The Awful Secret

Chapter Four In which Crowner John visits the Shambles

Mindful of Matilda’s infatuation with the handsome Templar, John was a little concerned that Nesta might suffer the same symptoms, but although her eyebrows rose a little when he walked in with de Ridefort, she showed no signs of falling for him. After de Wolfe had explained the need for bed and board, Nesta sent the newcomer up the ladder with one of her maids, to approve his accommodation and leave his roll of belongings. The large space under the thatch of the Bush’s steep roof was divided into a number of sleeping spaces. Nesta had one corner, with the luxury of a door, while the rest of the boarded space was communal sleeping, with mattresses filled with clean straw, and a few open-ended cubicles, containing similar straw pallets.

While de Ridefort was up there, Nesta asked, ‘Who is he, John? A good-looking man, but he speaks poor English. Is he French?’

De Wolfe explained a little of the situation, but refrained from saying that he was a fugitive. ‘He is an ex-Templar, but whether he is still celibate I don’t know – so watch your step, my girl!’ His attempt at wit was half-hearted and Nesta knew him well enough to sense that there was more to this business than just a passing traveller wanting a bed for a few nights.

‘This is the man who has been stalking you! Come on, Sir Crowner, you can tell me more about him than that.’

‘I know little myself, except that he wants to remain incognito while in Exeter. He is expecting a friend soon, then they are off to Ireland. I knew him slightly in the old fighting days, and he has looked me up as he was passing through.’

Nesta sniffed peevishly. ‘You know more than you let on, John. What’s all the mystery?’

He was spared answering by the descent of de Ridefort down the rickety steps, and soon they were drinking ale and eating a pair of boiled fowls that Nesta had caused to materialise from the cooking shed behind the inn. Some other travellers had just arrived and she was dealing with them, so the two men had time for a low-voiced conversation, to the chagrin of Edwin, an incorrigible eavesdropper.

‘I have been absent from Paris these past six weeks,’ murmured Gilbert. ‘By now, the Master will have sent urgent news about me to London.’

‘How would they know you came to England?’

De Ridefort smiled sadly. ‘John, you should know after all your travels that the Poor Knights of Christ have the best intelligence in the world. There are Templars or their agents in every town and every port of any size. Nothing happens but they know about it – they need information to conduct their huge business transactions. They fund most of the kings of Europe and lend money to anyone who pays a sufficient levy on it. They will know that I took ship from Harfleur to Southampton. Soon, they will be after me, and their efficiency is legendary. I should know – I have been one of them these past fifteen years.’

He looked around the room, searching the faces of the merchants, tradesmen, travellers and harlots who made up the customers of the Bush, as if a Templar might be hidden amongst them already. ‘Sooner or later they will catch up with me, unless Bernardus and I can get abroad before they arrive.’

John was beginning to tire of this repetitive forecast of doom. ‘If you have not revealed this great secret of yours, whatever it might be, then what have you to fear?’

‘The very fact that we have left the Order and broken virtually all the rules laid down by St Bernard. That is enough. It may be a mortal crime, our lives may already be forfeit. Certainly, the best we can hope for if we are recovered by them is endless incarceration and penance.’

He tore at his chicken and as de Wolfe began thinking aloud. ‘There are no Templars in or near Exeter, that I know. There is a small Preceptory beyond Tavistock, almost fifteen miles from here.’

‘I know how they act, John. The main Commandery in London will send men to seek me out. They may well require any local Templars to assist them, but the thrust of the search will be from our New Temple on the banks of the Thames. The gravity of the secret is such that they will not entrust any great responsibility to rural knights or sergeants. It will be senior brothers who come after us.’

De Wolfe snorted with impatience. ‘You keep on about this bloody secret, Gilbert! How does your Order know you have it and that you might broadcast it? And why should you wish to do that, anyway? Don’t you have fifteen years of loyalty to consider?’

De Ridefort dropped the remains of his fowl and pushed the thick trencher of gravy-sodden bread away from him. ‘It torments me all the time. Bernardus and I were too outspoken and argumentative about many things in Paris. We thought we were indulging in academic discussion with our fellows, but as the truth began to dawn upon us, after I learned of certain matters we should not have explored, we were cautioned then reviled. I had already had enough of whispered innuendoes about my uncle, whom the younger Templars now accuse of incompetence at best and treachery at worst in his calamitous behaviour in the Holy Land.’

‘The sins of the uncles visited upon the nephews, eh?’ misquoted John cynically.

‘Not only did the brothers of the Order began to despise and suspect me, but the priests outside started murmuring heresy. There is great trouble brewing in France, John, especially in the south-west, where de Blanchefort comes from. Though generally the Templars have sympathy with the Cathars there, in their dangerously unconventional beliefs, the power of Rome and its army of priests are becoming both anxious and vindictive – and some of that is falling on Bernardus and myself.’

‘So this great secret is a matter of Christian faith?’ asked de Wolfe, trying to pin down this elusive tale more firmly.

‘You could certainly say that,’ agreed Gilbert cautiously. ‘When the time comes, you will know it, along with the rest of the world, unless we are silenced beforehand.’

He would say no more, however much as John probed, and when Nesta came back to join them, the conversation was bent to other subjects. De Ridefort was particularly curious about the other’s duties as coroner, for no such office existed outside England. As they finished their meal, and drank more ale and some wine, de Wolfe explained his functions to an attentive listener who had many searching questions. The red-headed Welsh woman sat and listened to the two men and John noticed that her gaze often strayed to the profile of the handsome Frenchman. Eventually, Nesta was called away to settle some shrieking dispute between her maids in the kitchen.

As soon as they were alone again, de Ridefort returned to his worries. ‘I’ll stay here in the inn for most of the day, John, and not show myself about the town.’

‘No one here knows you, that’s for sure,’ said de Wolfe, to reassure him, ‘but I’ll keep an eye open for you. Both my officer Gwyn and my nosy little clerk know everything that happens in this city. So does Nesta, for that matter – her intelligence is county-wide!’

De Ridefort reached an arm across the table and gripped John’s elbow with a strong hand. ‘Let me know of any strangers who arrive. They need not be in Templar dress – we do not always wear it when necessity demands.’

‘I know you do not wear a chain-mail hauberk, but surely you always have your white mantle with the red cross on the shoulder?’

‘It is so claimed, John, but not always adhered to in travelling away from the Commanderies and Preceptories. And only the knights and chaplains wear the white mantle – the chaplains have it fastened in the front, but we must let ours hang loose. The lower ranks, such as sergeants, wear brown or black, but all with the red cross.’

De Wolfe sighed. ‘White, black or brown, cross or no cross, Gwyn and Thomas will watch out for you these coming days. Now I must get myself home, or my wife will chastise me.’

Somewhat uneasily, he left de Ridefort in the company of his mistress and made his way back to Martin’s Lane. It was now late afternoon and he had nothing to divert him in the way of corpses, rapes or even a serious assault.

As he was passing through the cathedral Close, he saw a familiar figure coming towards him, enveloped in a full black cloak. The crinkled grey hair surmounted a lean, ascetic face from which a pair of blue eyes looked out serenely on the world. It was John de Alençon, Archdeacon of Exeter, one of de Wolfe’s favourite churchmen, who lived in one of the dwellings in Canon’s Row, along the north side of the Close. After they had greeted each other and passed the time of day, de Wolfe thought he might tap the senior cleric’s knowledge of some of the things hinted at by Gilbert de Ridefort.

‘I recently met an old Templar friend I knew at the Crusades,’ he began, adapting the truth slightly. ‘He caused me to become curious about their beliefs and the strange secrecy that seems to surround their order.’

The Archdeacon took his arm and steered him towards the line of prebendaries’ houses. ‘Come and talk with me a while, John. I’ve seen little of you since you let your warhorse fall on to your leg.’

The priest’s asceticism did not extend to a rejection of good wine and soon they were sitting at a rough table in his bare room, the only ornament a plain wooden crucifix on the wall. Between them was a flask of his best wine from Poitou and each man held a heavy glass cup filled with it.

‘Why this sudden interest in theology, Crowner John?’ he mocked gently. ‘I’ve never taken you for a man who has much time for the Almighty, more’s the pity!’

De Wolfe grinned sheepishly. It was true that his devotions were reluctant and perfunctory – he went to Mass occasionally, but only on High Feasts or when Matilda nagged him to accompany her to some dreary service at St Olave’s. ‘It was meeting this old Crusading companion again, who now belongs to the Templar establishment in Paris. Some of the things he mentioned intrigued me, that’s all. The Order is said by some to have a rather different view of Christianity from the rest of us – is that true?’

He was fishing for information without wanting to give anything away, a difficult task with someone as astute as John de Alençon – but the cleric was happy to discourse on anything touching the Faith. ‘I agree with you that their organisation is somewhat peculiar,’ said the archdeacon. ‘Though they are under the direct protection of the Holy Father in Rome, many in the Church have for long been uneasy with the favoured status of the Templars.’

‘Why is this?’ prompted de Wolfe.

‘They are immune from orders by even the highest bishops, only bowing their knee to the Pope. They recruit not only devout men, especially rich ones with wealth or land to donate, but also attract excommunicate knights and persons with unorthodox views of religion,’ he said disapprovingly.

At this the coroner’s heavy eyebrows lifted. ‘I have heard that some accuse the Templars of heresy – but how can that be, in a such a devout body of men so favoured by Rome and patronised by St Bernard?’

The grey-haired priest looked shrewdly over the rim of his glass at his friend. ‘This is a strange conversation for you, John. You are usually full of tales about murdered men and mutilated corpses. Why this sudden interest in the Templars?’

De Wolfe sighed – he seemed to be transparent to his old friend.

‘This man seems to have fallen out with his Order. I can say no more, but I wondered if his dispute with them is real, or whether he has some ailment of the mind that convinces him he is persecuted.’

The archdeacon looked puzzled. ‘To fall out with the Templars would be very unusual – their brothers are bound to them for life. And it would be a very grave situation to fall foul of them as they are not known for their tolerance and forbearance with those who cross them.’

‘Do they have any dark secrets that they would not wish spread abroad?’

‘Rumours abound, John, but most are probably idle tittle-tattle. They have been accused of many things over the years.’

‘Such as?’ persisted the coroner.

‘Idolatry, including worshipping a disembodied head named Baphomet – and even the denial of the crucifixion of Our Lord and spitting on the True Cross.’ He shuddered and crossed himself as he uttered the words, reminding de Wolfe of his own clerk. ‘But I think these must be foul slanders about an Order so favoured by Rome.’

John sensed that he was getting on to ground that might prove harmful to de Ridefort, if the established Church had some antipathy to the Order of the Temple. He let the conversation slide into less dangerous topics, though he knew that the priest was still intrigued by his interest.

He spent an hour with de Alençon and when the wine flask was empty, the archdeacon walked him to the door of his narrow house. As they parted, the cleric’s last remark proved that he had not forgotten their earlier discussion.

‘Advise your friend, John, that he had better keep a good watch over his shoulder, if he has become at cross-purposes with the Poor Knights of Christ. They possess a very long arm indeed!’

When he arrived near his own house, de Wolfe saw Gwyn hovering in Martin’s Lane, talking to Andrew the farrier as he hammered a shoe on to a roan gelding. The Cornishman looked scruffier than usual, his tattered thick leather jerkin more frayed than ever and his serge breeches crumpled above his muddy boots. The only acceptable part of his outfit was the large scabbard that contained his broadsword, hanging from the diagonal baldric strap over his right shoulder.

‘Have you been at war while my back was turned?’ demanded the coroner as he approached his officer, whose flaming ginger hair and beard were as unkempt and tangled as if he had been through six blackthorn hedges.

Gwyn grinned amiably and patted the hilt of his sword. ‘There was a riot down in the Shambles just now – you can barely have missed it if you walked up from the Bush.’

‘Any work for us there? What was it all about?’ demanded his master.

‘One dead, two badly wounded,’ replied Gwyn. ‘One I injured myself, after he had killed the other fellow.’

De Wolfe was already striding off towards the meat market, which was on the other side of the cathedral Close. ‘Come on, man, tell me about it as we go.’

‘A group of men came into the city, driving a score of pigs. They set up a booth on Bell Hill, half-way up Southgate Street, and began killing a few hogs, offering the joints at a price lower than the Exeter traders’.’

‘They must have been fools – or desperate!’ said de Wolfe, as they hurried along. ‘It’s not even a market day! The local butchers wouldn’t stand for that.’

‘They didn’t – not for more than a few minutes. They started shouting at them, then overturning tables. The pigs were running wild, the traders were fighting and the customers were screaming in panic.’

‘What about the portreeves and burgesses? Where were they with their bailiffs?’

‘They soon arrived and it developed into a free-for-all. Then the cudgels came out and the knives, even a couple of old swords. It was bloody chaos!’

They hurried through Bear Lane and out into South Gate Street where the Serge Market lay slightly downhill from the Shambles, in the dip before the road rose again to the gate. There were plenty of people milling around, but no obvious fighting. ‘It’s gone quiet now,’ exclaimed Gwyn, in a disappointed tone. ‘All hell was let loose here half an hour ago.’

John de Wolfe pushed past a crowd of onlookers near an overturned stall to get to the middle of the road. He was carrying no sword, but kept a hand on the hilt of his dagger in case there was more trouble. Above the hubbub of chatter and complaint, he could hear a familiar voice shouting a few yards away. ‘Gabriel! What’s going on?’ he yelled, pushing through the crowd to reach the sergeant of the castle guard, who was shoving at the crowd with four other men-at-arms, clearing a space around some bodies on the fouled ground.

When John broke through, with Gwyn at his shoulder, he thought at first that there had been a massacre, as the mud was running with blood. ‘It’s not all from your customer, Crowner!’ the sergeant reassured him, his lined old face creasing into a grin. ‘Most of this is swine’s blood – though these human swine here have added a few pints!’

De Wolfe cursed as two terrified black pigs crashed against his legs, before careering off into the throng. He stepped into the squelching pink mud and looked down at a still corpse, then at two men groaning on the ground. One had blood pouring from a large gash in his scalp, the other was doubled up in pain, clutching his belly. From between his fingers, oozed an ominous dark red clot.

‘The dead ’un is a meat-hawker from Milk Street,’ announced Gabriel. ‘These other two are from the gang from the countryside.’

Gwyn bent over the man with the stomach wound. ‘I fixed this bastard,’ he said gruffly. ‘He was one who ran through the Exeter man.’

Gabriel and his men were gradually restoring order, pushing back the gawping crowd and getting some to restore the fallen booths. Here there was a disordered mixture of serge and worsted rolls, lamb and pork – much had ended up on the ground and urchins and dogs were playing with the meat. A few surreptitious looters were picking up joints and offal, trying to wipe away some of the mud before making off with their booty.

‘Where are the rest of the intruders?’ snapped de Wolfe.

‘I’ve got two of them pinioned over there, Crowner,’ answered Gabriel, motioning towards the nearest house. ‘The others have made a run for it. They’re far beyond the gate by now.’

John looked down at the dead and injured. ‘Better get the corpse taken to his home, if he’s a local.’

Gwyn nodded. ‘What about these other two?’

De Wolfe looked at the head wound on the first man. His hair was matted with blood, but the bleeding seemed to be slowing from the gash. He was sitting up, groaning, but conscious. ‘This one will live, unless the wound suppurates later. Gabriel, take him to the gaol down there at the South Gate. Illegal trading is a city problem, not one that concerns the king.’

‘I’m glad to hear you admit that, for once, John.’

Turning, de Wolfe saw the sheriff standing behind him, elegant in a short brown mantle over his long green tunic. He wore a close-fitting helmet of brown felt, tied under the chin, and his shoes were in the latest fashion, with long curled points at the toes.

De Wolfe pointed to the cadaver then moved his finger to the other man. ‘These are within my jurisdiction, Richard.’

‘But only one is dead, Coroner,’ said de Revelle sarcastically.

‘The other has a mortal wound,’ stated de Wolfe bluntly. After a score of years on many battlefields, he considered himself an authority on violent injuries. ‘He’s losing blood clots from his belly, so he’ll not last long. My officer put a sword into his vitals as he was killing this Exeter man.’

The victim about whom they were talking had slumped sideways and his face had taken on an ashen hue. A priest, a young vicar-choral from the cathedral, had pushed through the crowd and went to crouch by his side, cradling the dying man’s head on his lap. He pressed the small cross from a chain around his neck against the victim’s forehead and muttered a Latin absolution into now deaf ears.

‘No point in trying to take this one to the gaol, Crowner,’ said Gabriel, ‘but I’ll get the corpse moved and clap these other three in the gatehouse.’

‘You’d better get an apothecary to look at his wound. We don’t want him dying on us before he’s hanged,’ boomed a new voice. This came from a large warrior, with a forked grey beard, wearing a mailed hauberk and a round iron helmet. Ralph Morin, the castle constable, had come down with the sheriff and a dozen more soldiers to quell the disturbance. He took over from his sergeant and ordered the men-at-arms to get rid of the crowd. Grumbling and swearing, they dispersed gradually and the stalls were hoisted back into their places for trading to start again.

As the corpse was being carried away on a wattle hurdle, de Wolfe and his brother-in-law began walking back to the high street, Ralph Morin and Gwyn at either side. ‘I can’t see why they risk coming into the city, these out-of-town traders,’ said the sheriff testily. ‘They can set up their stalls a few hundred paces away outside the walls and no one can deny them.’

‘The portreeves and the burgesses are rightly strict about the monopoly within the city for the freemen. They pay their taxes and have a right to expect the best of the trading,’ said Ralph Morin. ‘If every free cottar and runaway could come in and sell at a lower price because they pay no dues, the city would be ruined in no time.’

‘I’ll have to hold an inquest on those two in the morning,’ grumbled de Wolfe. ‘For the other man will be dead long before then.’

‘I’ll hang the other three scum for you, John,’ offered de Revelle. ‘The County Court is held tomorrow and I’ll delay it until after your inquest.’

De Wolfe shook his head stubbornly. ‘Thank you, but no, Richard. If the killer lived, I would attach him for the next Eyre of Assize, but as he has no hope of surviving there’s no need. The remaining offence, unless the inquest finds otherwise, concerns trading, not killing, and the burgess court can deal with that. It’s not the business of either of us.’

Richard de Revelle clicked his tongue to convey his exasperation with de Wolfe’s interpretation of the legal system but, on probation himself over the rebellion, he was unable to be as despotic as before.

As they walked briskly in the chill March wind, Ralph Morin turned the conversation into a less controversial channel. ‘What about this problem up on the north coast? What are we doing about it?’

‘I’m sending Sergeant Gabriel up there with a few men to get a feel of the problem, if organised piracy is afoot,’ said de Revelle loftily.

John felt exasperated that the sheriff had appropriated his suggestion as if it was his own, but managed to bite back any protest. ‘I intend setting off straight after the court tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘We can get much of the way before nightfall and on to Ilfracombe the next day.’

‘I thought it was Appledore you were interested in,’ objected the sheriff.

‘We are – and Bideford and, perhaps, Combe Martin. But I have to see this survivor again. He may have recalled something that would help to identify the attackers. He was too ill when we first saw him to be very helpful.’

They fell silent for a while and soon were in the narrow main highway of the city. As they passed the Guildhall, two figures hurried out of the arched doorway of the new stone building and accosted them in the road. They were the two portreeves of Exeter, Hugh de Relaga and Henry Rifford. They had been elected by their fellow burgesses to lead the civic organisation of the city, especially commerce, as the markets and fairs, the wool and cloth trades made Exeter one of the most thriving English towns. Hugh de Relaga, de Wolfe’s partner in the wool enterprise, was a tubby, cheerful dandy, fond of good living and bright clothes. He was a complete contrast to Henry Rifford, a prosperous leather merchant but a serious, rather gloomy man above middle age. His beautiful daughter, Christina, had been brutally raped a few months ago, which had done little to improve his spirits.

‘Is it over? What damage has been done?’ demanded Rifford in agitation. The two men had been poring over municipal accounts in a back room of the Guildhall and had only just been informed of the riot in Southgate Street.

‘Our clerk says a man is dead – is he a guildsman?’ asked de Relaga.

Richard de Revelle took it upon himself to explain what had happened, never missing the chance to take credit for knowing everything and being the instrument of restoring order. Reassured, the portreeves calmed down, but decided to walk with their clerks to the Shambles and the Serge Market to show their concern to the citizens. ‘We must visit the dwelling of the dead man and ensure that his guild-master is informed so that support can be offered to the family,’ said de Relaga, with his typical concern for the more unfortunate of his townsfolk.

As they parted, de Wolfe reminded them of their other legal responsibilities. ‘As the killer is dead, there will be no need to bring anyone before the king’s judges – but the three men in your gaol are your problem.’

The sheriff could not resist having the last word. ‘I could try them for causing an affray in my County Court tomorrow – but if you want them for illegal trading, you’re welcome.’

With that parting shot, they walked on the few yards until de Wolfe came to the opening for Martin’s Lane, leaving the others to continue on up to Rougemont. Giving a deep sigh, he pushed open his street door and prepared to meet the grim face of his wife when he told her that he would be leaving for another expedition to the north coast.