The Prophecy of Death

Chapter Seven

Coroner Robert was waiting in the Prior’s hall. The Bishop sat at table, noisily dismembering a chicken and paying the prior and coroner no attention while the prior introduced them. As Simon said to himself, though, the man hardly spoke any English. It was no surprise that he was silent.

The Coroner of Canterbury had met enough knights and King’s officers in his time. It was his firm belief that there were only a few different types. They all fell into one of three categories, and he was perfectly capable of recognising them all. There were those who were set upon personal aggrandisement, seeking money at the expense of all others; those whose sole ambition was to have power; and those, a form of reptile like the repellent Despenser, who wanted both at the same time. Coroner Robert had no time for any of them. Yes, in his experience all men fell into one of the three, and he wondered idly into which category these two fell.

‘You are a keeper?’ he asked of Baldwin. Hearing the response, he nodded to himself. If he had to bet, this was one of those who sought power. Clearly the other one, the former bailiff, was after money. You could see that by looking at the two of them. The better dressed, albeit with the stains and mess of the roads on his clothing, was the former bailiff, while the knight was quite shabby-looking. He clearly didn’t have any care for fashion. Presumably, the former bailiff was looking to improve his treasure so he could maintain himself in the style he enjoyed, while the knight was merely power-hungry.

Satisfied with his conclusions, the coroner felt a vague disappointment. It was a common experience for him nowadays. Everyone could be slotted into one of the three sheaths he had seen. The King was not powerful enough to control the rampant ambitions of his nobles, and in the free-for-all that was modern politics, everyone was out to grab what they could. Even when the coroner had, generously, given someone the benefit of the doubt, hoping that the fellow would not fit into the sheath of greed or power, he had, unfailingly, been disillusioned later. Now he preferred to see the worst from the first moment. It saved trouble later.

‘You are investigating the three?’ Baldwin said. ‘I am glad to see you take your job so seriously as to come here this late to investigate, Sir Robert.’

‘We are not so populous that we can afford to lose three men without noticing,’ Sir Robert said sharply.

‘I would not have thought so,’ Baldwin said with a smile. ‘I respect you for your diligence, though.’

‘Thank you. Now, these two who killed them. They are here in the priory?’

‘They will go nowhere.’

The Bishop of Orange’s words were the first the coroner had heard him speak, and he was startled for a moment. Then he bowed stiffly and thanked him. ‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘But I will have them with me in the morning when I leave.’

‘My Lord Bishop, that is difficult. I have a duty to investigate the deaths of the three outside the city gate, and-’

‘They are my guards. They must leave with me. I am on an urgent embassy to your King, and the guards fall under the protection of your King. They were set upon and attacked by a small mob. They defended themselves. That is all you need to know.’

‘With respect, my Lord Bishop, the law of my country says that I have to investigate and record the facts. And if I discover that the men were guilty of murder, I have a duty to have them held until the next court is held to hear their case.’

‘That is not possible. My men answer to me, and I will not have them left behind.’

The coroner’s hackles were rising. ‘My Lord, they must be kept here until my inquest. After that you may — may — be permitted to take them with you.’

Baldwin interjected. ‘Coroner, I think that the only issue here is the urgency of our mission to the King. If there is any means of speeding the inquest, so that it could be held in the morning, would that satisfy your need for justice and the Bishop’s need for haste? After all, it is to be hoped that the two will not be found guilty of deliberate murder. There was clearly no premeditation here, nor was it some secretive assault under cover of darkness. It was two nervous men who were assaulted, just because they were riding to the gate on the orders of the Bishop. The locals deprecated their temerity at hurrying past, and they tried to defend themselves against apparent attack.’

‘So you say. I do not know until the jury meets.’

‘But it would be possible to hurry the matter along?’

‘Not if there is any risk of an injustice.’

‘If there were,’ Baldwin said gravely, ‘I assure you, I would take a dim view of it.’

Of course you would! Coroner Robert thought to himself. Aloud, he said silkily, ‘And, naturally, you would want to see them punished if they were found guilty?’

‘Yes. I am Keeper of the King’s Peace in Devon, and I spend my life seeking the fair punishment of those who deserve it.’

Coroner Robert nodded, but he was not persuaded. Sir Baldwin was clearly a man who enjoyed power and the trappings of power. ‘You have been keeper for long?’

‘It will be ten years next year, I think. Is that right, Simon?’

The bailiff nodded.

To the coroner’s eye, the bailiff looked the grimmer, less trustworthy of the two. He had a bleak expression in his sunburned face, like a man who was constantly waiting to hear an insult so that he may avenge it. There was a bleakness about him that made the coroner feel wary.

Ten years. There were few keepers who had held their positions for that length of time. Usually their corruption was discovered much sooner.

‘And you, Coroner? How long have you been in post?’

‘I’ve been here for some six years now.’

Baldwin’s eyebrows rose a little. Then he nodded slowly.

To the coroner’s acute annoyance, it felt as though Sir Baldwin was having the same kind of thoughts about the coroner as the coroner was having about him. Admittedly, there were some coroners who were venal and unfaithful, but that was no reason to lump Coroner Robert into the same group. He was an honourable man.

‘What of you, Bailiff?’

‘Me? Well, I’m not really a bailiff any more.’

‘No?’ Ah. No doubt the man had been taking bribes or-

‘I was made the Abbot of Tavistock’s personal representative to the Port of Dartmouth. Now I only hope to become bailiff once more.’

‘You hope? You have lost your post at the port?’

‘It did not suit me. I’m happier away from the sea.’

‘But it must have been a rewarding position.’

‘Fairly, yes.’ His expression darkened as though he resented the coroner’s assumption that this could have had any bearing on his decision to leave his post.

The prior was clearly growing irritable. ‘Coroner, are you going to discuss the matter or not? If you will not broach it, I shall.’

‘What subject is that?’ Baldwin demanded.

‘Can I have some wine first, please?’ Simon asked plaintively.

In the guest chamber, the guards ate their food and for the most part did not speak. Why would they? They were not comrades by friendship, but merely associates who had been thrown together by their service to the Bishop. It did not make for the refreshing sharing of confidences or the offer of sympathy, Jack of Oxford told himself.

He glanced across at the others as they ate, and winced inwardly. It was very difficult to have any feelings other than contempt for such fellows — and it was a mark of his own disgrace that he was here in their company.

Those two, André, his head swathed in linen after his wound had been stitched, and Pons, were both sitting a little apart. They were no different from any of the others, although today they were more reserved. The others were avoiding direct contact with them, as though they already had the ropes about their necks for their murders.

It was unfair, of course. If he had been there, Jack would have reacted in the same manner, drawing his sword in order to defend himself, especially if he’d seen someone throwing dung at him. The peasants in a city like this had no respect for their betters! Still, the pair of them were quiet now, fearing that here in this strange town their bishop might not be able to protect them. Now, without even the friendship of their peers, they sat solitary and grim-faced, contemplating their fate, should their master fail to defend them.

These fellows had nothing in common other than their master, and there was nothing to bind them either to him or to each other, really, except the money which he offered. For his own part, Jack felt no bond to the Bishop. He was not a warmhearted man who inspired devotion. He was too lawyerly in his manner, looking at anybody as though he was peering at an interesting specimen, rather than a human.

Most of the men here had been in the service of the Bishop for some years. It was a large household, and life with the Bishop had great advantages. No man would go hungry living with a bishop. And that was an important consideration — especially after the dreadful years of famine.

Jack remembered them, all right. All too clearly.

He had been barely eighteen when the rain began in that awful year of 1315, and he had watched as the fields flooded and the grain rotted on the stems. All the food which they had expected to farm that year was lost, and there wasn’t enough to feed the people, let alone the animals. Within two years, the herds and flocks had been all but wiped out, and the grain stored went rotten each winter. Although that was not what Jack remembered most of all. What he remembered most clearly was the sight of the bodies lying at the side of the road, the peasants who tried to work their lands, only to collapse and die, thin and racked with hunger, where they fell. It had been a time of misery, of grim, unremitting hell. The devil himself could not have imagined such scenes.

Jack’s family had been moderately well-to-do at the time. They had been small farmers, but they were at least free men. His older brother Peter was to inherit their farm on the death of their father, but when his father died, Peter was already two months dead. And by then Jack had decided that there was nothing for him there. He packed his bags and left the homestead which had grown hateful to him.

Those days had been appalling. People were dying all over the land, and he had been fortunate to find a fisherman who wanted help. He had lost his own son, and took Jack on, teaching him how to use the wind and the sea. It was only when the old man had himself died that Jack had taken his vessel and crossed to France, where he had hoped to find work. But so many were seeking food, that all were forced at one time or another, to find food in the oldest manner possible. Jack had, too, first by robbing, and then by killing.

He had never tried to count the dead. In his time he had waylaid and cut the throats of many, he guessed, but at last he had found salvation. He had been with a small band, trailing after some merchants travelling to a great fair, when he had seen a woman. She had been walking tiredly by the side of the road, and for some reason he had not indulged his whim with her as he had so often before, but instead had spoken to her, and learned a little about her. She was a maid to a lord, a kindly man, in a small manor nearby, he learned. He had stayed there with Anne-Marie for some little while, and when her priest came to talk to him, Jack had remained, out of affection for her. The few days became a couple of weeks, and then some months, and gradually he found himself slipping into the old ways of life, helping with the harvest, then with the ploughing and the sowing, until he suddenly realised he had been there a year.

This and his growing love for Anne-Marie, his love of the vill and the affection he felt for the area, made him offer his heart to her, and it was only then, when the people realised he wanted to take her for his wife, that the atmosphere changed. Suddenly he was ostracised, and his lovely little woman would not speak to him. He was foreign. He came from England. They would not let him have their girl, and she felt the same. She had never meant to lead him to believe that she could love him, she said. No. Of course not, he told himself cynically. He didn’t believe her, of course. He reckoned she was just saying what the others in the vill wanted her to say, and so he did what he felt any man might.

He left the same day, bitter, and disillusioned. When he saw a man being attacked in Tours shortly afterwards, he, a natural fighter, entered the fray himself. It was more than trying to aid a man in need, though. He was seeking the peace that would come from battle. He allowed his rage to overwhelm him.

It was fortunate that the scruffy, foul little man whom he leapt to help had been the Bishop’s own servant, and soon he was hired by the Bishop to join his bodyguards. At least, so he reasoned, it was safer for him to be there than to be out in the open where his rape could be punished.

‘What do you say?’ Prior Henry asked.

Baldwin glanced at Simon. Now that the bailiff had been able to quench his thirst again with a jug of wine, he was feeling a shade more lively, and the change showed in his face.

It was Simon who shrugged. ‘We would need to see the place where it happened; the body, where he died, anyone who could have been about at the time, and we’d need to see where the stolen things were kept, of course.’

‘What was stolen?’ Baldwin asked.

Prior Henry looked at the coroner, then sighed. ‘It was a phial of oil A very valuable oil indeed.’

‘Just some oil?’ Simon repeated disbelievingly. ‘You say your monk died for some oil?’

‘This was no ordinary oil. You see, many years ago, while St Thomas Becket was in exile in France, he had a vision. He saw the Virgin Mary come to him. She gave him this oil, and told him to hold on to it until the time of the sixth king after his own. That would be Edward, our King. But although the oil was there for his coronation, it was not thought … er … necessary to use it. There were disputes, I believe, about its authenticity. So it was not used for the anointing of the King. Instead, it was returned here, and placed in the reliquary with St Thomas’s bones. And there it should still be.’

‘If someone had not taken it.’ Baldwin nodded.

‘Quite so. And then killed our poor monk, too.’

‘This Gilbert — he was trying to guard it, you think?’

‘Of course.’

Baldwin could not help but notice the quick glance from the coroner. He wondered about that for a moment, but he continued without mentioning it. To him it looked as though the coroner was somewhat less convinced of Gilbert’s innocence than the Prior.

He cleared his throat. ‘Prior, how well did you know this Gilbert?’

The Prior had been studying the floor as he considered the matter yet again, but now he looked up sharply. ‘If you are going to cast any malicious rumours against this poor, dead fellow, I will be-’

‘Prior, the lad was up and about at a time when he should have been asleep, just like all his brother monks, from what you tell us. He alone rose in the middle watches, while all his brethren lay sleeping. Was he a uniquely light sleeper?’

‘Well, not-’

‘So we can exclude the idea that he alone of all the brothers might have heard something, then. Which leads us to the next question: what would have made him wake? Perhaps it was a call of nature. He needed the reredorter. Where is it?’

The prior wordlessly pointed.

‘Fine. So, if he had sought that relief, he would have walked even further from the scene of the theft, and further from the barn where he was to meet his death. It is inconceivable that he might have seen something from the reredorter, so that is easy to dismiss. If not a call of nature, perhaps there was something he realised he had omitted to do the night before. Was there any such omission on his part?’

‘No.’

‘So that too, we can exclude. And we are left with any number of other possibilities: that he had a nightmare and woke — but commonly a dream so painful as to force a man to wake will also cause others to be disturbed. None other woke? No. Perhaps he was tormented with a pain — a tooth that ached, a twisted ankle, a blocked ear … did he make any mention of such an affliction?’

The Prior shook his head.

‘So we come again back to the most obvious possibility — no more than that, it is just a possibility — that he may himself have been involved in the theft.’

Prior Henry shook his head, unconvinced and unconvincing. He wanted to respond waspishly to this accusation, but the conviction in Baldwin’s voice kept returning to him. ‘You are very certain of your reasoning, sir.’

‘Pray, do not be offended. I seek the truth. It is all any man can do. I never seek to judge a man unless I am sure. I would prefer to allow ten guilty men to go free than convict even one innocent who was undeserving. I do not wish to malign Brother Gilbert post-mortem, Prior. All I seek is the truth, so that we can attempt to recover your treasure.’

‘He was an easy fellow to like,’ Prior Henry said. Now that the barrier had weakened, his determination to protect the boy’s memory was undermined. ‘We bring many boys here from about the diocese, for without their education here at the priory, many of them, boys with good brains and hearts, would otherwise be lost to the Church. It is one thing for the world to lose another merchant, butcher or baker, but another thing for the world to lose a man capable of inspiring love for the Word of God. Gilbert was one of those.

‘I think he had been a novice for only a matter of weeks, when I saw his potential. He had a purity of thought, and an astonishing facility with a brush or reed. His depictions of scenes from the Gospels were marvels of the art, truly astonishing from a lad of such tender years. And yet there was always something at the edge of his work, a certain humour on occasions, and when the subject deserved it, a bleakness to show that some men could be truly evil.’

‘How long was he here as a monk?’

‘Only a matter of some seven months. Before that he was still a novice. I called him into the chapter when I thought he was ready. The brothers all agreed with my judgement.’

He was sounding quite defensive, Baldwin thought, and he could see that Simon felt it too. It surprised him. ‘It is not your fault if a brother decides to steal from the priory. You should not blame yourself, Prior.’

Now the prior and the coroner exchanged a look, and Baldwin understood that there was another point at issue. What it might be, though, he had no idea. ‘Prior?’

‘I think you should tell him,’ Coroner Robert said.