The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER SIX

De Wolfe hurried across the wasteground to the side gate of the tavern, which opened directly into the large backyard.

Gwyn was waiting for him inside the gate, which was the only entrance through a line of rough but sturdy palings that marked off the land belonging to the inn. The light was poor, but the moon and a pitch-brand stuck over the back door, in defiance of the curfew regulations, gave enough light for those who wanted to empty their bladders against the fence. As he arrived, Edwin came out with a horn lantern, which though feeble, threw a pool of light over a small area.

‘Where’s your mistress?’ de Wolfe demanded harshly.

‘Inside. She had a sit-down and cup of brandy-wine to settle her nerves, then went up to her bed. She had a terrible shock, Cap’n.’

‘Want to see the cadaver first?’ asked Gwyn pointedly.

De Wolfe gave one of his ambiguous grunts. He was more concerned with Nesta, but decided that he must salve his official conscience by delaying another minute or two. The potman held up his lantern and limped up the yard. It was almost square, about twenty-five paces each way. The brew-shed was the largest hut, facing the cookhouse and the privy, which were too close together for good health. Against the end fence was an open stable, a fowl-house and a pigsty, all set in a patch of grassless mud that, fortunately, was now fairly dry.

A murmur of voices came from the back door of the tavern and, turning, John dimly saw a cluster of curious onlookers. Gwyn followed his gaze. ‘They were all over the damn place when I came, but I chased them back and threatened them with amercement if they set foot up here again,’ he boomed, as they reached the crudely boarded hut where the ale was brewed.

‘There she is, Cap’n!’ croaked Edwin, almost as if he owned the corpse. He held up his lamp and de Wolfe saw a still form lying on the hard earth. The woman’s head was almost touching the planks of the brew-house door, and she was flat on her back, with her legs crossed at the ankles. Her right arm was outstretched and just beyond her fingers was a pottery wine-cup, tipped on its side. The striped hood of her cloak was still in place, almost concealing her red wig. Its front edge was across her forehead, but the rest of her face and neck were exposed to the pale moon and the flickering lantern.

‘This time it’s a strangling,’ said Gwyn, unnecessarily, for it was obvious that a white band was cutting tightly into her throat, a loose end lying across her chest. The cloak had fallen open and her crumpled silk kirtle was visible all the way down to her ankles.

It was hard to tell the colour in that light, but John thought that the cloak was purple and the gown a bright red. ‘Put that light down close to her face,’ commanded the coroner. Even his anxiety about Nesta had been temporarily dampened by his professional interest in the mode of death.

‘No doubt she’s been throttled,’ repeated his officer. ‘Her face is dark and swollen.’

The boldly handsome face of the prostitute was reddish-purple in the light from the lantern. Her tongue protruded slightly from between the carmined lips and a dribble of frothy saliva issued from one corner. De Wolfe placed the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘Still warm, she’s not been dead long.’ He picked up one of her outflung hands and dropped it again. ‘Not a trace of stiffness, either.’

‘She weren’t here an hour before the Matins bell, Crowner,’ offered Edwin. ‘I came out for a new cask then. The mistress found her a few minutes before the bell so it must have been done between them times.’

De Wolfe rocked back on his heels alongside the body. A strangled whore was no great novelty, usually related to a dispute over payment or because the girl had taunted the client for his pathetic performance. In the great scheme of things, this was not a serious crime.

Yet when he looked up at Gwyn, he had a foreboding of greater problems to come. The man was looking at him with a sly grin that John had come to know only too well over the past twenty years.

‘Well, what is it? Out with it, damn you!’ he barked.

His henchman continued to leer at John in his infuriating way. ‘Lift up the cowl, Crowner, and you’ll see.’

Suspiciously, John turned back to the dead girl and pushed back her hood. He stared at her forehead, then beckoned impatiently to Edwin to hold the lantern closer. ‘There’s some marks on her skin — looks like soot or lamp-black across her temples.’

Gwyn nodded. ‘It’s surely writing. I can’t read a bloody word, but I know letters when I see them.’

De Wolfe grabbed the lamp from the potman and held it almost touching the woman’s face, in an effort to make out what the marks were. They were certainly letters of the Latin alphabet, but the edge of the hood had smudged them. Desperately, he tried to recall all his lessons and managed to make out that it was a long word beginning with R, but he could not decipher the rest. He stood up quickly and yelled urgently at the crowd still loitering near the back entrance to the inn. ‘Is there anyone among you who can read? A priest or a merchant’s clerk?’ It was asking a lot to find someone literate among the late-night drinkers in a city tavern, but John was afraid that the writing on the girl’s face would smudge off before it could be read, as it seemed only to be made with a finger soiled with soot from a fire-pit.

‘Shall I go and find our miserable clerk?’ suggested Gwyn.

De Wolfe was about to agree when there was a minor commotion at the inn door and a figure was pushed forward. When he came hesitantly up the yard, John could see it was a youth in the sober garments of a secondary, one of the junior acolytes from the cathedral. These young men assisted their vicars and canons, as a stepping stone to priesthood, which could only be achieved after the age of twenty-five. ‘Sir, they say you need someone who can read,’ he said reluctantly. John nodded brusquely and beckoned him forward. The lad recoiled when he saw a corpse garbed in the well-known uniform of a whore, but he steeled himself to crouch down alongside the coroner.

‘Can you tell me what that says?’ demanded de Wolfe. He held the lantern as close as he could to the woman’s forehead, while the secondary peered at the smudged markings.

‘It reads … a strange word …’ He hesitated, and formed sounds with his lips. ‘It says “revelation”, Crowner. Just that one word, revelation.’

‘You are quite sure?’

‘I am certain what the word is, sir, though what it signifies, I have no idea.’ De Wolfe grunted his thanks and the aspiring priest scurried away, to be treated to a quart of reviving ale by his friends in the tavern.

Gwyn looked down knowingly at his master. ‘Is this another like the Jew?’ he asked, with a hint of morbid satisfaction in his tone.

The coroner shrugged and hauled himself to his feet. ‘It may well be. We must consult Thomas, our oracle, for he is most likely to have the answer.’

The urgency of dealing with Nesta flooded back to him and he pointed at the corpse. ‘Send for the constables or Gabriel to move her to where we can examine her later — anywhere out of sight of our friend the innkeeper.’

‘It’s a long way to haul a body to the castle from here,’ objected the Cornishman. ‘What about carrying her to St Nicholas’s Priory, where we took that dead lady, Adele de Courcy, a while back?’

De Wolfe agreed impatiently — at the moment, he didn’t care if they carried her to Dartmoor, as long as she was removed and he could get to see Nesta. ‘Don’t go there yourself, Gwyn. Seize all these idle drinkers and impound them for a jury tomorrow. Find out if they know anything about this strumpet, if she was in the inn tonight and who was with her. You know what to do. And bring that wine-cup — for all we know, it might have been drugged. Then find that God-forsaken clerk of ours!’ he added as a parting shot.

The coroner strode to the inn door and pushed his way in through the gawking throng, with Edwin limping after him clutching the lantern. ‘She’s up in her garret, Cap’n,’ he wheezed, as they entered the odorous drinking chamber that filled the ground floor. It was almost empty: many patrons had slunk away when they knew that a crime had been committed, anxious to avoid any contact with the law and its possible effect on their person or their purse. The only ones whose curiosity had got the better of their caution were those in the yard behind.

John made straight for the wide ladder that led to the upper floor, and climbed its treads with a feeling of nostalgia for the many times that he had ascended them with Nesta. He reached the loft, its peaked roof lost in the darkness. A few lodgers snored on their pallets, those who were too tired or too drunk to have joined the curious crowd in the yard. The only light came dimly from a corner, where a small room was partitioned off for the landlady’s own use. It had no ceiling and the dim light of a tallow dip reflected off the hazel withies that supported the thatch above. He picked his way through the straw mattresses that lay on the floor to the little room, Edwin and his lantern having diplomatically stayed downstairs. John tapped softly on the door and called her name.

‘Who’s there? What do you want?’ The voice sounded more weary than distressed.

‘It’s John. I came to see if you were in need of anything. I have dealt with … with what was in the yard.’

There was a pause, then the bar across the inside of the door was lifted and the wooden latch raised. A face appeared, a taper held high alongside it to throw light upon his face. ‘It really is you, John!’ Nesta sounded genuinely surprised.

He grinned lopsidedly, in spite of the tenseness of the moment. ‘It really is, Nesta — not some evil spirit.’

She opened the door wider and stood before him, still in her working gown and linen apron. They stared at each other as if meeting for the first time, her eyes wide in her oval face. Even in the gloom, he could see the rich red of her hair and the fullness of her lips. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.

A moment later she was in his arms, sobbing with relief — though he was not sure if the relief was from the shock of falling over a throttled corpse or at being reunited with him. He pulled her gently to the bed and sat her alongside him, his arm around her shoulders in an almost fatherly embrace. ‘I’ve missed you sorely, Nesta. Are you going to send me packing again?’

She shook her head and gulped back tears. After the hard life she had led, Nesta was rarely given to visible emotion, but now many weeks of loneliness and remorse leaked away in muffled sobs. The inarticulate John also felt an unaccustomed lump rise in his throat, which he attempted to clear with his usual grunts and spasmodic squeezes of her shoulders.

‘Am I welcome back again, dear woman?’ He didn’t know whether he meant in her inn, her heart or her bed.

She nodded vigorously and then, with a snort of anger at her weakness, sniffed back her tears and wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron. ‘It was horrible, John. Although she was a whore, she didn’t deserve to die like that. And why in my bailey?’

‘Murder is a hazard of her trade, Nesta.’ But even as he said it, he remembered the sooty writing on the woman’s brow and knew that this was no common killing. However, did not want to talk about the pursuit of justice. ‘I have been foolish these past months, Nesta. I should not have let you keep me at arm’s length.’

‘I’ve missed you more than I can say, John. It has been the most miserable time of my life — certainly since Meredydd died.’

Her husband had been a Welsh archer, a friend of de Wolfe. When Meredydd had given up fighting, he had settled down as landlord of the Bush, but soon a fever had carried him off and John had helped his widow pay his debts and carry on with the tavern. An innocent friendship had blossomed into affection and passion.

‘But nothing has changed, John. I love you dearly, yet the future holds little for us,’ she said, with infinite sadness.

De Wolfe had just regained what he had lost for months and was in no mood to surrender it. ‘We can go on as we did before, Nesta!’ he exclaimed vehemently. ‘Why should we forfeit even a moment of the pleasure we get from each other’s company? And I don’t only mean here.’ He bumped up and down on the mattress to illustrate his point.

‘Everyone knows about us, John, even Matilda.’ But she was fighting a rearguard action and she spoke with no real conviction in her voice.

‘I don’t give a damn what people think. Almost every man I know has a woman or two tucked away — and usually not one he cherishes, as I cherish you.’

She burrowed closer to him. ‘But what if I become with child, John? It’s a wonder it hasn’t happened already.’

‘And what if you did?’ he bellowed recklessly. ‘I would honour and support it and be glad to give it the name Fitz-Wolfe. There’s no shame in becoming a father. Even the bloody sheriff has at least two bastards that I know of, and no one points a finger at him.’

Nesta wanted to be convinced and stifled her protests, though she knew that stormy passages lay ahead. ‘Let us see how it goes, then, cariad,’ she murmured, in the Welsh they always used when together. They held each other tightly for a few minutes, but de Wolfe was aware of noises coming through the thatch from the yard below. Then he heard Gwyn yelling orders at whoever had arrived to move the murdered woman’s body out. There was a crash as the gate was thrown back on its hinges.

The commotion was like a douche of cold water over the pair.

‘I’ve seen dead bodies before, John, but to fall over one in my own yard …’

He gave Nesta’s shoulders squeeze, but felt a restless urge to go down to see what was happening. ‘Was the woman in the inn tonight? I saw her flaunting herself here a few days ago,’ he said.

Nesta nodded, her face rubbing against his tunic.

‘She has been here a few times lately. I don’t encourage whores, but if I had them all thrown out, I’d lose the trade of the men, especially those merchants and travellers who lodge here and want a woman. But I never let them use the loft — not like that fat swine in the Saracen.’ It was a low-class tavern not far away on Stepcote Hill, run by Willem the Fleming, notorious for harbouring cutpurses and harlots.

‘But was this Joanna here tonight?’

‘I saw her earlier on, drinking with a couple of strangers. She was plying her trade with them, and when she vanished, I assumed she had gone off to serve them in some doorway or under a bush.’

‘When would that have been?

‘Oh, God knows, John. I’m too busy to watch the comings and goings of the local whores. I would think it was a couple of hours before midnight.’

‘Edwin says the corpse wasn’t there an hour before that time — and you stumbled across it at about the time of the Matins bell?’

‘Yes — so she must have gone elsewhere from here, not straight out to her death. I’ve no idea who the men she was with might have been. They weren’t regular customers — nor were they staying here the night. I’ve only three or four lodging.’ She jerked a thumb towards the door, from beyond which came a stuttering snore.

‘What do you know about the girl? Where did she stay?’

Nesta frowned a little. ‘John, you’re getting too official already. Am I going to lose you again within minutes of finding you?’

He hugged her close, knowing how carefully he must tread in the future. ‘But I have to protect you, my loved one. If that was some stray madman in your yard, he might have attacked you, rather than the whore.’ He omitted to mention the bizarre matter of the inscribed forehead, which was likely to mean that this had been no random killing.

‘And another thing. You’re the First Finder. I will have to have you at the inquest in the morning.’

She smiled up at him impishly, a welcome return of her old nature. ‘And will you amerce me two marks if you find I failed to raise the hue and cry, Sir Crowner?’

It took the staid de Wolfe a second to realise that she was teasing him. ‘You did raise it, for those men in the inn were on the scene at once. That’s as good a hue and cry as I need.’ He stood up and placed his long fingers on her shoulders. ‘I’ll not sacrifice you for the law again, woman of mine! But I will have to see to this business now, for both our sakes.’

She stood up with him and threw her arms around his waist, her head coming only to the level of his collarbones. ‘I’ll give you but a few hours, Keeper of the Pleas of the Crown!’ she mocked. ‘If you desert me until after breakfast, never darken these doors again.’ She stood on tip-toe and raised her face to be kissed.

John went out in a haze of joy, almost falling down the steep ladder as his feet trod air.

St Nicholas’s Priory was a small establishment of Benedictines, a dependency of Battle Abbey, the mother church that had been set up in Sussex to commemorate the Conqueror’s great victory over Harold and his Saxons. It stood in a lane on the outer edge of the dismal area of Bretayne, not far from St Olave’s on Fore Street, which in turn belonged to St Nicholas’s.

It was a single building set in a small plot of land and housed half a score of monks under a sour-natured prior. They kept a couple of beds for the local sick and a storeroom that not infrequently doubled as a mortuary, for there was a high death rate in that squalid part of the city.

The two town constables, one of them the Saxon Osric, had been called to the Bush from their patrol. As usual, they had been attempting to enforce the curfew and catch those who had failed to damp down their fires. The curfew — the couvre-feu — demanded that all open fires had to be either extinguished or banked down each night, though it was a rule observed more in the breach than in reality. Aided by a couple of the Bush’s patrons they had carried away the cadaver on a hurdle pulled from behind the tower’s pig-pen. By the time John arrived at St Nicholas’s, they had already negotiated with the prior to place the body in his storeroom and it now lay on three planks, supported by trestles, ready for his inspection.

The last time he had seen a woman’s corpse in this room, he had enlisted the services of the formidable Dame Madge from the nunnery at Polsloe, two miles away. But in the early hours of the morning, with all the city gates firmly barred, it was impossible to bring her to help him examine Joanna of London. Without the aid of a chaperone, he decided to tread cautiously and confine his investigations to the upper part of the body, at least until the nun could be called next day.

After Matins and Lauds, the surly prior had gone back to bed until Prime at dawn, leaving a sleepy monk to lean against the door-post of the mortuary and keep an eye on the coroner. The other town constable had gone about his business, but the skinny Osric stayed to help. Just as de Wolfe was about to approach the corpse, he heard Gwyn’s heavy tread in the lane outside. The Cornishman came through the priory gate with Thomas de Peyne in tow. ‘Found the little knave wandering the Close. He wasn’t on his bed after all.’

‘I couldn’t sleep — I went for a walk to clear my head, that’s all,’ protested the clerk. ‘Do you expect me to crouch in my lodging all night, just in case you want me?’

Ignoring their bickering, the coroner beckoned them into the storeroom, where a couple of candles, remnants from the altar in the priory chapel, threw a flickering light over the body. ‘Thomas, come and look at these marks, before they are rubbed away for ever.’ He grabbed the ex-priest’s hunched shoulder and dragged him to the head of the bier. ‘What do make of that? A young secondary at the Bush claimed that it spelled a word.’

Thomas peered closer, the hunt for truth overcoming his revulsion at the proximity of a dead woman. His thin lips moved as he tried to trace out the smudged marks, which even to de Wolfe’s illiterate eyes were less clear now than when he had first seen them. ‘It’s hard to make out … A couple of letters are gone. What did that other fellow claim he saw?’

‘He said it read “revelation”.’

Thomas scanned the marks again. ‘Ah! Now you tell me that I can fill in the blurred parts. It is indeed “Revelation”.’

‘And what the hell might that mean, written on the brow of a whore?’ demanded Gwyn.

‘A whore, you say?’ Further light dawned on the clerk’s face. ‘Of course, St John the Divine! This is another message — like the one we saw with the old Jew, Crowner.’

De Wolfe sighed. ‘Come on, Thomas, explain yourself. What’s St John to do with marks daubed in lampblack? Do you mean this comes from the fourth Gospel?’

Thomas frowned at his ignorance. ‘No, no! The same disciple, but a different book of the New Testament. He also wrote the very last one of the whole Vulgate — the Revelation of St John the Divine, the most obscure and mystical of them all.’

‘You’re right there, little toad,’ growled Gwyn rudely. ‘It’s totally obscure to me. But what’s this to do with a throttled drab?’

Thomas closed his eyes, not in disgust at his companions’ Philistine failings but as an aid to searching his memory. ‘Let me see — yes, I have the words! Not literally, but those that seem so relevant to these circumstances. Just look at the colours of her clothing.’

De Wolfe ground his teeth: Thomas was becoming as long-winded as Gwyn. ‘God’s guts, man — spit it out, will you?’

The clerk pointed at the dead woman’s temples. ‘Towards the end of the Book of Revelation, John describes a woman dressed in purple and scarlet, with a cup in her hand filled with the abominations of her fornication. And on her forehead was written “Mother of whores and every obscenity on earth”.’

There was a silence, in which they all looked at the gaudy colours of Joanna’s clothing, the wine cup left alongside her and the writing on her forehead.

‘Whoever’s doing this, he certainly knows his Bible,’ muttered de Wolfe. He looked sharply at Thomas. ‘Is every priest able to recognise these passages from the scriptures as well as you?’ His tone was almost accusatory.

‘I told you last time, Crowner, many priests can hardly read. Whoever is doing this must have had a good education.’

‘Do you mean it would be a canon or an archdeacon?’ demanded Gwyn.

The clerk shook his head. ‘Far from it. Some canons are as ignorant as their bottlers. I suspect some are even totally uncaring about their faith, perhaps even unbelievers.’ His face darkened as some inner thought erupted. ‘And some are evil men, who think nothing of taking away a man’s soul.’

De Wolfe had more urgent problems than Thomas’s soul. ‘Has he left a message this time, as he did with the moneylender?’

They began to search the body, but were hampered in that none of the men wanted to undress her, although in life she had earned her living by exposing her body to men. The removal of her hooded mantle was as far as they went, which at least gave them access to her head and neck. The gaudy wig, made of some bright orange-red tow, was awry, revealing her short brown hair beneath. The ligature around her neck was made of silk and when Gwyn unwrapped it, they saw it was a thin stocking, looped twice around her slender throat and tied in a double knot at the side. It had cut into her neck, leaving a deep groove from the pressure.

‘It was done during life, no doubt of that,’ growled the coroner, pointing at the two edges of the groove. ‘The upper edge has a line of blood spots along it and above that, the skin is purple and swollen, whereas it is pale and clear below.’

‘Why should you think otherwise, Crowner?’ asked Thomas, with his unfailing curiosity, even for the macabre.

‘Because I have seen ligatures around the already dead — and this one has a head injury, just like the Jew.’

De Wolfe, who had been supporting the head while Gwyn unwrapped the stocking, showed the palm of his hand, which was covered in sticky blood. ‘The back of her head was violently struck — this time with force enough to crack the skull in spite of her wig. I can feel pieces of bone grating together under the hair and skin.’ He wiped his hand on the crumpled silk stocking. ‘We have a killer who seems to stick to his methods — first a blow to the head to silence the victim, then another means of causing their death.’

He stood back and gazed at the pathetically still harlot. For the first time, he noticed that an ominous bloodstain was spreading through her gown over the area of her lower belly and upper thighs. The significance was all too obvious, but still the men shied away from the intimate probing that would be necessary to determine exactly what had happened.

‘We need a wise woman’s help here,’ de Wolfe muttered gruffly. ‘Gwyn, make sure that a message gets to Polsloe soon after dawn to get that midwife nun over here.’

Gwyn nodded, then, anxious to change the subject, said ‘No sign of any written message, though?’

‘The written message was on her temple, Crowner,’ pointed out Thomas, sensibly. ‘It seems clear enough to me.’

John nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose you’re right. There’s little else we can do here, now — we know who she was, how she died and that it was by the same crazy hand that killed Aaron.’ He led them outside, and Osric pulled the door shut.

‘Can we do any more tonight?’ asked Gwyn. ‘It must be halfway to dawn now.’

De Wolfe remembered Nesta’s threat about breakfast, but he also had Matilda to contend with. He was back on the old knife-edge of weaving a safe path between them.

‘If you have the names of those who were at the Bush, we can leave it until early morning. The Saracen will be our first call, to get that evil swine Willem to the inquest, if this girl was working mainly out of his lousy ale-house.’ He trudged away, leaving Thomas to find his pallet in the Close and Gwyn to bed down in the castle gatehouse, while he himself went home to make his peace with Matilda as best he could — although he knew that when she discovered his new case was centred around the Bush, she would make his life hell.