crimes at his feet.’

‘I suppose there’s no reason why he couldn’t have done them,’ boomed Ralph Morin. ‘As a physician, he travelled about outside Exeter. It’s no distance to Wonford, and the other murders were actually in the city.’

The sheriff shrugged. ‘As John says, we’ll never know the whole truth, though he seems the most obvious culprit. The way that poor man’s voice-box was cut out smacks of medical knowledge to me.’

‘Yet that mad monk Alan de Bere and his fanatical friend Rugge were crazy enough to have been the killers,’ countered John.

‘And I wouldn’t put it past those proctors’ men, either!’ added Brother Rufus darkly. ‘Whoever it was, God will know well enough when it comes to the Day of Judgement.’

Thomas nodded fervently and crossed himself, and with a sense of anticlimax the meeting broke up, John taking Mary back next door, leaving his mother and Hilda to care for the bruised and battered women.

Gwyn and Thomas thought it best to leave their master to his own thoughts, so John settled in his chair in the empty hall, with only Brutus and a cup of wine for company.

He sat brooding darkly on what he had just heard. This was the very chamber in which that bastard Clement had ended his wife’s life, and though John was not sufficient of a hypocrite to shed crocodile tears, it was still his wife and the woman who had shared his life for so many years, albeit intermittently. What right had that swine to take her away in such a violent fashion? The sudden horror of that episode even overshadowed the obvious liberation that it had given him, the freedom now to be with Hilda. His blonde mistress and lifelong friend was sensitive enough to avoid the subject for now, until the emotional avalanche had levelled out.

She said she would stay at the Bush for another two nights, to attend Matilda’s funeral, which John de Alençon had arranged for tomorrow in the cathedral. Then she would have to go back with Enyd, who was keen to return to help Evelyn look after William, who was still very weak. John was determined to escort them back himself, as he was desperate to see his brother returning to health.

He sat for a while longer before going up to Rougemont, where Gwyn said a local case needed his attention. He would also have to hold an inquest on Clement of Salisbury later that day — on reflection, it was fortunate that he had killed himself, as John had been fully prepared to run his sword through him if he had found him alive, getting himself into more trouble.

Richard Lustcote, whom John called to look at the body and the broken flask, had said that from the smell and tentative taste, the black fluid was a strong extract of monkshood and belladonna and possibly other poisons that the physician would have had in his pharmacopoeia.

With a sigh he hauled himself out of his chair and, with a final pensive glance at the empty one on the other side of the hearth, he went out of the hall to carry on with his life.