The Grim Reaper

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was not long before Sir John de Wolfe, warrior and Crusader, again showed his yellow streak when it came to facing up to women. Matilda was sound asleep when he eased himself quietly into the solar and even more quietly on to his side of the wide mattress. He was up before dawn and slid out before she awoke, putting off the evil hour when he must tell her about the body in the Bush.

Mary was also up and about, getting the cooking fire going, but he refused her offer of food and took himself off to Idle Lane just as it was getting light. The Bush was already in full swing, with the lodgers breaking their fast and some early traders calling in for food and ale.

Nesta looked sleepy but was full of smiles, and John’s morbid fears that she might have had second thoughts about their reconciliation were unfounded. ‘I came before breakfast, as you demanded, woman,’ he said, with mock ferocity. She gave a swift kiss and sat him down at his favourite table, behind a wattle screen near the empty fireplace. She hurried away, yelling for her two maidservants, and within minutes a wide pewter platter, heaped with thick slices of bacon, three griddled eggs and leeks fried in mutton fat, was put before him even though it was Friday and a fish day in the eyes of the Church. A wooden bowl filled with boiled oatmeal followed, swimming in milk and honey, and a quart of best ale completed his meal. Nesta sat opposite him, chin in hand, daring him not to eat every morsel.

‘This is fit to break the fast of a Gwyn, not a John!’ he complained happily, tucking in with a will, determined to swallow every scrap to please her, even if it killed him.

Between mouthfuls, he told her of the discoveries at St Nicholas and brought her up to date on the similarity of this case with the death of the Jewish moneylender. He knew that Nesta would keep his confidences — and also that, like Thomas de Peyne, she was an invaluable source of information, for little happened in Exeter, and for miles around, that was not gossiped about in the Bush, which was one of the city’s busiest taverns.

‘So you feel it must be a priest?’ she asked, wide-eyed at the macabre story.

‘With that knowledge of the scriptures and the ability to write, it can hardly be anyone else. Only someone like Thomas would be able to pick such appropriate texts.’

There was a sudden awkward pause, as both realised what he had just suggested. Nesta laughed, a short embarrassed laugh. ‘Of course, that’s nonsense. Anyway, he would have been with you each time.’

There was another short silence.

‘He wasn’t, in fact. But it’s still damn ridiculous — although he has been acting strangely since he tried to kill himself.’

They both made a conscious effort to throw the foolish thought from their minds.

‘What’s the next thing, then?’ she asked. ‘Put every priest in Exeter to the peine forte et dure?’

‘That would please Gwyn, I’m sure. No, I’ll have to seek out those clerics who are known to be a bit strange and put some pressure on them.’

The landlady made a rude noise, indicating her derision. ‘You’ve got little chance of that, Sir Crowner! The Bishop will have you excommunicated if you start pestering his troops — Benefit of Clergy and all that.’

‘He can waive that right if he is so persuaded, just as he has agreed we may have jurisdiction in the cathedral precinct over any crime of violence there.’

Nesta sniffed disdainfully — she was tiring of all this talk of the law, when she just had her lover back again. But it was too early in the day for passion and when John had finished his massive breakfast, he felt more like slumping back against the wattle screen than investigating a murder. As always, his sense of duty triumphed. This was just as well, because the inn door flew open and his officer stormed in. When he saw his master with Nesta, Gwyn’s craggy face broke into a radiant smile, his blue eyes dancing above the ginger foliage on his face. He adored the Welsh woman and his mortification when they had split up was only equalled by his present delight at the healing of the wound.

Nesta, who was familiar with his gargantuan appetite, offered him food, but he had already eaten at a stall on the way down from Rougemont. He would have succumbed to the mildest persuasion to have another meal, but de Wolfe hauled him away. ‘To the Saracen, man! We have a day’s work before us. There are hangings to attend as well. Where’s that bloody clerk of ours? He knows how many swing today.’ He left the Bush with a promise to Nesta that he would return later and trudged off with Gwyn to the tavern where Joanna was said to have had her base. The Saracen was at the top of Stepcote Hill, between Idle Lane and St Mary Steps, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Bush. It was a similar building, though lower in the roof. Its walls were dirty pink, washed with white lime coloured with ox-blood. Over the door was a crude painting of a man with a turban, holding a scimitar, though de Wolfe decided that the artist could never have been nearer the Holy Land than Exmouth.

‘Have you set up the inquest at St Nicholas?’ he asked Gwyn, as they approached the inn.

‘Yes, the jury will be there at the ninth hour — the prior was not pleased, the miserable old sod.’

They stepped aside to let a donkey pass them, heavily laden with bales of wool going to the fulling mills, its hoofs slipping on the cobbles of the steep lane. When it had passed, they were opposite the inn door and John ducked inside. The stench, even at that early hour, was ten times stronger than the Bush, which Nesta kept cleaner than any other ale-house in Exeter. The Saracen was indeed a foul den. The four maids were all prostitutes, paying Willem the Fleming half their fee for the privilege of picking up their customers between serving ale and cider. Many of his patrons were thieves and coiners and much of the business transacted there was the disposal of stolen goods.

When they went in the landlord was at the back of the room, throwing a thin layer of mouldy rushes on top of the filthy ones that were already strewn over the floor. They looked as if they had not been changed since old King Henry died, for they were dotted with scraps of food, dog droppings and assorted rubbish. Here and there they moved, as a rat foraged among them.

When he saw his visitors the Fleming dropped his bundle. The arrival of law officers always meant trouble and his flabby features signalled his suspicion and displeasure. ‘The bloody crowner, no less!’ he grated, his foreign accent still strong even after twenty years in Devon. ‘What in hell do you want this time?’

He was as big as Gwyn, but fat rather than muscular. His jowls hung over the collar of his grimy smock and the long leather apron bulged over his belly.

‘You have been harbouring a girl known as Joanna of London?’ snapped de Wolfe.

‘Harbouring? What d’you mean, harbouring?’ The small eyes glittered over a sneering mouth. ‘An inn is open to anyone who wishes to enter. The law demands it.’

John sighed, he had no inclination to bandy words with this fat bastard.

‘Don’t waste my time, Willem. She was a whore who worked out of your ale-house, we all know that. I’m not interested in the way you run your business, I just want to know about this Joanna.’

The little eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s the crowner that’s asking, then she must be dead, eh?’

‘Yes — and you’ve lost your cut from her earnings. The girl’s been murdered. I want to know where she lived, when you last saw her and who she was with.’

The inn-keeper roared with laughter. ‘Would you like to know her grandmother’s maiden name while you’re at it? She slept here sometimes, yes — when she wasn’t in some man’s bed elsewhere. But where she went and who with — Holy Mary, she was whore! A dozen different men on a good day.’

It was the answer de Wolfe had expected, but he felt he had to go through the motions. ‘She slept here sometimes, though?’

‘Up in the loft. She usually had money and paid for a twopenny pallet. As she was a regular, so to speak, I let her stay in one that has a screen at the side — though I suspect she usually crept out to service the other lodgers at a penny a time.’

‘Did she have any belongings?’

‘She left a bundle alongside her mattress. Clothes, I suppose.’

The coroner demanded to see them and, grumbling under his breath, Willem reluctantly led them up a flight of wooden steps to the floor above. It was similar to that in the Bush, only smaller and dirtier. A row of verminous straw-filled mattresses lay on the floor. At each end was a vertical screen of woven reeds, which gave some slight privacy to the mattress behind it.

‘When did she come here?’

‘About two months ago. Said she had had to run from London, as she had stabbed her keeper, who was beating her for holding back some money. Sounded like the truth, for once.’

John looked behind the screen and saw a bundle tied up in a scarf, lying on the bed. Ignoring the fleas that hopped on the sacking cover of the pallet, he untied it and, in the dim light under the thatch, looked cursorily at two gaudy dresses, a gauze shift, some stockings that matched the one that had been around her neck and a cloth bag containing a dirty hairbrush and a tiny pot of rouge.

‘No money, I see. There was nothing on her body, either.’

Willem sneered again. ‘A girl like that would be too wise to leave a ha’penny lying here. It would be stolen within two minutes. She’ll have stashed her funds in a hole somewhere. Harlots never carry it on their person — most of their customers would cut their throat for the price of a drink. Maybe that’s what happened, anyway. Why are you bothering about a dead strumpet?’

De Wolfe ignored him and clambered back down the steps. At the door, he had one last question. ‘When did you last see this Joanna?’

The Fleming scowled at him. ‘I don’t mark the comings and goings of every whore who uses this place. She was around sometime yesterday, as far as I recall. In the morning, I think.’

They left the Saracen with some relief, Gwyn scratching vigorously after having added to the colony of fleas that normally lived in his clothing. As they loped up Smythen Street, past the clanging of the forges to where St John’s Row turned through to Fore Street, Gwyn vented his opinion of the Saracen and Willem the Fleming, his description coloured by a string of oaths.

‘But, for once, I think he has no involvement in this,’ grunted de Wolfe. ‘The business with the Biblical quotations makes this a more sinister affair than just the casual croaking of a harlot.’

They passed St John’s church and crossed the main street then turned again into the narrow lanes at the top of Bretayne to reach St Nicholas’s, squelching through a rivulet of sewage that ran down the middle of the alley and pushing aside goats and a pig. Inside the gate, the compound around the monastic building was well kept, compared to the squalor outside. A cobbled area lay around the walls and outside was a garden where the monks grew vegetables and herbs. A few fruit trees around the boundary fence were well into leaf.

A score of men hung around the door to the mortuary, watched suspiciously by two monks set there by the prior to prevent them stealing anything. Thomas was there too, looking as unhappy as ever, his lips making silent conversation with some invisible being.

‘Let’s get on with this, there’s hangings to be attended afterwards,’ snapped the coroner, going to the storeroom door and flinging it open. He heard the lane gate scrape open and turned back to see Nesta coming in, with one of her serving-maids in attendance. As the discoverer of the body, she was obliged to be present at the inquest and had covered herself for the occasion with a decorously dull-green cloak with a hood that covered her linen coif and burnished copper hair. Old Edwin limped gallantly behind them, grasping a knobbly staff in his fist, to guard them through this disreputable part of the city.

Gwyn marshalled the jury to each side of the door, like a dog with a flock of sheep. They were all last night’s drinkers from the Bush, with the two constables at each end. A handful of old men and goodwives from the nearby hovels came in to listen at the back — a dead whore was a welcome diversion from the sordid routine of life in Bretayne.

Gwyn gabbled his usual royal command to open the inquest and Thomas squatted on a keg just inside the storeroom, with his parchment and pens on a piece of board across his knees. John stood in the open doorway to conduct the proceedings and, after a quick preamble, asked Nesta to step forward. With a dead-pan face, he asked her to identify herself, then went on to question her. She answered demurely, with downcast eyes, and although almost everyone there knew that she was the coroner’s mistress, not an eyebrow lifted and not a smirk passed across a face. ‘Lady, can you put a name to the deceased from your own knowledge — and were you the First Finder?’

Nesta said softly but clearly that the woman was known as Joanna of London and that she had frequented her hostelry a number of times, even though prostitutes were not encouraged there. She had last seen her in the Bush late last night, then described how she had gone out to her brew-house some time before midnight to attend to her latest batch of mash. She had taken a horn lantern, but had tripped over something in the shadows and almost fallen. It was then that she had seen the dead girl lying on her back. She had screamed and run to the back door of the inn, where Edwin was coming out to investigate, followed by several of the patrons.

‘A nd was a Hue and Cry made straight away?’ demanded de Wolfe, with deliberate sternness.

‘It was indeed! Some of the men rushed around the yard to make sure no one was lurking there — they looked in the kitchen, the privy, the brew-house and even the pig-sty. Others ran out of the gate and searched the wasteground in Idle Lane and went as far as Priest Street, Stepcote Hill and Smythen Street. But they found nothing suspicious, so they called Osric, the constable, then sent Edwin up to the castle, where he found Gwyn of Polruan.’

The coroner had one last question, which he had genuinely forgotten to ask Nesta back at the Bush. ‘There was a drinking cup near the dead girl’s hand. Do you know where it may have come from?’

The landlady shook her head. ‘Gwyn showed it to me last night, but it’s not one from the Bush. Mine come from a different potter.’

De Wolfe thanked her gravely and Nesta stepped back to stand with her maid. Then a succession of jurors was called, those who had been involved in chasing around the streets of Exeter in the middle of the night. They all told the same story, confirmed by Osric and his fellow constable when they gave their evidence.

As with the inquest on Aaron, John felt no obligation to mention the writing and the strange circumstances, so there was little else to be said. The jurors had to view the corpse, so they paraded through the storeroom, where Gwyn showed them the stocking that had been around Joanna’s neck, then pointed out the strangulation groove on her skin and the bloody wound on the back of her head.

Outside again, de Wolfe concluded the proceedings in short order. ‘The dead woman is Joanna, a whore reputed to be from London, as her striped hood would confirm. She lodged at the Saracen, but they know nothing of her movements last night. As she is a woman, there is no need to present Englishry, which would be impossible, anyway, as she is a stranger. The cause of death is clear. She was struck on the head to relieve her of her wits, a blow that broke her cranium and which alone would have killed her within hours. But before she died she was throttled with one of her own stockings — a spare one, as she was wearing two, but it matches some that were found with her chattels at the Saracen. Dame Madge from Polsloe Priory has earlier this morning examined the girl on my behalf and found certain injuries of a depraved and licentious nature, which need not be described to you in any detail. It seems likely that they were inflicted immediately after death.’

He paused to glower around the half-circle of uneasy jurors.

‘So the verdict is yours, but I am sure you will find that her death was murder against the King’s peace, by person or persons as yet unknown.’

There was no disputing de Wolfe’s direction, and minutes later, the jury was streaming through the gate, heading back to the Bush for a few reviving quarts of ale.

Only a few yards away from the scene of the inquest, stood another of Exeter’s plethora of churches. Indeed, the thirsty jurors had to pass St Olave’s on their way back the Bush, though at that moment, praising the Lord was not on the minds of the few that happened to notice the incumbent standing at the door, which opened directly on to Fore Street.

Julian Fulk was fleetingly curious about the group of men who emerged from the lane, but he had other things to concern him. He was chronically anxious about his future and this had generated a slow anger that burned constantly and never left him. Although on the surface, he appeared amiable to the point of obsequious affability, this was a façade over the seething discontent beneath. To the members of his congregation, like Matilda, he was an urbane, unctuous priest, full of the social graces that attracted many of the more prominent wives of burgesses and officials like Sir John de Wolfe. They came to St Olave’s even when their dwellings were distant from his church.

Though formal parish boundaries were a thing of the future in Exeter, most people went to the nearest of about twenty-seven city churches, some only a few steps from their front doors. But Julian Fulk appealed to — and cultivated — those who, like himself, wanted social advancement. Though he was unaware of it, he had much in common with Adam of Dol of St Mary Steps, who also desired to be a canon and was as bitterly resentful that no such elevation seemed to be contemplated by the powers in the cathedral precinct.

Fulk turned away as the men disappeared from Fore Street and went inside his little church. Another oblong stone box, it was the cleanest of them all and, though bare of any decoration, its floor had fresh rushes strewn about and the shutters on the high windows were freshly painted. The altar table was covered with a lace-edged linen cloth, personally worked by the wife of one of the guild masters. The cross was filigreed silver donated by another guild, and before it was a pot containing fresh flowers, an unusual sight in an urban church.

But all of this was ashes in Father Julian’s mouth, though none of his gushing lady parishioners would have guessed it. He sat down on the unused bishop’s chair at the side of the altar to rest his bulk, for he was the shape of a barrel and perspired copiously at the slightest exertion. His moon-shaped face was pink, virtually the same colour as his almost bald head — he had only a rim of sandy hair from ear to ear. Nerves caused him to chew his flabby lower lip as he sat in his empty church, waiting for the few worshippers to arrive for his mid-morning Mass.

When the ladies came, he would smile and bob his head, for there were seldom men on a week-day. Julian Fulk would appear the soul of affability, especially to those he thought had husbands who might have influence with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Fulk knew that it was the gossip around dining tables in Canon’s Row and the guildsmen’s houses that made or broke reputations, and where preferment was assisted or frustrated with a nudge and wink.

As he pondered beside his altar, he once again cursed the fact that St Olave’s was different from all the other city churches, in that it belonged to St Nicholas Priory and its living was controlled by the Abbot of Battle, far away in Sussex. He had never even visited Battle and never met the Abbot, so he was at a double disadvantage in angling to be a canon-elect; the Bishop and Archdeacon here had no responsibility for his curacy of St Olave’s. Even that madman down at St Mary Steps had a better chance of promotion, for at least he was within the fold of Exeter.

Julian Fulk had got the living here almost by accident and had regretted it ever since. He was the son of a canon of Winchester and had been educated at the school there, some years earlier than Thomas de Peyne but he had been in the cathedral as a vicar-choral when Thomas was teaching juniors. His father had died suddenly and any chance of paternal influence had died with him, given the intense competition in Winchester between an excess of senior vicars. At a guest-night dinner in the Bishop’s palace, he had chanced to sit next to a monk who was Precentor at Battle — and Fulk, disillusioned with Winchester, was offered the living of St Olave’s. Without appreciating the insignificance of the church and the grave disadvantage of being outside the pale of Exeter’s episcopal establishment, he had moved and stagnated ever since. The impasse had become like a cancer, eating away at his soul and monopolising his every thought, but unlike Adam of Dol, he masked his resentment with a falsely benign face. Yet he knew that, like a cooking pot with a jammed lid, the pressure inside him was building.

De Wolfe had intended to go up to Rougemont after the hangings, to tell the sheriff about the second murder, but de Revelle spared him the trouble by attending the executions himself.

To be more accurate, he came to attend one of them, for the frantic activity to get everything ready for the Justices was mortgaging his time, if he was to conceal every irregularity in the accounts and records. However, he could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing Gocius de Vado swing that morning, after all the trouble the damned man had caused.

Gocius was a freeman who lived near de Revelle’s manor at Tiverton and had successfully fought the sheriff’s efforts to claim a hide of land from him through an attempted distortion of a land charter going back to the Domesday Commissioners. De Vado had even petitioned the King over the dispute and received a favourable judgement from Hubert Walter. De Revelle swore vindictively to get even with him and, using an agent provocateur and several bribed false witnesses, had his enemy convicted in his own shire court of receiving stolen property to a value of ten marks, far above the legal minimum of twelve pence for a felony and thus a capital offence. De Wolfe had not been involved, as no death, robbery or violence had taken place, but when he heard ale-house gossip on the matter, he strongly suspected some underhand dealing by his brother-in-law.

On this Friday morning, the coroner, followed by his officer and clerk, went out of the South Gate and up Magdalen Street on foot — it was not worth the trouble of saddling up three steeds for a half-mile journey. Though it was called a street, the way to the gallows became a country road, once beyond the huts and ramshackle dwellings that had sprung up outside the walls. These were not villages, like St Sidwell’s beyond the East Gate where Gwyn lived, but the overflow of the city. Due to its burgeoning prosperity, Exeter had expanded rapidly and the old walls could no longer house all those who worked there.

The coroner’s party walked with scores of others who were going to the hanging tree, either for entertainment or to see off a relative or acquaintance on their journey into eternity. Old men, too aged to work, and mothers with small children to entertain formed the bulk of the crowd, while hawkers with trays of pies and pasties, trinkets and lucky charms made up the rest. There were a few beggars too and even a hooded leper, forbidden to enter the city from the hospital outside the East Gate, but hoping for a few coins in his wooden bowl from those rash enough to brave the warning of his wooden rattle.

Magdalene Street, where Aaron had just been buried in the tiny Jewish cemetery, became the King’s highway to Honiton, and thence far away to Salisbury, Southampton, Winchester and even London. But today four men would never get beyond the first half mile, as their journey through life was to end abruptly at the gallows at the road-side.

Hanging was an accepted part of everyday life, preferred by many miscreants to mutilation, blinding or castration, which William the Bastard had favoured when he took over England. The Conqueror preferred these methods because the maimed victims remained in the community as a grim example to other potential wrongdoers. But conviction for a felony usually ended in a hanging, and all the executed person’s land and chattels were confiscated. It was not only the Crown that benefited: the power of life and death also resided in the manor and burgess courts when forfeited goods went to the lord or the town council. At this time, England hanged a greater proportion of its inhabitants than any other country in Christendom.

John de Wolfe had no quarrel with this state of affairs — in fact, it never crossed his mind. He was concerned with injustice, but if a man or woman had been sentenced to death in a legitimate court, then like almost every other man in the kingdom, he accepted that death was the proper remedy. His thoughts were on his own problems, not those of the condemned — how to manage the still-delicate relationship with Nesta and Matilda’s wrath when she became aware of it. The two latest murders nagged at his mind, with the knowledge that a warped killer was at large within the city.

As he loped along, Gwyn broke into his reveries. ‘What’s going on up there, then?’

De Wolfe lifted his head and saw a knot of people around a horseman, grouped at the edge of the road level with the gallows. Even at this distance, the angry gesticulations of the rider marked some extremely bad temper.

‘It’s the sheriff — and Ralph Morin and Gabriel,’ exclaimed the sharp-eyed Cornishman. ‘They seem to be arguing about the death cart.’

Alongside the group, with a few men-at-arms as escort, was an open wagon with large solid wheels, a patient ox between its shafts. Standing inside, their wrists bound to the front rail, were two men and a woman, their heads drooping in terminal hopelessness.

‘There should have been four this morning,’ bleated Thomas, who was almost running to keep up with them.

As they covered the last hundred paces, de Wolfe looked to his left at the hanging tree. It consisted of a massive beam twelve feet off the ground, supported at each end by stout posts buried in the earth. Today it indeed had four rope nooses dangling from it.

‘You’ll answer for this, you incompetent fools,’ de Revelle ranted, the objects of his rage being Osric, the constable, and another man who John recognised as one of the gaolers from the city prison in the towers of the South Gate.

‘Easy, Richard, you’ll give yourself apoplexy,’ he advised, as he came up to the sheriff’s big black horse. John looked across at Ralph Morin and Gabriel, the sergeant of the guard, but got only a deadpan look from the latter and a covert wink from Morin.

‘What’s the problem?’

The red-faced sheriff launched into a repetition of his tirade. ‘One of the felons has escaped, the very one I came to see dispatched! The fools — or, more likely, corrupt knaves — in the South Gate allowed him to vanish last night.’

‘Would that be de Vado, the one to whom you lost that land suit?’ asked John with straight-faced innocence.

De Revelle’s colour heightened even more and he glared around the faces of the other men, daring them to show even the vestige of a grin.

‘It was de Vado, yes. The man who was found with God knows how much stolen loot in his house.’

‘Prisoners vanish all the time,’ said de Wolfe, reasonably. ‘The city couldn’t afford to keep all of them in food for months on end, even if there was room in that stinking tower.’ He almost added that Richard had never shown any interest in escapees before, but thought it best not to inflame him even more. Many prisoners, especially those in the town gaol, never came to trial or execution, almost always because their relatives or friends bribed the gaolers to let them run for sanctuary in the nearest church or melt away into the countryside to become outlaws. Others just slipped away to another part of England or even abroad, until they could slink back to their homes unobserved.

It was only the sheriff’s chagrin at being done out of seeing Gocius de Vado perform the dance of death this morning, that had prompted his condemnation of gaol-breaking. He tried to include his men at the castle in the blame, but Ralph Morin was having none of it.

‘Nothing to do with us, sheriff,’ he snapped. ‘The city gaol belongs to the council and the Portreeves. I’m only responsible for Rougemont. Though we all know that Stigand is not above forgetting to lock a door, if the price is right!’

De Revelle wheeled his horse around, still glowering at his disappointment … He was about to kick his stallion into a trot, to go back to the city gate, when John reached up to grip one of the reins.

‘Wait a moment, Richard. I have to talk to you.’

‘I’m in no mood for gossip, John. I have a legion of pestilent clerks clamouring for my attention before this damned Eyre.’

‘You’ll listen to this — for the Justices certainly will.’

The mention of the royal visitors sharpened the sheriff’s attention. His sharp face stared down, the pointed beard bristled with impatience.

‘What is it now? Another dead moneylender?’

‘No, a dead whore — but slain by the same priestly hand.’

De Revelle’s forehead creased in puzzlement. ‘How d’you know that? And who was she?’

De Wolfe explained the circumstances quickly, knowing that it was difficult to hold the sheriff’s attention if he had more pressing affairs — especially ones which might affect his purse. But this time the sheriff was intrigued. ‘Joanna of London, you say? A handsome harlot with the striped clothing?’

‘That’s the one — and with flame-coloured hair.’

‘Her hair’s not flame-coloured all over!’ sneered Richard, unable to resist a cynical quip. John wondered how he knew so much about a tavern drab, though being aware of the sheriff’s nocturnal diversions, he could make a good guess.

‘We have to do something about this — and quickly,’ he said. ‘The Justices, especially Walter de Ralegh, are sharp men and they’ll be aware of the latest scandals in the city before they get their boots off. They’ll want some explanations, mainly from you.’

For once de Revelle agreed with his sister’s husband. ‘What do you suggest? If it’s a damned cleric, then the Church should be involved. Your bosom friend the Archdeacon is responsible for parish priests, why not ask him?’

‘I’m seeing him today, but we must get a few more wise heads together to see if we can draw up a list of possible madmen.’

De Revelle shook the rein free of John’s fingers, and as he rode off he jerked a thumb towards Thomas de Peyne, who was setting out his pen and ink on a nearby tree-stump. ‘There’s one for the top of your list,’ he called back over his shoulder.