A Plague of Heretics (22 page)

‘He has been hiccuping now and then,’ reported John, mainly for something neutral to say. His mother nodded.

‘The poor boy has been doing that for the past day or so,’ she said. ‘His breath smells peculiar, too. I wish I knew what more could be done for him.’

John had no useful suggestions, and Evelyn, a most religious woman, provided the only remedy by endlessly passing rosary beads through her fingers as her lips soundlessly prayed for her brother’s life. The evening passed slowly, John helping his mother and one of the servants to clean William’s body and to struggle a new bed-shirt over his limp limbs. William muttered a few incomprehensible words when he was disturbed, but he was in a stupor, if not actually a coma, and did not respond to any questions or attempts to rouse him.

At dawn the situation was unchanged and reluctantly John and Gwyn saddled up after a good breakfast and prepared to head for home. As his mother came to say farewell in the bailey outside the house, her tears touched John’s heart, for he was aware that both of them were afraid that William would not survive.

‘At least there have been no more deaths in the manor – nor new cases for a week,’ she said, wiping her eyes and nose with a kerchief. ‘And there have been none at all in Holcombe, thanks be to Christ and His Virgin Mother.’

He kissed her and his sister, who was also weeping silently, and with a promise to return in a couple of days he left with a subdued Gwyn riding alongside him. As the tide was in, they crossed the river by another ferry further upstream near Combe-in-Teignhead, and then made their way eastwards along the coast road.

‘Strange how this bloody illness hits one village and not another,’ ruminated Gwyn. ‘Holcombe has had no trouble at all.’

He waved an arm to the left, where that manor lay just off the track, and John wondered if his officer was trying to hint at something. By the time they were in sight of Dawlish, a short distance further on, he had made up his mind.

‘I’ll speak to Hilda, but not come within coughing distance!’ he announced.

In the little port, fishing boats were drawn up on the beach and larger vessels on the banks of the small river that came down from the hills behind Dawlish. At this stream, they turned off and found a short backstreet, parallel with the high road. Among the few houses there, one stood out by being both stone-built and larger than the rest. It had two stone columns at the front supporting an arch over a large door. Hilda’s late husband, shipmaster Thorgils the Boatman, had modelled it on one he saw at Dol, in Brittany.

They reined in before the house, and Gwyn slid off his big mare to knock loudly on the door. Then he went back and climbed back into his saddle before Hilda’s young maid Alice answered.

‘Call your mistress to an upper window,’ commanded John.

A moment later one of the upstairs shutters flew back and Hilda leaned out, a shawl thrown around her shoulders in the keen morning air. She was a lovely woman, her honey-coloured hair falling down her back, unfettered in her own house by any cover-chief.

‘John, you must come in! I do not fear you bringing any contamination to me!’

He shook his head stubbornly. ‘This is as near as I must come, though God knows I would wish to have my arms around you!’

‘I had your message through my father,’ she called. ‘It is tragic what has happened in Stoke.’

John gave her the latest unhappy news from his brother’s manor and they talked for some time across a gap of twenty paces.

‘There have been no more attacks of the yellow plague in Stoke for a week, so we hope it has passed. But it seems that it has damaged William badly.’

Hilda offered to go to his mother to help nurse William, but John forbade it. ‘You are a good woman, my love, but there is nothing you can do there that cannot be carried out by Evelyn and my mother. I would worry myself to my own early grave if I knew you were putting yourself at risk.’

Hilda pulled the shawl more closely around her against the cool morning air, and leaned further over the window sill, as if trying to get nearer to her lover.

‘Now that the distemper seems to have passed, then it must soon be safe for you to visit me, John. I have missed you so much!’

They talked for a few more moments but, aware that their public conversation was starting to attract the attention of neighbours and passers-by, John reluctantly felt that he had to say goodbye, with a promise to call again within a few days. The two horsemen wheeled their steeds around and Hilda waved until they were out of sight, then the shutter closed.

Having left at dawn, the coroner and his officer were back in Exeter soon after the cathedral bells tolled for High Mass in mid-morning. Gwyn went straight to his family and another large breakfast at the Bush, while John went up to Rougemont. He had not seen the sheriff for a few days and felt he should tell him of yet another murder, that of Hengist of Wonford.

‘What in God’s name is going on, John?’ exclaimed Henry de Furnellis as they sat on each side of his cluttered table. ‘Three heretics slain in a week? By whom?’

De Wolfe turned up his hands in a gesture of bafflement. ‘Someone is taking the law into their own hands, not trusting the Church or the king to deal with these people,’ he growled. ‘These three canons are the obvious suspects, but I can’t see them getting blood on their own hands in such a barbaric fashion.’

‘Are they getting someone else to do their dirty work?’ queried the sheriff. ‘What about these two proctors’ men?’

‘William Blundus is ruffian enough, I suppose,’ answered the coroner. ‘He is used to throwing drunks out of the Close and beating a few hooligans with his staff when the occasion arises. The senior bailiff is Herbert Gale, a more serious fellow altogether. But why should two men who are little more than constables or beadles take to murdering heretics?’

Henry, whose main concern was getting in Devonshire’s taxes, was content to leave the problem to de Wolfe, but the latter reminded him what Thomas had told him about the Papal decretal.

‘Our good friend and master Hubert Walter has sent a reminder to all the bishops about the need to stamp out heresy. My clerk Thomas tells me that we secular officers – and that especially means you, Henry – are obliged to give all necessary aid to the ecclesiastical authorities in detecting, securing and punishing these blasphemers. So we may not get out of this situation so lightly.’

De Furnellis sighed and pulled a face. ‘You certainly know how to cheer me up, John! I need no distractions to scraping together the county farm, after this year’s awful harvest.’

‘We may have little choice after tomorrow, when they hold the first of these inquisitions,’ replied de Wolfe. ‘They are dragging in a handful of so-called heretics for interrogation and, if they are sent to the bishop’s court, they may well call upon you to deal with them.’

John left the sheriff muttering under his breath at these extra labours likely to be piled upon him and went back to his chamber high in the gatehouse. He expected to find Thomas there, labouring away with his pen, ink and parchment, but there was no sign of the little priest, and John assumed he was either at one of the interminable services in the cathedral or working in the scriptorium on the upper floor of the chapter house.

With no new deaths reported and no hangings to attend that day, he felt rather at a loose end, so he settled down to a boring hour before dinner, trying to follow the reading lessons that Thomas had set him. He had been coached on and off for a year or so, by a vicar-choral from the cathedral, but had made little progress. Then Thomas had taken over, but their move to Westminster earlier that year had dislocated his tuition and he was no further forward, mainly from a lack of enthusiasm on his part.

He sat staring at a few curled sheets of parchment on which Thomas had carefully inscribed the Latin alphabet and some simple sentences, but his mind kept straying to Stoke-in-Teignhead and the vision of his brother lying so desperately ill on his bed. He found himself praying again, ill-formed words muttered under his breath, but nevertheless sincere in their plea to whoever was up above in heaven, asking him to deliver William from danger.

His lessons ignored, he sat gazing into space until the noon bell from the cathedral told him it was past dinner-time. Back in Martin’s Lane, he endured another silent meal with Matilda, after he had told her of his brother’s desperate condition and she had grudgingly admitted that she had prayed for his recovery or, if that was too much to ask of God, for the salvation of William’s soul.

‘I also hear that there is another outbreak of the plague down on Exe Island,’ she added in a rare burst of loquacity. ‘Not surprising, with such people living in those squalid shacks that dot the marshes there.’

He felt like telling her that not everyone had such a soft life as her, with a relatively rich husband, her own income bequeathed by her father from the de Revelle estates and a substantial house to live in. But he held his tongue, preferring silence to provoking another tirade.

News of a fresh attack of the yellow disease was worrying. He had begun to hope that the present sporadic epidemic had burned itself out. So far, about twenty people had died in the city, and the fear and tension that this engendered could be felt as he walked the streets. People seemed more bent and furtive as they hurried along, as if keeping inconspicuous lessened the danger of contagion.

After the meal, Matilda clumped up the outer stairs to the solar to take her usual postprandial rest until it was time for her to go again to St Olave’s. John took a quart of ale and sat near his beloved stone hearth, nudging Brutus away with his foot so that he could be nearer the warmth from the glowing logs.

He had plenty to think about, as he stared into the flames. Apart from his brother’s desperate condition, he was frustrated by the lack of progress on the heretic killings. There seemed nothing to grasp hold of in his search – the heretics themselves had no idea who was preying upon them and the only possible suspects, the canons, seemed too improbable a target to be seriously considered. The only people he had not questioned now were the two proctors’ men, and for want of any other inspiration he decided to seek them out this very afternoon.

When he had finished his ale, he whistled to his old hound and went out into the lane, shrugging on his grey wolfskin cloak, though he found that the cold had moderated considerably as a dense mist had descended upon the city. When he went into the Close, the bulk of the cathedral was shrouded in fog, the tops of the great towers lost in a grey blanket.

The proctors’ bailiffs had a small building alongside St Mary’s Church, which was little more than a room for them to sit over a brazier and three cells with barred doors for incarcerating miscreants, most often drunks or aggressive beggars making a nuisance of themselves in the cathedral precincts – though occasionally it was someone in holy orders who was locked up.

De Wolfe rapped on the outer door and pushed it open, telling Brutus to stay outside. In the bare chamber he found Herbert Gale sitting at a rough table, eating from some food spread on a grubby piece of cloth. Half a loaf, a slab of hard yellow cheese and some strips of smoked pork appeared to be his late dinner. In one of the cells, a scarecrow of a man, dressed in rags and with filthy hair and a straggling beard, slumped on a slate shelf that did service as a bed. He was snoring like a hog and obviously sleeping off the effects of too much drink.

The cathedral constable got to his feet as he saw the coroner enter. Everyone in Exeter knew Sir John de Wolfe, though this particular citizen did not look too pleased to see him. About the same age as John, Gale was a thin, leathery man with a permanent expression of distaste, as if he disliked the world and all that was in it. He wore a long tunic of black serge, with a thick leather belt carrying a dagger. His cropped iron-grey hair was uncovered indoors, but a helmet of thick black felt lay on the table, alongside a heavy wooden cudgel.

‘I came to talk to you and Blundus about these so-called heretics,’ announced John without any preamble.

‘They
are
heretics, coroner, not “so-called”,’ retorted Gale. ‘And William Blundus is out about his duties.’

De Wolfe’s black eyebrows rose. ‘So they have been judged ahead of tomorrow’s enquiry, have they?’

‘If Canon Robert, who is a proctor and my master, thinks they are heretics, that’s good enough for me, sir!’ growled the bailiff.

John was not inclined to bandy words with a constable.

‘I have no interest in their religious leanings, Gale. I am investigating two, probably three, murders. All of men you must have known.’

‘What do you want from me, Crowner?’ asked Gale suspiciously. ‘This is a cathedral matter; we are independent of you in the castle and the borough.’

De Wolfe crashed his fist on to the table, making the remnants of Gale’s dinner scatter on the cloth.

‘Don’t try to tell me my business, man!’ he shouted. ‘Firstly, these deaths took place well away from the cathedral precinct. And in any event, Bishop Marshal long ago agreed that serious crimes against the person are within the purview of the king’s law, whether they are committed in or out of his territory.’

The bailiff remained silent, as when angry de Wolfe was not a man to be argued with.