As they shuffled on their outdoor clothes, for the sun had vanished again in favour of cloud and cold wind, Gwyn reminded him of another routine task for that morning. ‘I put the inquest back an hour as you must attend two hangings at noon.’
John had forgotten, but now recalled it was Tuesday, one of the two weekdays on which executions were carried out. Sentences of death could be passed in the sheriff’s county court and the mayor’s burgage court of the city, as well as on the rare occasions when king’s judges were in the city. Baronial and manorial courts, too, had power over life and death.
‘Who is to be turned off today, Gwyn?’ he asked, as they walked down from the castle to the High Street.
‘An old beggar who knocked down a fishmonger and stole his purse, and some lad of thirteen, who made off with a pewter jug.’
John sighed, with no particular revulsion, for hangings were an everyday occurrence, but from irritation that his presence was still needed, even though the felons had no property to be recorded and confiscated for the royal Treasury. ‘A couple of paupers – not worth a strip of Thomas’s vellum to record the event. Still, the law’s the law.’
They turned right into the High Street, the main artery of the city, a busy road thronged with stalls. Most of the buildings were wooden, but a few new stone-built dwellings and shops were beginning to appear, belonging to the wealthier burgesses. The many churches were also being reconstructed in stone as the city became wealthier. All the buildings had steeply pitched roofs to throw off the West Country rain, most of which ended in the street to form sludge with the rubbish from the food stalls and the refuse and sewage thrown out of house and shop doorways.
At least the High Street was cobbled, unlike St Sidwell’s, where Gwyn lived. In the few paved streets, the mire tended to gravitate to the central gully and from there run downhill to the river Exe, but elsewhere the garbage and horse dung stagnated to form a glutinous ooze.
The tavern named after the Crusaders’ enemies was near the West Gate, in a side lane parallel to the High Street. The lower storey was of stone, with an overhanging wooden upper structure, topped by a steep thatched roof. A low central door led from the cobblestones, flanked by two pairs of shuttered windows. A board nailed to the wall above the door had a crudely painted head supposedly representing a Mohammedan warrior, daubed in garish primary colours.
A small group of curious onlookers hung about outside and Gwyn pushed through them to enter the inn, bending almost double to pass under the low lintel. The coroner did the same, but their stunted clerk cleared the doorway with inches to spare.
Inside, the gloom was lightened a little by a roaring fire in the large room that occupied all the ground floor. In the middle stood the landlord, a rough-looking man of Flemish origin. Though he had been in Exeter for twenty years, he was still known as Willem of Bruges. He glared at the new arrivals, hands on hips, his chest and belly covered by a leather apron that protected him when he carried in barrels of ale from the back yard as easily as if they were flagons. Pouches of lax skin hung below his blue eyes, and much of the rest of his face was covered by a stubble of grey beard that matched his matted hair. ‘Come to see my unwelcome guest, have you?’ he grated. ‘Who will pay for the bed he lies on, one that I could let to a traveller for a penny-halfpenny a night?’
John ignored his complaint. ‘Where is the man, Willem? Has the apothecary seen him?’
The burly Fleming jerked a thumb at the wooden steps that led up to the floor above. ‘Up there, bleeding on my palliasse. The leech came two hours ago, put some plaster on his wound, but said there was nothing he could do that God couldn’t do much better.’
‘Will he live?’
Willem shrugged indifferently. ‘Ask me in a week, though I’ll not suffer him here that long without payment. Find me his family, Crowner, for I must dun them for his keep.’
He turned to picking an empty hogshead and carried it to a door at the back. ‘The criminals are out here, if you want them – unless de Revelle’s men have let them run off.’
This was a stock local joke and, indeed, over most of England, for the expense of keeping prisoners fed and guarded in the gaols fell on the local community. Many would have preferred the felons to melt away and become outlaws in the woods rather than pay yet more taxes to house them until they were either hanged or brought before the judges at the General Eyre. Guards, gaolers and men-at-arms were often bribed to turn a blind eye and let prisoners escape.
Willem pushed through the back door with his load and let it slam behind him, leaving Sir John and Gwyn to clamber up the stairs, which were little more than a stout ladder set against a hole in the floor above.
Unlike the Bush, the upper floor was divided by rush or wattle screens into a series of cubicles. These were set against the walls, all open towards the centre of the large room. The more desirable ones contained a palliasse stuffed with dry ferns, and a few even had a low bed-frame. Most, though, had merely a pile of straw on the floor, at a penny a night.
Only one of the stalls was occupied and the coroner walked over to its entrance. On a pallet on the floor lay the still figure of a man, covered with a rough grey blanket. Sitting on a three-legged stool alongside him was an elderly nun, holding his pale hand and pressing a wet cloth against his brow. She looked up as John came near, her lined old face placid, resigned to a lifetime of dealing with man’s cruelty.
‘Good day, Sir Crowner. I don’t know yet if this man will come to one of your inquests. It will be a near thing if he doesn’t.’
John had great respect for the sisters of the healing orders, whom he had seen care for hundreds of sick and wounded in campaigns both at home and abroad. ‘God be with you, Sister. How did you come to find this fellow so soon?’
‘Your big man Gwyn there, he sent a potboy down to the priory soon after the fight. They called us straightway, but he had lost much blood even before I arrived.’ She added, as an afterthought, ‘He told me earlier that his name was Eadred, that he was a free-holder from Dawlish, here to sell his pigs.’
John went to the other side of the pallet. He bent down to bring his dark head nearer to the victim.
The man’s eyes were closed, the skin of his face stretched over his pallid cheekbones.
‘Is he awake, Sister?’
The man answered, not the nun, in a voice that seemed to whisper from the floorboards rather than from his throat. ‘Who is that? Who are you?’
‘The Crowner, come to see how you are – and if you can tell me anything. Who did this hurt to you, eh?’
The man made no reply, but panted almost silently.
‘Can you show me his wound, Sister?’
Somewhat reluctantly the nun pulled down the blanket and exposed the man’s left shoulder and upper chest. A pad of clean rags lay across the front of the armpit, the centre soaked with blood, which had run down into the pallet.
When the cowled nurse pulled away the dressing, a small, almost circular hole, the size of an acorn, could be seen in the bloodstained skin of the man’s chest, below the fold of muscle across the armpit.
‘It must have gone into the upper part of the lung. He has bled much outside, but I fear that a great deal has drained into the inside of the chest.’
The coroner looked at the wound with professional detachment. ‘Gwyn, an unusual wound from a poniard. A round hole, not a slit.’
The big Cornishman leaned over his shoulder to look. ‘Like a sharpening steel, more than knife. Yet I have seen misericords like that, mostly Italian made.’
A misericord was a sheathed dagger, carried by noble warriors, for jabbing between the joints of plate-armour and also for administering the coup de grâce to vanquished opponents. Their interest was more than academic, as a characteristic wound from an unusual weapon could help to identify the offending knife and its owner.
‘He’s awake again,’ observed the nun, as she covered up the injury.
John turned to speak to the man once more. ‘You may die, fellow, though perhaps this good lady and the God she serves may save you. But in case they don’t, your declaration to me may help bring you revenge and justice to the people … and reparation for your family.’
Weakly, the lips moved to frame words. ‘Robbed, we were … as we left the inn. Two men fell on us.’ Heaving breaths punctuated the story. ‘One was hairy – black frizz of beard and long, ragged hair. Very hairy.’ He gasped into silence. Then, ‘He struck down my friend as we turned the corner. The one who stabbed me was younger and fair – must have been Saxon.’
John motioned to his clerk to write as they spoke. ‘You knew them – or their names?’
‘I have seen the hairy one around the town – but I don’t know his name.’ Again he sucked in air in a spasmodic gulp. ‘The young one was a stranger to me.’
Exhausted, the man’s head fell back and his eyes rolled up. His breathing grew laboured and the coroner could see that he would get nothing more from him. The nun pulled up the covers. With a farewell nod to the old lady, John moved out of the cubicle and waited for Thomas to finish his note. Then he said, ‘Let us see who is downstairs.’
The Flemish landlord opened the back door for them and they passed out into a filthy yard, where chickens and a few ducks competed in the mud with the cook, who made meals for the inn in a lean-to shed with a tattered thatched roof. Opposite this was an open stable, where the hostelry guests tethered their horses, and a pig-sty, from which came a cacophony of grunts and a terrible stench.
Directly opposite the back door was a rickety gateway that opened into the lane behind the inn. Tethered to it were two dejected-looking men, their hands lashed behind their backs with ropes that were tied to the gatepost. At the other side lounged two castle guards, wearing round helmets with nose protectors, but no mailed hauberks in the relaxed military conditions of the town. They hauled themselves languidly upright when they saw the coroner emerge from the inn. They knew the man’s office was held in mild contempt by Sheriff de Revelle, and rumour had spread of the rivalry and competition between the two men. They did not know what respect they should afford him.
John left them in no doubt. ‘Is this how you stand guard?’ he snarled. ‘You are paid to be soldiers, so stand alert, especially when a King’s officer comes among you.’
The pair glowered at him, but straightened their backs and rammed the stocks of their lances onto the ground in some semblance of a salute.
‘You’d have had your throat slit by a Mohammedan on the first day in Palestine if you’d been as slack as this,’ John grumbled, but his interest had already turned to the two wretches bound to the other gatepost.
One was a large, bulky man in middle age, with wild black hair and an untamed beard. His smock was torn almost to the waist and his barrel-like chest was a mat of dark bristle and John was reminded of the apes he had seen chained on the Continent, brought from Africa to be cruelly exhibited by mountebanks at fairs. The other fellow was much younger and, in stark contrast, a typical Saxon blond. They stared at him, like animals awaiting slaughter – which was almost certainly their eventual fate.
‘I am the King’s coroner, charged with investigating your crimes.’
The hairy one spat contemptuously into the mud, just missing Gwyn’s feet. The Cornishman growled ominously, but John put out a restraining hand.
‘The injured man swears you killed his companion. What have you to say to that?’
‘I did not. I know nothing,’ said the hairy one. With nothing else between him and being hanged, flat denial was the only option.
‘Liar! I have six men who will say they saw you strike the victim with a chain mace!’ Gwyn had little time for ruffians who spat at his feet so had no qualms about exaggerating the evidence: only two witnesses of the affray had come forward.
The bearded man looked away sullenly, tugging at his wrist bonds.
The coroner turned to the younger man. ‘And you, what have you to say for yourself?’
Less truculent than his accomplice, the fair man trembled at the prospect of a noose around his neck, but tried to remain defiant. ‘I know nothing of it. I was but one in the crowd outside the inn when a fight broke out.’
Gwyn pushed him roughly in the shoulder, making him stagger. ‘A pair of liars, then! We have a dying declaration to say that you stabbed the man mortally in the chest.’
He was again stretching the truth, but it had the desired effect. The Saxon, who was no more than nineteen, sagged into the mud, held up only by his wrists bound to the post behind him. ‘It was an accident,’ he sobbed. ‘The man was pushed on to my knife. I was holding it out to protect myself.’
Gwyn grunted. ‘A likely story!’
The cathedral bell chimed in the distance and Gwyn reminded the coroner that other duties called.
John called to the two men-at-arms loitering beyond the gate, ‘Take these prisoners to the castle and lock them up. Try not to lose them on the way.’ Then he and his men made their way back through the inn, and walked back along Butchers Row towards South Gate Street, dodged down Milk Lane and thrust through the throng of shoppers, porters, carts and animals that congested the narrow streets.
‘The hairy one will hang, no doubt,’ squeaked Thomas, crossing himself in anticipation as he scurried behind the two big men.
‘If Gwyn’s witnesses so testify at the inquest I’ll hand him into the tender care of my brother-in-law to appear before the royal justices who, no doubt, will condemn him.’
‘What about the boy?’ asked Gwyn.
‘Depends on the holy sister’s care – and her God’s will. If he dies, the boy hangs. If he survives a year and a day, the lad may only be charged with assault.’
Thomas pondered this for a moment as they passed into the Serge Market, heading down to the South Gate. ‘So he’ll lie in gaol for a year?’ he asked, crossing himself again.
John thought about this. ‘I think I’ll let him free, if he has a family to go surety for him. The best chance the injured man has of survival is if his assailant must provide for his care, for if he dies, so does the Saxon – at the end of a rope.’
Gwyn was doubtful about this proposed leniency. ‘Let him out of the castle dungeon and he’ll vanish into the forest within the hour – or else claim sanctuary in a church.’
John was philosophical. ‘He may prefer to gamble that the man will live, rather than become an outlaw. In any event, the city burgesses will be saved the expense of keeping another prisoner in the castle gaol.’
Gwyn grunted. ‘Cheaper still to cut their throats or drop them in the river.’
By now they were past Holy Trinity church and nearing the South Gate. A steady stream of townsfolk was converging on one of the main exits from the city, which led to the London and Winchester roads. They were not going far, only to the gallows site, which lay a few hundred yards outside the city walls. Beyond the gate, the road divided into Holloway and Magdalene Street, which skirted Southernhay, a wide strip of pasture, gardens and trees that lay on the slope below the town wall. The first part of the London road beyond Magdalene Street was known as Bull Hill and, after the few houses petered out, the hanging tree stood starkly at the side of the highway.
It was a chillingly simple structure, just two stout posts twelve feet high, with a longer crossbar joining the upper ends. Nearby were several single posts with a short arm at the top, from which were suspended gibbets, hooped iron frames the size and shape of a body. Inside, the rotting remains of previously executed fellows wafted a foetid stench to remind the populace of their mortality and the wages of sin, which meant the theft of anything worth more than twelve pence.
By the time that John de Wolfe and his party arrived, a crowd of a hundred or more was assembled around the gallows. Hangings were a popular diversion for those who had an hour to spare on Tuesdays and Fridays. It was a social occasion, where people could meet and gossip, even conduct business while waiting for the felons to be dispatched.
Hawkers stood by with their trays of sweetmeats and fruit, yelling their wares at the matrons with babies at their breast. Old men and cripples fended off the children and urchins who dodged about, yelling and playing hide-and-seek in the bushes at the side of the road. Only when the moment of death approached did the crowd become silent, better to savour the vicarious thrill of a life extinguished in the final agony of strangulation.
John disliked hangings, though he was not sure why this was. As he approached the foot of the empty gallows, he felt a vague unease. Violent death was so familiar to him that he gave it not a second thought – men mutilated on the field of battle had been part of his way of life for years, and he had killed more than his share with his own hands, sword, mace and dagger. Yet there was something about this cold-blooded ritual of snuffing out civilians that bothered him, irrational though he knew it to be. Justice must be done, examples must be made of miscreants or the whole fabric of society would tumble about their ears … and yet…
He shrugged the mood off and motioned to his clerk to set out his pen and ink on a nearby cart, which would be used to turn off the condemned after the ropes were set around their necks.
‘Thomas, take the names and dwellings of the felons – though today we are wasting our time. They haven’t a pennyworth of goods between them.’
It was the task of the coroner to record all executions and make sure that the property of the hanged was collected, as it was forfeit to the Crown. But most criminals were penniless ruffians, whose only possessions were their tattered clothes, fit only to be burned or buried with them, if they avoided rotting in chains or on the gibbet.
Gwyn had wandered off to buy a pie, so the coroner sat on the edge of the cart to await the ceremony. Soon a small procession wound its way from the South Gate and there was an expectant buzz from the crowd, which parted on the road to allow another cart to trundle through, escorted by a dozen soldiers from the castle. As it came nearer, he could see a woman running alongside the wagon, throwing herself at its side every few yards. Nearer still and he could hear her screaming and wailing, as she tried to clutch its rough rails. The cart, pulled by a stolid mare, slowly rolled up to the foot of the hanging tree, the mob rolling in behind it like a human wave.
Standing inside, their hands lashed to the front rail to keep them upright, were the victims of today’s ritual. An old man, grey hair falling in unkempt strands over his threadbare smock, slumped uncaringly, his chin on his chest, bereft of any hope. John sensed that his death might be a welcome release from a long, miserable life.
In stark contrast, the other was shaking with fear, worsened by his poor mother’s hysterical screams as she scrabbled at the side of the wagon. He was a thin waif of thirteen, his red hair heightening the pallor of his face, a white mask with red-rimmed eyes, from which tears dribbled down his sallow cheeks.
The babble and screams of the woman, herself less than thirty years old, were almost incoherent, but John picked out repeated exhortations to God to save her only son.
As soon as the cart stopped, one of the soldiers walking behind it pulled her away. ‘Come on, Mother, there’s nothing you can do.’
She fell to her knees in the muddy earth and clasped his legs, her terror-racked face upturned to him in agony worse than that her child was soon to suffer.
‘My son! Save him! Let him go, sir!’
More embarrassed than angry, the sergeant-at-arms pulled his feet away and she fell to her face in the wet soil. A yeoman, obviously her husband, pulled her gently to her feet and led her away towards the edge of the crowd, as she continued alternately to sob and howl.
The soldier motioned the carter to move directly under the gallows, while he walked up to the coroner and raised a hand to his chest in a perfunctory salute. ‘You need the names of these felons, Sir John?’
‘And their place of abode, if you know them, sergeant.’ He turned to point at Thomas, who was still leaning against the other side of the unused wagon. ‘Give them to my clerk there, to record on his roll.’
The soldier hesitated. ‘There was also a message I was to give you, Crowner. The town crier may have some news of the man found dead in Widecombe.’
News travelled fast within the closed community of Exeter, where every citizen was a professional gossip. They all knew about the man lying stabbed in the stream, fifteen miles from the city.
‘What news, man?’ demanded John.
‘I don’t know, sir. But a journeyman mason told the crier that he wished to speak to you. He is working at the cathedral.’ He turned on his heel and went about his business.
As John pondered the development in the Widecombe affair, the last act of the drama before him was being played out.
The hangman, who on days other than Tuesday or Friday, ran a butcher’s trade in the Shambles, climbed a rough ladder resting against the gallows cross-bar and pulled down two nooses that had been wrapped around the timber. Then he slid a plank deftly across the width of the wagon under the side-rails and climbed aboard. John sensed the hubbub of the crowd damping down, as the man untied the ropes that lashed the two victims to the cart, leaving their wrists tied. The old man he urged up to stand on the plank and the boy he lifted on to it. The child was keening softly, staring at his mother and father on the edge of the crowd in mixed supplication and incomprehension.
With the soldiers had come a priest, and he now began to read some unintelligible dirge in Latin from a book held before him, his tone suggesting that this was an unwelcome chore with which someone from the diocese was stuck every Tuesday and Friday. The hangman slipped the rope over the old man’s head and pulled it firm. Then he did the same to the boy, who began to screaming, his wails matched by heartrending cries from his mother. The crowd was silent, but as the executioner leaped from the wagon and smacked the horse’s flank, a low animal growl rose from the throng.
The mare, as well accustomed as the priest to what was required, moved forward with a jerk. The noise from the crowd swelled and, as the two victims tumbled first from the plank and then from the back of the moving wagon as it cleared the gallows, an orgasmal groan spread across the meadows.
The screeching of the boy was strangled into a gargling croak as the noose tightened around his neck and he began to kick furiously, constantly at first, then in spasmodic jerks. With a cry of despair, his father broke from the crowd and raced to the gallows. He flung himself around his son’s legs and pulled as hard as he could to shorten the death throes, oblivious of the collapse of his wife into a dead faint.
The old vagrant died as he had lived, quietly and inconspicuously. A few intermittent twitches lasted for several minutes as his soul left the unhappy body that had sheltered it for sixty years.
The coroner watched impassively, but with a return of the unease and foreboding that these rituals always generated. What sense could there be in publicly throttling a young lad who had run away with a pot worth twelve pence? Would there ever be a time in England when a better method of dealing with juvenile petty thieves could be devised? He motioned to Thomas and Gwyn as the two corpses made their last nervous twitches on the gallows.
‘Come on, Thomas – and you, Gwyn. There’s an inquest to hold, and on the way we’ll hear what this journeyman has to tell us about our mysterious corpse from the edge of Dartmoor.’