The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When de Wolfe slid out of bed before dawn next day Matilda was still sound asleep. He dressed and had boiled bacon, eggs and bread in Mary’s kitchen-hut before setting off alone to the bottom of the town. He wanted to stir up the priests who were on the cathedral’s suspect list, to see if any allowed their guard to slip. He also hoped, rather forlornly, that he might find some clue as to who had sent the anonymous note to the sheriff. It must surely be one of the suspected priests, he thought. The court began at the eighth hour and he had to be back at Rougemont by then, so early morning was the only opportunity for him to make such visits.

He hurried down to the West Gate, which was just opening to admit the flood of dawn traders, then turned towards All-Hallows and found that an early Mass, de Capra’s version of Prime, was just finishing. He waited for the dozen parishioners to leave, then walked into the barren church. A figure was on its knees before the altar, still wearing a creased surplice over his cassock, with a threadbare stole around his neck and a maniple over his arm.

Ralph de Capra was muttering to himself, but as soon as he heard de Wolfe’s footsteps behind him, he jumped to his feet. ‘You again, Crowner! Why don’t you leave me be? I’ve nothing to tell you.’ His face was haggard and suffused, the defect in his upper lip looking like a white scar against the flushed face.

‘Did you write an unsigned letter to the sheriff, falsely accusing my clerk of being at the scene of a killing the other night?’

De Wolfe had neither the time nor the inclination to be circumspect, and he wanted to provoke the priest as much as possible. Even as de Capra was hotly denying it, he followed up with a barrage of questions and accusations about his movements during the past few nights. Prodding the man in the chest with his forefinger, he drove him back down the nave, hoping that the confusion and resentment he was generating might cause him to drop some unguarded statement.

However, the priest frustrated the coroner’s tactics by screaming suddenly and, dropping his surplice on the floor, turned to rush towards his simple altar. Throwing his arms across the cloth, each side of the Cross, he hung across its front and began to wail and gabble. He was largely incoherent, but de Wolfe picked out some words. He seemed to be making a desperate plea for forgiveness for ‘his great sin’.

‘What sin is that, Ralph?’ he asked loudly, as he came to stand behind the man. ‘Is it the sin of murder? Did you kill the Jew, the whore and the merchant?’

The priest slid down the front of the altar and squatted in a crumpled heap on the floor below the Cross. ‘Let me be, Crowner,’ he whimpered. ‘My sin is greater than ten thousand murders. It is the sin of rejecting God Almighty, for which I will surely roast in hell.’

De Wolfe failed to get any further response from him and, feeling compassion, embarrassment and frustration, abandoned the attempt and left the little church.

He had even less satisfaction at his next call: at St Mary Steps there was no sign of Adam of Dol, either in the church or at his dwelling around the corner.

At St Olave’s, further up on his route back to the castle, John found Julian Fulk on his knees at the chancel step, deep in silent prayer. On hearing someone enter, he crossed himself and rose to his feet, but his smile of welcome faded when he saw the coroner.

John knew that shock tactics would be wasted on an urbane, calculating person like Fulk, so he asked his questions in measured terms. As he expected, the moon-faced priest answered him coldly but civilly, denying any knowledge of the note sent to de Revelle and flatly rejecting any notion that he had been skulking in the midnight streets of the city. ‘I realise that you have your obligations as a law officer, Sir John,’ he said levelly, ‘but it really is a waste of your time and mine for you to come here repeatedly asking me questions, the answers to which are self-evident. No, I am not the avenging killer of Exeter, I do not know who it might be, and I appear to have no information that could possibly help you. Now, is that sufficient for you to leave me in peace to attend to my own duties — which includes ministering to my congregation, among which your good wife and, indeed, yourself are numbered?’

Though de Wolfe had a thick skin, he felt put in his place by this reasoned statement and, partly spurred by the fear that Fulk would complain to Matilda, he muttered some platitudes and left Julian Fulk to his prayers.

In the Shire Hall that morning de Wolfe found the same mixture of cases, with the same organised confusion of milling people, harassed clerks and clumsy soldiers shunting prisoners in and out. At least the whole of that week would have to be devoted to the Eyre of Assize, dealing with a great backlog of civil cases, plus current criminal matters and ‘Gaol Delivery’, meant to flush out the chronically overcrowded jails in the city. Many of these long-term prisoners never made it to trial, as they had either escaped, bribed their way out, died of gaol fever or been fatally abused by their fellow evildoers in the stinking cells.

The second part of the judges’ visit, the General Eyre, which looked into the administration of the county, was not due to begin until the following week, so Richard de Revelle had a few more days in which to cook his accounts, and to fret about the vigilance with which the four Justices would probe his management of Devon on behalf of the King.

Meanwhile, de Wolfe was called frequently to present new matters, which came from the mass of parchment rolls that Thomas de Peyne produced from a wooden box at the back of the dais, with Walter de Ralegh and Serlo de Vallibus officiating from their chairs at the front. John had a stool at the end of one of the clerk’s tables, to be near Thomas’s store of documents. When required, he grabbed a roll from his clerk and marched over to stand alongside the Justices and recite a summary of the case, with which Thomas had primed him a few minutes earlier. Being unable to read what was on the roll made it difficult, but if any clarification of the matter was needed, he thrust the parchment at Serlo and let him pick out what he wanted.

At the other end of the court, his more literate brother-in-law was carrying out much the same function as himself with the other two judges, though their cases were slower and more complex, dealing with land, inheritance, marriage contracts and arguments about freemen and villeins. The morning wore on until a break was called at noon, when the four Justices went back to the New Inn for their meal. This was no more than a few hundred yards from Rougemont, and de Wolfe walked with them, flanked by Sergeant Gabriel and the four men-at-arms that Ralph Morin had assigned as an escort whenever the King’s men were abroad in the streets. He left them at the door of the inn and went on to Martin’s Lane to have his own meal with Matilda. She was still relatively benign after the previous night’s banquet — and with the prospect of another at the castle the following evening.

He managed to hold her attention with an account of the more colourful of the morning’s cases, until near the end of the meal when there was a dramatic interruption. The outer door crashed open, then the inner one to the hall burst open and someone almost fell inside, behind the screens that kept the winter draughts at bay. A wild figure appeared and Matilda leapt to her feet to shriek her protests at such an unseemly intrusion, for it was the despised Gwyn, the usual harbinger of bad news. For once, he was not cowed by her outburst, as the news he had for his master was too urgent.

‘Crowner, one of the Justices has been attacked! And there was another Bible message and they’ve arrested Thomas for it!’ he yelled, his arms flailing like the sails of a windmill.

Ignoring Matilda’s commands for the dishevelled man to get out of her hall, John hurried across, seized Gwyn’s arm and hustled him out into the vestibule and then into the lane. ‘Calm down, man. Tell me what’s happened.’

Gwyn tugged at the coroner’s sleeve, urging him towards the high street and the New Inn. ‘You told Thomas to take the rolls for some of this afternoon’s cases down to Serlo de Vallibus, so that he could look at them before they were presented.’

‘I know that — two of the killings are false allegations, I suspect,’ John said. They were hurrying around the corner into the main street.

‘One of Gabriel’s men came racing up to the gatehouse just now, yelling that an attempt had been made on the life of de Vallibus. He went off to find the sheriff, and I ran like hell down to the New Inn.’

They were trotting now, thrusting aside townsfolk who were standing at stalls or looking into the shop fronts of traders.

‘When I got there, Thomas had been grabbed by the guards, apparently on Sir Peter Peverel’s orders, and marched away to the castle.’

The inn was now a few yards away, and Gwyn had just enough time to finish telling the little he knew. ‘Alan Spere, the landlord, let me through and pointed up the stairs. I dashed up and saw the three other Justices clustered round de Vallibus, who was lying on his pallet, groaning. Then Peverel recognised me and began shouting that I was another of them, whatever that meant. Walter de Ralegh pulled me out of the room and told me to go for you, saying that Thomas had attacked Serlo and left a Gospel message, proving he was the killer.’

Bewildered and incredulous, John reached the doorway of the New Inn just ahead of his officer and skidded into the short passage and up the stairs. Ahead was a narrow stairway with open treads, divided into short two flights with a small landing halfway. At the top, stood one of the men-at-arms and as John thundered up the stairs, he looked uncertain whether or not to challenge him, but John brushed him aside impatiently and Gwyn followed up with a shove that sent the soldier staggering against the wooden wall. A planked door on the left was open and a babble of voices came from inside. As de Wolfe barged in, five heads turned towards him.

‘Here he is, the King’s damned crowner!’ brayed Peter Peverel, ‘Now perhaps he’ll see reason about his evil little clerk.’

The others in the room were the three judges, Richard de Revelle and Ralph Morin, with Serlo de Vallibus groaning on his blanket. The left side of his head was partly covered by a damp cloth, whose centre was pink with watery blood.

Gwyn hovered in the doorway, behind his master, who took in the scene at a glance, then fixed Walter de Ralegh with his dark eyes. ‘What happened?’ he said shortly, his incisive manner quelling the ferment of talk.

De Revelle answered for the Justices: ‘Y our accursed clerk attacked our noble judge, that’s what happened. A nd left a trademark that denounces him as this killer.’

The sheriff gloated over the situation, for at last he was giving his brother-in-law grief, instead of receiving it from him.

‘Who saw de Peyne strike the blow?’ snapped John, glaring about him, as whatever had been said, he refused to believe it.

‘Come on, de Wolfe, just accept what you’re told,’ bellowed de Ralegh. ‘The little swine was seen to come into the inn as bold as brass. He went upstairs and then ran out as if the devil was after him, but the man-at-arms grabbed him as he was going out of the door.’

‘Why did he hold him?’ grated John.

‘Because at that moment, Serlo here staggered out of this room and called for help — then fell down the stairs,’ cut in Peter Peverel, with almost malicious glee.

‘I asked if anyone saw him attack de Vallibus,’ de Wolfe repeated. ‘I sent him here with a bundle of rolls, as arranged.’ He looked quickly around the chamber. ‘There they are, on that chest.’ Four or five rolls of parchment lay on an oak box, and a couple had fallen on to the floor.

‘He must have taken the opportunity to try to kill Serlo,’ boomed Gervase de Bosco, the one Justice who so far had stayed silent.

‘Mary, Mother of God, why should he do that?’ burst out de Wolfe, desperately trying keep the alleged truth at arm’s length.

‘Because of this — some warped notion of justice.’

De Ralegh held out a torn scrap of parchment, which even in the turmoil reminded de Wolfe of the message left at the scene of the Jewish moneylender’s death. There was writing on it, but he handed it back straight away. ‘What does it say?’

Archdeacon Gervase took the fragment, which was about the size of his hand. ‘It’s a quotation from the Gospel of St Matthew, though virtually the same one is in St Luke.’

De Wolfe felt a sudden intense sadness that it was not Thomas who was explaining this to him. The last time, Brother Rufus had translated the clue, but now it was a portly archdeacon from Gloucester.

‘Tell me again what it says,’ demanded Walter de Ralegh.

Gervase held out the vellum at arm’s length better to see the penned words. ‘ “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” ’ he intoned.

Suddenly a voice came from the bed, wavering yet clear. ‘The full quotation goes on, “For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged. And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” ’

They all turned to look down at the bed, where the previously inert Serlo now appeared wide awake. Before they could speak, he continued, ‘Luke adds, “Condemn not and ye shall not be condemned”, but I’m unaware why someone should have taken such a dislike to the many judgements I must have handed down since I became a King’s Justice.’

The others now crowded around him, solicitously asking after his welfare, offering the services of an apothecary or to take him to St John’s infirmary nearby. Serlo shook his head, which made him wince, then struggled to a sitting position on the bed. ‘My head is hard, I’ll survive, thank you.’ He touched his scalp gingerly. ‘But I think I’ll not sit in court for the rest of the day.’

The others jabbered protests at the idea of his returning to the Shire Hall, and the sheriff was almost bursting with the desire to smooth over this dangerous fiasco, although he still delighted in John’s discomfiture. ‘Did you actually see that it was this evil clerk who tried to kill you?’ he demanded. ‘I have him in chains already and will hang him as soon as possible.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, damn you,’ yelled de Wolfe. ‘He’ll have a fair trial and, if guilty, be condemned on good evidence, not at your whim.’

Walter de Ralegh, whose large size and dominating presence always made him the leading figure in any group, held up his hands. ‘Wait, wait! Of course the fellow will be tried — though a confession would ease the process.’

‘He’ll confess, I’ll guarantee that!’ snarled the sheriff. ‘I have a gaoler who, though he is an imbecile, is a genius at extracting confessions.’

De Ralegh ignored this and spoke again to Serlo, who was now hunched on the mattress, holding his head in both hands. ‘What happened, de Vallibus? Can you help us?’

Unable to shake his head because of the throbbing pain in his cranium, the Chancery clerk murmured his reply: ‘I remember nothing after sitting on this bed for a short sleep after our meal. The next thing I recollect is tumbling down those damned stairs. I must have staggered out of the room after receiving this blow and lost my footing at the top.’

‘You remember nothing about my clerk being here?’ demanded de Wolfe eagerly.

‘Nothing at all. But those rolls of yours were not there before I lost my senses.’

Richard de Revelle gave a triumphant cry. ‘Ha! There is the proof. De Peyne comes with them as an excuse, de Vallibus is attacked, the clerk runs away and is caught by the guard. The complete story!’

The coroner glimpsed the landlord hovering anxiously outside the door. ‘Alan Spere, are these stairs the only way up to these chambers?’

The normally jovial host was as white as sheet, wondering whether it was a capital offence for a King’s Justice to be attacked on his premises. ‘No, Crowner, the passage goes past the other five rooms then down at the back into the stabling yard.’

‘Was there a guard there?’ the coroner demanded of the silent Ralph Morin.

The castle constable was glad of the chance to deflate the sheriff, for whom he had the same lack of regard as de Wolfe. ‘No. The escort was a mark of respect rather than a necessity.’

John shrugged and held up his hands in a Gallic gesture. ‘So whoever made this cowardly attack on Justice Serlo might have come into the yard from the lane alongside the inn and up the back stairs — for the man-at-arms at the front saw no one.’

‘He saw this bastard de Peyne, that’s who he saw!’ objected Peter, Peverel, who sided with the sheriff’s prejudices. The party was already dividing into two factions: those who were ready to hang Thomas out of hand and those who had a more open mind.

‘This is getting us nowhere, unless de Vallibus’s memory returns,’ said de Ralegh reasonably.

‘And we need to hear what my clerk has to say on the matter,’ snapped de Wolfe.

Ralph Morin agreed to send a soldier to St John’s to fetch Brother Saulf to attend to Serlo’s head and prescribe some salve, while the other three Justices returned to the court to carry on the afternoon session. With a couple of extra men-at-arms guarding them, the sheriff, constable and coroner walked behind them to the inner ward and the Shire Hall. De Wolfe kept silent during the five-minute walk, ignoring the smirk of triumph that lurked on the sheriff’s face.

When they reached the wide entrance to the Shire Hall, de Wolfe stopped. ‘I’m going to see Thomas first,’ he announced.

‘The fellow is in my custody, I’ll not have you interfering,’ retorted de Revelle, rejoicing in this unexpected return of his supremacy.

‘Go to the devil, Richard! A coroner is empowered — indeed, obliged — to investigate all serious crimes in his jurisdiction. Not only murders, but also assaults. So I am going to investigate this one, whether you like it or not.’

The sheriff became red in face and began to huff and puff about his absolute powers in the county.

‘Talk all you like, Sheriff, I’m going to the undercroft to see him now.’

As he stalked off, de Revelle hissed after him, ‘You dare to interfere or try to engineer his release and I’ll have the full force of the Justices on you. They’re not taking kindly to one of their own number being half killed, so don’t expect any aid from them!’ With that, he turned on his elegant heel and strode into the Shire Hall.

About an hour later on this tumultuous Wednesday afternoon, another drama was being played out in the lower part of Exeter. A small crowd, which increased by the minute, had gathered in the narrow street between the West Gate and the church of All-Hallows-on-the Wall. A cluster of street traders, porters, good-wives, children and beggars were pointing and gesticulating at a figure parading agitatedly along the narrow walkway that topped the city wall, twenty feet above the street. He was barefoot and dressed in a shapeless, ragged garment of what looked at that distance to be of sacking. In his hand, he grasped a rough wooden cross made of two thin sticks tied together.

‘Is it an absconder from sanctuary?’ asked one onlooker of her neighbour, for the figure’s garb was that of someone abjuring the realm after seeking refuge in a church.

The crowd was soon joined by Osric, attracted by the rising hubbub in the street. Shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, the constable stared up and asked the nearest man, a crippled pedlar with a tray of dusty pies hung around his neck, ‘Who is it up there? And what’s he think he’s doing?’

‘Gone raving mad, whoever it is,’ answered the pedlar, exposing broken, yellowed teeth as he squinted up at the top of the wall.

Osric watched for a moment, uncertain as to what to do. He was responsible for keeping order in the streets of Exeter, but it was hard to decide whether a man prancing about on the city wall, shaking his cross at the sky, was a hazard to the citizens. The fellow seemed to be chanting and wailing alternately, his face upturned towards the heavens, as he capered about. Suddenly, he turned and faced the crowd below, teetering on the edge of the parapet as if gathering the courage to jump. The crowd fell silent at his dangerous pose, then voices began to shout: ‘It’s the priest! It’s Ralph de Capra — it’s the father from All-Hallows!’

Now that he faced them, they could see that de Capra’s face had a wild, haunted look, and his head was plastered with wet ashes.

‘I’d better get up there to fetch him down,’ muttered the constable, and made for a flight of steps built into the back of the wall, almost against the pine end of the little church.

Before he could reach the bottom stair, there was a pounding of feet behind him and he was pushed aside. Adam of Dol was climbing up ahead of him to the parapet. He was well known to Osric as the priest of St Mary Steps, just along the street. He had heard the tumult of the crowd as he came out of his church and had hurried down the lane to see what was amiss.

Hoisting up his black cassock in both hands, the cleric mounted the steps surprisingly fast for such a burly man. At the top, he turned right and, followed by the constable, slowed down as he approached the wild figure of the All-Hallows priest as he rocked on his bare toes at the very edge of the stone precipice.

‘Ralph! Ralph, come to me, good man!’

De Capra stared vacantly at his brother priest, then turned and began running away along the battlement walk towards his own church, which came straight out of the wall, the stone-tiled roof sloping up just below the parapet, a small bell-arch level with the walkway.

Seemingly afraid that Ralph was going to go beyond the church and throw himself off to certain injury and perhaps death, the priest of St Mary Steps put on a burst of speed and threw himself at de Capra. The pair overbalanced and fell off the parapet — but only a couple of feet down on to the church roof. De Capra struggled, yelling and wailing, but the burly Adam held him with ease as Osric stepped down carefully on to the roof. Between them, they hauled Ralph back to the city wall, conscious of the ominous cracking of thin stone tiles under their feet.

By now several other spectators had climbed the steps and were staring open-mouthed at the unexpected entertainment, but Adam of Dol roared at them and waved them away furiously. Then he glared at Osric and told him to clear off too: this was a matter between men of God. The constable retreated a few yards, but felt it his duty to stay within earshot: he crouched at the top of the steps, down which the banished townsfolk were retreating.

‘What are you thinking of, you foolish man?’ bellowed Adam at his colleague, his tone as abrasive as when he had yelled at the onlookers. ‘Why the sackcloth and ashes? The devil is fighting for your soul, Ralph, and you must resist him!’

Osric felt this was hardly the way to pacify a deranged man on the point of committing suicide, but he had no intention of clashing with the pugnacious priest, whose reputation for anger was legendary.

Ralph de Capra sagged into submission, his struggles ceasing. His face was gaunt under the streaks of grey ash that had run down from his hair and his hollow-eyed expression was one of abject misery. ‘I have sinned, Adam, sinned most grievously,’ the constable heard him say. ‘There is no hope for me, either in this world or the next — if there is a next, which I often doubt.’

His fellow priest shook him angrily by the shoulders. ‘You must fight back, man! Faith has to be earned. I have said time and again that the great horned devil never sleeps. He waits for such doubts to weaken your armour. And throwing yourself from this wall is no answer — you’d probably break a leg rather than your neck. Preach hell-fire, Ralph! Keep it in the forefront of your mind that failure means eternal agony in the great furnace below. Be like me — never let your flock forget that the wages of sin are not death but unceasing torture until and beyond the end of time. That way you will keep Lucifer at bay.’

With that, Father Adam hauled his brother priest back along the parapet towards the steps, still cursing the powers of darkness. Osric wisely retreated before them, determined to tell the coroner what he had heard.

John had returned reluctantly to the court but without Thomas to guide him it was far more difficult: he had to borrow one of the junior clerks of Assize to help him with his rolls, and put up with smirks and knowing glances from the sheriff. The scowls of the Justices, especially Peter Peverel, boded ill for Thomas’s future.

His visit to the cells under the keep had been brief and unhelpful. The obese gaoler, Stigand, had tried to prevent him and Gwyn entering Thomas’s cell, until Gwyn pinned him against the wall by his throat and threatened to tear out his tongue by the roots.

Poor Thomas sat in a pathetic heap on the dirty straw inside the almost dark cell. He had been vomiting with fright into the battered bucket that was the only furniture, apart from the slate slab of a bed. All de Wolfe could get out of him was a flat denial of any wrongdoing. He had gone to the New Inn as ordered, taken the bundle of rolls upstairs past the guard on the door, whom he recognised from the gatehouse duty at Rougemont. The door to de Vallibus’s room was open — Thomas had known it from a visit with rolls the evening before — and when he had gone in he had found the Justice groaning on the floor, with a bloody wound on his head. Serlo was just conscious but incoherent. In panic, Thomas had rushed to knock on the other doors upstairs, but found the rooms either locked or empty. Then he heard a crash and saw that de Vallibus had crawled out of the room and fallen down the upper flight of stairs to the half-landing. Even more frantic by now, Thomas had pounded down to the ground floor, looking for help, and run straight into the arms of the soldier, who grabbed him: he had just seen the judge crash on to the landing above. The pandemonium that followed led to the little ex-priest being hauled off to the cells in Rougemont without the chance to explain anything.

‘You saw no one else upstairs?’ demanded de Wolfe, and Thomas’s denial was his only other contribution to a sterile investigation.

Now the coroner waited impatiently for the court session to end so that he could try to do something more for his clerk. But as the raucous trumpets signalled the end of the day’s cases and the three judges solemnly paraded out, Richard de Revelle sidled up to him, a supercilious sneer on his face. ‘John, the justices have decided to be present tonight at the interrogation of that rat-like servant of yours. A confession will be drawn from him and they will bring him before them tomorrow morning, for that superfluous trial you’re so keen to have. Then we can have him hanged by afternoon.’ With that he hurried after the judges before John could think of a forceful enough protest.

Gwyn had overheard the sheriff’s gloating message and his already worried face became even more disconsolate. ‘Is there nothing we can do, Crowner? They’ll hang the poor sod, just to prove their point.’ Though he had endlessly teased Thomas, the amiable Cornishman was protective towards the little man and the prospect of him being executed was too much to contemplate. For a moment de Wolfe stood in the doorway of the court, brooding and chewing his lip. Then he drew himself up and loped off towards the gatehouse, beckoning Gwyn to follow. ‘I must talk to his uncle. The Archdeacon is the most honest and sensible man I know, as well as being Thomas’s relative. Let’s see what he has to say.’

At this slack period in the episcopal day, John de Alençon was usually at home and they found him in his austere room, reading a treatise on Eusebius of Caesaria. When he heard of his nephew’s arrest, he groaned. ‘Thomas, Thomas! He’s been nothing but trouble to his family since he was born! Yet none of it was his doing, I’m sure.’

De Wolfe was blunt in his summary of the situation. ‘They’re keen to hang him, no doubt of that. These rumours have been going around for days, started by de Revelle and that malicious colleague of yours, Thomas de Boterellis.’

‘What can we do about saving him?’ asked the Archdeacon, his lean face etched with concern.

‘We have to get him out of Rougemont. Tonight they’ll torture him to get a confession — and knowing Thomas’s lack of courage, he’ll give it in the first half-minute. Then they’ll hang him, unless we can plead Benefit of Clergy.’

John de Alençon’s face fell. ‘But he’s no longer a priest! When he was unfrocked, he lost the privilege of being tried by a consistory court.’

‘I thought that proving he could read and write was sufficient,’ objected de Wolfe.

The Archdeacon hesitated, deep doubt showing on his face. ‘I agree that this is a popular notion, as virtually everyone who is literate is in Holy Orders. But it’s not a definition that can be relied on, especially when you have the King’s Justices, a sheriff and a Precentor eager to deny it.’

‘It’s his only hope, short of Gwyn and I storming the castle’ growled John. ‘If the Bishop threw his weight behind the idea, then surely it would succeed?’

The Archdeacon looked dubious. ‘You know quite well that he has no love for you, especially since you crushed de Revelle.’

However, after John had argued and pleaded with him for several minutes, de Alençon agreed to go to his bishop and seek to have Thomas de Peyne transferred to the custody of the cathedral proctors, instead of being incarcerated in Rougemont.

‘It’s desperately urgent,’ pressed the coroner. ‘Within a couple of hours, he may have his limbs broken or burned unless we can prevent it.’

With this awful prospect drilling into his mind, the Archdeacon rose and threw his long black cloak around his shoulders, though the early-evening air was mild. ‘I’ll go straight away — thank God the bishop’s still in the city. But don’t have too high hopes of this, John — you may still have to storm Stigand’s prison.’

Uneasily, de Wolfe and his henchman went to the Bush for food and ale and to wait for news from Henry Marshal. Thankfully, de Wolfe knew that Matilda was on some charitable visit with her friends to one of the city’s almshouses, so he felt no obligation to return for the evening meal. In Idle Lane, the prospect of what might soon befall the little clerk extinguished any humour or passion, and although they ate heartily the coroner and Gwyn were subdued and anxious. To break the glum silences, Nesta retailed some of the day’s gossip. ‘We had a strange tale brought by Alfred Fuller from Frog Lane. It seems that the priest of All-Hallows went crazy this afternoon.’

‘Which All-Hallows?’ demanded John, his interest aroused.

There were two All-Hallows churches, one in Goldsmith Street, the other near the West Gate, about which he had a special concern.

‘Oh, on-the-Wall — for it seems he tried to jump from it.’

‘You mean Ralph de Capra?’

‘That’s the one — apparently he was in sackcloth and ashes and raving about his great sin.’

Nesta stopped abruptly, her hand to her mouth. ‘He was one of those you were investigating, wasn’t he?’

De Wolfe nodded grimly. ‘I saw him this very morning. Now he’s gone mad, you say.’ He stood up, feeling suddenly old and weary. ‘Is that all you know about it?’ John would have known more, but Osric the constable had not yet encountered him to give him his eye-witness version.

Nesta beckoned urgently across the tavern. ‘It was Edwin who had the tale — you know he’s the nosiest man in the city. Edwin!’ she cried.

The old potman came limping across the floor, his dead eye horribly white in his lined face. At his mistress’s prompting, he told what he knew of the incident in Bretayne. ‘The priest from St Mary Steps got him down, they say. Then took him away back to his lodging. Adam of Dol lives behind his church, not down in Priest Street like most of them.’

‘What was it all about?’ asked Nesta, but Edwin shrugged.

De Wolfe got up and paced restlessly before the empty hearth. ‘I must talk to those two priests again — perhaps I stirred up something when I questioned de Capra this morning.’

‘But he couldn’t have been the one who attacked de Vallibus, could he?’ objected Gwyn. ‘Not if all this fuss happened down in Bretayne at almost the same time.’

‘We don’t know how much time there was between. Maybe he had visited Serlo and the experience turned him off his head.’ He put an arm around Nesta’s shoulders and gave her a quick hug. ‘But I can’t risk going down there now, with poor Thomas facing peine forte et dure at any moment. I hope by the Holy Virgin that the Archdeacon has had some influence with the Bishop.’

With Nesta looking after them anxiously, the coroner and his officer hurried out into Idle Lane and made for the castle.

The Moors almshouses were just outside the city, near the half-completed new bridge over the Exe. The short row of dwellings for the poor, built some years earlier by the benefaction of a wealthy fulling-mill owner, was supported by donations from city merchants and some of the churches. This evening, a dozen good ladies of St Olave’s, accompanied by their priest Julian Fulk, were making their monthly pilgrimage with gifts of food, clothing and money. Prominent among them was Matilda de Wolfe, playing Lady Bountiful with a large pie made by Mary, some cast-off clothing and a purse of coins extracted from her husband.

The hard-faced harridan who was the warden had lined up the inmates for inspection and the ladies of St Olave’s paraded past the aged crones, the cripples and the despised unmarried mothers, doling out their gifts. Later, they sat in the narrow hall of the building to share the food they had brought, but they occupied separate trestles and did their best not to mingle with the destitute.

Julian Fulk tried to be his usual unctuous self, though it was difficult as he had a lot on his mind. Dressed in a new black tunic, flapping round his ankles, his head was covered in a tight coif, on top of which was a floppy beret of black velvet. Matilda made sure that she sat next to him at the table, with her back to the toothless hags and the anaemic drabs who dragged out their wretched existence in this place.

‘You were not at the Bishop’s banquet last night?’ she asked sweetly, knowing that no parish priest would have had even the smell of an invitation, but it gave her an opportunity to describe her husband’s eminence and the exact position on the tables that they had occupied. Of course Fulk knew who her husband was and, in fact, his preoccupation tonight was due to the coroner. The repeated visits that de Wolfe had made to him over the murders had done nothing to help his reputation, at a time when he was bursting every sinew to improve his standing in the Church. Being on the suspect list for multiple murders did nothing for his dreams of advancement.

As Matilda’s prattle washed over him, Fulk contemplated his limited options — he must try to see the Bishop again, while he was still in Exeter, and he must also make the arduous journey to Sussex, to see the Abbot of Battle. One way or the other, he must get away from these maddeningly dull people who were holding back his career in the Holy Ministry. Could no one recognise his theological prowess, his mastery of the liturgy, his God-given understanding of the scriptures? Was he condemned to waste his talents in a tiny chapel in a mediocre city at the far end of England, when he had the makings of a bishop — or even an archbishop? He must do something soon, for desperate situations require desperate solutions

That evening, Thomas de Peyne, chains on his wrists and ankles, was half led, half dragged through the gate in the iron grille that divided the undercroft of the castle keep. The grotesque gaoler, Stigand, pulled him along by the manacles, with a soldier walking rather shamefacedly behind — this wretched prisoner was hardly likely to put up a fight.

Stigand hauled the clerk across the damp earth of the forbidding basement towards the group of men waiting silently for him. Three of the Justices were there, as well as the sheriff, the constable, the coroner and a priest. The latter was the castle chaplain, Brother Rufus, his usual affability muted this evening. De Wolfe had had to banish Gwyn from Rougemont, afraid that his outrage at the arrest of his little friend might provoke him into some rash act, such as a hopeless rescue attempt. Now he glanced repeatedly towards the steps coming down from the inner ward, desperately hoping for some sign that de Alençon’s plea to Bishop Marshal had been successful.

The gaoler dragged the clerk before the row of brooding men and stood aside, his bloated face grinning with anticipation as he poked at a brazier in which branding irons glowed.

Richard de Revelle opened the proceedings. ‘A confession would make it easier for all of us, fellow. We are busy men, as you know from your own work, when you are not murdering honest folk.’

De Peyne stood in the mud, his narrow shoulders drooping, the left more than the right, which accentuated the hump on his back. Though he had been incarcerated for only a few hours, his shabby black tunic was already badly stained, with pieces of filthy straw clinging to it. His lank hair hung over his high forehead and his mournful eyes stared fearfully from behind it. He mumbled something in reply to the sheriff’s words.

‘What was that? Speak up, damn you!’ snapped Sir Peter Peverel, muffled in a brown cloak against the cold of the dank undercroft, where the outside air never seemed to penetrate.

‘I said I have done nothing wrong, sir, so what can I confess?’

The sheriff stamped his foot in annoyance. ‘Stop wasting our time, I say. You were caught running away from the scene of your cowardly attack on Serlo de Vallibus.’

Thomas mumbled, ‘I was going to get help,’ but Walter de Ralegh interrupted, ‘De Peyne, you have been under suspicion for some time. This merely confirms your guilt.’

‘The only suspicion he was under came from malicious gossip!’ cut in de Wolfe angrily. ‘There has not been a shred of proof against this man — only mischievous tittle-tattle.’

Peverel seemed determined to blacken Thomas’s chances. ‘Not gossip, Coroner. As a former priest — and one with a grudge against the world, so I understand — he can read, write and has a good knowledge of the Vulgate. That narrows down the field a hundredfold in this city.’

‘And he cannot account for his movements on any of the occasions when these outrages occurred,’ brayed the sheriff triumphantly.

‘Can any of us account for our movements at all those times?’ demanded the coroner. ‘Though I know where you were on one occasion, Richard.’ This was an oblique threat to the sheriff, but he knew it was insufficient to help Thomas. Desperately, he looked again towards the bright square of the entrance, hoping against hope that relief would arrive. De Ralegh began to lose patience and started to shout at the prisoner. ‘If your lips are sealed by malice, there are ways to open them! As a servant of the Crowner, you must know better than most how confessions can be obtained. See sense, man, and speak now!’

Thomas’s response was to fall to his knees in a rattle of chains and burst into tears. ‘I am innocent!’ he screamed. ‘Master, save me!’

This was no prayer, but a direct plea to John de Wolfe, who stood impotent, swinging between intense anger and deep sorrow. ‘This is intolerable!’ he shouted. ‘There is no evidence whatsoever to link this man with the crimes. Let a jury decide tomorrow! What use is there in torturing a false confession from this poor soul?’

At this, de Revelle rounded on his brother-in-law. ‘You should not be here, John. As this creature’s master, you can have no balanced view of how things really are. You should leave well alone!’

Archdeacon de Bosco had been silent until now, but looked uneasy at the prospect of a fellow priest, albeit one dishonourably discharged from the Church, being subjected to peine forte et dure like a common felon. The procedure to extract confessions varied, but should have been performed by placing increasing weights of iron on the chest of the victim, lying flat on his back, until he either spoke or expired. However, the practice had been widened to include many forms of torture, some sadistically ingenious.

‘Perhaps it should be left to the court tomorrow, brothers,’ said the Archdeacon tentatively.

‘You are biased because the man was once in Holy Orders,’ retorted Peverel nastily. ‘But he’s not now, so that can no longer be an issue.’

De Ralegh walked over to the clerk and hoisted him to his feet by grabbing a handful of his hair. ‘Tell us why you did it, wretch!’ he bellowed. ‘All those deaths, were you trying to play God, eh? Is not the King’s justice enough to punish evildoers that you have to take the law into your own hands?’

Outraged at seeing the puny clerk mishandled, de Wolfe stepped forward and seemed ready to strike de Ralegh, a move which would have had disastrous consequences, given that he was a Justice of the King. Almost casually, the bulky figure of Brother Rufus stepped sideways in front of him and pressed him back, giving enough time for de Wolfe’s passion to subside.

Then, providentially, a cry came from the entrance arch, which distracted them from the mounting tension. ‘Stop! I have orders from the Bishop.’

It was John de Alençon, looking more haggard even than usual as he stumbled across the uneven floor towards them.

‘Is he granting Benefit of Clergy?’ De Wolfe asked eagerly.

‘Not as such, no,’ panted the Archdeacon. ‘Bishop Marshal declines to refer the matter to the Consistory Court, as he rightly points out that my nephew is no longer an ordained priest. But he takes great exception to a former man of the cloth being put to the torture for a confession and forbids you to proceed.’

The sheriff looked as if he was going to object, then thought of his relationship with the Bishop and decided not to risk damaging it for the sake of a fleeting victory over the coroner. He kept silent, but Walter de Ralegh and Peter Peverel felt no such inhibitions. They protested strongly that even the head of the Church in this diocese had no power over a secular court, especially the will of the King’s Justices. However, Archdeacon de Bosco came down firmly on the side of the Church, as this confirmed his own recent misgivings.

They argued for a few minutes, while the dishevelled Thomas, red-eyed and forlorn, looked from face to face seeking any crumb of hope.

Richard de Revelle settled the matter. ‘Our Lord Bishop in his wisdom has made no attempt to take the judgement into the hands of the Church so, confession or not, we can proceed with the trial tomorrow morning — and I suspect there is little doubt of the outcome, so any bickering tonight is hardly worth the effort.’

Tired, irritated and in need of their evening meal, the others agreed grudgingly and Thomas was dragged back to his foetid cell by a disappointed Stigand. The others dispersed, most of them confident that the murderous clerk would be swinging at the end of a rope within a day or two.

De Wolfe spent a miserable night worrying about Thomas’s fate. Though he was grateful for John de Alençon’s intercession with the Bishop as far as the forced confession was concerned, he had little hope that the Eyre of Assize would acquit him in the morning. As he had told a depressed Gwyn and a tearful Nesta, when they had sat discussing the crisis in the Bush that evening, it was the attack on de Vallibus, one of their own number, that was likely to seal the clerk’s fate.

Nesta clutched de Wolfe’s arm and rested her head against his shoulder for comfort. ‘They mustn’t hang the poor fellow, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone kill a string of people,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s had nothing but trouble and misery all his life, being afflicted in his back and his leg and his eye, then being falsely accused of rape and thrown out of his beloved Church.’

‘Maybe he’ll be glad to leave this earth,’ said de Wolfe, mournfully. ‘He tried to go the other month, when he jumped from the cathedral roof.’

‘Is there nothing more we can do for him?’ demanded Gwyn, his great red moustache drooping as low as his own spirits.

‘There is so little time,’ answered John. ‘If the sentence goes against him tomorrow, as surely it must, they’ll demand a hanging next day — and I’ll wager all the Justices will turn out to watch it.’

‘Can you not petition the King or the Justiciar or someone?’ wailed Nesta.

‘The Lionheart is in France, God knows where Hubert Walter is, but it would take a week or more to reach him and another to get back here. It’s hopeless, even if they would listen to a plea for clemency.’

‘The only miracle that would save him would be another Gospel killing before he’s hanged,’ said Nesta sadly. ‘And though we’ve had a string of attacks these past few days, the swine who’s doing them will now no doubt lie low, just to avoid obliging us.’

When he came home to Martin’s Lane, de Wolfe went straight to bed, despondent about the morrow. Though Matilda was still awake, he could not bring himself to tell her what had happened, as she was likely to crow over the disaster that had befallen Thomas. After a restless night, when sleep came only fitfully between bouts of anxious worry, de Wolfe reluctantly made his way up to the castle. Before the court began its session, he made a last attempt to influence Richard de Revelle, even threatening to revoke his promise to keep quiet about his involvement in the brothel fire, but the sheriff called his bluff: ‘You gave me your word, John, that you would stay silent. As a knight, you know you will disgrace yourself if you go back on that — and it would be futile, as you undoubtedly know.’

Then John tried to talk the judges into a more reasonable attitude. Indeed, Gervase de Bosco was not pressing for a conviction and Serlo de Vallibus, even though he was the injured party, honestly admitted that he had no recollection of Thomas being his assailant. But the other two were adamant and, with a heavy heart, de Wolfe sat in a corner of the dais when the case was called halfway through the morning. Once again, he had ordered Gwyn to stay out of the castle and even managed to get Sergeant Gabriel to stay with him at an ale-house, to make sure that he did nothing foolish.

Twelve jurors representing the city of Exeter were already empanelled for other cases and were dragooned into hearing this interposed indictment.

The proceedings were short and predictable.

Thomas de Peyne was led into the Shire Hall in chains, amid hisses, shouts of abuse and a few vegetables hurled from the crowd. Bedraggled and pathetic, he stood with his head bowed before Walter de Ralegh and the other judges. A clerk — one he knew well — read out the charges of murder. The sheriff made an abrasive speech, detailing each foul homicide and laid them all at Thomas’s door, as well as the arson in Waterbeer Lane and the assault on Serlo de Vallibus.

Both Peverel and de Ralegh weighed in with their own vituperative opinions about a literate ex-priest, haranguing the bemused jurors about Thomas’s proficiency in writing and expert knowledge of the scriptures. They ended with an embellished account of the attack on de Vallibus that sounded as if they themselves had witnessed the whole incident.

At the end of this, there was no opportunity for any defence to be offered, apart from a harsh invitation for the accused to speak up — which Thomas ignored, continuing to stare at the earthen floor. De Wolfe had pleaded with the Justices to be allowed to speak in his clerk’s defence, but they had vetoed this on the grounds that he had no right to do so and, furthermore, was obviously highly prejudiced — an argument which he cynically thought was sheer hypocrisy, coming from a pair who had decided on guilt well before the case came before them.

The jury were then virtually commanded to return a verdict of guilty, which they did without hesitation. De Ralegh, as the senior justice, then snarled a sentence of death and commanded that this be carried out next day. Without looking up, Thomas meekly followed two men-at-arms back to the prison in the undercroft and the whole sad episode was over.

For the rest of the day, de Wolfe went about his duties as if he was in a nightmare. He would liked to have saddled up Odin and gone alone into the countryside, to be away from everyone and suffer his resentment and anger in solitude. But he was required in the court as if nothing had happened, for without his presentment of the cases in which he was involved none could be dealt with. The clerk who tried to carry out Thomas’s functions with the rolls was a shadow of the little man’s efficiency and his clumsy efforts only reminded de Wolfe the more of what he had lost.

By the time of the midday meal, Matilda had heard of the conviction and John expected her to rub his nose in it, but to his surprise she was muted in her comments and he soon sensed that she realised this was a topic so sensitive that she might get the worst of it if she crossed him. Instead, almost as if she was trying to divert his troubled mind from such a painful subject, she launched into some gossip about her favourite topic: the clergy of Exeter.

‘Our priest at St Olave’s is to leave! He saw the Bishop last evening, so it is said, and tomorrow he is to journey to Sussex to see his Abbot.’

John managed to drag his attention to her words, as Fulk was one of those who had been fingered by the cathedral as a potential malcontent. Was the fact that he was suddenly leaving in any way significant, he wondered?

‘What brought that on?’ he asked his wife.

‘I can’t imagine. At the alms-giving yesterday he said nothing about it. I thought he might have mentioned something to me, as one of the staunchest members of his congregation.’ She sniffed in disapproval of the priest’s attitude and John sensed that her infatuation had begun to evaporate.

‘When I talked to him the other day, he seemed discontented to be at a small church like St Olave’s,’ de Wolfe mused. ‘He seemed to think he was destined for greater things.’

For once, Matilda agreed with him. ‘He’s a clever and able man, wasted in a small chapel like that — especially as he could get no advancement in the diocese.’

The coroner was not interested in Julian Fulk’s ambitions, but Matilda’s next remark was of more interest. ‘That was a strange business with the priests down at All-Hallows and St Mary Steps. They say that Ralph de Capra has gone completely mad now and is locked in the infirmary of St Nicholas.’

De Wolfe looked up from his bread and cheese. ‘I thought that hell-fire merchant, Adam of Dol had taken him under his wing?’

‘He had, but it seems that de Capra ran away and tried to drown himself in the river. They fished him out and took him to the monks at St Nicholas for his own safety.’

Though it was difficult for John to shake off the depressed torpor that enveloped him, he decided that he had better talk to those three priests again. He was convinced that the true killer was still somewhere in the city, so the search must go on. When he found the culprit, at least he could throw it in the faces of the sheriff and the Justices — though much good that would do his poor clerk.

In the afternoon, he returned to the Shire Hall and tried to concentrate on the cases, to keep himself from dwelling on Thomas’s fate.

Near the end of the session Gwyn turned up, surprising de Wolfe by being sober. The Cornishman looked a decade older than he had when de Wolfe had last seen him. Gabriel was behind him and gave a covert shrug towards the coroner, as if to convey that he could do nothing with Gwyn in his present depressed mood. They remained behind when the court emptied, sitting in forlorn silence among the bare tables and benches.

‘It is useless appealing again to those men,’ growled de Wolfe. ‘They say that once a jury has pronounced a verdict, they are powerless to alter it.’

‘Bloody hypocrites — that jury would have said whatever their lordships decreed,’ snarled Gwyn.

De Wolfe uncoiled himself wearily from his stool and stepped down on to the floor of the court. ‘I’m going across to see Thomas now. Are you coming?’

His officer shook his head. ‘I’ll go later — when I’ve gathered the courage to face him.’

When John descended the few steps into the undercroft, Stigand made no attempt to obstruct him and sullenly waddled across to open the gate into the cells with a clinking bunch of keys. Inside was a short passage with a series of cells on either side and the gaoler opened the first door to admit the coroner.

Almost fearfully, de Wolfe squelched through the blackened, wet straw to stand over his clerk, who sat motionless on the edge of the slate slab. A lion in battle, willing to face any adversary with a sword or lance, de Wolfe cringed in any situation such as this: emotion and compassion confused him. Yet when Thomas looked up, it was almost as if the little ex-priest was the one who was ready to give comfort to him, rather than the reverse. He wore a beatific smile and seemed quite at ease. ‘Don’t fret, master, this is what was ordained by our Creator. At least I can’t make a mess of being hanged tomorrow — my cloak is hardly likely to get hooked on the gallows-tree as it did on the cathedral wall.’

His calmness and his attempts at humour almost broke John and only by coughing and choking could he keep his emotions in check.

They spoke together for some time, though Thomas did most of the talking. He told his master of his childhood and his long, lonely schooling in Winchester, of the death of his mother from the same phthisis that had crippled his own back and hip, and of the good days when he had taught at his old school, until his downfall over the girl, who had trapped him into making an innocent advance then alleged that he had ravished her. He told de Wolfe that there was nothing he wanted as his uncle the Archdeacon had already brought him his precious Vulgate. He clasped it in his hands as he spoke. Eventually, there was nothing left to say and, with a promise to see him again on the fateful morrow, John left with a heavy heart, telling Thomas that Gwyn had promised to visit him later that evening.

As he trudged home, he wondered if his officer had some notion of a last-minute rescue. Part of him hoped Gwyn would make some attempt, but common sense told him it would be a futile, disastrous act. The gaol was inside a locked compound, itself in the undercroft, guarded by the gaoler and often a man-at-arms too. The inner ward was impregnable, with a guardroom and sentries always on duty at the gatehouse. The whole castle — indeed, the whole city — knew of Thomas’s conviction, and no trickery or brute force on Gwyn’s part could get them both out of Rougemont then through the city gates. If they did, both would immediately be outlawed, legitimate prey to anyone who wished to kill them and claim a bounty for their heads. And Gwyn had a wife and sons to support, so even the affection he had for the little clerk was surely not worth that sacrifice.

It was early evening and he went home for a subdued meal with Matilda, who again was unusually docile, stealing puzzled glances at him from under her heavy brows as she sensed his distress. Although they spent most of their life together in mutual antagonism, when serious matters oppressed them, they were somehow drawn together, albeit temporarily. When John had broken his leg in combat some months previously, Matilda had nursed him with a fierce solicitude, and when she had suffered acute distress over her brother’s misdeeds, he had pledged and delivered his absolute support.

After the meal he paced the hall restlessly, then announced that he was going to talk to Adam of Dol and possibly the unhinged Ralph de Capra, if he could get into the sickroom of St Nicholas Priory. He also wanted to talk yet again to Julian Fulk about his sudden desire to leave Exeter, but knowing of Matilda’s interest in that particular priest, he avoided mentioning his intention.

The sun was going down as he reached St Mary Steps. The church was deserted once again, so he went round to the living quarters. The incumbent lived in a small house tacked on to the back wall of the church, its door opening on to the terraced cobbles of the hill. It was little more than a single room, with a box-like bed forming one wall. A lean-to shed at the other side provided space for cooking, which was done by an old man who also cleaned the church and rang the bell for devotions.

De Wolfe rapped on the upper half of the split door, which opened to reveal the truculent features of Father Adam. ‘What do you want, Crowner?’

‘To speak to you about de Capra.’

‘What business is it of yours? You’ve caused enough trouble as it is.’

De Wolfe took no umbrage at his manner, accepting that this strange man was incapable of civility. ‘As coroner, I have a duty to inquire into unlawful events. And it seems Ralph de Capra has twice attempted to kill himself, which is a felo de se.’

‘So what are you going to do about it — arrest him? Your own clerk tried to kill himself too, but he wasn’t thrown into prison — though he’s ended up there just the same,’ he added sarcastically. It seemed that he had no intention of letting de Wolfe inside his dwelling, so the coroner had to continue his questioning from the street.

‘What drove de Capra to this desperate state?’

Adam leaned on the door and thrust his florid face almost against John’s nose. ‘None of your concern, Crowner. What passes between two priests by way of confession is not for the ears of you or anyone else on earth. Only God the Father knows what was said.’

‘Was it truly a confession — or just the outpouring of a troubled mind? For I have heard that he had suffered a crisis of faith.’

The priest slammed his big hands on to the door top in temper. ‘Ha! Almost every so-called priest in this pestilent land is suffering from a crisis of faith! A lack of faith in what religion should mean. The failure to tell sinners what lies in store if they fail to repent. These milk-sops are not proper priests, but weak-kneed time-servers, all of them!’

John groaned to himself. He had launched this madman on his favourite obsession and was about to get another hell-fire tirade. ‘Then I’ll go to see de Capra up at St Nicholas’s,’ he said hastily, and backed away to leave a puce-faced Adam waving his arms and ranting about the unrepentant and the fires of damnation.

De Wolfe strode up the uneven steps of the hill and passed both the Saracen and the end of Idle Lane, but resisted the temptation to call in for a pot of ale and the solace of Nesta’s company, though he intended to come back later to the Bush. He crossed Fore Street and wended his way through the mean alleys to St Nicholas Priory, tucked away at the top of Bretayne. The prior, a sour-faced man whose cheeks were pitted with old cow-pox scars, was in the small garden, chastising a young monk for some error in the way he was weeding the vegetable plot.

When de Wolfe asked to see Ralph de Capra, the prior shook his head. ‘He’s not fit to be spoken to yet. The infirmarian has given him a draught to quieten him, though it seems to have had little effect.’

‘I have to talk to him now,’ insisted de Wolfe. ‘It is a matter of the utmost urgency.’ Though the chances were slim, if the deranged priest let slip anything that identified him as the killer, Thomas would be cleared. John could not pass up even the most remote possibility of saving his clerk’s neck from the rope tomorrow.

The scowling prior pulled up the cowl of his black Benedictine robe against a sudden gust of cool night air. ‘If you must, then be it on your head if he goes berserk again,’ he grumbled. He beckoned to a novice who was washing a pan outside the kitchen of the small priory and told him to take the coroner to the sickroom. Following him, John passed the storeroom where more than once, he had attended dead bodies from this part of town, though mercifully, it was empty tonight.

The young man led him into a passage with two cells opening off it, in one of which was locked the priest from All-Hallows. Nervously, he pulled a wooden pin from the hasp and stood aside for the coroner to enter. The moment John slipped inside, he heard the pin being hastily shoved back.

In the tiny room, with only a shuttered slit to admit a little light, he made out a skinny figure crouched on a pallet in a corner. He was stark naked and his tunic lay on the floor, torn into ragged strips. John wondered if he had been trying to make a noose, but there was nothing in the bare cell from which he could hang himself.

De Capra was shivering like a man with the ague, but not from cold. He gave no sign that he had noticed the coroner’s arrival, and sat staring at the floor.

‘Ralph, I am John de Wolfe, the crowner. Do you remember me?’

There was no response, so he pulled over a milking stool, the only furniture in the cell, and sat directly facing the other man. ‘Ralph, you must answer my questions.’

Again there was no reaction and John reached out to take the priest’s chin in his hand. He moved the man’s head so that he could stare straight into the vacant eyes. ‘What has happened to afflict you like this? What have you done?’

Suddenly, the other man was galvanised out of his catatonia. Shocked by the change, John fell backwards off his stool as de Capra leapt up and threw himself against the corner of the cell, standing naked on the straw mattress with his arms outspread against adjacent walls, like a living crucifix. ‘I have sinned, I have sinned!’ he wailed, his eyes rolling up to the wattled ceiling.

‘How have you sinned? What have you done? Have you killed, Ralph?’ The coroner was becoming desperate in his quest for a confession.

‘Killed? I have sent a legion of souls into purgatory!’

De Wolfe’s spirit leapt for a moment, in glorious hope that he had at last found his man.

‘What do you mean? Were they murdered in the city?’

De Capra thumped his lean body back and forth into the angle of the wall, his nails scrabbling at the plaster. ‘I stopped believing! Satan stole my mind! With no faith I shrove many, I betrayed them! I baptised babes with no belief in what I was doing! I shrove the dying without the true grace of God! They are lost! I betrayed them!’ He slid down the wall on to the pallet and sat in a crumpled heap, weeping disconsolately.

With a sinking heart, John made one last attempt. ‘But have you killed, Ralph? The old Jew, the priest at All-Hallows, the sodomite, the whore?’

There was no reply and the sobbing continued.

The door opened and the fearful face of the novice appeared, followed by that of the prior. ‘This cannot be!’ he hissed. ‘You must leave, Crowner. This man is sick in his mind.’

Acknowledging defeat, de Wolfe nodded and, with a last compassionate look at the wreck of a man on the mattress, he followed the monks out of the room. As they left the passageway, Ralph de Capra began to scream, the high-pitched, repetitive wail of a soul in torment. It was the signal that de Wolfe’s last chance of saving Thomas had failed.