The Chapel of Bones

Chapter Sixteen

‘What was the man doing here?’ Baldwin wondered. If his voice was harsher than usual, that was because he felt scaffolding was precarious at the best of times. This lot in particular seemed to wobble alarmingly, and Baldwin was reminded of the story he’d heard that a rock had recently plummeted from the wall, through the scaffolding and crushed a man. He wondered now whether the labourers had put it back together again quite so solidly as they ought.

The others appeared unconcerned. They were staring at the body on the rough planking. It had lain in a rock enclosure, built as stones were piled at the base of the wall, and to remove it, the Master Mason had pulled it up until it could be lain down on the scaffolding, rather than manhandling it over all the rubble.

In life, Baldwin reckoned the dead man would have been a humbling sight. His back was badly hunched, his face disfigured by a dreadful scar that had penetrated one eye-socket and ruined the eyeball itself, and his right hand was badly withered. His looks were not improved by the terrible, bloody burnmark that encircled his throat. Baldwin looked more closely. There was a lot of blood, he thought. Usually a man who was hanged would have bruising, perhaps a little blood where the rope had torn the flesh away, but not so much as all this. The fluid had soaked the rope itself, dripping down the man’s neck and running into his old tunic.

‘He could have been walking past the site, and when the rope was released to allow a stone to be taken down from the top, maybe he walked into it? The rope encircled his neck, and he couldn’t do anything to get it off, maybe?’

This was the Annuellar speaking, but he was ignored by the other men. The Master Mason shook his head. ‘This was no accident, I can tell you that much. He was strangled on purpose.’

‘How can you be sure of — ah — that?’ the Dean enquired.

‘When I knocked off work last night, I came here as usual to take a last turn about the place. I always do, to make sure that there’s no thieving bast- saving your grace, sir, no felons about the place seeing what they can take. It’s been known before now. I once had a pair of anvils stolen from under my nose and … anyway, the fellow wasn’t there then. He was killed later, I’d wager.’

The friar’s flesh was thin, Baldwin noted. It was possible that a blood vessel had been ripped open when the rope tightened. He leaned down and felt at the greying skin, and then saw the nick under the ropemark. He nodded pensively. ‘This rope. Would it have been up there yesterday?’

‘Yes. It’s one we use to bring mortar and tools up from the bottom. The heavy stuff is lifted on a windlass from a separate pulley up there.’

‘His body was concealed down there, you say?’

‘Yes, he was hidden in among those stones,’ Robert said helpfully, taking Baldwin’s shoulder and pulling him to the edge of a plank, pointing down. Baldwin closed his eyes and tried to quash the desire to knock the Master Mason’s hand from him. It was very tempting to push the man away, even if it would mean his falling to his death many feet below. Swallowing hard, Baldwin peered down.

‘There was no one working there last afternoon,’ Robert said, frowning down into the abyss. ‘He could have been throttled and just left down there.’

Baldwin could see what he meant. There below them was a large gap between slabs of rock. He would have been effectively concealed for as long as no one searched for him, but … Baldwin frowned. Surely the killer would know that the body must soon be spotted in daylight, as soon as someone climbed this scaffold? Had he hidden the body in a hurry, before some passer-by could see what he had done? ‘So he wasn’t hanging when you found him?’

‘No. When I got here this morning, I found the rope hanging there for no reason, so I gave it a pull to see what was down there. Got the shock of my life!’

‘I can imagine it,’ Baldwin said, stepping back from the brink, he hoped not too hurriedly.

‘So what now?’ the Treasurer asked. He watched as Baldwin walked to the ladder and descended.

Baldwin didn’t answer immediately. He reached the bottom with relief, and paused a moment before walking under the scaffolding to the pile of rocks.

Each of the rocks was a cube, the faces at least a foot square. There was a large pile of them in a rough horseshoe shape, the open edge facing the old wall. Baldwin squeezed around between the rocks and the wall. It was a tight fit, very tight, and when he was inside, he peered back at the gap thoughtfully for a moment.

The space in the horseshoe was only some six feet in diameter. Glancing up, he felt a vague sense of disquiet as he realised how high up he had been, standing on those warped planks. A noise behind him told him that Simon had joined him.

‘What do you think, Baldwin?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t like the fact that his neck seemed to bleed so much. When I looked, I think there was a cut.’

‘Someone had opened his throat?’

‘I think so. Just enough to bleed him.’

‘Why put the rope about him, then?’

Baldwin walked to the Cathedral wall again. ‘Could you have dragged a man in through that gap?’

Simon’s face cleared. ‘Of course. He had to lift the fellow in, so he threw a rope about him and raised him aloft, over the walls of this enclosure.’

‘Which means this killer knew something about the works,’ Baldwin said. ‘He had to know that this space existed, and he had to know how to lift a body up and into this space.’

‘It was a good hiding place,’ Simon commented. ‘The walls are high enough.’

‘Yes, but men are working up there all the time,’ Baldwin said, pointing up at the scaffolding. ‘Why put him here, when the body must soon be seen? And then leave the rope about his neck? Is this killer so stupid that he wanted people to know someone was murdered?’

Simon shrugged. ‘There’s probably a simple excuse. He was going to slip in here and release the rope, cover the body with rubble or a strip of cloth or something, but then he heard people coming, so he bolted.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said.

‘Or,’ Simon said, warming to a fresh idea, ‘he couldn’t fit! What if he was large-sized, with a great paunch, and couldn’t physically slip around the wall like you and me?’

‘He’d climb over the top,’ Baldwin said scornfully.

‘If he was that fat, I doubt it,’ Simon said. ‘Anyway, if this friar’s throat was opened, where is all the blood?’

‘No doubt that lies where the friar was murdered,’ Baldwin said with a sigh.

‘Well?’ demanded the Treasurer truculently. ‘What have you learned?’

He and the others had all left the scaffolding and were waiting for Simon and Baldwin in a huddle near the south-west corner of the Cathedral.

‘Little enough so far,’ Baldwin said. ‘The friar had his throat cut, I think, Dean. The murder must have happened somewhere nearby. There will be plenty of blood at the spot.’

‘So what do you want us to do?’ Treasurer Stephen said more calmly. His face was set, Baldwin noticed. He appeared anxious.

‘I would like you to order your lay servants to look for the place where the friar was killed. Meanwhile we need to know who was the last person to have seen this man. I don’t suppose any of you did so last evening?’ he asked, glancing at the Dean, the Treasurer and Matthew, who stood holding a leather cylinder for a scroll.

They all shook their heads, the Dean with his customary air of benign bafflement, the Treasurer studiously ignoring the Dean at his side; Matthew looked down at the man and shook his head too, as though reluctantly.

‘I shall let you know as soon as we learn anything about either man’s death,’ Baldwin promised, and the Dean took hold of the Treasurer’s arm and led him away a short distance to speak to him. Baldwin watched the two, so apparently at odds, and yet always managing to work together for the good of the Cathedral itself.

‘Sir Baldwin, I know this is quite ridiculous, but …’

‘What is it?’ he asked, facing the man. ‘You are Matthew, I believe?’

‘Yes. I am the Warden of the Fabric, the Clerk of the building work. It’s probably nothing, Sir Baldwin, but I did see the friar late yesterday afternoon. He was here with one of the masons, a man called Thomas.’

‘Here? Where, exactly? What were they doing?’

‘Thomas was at the foot of the wall, and the friar and he spoke together for a while. Then they moved away and I didn’t see anything of them after that.’

‘Thomas? That’s interesting,’ Baldwin said. ‘Do you know much of him?’

‘Not I, no. I had thought-’ he frowned. ‘But no.’

‘You thought what?’

‘It’s ridiculous, but I thought he looked familiar.’

‘He reminded you of someone?’

‘Yes — a man who used to live here in the city many years ago. He too was called Thomas,’ Matthew recollected with a slight frown.

Baldwin felt his mood lighten. If a man should run away for some forty odd years, and then desire to see the place of his birth again, what better method of doing so than coming to a building site like this? It was enclosed, so he need not face any of his old friends; he could remain locked within the Cathedral’s precinct. If any man saw him, it was so long ago since he had lived here, surely he would be all but unrecognisable.

Except, should someone here realise who he was, and be afraid lest Tom reveal their part in the murder of the Chaunter, might not that same someone decide to kill in order to keep his secret silent? Baldwin thought he might.

‘You say that the two were at the Cathedral wall. Where exactly?’

‘There,’ Matthew said.

Baldwin looked at the corner he indicated, and then found his eyes being pulled westwards again, to the rectangular block of the Charnel Chapel. ‘I think I know where he was killed,’ he said as he set off towards the chapel’s door.

Simon hurried to join him. Matthew and the Master Mason stood staring at each other for a moment, until Simon glanced back and beckoned to them authoritatively.

Baldwin stood at the north-eastern wall of the chapel. From here, northwards there was the small circular house that held the conduit; east lay the Cathedral and works. ‘Where did you stand, Matthew, when you saw the two?’

‘I was over there at the entrance to the Exchequer.’

Baldwin looked eastwards. The Exchequer lay beyond the tower of St Paul, the northernmost of the two Cathedral towers. ‘Any man slipping down here would have been invisible to you, then; or a man who went behind the conduit?’

‘Yes.’

Baldwin stalked to the conduit. The little building had its door facing east. ‘If they had entered here, you would have seen them?’

‘I think so, yes.’

Baldwin nodded, and he looked up at the Charnel Chapel once more, a feeling of leaden reluctance entering his bones. ‘He was killed in there, I think.’

He led the way across the grassed cemetery to the steps descending to the crypt itself. His eyes spotted the tell-tale marks on the stone steps. ‘Blood.’

He went down the steps into the crypt, pushing the door wide. It moved easily on well-oiled hinges, and Baldwin found himself in a dry, musty-smelling chamber as large as the chapel above: some twenty feet by forty. The floor was flagged, and there were thick pillars supporting heavy arches that formed the floor of the chapel. Baldwin could hear Simon’s breath growing sharper, faster, and usually it would have alleviated his own sombre mood, but not today. Baldwin had a strange feeling that he had been leading up to this moment for a long time, as though the crypt was in some way a culmination.

However, while Simon’s anxiety was based on the purest of superstitions about bones, Baldwin felt that there was an aura of evil in this specific building. He had felt it generally upstairs in the chapel, but here in the crypt it seemed more potent. I do not like this place, he thought to himself, and even the thought itself felt dangerous, as though the spirit of the building might read his mind.

‘Nonsense!’ he muttered aloud, annoyed with himself for allowing the atmosphere to colour his mood. It was ridiculous! He could only assume that his guilt at his treatment of his wife had caused this aberration. With a renewed determination, he marched further into the crypt.

On either side were piles of bones, skulls nearest the door, thigh and leg bones further on, stretching over to the far wall. The skulls themselves were set somewhat haphazardly, unlike the tidily piled thigh and arm bones. They were stored neatly; respectfully. The skulls were not. Some had fallen from a neat pile, and one had rolled across the floor. Baldwin picked it up, gazing into the empty eye-sockets, wondering what sort of a person had once inhabited these ounces of bone.

‘I don’t know how you can do that,’ Simon muttered from behind him.

Baldwin said nothing, merely set the skull back among the others, then studied the floor nearby. With a grunt, he removed the skull again, and then started taking away all the others too until he had cleared a space. He touched the bare flagged floor and rubbed finger and thumb together.

‘He died here.’

‘Could you take me to this man Thomas?’ Baldwin asked when they were once more outside.

‘My mason?’ Robert asked. ‘The clumsy one? Yes, I can take you to him. He was talking to me only this morning about leaving here and coming with me to another site. Can’t settle.’

‘I should be glad to speak with him,’ Baldwin said, walking into the sunshine and taking a deep breath. In the crypt he had felt the onset of claustrophobia, and it was a relief to inhale the fresh air with the sound of birdsong in the trees, the wind soughing in the branches, and people shouting. In his distraction he missed the Master Mason’s reference to clumsiness.

It took little time for Baldwin to tell the Dean what they had learned. ‘This murderer tempted his second victim into the crypt somehow, and then stabbed him once in the neck. I think that the Coroner will find a stab wound in his throat on the right side. The rope burn was fortuitous, but wasn’t intended to cover the stab, I don’t think. When the man had killed the friar, he carried him over to the works, and put the rope about his neck, lifted him up and had him drop down into the hollow where the Master here found him.’

The Dean gave a firm instruction that the Master Mason should help Baldwin and Simon in all that they required, and then left, his face grim. The Treasurer went off with Matthew to return to their work in the Exchequer, and Simon and Baldwin followed Robert de Cantebrigge over towards the breadhouse.

The odour of fresh baked bread was enough to set Simon’s belly rumbling; they had been asking questions of people all morning, and soon they should think of a meal. Simon was used to the old mealtimes — a breakfast very early in the morning, dinner a couple of hours before noon, and a good supper in the mid-afternoon — and he found it hard to travel to places where the mealtimes were different. He knew that the Exeter canons tended to stick to the routine of monks, so they would have their main meal after Nones, or mid-afternoon, while their supper was after Vespers. Through the morning they survived on the odd hunk of bread and a little breakfast of weak porridge. It wouldn’t keep him going.

As they passed around the tower of St Paul, there was an enclosure, and in it was a group of masons working on a huge rock. They were fashioning it into the shape of a column, cutting the top face smooth and setting rounded edges on the sides. A mason with a thick, bushy beard and long hair tied back in a pony-tail, was using a straight-edged stick to ensure that there were no bulges in the uppermost surface, while at his side was a large wooden mould cut into the precise curve that the stone should follow. Men would take this and measure the outer shape of the pillar to ensure that it would fit with all the other sections that would make up this support.

‘Thomas!’ Cantebrigge called, and the lead mason glanced at him, nodding. He put down his stick, and then seemed to realise that the Master Mason was not alone. His eyes flitted from Baldwin to Simon and back before he made his way to join them.

‘This is Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, this is Bailiff Simon Puttock. They want to speak to you.’

Baldwin did not bother with any preamble. ‘There has been another murder here last night. A friar was stabbed, and then hanged. Where were you last night?’

‘I was in the city earlier in the evening, then I returned here and remained in the Close all night.’

Thomas was a brawny fellow with a beard as thick as a bramble bush. His deep-set eyes were distrustful and apprehensive, from what Baldwin could see of them, and his age was surely comparable with Henry’s confederates. His heavy brow made him look a little slow of thought, but Baldwin reckoned that there was no dull-wittedness here.

‘The dead man was a friar called Nicholas. Did you know him?’

‘Why should I? Friars don’t often come here to the Close.’

‘You may know him because he was one of the men attacked forty years ago when the Chaunter was murdered here,’ Baldwin said grimly. ‘Did you know him?’

‘No. I wouldn’t think so.’

Simon smiled. ‘That’s a lie, friend. You were seen talking to the man last night.’

‘Perhaps the man who told you that was a liar,’ Thomas said sharply.

‘Your accent sounds just like an Exonian’s,’ Simon commented.

‘I’ve been here a while looking to the rebuilding. Maybe I’ve picked up a little of the local way of talking.’

‘Have you heard of the murder of the Chaunter?’ Baldwin tried.

‘Yes. It was after that the Bishop asked permission to be able to build his wall about the place, I think.’

‘That’s right. Because an armed band of assassins came here and slaughtered the Chaunter. We’ve heard that not many escaped that attack.’

‘What? What’s it got to do with me?’

‘Be calm, friend,’ Baldwin said, showing his teeth in a smile that held little humour. ‘It is merely the oddness of this chain of coincidences: we’ve heard that the friar was one of those who was attacked with the Chaunter. He had been there that night and won his scars from those who would have tried to kill his master. He was brave and honourable. And there were others there that night. There was a man called Henry, a saddler. He lies dead now in the Charnel Chapel.’

‘What of it?’

‘How long have you been here working on the Cathedral?’ Simon asked suddenly.

‘Almost a year, I suppose,’ Thomas said with a sidelong glance at the Master Mason.

Baldwin shot Robert a look and caught the brief pause, then the slight nod, as though he was considering and calculating before agreeing. ‘Good. And these murders began a short while ago. Perhaps you would like to tell us where you were before that?’

‘I have been all over the country. Immediately before coming here, I worked on the walls in London, I’ve been to the castle at Conwy, and I’ve helped with many churches.’

‘Where were you born?’ Simon asked.

‘At Axminster.’

Baldwin knew the town slightly. Set in flatlands on the Devon and Dorset borders, not very many miles from the sea, it was a pleasant small market town. He had seen the place when he had visited Forde Abbey some years before. ‘Was that where you learned your trade?’

‘No. I left my home when I was not yet seventeen and went to Dorchester to learn this. There was a church being built there. I helped.’

‘When was that?’

‘I am six and fifty years old now, so it would have been forty years ago.’

Simon and Baldwin exchanged a look. Baldwin knew it was possible. Sometimes men were driven to leave their home cities in order to seek a better life. About forty years ago there had been the Welsh wars, and in the aftermath, men were taken from all over the country to go and build the King’s new castles there; thousands of them. It was a massive undertaking, and it denuded the rest of the country of skilled masons. Many men who left their homes were snapped up by desperate town-dwellers who needed walls mended, new parish churches built, or even simply a new privy added to a hall. When Baldwin was a lad, he could remember his father complaining bitterly about the lack of workmen.

‘It seems curious that there should be two murders in the Close just recently,’ Baldwin said at last. ‘Especially when both are associated with the murder so many years ago.’

‘Why should it have anything to do with me?’ Thomas asked.

‘Because you bear the same name as one man who was there,’ Baldwin said. ‘A man called Thomas was involved in killing the Chaunter.’

‘Then I would be foolish indeed to come here without changing my name, wouldn’t I?’ Thomas said, but without bluster. He sighed. ‘Do you mean to arrest me? I’ve done nothing.’ Except kill poor Saul, of course — and that by accident, he thought.

‘It puzzles me that a man should say he saw you talking to the friar last night when you say you didn’t.’

‘Look — I was upset last night and went straight to my bed.’

‘Why upset?’

‘That’s a matter for me. A woman,’ Thomas said, glancing at the Master Mason in explanation and a search for sympathy.

Robert rolled his eyes. ‘Wine and women will be the end of many a good building. Now, masters both, have you finished interrogating my man here? He has a lot of work to be getting on with.’

The Dean was in his hall alone when the two men went up and knocked upon his door.

‘Ah, Bailiff, Sir Baldwin. Will you — ah — please come in and be seated? I shall ask for some bread and meat for you.’

In fact, when the door opened a short while later, there was more than the sparse repast indicated by his words. Three servants entered with trays held high. There were meats, cheese, wine and a thick, steaming pottage. ‘I — ah — often feel the need for warmer foods at this time of year,’ Dean Alfred explained. ‘So, please, do you have any theories as yet?’

Baldwin spoke, looking to Simon for support as he described their visits to the widow and to Joel. ‘So I think that there is a connection between the present two deaths and the murder of the Chaunter,’ he concluded. ‘Do you remember that night?’

‘The night of Chaunter Walter’s assassination? My heavens — um — no. It was many years before I came here. I only arrived when Bishop Stapledon was installed. Not because I was an especial ally of his, it just happened that way. Hmm. I’ll have to see if there is someone who can help you with that. The Treasurer may have been here then. Someone must have been. Plainly it would have to be an older vicar or canon — a man who was then a — er — novice or chorister. I shall ask for you, Sir Baldwin.’

‘It is certainly interesting that there were these different fellows who were all companions at the time,’ Baldwin said.

‘And a strange coincidence that the man who left was called Thomas,’ Simon added.

‘True, although the man’s comment that he would have to be a merry fool not to have changed his name before returning was compelling enough,’ Baldwin pointed out.

‘Perhaps,’ Simon said. ‘Although …’

‘What?’ asked the Dean.

‘It just occurred to me: if he had worked in other cities as a mason, he might have assumed that coming here, he’d meet men he’d worked with before. Changing his name might have seemed dangerous. Thomas is also, of course, a very common name. The chance of finding someone who recalled and cared about events so many years ago, was a risk worth taking.’

‘A good point. Masons often go from one site to another expecting to meet someone from a past job,’ the Dean commented. ‘I — ah — know this myself. There was a need to find a new mason after poor Saul died recently, and one of the men suggested a fellow with whom he had worked before. Recommendation often works to recruit new men.’

‘How did he die?’ Simon asked. ‘Was it an illness or an accident?’

‘An accident,’ the Dean said. ‘The poor fellow happened to be walking along beneath the scaffolding when a stone fell and crushed him. In actual fact,’ he added pensively, ‘it was Thomas who was responsible for the stone slipping free.’

‘Him again?’ Baldwin said, his interest aroused. ‘I should like to see where this happened.’

‘I shall ask my Clerk of the Works, Matthew, to show you, if you like.’ The Dean tilted his head, looking like a sparrow eyeing a suspect morsel of food. ‘That — ah — doesn’t mean Thomas is guilty, of course. These things do happen.’

‘Yes, they do,’ Simon agreed sharply, but there was a light in Baldwin’s eye which Simon hadn’t seen since he arrived in Exeter.

‘What do you — ah — wish to do next, then?’

‘We should speak to this curious corrodian, William,’ Baldwin declared, sitting back with his mazer of wine resting on the top of his belly. ‘And then perhaps, we should question this foreign gentleman as well — this Udo.’

‘Udo Germeyne?’ the Dean asked.

‘You know of him?’

‘By reputation. There are some who make their money solely by regrating and forestalling — that is, by buying all the stores in the morning and then reselling them later when they have a monopoly, or catching peasants on their way to market and buying in their produce before they reach the city, again in order that they control all prices. It is a violation of the city’s laws, of course, but all the Freemen tend to do it to a greater or lesser extent, so the fines are — um — derisory. They are not enough, in my view, to prevent a man continuing.’

‘So Udo is not a popular man with everybody?’ Baldwin said.

‘I do not think he is particularly unpopular,’ the Dean responded. ‘However, I find such behaviour often indicates the character of the man. If he is prepared to be so mercenary in his business dealings, using money to create more money like a usurer, what else would he not be capable of?’

To Baldwin’s mind, usurers were more evil than those who merely regrated and forestalled in a well-regulated market like Exeter’s. ‘I hope you don’t think him capable of murder just because of his market trading?’

‘Certainly his part in all this seems odd,’ Simon mused. ‘And the speed with which the two women sought to protect him was curious.’

‘Let’s go and speak to him first, then,’ Baldwin said, rising. He drained his cup. ‘Thank you, Dean, for our lunch. We shall see you again as soon as we have something to report. In the meantime — could you arrange for the mason Thomas to be watched? I should not wish him to suddenly disappear.’

‘You think he could be the guilty man?’

Baldwin considered, staring through the Dean’s little window out at the Cathedral Close. ‘I do not know, but the coincidence of his name, the fact that he’s about and Matthew says he reminds him of a man who left here years ago … It is better to keep him by than lose him.’

‘Do you wish Matthew to show you to the place where Saul died now?’

‘It will wait,’ Baldwin said. ‘If you could ask him to show me later, I would be grateful.’

They left the Dean’s room and walked out into the Cathedral’s grounds. Crossing the Close, Simon at first felt how chill it was compared with the warmth of the Dean’s hall, but then there was a rift in the clouds overhead, and suddenly the area was flooded with warmth.

‘It makes the whole city look more pleasant, doesn’t it?’ he commented idly.

Baldwin wasn’t concentrating. ‘Sorry?’

‘I said …’

There was a rattling of hooves on the cobbles, and Simon looked up in time to see a knight wrapped in a thick black woollen cloak over a bright red tunic and green hose ride in through the Fissand Gate. The two stopped and eyed the man as he rode along towards them, and then, just as he was about to trot on past he stopped and threw back his hood. His gleaming bald pate had a fringe of golden curls now faded with the years, which looked like a baby’s fluff on a middle-aged man’s head. His mouth moved into a smile, and as it did so, Simon could almost hear Baldwin’s hackles rise.

‘Sir Baldwin. How pleasant to see you,’ the man exclaimed. ‘And Bailiff Puttock, too. I am delighted to see you both here.’

‘Godspeed,’ Baldwin said, less than entirely heartily. ‘I am glad to see you, too, Sir Peregrine.’

Simon grinned to hear his friend lie. Baldwin had always cordially disliked Sir Peregrine de Barnstaple.

‘I suspect we are here for the same reasons, but I shall have to speak to you later, if you do not mind, Sir Baldwin,’ Sir Peregrine declared. ‘I am weary, yet I still have business to attend to with the Dean and Chapter. Will you excuse me? Where can I contact you?’

When they had told the knight where they were staying, he lifted his eyebrows in apparent surprise, and then smiled sympathetically, as though their inn was far below his own standard before riding off towards the Dean’s stables.

‘What is he doing here?’ Simon wondered.

‘Sadly I am sure we shall soon find out,’ said Baldwin. ‘Come, let’s get away from here while we can!’

Thomas was packing his meagre belongings and tools and preparing to escape. He had been very close to being uncovered when the two men had questioned him, and as soon as they left, he went to find the Master Mason, who was frowning at a plan sketched in charcoal on a sheet of vellum.

‘Sir, do you think you could use me on your other sites?’

‘No. If you want work, you can stay here.’

‘But Master, I can’t stay here, not now.’

Robert stopped his fiddling with the sketch and took a deep breath. At last he met Thomas’s eye. ‘If you’ve done something here, lad, that’s your lookout. I tell you this: I didn’t believe a word of your shite about some woman, right? And I didn’t believe your tale of being born someplace else neither. No. You came from here, didn’t you? And I reckon you’re hiding something. No problem with that when you keep your nose out of things, but when it leads to the work being held up, that I do mind. And when men start to die, I mind that too, just in case I get to be the next one. Right? So as far as I’m concerned, you can stay here if you want, Tom, but you aren’t coming with me anywhere else. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

As he spoke, Robert’s face was oddly devoid of compassion, as though he was talking to a man who was already condemned.

Perhaps, Thomas thought, he already was.

When he saw the knight approaching, John Coppe didn’t bother to hold out his bowl. Sir Baldwin didn’t ever give him alms. Still, there was a chance that he’d be more lucky with the strange knight’s friend who was Bailiff, so he smiled, ducking his head as Sir Baldwin approached. Then John remembered that some little while ago, Sir Baldwin had been in the city with his woman, and she had been very generous. Perhaps she’d taught her old man something.

‘Sir Knight, spare alms for a poor old sailor? Your wife was generous to me.’

Baldwin stopped and stared at him. ‘Yes, I remember you,’ he said as he fumbled in his purse. ‘I haven’t much …’

‘That’s enough, Sir Baldwin. Every bit is a help to me,’ Coppe said with a lopsided grin. ‘When you have as little as me, anything’s useful.’

‘Are you always here?’ Simon asked.

‘Costs me three shillings a year to take this spot, and I don’t grudge it. I make enough.’

Simon nodded. The places at Tavistock were cheaper, but then the town was smaller and the chances of a beggar making as much money as Coppe could earn in a year were that bit more remote. He dug into his own purse and pulled out the first coin that came to hand, but then he held it up.

Coppe lifted his eyebrows. ‘A penny? What are you after, Master?’

‘Just news. You’ll have heard about the friar killed out there in the Close? They found his body this morning. Did you see anything?’

‘I saw him come into the Close yesterday, aye. It was late afternoon, and I remember because Janekyn was here, and as soon as the friar appeared, Jan slipped off so he didn’t have to talk to the man.’

‘Why was that?’ Simon said.

‘Jan was always a loyal Exeter man,’ Coppe said dismissively, then threw a hasty look over his shoulder in case Janekyn was about. ‘That friar, Nicholas, was guilty, in his mind, because he tried to protect the Chaunter against the men John of Exeter had hired to remove him. Daft, I know, but Jan feels strongly about that kind of thing.’

‘You know him well?’ Simon asked.

‘Yes — and before you ask: he’s no killer! Anyway, he was here when the friar went in and he stayed here. I was with him, so if you want to have him hanged, you’ll have to hang me too. And that wouldn’t be easy, lords, because you’d have to carry me to the rope on account of me not having the legs to walk there!’

Simon chuckled along with him, but didn’t respond when Coppe held out his bowl expectantly. Instead he flicked the coin contemplatively. ‘What about the other man, the dead saddler? Did you see him the day before they found his body?’

‘He was often about here. You know, men like him, they’ll come in here to do a bit of business before Mass, won’t they? Actually, he was here with that man Udo, and they had a real shouting-match in the Close there. The foreigner threatened to kill him, in so many words.’

‘Why was that?’ Baldwin asked sharply. ‘We hadn’t heard this before.’

‘Something to do with the saddler’s daughter. Henry was saying something about the German not being allowed to marry her, I think.’

‘Aha!’ Simon said.

‘What then? Was there a fight?’ Baldwin frowned.

‘No. A vicar ran up and stopped them before they could do that,’ Coppe said regretfully. ‘Could have been fun, otherwise.’

Simon flicked the coin again, and it rattled in his bowl. ‘Keep your eyes open, and let us know if you see anything else.’

‘My pleasure. Sounds to me like easy money,’ Coppe grinned.

Baldwin looked at him, and then turned slowly. From here he could see the lean figure of Sir Peregrine crossing the Close with a vicar and the Annuellar behind him. He glanced at Baldwin without slowing his pace, and then made straight for the Charnel Chapel, disappearing behind the southern wall.

He had the look of a man who was involved in a busy and less than appealing task. Baldwin had not asked who the new Coroner of Exeter might be, and now he wondered with sinking heart whether this knight could be the replacement for the late Sir Roger de Gidleigh.

Glancing down at the beggar, who was happily fiddling with his coin, Baldwin shook his head. ‘Be careful that this isn’t the same as the easy money you were paid as a sailor, Coppe, on that last journey that cost you your livelihood and your leg.’

‘Hardly likely!’

Baldwin nodded, but he found his eyes drawn back once more to that chapel. He felt a sick apprehension, and the worst of it was, he had no idea why.